Category: Deep political thought

That’s reaching

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
The backyard maple is slowly leafing out as it reaches for more sunshine.

Good gravy. You couldn’t find more gasbags in the news if it were Thanksgiving Day and the Macy’s parade were meandering through Manhattan. On fire.

You have Rep. Mikey Mouse (R-Dizzyland) calling himself “a wartime speaker.” This is true in the sense that he is at war with his own caucus.

Then there’s tough guy Tom Cotton, (R-Dunk-’n’-Flay), regaling us from the depths of his dead eyes about how they know how to treat peace-creeps and hippies in Arkansas, where he apparently rarely shows his … well, I suppose you’d call that a face, if only because it’s parked on the front of his head.

And of course there’s Will D. DeFendant smirking, snoozing, and sounding off through jury selection in his criminal trial.

Hizzoner was not amused.

“Your client was audible,” Judge Juan Merchan told the defendant’s shysters, mouthpieces, and ambulance chasers.

Boy, is that ever an understatement. An offense to the ears, eyes, and nose, if you believe what you smell on the Innertubes from noted yukmeisters Adam Kinzinger and Kathy Griffin.

Well, look on the bright side. The trial takes a day off tomorrow, and we’re not in the jury pool.

In the beginning was the Word

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
“See this word here? It’s not pronounced the way you might think. Cecil B. DeMille got it right in ‘The Ten Commandments.'”

When I awakened this morning not as a fleeting puff of radioactive gas but as Your Humble Narrator, I knew it was gonna be a good day.

Jesus H., etc. The Middle East has been figuring in my nightmares since, well, forever.

When I was a smaller, humbler narrator my parents taught me to read phonetically, aloud, using whatever printed material was handy. Stumbling through a report in Time magazine one day I encountered the incomprehensible “Egypt,” and after rolling it around in the gem polisher of my mind for a spell I decided it must be pronounced “Iggy-pit.”

My parents roared. I never heard the end of it. They told it to their pals over martinis. They told it to my pals, who had to endure it stone-cold sober and punished me for it afterward. They told it to my dates, who otherwise might have become actual girlfriends, which may help explain why it took so long for me to find someone to marry.

I’ve been deeply suspicious about home-schooling ever since. Later, I would come to question faith-based titles to real estate.

The Shart-Timer

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment
“I gotta start wearing rubber undies.” Photograph doctored after being poached from Jim Lo Scalzo | EPA

Well, it seems Will D. Defendant won one and lost one today. He found a sucker to bond him out of some deep doo-doo in one case, but his relentless punching down at the Little People got a gag order expanded in another.

As The New York Times is fond of reminding us (those teases): “If Mr. Trump violates the order, the judge could impose fines, and in extraordinary circumstances, throw him behind bars.” Be still, my heart.

Meanwhile, is it just me, or does the latest Squeaker of the House always look like he’s fighting off a wicked shart? I’d be doubling up on my Kevlar Depends, too, if the Redneck Baroness was piloting her Fokker pickup with its twin Spandaus trained on my six.

Paddywhacked

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
A wee drink for the ould sod.

’Tis a fine soft St. Patrick’s Day morning so.

After a 24-hour sandblasting — I’m talking wind in the 30-mph area with gusts approaching 50 — we finally got a drop of rain to refresh the greenery without the need to crank up our irrigation system, tapping the invisible water that’s always in such short supply around here.

Now it appears to be snowing. Yay, etc.

Not snowing snowing, mind you. Not like it has been in Colorado or California. Hijo, madre. This borders on too much of a good thing, unless you’re a skier, or a yeti. Or perhaps an overdeveloped and underwatered desert community downstream from ski country.

What we’d like is a nice blanket that soaks into the sod before the wind can blow it to Hell. Water wizard John Fleck calls this “sublimation,” which means “the loss of snow straight to atmospheric drying without [it] ever having a chance to melt and make it to the rivers.”

As we speak, right on cue, here comes the wind again, as reliable as bad news from the campaign trail. We’re all doomed, some say. Proper fucked.

Well, the world ends for someone every day, yeah? A whole bunch of someones, most days. I’m not sure it helps to dwell overlong on when your turn might be coming round. Better, maybe, to spend that time seeing to it that the other guy’s parade is the one that gets rained on.