Category: Cats

Idiocracy 2026: Older but no wiser

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
“Ah, Jaysis, tell us he’s not at it again so. …”

What with having a drop taken and/or a mind wandering common on both branches of the family tree it behooves a fella from time to time to test-drive what remains of his wits, if any.

It struck me recently that for perfectly sound (har de har har) reasons I hadn’t done an episode of Radio Free Dogpatch since February 2025. But times pass and things change and people clearly aren’t getting any smarter, especially me.

So here we are so, dusting off what few of the mad skills I possessed only in theory not so very long ago and taking them for a spin around the old podcasting studio to see what falls off.

For openers, the 24-inch LG display that now supplements the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro in my main office is no longer attached to the MacBook Pro in the studio, which is 10 years older and an inch smaller, displaywise, and I cannot recommend such a tiny stage for audio theater as senescence staggers forward, trying to remember where it left its spectacles (atop its head).

Auphonic is no longer a strictly free app, which failed to astonish me in this, the New Gilded Age, so creator and audience must deal with what they call a “Jingle” fore and aft. Jingle me bollocks, boys … I’ll be looking for some other way to give me chin music a tuneup before I next set it out on its street corner to busk for nothing.

Finally, Libsyn has gotten a makeover as well, but if you’re reading this you can be sure that I managed to negotiate their maze. An old ratoncito can still cut the cheese. Find the cheese! I meant find the cheese! Where the hell are my spectacles? Oh … never mind.

Could this be the start of something big? Probably not. Mostly I wanted to see if I could still get ’er done. Also, I was bored. Giving the old brain-box a wee scrape and a splash of paint is a fine way to stay out of the wind, which is full of allergens and other evil tidings. Extra credit to anyone who can find the Firesign Theatre reference in this mess.

• Click here for the latest episode.

• Technical notes: RFD uses the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a wash and brushup. Clip from Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy” lifted from YouTube. Booing crowd, kicked-in door, and Celtic tune from Freesound. “Out of Step,” which you’ve heard here before, comes from Audio Hero via Zapsplat. Special guest appearance from Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who despite a screechy meow is healthy as a horse as she approaches her 19th (!) birthday.

Time and temperature

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Streetlight and moonlight in daylight.

Didn’t we just have a full moon? Is God overstocked with these things and blowing them out? Or has He finally run out of patience and put His foot to the floorboard on the road to the End of Days?

This latest celestial spotlight is the Snow Moon, which, ha ha, etc. Yesterday’s high was 61, 10 (!) degrees above normal. Today’s may be warmer still. What little remains from last week’s snow lurks in dark corners, like ICEholes waiting for women and children to push around.

But we were talking about time, not temperature, yes?

Lately it seems that the instant I’ve finished washing the breakfast dishes it’s time to make lunch. Then, with luck, a bit of exercise, and boom! Dinner and bedtime.

Not a lot of unclaimed space therein to, as Whitman put it, “loafe and invite my soul.” My soul won’t even take my calls. Straight to voicemail they go.

Now, some may say that I burn an awful lot of dawn’s early light slobbering around the Internet like an ADHD kid working out on a Tootsie Pop — the National Weather Service, The Paris Review, various and sundry purveyors of products that I don’t need and can’t afford — before finally biting into its center, the homepage of The New York Times, which almost always shares a deep brown hue with, but is very much not, chocolate.

That this drives me to lunch is only because (a) I no longer drink, and (2) I desperately need something to take the taste of the NYT homepage out of my mouth.

Having eaten my way through the fridge and pantry, I feel a pressing need for either sleep or exercise. And exercise it is, because Miss Mia Sopaipilla is in the bed, and if I try to share a corner of that king-size bed with that 8-pound cat she will get right out of it and stalk around the house, meowing at the top of her lungs. She’s deaf as a post and her voice carries.

So out the door I go. And sure, if it’s 55 or 60 out there I’m liable to stay out a while, because see “the homepage of The New York Times” and “meowing at the top of her lungs” above. Last week I got 100 miles in, plus one trail run.

When I get home I’m hungry again for some reason as Herself inspects a gas range atop which dinner is very much not cooking itself with that look on her face that says, “Some people have to go to work in the morning.” I strive mightily to swallow a cheery, “Not me!” And get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans.

And soon dinner is served, as is something less toothsome on TV, and since some people have to go to work in the morning (not me) everyone is in bed by 8 and asleep shortly thereafter.

