Putting the rumors to bed

July 15, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Turk denies coup reports. "I'm right here, just like always," he told our reporter. "When's dinner?" — Turk denies coup reports. “I’m right here, just like always,” he told our reporter. “When’s dinner?”

Despair

May 31, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Life. Don't talk to me about life. — Life. Don’t talk to me about life.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla contemplates a month without Live Update Guy. Colorless. Forlorn. An unscalable wall of gloom.

Reveille, but in Italian

March 19, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

"Right, off you go." — “Right, off you go.”

Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), rousted me out of a warm bed at dark-thirty this morning, thinking I needed to be earning my keep by following Milan-San Remo.

I explained that I no longer work for a racing magazine, but he simply yawned and replied: “It was time you got up anyway. Wake me when lunch is ready.”

Back in the saddle again

February 25, 2016February 25, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

Miss Mia Sopaipilla inquires whether I plan to stick around for a few head bumps before pissing off again to God knows where.

Nose, meet grindstone.

I pretty much plugged right back in after my little sojourn in the desert. Cranked out a column and cartoon for Bicycle Retailer, edited pix and video for Adventure Cyclist, bashed out a post and gallery for all y’all, delivered myself of a few quips on social media, replenished the larder, and got the Subie serviced.

The old rice rocket is still ticking along nicely after 11 years and 117,000 miles, and a few inexpensive repairs — replacing the cracked moon roof, reupholstering the driver’s seat and buffing the haze out of the headlights — should keep me off the car lots for a while yet.

The critters’ separation anxieties have all been soothed (I haven’t told them Herself will be pissing off to Hawaii here directly). And if I haven’t had a lick of exercise in three days, well, at least I’ve gotten a few things done.

After a heavenly week of shunning radio, TV and the Innertubez, I can’t say I’ve enjoyed catching up on the news, save for a bit of heehawing at Jeb (!) finally noticing all those loafer prints in his ass. How pleasurable it was to finally see a head roll in that dime-store dynasty, even with The Donald serving as executioner.

And speaking of The Mouth That Roared, that tale has pretty much stopped being funny. Over at MoJo, David Corn reminds us that the Rethugs have no one to blame but themselves for this billionaire buccaneer who sailed right into the middle of their tony fleet and let fly with broadsides to port and starboard.

At The Guardian, Jeb Lund distributes the credit a little more widely, observing that the courtier press is a bit too comfy in its own box seat at the opera to notice that the peasants outside are revolting (oy, are they ever).

Me, I think we all had a hand in the phenomenon that Charlie Pierce calls “He, Trump.” Or off it, as in abandoning control of our electoral processes to the pros, fixers and wizards.

This is one of the reasons I’m not sanguine about the idea of self-driving cars. If you’re not in the driver’s seat, you can be certain that someone else is. And they may be taking you somewhere you’d rather not go.

Deep doodoo

January 24, 2016January 24, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Thirty-six inches: That’s the final tally from Maryland, where the digging out has commenced.

"It snowed how much? Where? Let's never go there." — “It snowed how much? Where? Let’s never go there.”

Adding insult to inundation, the gut rumble that started working its way through the kinfolk beginning with the brother-in-law has so far claimed 75 percent of the clan, with only Herself spared (so far).

Meanwhile, the mom-in-law’s flight back to Tennessee got croaked by the storm, so Herself the Elder is enjoying a little extra recovery time before clambering into an aluminum tube full of fresh viruses for the trip home.

This whole clusterfuck was intended to give her the chance to inspect a couple of properties with an eye toward relocating somewhere down the road.

I bet the trip made Albuquerque look like the Garden of Eden. The place has its warts like any other, but the snow rarely arrives three feet at a time and the only time anyone ever shits themselves is at the thought of living in Maryland.

"'Maryland,' you say? Sounds like Hell to me." — “‘Maryland,’ you say? Sounds like Hell to me.”