Through a glass, darkly

April 17, 2025April 17, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Weird dreams last night. Lots of rain; a bicycle with a dynamo light I couldn’t get working; a close encounter with a mystery motorist who nearly clipped me as I wrestled with the unresponsive light; long drives with people I knew through vaguely familiar landscapes and towns; a small, dilapidated guest house that likewise had the feel of someplace I’d lived before; a couple of friendly dogs I didn’t recognize; and a visit to and some conversation with a genial old man living in a single cluttered room.

What finally blew me out of bed at 5:19 a.m. — and I mean had me out of the rack and onto my feet in some fight-or-flight reaction — was the sound of a woman either laughing or crying.

Herself watching a cute-animal video on the iPad? The garlicky pasta sauce I made for dinner? La Llorona?

Wasn’t Herself. She was in the kitchen making coffee and entertaining Miss Mia Sopaipilla. And she had disturbing dreams too, about her late mom and an old friend who passed not long after Herself the Elder. So it could’ve been the pasta sauce, I suppose.

La Llorona? A strong maybe. This is the Southwest, after all, though my crowd, the Ó Grádaighs of County Clare, is more closely associated with the banshee, an Irish herald of death.

So it may be relevant that yesterday I spoke with one old bro’ about friends and relatives gone west, and with another about the Doors, who took their name from Aldous Huxley’s book describing his experiences with mescaline, “The Doors of Perception,” its title likewise lifted from a William Blake metaphor in his book, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

Now, I have had my own experiences with mescaline and other psychedelics, starting in “high” school and continuing off and on into the Eighties. And they certainly took the Windex to my perceptual doors, if only for a little while.

But these days I see “through a glass, darkly,” as did Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, adding, “now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Or, as newspaper lingo once had it: “More TK” (more to come).

Y’think? Naw. Maybe? I dunno.

Until further enlightenment arrives, I’m betting on either garlicky pasta sauce or acid flashback, though the latter doesn’t explain why Herself had weird dreams too. An acid head she was not.

The good news? We have leftovers. So, “more TK.”

Breaking (away) bad

February 27, 2025February 27, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Stupid warm in these parts.

On Monday I watered turf, trees, and shrubs. On Tuesday, I enjoyed my first ride since making my Denver pilgrimage, in shorts and short sleeves.

And on Wednesday, it seemed everything was springing to life all at once. Juniper, maple, alder, you name it. Pollen out the wazoo and right up my snout.

“Screw it,” I thought, examining a sodden Kleenex for signs of brain tissue. “I’m taking drugs.”

And lemme tell you, that behind-the-counter Non-Drowsy Claritin-D 12-Hour with the pseudoephedrine frosting will kick the tires, light the fires, and set your eyes out on wires.

During Wednesday’s Geezer Ride, after I spun past a few guys on a short hill, one asked, “Why aren’t you even breathing hard?”

“I’m on drugs,” I replied. I felt like Ol’ Whatsisface ’fessin’ up to Oprah, only without all that annoying money and fame.

Maybe it was spending an afternoon with my old college cuates, but I was reminded of a “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” cartoon by Gilbert Shelton.

Freewheelin’ Franklin wants to borrow Phineas’s car to go buy a couple pounds of weed, but he’s sold it and bought a bicycle. So Phineas offers to pedal him out to Country Cowfreak’s place to make the buy.

On the way home they decide to take an illegal shortcut via the freeway, and the law takes an interest. No problem. Says Franklin: “First, I’ll snort a whole buncha cocaine … now,. you steer while I pedal.”

For the punchline, you can read the whole strip here.

2024: A Spaced Odyssey

February 10, 2024February 10, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments

I am not a senile old fool.

Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply taking a cheap political shot, hoping to stop me from serving another term as Your Humble Narrator here at whatever the hell it is that we, or you, or I am doing at this whatchamacallit, the thing. The … bog? You know.

Now, it’s true that I may occasionally stare blankly at my iPhone, the way that monkey did at the glossy black rectangle in that movie — c’mon, you know the one — because the nice lady on the phone asked me for my phone number and I’m trying to look it up in Settings without hanging up on her because hey, I never call myself. Do you?

Hello? Hello?

Shit.

But I can assure you that while I’m pawing helplessly at that glossy black rectangle I no longer make the plaintive hooting sound. Like the monkey. The one in the movie. You know, where the bone turns into a spaceship and Siri or Alexa or Elon is trying to kill everyone and the young guy in the spaceship turns into an old guy in a Home who can’t remember his phone number? Is it HAL9000? No?

I do? I’m making it right now? I’m sure you’re mistaken. Whoever you are. Ook ook ook.

