Flag on the play

May 23, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

Lady Liberty? Naw, just another headless dummy.

Anybody else feel as though they should tuck Old Glory away and fly the Jolly Roger this Memorial Day weekend?

Whenever our fellow Americans get their bib-’alls in a bunch and saddle us with some featherbedding fascist who’s only passing through to rob the savings and loan, poke anything with a pulse, and then burn the whole town down to its foundations, why, I think about how refreshing it would be to rock the hammer and sickle, skull and crossbones, or an upside-down stars and stripes on national holidays.

Someone up the road a ways is doing the latter, perhaps in response to a neighbor who did likewise during the previous administration. A quiet little tit for tat. Haven’t heard any raised voices or gunfire yet, anyway.

I don’t know who I’d be trying to impress with any kind of alternative flag display, though. El Rancho Pendejo sits at the bottom of a cul-de-sac and is seen mostly by the people who live here, the mailman, various tradespersons, and the drivers of a steady stream of delivery vans, though that torrent has become more of a trickle as the economy struggles with a distinct kink in its hose.

It all seems mostly performative, anyway. Like the mouth-breathers flying Trump flags from porch and pickup. Lets you know whom to visit at 2 in the morning come The Revolution, to be sure. But they’re starting to look like an endangered species in any event. Fingers crossed.

Back when we were new to the Greater Patty Jewett Yacht & Gun Club Neighborhood in Bibleburg, our next-door neighbor Marv, a veteran, explained that he flew the flag to make sure that “those guys” (his words) didn’t think they were the only ones entitled to do so.

Maybe that’s the example to follow. Memorial Day isn’t about “those guys.” If it were, we’d all be flying pirate flags for sure.

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.

Sink o’ de mayo

May 6, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Yesterday being Cinco de Mayo I made the usual magic in the kitchen — guacamole and Lazy Gringo Posole.

This is not exactly a forced march through The New York Times Cooking section. You th’ow the ingredients for the first into a bowl and mash ’em up, and you th’ow the ingredients for the second into a pot and simmer ’em up.

One more day on the counter and this avocado would’ve been a goner.

Shit, a Republican could do it, if someone kept an eye on him to make sure he didn’t stick his dingus into the grub or try to bomb it onto the table. You know how those guys cook.

Soups and stews were among the first dishes I learned how to cook, and when the sloth has got me with a downhill pull I will fall back on them at the drop of a chef’s toque and drop the fucker myself.

The posole takes two hours to cook and about no time at all to prep. I toss three cloves of garlic into a small food processor for a quick, coarse chop. Next I add four or five dried red chile pods, seeded, and a large yellow onion, chopped into chunks the processor can swallow. Zoom, another round of push-button chopping. Toss the results into a 6-quart pot.

Drain and rinse a 25-ounce can of white hominy and add that to the pot. You can do the whole dried-hominy thing if you like, but I told you I was lazy. Add a pound and a half of pork or boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch bits, two teaspoons of Mexican oregano and one of ground cumin, salt to taste, and 6-7 cups of water. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, and go watch the hummingbirds for a couple of hours, returning to the pot now and then to give ’er a stir.

The guac’ is even easier. To a bowl add one large avocado, a light drizzle of fresh lime juice, a couple-three teaspoons of finely chopped tomato (optional), a smidge of minced white onion if you like it (Herself does not), and salt to taste. Mash with fork, leaving it a little chunky just ’cause. Serve with corn chips.

You want some nice warm flour tortillas for the posole, along with some class of crunchy garnishes — minced jalapeños, chopped radishes, green onions — and a scattering of cilantro. Watch the BBC’s “Lord of the Flies” on Netflix as you dine and be glad you’re not a castaway kid trying to get that pig in the pot you don’t have.

Lights out

January 2, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

My impression of what an MRI of Pestilence Piggy’s noggin might reveal.

We pulled the plug(s) on the 2025-26 holiday season after breakfast this morning.

Herself boxed up all the small stuff — Bicycling Santa, Fat Cowboy Santa, Cat Santa, etc. — and then we disassembled and bagged the fake Christmas tree before dragging the unwieldy sonofabitch out to its corner of the garage, where the bicycles jeer at it.

“Ha ha, ha haaah, ha, you only get out once a year!”

Then I set about pulling down all the lights out front. I got a little carried away this year, adding a strand here and a strand there, until PNM sent us a thank-you card for using more power than the Coronado Center.

As a consequence, dismantling my creation took longer than I had expected, and by the time I started dragging all the bits and pieces back into the house the clouds were right behind me and splish, splash, my bike ride got rained out.

And yes, those are skulls you see in the pile there. Leftovers from Halloween that I decided to leave up for a while.

Far as I’m concerned, it’s still Halloween. It ain’t over until the last ghoul’s been staked and baked. And the White House is still possessed by devils.

Great minds

December 30, 2025December 30, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Rooting around the Innertubes for some New Year’s recipes I was congratulating myself on picking a couple of winners, both from The New York Times Cooking section, which by itself is worth the price of a subscription.

One was a simple Hoppin’ John recipe from Bill Neal of Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, N.C., as adapted by Craig Claiborne in 1985. The other was a jalapeño cheddar cornbread from Melissa Clark, the franchise player on my pro cooking squad.

But when I crowed about this to Herself I found she’d beaten me to the punch. She’d already found her own recipe and acquired the ingredients for it, too.

Good thing I shot off my big bazoo before heading for the grocery. We’d have been eating Hoppin’ John and cornbread from New Year’s right through St. Patrick’s Day.

Meanwhile, I had to quickly re-establish my primacy as tenzo of this zendo. Facing an economy of scarcity — a lack of fresh red grapes, which I dice up for the morning oatmeal — I displayed my resourcefulness in the kitchen, or “skillful means,” as defined by the late poet-gourmand and Zen student Jim Harrison, by locating a wrinkled honeycrisp apple in the crisper and chopping that up instead. In your face! as the sage Dogen has taught us.

Jimbo hated oatmeal. But he’s dead and didn’t have to eat any of it.