Category: Feckin’ eejits

For whom the bell tolls

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
It was warmer today — but not that much warmer.
It was warmer today — but not that much warmer.

Finally, the temperature crept above zero, and then above freezing, and after I shipped my “Shop Talk” cartoon for the March 1 edition of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News I was able to sneak out for my first ride in the better part of quite some time that didn’t require pulling on enough neoprene to make wetsuits for every frogman in the Chinese navy.

First I took the Bootleg Hobo out and about with a GoPro on board, so I could get some winter footage for its video review, which Adventure Cyclist wants early next month.

Then I pulled the old mountain bike out of the garage again and rode over to Bear Creek Regional Park, where the Mad Dogs used to promote cyclo-cross races back when we were men instead of whatever it is that we are now.

There was still plenty of snow and ice on the ground, plus some slush to keep it company, and the trails were thick with feckin’ eejits who were either unable or unwilling to hear the crunch of fat tires on old snow, a bell rung thrice, and a cheery voice warning, “On your left!”

I startled the mortal shit out of at least two of ’em when I passed. They jumped smack out of their shivering skins and left ’em splayed on the ground like sex dolls awaiting inflation, their internal workings exposed to the elements. Stupidity should be painful.

Speaking of which, our local fish-wrapper, which is dead set on helping politicians, developers and other shameless hoors further enrich themselves at the taxpayers’ expense by elevating The Olympic Movement to cult status hereabouts, couldn’t even be bothered to localize an Associated Press story about a new national mountain-bike series that will finish right here in Bibleburg, home to (wait for it) The U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Cycling, in the U-nited States of America.

Nope, they’re too busy pimping the Winter Games, which is all the way around the damn’ world in Red Roosha, is what.

Shit, the lazy sonsabitches didn’t even fix the typos. Looks like we lost the Cold War after all.

Oh, Atlanta

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

Man — talk about things that suck. And no, I’m not talking about the State of the Union, though, yes, that too, come to think of it.

No, I’m talking about Ragnarok coming to Atlanta.

I’ve always heard that the traffic in Atlanta made Chris Christie’s arteries look like the wide-open spaces, but still, damn.

I was mystified, shortly after my family was transferred from Ottawa, Canada, to Randolph AFB, Texas, to see school and pretty much everything else canceled the two times in five years that it snowed (about a gram’s worth each time).

But I didn’t have a driver’s license, or any urgent tasks to perform, so I suppose my ignorance was excusable. Plus a guy could pretty much walk or ride a bike everywhere on base, so the potential for fatal collision and/or extended naps in Dad’s Cad’ was greatly reduced.

Gee. Y’think suburban sprawl ain’t all it’s been cracked up to be?

For everything there is a season

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Herself almost made it home last night, if you will concede that Denver International Airport qualifies as “almost home.”

The weather was moderately evil, and Herself’s flight from Chicago to Bibleburg was rerouted to Denver, a change of schedule about which I was blissfully ignorant until hanging a left off Powers onto the airport road after a very slow drive on icy, snow-covered streets.

“Where are you?” asks Herself, and I figure I’m about to get an earful for being late picking her up.

“Coming up on the airport,” sez I. “Where are you?”

“In Denver,” sez she.

And that’s the way things stayed. I hung out in the cellphone lot for an hour or so, waiting to see if the situation would resolve itself. United was waffling on whether the 15-minute flight was go or no-go, saying the Bibleburg airport was closed (the airport’s website proved useless on the iPhone, The Gazette had nothing about it, and I was feeling cantankerous and forbade myself to investigate in person).

Anyway, long story short, I motored back to Chez Dog to await instructions, United finally canceled that DIA-COS flight altogether, and I arranged a hotel room for Herself, who — having been scheduled to touch down in Bibleburg at 8:03 p.m. Monday — finally hit the hay at two-ish Tuesday in Saudi Aurora. Now she’s due in at 3:15 this afternoon. So it goes.

While awaiting dispatches from the front I learned of Pete Seeger’s passing, and this morning, in his honor, I decided not to go a-tilting at the windmills of customer service. It was late, the weather sucked, and the harried minions who seem like knee-jerk shitheels at first glance are just working stiffs, like us. They probably don’t like being United employees any more than we like being United customers.

Pete, that unreconstructed old commie, would have sung them a song.

Remembrances

• “Pete Seeger: This Man Surrounded Hate and Forced it To Surrender,” John Nichols, The Nation

• “R.I.P., Pete Seeger,” Charles P. Pierce, The Politics Blog

• “Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94,” Jon Pareles, The New York Times

• “I simply wanted him to know that I loved him dearly,” Arlo Guthrie

Dope and doper

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 36 Comments
Shit makes you smart, man.
Shit makes you smart, man.

Cheech and Chong* must be laughing their asses off.

“By a 3-to-1 margin, journalists inside 3D Cannabis outnumbered customers waiting outside before the shop opened,” reports The Denver Post in its coverage of today’s first sales of legal recreational marijuana in Colorado.

“This is history I just made,” crows a Georgia gent who slept in his car, with his dog, in order to spend $180 on 6 grams of smokable herb and some munchies.

Well, Stoney, let’s get real here. Buying a legal bag of shit is not quite up there with integrating a redneck lunch counter, landing on the moon or inventing the Internet. But we take your point. Folks in Colorado — certain parts of it, anyway — can now purchase the fabled Whacky Tobacky over a counter instead of under the radar, and from someone who doesn’t look the way I did when I was selling $12 lids in Alamosa, too.

Bibleburg, naturally, decided not to participate in this making of the history. Retail sales of firearms, tattoos, payday loans, superstition, fuck books, tonsil polish in a thousand-and-one flavors, and all manner of other smokable products? Fine, fine, go about your business.

But the recreational mary-joo-wanna? Nossir. Might set the younguns to rubbing theyselfs in public, cause the Army to make bongs of its M203s, maybe even lead to dancing on Sunday.

So Manitou Springs, Pueblo and Denver will get the mota-related jobs and taxes, and Bibleburg will get the mumbling stoners. Assuming said stoners have recourse to money and reliable transportation, anyway. So we got that going for us.

Pretty silly, hey? But not as silly as the 62-year-old masters racer who just drew himself a two-year ban for using amphetamines, testosterone and EPO. Talk about hitting the trifecta. It’s a wonder the cup didn’t dissolve when he pissed in it. Doping to win masters races is like standing tiptoe on a stack of prescription pads to make yourself the biggest midget in the room.

* Looks like Tommy Chong is going to be paying a visit to an area dealer. Dave must finally be here.

The blessings of liberty

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

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.”