Category: Dollars and nonsense

The basement tapes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Herself and I picked out vinyl, tile and carpet yesterday — now all we have to do is wait for the flooring dude to clear our choices with the property-restoration folks, who no doubt must consult the turd-herders. Then we’ll be in business, maybe, assuming that the contractor who handles the installation will not be buried in some other nightmare project.

Lots of other projects in greater cosmopolitan Bibleburg are playing red light-green light lately. A massive development project on North Nevada past Garden of the Gods has been dialed down to a Costco for the moment, while a similarly ambitious project on South Nevada has been placed on hold altogether.

One suburban-renewal project is continuing apace, however. Jimmy Dobson has stepped down as chairman of Focus on the Family. Dobson plans to spend his twilight years instructing his grandchildren in the dark arts of Republicanism, homophobia and hypocrisy while struggling to master a Biblical magic trick — stuffing a camel through the eye of a needle.

Stimulate my package

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Don't leave home without it.
Don't leave home without it.

I’m not an economist. I don’t even play one on TV. So I don’t feel qualified to comment on the arcane machinations under way in Congress. But I do like this economic-stimulus proposal from Dan Newman, owner of a retail food store in Seattle: Send every U.S. taxpaper a $2,000 debit card.

Sure, the Repugs will call it socialism, a convenient catch-all phrase meaning “anything Rush Limbaugh doesn’t like.” But if I got me two large, I’m buyin’ something with it — goods, services or both — and someone has to provide them. Jobs, baby, jobs.

Case in point: Right now I’m not enjoying my usual week of “training camp”  at McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, Arizona, in part because of extended labor negotiations and in part because we just spent a ton of cash repairing Herself’s Subaru. But give me a debit card with a picture of Lady Liberty on it and I’m a gone dog, enriching gas stations, brewpubs, hotels, restaurants and campgrounds in three states.

New computer? Same old problem. This ol’ sumbitch limps worse than a three-legged hound with a butt full of buckshot, and I’d put it down in a New York minute if I had a brand-new one in line to replace it, but we seem to be short of simoleons in these parts. Where’s my ObamaCard®, honey? Whaddaya mean, there’s an elephant sitting on it? Well, shoot the fucker and at least we’ll have meat in the freezer!

Just 364 shopping days until Christmas

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Are you out and about, greedily snapping up those post-Christmas deals? Me neither. And we have plenty of company, according to The New York Times. The dismal post-holiday buying follows a hideous pre-Christmas shopping season, as reported by The Wall Street Journal and passed along by Steve Benen at Political Animal, who is predicting widespread bankruptcies among retailers in the new year. Oh, goody.

I just took a drive through Bibleburg’s downtown after retrieving the Subie from Heuberger, and the sting in my wallet pocket failed to distract me from noting that Tejon Street wasn’t exactly rocking with shoppers. The malls may be doing a little better, but I’ll be damned if I’ll visit one to check it out. I hate those places. And anyway, I’m stony broke.

The eagle has landed

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

The snowman lives. And the traditional O’Grady-family Christmas flick — Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” — is queued up for viewing just as soon as a certain wine-sipping hash-slinger finishes his pre-holiday cookery.

The posole is done, as are the Anasazi beans with chipotle chile and the pico de gallo, and the green-chile sauce is on deck. That leaves only the chicken breast to cook and shred, the corn tortillas to fry, the cheese to grate and the enchiladas to assemble and cook. Oh, yeah, and the potatoes to dice, toss with Chimayo red chile and chopped onion, and roast. And jeez, the chicken quesadillas. Can’t forget the appetizers.

Back in the kitchen. There’s chicken to cook and shred. If I wait to do the green chile until tomorrow, the house will smell like Santa Fe, but without all the silver and turquoise. Happy holidays to you and yours from the Zen Druid, who hugs the tree, even though he knows that it is an illusion.

Didja get any onya?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

The Decider has finally turned the money hose on Detroit, and don’t I wish I were standing nearby with a bucket. One of my paychecks has mysteriously gone walkabout again and Visa would like nothing better than to get me by the plums with a downhill pull.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of the holiday season, there’s a fresh rant up at VeloNews.com. No charge. Think of it as my little gift to you this Zappadan.

Interesting concept, eh? I get paid (or don’t, as the case may be) to dash off my little online japes. The editors get paid to read and post it. And the publisher has to write the check (or not). But you, you lucky devils — you get off scot-free. Except for having to notice all those bloody ads for this and that in your peripheral vision, which does tax the eyeballs, does it not?

Not only is my stuff free to you, it’s easily accessible. Couple clicks of the mouse and there I am in all my pointless, content-free glory. It’s a pretty specialized delivery system, when you think about it. If all you care about is reading me, or Lennard Zinn, or Bob Mionske, you don’t have to thumb through a wad of other stuff to get to us. Click, click and off you go.

(More on this later. Herself is screeching that I look like a coconut and am in dire need of a haircut.)

OK, I’m freshly shaven and back to deep thought. I click the mouse for my national and international news, coverage of fringe sports like cycling, leftist political commentary and expert advice I can use to make my life richer (investment advice, recipes from elite chefs, and so on). I know where to go and how to get there.

I would like to read local news, too, and plenty of it, without having to wade through a wad of other stuff that is more easily available online: the aforementioned national and international news; pointless coverage of mainstream professional sports already covered to excess by TV; and the endless smelly pile of treacly features keyed to days of the week (Food, Life, Money, et al). But I can’t get local and regional news — not a lot of it, anyway, and certainly not reliably — with a click of the mouse.

If the Gazette were to do without all the trappings that defined the Newspaper v1.0 and become a strictly local news source, I might subscribe again. But if it keeps trying to be all things to all people, I’ll continue to withhold my pennies and watch it die a slow, lingering death.

Late update: Incidentally, if this post seems even more scatter-brained than usual, it may be because the cats were dancing on my head at 4 a.m. and set me to thinking creakily about some of the excellent comments in an earlier post.