Guinness is good for you. So is Bushmills. They both make the sidewalk softer.
A very happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and yours. Herself and I cycled downtown to catch a bit of the annual parade, and the video clip above represents our unanimous pick for Dudes Having the Most Fun.
This particular parade entry was sponsored by a pub, Tony’s Downtown Bar. And while it could easily be construed as racist, I’m gonna give ’em a pass, because I almost always find dudes in gorilla suits funny for some unknown reason. It’s a weakness.
Now I’m back at the ranch and fueling up for a bit of holiday cookery — a simple Irish stew involving lamb, potatoes and other tasty bits. Herself is sipping a Smithwick’s and fiddling with some video of her own.
The evening’s entertainment will consist of The Pogues, The Chieftains and “The Commitments,” with a little Frank O’Connor for bedtime reading. And tomorrow, we suffer — not just from having a drop taken, but from the return of March in its traditional form, which is to say windy and chilly. Saints preserve us.
Longtime Friend of the DogS(h)ite Khal S. notes that the tax-loathing, big-gummint-fearing denizens of Bibleburg are profiled on this week’s episode of “This American Life,” carried on fine public-radio stations nationwide. Give it a listen and share my pain.
30 percent less suckitude than Pueblo or your money back!
Once again satire runs a very poor second to reality: Bibleburg recently pissed away $111,000 to come up with a new tagline — “Live It Up!” — along with a logo that would look right at home on a bottle of something or other.
The new tagline is reminiscent of a similar campaign in Richard Russo’s “Nobody’s Fool,” led by a dimwitted huckster of a bank president who has the brainstorm of hanging a street banner that reads “Things Are Looking ↑ in Bath,” equating its brilliance with the fabled “I ♥ NY” campaign.
The citizenry and merchants of Bath “were not fetched by this argument,” wrote Russo. “They were waiting for something tangible. …”
As are the citizenry and merchants of Bibleburg, no doubt. Given our reputation for religious intolerance and right-wing idiocy, perhaps “Live It Down!” might have been closer to the mark.
Or how about this? “We’re Jobless, Broke and Hungry, and We Can’t Eat Scenery.” Or bullshit, either, for that matter.
The Turk' has that sinking feeling as Daylight Saving Time comes to an end.
The weather went a bit sideways on us this week, briefly taking a distinctly Novemberish turn. Snow, wind and cold — the combination put me out of sorts, as the first frigid wedgie of winter always does. If I wanted to wear long pants all the time I’d have grown up by now.
I slouched around indoors, squatted at the computer and took far too many pictures of the cats, so many that a Facebook friend complained, “Man, I know it’s cold outside, but you need to get out for some fresh air.”
So today, after Daylight Saving Time crapped in our clocks, I took his advice. Herself had been out earlier wearing everything in her closet, but we cyclo-crossers are made of sterner stuff (even the retired geezerly ones). So come afternoon, once the VeloPile had dwindled to a workable size, I slipped out for a short ride clad in the basics — wool socks, leg warmers, bibs, two long-sleeve jerseys, long-fingered gloves, tuque, and the old Giro helmet that fits over a heavy-duty skullcap. You know; manly kit.
I chose a leisurely ride I call The Four Parks because it takes in (wait for it) four parks. No hustle, no hassle, no hurry; just stretching the legs and enjoying the endorphins. My fellow Bibleburgers were entranced by the feetsball, some faux military struggle between wild horses and buccaneers that kept them off the streets and glued to the One Big Eye. Thoughts of crimes against the State and Nature receded into the distance like farts in a whirlwind.
My spectators included a four-point buck guarding his harem with one eye on me. A few miles further along there was another four-pointer who could have been his twin brother, also with kinfolk in tow. And finally a mother and daughter, the latter wobbling all over the path on a pink bike.
I performed the traditional Laying of Hands Upon the Brake Levers, because it’s unseemly for cantankerous baldheaded tosspots to run down children, even among the libertarians. Words of four letters and one syllable queued up behind my clenched teeth, awaiting deployment.
And then the kid waved joyously, squealing, “Hi!”
Mom grinned and shrugged, and I retracted my venom-tipped fangs.
“Hi!” I replied with a smile as I rolled past, both mitts still on the levers (hey, I’m flexible, not foolish).
And then I rolled casually back to my own family, deciding to cook up a pot of chile con carne, just like the one Mom used to make.
Will wonders never cease? The Bibleburg bureaucracy has granted the Occupy crowd encamped at Acacia Park a 30-day permit that will allow them to set up two more 10-by-10 pop-up tents and a portable toilet. The police department’s Homeless Outreach Team even walked the protesters through the permitting process — you may recall that Bibleburg has a no-camping ordinance after an eruption of creekside tent sites a couple of years back made the town look like a sound stage for a remake of “The Grapes of Wrath.”
Surprised? So am I. It wasn’t that long ago that Bibleburg had an American Opinion bookstore about a block from where the Occupy folks are parked plus a Ku Klux Klan chapter (the David Duke flavor). More recently the cops were tear-gassing local antiwar rallies and beating the snot out of old ladies during the annual St. Patrick’s Day march.
The professional cynic in me suspects that this has less to do with an official embrace of alternative viewpoints than with a burning desire to show potential employers and investment capitalists — the latter a group that is ostentatiously ignoring our fair city — that Bibleburg is more than a sinkhole for One World Gummint fantasists and bush-league Elmer Gantrys.
What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now! Hmm … maybe there is some harmonic right-left convergence going on here. Whaddaya think?
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