A drop taken

April 10, 2026April 10, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment

The start of Tramway’s descent toward Interstate 25.

Never fear, I’m not back on the sauce. This drop taken was down to the bosque, for the first time this year.

It was a lovely day, if a bit windy — high of 80°, 65° when I started — and if I’d had my wits about me I could’ve finally ridden my age (in kilometers).

But I didn’t. After inspecting the state of the Rio Grande below the Gail Ryba bridge (still fluid, in a not-so-solid fashion), instead of pulling a U and heading home via the Paseo/North Diversion/Osuna-Bear Canyon trails, I noodled back to the ranch through Old Town to Odelia-Indian School and the Paseo de las Montañas/Tramway trails. Wound up 8 miles short of a birthday ride. In kilometers. Which is kind of like kissing your sister.

The Bosque Bandido never materialized, but I did notice a John Law parked on the gravel at trailside. We exchanged waves. Didn’t ask to see my papers or nothin’. Which was fortunate, because all I had on me was an elderly iPhone 13 mini, a water bottle, and a stick of Clif Blox. It would’ve been off to County Clare for Your Humble Narrator.

“Ireland? But your honor, my client’s bicycle doesn’t even have fenders!”

“Tough titty, counselor — he should’ve thought about that before his great-granddaddy came here to occupy a barstool that by rights belonged to a nat’chal-borned American. Next case!”

The good news is I missed whatever it was Melania thought she was up to behind the pestilential lectern, where nobody could see the rug burns on her elbows and knees, and that “Property of Satan’s Slaves’ tat’ on her ass.

Isn’t it about time we started relocating some of these Trumps to gilt-free cages in the swamps, deserts, and desert swamps of Wottalottaland, Lower Slobbovia, and Spaminacanistan? I mean, Christ, Boss Hogg is bombing anything he can’t steal, Melanoma’s doing this feeble impression of Richard Pryor’s “Now are you gonna believe me or your lyin’ eyes?” bit, and now Barron wants to start dealing speed in Florida?

Dude thinks he’s being cute by calling it “yerba mate,” which I think is Guarani for “murder tea.” Wait until he hears what the Cartel calls it. “Gringo failing to swim across the Gulf of America while wearing 300 pounds of chains, a jukebox, and a burlap sack,” is what.

See if you can get mommy and daddy to join you for that dip in the shark tank, kid. Your ould fellah could certainly use the exercise. Driving the golf cart and having people killed ain’t getting it done.

• Addendum: Artemis II made it home safely, and about 20 minutes after they were bobbing around in the Pacific off San Diego, boom! We got our first hummingbird of the new year at our feeders. Winning!

Let’s make a … deal?

April 8, 2026April 8, 2026 ~ 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.

Tonight, on The Trump Channel!

April 7, 2026April 7, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

A hard-and-fast rule around Ye Olde Dogge Haus is, “Disregard anything that follows the phrase ‘Trump says. …”

But rules are made to be broken. And while I had been planning a grocery trip, now I wonder whether digging a bunker in the back yard might be a better use of my time.

This fuckin’ guy. A mouth like a yawning hippo and the brains of a flea on the hippo’s arse.

And nary a zookeeper in sight.

A friend and I were chatting this morning and he wondered why we hadn’t been hearing anything lately about the whole “running out of ammo” thing that the press had been pushing not long ago, as the U.S. military pitched top-shelf armaments at bargain-basement threats.

So … what exactly will John Whine be packing for the showdown in this Western he’s produced, directed, and stars in?

A few of the lefty bloggers I read are thinking the Fat Man wants to go all — well, Fat Man, the bigger-and-better 2026 edition — on Iran. And here I sit reminiscing about the Good Old Days, taking cover under my desk at Randolph AFB Elementary.

That was one of those solid Air Force issue deals, not this cheapo Office Depot number I’ve been working at for the past couple decades. I’m not sure it’s up to the task of sparing Your Humble Narrator that difficult job interview down below, at The Lake O’ Fire Apocalypse-Intelligencer.

Notice how His Excremency pitches the “death of a civilization” as though it were just another shitty episode of reality TV: “We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.” But first, this message from Mar-a-Lago-Mars!

What I’d like to find out — and what the legacy media is not telling me — is what the other nuclear powers think about this slobbering shit-gibbon swinging his ’shroom around like a Central Avenue tranq addict oscillating between peeing and jacking off.

We know where Congress stands: watching from a safe distance and doing fuck-all, as per usual. Waiting for the midterms, I expect.

Aren’t we all? ’Scuse me, got a hole to dig. …

Luna. See?

April 6, 2026April 6, 2026 ~ 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.

Space oddity

April 3, 2026April 4, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

More than a few folks in the media have expressed surprise that NASA’s reboot of a flyby round the moon hasn’t engaged more eyeballs.

Huh. Well. …

It could have something to do with the fact that we are at wa … pardon, on “an excursion” … in the Middle East. Again.

Or that a third-tier reality-TV character put us there, when he wasn’t busy cheating at golf, stenciling his accursed name on everything, and/or lying through his false teeth.

Maybe the suckers that voted for him are too busy trying to squeeze their eyeballs back into their sockets after a glance at the latest gas prices, or a peek at his 2027 wish list for the Pentagon — $1.5 trillion, about a 40 percent jump from the last military-industrial goodie bag.

Can’t have guns and butter, of course, so better learn to like your toast dry. If you still have the bread to buy bread.

Me, I still like watching our tentative steps at space exploration. We caught the burn that took Artemis II — or Orion, Integrity, whatever the fuck this thing is called, Christ, no wonder nobody’s paying any attention to it — out of Earth’s orbit and toward the moon just before dinner last night. A missile launch that isn’t intended to kill someone, or a bunch of someones. Feature that, if you can.

So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure, how very unlikely is your birth. And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, ’cause there’s bugger-all down here on Earth.