Category: Law & Disorder

‘Tedious and burdensome’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Page 1 of 85. I’m surprised the judge didn’t order these ambulance-chasers summarily hanged.

Well, “tedious and burdensome” is one way to describe The Pestilence’s latest lawsuit against The New York Times.

“Wall-to-wall bullshit” is another. Or “the ramblings of an ADHD preschool dropout ‘parented’ by an outlaw-biker uncle who makes him work without safety gear in his poorly ventilated meth lab.”

But Judge Steven D. Merryday of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida clearly is not one for hyperbole, and so he confined his observations to phrases like “tedious and burdensome,” and “florid and enervating,” noting that in alleging only two simple counts of defamation, “the complaint consumes eighty-five pages.”

“A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner,” Hizzoner wrote.

He added — without giggling, which must have been difficult, because this shit is funnier than Jimmy Kimmel on a good day — that the complaint, as written, “stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart” legal requirements that complaints must be “a short and plain statement of the claim.”

And then Merryday wrapped things up the way editors of my early attempts at journalism were known to do, by crumpling that big ol’ 85-page pile of bushwa into a wad and throwing it at the authors, with further instructions appended.

“This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner,” Merryday wrote. “The complaint is STRUCK with leave to amend within twenty-eight days. The amended complaint must not exceed forty pages, excluding only the caption, the signature, and any attachment.”

Then he dropped the mic and walked off stage.

ICE, ICE, maybe?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
’Sup, SUV?

Paranoia strikes deep, as the fella says.

Coming home from a grocery run yesterday I turned into the cul-de-sac to see a nondescript white Chevy SUV parked in front of the new neighbors’ house.

Didn’t think anything of it at first — new neighbors mean strange vehicles full of inspectors, handymen, and new neighbors.

And then, as I rolled past, three largish individuals in light-blue shirts, dark-blue trousers, and thick black vests stepped out of the vehicle and stalked across the street to the Bulgarians’ place.

I call them Bulgarians because I think that’s their nationality. Can’t quite remember. It’s a multigenerational, multilingual household, and the owners have adult children in the area who are always popping round in a variety of top-shelf vehicles bearing dogs and grandchildren and whatnot.

They’re probably the neighbors we have the least amount of contact with, mostly because they seem a self-contained unit. Describing them to a reporter after a capital-E Event of some sort you’d say something like: “They were quiet. Kept to themselves. We never had any problems with them.”

Still, with one eye on the rear view as I punched the button to raise the garage door, I was thinking what I was going to say to the three largish individuals in light-blue shirts, dark-blue trousers, and thick black vests if they suddenly stopped talking to the Bulgarians, slapped the cuffs on their wrists and the hoods over their heads, and dragged them shrieking into the white SUV.

Time to earn that democratic-socialist street cred, bruh!

So I snapped some quick pix of the SUV, ran the groceries inside, grabbed the binoculars, went back outside, jotted down the deets from the license plate — which was not easy, it being a typically sun-bleached New Mexico plate and barely readable — and just generally made myself real obvious standing there in my driveway three houses down, waiting to see whether I needed to go over there and get my ass kicked for some people I barely know.

And then the discussion ended without violence and the authorities ambled down the cul-de-sac to the next house over. It was then that I saw, stenciled on the back of one dude’s stout black vest, not “ICE,” but “PSA.”

“PSA?” I mumbled to myself. “Public Service Announcement? Prostate-Specific Antigen? Pi Sigma Alpha?”

And then it hit me. Police Service Aide. The unarmed crew that helps the Albuquerque Police Department with traffic control, writing reports on property crime, and other low-risk chores while sworn officers focus on scraping the stiffs off the streets.

And as that neighbor stepped out to speak with the PSA posse I recalled that he does have a problem with the Bulgarians, who have kept a broken-down rust-bucket with a right front flat and weeds growing through the engine compartment parked at the curb for the better part of quite some time, and whose functioning vehicles have been known to take up a fair amount of the limited parking in our little cul-de-sac, occasionally blocking his mailbox and/or making it tough to find a spot for the bins on trash-pickup day.

Well … at least he didn’t call the ICEholes on them. He is a Trumper, after all. And I’m not at Alligator Alcatraz, picking worms out of the chow I can’t eat with my jaw wired shut.

La mordida

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was less of a peace treaty and more of a détente, which is the French for “a pause while reloading.” | Photo lifted from RMPBS.

From the Feb. 2 edition of “Today in History,” by The Associated Press: “In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, officially ending the Mexican-American War.”

I guess nobody told the Dingaling Bros-Barnum & Beelzebozo Circus. Los siento mucho. Incoming!

ICE, ICE, baby

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
He’s cold as ICE. Think someday he’ll pay the price?

The ICE boyos have brought a chill to Chicago, Aurora, and even the desert Southwest as Jesus Hitler starts making good on his promise of mass deportations.

Round up the usual suspects. A little song and war dance for the TV cameras. “Dr. Phil” even got in on the act in Chicago.

Shock and awe, baby. It works, for a while. But some folks just don’t take kindly to being shoved around.

