Category: Assholes

Orange Julius Seizure

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
What, you haven’t heard they have a National Mall in DeeCee?

Wherever shalt thou see a man on horseback, there also shalt thou see a horse’s ass. And sometimes more than one of them, too.

The endless pearl-clutching in the national media over Orange Julius Caesar doing exactly what we all expected he would do has me longing to grab some button-down editor a little lower — by the family jewels — and drag him around the room, growling like a mad dog.

Which of course is what I am.

But that would be wrong. Fun, but wrong.

So I’ll just leave you with that improbable visual and this all-too-probable audio — yes, yes, yes, it’s time for a Shakespearean edition of Radio Free Dogpatch.

• Technical notes: Still loving the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a sonic colonic. If it ain’t broke, etc. The gibbons and fanfare are courtesy of Freesound. Wrestling action comes to you from an old clip on YouTube. The cartoon tune, “Out of Step,” comes from Zapsplat. All the other bad noise is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.

Step right up

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
Everyone’s a winner, bargains galore.

Once again I was awake too early.

We’d bailed on election-night coverage as it slouched inexorably toward its denouement because someone around here has to get up at stupid-thirty to make us some money. Not me.

If I had dreams, I don’t remember them. But I do remember something Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post said during the PBS coverage last night.

It was a particularly fatheaded pronouncement, even for an associate editor of The Washington Post. And I didn’t make a note of it because I’d said something similar the first time TFG flipped his wig into the ring. That the 2016 election would show us who we were as a country.

Plenty of us already knew what we were then. Not enough, though. But surely anyone who has been paying attention since has caught up. Right?

Well, there’s the phone, on the nightstand. It’s not my practice to take the pulse of the planet before coffee, but I could hear Herself prepping in the bathroom and thought that if I got cracking I could make her a bite of breakfast before she left. If she had any appetite.

And so I picked up the phone.

Well, the rest you know. Another massive breakdown of politics, press, and populace. We’re just waiting on the details, is all.

Hunter S. Thompson has already filed his report, of course. He had the scoop after my first election, in 1972, when he wrote:

This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

[George] McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?

We still don’t know the answer to that one, Hunter old sot. The barrel appears to have no bottom.

Rocking out

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments

Having taken note of of the pummeling endured by The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times for showing all the backbone of two clawless fiddler crabs when it came time to take a stand in the 2024 pestilential erection, Mother Times struggles up out of her rocker on the Saturday before Election Day, squeaks out a fart, and plops back down.

“That’ll show ’em,” she mutters before falling back into a fitful snooze.

Boneheads

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Schwinning? Eh, not so much.

It was a light turnout for Halloween at El Rancho Pendejo. We handed out just half of the candy I bought, and not even the two neighbor girls showed up.

Thursday was our first truly chilly fall morning — Herself and I had to break out the pants, long sleeves, gloves, and caps to go running — and I finally caved and switched the HVAC from “cool” to “heat.”

Adios, October; buenos dias, November.

Across town, the Not-So-Great Pumpkin was said to be trick-or-treating a smallish crowd of boneheads in a hangar near the Sunport. Let’s just dial that back to “tricking,” shall we? What treats he has are not for such as we.

In any event, I wouldn’t take a fat envelope of Benjamins from his short, greasy meathooks with a set of fireplace tongs and welder’s gloves. The Secret Service used to take a deep professional interest in counterfeiting, but I expect they’re too busy making sure his fat ass only has the one hole in it to frisk him for funny money.

And like I said, treats? Fuhgedaboudit. We’re waiting to see how many suckers have fallen for his tricks again.

Balloons and gasbags

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Trumpkin.

The Not-So-Great Pumpkin is floating into The Duck! City this fine brisk fall morning, a fat orange gasbag too late for the International Balloon Fiesta.

But just in time for Halloween. Boogity boogity boogity.

Nobody knows just why he’s visiting. ’Burque, BernCo and New Mexico in general tilt reliably blue, last I heard. Oh, we have our cultists like everybody else, flying their flags upside down, hanging banners, erecting statues and the like.

Freedom of religion, etc. Their god is not dead. He just smells like it.

Maybe the last time he drifted through he found a Mickey D’s that suited his peculiar tastes. Maybe they let him work the fries station. I have my fingers crossed that he’ll need a job soon. No, not that one. Having Max Factor one stroke away from the Resolute desk is the scariest thing I can think of this Halloween.

We’re skipping the rally, same as we did back in 2016. If we crave some bad noise we can always tune in to the dulcet tones of dime-store street racers Steve McQueening it up and down Tramway.

And if you crave some bad noise, why, you can tune in to this week’s special Halloween episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

• Technical notes: I’m liking this setup — Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, a soupçon of Auphonic to sand off the rough edges, and a street organ and balloon burners from Freesound. The amateur racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.