The blessings of liberty

Herself and I were running down a list of worthy causes the other day, trying to decide which of them would get our limited financial support.

It was no easy task, in part because we are far from wealthy, thanks to our failure to capitalize on my globe-spanning fame. We have work, a roof over our heads and food in the cupboards, but still, damn; so many in need, so few dollars to go around. It was like spreading a pat of butter on a slice of toast the size of Kansas.

While we were crunching our pitiful numbers, the least productive Congress in the history of Congresses was busily fucking off, slinking out of town after having done less to “support and defend the Constitution” than any previous conclave of alleged lawmakers.

In their absence, which is preferable to their presence, 1.3 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits in an economy hamstrung by catastrophic long-term unemployment. That at least three people are seeking work for every job available is a moral failure on the part of the job seeker, says Congress, albeit obliquely. If hungry schoolchildren wish to eat, well, let them become amateur custodians. Plus they’ll be learning a trade! Bonus!

As Charles P. Pierce notes:

“Millions in subsidies, from the same program that until this year was tied to the food-stamp program for sound political reasons, which is the way we take care of each other in a political commonwealth. But poor children, if they do not work, shall not eat. Not all the big clanging brass ones hang in bell towers this season.”

The Constitution to which these swine swear their oaths begins thusly:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The Union has always been less than perfect, but lately it seems even more so. Where is the Justice, the domestic Tranquility? Who promotes the general Welfare, that the Blessings of Liberty may be secured?

“Fuck you, I’ve got mine, get yours,” doesn’t appear in the Constitution. Trust me. I checked.

So we write our little checks, and we send them off. And we hope. We hope for more than “four more years of things not gettin’ worse.”

Soccer to me

RFD-Logo-12062013I’ve put my foot in it again — this time, the target is a pro soccer franchise that needs a million-dollar kiss on the lips before it will screw the sports fans here in Bibleburg.

Yes, yes, yes — it’s your Finally Friday installment of Radio Free Dogpatch.

• Editor’s note: I’m in the process of moving Radio Free Dogpatch from its home at the old Mad Dog Media.com website to the podcast host Libsyn. Once the transition is complete, if you’re interested — as I appear to be, for no justifiable reason — you should be able to subscribe to RFD via iTunes. I think. I hope. I’ll keep you posted.

Off of my lawn, Junior Birdmen!

Radio Free Dogpatch first "aired" in November 2005, then promptly swirled down the Loo of History. It's back now, God help us all.
Radio Free Dogpatch first “aired” in November 2005, then promptly swirled down the Loo of History. It’s back now, God help us all.

One of the nice parts about the season winding down is that I generally find a minute or two for playtime.

Well, nice for me. Maybe not so nice for other people. You, for example.

See, I got this idea that maybe I should play around with audio a little more. Mike Creed and I were talking about podcasting the other day — he has a fine one going on — and Mike was surprised to learn that I’d been fiddling with the medium back in 2005.

• The Radio Free Dogpatch archives

I explained that I always felt slightly ridiculous talking into a microphone (though I don’t seem to have any problems holding extended conversations with the voices in my head) and just sort of wandered away from audio, thinking maybe it wasn’t for me.

But shucks. I have all this stuff lying idle around the joint — microphones, headphones, computers, software — and it seems silly to let it go to waste. Having done a few video reviews for the Adventure Cycling people, I feel a little less self-conscious about addressing an invisible audience. And sometimes it’s just fun to do something different.

For me, anyway.

So here we go — it’s a brand-new edition of Radio Free Dogpatch, back from the grave for no defensible reason.

And just when you thought it was safe to go back in the Innertubez, too.

The path of most resistance

The streets are safer, even with a light coating of leaves.
The streets are safer, even with a light coating of leaves.

If you ever wonder why so many Americans have so much trouble making their government function, just watch them making a shambles of another shared space — the infinitely simpler bike path.

I nearly got crashed twice yesterday — first by a pair of knucklehead roadies in team kit who cut across my bow in Goose Gossage Park, exiting the bike path for the street without bothering to check for oncoming traffic, and a few minutes later by some helmetless dipshit on a beater road bike careening down the wrong side of a sketchy slope coated with sand and pea gravel.

Mind you, these incidents constituted the cherries atop a turd-cake that included the usual ingredients — oblivious strollers three abreast, untrained dogs sans leash, and fleawits wandering across the path without checking to see whether they might be about to violate the laws of physics by trying to occupy the same space at the same time as a 180-pound Irish-American on a 30-pound touring bike traveling at 15 mph.

The offenders invariably wear the blank, bovine gaze of a feedlot cow doomed to wear a soggy bun, a slice of pickle and some processed cheese “food” in the afterlife. And yet some of us we marvel at the popularity of Rupert Murdoch’s various entertainment outlets, which shove a similarly toxic product at the feeble-minded through the flat-panel windows in their living rooms.

How hard can it be to walk, run and ride to the right, pass left, and keep your fucking eyes open?