Burnin’ the bayou

April 30, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

It really must be spring. In the past couple days I’ve seen a cottontail, a snake, a red fox the size of a coyote jogging up the sidewalk across the street and a muddy rain that required me to deploy the windshield wipers before I went grocery shopping yesterday morning. Oh, yeah, and enough yellow pollen to give King Kong the sniffles.

It’s 80 degrees one minute and 30 the next, and the dandelions are proliferating faster than dingbats in the GOP. Census workers are out and about, noting the locations of armed Christian patriots to be seized and shipped off to death camps as part of President Antichrist’s scheme to remake America as a socialist Muslim paradise.

But at least the oil slicks around these parts are mostly confined to Sprawl-Mart parking lots, under beater pickups. That sucker in the Gulf of Mexico is a whole other deal. It’s a hell of a note when cleaning up a spill means setting the ocean afire. Makes that 1969 Cuyahoga River deal look like a 5-year-old farting in the bathtub.

God certainly seems to have it in for Louisiana, afflicting it with every manner of torment, from Hurricane Katrina to Gov. Bobby Jindal. Maybe He had a bad bowl of gumbo there once.

Rollin’ on the river

April 8, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Nice day. I abdicated all professional duties and rode the creekside trail south until it dead-ended at someone’s pasture, just east of the Fort Carson exit off Interstate 25. It made for a rolling, 36-mile round trip from the DogHaus. Headwind out, tailwind back. Doesn’t get any better than that.

By the way, in case I haven’t mentioned it, my Nobilette cyclo-cross bike rocks. Sucker flat disappeared under me as I was riding it today. I felt as though I’d copped a ride on Aladdin’s magic carpet.

Herself and I had a couple buddies over for snacks and wine afterward and as usual we agreed that the body politic is afflicted with boils in dire need of lancing. But none of us has health care that’s worth a shit, and we can’t afford to catch anything, so we’ll leave the doctoring to someone else.

Hey, look, a shiny object! Is that iPhone 4.0 or Steve Jobs’ wiener in my ear?

You say it’s your birthday?

March 26, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Coming soon to a post-office wall near you.

A bunch of us enjoyed a mass birthday celebration in Weirdcliffe last night. Herself, as has been recounted elsewhere, turned (ahem) 29 on the 12th. Our burro-racing buddy, Hal, hit the half-century mark yesterday. And tomorrow I will have achieved a venerable 56, like a finely aged cheddar, only smellier and less tasty.

As befits our advanced ages, we gummed down a little oatmeal, did a few shots of Geritol and called it a night around 9 (that’s a.m., not p.m.).

So here’s a tip of the Mad Dog sombrero to Peter for all the Mexican cookery, to Pueblo’s Hopscotch Bakery for the delicious cupcakes and to the Crusty County Sheriff’s Department, which graciously turned a blind eye to the drunken shenanigans in their bailiwick.

Ask not for whom the (Taco) Bell tolls

January 19, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

Glen W. Bell Jr., founder of the Taco Bell chain, has gone to The Big Tortillera in the Sky. He was 86.

According to The New York Times, Bell opened his first Taco Bell in 1962, in Downey, California, and three years later sold his first franchise. In 1978, he sold his 868 Taco Bells to PepsiCo for $125 million in stock. Today, Yum! Brands is the boss, with more than 5,600 locations and 36.8 million customers per week, gobbling up 2 billion tacos and 1 billion burritos per annum. Yum! also owns Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s, A&W and KFC, so if you get tired of eating fake Mexican food, you can have fake pizza, fake fish, fake burgers or fake chicken as an easy, greasy change of pace.

What with “the Daddy-O of SpaghettiOs,” Donald E. Goerke, shoving off last week at age 83, one might wonder whether God has had enough of people turning His plants and animals into tasteless, chemically “enhanced,” heavily processed foodlike substances. Probably not. Yum! claims to be the world’s largest restaurant company, with more than 36,000 outlets in 110 countries and territories.

One thing is certain. Bell and Goerke sure as hell didn’t make it into their 80s eating the shit they sold to the rest of us.

Apples, loaves and fishes

December 15, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

As we chat so enjoyably about $1,500 Macs and $600 image-editing software, my buddy Khal S. makes a good point in comments: “Don’t forget to save a little cash for your local food bank.”

Natural Grocers-Vitamin Cottage, the grocery I patronize most often — and not just because it sponsors a cycling team — has a nifty point-of-sale deal that supports the Care and Share food bank here in Bibleburg. At checkout you simply select the amount you’d like to add to your grocery tab so that some other hungry folks can get a little sumpin’-sumpin’ too and presto: You’ve engaged in an instant, painless act of basic humanity. What the hell, you were already buying something anyway. Couple more bucks won’t kill you.

I’ve been kicking in a few bucks every time I go grocery shopping, and we plan to write additional solstice checks to Care and Share and the Marian House soup kitchen. Can’t give it all to Apple and Adobe. Last I looked, those folks were sleeping indoors and eating regularly.