Category: Assholes

Will the defendant please … relax?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Here’s a pic of a cute lil’ kitty-cat to distract you from the other one.

Call me cynical (“You’re cynical!”), but I don’t think that other cat, the bedraggled, raggedy-ass orange tom that keeps slinking around the joint, yowling, spraying on the national furniture, and clawing the Stars & Stripes curtains into ribbons, is in danger of being put to sleep anytime soon.

Nossiree, he’s got himself a solid majority of black-robed laps in which to curl up while he awaits delivery of The Big Fish, the one that got away on Jan. 6, 2021.

Fuck me running.

Meanwhile, the playacting continues. Government shutdown: Will they or won’t they? Dueling VIP visits to The Border, that deadly, open-air, razor-wired waiting room where all the brown foreigners go to apply for the jobs nobody else wants. The Senate leadership following the House down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Gaza. Ukraine. “Dynamic pricing” at Wendy’s.

And now, this: Is a president a king?

I thought we settled that question back in 1776. But as I recall, that king required a few years of rather aggressive convincing before he conceded the point.

Rabbit, run

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
“I’m tellin’ ya, dude, you gotta quit reading the news. Holy shit, is that a cat?”

A rabbit just sprinted through the cul-de-sac with a cat not far behind.

Looks like another one of those days.

Anybody else feel like that rabbit? Jaysis H., every time I looked over my shoulder yesterday there was some fresh slobbering nightmare gaining on me. Satchel Paige was right.

Aleksei Navalny. Fani Willis. Avdiivka. Brian Wilson.

At least it bounced Swaylor Tift off the front pages. For a while.

Not so that other newsmaker. I counted 14 stories mentioning his name (curse it, yes) on The New York Times homepage. True, a few were duplicates that appeared both high up and down low, in Opinion, Analysis, U.S. News, U.S. Politics, The Upshot, or In Case You Missed It (as if you could).

I will confess taking pleasure in reading about the steel-tied boot to the wallet pocket Judge Arthur F. Engoron gave him and his trouser-stains (*some extended appeals may apply).

“That’ll be $450 million, please. Will this be cash or charge? And did I mention that you can’t run so much as a hot-dog cart in Hell’s Kitchen for three years? Well, you can’t. Meanwhile, the vig’ will be $2.7 mil’ per month, and don’t make me come looking for you or we add a finger to the tab.”

I have absolutely zero faith that any of this shit will stick to him, of course. But I like to think that he finally caught a whiff of it while his orange blossomed into purple and he pitched ketchup bottles at his shysters. What I’d really like to see is him slipping in it as he tries to outrun a tremendously yuuuuuuuuge cat.

On (and off) the job

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Snowpocalypse, the sequel.

Never tease the Snow Gods. They will take a frosty dump on you from a considerable height.

True, it wasn’t much of a dump; just a few heavy, wet inches. Still, during round one on Thursday the roads got so slick that Herself refused to take me back down to Reincarnation to collect the Fearsome Furster after its semiannual pulse check. And even I could see the wisdom in not tackling the trip on two wheels, especially after I nearly faceplanted on an icy spot while shoveling our ski jump of a driveway.

Round two overnight was strictly a broomer, but the icy bits remained, and I checked my footing as I swept this morning.

“I break a hip and she’ll put me down for sure,” I mumbled to myself. “She’s a sensible woman, albeit a bit ruthless, won’t let the Medical-Industrial Complex suck the nest egg dry rehabbing an ill-tempered ould villain who’s months away from the brain fleas even if he gets back to limping around the property, acting out all the parts in whatever noxious play he’s producing in that scabby, hairless head. Hire some 19-year-old stud-muffin to handle the shoveling and other personal services. …”

Speaking of jobs of work, I see Joe reared up on his hind legs and talked some smack, so I guess he wants to keep the job after all. Christ only knows why. He has to have enough tucked away to sweep Jill off to a white sandy beach somewhere, let the SS boyos fetch the umbrella drinks and fajitas, take the weepy calls from Hunter in gaol. No, no newspapers, thanks all the same. And keep that TV turned off.

Meanwhile, Wayne LaPerrier, that fizzy little firearms fancier, is stepping down from the NRA to spend more time with his lawyers, guns, and money, because the rest of that wonderful Warren Zevon lyric.

And I guess Doug Lamborn finally got tired of being the King of El Paso County. Surely some worthy Democrat can finally snatch that House seat from the cold, cruel clutches of the GOPee hee hee hee haw haw haw haw as fuckin’ if.

The Duck! City may have frozen over but Hell hasn’t. I just checked The Weather Channel.

A ‘new’ year

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
The Sandias, pre-Snowpocalypse.

January’s getting all, well, January on us. New year, same old song.

It’s been chilly, but not so much so that a fella can’t ride his bike for 90 minutes with three or four layers of 30-year-old cycling kit, adding and removing same as conditions indicate while awaiting the fabled Snowpocalypse, which by noon Thursday was as you see.

The Sandias, post-Snowpocalypse.

Betimes we are reminded that rich people, politicians, and rich politicians can be insufferable, twisted, lying, featherbedding assholes. This is not an annual or even seasonal event.

Meanwhile, just to keep things interesting, evildoers found a back door to our credit card while Herself was in an personal-electronics-free secure area and I was out on the bike, oblivious to my my own digital alerts as I removed and added layers of this and that while rolling around to no particular purpose beyond taking pix of the Sandias.

So, once I had been made aware of the breach in our fiscal defenses, I had to race home, doublecheck my receipts, mumble several filthy words, block the attempted piracy and croak that card over the phone, go get two new cards from a local branch, and then go back to get two even newer ones because the Top Secret Your Eyes Only Three-Digit Security Code was buggered on the first batch.

Now I get to work my way down the long list of bills set to autopay in order that we do not suddenly find ourselves freezing to death in the dark with no Innertubes and The Blog up on blocks.

It should go without saying that today was the day I had to drop Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster at Reincarnation for its semiannual pulse check. I did not ride a bike home from the shop and will not be riding one back there to pick up the wee beastie.

Thirty-three, feels like 25°? No thank you, please. I’ve seen the way Burqueños drive under warm and sunny skies. There aren’t enough layers in my winter drawer and none of them are Kevlar.

Happy solstice

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Solstice, from the Latin solstitium, which means, “Aw, shit, here we go again. …”

The Duck! City is foggier than the deets about Rudy the Mook’s bank balance this morning.

Alas for The Mook, a judge has ordered that a hard cold light be directed upon his finances in order that at least two of the people he’s run his Scotch-addled yap at may be compensated for the damages they have endured. Like, immediately, as in now.

The judge may have to send over a team of marshals to beat it out of him, like loan sharks collecting from a deadbeat horse player. Sell the footage to ESPN and the ladies might yet get a little sumpin’-sumpin’ off the top. Beats spending the next few months digging holes in his yard looking for moldy shoeboxes stuffed with fat stax wrapped in plastic.

Winter isn’t just coming, y’know. It’s here.