Archive for the ‘Holidays’ Category

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Sinko de Turko

May 5, 2018

¿Tengo sed? Claro que si! Haz que llueva, pendejo.

Come the dawn, after a long night’s duty, Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) likes to refresh himself with a drink from the sink, holiday or no holiday.

And speaking of no holiday, at least one learned sort thinks Cinco de Mayo may be one of them there — created largely to sell beverages, and plenty of them too.

“It’d be like if the Fourth of July were reduced to beer and hot dogs,” said UCLA prof David Hayes-Bautista.

Dude. How long you been on this side of The Wall, ese? I bet you can’t find three gabachos off campus who think the Fourth is about anything else.

 

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Posted in Cats, Holidays | 16 Comments »

Happy New Year

January 1, 2018

The evening meal consisted of bean burritos smothered in green chile with a side of Mexican rice. Dessert? Raspberry cobbler.

It was a quiet New Year’s Eve around El Rancho Pendejo.

Since I no longer smoke, drink or dance the hoochie-koo, I’m no fun on the big night. And we didn’t have any invites to fancy shindigs at which I might not act the fool. So we spent the day catching up with distant friends and family, cooking a bit of this and that, and going to bed long before the ball dropped in Times Square.

Neighbors with more stamina blew me out of a sound sleep as 2017 sequed into 2018, discharging their muskets, flintlocks and blunderbusses with wild abandon. If there was any body count, it didn’t make the morning paper, no doubt because those misfits were out in the street banging away too.

Having already achieved perfection I have no New Year’s resolutions. I’m taking a 30-day break from Twitter that may become permanent because I think it’s making my head fat and I’d like to be able to squeeze into my old hats again. Plus I think there may be more productive ways to pass the time, like pounding sand down a rathole, pissing into the wind, or baying at the moon like some infernal hound.

And there’s riding the bike, too. In 2017 I managed 2,767.8 miles, more than in 2016 but without a single, solitary tour. Bad Adventure Cyclist! Bad, bad, bad! Go sit in that office chair and think about what you’ve (not) done! And then blog about it.

This unspeakable sloth will persist throughout today. After a light breakfast Herself and I plan a short New Year’s trail run. At some point the black-eyed peas and cornbread will make an appearance, and the burritos smothered in green may get an encore, too. The raspberry cobbler, alas, is a goner.

Meanwhile, happy happy joy joy to thee and thine, and a thousand thank-yous for popping round the old cracker barrel during 2017. Let’s do it some more in 2018.

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Posted in Family, Friends, Holidays, Milestones | 34 Comments »

Feliz Navidad

December 25, 2017

Merry Christmas from the family.

Extra Credit Music That Doesn’t Suck

• “Christmas in Prison,” John Prine.

• “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis,” Tom Waits.

• “Christmas in Washington,” Steve Earle.

• “St. Stephen Day Murders,” Elvis Costello and The Chieftains.

• “The Rebel Jesus,” Jackson Browne.

• “Blue Christmas,” Porky Pig.

• “Walkin’ Round in Women’s Underwear,” Bob Rivers.

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Posted in Holidays, Music that doesn't suck | 4 Comments »

The eatin’ of the green

December 24, 2017

We kicked off Christmas Eve morn with coffee, a fruit cup and the traditional guacamuffin, which like uisce beatha, bruised knuckles and the grudge is a Ó Grádaigh family breakfast staple.

This festive red and green guacamuffin goes great with those Christmas Eve morning tequila shots you sneak between lectures from Uncle Buster, the BLM pensioner on Social Security and Medicare who serves as the family Paul Revere re: the evils of the all-pervasive feddle gummint.

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Posted in Cooking, Holidays, Humor | 13 Comments »

No turkey, but a trot

November 24, 2017

Black Friday me arse. Here in the Duke City we’re expecting blue skies, a high near 70, and no bloody shopping.

Another Thanksgiving done and dusted. A thousand thank-yous to everyone who continues to pop round to the rumormongery, if only to see whether I’ve croaked and left them a slightly used bicycle or two or three.

Posole verde on the fire.

We kept it light this year. Neither family nor friends were in attendance (we phoned Herself the Elder, my sister, and our former Bibleburg tenant Judy) and thus the kitchen drudgery was nothing out of the ordinary.

I cooked a simple posole verde based on a recipe by Rodrigo Bueno, Herself whipped up a raspberry cobbler, and that was that. No leftover turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy and whatnot for snacking purposes, but the post-feast cleanup was greatly expedited.

Before sitting down to eat we went out for a short and leisurely run, neither of us having legged it around and about for a while. It was a gorgeous November day, with temps in the 60s and nothing but blue sky overhead.

Indeed, it was so pleasant we gave the cats a good airing, too, and they spent the rest of the day snoozing in their respective towers by a window.

Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), keeps an eye peeled for Rooski ratfuckers.

Ordinarily we watch “Home for the Holidays” on Thanksgiving, but this year we opted for a few episodes from season two of “Baskets,” a weird little series starring Zach Galifianakis. It’s not for everyone — especially now, since disgraced weirdo Louis C.K. is one of the co-creators and producers — but it’s definitely … different.

Elsewhere, there’s nothing different about the way special counsel Robert Mueller is pressing his inquiry into the Rooski ratfucking of the 2016 elections.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla favors a sunny spot underneath the yard art.

The Old Wise Heads speculate that Mike Flynn has rolled over and begun chirping canarylike arias, which is generally what happens when the laws have you by the short and curlies and wish to grab hold of someone a little higher up the criminal chain of command.

