Category: Holidays

On the nickel, over there

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

I dressed up as an old bald white guy for Halloween, but nobody noticed. Too subtle, I guess.

We did get a record crowd of trick-or-treaters, which may or may not have something to do with the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that took effect today.

One toddler pirate was into some serious pillaging, plucking booty from our candy bowl with both teensy fists. An adult joked, “I hope you’re planning to share that. …” Goddamn socialists. When I was a child, we had to make our own Halloween candy and then defend it by force of arms.

With this satanic celebration safely behind us now, it’s time for the sanctified seasonal festivities, like scrambling to find nifty places to stash the poor folks where holiday shoppers won’t have to look at ’em.

A beater South Nevada motel that has housed some 70 folks is closing, apparently to reopen in 2014 as “a center for mothers undergoing substance abuse treatment,” a need for which the necessary $300,000 per annum to house an estimated 20 moms and their kids has yet to materialize.

In the meantime, the Springs Rescue Mission will operate the city’s only overnight shelter for the chronically homeless throughout the winter, providing 30 beds for men and women. That has funding through April 15, but the mission apparently has plans to use the space for “an undetermined purpose” come springtime.

I bet springtime seems a long way off to a lot of these folks. The Baboon Caucus would like to ensure that it never comes. Not for the homeless. Anyone who doesn’t own at least three houses, a bank account in the Caymans and a senator is invisible to that crowd.

Patriot games

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

The tinfoil-Stetson assclowns in my old stomping grounds of Weirdcliffe are taking a beating in the lib’rul media today over plans by the Southern Colorado Patriots Club to march with unloaded firearms in the annual Fourth of July parade.

The local paper, Jim Little’s Wet Mountain Tribune, has a piece from the firing line, as it were. Seems a ruckus ensued when the “patriots” promised that “as many as 500 marchers, bearing firearms, would be marching in the parade as a show of support for 2nd Amendment rights.”

Ho, ho. I hope they plan on busing a few of these nimrods in. The 2010 Census found only 568 persons total living in Weirdcliffe, with 4,205 in the entirety of Crusty County.

Don’t expect Obamacare to provide you with free oxygen tanks for the hike, peckerwoods. Look to the Invisible Hand of the Free Market to prop you up while you’re lugging that 8-pound AK-47 around in the summer sun at 7,888 feet.

A kick up the Oval Orifice

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

You know it’s Monday when you drop your English muffin en route to the toaster and it rolls straight into the dog’s water dish.

I blame Presidents Day, which is a bullshit holiday, like Valentine’s Day, intended to herd the feeble-minded to the nearest big-box outlet to buy shit they can’t afford and don’t need.

George Washington’s birthday? That I’ll celebrate. Lincoln’s birthday? Ditto. But there have been far too many nitwits, pud-pullers and ne’er-do-wells in the presidential pantheon for me to grant a blanket absolution, even for a single day.

There’s plenty of dead wood stacked up beneath that storied office, too. Case in point: “As budget crisis looms, Congress leaves town.” You get one day off for Presidents Day. This lot has fucked off until Feb. 25.

And to think some of them have the chutzpah to say the gummint should be run like a bidness. The stoutest union shop in the country doesn’t pay out this kind of slack. Try telling the manager at Mickey D’s you need a week off for Presidents Day and he’ll give you a kick up your Oval Orifice.

Hell, try telling him you want Presidents Day off. We wish you luck in your next endeavor.

Hello, sailor (all my lovin’)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

Carnival Cruise Lines ought to be planting some big-ass Valentine’s Day smoocheroos on the 4,200 smelly suckers who thought they were taking the Love Boat to Cozumel but found themselves aboard a barely floating honey wagon being towed to Alabama.

Alas, the waters in which these buccaneers ply their trade are full of pinstriped sharks, heavy on teeth but lacking in the lip department.

Lawyers speaking with The New York Times say the ability of passengers to sue cruise-ship operators “is sharply limited,” and the location for any court action generally fixed in some shithole (Miami) favorable to piracy. “Shiver me timbers, matey, ye must file yeer complaint on Skull Island, arr.” Plus passengers are barred from collecting for emotional distress unless they are actually flogged, keelhauled or forced at cutlass point to walk the plank.

No gambling? No drinking? No showers? Sounds like a little trip to heaven.

Herself is on a little trip to Vegas, where they have all three of the aforementioned items plus “Love,” the Cirque du Soleil tribute to making money. I would insist on a functional toilet afterward, or perhaps during. But it was a girls’ outing and I wasn’t invited for some reason, so I’ll just have to make do with my memories of the Fab Four’s debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Was it really almost a half-century ago?