Category: Feckin’ eejits

Austin shitty limits

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 38 Comments
One of the nine thousand 'cross cartoons I've done since taking up the benighted activity. This one appeared in Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.
One of the nine thousand ‘cross cartoons I’ve done since taking up the benighted activity. This one appeared in Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

It’s not often that I say, “Wow, I’m glad I didn’t go to cyclo-cross nationals.” But this is one of those rare occasions.

Somehow, the promoters, USA Cycling and the Austin Parks and Recreation Department — after four days of running lesser championship and non-championship events — found themselves at odds over whether Sunday’s Big Finale was appropriate given the appallingly ‘cross-like conditions at the venue, Zilker Park.

A less-than-joyous noise apparently having been made unto the Lord by some non-Belgian whose voice carries, the marquee events were first canceled, then postponed until Monday, though a sober copy editor might raise a few pointed questions about the “Barring more rain” qualifier in the headline some USAC media type slapped atop its announcement.

I’ve been to ‘cross nats more than a time or two, and I can’t recall anything like this happening anywhere else, despite flood, freeze, snow or snafu. Course changes? Si. Cops running people away from the venue, perhaps never to return? No.

Someone has intercoursed the penguin with a vengeance here, and if I were sitting on a flat wallet in an Austin Motel 6 with a useless race number, all kitted up with no place to go but home, I’d want to know who the hell the all-hat, no-cattle sonofabitch is. If he had a brain, he’d be out playing with it, as Dan Jenkins once wrote.

Everything’s bigger in Texas, they say. I guess that goes for the fuck-ups, too. Oops.

Bloody hell

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Sure, it's a little blurry. So was I.
Sure, it’s a little blurry. So was I.

This is either my impression of Ebola sweeping the nation or a quick iPhone shot through the windshield while zooming past Santa Fe on the latest 12-hour U-turn from Duke City to Bibleburg and back.

The maple in the front yard has commenced the annual leaf dump.
The maple in the front yard has commenced the annual leaf dump.

The Old Home Place® still stands, and I had a chance to chat with several of our former neighbors while trying to see how much stuff I could cram into a Subaru Forester without actually causing its rims to bottom out on the driveway.

This took my mind off what blithering eejits we’ve become over this Ebola business. Seems you don’t actually have to have the disease to shit yourself over it.

Tell you what, though. I get sick in Texas, I’d rather see a barber than a Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital sawbones.

Creative class warfare

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
The Turk' enjoyed some backyard time while I cleaned a bike in honor of the summer solstice.
The Turk’ enjoyed some backyard time while I cleaned a bike in honor of the summer solstice.

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Just ask the Turk’, who enjoyed a little outside time in the Mad Dog Media Botanical Gardens, a.k.a. “Weedpatch,” as I washed a bike in honor of the solstice.

Shortly thereafter it began raining off and on, with thunder for flavor, and the feline outings, bicycle riding and Old North End Garage Sale took back seats to working and earning.

Speaking of which, I can see I’ve been going about the latter activities all wrong. Clarity is so 15 minutes ago. If a guy could only learn to deploy with a straight face semantically null phrases such as “further leverage,” “cultural and creative assets,” “place of choice,” “launching new ideas” and “preserving our rich cultural heritage,” why, People of Money would write us fat checks for doing absolutely nothing beyond talking authoritatively and incomprehensibly out of our asses.

Toward that end I’m pleased to announce the formation of the Caramillo Street Collective for Creative Obfuscation, whose sole purpose it shall be to talk shit for money. I know, that sounds an awful lot like what I already do, but trust me, this is a radical departure from business as usual at Chez Dog. It’s a means of further leveraging my cultural and creative assets from my place of choice to launch new ideas that preserve my rich cultural heritage.

Somebody owes me $20K now.

• Speaking of talking shit: Here’s Timothy Noah on the ethics of dog-crap disposal.

I got your ‘partial zero emission’ right here

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

A Subaru Impreza that’s belching cigarette smoke from the driver’s window is hardly a “Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle,” which is marketing bullshit anyway. It’s either a zero-emissions vehicle or it isn’t.

PZEV sounds like the sort of stealth fart we used to call a “one-cheek sneak.” Elevate half the butt slightly above the plastic chair and let fly as the teacher pauses in mid-lecture to take a breath.

Pppppppzeeeeeeeevvvvv.

I found myself stuck behind this PZEV shit (that’s an audio pun, son!) while riding my Vespa over to the scooter shop for its annual maintenance and a minor repair. Interesting how the de rigueur carry for a lit cig’ these days is out the window. As much as the fuckers cost you’d think the addicts would want to keep all those expensive carcinogens inside the car where they can get full value out of each nicotine stick.

But what do I know? I shed that particular vice three decades ago, when a carton of Marlboros cost less than a Subaru.

Still, if ever there was a bad week to quit smoking, this was it. Smack in the shitter goes Iraq, with all the usual suspects slithering out from under their rocks to flicker their forked tongues for fun and profit — including Dickless Cheney and his carpetbagger kid, who’s so overfed and under-taught that she couldn’t even queer a Wyoming election properly. Some 4,500 Americans dead in her daddy’s imperial fantasies and yet the cyborg sonofabitch walks the earth unfettered.

Plus Herself has been road-tripping again, leaving me in charge of quarters. The Augean Stables is what that is. Bowls to fill, litter boxes to empty, Boos to walk twice daily — did you know you have to pick up the dog shit now?

Well, here, anyway. In DC they put it on the Sunday shows and on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal.

• Extra Credit Bonus Shit That Pisses Me Off: Eagle, another anonymous stop along the Interstate 70 Industrial Tourism Sacrifice Zone, is creating fun stuff for visitors to do. Bibleburg is angling for gilded turds in the old five-ringed toilet, hoping to display same for ham-and-eggers shuttling between Six Flags Over Bethlehem and the American Opinion Bookstore.