Tomorrow, as the fella says, is another day. That Tootsie Pop ain’t gonna lick itself.

Tick, tock. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Mooned again.

Here we are once more, not watching the clock tick down to midnight, knowing it will get there without us.

Mia sitting zazen.

It’s been a good long while since Herself and I stayed awake to greet the new year, and I see no good reason to break that streak this time around.

Impatient celebrants began setting off fireworks 7-ish, which set off the neighborhood dogs; sort of a bonus year-end racket. Miss Mia Sopaipilla remains unruffled, having developed a degree of hearing loss, and never being much frightened of anything anyway, not even the Turk, who could be very scary indeed depending on which one of the voices in his head had the conn at the moment.

Thus we take a page from “Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry,” by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison:

We should
sit like a cat
and wait for the door
to open.

The door to 2026 will swing wide directly. Until then, sláinte to all you cats who spent 2025 helping me fill up the old literature box, clawing the furniture and keeping your tails well clear of the rocking chair. See you next year.

Fourth and long

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
“Holy hell, hon’, better start filling the sandbags.”

Winter finally came a-calling yesterday.

More of a “ring the doorbell and run” deal, actually. Left 0.06 inch of rain on our doorstep instead of a flaming sack of dog shit.

We’ll take it. Don’t gotta stomp it out or nothin’.

Today dawned clear and cold, and the furnace and humidifier were harmonizing on what sounded like some sort of mariachi tune as I awakened just before 4 to “shake hands with the governor.”

“Are you getting up or going back to bed?” Herself asked as she set about her day.

“Back to bed,” I mumbled, and made it so. The next two hours of sleep were top shelf, curled up like an old dog under blanket and comforter. The news cycle can’t get me in there, with the phone locked and in silent mode. No wonder Miss Mia Sopaipilla loves the bed-cave I make for her every morning after coffee. And she doesn’t even read The New York Times.

The press is deep into “The Year in Review” mode now, which reminds me of the last time I went to a Broncos game at the old Mile High stadium, back in the days when the Donkeys would have had their hands full going up against a Pop Warner squad from Saguache.

Anyway, the Donks were getting their asses handed to them, by whom I can’t recall, and though there was plenty of time remaining on the clock, the stands were emptying faster than bladders overloaded by the industrial lager the fans were slamming to drown their sorrows.

In mid-exodus the PA gives out with a cheery, “And don’t forget to watch ‘Bronco Replay'” on whatever local TV channel was playing the piano in that whorehouse. After which some tosspot a few tiers downhill from us lurches to his unsteady feet, bellows, “Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?” and then tumbles down the stairs.

All these years later three hundred and sixty-five steps seems like quite a tumble, especially since I’m not wearing any protective gear — like, say, sinuses lined with cocaine, a beer-swollen liver, and a couple dozen extra elbees of adipose tissue.

So please excuse me if I skip the replay. It was bad enough the first time.

O’G and the Night Visitor

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
The eastern sky on Christmas Eve morning.

I can’t say with a straight face that I’ve been a good boy this year.

So it must be that I was riding Herself’s coattails when Santa dropped off a holiday gift last night.

We both — yes, both of us — dreamed of our late cat Turkish.

The Turk at rest.

Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) left us far too early, on March 5, 2020. He and I reconnect now and again in dreams, but never have Herself and I met up with the old soldier at the same time.

In my dream, I was in bed, head propped on the pillows, but the bed was on the front porch of some vaguely familiar house from my past. I was just chillin’ there, watching the world pass by, when the Turk came aboard without so much as a bosun’s whistle and stretched out alongside me, as he did regularly when still he walked the earth.

Surprised to see my old comrade, I turned my head and said to Herself, who was nearby but out of sight, “Hey, check it out!” And then Someone hit the channel changer, the dream shifted gears, and I was lucky to have the warm memory of it when I awakened this morning.

Herself was scurrying around getting ready for work when I shambled into the kitchen and told her I’d dreamed of the big fella.

“I did too!” she said.

In her dream I wasn’t there, but her dad was, or might have been, though I don’t recall Bob Pigeon and the Turk being all that tight. He probably tried to explain how the Turk was going about the whole cat thing all wrong, and that would be as far as their relationship would ever go, because the field marshal was very much not interested in advice from junior officers.

Now, a cynic might write the whole visitation off as the upshot of eating spicy Mexican dishes for about a week straight, plus a few too many sugary seasonal treats.

But I know a gift when I see one. What a joy it was to have an old friend home for the holidays.