Author: Patrick O'Grady

After decades with his scabby little nose pressed to various grindstones of journalism, Patrick O'Grady came away with plenty of mental scar tissue, a good deal less hair to cover it, and an undiminished appreciation for three subsets of the craft: drawing cartoons, writing commentary, and composing headlines. All three are short, punchy attention-getters, the literary equivalent of yelling, "Hey, look at me!" before hanging a moon out the school-bus window, and thus own a natural appeal for an overgrown class clown with the attention span of a rat terrier raised on angel dust and bong water. And thanks to the Internet, the best thing to happen to journalism since the invention of movable type, he gets to do all three of them without having to go to work at a newspaper, where management has slowly devolved into a button-down mutant hybrid of the worst aspects of the Spanish Inquisition, the dental bits in "Marathon Man" and the DMV of your choice. He and his wife, the long-suffering Shannon, share an adobe hacienda in The Duck! City with their cat, Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

Holy macaroni!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Good God, what a motley crew. No wonder I drank. I bet this photo wound up on bulletin boards in newspaper HR offices nationwide, bearing a red stamp reading “DO NOT HIRE.”

Herself and I celebrated 28 years of unholy matrimony this morning with the traditional “Happy Anniversary” dance in the kitchen.

And what a long, strange tripping of the light fantastic it’s been, too. When we got shackled up at Jekyll & Hyde State Park outside Fanta Se in 1990 Herself was managing the DeVargas Center location of B. Dalton Bookseller (anyone remember bookstores?) and I was an editor at The New Mexican (anyone remember newspapers?).

“Is there a bus ticket and some fake I.D. in here somewhere? Goddamnit!”

Just shy of three decades further on down the road, she is a skilled, respected information-services professional burrowed like a tick into the leathery hide of the Military-Industrial Complex, while I … I … ai yi yi. The less said about that, the better. For every up, there must be a down. That’s Scripture. Ballistics. The Scripture of Ballistics? One a them there.

Anyway, that we have nearly made it to the Big Three-Oh is not my fault. She had Lasik. She can work an Excel spreadsheet. She knows where the guns and the airport are.

But Herself is in the habit of collecting stray animals and is reluctant to concede defeat, even in the face of tattered furniture, soiled carpets, and a dwindling income stream that one might blame on an aged prostate if a work ethic had one.

Fortunately one of us remains viable. We started small, in that teensy rental roach motel on Romero Street, and now we have this fauxdobe hacienda with a great big yard. Sometimes she lets me off the leash to chase rabbits.

That’s what she’ll tell the cops and neighbors when they wonder why they haven’t seen me wobbling around on the bike lately, anyway.

“I took my eyes off him for one second and he was over the wall and gone! Beg pardon? What’s with the shovel and the mound? Oh, just turning over an old flower bed. Why do you ask? ’Scuse me, I have a flight to catch.”

Bloomin’ marvelous

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
The daffodils and tulips have come and gone, and now it’s the irises’ turn.

The plant life hereabouts doesn’t seem to have gotten the word about our record heat and drought.

The roses on the back patio are doing as well as ever, and maybe better.

Roses are exploding on their trellis, the irises are going full tilt, and the lawn — well, it actually looks kind of like a lawn.

And those little green apples that God didn’t make? Well, somebody did. We’re gonna have a metric shit-ton of those inedible sonsabitches to contend with here directly.

Good thing we don’t have a Triffid. Judging by the way everything else is coming along, our little cinder-block wall sure wouldn’t restrict its movements any.

Nossir, that sucker would be striding around and about the Greater Comanche Foothills Yacht & Cricket Club, snatching up the neighbors and their pets, lowering property values, and making Republicans of the survivors.

Danger, Will Robinson

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
“Call Uber, see if they’ve got those flying cars up and running yet.
I’d like to get the hell out of here.”

Remember when Google’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil?”

Those were good times, hey? ’Scuse me, I need to take this call. Hi, Dr. Smith!

Asked for comment, Skynet-Palantír-Magic 8-Ball CEO Sauron DeGreate said, “Eye have no idea what you’re so excited about. That’s a joke, I say, that’s a joke, son! Say hello to Siri for me.”

Be Worst

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
Remember, kids, cutting and pasting other people’s work
is for bloggers only.

From Steve Benen at the Maddow Blog:

• Melania Trump’s “Be Best” blather was apparently another cut-and-paste job, liberating the content of a document released by the previous administration’s Federal Trade Commission in 2014. The writing, it is hard. I know, believe me, I know.

• While Ms. Trump was Being Best, her husband and his pals were being the other thing. Jeffy Bob Jimmie Joe Sessions plans to separate immigrant parents and children because, you know, “the best people,” etc., et al., and so on and so forth. The Big Orange Cheese, meanwhile, wants to slash more than $15 billion in previously approved spending, more than half of it to come from the Children’s Health Insurance Program, because children can’t vote, buy real estate, or suck a golf ball through a garden hose.

• And finally, according to The New Yorker, Eric T. Schneiderman has resigned as New York attorney general to spend more time with his family and work on a memoir entitled, “Shut the Fuck Up And Get Me Another Drink, You Whore (Before I Slap You Again).”

‘The Post has been totally gutted. …’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
“We need more budget cuts. Call it 10-15 percent. And a couple of bibs.”

When Lean Dean says you’ve gone too far, you’ve gone too far.

Dean Singleton, who once mused about consolidating, outsourcing and perhaps off-shoring the various MediaNews copy desks, says the owners of The Denver Post have “cut the heart out” of the once-mighty newspaper.

Undeterred by bad press, senior staff departures, and even the resignation of Lean Dean, the hyenas at Alden Global Capital continue gnawing away, taking comfort in the knowledge that there are plenty of toothsome tidbits left on the stinking carcass.

I know, I know — it’s a new world, information wants to be free, adapt or die, etc., et al., and so on and so forth. Doesn’t mean it’s pretty to watch.