It’s probably a tad early to give thanks. But may we please have a few indictments neatly wrapped and under the tree by Christmas, Santa baby?

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Posted in Cooking, Family, Friends, Holidays, Running | 15 Comments »

A friendly gesture

November 23, 2017
Shut up, kid.

Shut up, kid.

The dump is closed on Thanksgiving. But feel free to put the garbage in comments.

 

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Posted in Holidays, Music that doesn't suck | 19 Comments »

Wide Load Wednesday

November 22, 2017

Comedy is easy. Gravity is hard.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and come Black Friday you’re gonna need to go for a long, slow, fat-burning ride to recover from the turkey flu. Sweat a little gravy. Know what I’m talkin’ about?

But your kit won’t fit anymore for some strange reason.

What to do?

Good news, Tub-o. We can’t help you for this holiday, but if you act now, you can have your official Old Guys Who Get Fat In Winter kit ready to roll by Christmas.

Just click here to take advantage of our special holiday offer* and you, some anonymous porker who happens to be wearing your XXXXL underwear, or a gravity-challenged friend, co-worker or family member, can be trundling along in style like a Clydesdale hauling a beer wagon, just in time for the New Year.

We even have a long-sleeved model now, the better for mopping grease from your chins.

• The fine print: Some restrictions apply.** One jersey per customer.*** Offer void where prohibited by law.****

* Actually, it’s not that special.

** No, they don’t.

*** Bullshit. We’ll run your credit card until it smokes. Buy as many as you can afford, and in ascending sizes, because you’re only gonna get bigger, bubbeleh. Eat, eat; like a skeleton you look.

**** Law? What law? You see any law around here lately? If we had any laws in this country we’d have a jail on every streetcorner instead of a Starbucks, and there would still be a waiting list to get in.

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Posted in Fat bastards, Holidays, Jerseys | 6 Comments »

Boo

October 31, 2017

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Posted in Holidays | 12 Comments »

Everything’s rosy

September 3, 2017

Winter may be coming, but it ain’t here yet.

We’re getting a burst of late roses here at El Rancho Pendejo. Red, pink, yellow. The works.

The four-day (!) Labor Day weekend has been a rousing success so far. Herself and I went for a short trail run on Friday. On Saturday she performed yoga while I did 90 minutes of hills on the Bianchi Zurigo. Afterward I burned a couple slabs of defunct bovine and served ’em up alongside some spinach fettuccine topped with smoked salmon and asparagus in a shallot cream sauce. Herself provided a refreshing green salad. Teevee was watched, and chocolate eaten.

Today there was more yoga and cycling (the latter on the Sam Hillborne, just rolling around eyeballing some of the top-shelf real estate over by the tram). Afterward the neighbors popped round with baskets full of homegrown goodness — tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers — that went nicely in a salad alongside the leftover moocow from yesterday, plus some mashed spuds. Also, and too, ice cream.

We are neither on fire nor under water, are unlikely to be deported, and there are no inbound missiles of which I am aware.

Is this the winning we’ve heard so much about? If not, why, then, it will have to do.

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Posted in Albuquerque, Cooking, Holidays, In the neighborhood | 11 Comments »

Memorial Day 2017

May 29, 2017

Mementos from wars fought by other men.

What a strange time to be honoring those Americans who’ve sacrificed everything — lives, fortunes, sacred honor — on the altar of freedom.

We’ve thanked them for their service by installing as commander-in-chief a creature who has sacrificed nothing. Not his life, which he still lives mostly as he pleases. Certainly not his fortune, about which we know next to nothing. And sacred honor? Puh-leeze. He has none.

Since he has no shame, we must bear it in his stead. Shame on us.

As a child I desperately wanted a uniform. It’s probably the only reason I submitted, briefly and without distinction, to a tour of duty with the Cub Scouts.

What I really craved was a uniform like my dad wore to work on Randolph AFB, that tan U.S. Air Force summer kit. But the old man gave me a stern talking-to about that, explaining that uniforms were something to be earned, not bought.

Harold Joseph O’Grady certainly earned his kit, beginning with flying Gooney Birds out of New Guinea during World War II. So did his brother, Charles Declan O’Grady, tail gunner in a B-29, also in the Pacific Theatre.

Mom’s dad served, too, in WWI, but of him we know next to nothing. Both grandfathers were long dead when we kids came around, and neither of our parents were inclined to discuss their respective early histories in any real detail. It was as though they had never existed apart from each other.

Children of war and depression, they ensured that their offspring would have an easier row to hoe. We didn’t get the best of everything, but lacked for nothing, especially when it came to education, from kindergarten to cap and gown. We didn’t get any little million-dollar loans, but neither I nor my sister had to sweat the college debt that cripples today’s youngsters trying to find their way in the world.

And a good thing it was, too, because neither of us has exactly killed it on the golden-toilet scale used to measure success and failure. Sis has spent her life helping people navigate the murky waters of our social-services system. I, as you know, was a minor cog in the fake-news machine before deciding to hang out my own shingle as an artisanal purveyor of free-range, non-GMO, sustainably sourced, gluten-free, 100 percent organic designer bullshit.

Neither of us followed in our father’s footsteps. But we’ve known men and women who served, from World War II through the apparently endless war in Afghanistan. And the least of these stands head and shoulders above the preening back-alley huckster who purports to command them between pep rallies, nest-feathering, and rounds of golf played from the cart. Stamina!

We owe these people a debt, and we keep reneging on it. In this, at least, we are well represented in the White House.

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Posted in Agitprop, Deep political thought, Holidays | 24 Comments »

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