Category: fucking up

Spinal crap

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 33 Comments
That wheelie hurts.

Somehow I’ve managed to bollix my back again, possibly the upshot of doing a wee bit too much of what’s supposed to be fun and good for me.

P’raps at my advanced and ever-accelerating state of disintegration it’s not smart to follow a 120-mile week with a few days of caroming various cyclocross bikes and a rigid mid-Nineties 26er off rocks in various calibers while rolling the foothills trails? Plus a trail run and adding a couple elbees to the ol’ dumbbells, like a dumbbell?

Well … you know what we say about “smart” and Your Humble Narrator — rarely seen together, like Clark Kent and Superman, and without all that useful Kryptonian super-strength and invulnerability, too.

Anyway, shit took me right out of the game. I never know precisely what triggers this old injury, acquired in college while delivering appliances for beer money. And there’s no curing it, not since we headed south from Bibleburg and my miracle worker Doc Lori took that long road west.

So when it pops round like the taxman, a cold-calling insert-your-home-improvement-project-here rep’, or a chirpy acolyte of the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu, I just wait it out. No sudden movements, no heavy lifting, and definitely no bicycling. A little gentle stretching, a few equally gentle walks, spasms working their way up and down the carcass looking for structural weaknesses, and, inevitably, finding them.

A severely restricted news diet is a must as well. Ping-ponging between the hysterical laughter of disbelief at the countless teensy weenies being so fiercely trodden upon and a shrieking “Follow Me Up to Carlow” rage (up with halberds, out with swords, etc.) is not a balm for the slowly recovering organism.

Thus the lack of recent bloggery. I’m feeling much better now, thanks. Though I can’t remember where I parked my halberd, goddamnit. ’Twas a nice Rivendell model too.

There’s a new tariff in town

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
The “Rubáiyát of Owe-More Khayyám.”

Hoo-lawd. Anybody’s portfolio turn into a postcard yet?

In case you’ve missed Paul Krugman, he’s speculating over at Substack that Elon’s Hitler Youth may have cobbled together the tariff scheme using ChatGPT and/or other A.I. models.

In my post immediately following the Trump announcement I speculated that Elon Musk’s Dunning-Kruger kids might be responsible for those tariff numbers. That now looks like a distinct possibility.

Who makes policy this way? The key point is that Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel, rather than policy in the normal sense.

Again, I’m not being snobbish here. When the fate of the world economy is on the line, the malignant stupidity of the policy process is arguably as important as the policies themselves. How can anyone, whether they’re businesspeople or foreign governments, trust anything coming out of an administration that behaves like this?

Good time to be heavily invested in the knee- and elbow-pad markets.

This Bud’s for you

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

We should be so lucky.

Ho hum. I see some deep-pockets blowhard strolled in and out of court again yesterday, without consequences, as per usual. Not even a mug shot.

Shit, I’ve done more time than this blabbering plastic sack of fast-food farts, a serial liar who cheats at golf and would sell his idiot children to the Saudis, if he could find one dumb and mean enough to buy them for sex toys and/or dog food.

And I didn’t have to lip off to the cops, DAs, or judges to get jugged, either.

No, that would’ve been one of my bros, the dude who told the graying Colfax beat cop with the rookie partner: “You can’t arrest us for walking out of a bar with a beer.”

Ho, ho. Wrong again.

This regrettable incident took place in the Glory Days, when my friends and I were basically ambulatory recruiting posters for the War On Drugs. We’d have let the feds put our faces on a “Know Your Enemy” flyer if they paid us in cocaine and Stoli.

None of us was wealthy. We had no well-connected allies. We had dedicated ourselves to scaling new heights of impairment and then tumbling down the other side into a crusty rental house that used to be part of a Glendale nursery. For plants. Not children.

And thus we learned how to talk to cops. Be polite. Rely upon the short, simple words you can still pronounce without drooling. Don’t let the nice flatfoot see the devils raging behind your blood-red eyeballs.

And never, under any circumstances, tell a cop, “You can’t arrest us for [insert your offense here].”

My friend forgot this cardinal rule — only for a moment — but that’s all it takes. Loose lips sink ships, especially when the crew is hammered. And so we all got a fun ride in the drunk wagon and a night to remember in the Denver calaboose, where we met some fascinating people.

One was a duster (crazed on PCP), and he was quickly awarded the entire drunk tank for his earsplitting arguments with people or Things who were not there. We more numerous but much less scary drunks got packed into two-man cells so we could enjoy the floor show from a safe distance.

Another was a glum-looking permed and pastel-leisure-suited gent who had gotten popped for soliciting a hooker who turned out to be a vice cop. He could see his apartment from our cell, but not his wife inside it. He was not looking forward to seeing her in his new digs.

We got sprung in the morning without charges. Go and sin no more, you silly little shits, they told us. But goddamn it, we did our time.

If only we’d been riot-inciting former presidents of the United States whose Florida resort’s crappers were overflowing with national secrets instead of addled stoners getting sideways with a Colfax cop.

We’d have been back in the Satire Lounge before closing time.

‘The Wisdom of Solomon’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 34 Comments

“You have the right to remain stupid. …”

The final entry in The Duck! City trilogy that began with “Breaking Bad” and continued with “Better Call Saul” stars “This Fool” co-star Frankie Quiñones as Solomon Peña, a failed GOP candidate accused of ordering — and participating in — drive-bys on Democratic officials’ houses and offices.

Hilarity ensues. Or not.

Look for the premiere, “Don’t Recount … Reload!” on Court TV.

The Bloviator

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

It takes talent to step on your own dick without getting out of the car.

Herself is a huge fan of the original “Arthur” flick, the one starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli.

Me, I can take it or leave it, but I must admit that the thing is chock-full of quotable quotes. Pretty much any line delivered by Sir John Gielgud is a keeper.

But you have to know your audience when you cite a 41-year-old flick about a wealthy rumpot, horndog, and all-round dilettante — as Tony “The Blevinator” Blevins learned when he riffed on an Arthurism for a TikTok creator.

TikToker Daniel Mac spotted Blevins — Apple’s hard-charging vice president for procurement — in a high-zoot Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren at a California car show, and asked Blevins what he did for a living.

And like Arthur, Blevins was off to the races, quipping:

“I have rich cars, play golf and fondle big-breasted women, but I take weekends and major holidays off.”

Oof. What Arthur said was:

“I race cars, play tennis, and fondle women, But! I have weekends off, and I am my own boss.”

Frankly, it wasn’t that funny in 1981. And The Bloviator’s updated take on it really fell flat at Apple, which showed Blevins the door. And not to his McLaren, either. Turns out he was not his own boss.

A tip of the hat to MacRumors, which is where I first saw the story.