Category: Just mumbling along

A salty Dog

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
Avast, sunrise off the port bow!

This must be what it feels like to be in the brig after a failed mutiny. Or on deck and in the grip of an obsession, like a one-legged sailor chasing a white whale.

If it’s jail, we built the cells and hired the guards, who’ve been off playing pinochle somewhere, giving the inmates the run of the joint. The whale? Raised it from a pup.

How in hell does anybody get any work done? License plates stamped, kujira sushi rolled? After burning all of my daylight monitoring yesterday’s debacle via NYT and WaPo, trying and failing to finish a job that had nothing to do with a riot goin’ on down in cellblock No. 9 or going fish-fish-, fish-fish, fish-fish-fishin’, I finally threw in the towel and devoted myself entirely to the porthole.

We watched a few minutes of PBS NewsHour during dinner. Holy hell, has that wee beastie ever lost most of its teeth and talons.

Afterward I went back to NYT, watching “live” as the national legislature reconvened for its mutt-and-crowbait show. A few of them acted like they’d gotten the message, emphasis on “acted.” Others, mmm, not so much. Shut that shit off when Lindsey Graham was called to speak. Showered, didn’t feel any cleaner, went to bed anyway.

Woke up at 3. Herself finally bit the bullet and got up when Mia stormed the bedroom 4-ish. I managed to drift back into some interesting nightmares and finally crawled out of the sack around 6.

“Is he dead yet?” I sez to her I sez.

“Nope,” she sez to me she sez.

“Impeached?”

“Nope. Just beaten.”

Ho, ho, etc. He is not beaten. They are not beaten. Hey, screw, here’s your plate! Where’s my sushi?

Just farting around

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
The Big Fella must be letting Baby Jeebus fingerpaint again.

One thing about cycling in the desert — it’s tough to reacclimate to the chilly weather that even residents of the fabulous Duke City must endure from time to time.

Checking the training log yesterday I noticed that I’d been on foot a lot lately, either hiking or jogging (yes, I’ve started that back up again, in an extremely cautious, limited, and sissified fashion).

I seem to have a lot of bikes around here for some reason, so I thought I’d grab one and go for a spin as a change of pace. But what to wear?

All my kit is about a thousand years old, but at least there’s plenty of it, so sorting through the pile burns a bit of daylight, if there is any.

Old favorites included a long-sleeved Descente jersey that dates to the Nineties, some lightweight Pearl Izumi tights that are nearly as old, and a pair of threadbare Smartwool socks. Items from this millennium included bib shorts and a short-sleeved jersey, both from Voler; long-fingered Pearl Izumi gloves; a Sugoi tuque; and my Shimano SHXM700-S G Gore-Tex clodhoppers.

It was an imperfect ensemble, as per usual. In addition to looking as though I had just rolled out of a time machine I was underdressed for downhills and overdressed for climbs.

Still, it beat the mortal nuts out of hanging around the office awaiting dispatches like the one Herself just delivered, about how the White House staff has taken to burning incense in quantity to mask the nostril-searing stench of Il Douche’s fast-food-and-fear farts.

Three weeks

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Miss Mia bags it. “Wake me when it’s over, or when it’s dinnertime, whichever comes first.”

Miss Mia Sopaipilla has the right idea here.

I was following her lead earlier this morning. Herself arose at stupid-thirty, as is her practice. I remained abed, head buried ostrichlike under the covers, hoping that if I just stayed under wraps for a while everything that annoyed me would go away.

Nope.

I got out of the sack three weeks too early. Give or take a couple months of lawyering.

Is it really three weeks until we get our next chance to roust this crime family? I’d give a healthy organ to see a “Cops”-style perp walk, with a disheveled Don Cornholio frog-marched to the paddywagon in guinea tee and cuffs. But this may prove elusive since La Hosa Nostra has spent the past three years and change packing the nation’s benches with capos, soldatos, and other reliable associates.

“It’s a fair cop, but society is to blame.”

“Right, we’ll arrest them instead.”

TGIFuhgedaboudit

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Santa may not be squeezing his fat ass down my chimney at the moment, but with a sky that blue, who cares?

Some Fridays I send no thanks to God.

The press brays about another delivery of magic beans from the Orange House. My main MacBook Pro develops a bloat I can’t doctor and must be shipped off for emergency surgery. Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster goes in for a radiator transplant. And WordPress shanghais me into its pain-in-the-ass block editor.

All this being said:

• At least I don’t have to edit any bean-delivery stories for The Daily Disappointment-Fabricator. (“Just who says ‘he tested positive,’ anyway? Same guy who’s been lying about anything and everything since he was whelped?”)

• I have a backup MacBook Pro. Not as powerful, but hey, at least it’s not swelling up like a poisoned Russian dissident.

• The Furster is 15 going on 16. Of course she’s gonna have occasional meltdowns. They’re still cheaper than a monthly payment for the car I don’t want to buy anyway.

But WordPress? Fuck those guys. This block editor eats shit out of a hipster’s thrift-store fedora. It makes me want to run away from the news, my second-best MacBook, and my credit-card statement, and go for a nice long bike ride.

See ya.

Ash hole

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 34 Comments

The iPhone camera didn’t care for the conditions, and neither did we.

With Labor Day in the rear-view mirror, we’re on the fast, winding descent to fall, the election, winter, The Fear, and the decline and fall of western civilization.

And now here’s Patrick with the weather!

We got a surprise visit from someone’s wildfire smoke last evening, probably Santa Fe’s. Though it could’ve come all the way from California or Colorado, where my sister reported from Fort Fun that clouds of noxious smoke from the Cameron Peak Fire turned day into night.

“We have also had lots of ash falling,” she added.

Here we got only smoke, which made the setting sun look like the devil’s fiery bunghole. The pic doesn’t begin to do it justice. It was as red as the business end of a plutocrat’s cigar as he’s telling you to clear out your desk and hit the bricks.

This morning the sky has an odd, flat, metallic sheen, and the Duke City is enjoying an air-quality alert, though we don’t have to cut it with a knife and chew 20 times before swallowing the way they do out to Californy. It must be tough to sell real estate when so much of it is floating around in the sky.