A Freudian fillup

October 11, 2026October 11, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

So the other day I was motoring around and about, running on fumes as a fella will in these dark days, when the Subaru’s low-fuel light blinked on.

Huh, I thought. You don’t say. Well, I have errands to run, I don’t believe in the Low-Fuel Fairy, and I don’t give my money to Big Oil until I have to. F’chrissakes, Herself just poured $60 of go-juice into her Honda CR-V. That oughta hold the greasy sonsabitches for a while.

A glance at the trip meter told me I’d squeezed 318 miles out of that tank, which is not bad for a 2005 Forester with more than 159K on the odometer. Bound to be a few more miles in there, I thought. So the Subie and I soldiered on.

Errands complete and homeward bound the trip meter was showing 325 miles and I reconsidered my position. No point in pushing my luck and maybe pushing this bucket of bolts back to El Rancho Pendejo, I thought. It’s all uphill from here and this old mechanical burro needs her hay.

So I pulled into the next gas station, fed my credit card to the pump, and got the party started.

Now, I don’t gas up often because I don’t drive that much anymore. The Duck! City drivers have sucked all the happy out of motoring for me. Imagine a bumper-cars circuit looping through a shooting range with a wet bar in an insane asylum. So in the long stretches between fillups I tend to forget that buying a tank of gas has become a multimedia experience.

As the pump sprang to hideous life its TV screen started screaming something about “FATTY MEAT STICKS! Made with GRASS-FED BEEF AND PORK!” and how I have to get one RIGHT NOW!”

Uh … isn’t that what’s happening right now? I thought as my tab ticked steadily upward to $56.98.

Remember the old quip about the price of a lift? “Ass, gas, or grass?” It’s true; nobody rides for free. But I didn’t expect to pay my freight by doing a threesome with Speedway and Fatty.

Buckle up!

May 22, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

The Memorial Day Shopping Fiesta and Family Barbecue Getaway (Nothing to See Here, Move Along, Move Along) kicks off today with the murders most foul of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” and CBS News Radio, along with any remaining illusions that Americans live in a functioning democracy.

There is no truth to the rumor that the new national anthem for our next 250 years — or perhaps 250 days? Hours? — will be the Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” reimagined by Black Sabbath. Or so we may hope, anyway.

One thing is certain: That cheery little ditty, along with an unauthorized Kid Rock cover of the Eagles’ song “The Last Resort,” will be in heavy rotation down in the Adolf & Eva Memorial Ballroom & Führerbunker. The lyric “Some rich men came and raped the land / nobody caught ’em” will be a huge laugh line for everyone save the slaves serving up the Big Macs and Diet Cokes.

Meanwhile, some good news: M-Day weekend gas prices are at a four-year high! But that won’t keep 39 million of us from cranking up the Family Yacht and burning a few tanks’ worth to spend time eating bad food poorly prepared and swilling tins of thin industrial lager with people we really don’t like all that much.

The Soma Double Cross takes five in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.

Last I looked go-juice was between $4.50 and $5 here in The Duck! City, which didn’t make AAA’s list of the top-10 Memorial Day getaways (the podium: Orlando, FL, Seattle, WA, and New York).

No worries here, bruh. I got my holiday shopping done early yesterday, before the ravening hordes could descend upon the grocery and strip the shelves bare like a cloud of fat betatted locusts. And today I ain’t driving nowhere, nohow, though I do expect to get out on a bike at some point. Yesterday was stellar in the Elena Gallegos Open Space; I saw only a few other trail users as I rumbled along on the old Soma Double Cross, and most seemed to be enjoying the wide-open space as much as I was.

Meanwhile, Republicans will be traveling home after shitting the bed in Congress. Here’s hoping their constituents have a few words with them about the horrible smell.

Oh, mama …

April 15, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

It’s money that he loves.

They say that money
Can’t buy love in this world
But it’ll get you a half-pound of cocaine
And a 16-year old girl
And a great big long limousine
On a hot September night
Now that may not be love
But it is all right. — Randy Newman, ‘It’s Money That I Love’

The Toddler-in-Chief wants to fire Jerome Powell again. Or still. Whatevs.

I guess a diet rich in Mickey D’s shitburgers, Adderall and defeat just doesn’t tighten the ol’ focus the way it once did.

Is this a pivot back to Making America Great Again? Like he did with grocery prices, gas prices, and the whole no-more-wars thing?

So. Much. Winning.

Take a nap, fuckface. We could all do with a little peace and quiet around here for a change.

Space oddity

April 3, 2026April 4, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

More than a few folks in the media have expressed surprise that NASA’s reboot of a flyby round the moon hasn’t engaged more eyeballs.

Huh. Well. …

It could have something to do with the fact that we are at wa … pardon, on “an excursion” … in the Middle East. Again.

Or that a third-tier reality-TV character put us there, when he wasn’t busy cheating at golf, stenciling his accursed name on everything, and/or lying through his false teeth.

Maybe the suckers that voted for him are too busy trying to squeeze their eyeballs back into their sockets after a glance at the latest gas prices, or a peek at his 2027 wish list for the Pentagon — $1.5 trillion, about a 40 percent jump from the last military-industrial goodie bag.

Can’t have guns and butter, of course, so better learn to like your toast dry. If you still have the bread to buy bread.

Me, I still like watching our tentative steps at space exploration. We caught the burn that took Artemis II — or Orion, Integrity, whatever the fuck this thing is called, Christ, no wonder nobody’s paying any attention to it — out of Earth’s orbit and toward the moon just before dinner last night. A missile launch that isn’t intended to kill someone, or a bunch of someones. Feature that, if you can.

So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure, how very unlikely is your birth. And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, ’cause there’s bugger-all down here on Earth.

Fuelishness 3: Dimed

March 19, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Half-stepping: checked only two gas stations instead of four today.

Can you feel the savings? The economy roaring?

During my errands this morning I noticed a gas station on Montgomery rocking the $3.99, so when I slipped out for a short bike ride later in the day I checked half of my usual suspects and they were as you see — up a dime since March 14, and up 40 cents or better since March 10.

I’d expect to see some even steeper prices at 7-Eleven directly. 7-Eleven Inc. may have its headquarters in Irvine, Texas, but it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of Seven-Eleven Japan, and I can’t imagine Corporate found Cadet Bonespurs’ little jape about Pearl Harbor a real knee-slapper.