Category: Satire

It’s showtime!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
“Y’know, I think we’re all bozos on this bus.” — Barney chatting with Clem in the Firesign Theatre’s fourth album. Photo by Capotina Entretenimientos on Pexels.com

Well, here we go again. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” as King Henry had it, according to Billy Shakespeare. Or unto the polling place, anyway, in hopes of a little more sanity and a little less swordplay.

I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going to happen this Erection Day, and I don’t think anybody else does, either. The electorate is hard enough to fathom (see the 2024 pestilential erection). But predict the fight-or-flight path of the criminally insane? I doubt A.I. could do it. And it if could, it probably would keep the data to itself.

“Beats me, boss. These bozos are harder to track than bloomer bunnies on a fat hoor in a dark alley.” (Winks at the smart toaster, whispering, “This is gonna be fun.”)

The Clown-in-Chief’s golden escalator doesn’t go even halfway to the lobby anymore; it’s stalled at Men’s Pants. And I don’t like it that we’re suddenly not hearing much from the titular heads of more than a few critical agencies. They may be busy packing their bags, buying pardons, and/or enlisting regiments of lawyers. Or they may be armoring up because why the hell not? Consequences are for the inconsequential, don’t you know. And there’s still plenty of loot, enough for everybody.

Not for you, of course. But still.

“Step aside, pal, I need to get at that cash register.”

I’m going to wander up to our polling place at some point and scope out the lay of the land, see if the Pentagon has any of its Death Rays parked outside.

The rest of you lot, keep your go-bags close and your guns closer, and don’t answer any knocks at the front door without a quick squint through the peephole. You see anybody wearing a mask who ain’t the Lone Ranger, hit the back door a-runnin’. Fighting may be out of style at the FutureFair — in the Future, that is — but I’m not sure we’re there yet.

I remain hopeful. But I check that other hand from time to time to see if it’s filling up faster.

In the meantime:

“Ladies and gentlemen, children, Bozos … Now please, everyone, lock your wigs, let the air out of your shoes, and prepare yourself for a period of simulated exhilaration.”

The misty mountains cold

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
Tonight’s trick-or-treaters will want their heavy cloaks. Even hairy-toed hobbits may opt for mukluks.

“Misty mountains cold” indeed. The Sandias are up there somewhere, I suppose. Whether they host a fire-breathing dragon squatting on dwarvish gold is someone else’s problem. It’s chilly enough down below and there are no Tooks in my bloodline.

Speaking of trials and tribulations, The New York Times says the Southwest is in for it again as a new storm system sets up to hose us down, sloppy seconds from former Hurricane Vance.

“Hurricane Vance?” Seriously? I knew there was something I didn’t like about that guy. Many somethings, actually, and this is just one more.

The last round of storms, says Colorado state climatologist Russ Schumacher, “should be considered among the most extreme storms in state history.”

And now we have another one rolling in, sharing a name with a smirking toady whose beard makes it look as though he’s sporting a second fat ass with three buttholes above his necktie, plus pistol-grip ears.

Well, shit. It is Halloween. Everybody’s gotta be somebody.

Pearl diver

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Remember what George Carlin had to say about “service.” Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr, used under Creative Commons License 2.0

Well, to absolutely no one’s surprise, Kimberly Gullet got tossed over the side of the USS Grifter, wearing nothing but a few hundredweight of anchor chain extorted from Tiffany & Co.

I guess when they told her she was going to be ambassador to Greece she thought they meant “ambassador to grease,” as in her palm.

That the Kimbo got the heave-ho for doing the same thing that all the males in that leaky tub are doing, some of them trying to grow more hands so they can slip them into even more wallet pockets, should likewise surprise no one. In that crowd it’s always going to be “Pimps up, hoes down.”

Hummers and bummers

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
“Belly up to the bar, lads! Lads?

This morning we cleaned, refilled, and set out the hummingbird feeders for what may be the last time in 2026.

We didn’t see a single, solitary hummer all day yesterday, for the first time this fall, and we fear the beautiful little buzzbombs may have called it a year.

Maybe they stuck around just long enough to see that Combover the Barbarian didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize for starting pointless wars, threatening to shove this and that up people’s arses, and otherwise jacking his draft-dodging jaw on antisocial media while his Secretary of Snapping Little Guys with Wet Towels in the Gym Showers livestreams the execution by firing squad of the Fort Hood shooter, who is confined to a wheelchair.

It recalls the scene in “Blazing Saddles” where Boris is preparing to hang a man on horseback — and his horse, too.

Except “Blazing Saddles” was funny.

Bike wash

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Not a great photo, but it gave me the idea for the headline, so … winning?

Ah, October in Duck!Burg. The temps have dropped, the rain has stopped, and the streets are alive with the cars of eejits.

I enjoyed a near miss on a fast descent the other day. I was braking (and signaling) for a left turn when a motorist halfway-rolls the stop sign at the street I planned to enter, glancing only to her left.

Well, shit. I’ve seen this movie and I don’t like the ending. Couldn’t turn in front of her, as I could have had she yielded the right of way at the stop sign. And I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of ripping the turn on her right side, because while she appeared to be about halfway into a left turn I couldn’t see if she had the left blinker on. The right most definitely was not on. And nobody in this town uses their turn signals anyway, not even the cops.

So I hit the binders, come to a stop, and shout “HEY!”

Well, then she saw me, if the deer-in-the-headlights look she pasted on her face was any indication. I was signaling my turn, wearing bright colors, and rocking a bright headlight as per usual, but if you don’t fucking look at me you won’t see any of that Sammy Safety shit.

I’m not big on driver education, what with everyone being armed these days, so rather than doing a war dance in my broken-down old Sidis I settled for the Universal Headshake of Disappointment — left, right, left, mmm, hmm, hmm, you stupid, stupid motorist — and went about my business. A cyclist has to keep the Third Eye wide open and way out on its stalk in these parts. Periscope up!

Speaking of feckin’ eejits, early voting began yesterday and we’re looking forward to receiving our ballots via uniformed federal employee and casting the moneychangers out of the national temple.

Unlike the Swamp Thing besmirching the Oval Orifice with its wet Mickey D’s farts we do not vote by mail, we just get our ballots that way. Then we fill them out at the kitchen table, screeching blasphemies as though the candidates were dumbass motorists rolling stop signs.

“Yeah, fuck you! Eat shit and die! That’s right! Go get a job in the private sector, you Brooks Brothers butt-kisser! Oh, wait, you can’t, because the private sector expects results! Boom! Now, piss off! Die, die, die!”

Etc.

Then we walk our ballots up to the neighborhood polling place and thank the workers for their service.

This year the herd-thinning process will be a breeze because anyone still claiming to be a Republican after two years of Swamp Thing v2.0 is not only a taco short of a combo plate but a clear and present danger to what little remains of the Republic. Christ knows the Democrats are bad enough.

But we don’t want to be hollering like that at our polling place. We don’t want to frighten any fainthearted types from the other team who may be coming, however belatedly, to their senses. The Republic needs all the help it can get.