Soon even the fanboys will find the price of admission to the Dingaling Bros-Barnum & Beelzebozo Circus (“There’s One Born Every Minute!) just keeps going up, as honest immigrant workers vanish alongside the bad guys, citizens decline to take their jobs in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, food processing and service industries, and goods and services get more expensive and/or harder to find.

But never fear. We’ll be annexing Canada! And Greenland! And the Sudetenland (whoops, wrong fascists, never mind). The Circus will roll on a Road of Bones until the world is under One Big Red White and Blue Tent (handmade by skilled artisans in border internment camps)!

While you await your own personal invitation to assist the authorities with this project (and their inquiries) you might as well listen to the latest All-American Episode of — yes, yes, yes — Radio Free Dogpatch. Could be the last one. You never know who’s lending us an ear, or why.

• Technical notes: RFD favors the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a wash and brushup. The trailer theme from “Fort Apache” comes from YouTube, as do Rick’s conversations with Major Strasser and Sam in “Casablanca.” Bob and Doug McKenzie say “Good day” from SCTV’s YouTube page. The drum-heavy martial music (by Gregor Quendel) and “Out of Step” are both courtesy of Zapsplat. The Mescalero Apache tribe’s take on a member’s run-in with an ICE agent can be found here. The Guardian reports on a Navajo experience. Lawmakers from New Mexico and elsewhere view with alarm. The Associated Press covered immigration raids in Chicago. At The Atlantic Mark Leibovich had some fun visiting Greenland, soon to be our 52nd state. And at The New Republic Matt Ford shredded the pestilential ordure dropped on birthright citizenship. All the noisy, less-well-reasoned palaver comes from Your Humble Narrator.

Soaring with the pigs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Wonder Wart-Hog, president of the United States? Hey, we’ve had worse.

Gilbert Shelton saw this coming.

You may remember him as the creator of “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers,” if you ever knew his work at all (he wasn’t in the Sunday funnies section of the Muthalode Morning Mishap when you were a sprout).

I first saw Shelton’s stuff in Texas, back in the Sixties, when as an aspiring young motorhead I stumbled across his “Wonder Wart-Hog” strip in Pete Millar’s Drag Cartoons.

Even then I was a comics/superhero fiend, and dug satires of the genre, like “Captain Klutz,” which Don Martin created for Mad magazine. So naturally I loved the Hog of Steel and his alter ego, deuce reporter Philbert Desanex (a “deuce reporter” sitting at the opposite end of the pay scale from an “ace”).

Shelton wasn’t just another funny fella. He was also a student of American history and politics, and often aimed his pen at same in his work (see “Give Me Liberty: A Revised History of the American Revolution,” from 1976).

But man, he really hit his stride with “Wonder Wart-Hog and the Nurds of November.” A cartoon collection bearing that title was published in 1980, and the titular strip included the following:

  • A stony-broke, hungry, unemployed journalist (Desanex).
  • A Supreme Court that ruled the First Amendment was “a typographical error.”
  • Assassinations and a discussion of the presidential line of succession (through the secretary of the Treasury, anyway).
  • The country, having run through 13 presidents on one day, being managed as a trust by the board of directors of Gloptron, Inc., “an immense multinational cartel.”
  • A presidential primary contest, in which Desanex secures the nominations of both the Democratic and Republican parties (OK, so that may seem a little far-fetched).
  • Gloptron’s attempt to assassinate Desanex (foiled by the Hog of Steel).
  • Gloptron’s queering of the weather on Election Day, hoping to keep all the voters home. It didn’t work: Desanex wins the popular vote.
  • Gloptron’s zombies overturn the popular vote via the Electoral College and the coup is buried on page 67 of the next day’s newspaper (“Well, after all, it is Gloptron’s newspaper, Mr. Desanex,” explains an aide.
  • Desanex takes his case back to the people, calling for a constitutional convention on New Year’s Eve to rewrite that hallowed document and dispose of the Electoral College.
  • With predictable results, it being New Year’s Eve:

By the way, the splash panel is a fakeout. In the cartoon, the pig doesn’t win the presidency. Adolf Hitler does — seems he didn’t die in that bunker after all, having taken it on the lam after first getting his skull and teeth surgically removed to mislead his enemies.

And, after an extended rant against — well, pretty much everything and everyone, promising the convention “a strong, decisive leader who can bring back law and order and restore the nation’s dignity in the eyes of the world … purge the population of misfits, get our armed forces into shape and declare war on everybody who won’t toe the line!” — the new dictator of the USA orders an invasion of Mexico “on the pretext that the Mexicans had been secretly invading the United States for years.”

Any of this sounding familiar to you?

• Editor’s note: The headline comes from (of course) Hunter S. Thompson, who in “The Great Shark Hunt” rewrote that old saw, “You can’t wallow with the pigs at night and then soar with the eagles in the morning,” which came up in a half-remembered conversation at a Colorado bar in which a construction worker told a bartender why he shouldn’t have another drink.

Wrote HST:

No, I thought, that geek in Colorado had it all wrong. The real problem is how to wallow with the eagles at night and then soar with the pigs in the morning.