Category: Small hat sizes

Laws a mercy!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
The renowned political analyst Mister Boo tries to sniff out the sense of it all.
The renowned political analyst Mister Boo tries to sniff out the sense of it all.

I don’t envy the folks who have to make sense of today’s politics for the rest of us.

Maybe I’m just suffering a bit of tummy upset after having sipped from this poisoned well for way too many years, but I’m really getting sick of watching our “leaders” flail and squeal like over-sugared kindergartners who aren’t getting their way right this second.

When was the last time you saw a speaker of the House invite a foreign official to call the president a deluded pussy, for his own political purposes, before that august deliberative body?

When will the Clintons — and the Bushes — learn they’re not royalty, or even poor imitations of the Kennedys, and they don’t get to hide the family skeletons in an ermine closet in the Black Tower?

When will faux-populist, cash-hoovering whores like America Rising and Correct the Record be fed into shredders, or better yet, to the IRS, instead of being treated as authoritative sources and quoted in The New York Times? Incidentally, I notice that The Times’ love for false equivalency does not extend to mentioning that the Bush administration hid its emails too. Though they did get around to mentioning Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney.

When should intent trump ambiguity? Stop preening for the cameras, bozos, and give the bill another critical read before passing it. And don’t I wish the Second Amendment had enjoyed the tender attentions of a copy editor. We would have fewer, poorer lawyers.

It’s gonna be a long haul to 2016, folks. And you already know what the roads are like. So buckle up.

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.

Erection Day

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 36 Comments

Well, here we go, headfirst down the rathole of what the GOP expects will be Christmas in November and the rest of us fear will be a hole full of grinning rats, wearing American-flag lapel pins.

It seems the Founding Fathers intended the business of running a republic to be tough sledding, given our whole setup. “That government is best which governs least” is a line often attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

But I don’t think ol’ Tom, or any of his bros, intended it to be impossible.

And yet, today, we, the inheritors of a republic we don’t seem able or willing to keep, are said to be eager not to solve the problems of self-governance, but rather to exacerbate them by turning the Senate over to a collection of bunko artists, waterheads and loons. It’s like electing a full slate of Hell’s Angels to run your local school board.

God knows that the Donks have not covered themselves in glory here. Candidates like Mark Udall in Colorado and Bruce Braley in Iowa have run inexplicably feeble campaigns, and as a consequence we seem to be on the verge of elevating Neanderpols Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst to the upper chamber of our national legislature. All hat and no cattle, and two very small hats at that.

This is in part the fault of the media, which focuses on horse race and narrative over résumé and platform. But it’s also the fault of an electorate that prefers chowing down on a steaming plate of deep-fried bullshit to actually rustling around in the national kitchen to see if there’s anything more nourishing to be had.

And we do this all the time. We elect Republicans who make a shambles of things, then elect Democrats to clean up their mess, and then elect Republicans again because the Democrats aren’t cleaning up the Republicans’ mess fast enough. It’s like watching an arson victim chase the firefighters off at gunpoint and then invite the firebug inside for a Molotov cocktail.

I voted, like always, but I won’t pretend to be happy about it. The folks at the county clerk’s office were friendly and helpful, and they said turnout was surprisingly good for a midterm, and I felt like I was using the last few squirts from an old can of Krylon to scrawl my name on a collapsed bridge on an abandoned road.

 

Bloody hell

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Sure, it's a little blurry. So was I.
Sure, it’s a little blurry. So was I.

This is either my impression of Ebola sweeping the nation or a quick iPhone shot through the windshield while zooming past Santa Fe on the latest 12-hour U-turn from Duke City to Bibleburg and back.

The maple in the front yard has commenced the annual leaf dump.
The maple in the front yard has commenced the annual leaf dump.

The Old Home Place® still stands, and I had a chance to chat with several of our former neighbors while trying to see how much stuff I could cram into a Subaru Forester without actually causing its rims to bottom out on the driveway.

This took my mind off what blithering eejits we’ve become over this Ebola business. Seems you don’t actually have to have the disease to shit yourself over it.

Tell you what, though. I get sick in Texas, I’d rather see a barber than a Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital sawbones.

Creative class warfare

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
The Turk' enjoyed some backyard time while I cleaned a bike in honor of the summer solstice.
The Turk’ enjoyed some backyard time while I cleaned a bike in honor of the summer solstice.

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Just ask the Turk’, who enjoyed a little outside time in the Mad Dog Media Botanical Gardens, a.k.a. “Weedpatch,” as I washed a bike in honor of the solstice.

Shortly thereafter it began raining off and on, with thunder for flavor, and the feline outings, bicycle riding and Old North End Garage Sale took back seats to working and earning.

Speaking of which, I can see I’ve been going about the latter activities all wrong. Clarity is so 15 minutes ago. If a guy could only learn to deploy with a straight face semantically null phrases such as “further leverage,” “cultural and creative assets,” “place of choice,” “launching new ideas” and “preserving our rich cultural heritage,” why, People of Money would write us fat checks for doing absolutely nothing beyond talking authoritatively and incomprehensibly out of our asses.

Toward that end I’m pleased to announce the formation of the Caramillo Street Collective for Creative Obfuscation, whose sole purpose it shall be to talk shit for money. I know, that sounds an awful lot like what I already do, but trust me, this is a radical departure from business as usual at Chez Dog. It’s a means of further leveraging my cultural and creative assets from my place of choice to launch new ideas that preserve my rich cultural heritage.

Somebody owes me $20K now.

• Speaking of talking shit: Here’s Timothy Noah on the ethics of dog-crap disposal.