Category: Feddle gummint

A wee bit of civics

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
The backyard maple is trying to coax a bit of rain from those clouds.

June 1. Good gawd awmighty. Three weeks until the first day of summer.

Where the hell does the time go?

It doesn’t feel very summery, not yet. We’re slathering on the sunscreen when we go out and about, but highs have only reached the mid-70s to mid-80s, which are very much bearable.

Thus, we have no excuses for staying inside to watch Sleepy Joe and Charlie McCarthy make the sausage. We’ll be eating it soon enough.

It all reminds me very little of what we were taught in junior-high civics classes. Or home economics, for that matter.

What it reminds me of is gym class, specifically the shower portion, wherein a jock occasionally would pee surreptitiously on some poor geek’s leg while distracting him with conversation.

The geek was usually so astonished to be having a chat with one of his betters that he didn’t notice the augmented fluids coursing down his calf until the giggling began.

And then he couldn’t do anything about it anyway.

The geek didn’t yet know about the sausage. He still thought it was just something mom put on his plate with the scrambled eggs and toast. He still thought Bob Dylan was just singing a song.

‘OG?’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
The Real OG. Or is it?

It’s not me.

I don’t care what you’ve read, what you’ve heard, or what you’ve seen.

It’s not me.

“What ’ave you been up to, my lad?” asks my supervisor, code-named “M.”

For starters, nobody in their right mind would give the likes of me access to a “secure” area. I do my little bit of business in an extremely insecure area at the corner of Social Security and 401(k).

I don’t take pictures of classified documents. I take pictures of sunrises and mountains and cute lil’ kitty-cats.

And while I may occasionally cause discord, I don’t use Discord.

Now, who you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?

Oh, before I forget: Please burn your computer, laptop, tablet, or phone after reading.

’Scuse me, someone’s at the door. …

 

A federal case

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
Change in the weather.

Herself is putting the finishing touches on our income-tax paperwork this morning.

She’s refreshingly scrupulous that way. Even though the Repugs have whittled the IRS down to one half-senile retiree from H&R Block clocked in for 10 hours per week from a memory-care facility in Muscatine, Iowa, Herself dutifully catalogs what we’ve paid and what we owe (or are owed).

I really don’t mind paying taxes. That is, I wouldn’t mind, if everyone paid their fair share and the money didn’t get pissed away on stupid shit.

For instance, I’d like to see more money spent on food, housing, and health care for the needy and less chucked into gold-plated, diamond-studded, unreliably airborne shredders like the F-35, which Charles Pierce calls “The Flying Swiss Army Knife.”

But then I’d like to see a lot of things that will never happen. Hair on my head. A Moots Routt YBB in my garage. Adolf Twitler frog-marched to Rikers on Tuesday.

Yeah, right. As if. That last item stinks to high heaven of the manic desperation of a shunned kindergartner all alone in a corner of the playground. “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”

I wonder what his SS detail would do if the John Laws came for him, bearing chrome bracelets.

“Can we maybe shoot him just a little bit? We’re sure he’ll try to resist arrest, if Fox sends a camera crew. Oh, come on, just a few dozen rounds, no vital organs. We need the practice. He won’t let us go to the range. We have to bus tables and mow fairways for the son of a bitch.”

And they’re off!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
The checkered flag for one year doubles as the starter’s pistol for the next.

Brand-new year, same old feeling:

What now?

I’ve been doing laps on this circuit since March 1954, and I suppose I should be happy that I haven’t been black-flagged yet.

2022 was the first time I’ve been off the clock for an entire calendar year since I signed on with the Gazette Telegraph back in 1977. That’s what I call an extended pit stop (props to the mechanics at Social Security for the fuel and new rubber all the way around).

You’d think that after such a lengthy pause for the cause I’d have decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. Nope. Pissed it away cycling, running, hiking, grocery shopping, cooking, playing with the cat, reading, watching TV, and dicking around on the Innertubes. When I wasn’t asking “How high?” whenever Herself barked “Jump,” that is.

The old man took up real-estate sales when he retired from the U.S. Air Force, but that’s not for me. The only thing I ever sold successfully (other than free-range rumormongery to publishers) was weed to hippies. It was loads easier for a prospective buyer to commit to a $12 lid and there was less paperwork involved.

“Need any papers with that?”

“Naw, man, I got a pipe.”

And unlike publishers, the hippies paid up front.

Hey, maybe I should run for Squeaker of the House? Looks like Kevin McCarthy isn’t getting the trade-in value he’d expected for that scratched-and-dented soul of his with its four bald retreads, the weird stains in the back seat, and the air freshener that ain’t quite gettin’ ’er done.

Naw. That’d be worse than dealing weed or words. Imagine having to listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene while pretending to care what she’s going on and on and on about. I’d have to start smoking that shit again.

It never rains, but it pours

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
It looks like feckin’ Ireland over by the Menaul trailhead.

We New Mexicans should probably apologize to the Pacific Northwest for stealing their climate.

But hey, you left it unlocked with the keys in the ignition, so. …

Puddles on the Duke City trails are as rare as original thought in government. (See the latest iteration of publicly funded downtown stadiums for privately owned sports teams.) This in a town where we have a six-pack of dudes — half of them part-time — to plug holes in the bike paths along which the homeless pitch their festive tents.

Standing water on a Duke City trail in July? Truly these are dire portents of the End Times.

In DeeCee, meanwhile … well, the less said about that, the better. But can we at least agree that a few more Republicans would be on board the Investigation Train if the treasonous fucks who invaded the U.S. Capitol, pounding a few John Laws along the way, had been socialist, gay, people of color, or any combination thereof? You know: Democrats?

Jesus H., etc. In Hell Mao is all like, “Damn, and I thought I had a cult of personality going on.” But this feels more like the Israelites and their golden calf, only with “Christians” and a plastic pig from the Dollar Store rattle-canned with metallic-gold Krylon.

This sort of behavior failed to amuse either Moses or the Lord, as I recall. Doesn’t do shit for me, either.

Speaking of things that are a monkey or two short of a full barrel, I see we’re back to wearing our face panties.

Bernalillo County is tagged orange, with a “substantial” level of community transmission, so the CDC would like us to cover up when visiting indoor public spaces, shots or no shots.

Oh, good. I was already sick of seeing smiling faces and understanding the speech emerging from same.

The bright side is that in the past two weeks a half-dozen family members from far and wide have been able to visit Herself the Elder before the portcullis drops again, as seems likely. So, yay, etc.. May yis all be in Heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.