And sometimes I may forget who the president is, but only because I’m pretty sure it’s not the Red Skull or Pumpkinhead or Dick Tater, whatever the crazy orange fella’s called, the one who looks like a giant circus peanut with beady little eyes like a big fat rat with a mouth like an asshole and is always in the news because he keeps doing stupid shit and getting caught at it but nobody seems to be able to put him in jail and somehow they all think the other fella is the problem because he can’t remember who the King of the Moon is or the name of that movie with the monkey who can’t remember his phone number or how to find it in that big black iPhone that the Space Baby left somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, where the bones turn into Great Red Sharks driven through Bat Country by Hunter S. Thompson to Las Vegas, where an infinite number of monkeys are writing “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’24.”

Anyway, whoever’s president now seems to be a little quieter and more laid back and I don’t have to think about him all the goddamn time and I kind of like that because it’s restful and I seem to need a lot of naps lately. Like right now.

This Bud’s for you

June 14, 2023June 15, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

Ho hum. I see some deep-pockets blowhard strolled in and out of court again yesterday, without consequences, as per usual. Not even a mug shot.

Shit, I’ve done more time than this blabbering plastic sack of fast-food farts, a serial liar who cheats at golf and would sell his idiot children to the Saudis, if he could find one dumb and mean enough to buy them for sex toys and/or dog food.

And I didn’t have to lip off to the cops, DAs, or judges to get jugged, either.

No, that would’ve been one of my bros, the dude who told the graying Colfax beat cop with the rookie partner: “You can’t arrest us for walking out of a bar with a beer.”

Ho, ho. Wrong again.

This regrettable incident took place in the Glory Days, when my friends and I were basically ambulatory recruiting posters for the War On Drugs. We’d have let the feds put our faces on a “Know Your Enemy” flyer if they paid us in cocaine and Stoli.

None of us was wealthy. We had no well-connected allies. We had dedicated ourselves to scaling new heights of impairment and then tumbling down the other side into a crusty rental house that used to be part of a Glendale nursery. For plants. Not children.

And thus we learned how to talk to cops. Be polite. Rely upon the short, simple words you can still pronounce without drooling. Don’t let the nice flatfoot see the devils raging behind your blood-red eyeballs.

And never, under any circumstances, tell a cop, “You can’t arrest us for [insert your offense here].”

My friend forgot this cardinal rule — only for a moment — but that’s all it takes. Loose lips sink ships, especially when the crew is hammered. And so we all got a fun ride in the drunk wagon and a night to remember in the Denver calaboose, where we met some fascinating people.

One was a duster (crazed on PCP), and he was quickly awarded the entire drunk tank for his earsplitting arguments with people or Things who were not there. We more numerous but much less scary drunks got packed into two-man cells so we could enjoy the floor show from a safe distance.

Another was a glum-looking permed and pastel-leisure-suited gent who had gotten popped for soliciting a hooker who turned out to be a vice cop. He could see his apartment from our cell, but not his wife inside it. He was not looking forward to seeing her in his new digs.

We got sprung in the morning without charges. Go and sin no more, you silly little shits, they told us. But goddamn it, we did our time.

If only we’d been riot-inciting former presidents of the United States whose Florida resort’s crappers were overflowing with national secrets instead of addled stoners getting sideways with a Colfax cop.

We’d have been back in the Satire Lounge before closing time.

McShrooms

October 25, 2022October 25, 2022 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

The Suits have come for your ’shrooms.

Jesus H. Don Juan and St. Castaneda preserve us! Is nothing sacred? Is there anything global capitalism will not besmirch with its grabby little hands?

Coming soon to a strip mall near you: a chain trippery called Mescalito’s. Try the gluten-free non-GMO vegan Peyote Burger with a side of Zoom ’Shrooms and a Cabron Lite® CBD lager!

Sorry, we haven’t had a drive-through window since a VW van full of hippies got caught in an M.C. Escher-King Crimson feedback loop at our Taos location and wound up circling the joint like hairy zopilotes until they ran out of gas.

So much for being a Trippist monk, growing your own revelations.

Oh, well. I guess even Mother Church has to buy the wafers and wine from someone.

In other news that makes you wonder who’s taking what:

• What’s this shit? The state of California has slammed the lid on San Francisco’s plans for a $1.7 million public toilet in Noe Valley. Is that a steep price for a one-holer? Does the pope shit in the woods? Noe thank you, please. Apparently there are some crappers down which not even California will flush the taxpayers’ dollars.

• Holy shit! Is Pootie-poot really contemplating a false-flag “dirty bomb” attack that would justify his use of nuclear weapons to pull his nicely roasted lil’ chestnuts out of the fire in Ukraine? If we’re going headfirst down that glow-in-the-dark loo, I’m gonna need some ’shrooms, stat.