He's a walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction. …
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.
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Jim Beam) is not only a major-league shithead, he’s a major-league shithead without the courage of his convictions — he dropped his one-eejit crusade against extending unemployment benefits last night.
Of course, “courage” is hardly the word to use here. Dubbed “The Underperformer” by Time magazine in a 2006 article discussing America’s five worst senators, Bunning wouldn’t have dared take such a stand were he not retiring from the Senate. To do so would’ve have taken actual balls instead of the substitutes he played with while pitching baseball instead of fits.
One thing I don’t understand: Why has nobody asked whether Bunning was such a deficit hawk when the Daffy-Fudd cabal was running two unfunded wars? Probably because the press knows it won’t have him to kick around much longer. Lazy pricks.
You can quit searching the taverns, flophouses and obits — I’m still very much alive, despite the feddle gummint’s insistence on tinkering with The World’s Best Health Care System®. I just haven’t had much to say. Too busy riding the bike.
I actually managed to log 150 miles last week despite the weather, and I’m finally starting to feel vaguely like a cyclist again. On Wednesday, the DBR went to Old Town for more surgery — this time a Ritchey crankset with 172.5mm arms and 50/34 chainrings — and on Saturday I took it out for three hours and climbed every damn’ hill in town, some of ’em twice.
Weird how the little things can make a difference. I had always ridden 172.5mm cranks until I took up mountain biking. Longer levers were the fashion off road, so I stepped up to 175mm cranks on the MTB and stuck with them when I started racing cyclo-cross. Finally I went to 175s on the road bike, too, thinking, what the hell, I ride ’em on everything else.
But when I got the Jamis Supernova, it showed up sporting a compact crankset with 172.5mm arms. And y’know what? I kinda liked the feel. I’m not grinding along the single-track this time of year — I’m mostly riding the road, or some bike path, and it’s a whole lot easier to spin shorter cranks and smaller rings with bum knees and a big ass.
So chalk up another convert to the Church of the Compact Crank. Now if I could just find a shop that sold legs and lungs. …
You ain't gonna be spendin' no 40 days an' nights wanderin' ’roun' this desert, bo'. Move along, move along.
If Christ were to begin wandering around our local wilderness, collecting disciples and preaching sermons, sooner or later he and they would run afoul of Bibleburg’s latest ordinance forbidding camping on public property.
The ordinance is both shameful and silly in that it (a) demonstrates the lack of compassion in the black, withered heart of Industrial Christianity and (b) will be impossible to enforce.
Regarding the former, I always thought that it was the money-changers who were supposed to get tossed out of the temple, not the poor and helpless. As for the latter, if I’m a stony-broke homeless guy living in a tent by the creek and a cop hands me a ticket, I’m wiping my ass with it and sending it downstream to Pueblo. Put me in jail for noncompliance and I’m enjoying three hots and a cot, plus regular showers, at taxpayer expense. Shameful and silly, as I said.
Homelessness is a real problem, for the campers and the Chamber of Commerce alike, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Some campers are just down on their luck and awaiting better days. Others are mentally ill, addicted to this or that, and perpetually in need of social services that are either stretched beyond the breaking point or simply unavailable. And still others are real, honest-to-God hobos who prefer nibbling along the tattered edges of our consumer culture to diving in head first. Treating them all the same is absurd.
The private sector, various non-profits and individual volunteers are doing what they can. One local businessman sees an opportunity to house the homeless in a former KOA campground off South Nevada Avenue, but the city is standing in his way.
Many a passage from the Sermon on the Mount comes to mind here. Let’s try this one on for size — Matthew 8:21-23:
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
No more goose with a sluice thanks to my new Planet Bike fenders.
How the hell did I ever get along without fenders?
I tell you, I’d have skipped more than a couple outdoor rides this year without these nifty little plastic mothers. Unless I’m actually racing cyclo-cross — something I haven’t done since 2004 — I’m just not into the freezing, muddy douche up the old exhaust port any more. Cold is bad enough. Cold and wet just plain sucks, especially if you plan to stay out for a while. And washing your kit and bike daily is as much fun as drinking a bottle of cough syrup and watching a chart-wielding Repuglican on C-SPAN.
The roads were particularly filthy today since the sun finally came out and got after that last snowfall, so I slapped a set of Planet Bike fenders on the DBR mountain bike and rode the Greenway Trail for 90 minutes. The Voodoo has fenders, too, but after hitting the deck and dislocating that finger, I’ve decided I like wider tires and a lower center of gravity for a reconnaissance ride in evil weather.
Anyway, it was nice to be outdoors doing something other than running through lumpy snow. I only saw two other cyclists so I get big manly points too. The weatherman says mid-40s tomorrow. Sheeyit, that’s practically tropical. Maybe I’ll ride in a Speedo.
Speaking of things that should not be seen, a local billboard company has rejected a bus-shelter ad that would have displayed the alluring cleavage of — a puppet. The ad, for the touring Broadway production “Avenue Q,” featured the furry pink hooters of Lucy the Slut, one of the stars of the admittedly adult show. Not on my bus shelter, said Lamar Advertising account executive Jeff Moore, who explained his criteria for determining what’s appropriate for bus ads and billboards: “If I have to explain it to my 4-year-old or my grandmother, we don’t put it up.”
That covers a lot of waterfront, there, Jeff old scout. Better invest in a couple sets of blinders for Junior and Granny if you ever plan to leave the house, what with all the titty bars, massage parlors, adult bookstores, XXX theaters and other ungodly sights in our otherwise immaculate Industrial Christian community.
Hell, they might see Doug Bruce. Any sane community would recognize that loudmouthed tub of lard as an obscenity. Alas, our community’s standards are a little looser. When it comes to man-boobs, anyway.
We enjoyed a beautiful morning today in Bibleburg. There was finally enough snow to shovel, just barely, and the Big Yellow Ball In the Sky took a valiant stab at burning through the clouds that have been hovering overhead for the past few days.
Herself has returned from a sun-splashed weekend in Palm Springs and is very much not amused by the conditions here, especially since she has to drive to the office in Denver shortly. This is not unlike entering a demolition derby held on ice, driving your good car instead of some beater.
Last night, as I was gingerly negotiating the slippery streets en route to the Bibleburg Intergalactic Airport to fetch her home, I saw any number of speeding nitwits piloting two-wheel drive vehicles one-handed while jabbering away on their phones. Why not just stay home and shoot yourself in the head? That way you’re performing a public service instead of being a public menace.
Speaking of public menaces, don’t miss this Mother Jones story on the Oath Keepers, a so-called “patriot” organization whose core is men and women in uniform. You can’t grow up in the military or live where I’ve lived without meeting people like this, and they’re much more frightening than their leftist counterparts, with whom I palled around in my younger, dumber days.
I occasionally consider selling my guns. Then I read a piece like this and check to see whether they’re all still loaded, with extra magazines and speedloaders within easy reach.
