Category: Religion

From soup to nuts

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Our Chinese pistache is not quite in “Last Leaf” mode, but it’s getting there.

I fight off the snow
I fight off the hail
Nothing makes me go
I’m like some vestigial tail
I’ll be here through eternity
If you want to know how long
If they cut down this tree
I’ll show up in a song

Not a lot of snow or hail to fight off in these parts lately.

Christmas brought a record high temperature — 65°, eclipsing the old mark set in 1955(!) — and it wasn’t even The Duck! City’s first record high this month.

Herself and I went out for a little pre-feast hike in the Sandia foothills with a couple hundred of our closest friends, their extended families, and their dogs. Only saw two cyclists in just under five miles, and their rigs didn’t look new to me, so, maybe not a festive holiday season for the local IBDs.

The good news is, we’re delivering the teachings of Jeebus to the Nigerians in the usual explosive fashion. So, at least the Military-Industrial Complex is ticking along nicely, if only in terms of supplying shiny objects to the news media, since it’s a little late to carpet-bomb the Epstein files.

The bad news is … well, not all that bad. I couldn’t locate any crosscut beef shanks for my beef vegetable soup, so I had to call an audible and run with another recipe that proved to be not quite as good as our favorite, which is from a “Better Homes and Gardens” cookbook with a 1981 copyright. After a week’s worth of chile-infused dishes I was striving for mild, and overachieved for a change.

However, Herself’s cornbread was superb, as was her salad, and thanks to exchanges with neighbors and colleagues we had an extensive menu of possibilities for dessert.

With the second season of “Fallout” finally available, we’d thought to revisit season one, since we’d forgotten what all the fuss was about. Alas, our Amazon Subprime Video membership is not ad-free, and the viewing experience was peppered at random with multiple sales pitches for depression meds, Range Rovers, and other shit that we don’t want, don’t need, and/or can’t afford, some of them running more than two minutes at a stretch.

Which was really a stretch. So this morning we decided to bring capitalism to its knees by signing up for the ad-free tier, then binge-watching both seasons before finally canceling the service entirely.

¡Venceremos! You’re welcome, comrades. Just crawl out through the fallout, baby.

The Dullard Lame-o

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
“Blabble gabble Obama yammer stammer landslide gibber jabber treason. …”

Gautama H. Buddha on a flying zabuton, how does someone get this fucking stupid in just one lifetime?

Best argument for reincarnation I’ve ever seen.

We are in the moist and clammy paws of the Bizarro World Buddhists, and this slobbering eejit is their Dalai Lama. His Assholiness.

Speaking of the actual DL, there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that His Holiness has declined reincarnation, saying, “If Yosemite Samsāra over there keeps coming back, I’m giving it a miss.”

In the beginning was the Word

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
“See this word here? It’s not pronounced the way you might think. Cecil B. DeMille got it right in ‘The Ten Commandments.'”

When I awakened this morning not as a fleeting puff of radioactive gas but as Your Humble Narrator, I knew it was gonna be a good day.

Jesus H., etc. The Middle East has been figuring in my nightmares since, well, forever.

When I was a smaller, humbler narrator my parents taught me to read phonetically, aloud, using whatever printed material was handy. Stumbling through a report in Time magazine one day I encountered the incomprehensible “Egypt,” and after rolling it around in the gem polisher of my mind for a spell I decided it must be pronounced “Iggy-pit.”

My parents roared. I never heard the end of it. They told it to their pals over martinis. They told it to my pals, who had to endure it stone-cold sober and punished me for it afterward. They told it to my dates, who otherwise might have become actual girlfriends, which may help explain why it took so long for me to find someone to marry.

I’ve been deeply suspicious about home-schooling ever since. Later, I would come to question faith-based titles to real estate.

Willin’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 37 Comments

Nope, not a church. It’s the chimney for the bedroom kiva fireplace.

The Lowell George song is pretty much all I know about Tucumcari. That, and that round two of The Visitation occurs today, as another smallish herd of Texicans gallops in from there to see Herself the Elder.

Their trip looks like a stroll through the daisies compared to what Herself’s sis will endure when she jets in from Maryland midweek. Holy hell. That itinerary is why I drive any distance under 3,000 miles that does not involve an ocean crossing. A UPS driver at Christmastime makes fewer stops. Plus there are fewer psychos to duct-tape to their seats en route.

Meanwhile, the news of the world remains an ongoing refutation of both Darwinism and theology. One envisions the Son having a Word with the Father while the Holy Ghost spitballs a new PR campaign:

“I got nailed up for these people? What were You thinking? I’m going to put You in a home while HG and I try to figure out how to turn this thing around.”

Good luck with that. Me, I’d think about starting over with a fresh crop of monkeys. But judging by the state of the place, maybe that’s already occurred to You.

Rosary for Mons

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

I opened the office curtains this morning and … pow!
So I dragged the Sony RX100 and the iPhone SE out to have a digital peek.

OK, with my lefty snark in the books, how about this?

The iPhone SE’s camera gave the light a slightly less mind-boggling tone.

This is what we woke up to this morning — one of the most fabulous, otherworldly skies it has been my privilege to witness.

I’m just an old Zen atheist, heretic, and equal-opportunity blasphemer, but if I were of a more religious bent, I might think that somebody with some weight up there said a rosary for Mons.

And seeing as how it’s snowing now, I’d say I’m getting mine, too.