Category: Ranting and raving

Turn the page

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Drawing a blank instead of drawing a bead.

I’ve been finding it hard to write lately.

It’s not the infamous “writer’s block.” The problem is that the only thing I want to write about is all the you-know-what coming from you-know-where.

And isn’t there enough of that sort of thing available pretty much everywhere? Every day? Every second?

I find myself belatedly having some sympathy for the mouth-breathers who squealed like maladjusted brakes whenever my columns would veer off the course laid out in the race bible and careen into the real world. Which, if we’re being brutally honest here, was pretty much all the time.

“Stick to cycling!” they’d wail.

“Everything is political!” I’d bark.

Now I’m just a blogger and don’t have to meet a regular deadline or wrestle with nervous editors, penny-pinching publishers, and illiterate critics.

Too harsh? Hey, I read the letters.

“Go back to waxing your chain, Spanky,” I’d grumble. “Leave writing to the pros.”

These days I write for free, because I like it. Anyone who doesn’t like it is likewise free, to fuck off.

Still, I’m not entirely sociopathic. I have you hardcores, my small, deeply disturbed audience, to consider. And I don’t want every single brain-dump here to be of the rancid, greasy, orange variety. There are only so many different ways to say ‘BOHICA!'”

Thing is, to write about anything else feels vaguely criminal. Borderline treasonous. Anyone with a voice, however small, should be sounding off like they have a pair.

What’s a poor mad dog to do?

Well, you may imagine my delight when I stumbled across another scribbler in similar straits. Chuck Wendig is a published author — like, of actual books, an’ shit — and he has a new one due out April 29, “The Staircase in the Woods.”

I first noticed him when The New York Times included “Staircase” in a roundup of 24 new works of fiction to read. Then his name came up again over at Daring Fireball, the free-ranging blog by John Gruber, who promoted this “crackerjack essay” Wendig had written while trying to write about other stuff and promote the new book and basically just live his fucking life.

It’s titled “What It Feels Like, Right Now.” Here’s a sample:

Writing is hard right now. Releasing a book is hard. Promoting that book is, say it with me, hard. It’s not trivial but it feels trivial. Like performing a puppet show in the town square as the town burns down. It feels good to do it and you want others to feel good while reading it but you also know feeling good right now also feels somehow bad, and maybe that’s one of the most fucked up things of all. They didn’t take joy but they took the joy of feeling joy away, made it feel wrong and strange. Turned happiness into a hot stove.

Top-shelf stuff here, folks. Rage and comedy, despair and hope, the whole ball of wax. Writing as an escape and an act of resistance. Inspirational.

In fact, I liked it so much that I immediately ordered up his new book from my favorite local bookstore, Page 1 Books.

Shit, I’d have given him the $32.29 just for the essay.

Point of ordure

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Senators at work. For a change.

One thing you do not want to do on a brisk February morning is consider the rampant jackoffery taking place in the U.S. Senate while your spouse tells you how Uncle Sammy plans to hoist you by your ankles for a vigorous shakedown come April 15.

Jesus H., etc. Every one of these posturing poltroons who came into this process focused on rubbing one out while waiting to acquit Impeachy the Clown has betrayed his or her oath to the Constitution and should be run out of town via rail (not the Amtrak variety, but rather the splintery numbers without sleepers or a dining car).

Once delivered to Flyover Country the chickenshits should be issued orange jumpsuits, either too large or too small, equipped with masks crafted from the unlaundered undergarments of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson, and compelled to pick up roadside refuse, distribute vaccine, and build houses for the homeless.

You got time to doodle, read the paper, and put your feet up while doing the people’s business, you got time to pick up discarded diapers, broken bottles, and used rubbers.

How’s that for justice? The trash picking up the garbage.

More, late*

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

A little light and a lot more tunnel.

“Pandemic Deal by Congress Provides Economic Relief, for Now,” reports The New York Times.

But it’s too little, too late, and perhaps the last of Uncle Sammy’s pennies in the ol’ tin cup for a while, adds The Old Grey Hoor, in an analysis by Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley.

The injection of money comes months too late for tens of thousands of failed businesses, however, and it may not be enough to sustain unemployed workers until the labor market rebounds. Moreover, it could be the last help from Washington the economy gets anytime soon.

Call me cynical, but I think we need some brighter bulbs on this job.

*Apologies to Chris in the Morning.

Austin shitty limits

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 38 Comments

One of the nine thousand 'cross cartoons I've done since taking up the benighted activity. This one appeared in Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.
One of the nine thousand ‘cross cartoons I’ve done since taking up the benighted activity. This one appeared in Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

It’s not often that I say, “Wow, I’m glad I didn’t go to cyclo-cross nationals.” But this is one of those rare occasions.

Somehow, the promoters, USA Cycling and the Austin Parks and Recreation Department — after four days of running lesser championship and non-championship events — found themselves at odds over whether Sunday’s Big Finale was appropriate given the appallingly ‘cross-like conditions at the venue, Zilker Park.

A less-than-joyous noise apparently having been made unto the Lord by some non-Belgian whose voice carries, the marquee events were first canceled, then postponed until Monday, though a sober copy editor might raise a few pointed questions about the “Barring more rain” qualifier in the headline some USAC media type slapped atop its announcement.

I’ve been to ‘cross nats more than a time or two, and I can’t recall anything like this happening anywhere else, despite flood, freeze, snow or snafu. Course changes? Si. Cops running people away from the venue, perhaps never to return? No.

Someone has intercoursed the penguin with a vengeance here, and if I were sitting on a flat wallet in an Austin Motel 6 with a useless race number, all kitted up with no place to go but home, I’d want to know who the hell the all-hat, no-cattle sonofabitch is. If he had a brain, he’d be out playing with it, as Dan Jenkins once wrote.

Everything’s bigger in Texas, they say. I guess that goes for the fuck-ups, too. Oops.