Category: Deep political thought

May Day parade

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
O ride, ye prisoners from your slumbers. …

There was a May Day gathering at Civic Plaza yesterday but we gave it a miss. Instead I formed a rolling rally of one, equipped and clad to suit the occasion (in red) and the weather (brisk).

A quarter inch of rain is a whole lot better than none at all.

A quarter inch of rain fell overnight, and at high speed, too. The wind and water blew us out of a sound sleep shortly after 2 a.m., and while the rain stopped the wind was still with us at 11:30 when I took the red Steelman off its hook and rolled out to spend 90 minutes trying to find shelter from it.

We did honor the general strike. We bought nothing and did no paid work; I’ve gotten pretty good at that since retiring in 2022. To feed the starving masses I made three meals out of fridge and pantry: toast, tea, oatmeal, and fruit for breakfast; grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch; and pasta with a sauce of tomatoes, onions, jalapeño, garlic, black olives, red pepper flakes (there’s that red again) and chicken sausage for dinner.

This morning as I arose at 5 a.m. the furnace ticked on, which really lets you know it’s May. Forty-two, said the weather widget. We get summer in March and winter in May and if we’re lucky a little rain sneaks in there somewhere.

Today I will have to re-engage with capitalism in a fairly significant fashion. The pantry is bare, and the People’s Army, like any other, marches on its stomach.

Another day, another shooter

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
“Welcome to the hotel, California. … hey, wait, he’s got a gun!”

I was visiting The Associated Press website, checking out the security-cam video of our latest alleged would-be pestilential assassin dashing through the Washington Hilton towards the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Wank-Fest & Spooge-a-Thon, when the video snippet served me up an ad:

“Breeze through tax season … with Acrobat AI Assistant.”

Well. Fuck me running. Ain’t that just the way it is? Some things will never change.

Dude was definitely breezing through, with what was reported to be quite the toolkit — “The suspect was carrying knives, a shotgun and a handgun, officials said,” according to The New York Times — and quien sabe? Maybe tax season was on his mind. He may have simply wanted to consult with The Pestilence and his lesser maladies about how best to dodge his fair share of the ever-heavier burden the dozy orange sonofabitch is imposing upon us day in and day out.

In any event, as this flag-pinned plague shambles ever on and on, lying through its false teeth like any other dementia victim denying at the top of what remains of his lungs that he has yet again shit the bed, I am less and less inclined to take at face value anything I read with the qualifier “officials said” attached. I have stayed in many a Hilton over the years, occasionally with a loaded firearm, and more than once I have been sorely tempted to haul it out, if only to focus someone’s attention.

“When I booked this overpriced shithole I said I wanted a room as far away from the elevator and the ice machine as was humanly possible. Also, was the previous occupant grooming a chimpanzee in the shower? I’ve seen barber shops with less hair on the floor. And what’s with the goddamn Keurig instead of a proper coffeemaker? If you force me into going to a Starbucks at stupid-thirty for my morning fix, I swear to Dog. …”

Etc.

In any event, I awakened this morning — not in a Hilton, praise Dog — possessed of the certainty that this is not the last time we will read the words “shots fired” in connection with His Excremency King Piggy the Sticky-fingered. “Every nation has the government it deserves,” as the political philosopher Joseph de Maistre wrote in 1811.

A decade later, he wrote, “The sword of justice has no scabbard.”

Let’s make a … deal?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
The road goes on forever and the stupid never ends. Apologies to Robert Earl Keen.

A cease-fire in which the fire has not ceased. A 10-point program that seems to leave Iran in the driver’s seat. Also, did I mention that the firing has yet to cease?

I have some thoughts about a long-overdue firing. The underperforming employee is pictured above. Let’s fire him — to the moon. Tell him it’s made of Mickey D’s cheeseburgers and he can be king of the place until the oxygen and/or ketchup runs out.

Luna. See?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
I call this “Shitty iPhone 13 Mini Snapshot of the Moon Taken on Zoom While Setting Out the Trash and Recycling.”

What a great week to be offworld, hey?

I mean, sure, the Artemis II’s toilet keeps crapping out (har de har har). And then there’s that whole “hitching a ride home on the moon’s gravity” thing, which sounds kinda crucial, because nobody wants to ask the Vogons for a lift, what with the bad poetry and all.

But at least the astronauts don’t have to have one of those tiresome “the president would like a word” wankfests with War Piggy, a.k.a. Addled Shitler, because he’s too busy trying to see to it that they don’t have a world to return to.

Sigh. Have you noticed how we keep launching all the wrong people into space? I can think of one eejit — plus another 18 in the presidential line of succession — who would make an excellent audience for a Vogon poetry reading somewhere on the other side of the galaxy.

No kings (just one royal pain)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
Let’s give the TV-addled stumblebum a show worth watching on Saturday.

Yes, kids, it’s almost that time again — time to hit the streets and make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lard.

More than 3,000 No Kings events had been scheduled as of a couple weeks ago, with organizers and supporters alike hoping for a mammoth turnout:

Last June, more than five million people took to the streets across more than 2,100 events during the coalition’s first day of action. Then, more than seven million people protested across more than 2,700 events last October. The March 28 mobilization is the next step in this growing movement, with organizers anticipating it will be one of the largest single-day nonviolent nationwide protests in U.S. history.

It’s not a riot going on, or at least it shouldn’t be. And with any luck at all we won’t all wind up on Cellblock No. 9, wearing bruises and zip-ties. Here in The Duck! City we’re gonna be in a park, with shade trees and music, even a march! (Cue the revolution scene from “Reds,” but without all that winter garb.)

Rallies and marches can feel a tad performative, mostly because they are. But they help you remember that you’re not alone, it’s not just you or the Voices in your head, there really is something of a problem here, and if we’re lucky, and there are enough of us intent on doing something about it, we can use ballots instead of bullets because the last game in town that needs a shot in the arm these days is the funeral racket.

A mass thumbing of the national noses may also give an atomic wedgie to a certain diapered dictator at some point during his 24 hours per diem of TV-watching, assuming the legacy media actually turns on and tunes in.

Which is always something of an assumption. So, before you head out the door to your local No Kings gathering, call a couple TV stations and invite them to join the party.

No, not that party. Whaddaya think this is, a Warren Beatty movie?