Buckle up!

May 22, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

The Memorial Day Shopping Fiesta and Family Barbecue Getaway (Nothing to See Here, Move Along, Move Along) kicks off today with the murders most foul of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” and CBS News Radio, along with any remaining illusions that Americans live in a functioning democracy.

There is no truth to the rumor that the new national anthem for our next 250 years — or perhaps 250 days? Hours? — will be the Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” reimagined by Black Sabbath. Or so we may hope, anyway.

One thing is certain: That cheery little ditty, along with an unauthorized Kid Rock cover of the Eagles’ song “The Last Resort,” will be in heavy rotation down in the Adolf & Eva Memorial Ballroom & Führerbunker. The lyric “Some rich men came and raped the land / nobody caught ’em” will be a huge laugh line for everyone save the slaves serving up the Big Macs and Diet Cokes.

Meanwhile, some good news: M-Day weekend gas prices are at a four-year high! But that won’t keep 39 million of us from cranking up the Family Yacht and burning a few tanks’ worth to spend time eating bad food poorly prepared and swilling tins of thin industrial lager with people we really don’t like all that much.

The Soma Double Cross takes five in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.

Last I looked go-juice was between $4.50 and $5 here in The Duck! City, which didn’t make AAA’s list of the top-10 Memorial Day getaways (the podium: Orlando, FL, Seattle, WA, and New York).

No worries here, bruh. I got my holiday shopping done early yesterday, before the ravening hordes could descend upon the grocery and strip the shelves bare like a cloud of fat betatted locusts. And today I ain’t driving nowhere, nohow, though I do expect to get out on a bike at some point. Yesterday was stellar in the Elena Gallegos Open Space; I saw only a few other trail users as I rumbled along on the old Soma Double Cross, and most seemed to be enjoying the wide-open space as much as I was.

Meanwhile, Republicans will be traveling home after shitting the bed in Congress. Here’s hoping their constituents have a few words with them about the horrible smell.

Rocket, man

April 2, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

Off we go, into the wild blue yonder. … Photo courtesy NASA/Bill Ingalls

It was nice to take a break from the Dingaling Bros-Barnum & Beelzebozo Circus yesterday to watch NASA pitching a high hard one at the moon.

When my sis and I were sprouts we often got to catch NASA’s act. The old man was a big fan of the space program (three of the seven Mercury astronauts were Air Force flyboys like him). So I remember the Mercury and Gemini programs from our time at Randolph AFB at San Antone. And of course Apollo, which took off after we’d transferred to Bibleburg, with the first crewed flight in 1968.

The old man collected autographed pix of the astronauts, and I built models of the craft they flew, even got into model rocketry for a time. Also, and too, “Star Trek,” because of course “Star Trek.”

Apollo 11, the first time a human set foot on the moon, was the crowning achievement. Nothing NASA did afterward thrilled me in the same way, possibly because I was too busy being a space cowboy with Major Tom.

Too much science fiction, I suppose. No lunar colony, no base on Mars, no interstellar travel … did my old B-burg bro’ Robert A. Heinlein live in vain? Here it is 2026 and we’re still stuck down here with the eejits, murdering each other and crowing about doing a hot lap around the moon, samey same as in 1968, when we got the famous photo “Earthrise,” from Apollo 8’s William Anders.

Ah, well. I still like to watch. And dream.

Fuelishness 2: $3.89 for all my friends!

March 14, 2026March 14, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Everyone’s on the same page along Tramway Boulevard.

Way back in the Glory Days of Monday — remember that fabulous Monday? — a happy Duck! City motorist could gas up for $3.39 or $3.59 per gallon, depending on his/her choice of station.

On Saturday … not so much.

The going rate for a gallon of go-juice on Tramway today is $3.89, from Lomas to San Bernardino. Affordability is on the march, and soon the American public will be legging it around and about, too.

Just wait until Addled Hitler sinks Kharg Island, a small coral island off Iran’s coast that according to The Associated Press is “the primary terminal through which nearly all of Iran’s oil exports pass.” The Guardian has a nifty explainer, too.

Petras Katinas, an energy researcher at the Royal United Services Institute who calls Kharg “the main node” of the Iranian economy, said that if Iran were to lose control of the island, it would be difficult for the country to function, even though the island isn’t a military or nuclear target.

“It doesn’t matter which regime is in power — new or old,” Katinas said.

Oh, good. This is like blowing up a 7-Eleven and replacing it with a Circle K, only the Circle K has empty shelves, fuel pumps that don’t work, no employees, and an angry mob forming in the cratered parking lot with weapons in various calibers and configurations, craving a word with management.

Send Whiskey Pete Kegsbreath out to restore order. He can show them his tats. They can show him their rat-a-tat-tats.

Fuelishness

March 10, 2026March 10, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 34 Comments

Gas prices on March 9 along Tramway Boulevard between Lomas and San Bernardino.

Monday’s chores were medium-heavy and I didn’t get a chance to ride until late afternoon.

It was going to have to be a short one, and I was thinking I should just go for a run instead.

But it was a gorgeous day — 77°! — and the forecast for today was looking a little less favorable. So I kitted up, grabbed the Rivendell Sam Hillborne, and set off for a brief inspection tour of gas prices at four stations along Tramway.

As you know, “the roaring economy is roaring like never before,” and though I’ve seen no signs of this at the grocery or anywhere else, The Pestilence says it is so and thus I must be mistaken. Wouldn’t be the first time.

I rarely drive, gassing up the ol’ rice rocket about once every three months or so. And lately I’ve quit collecting receipts because the pumps’ printers are usually on the fritz and damme if I’m stumbling into the kiosk to stand in line with the proles waiting to pay for their Slim Jims, malt-liquor 40s, and coffin nails, whatever they haven’t already shoplifted.

But I’m pretty sure that the last time I filled up — before we decided to bomb Iran into democracy — the price per gallon for regular was $2.83. And yesterday it was as you see above.

Winning? Your mileage may vary, as the fella says.

This may become a regular feature here at Ye Olde Dogge House. Feel free to chime in with the gas prices in your neck of “the roaring economy.” In the meantime, I have a year’s worth of grocery receipts to examine. I suspect that if there is any roaring to be heard as a consequence, it will be coming from me.

• Addendum: The Associated Press has a national roundup. Whoo, check them L.A. prices! I love L.A.!

Schooled

August 14, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 43 Comments

In which local news coverage fails to pass the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

This morning I have read three stories trumpeting $6.9 million in federal aid to help Albuquerque Public Schools acquire 20 electric school buses and related infrastructure — in the Albuquerque Journal, City Desk ABQ, and at KUNM — and not one of them tells me where APS will be getting its e-buses.

One would think that after the Albuquerque Rapid Transit debacle — in which e-buses from BYD began falling apart like big-box bicycles, and the understudy, New Flyer, suddenly faced a fraud complaint over charges that it failed to hold up its end of a wage-and-benefits deal — our local newsdawgs might want to sniff out something other than a PR flack’s farts. Especially since, as far as I know, diesel, hybrids, and compressed natural gas remain the modus operandi for the bulk of the city fleet.

This will apply to the APS fleet, too — once all the e-buses are buzzing along The Duck! City streets, they will represent about 10 percent of rolling stock.

So, after two cups of strong black coffee, two slices of toast, and much bad language Your Humble Narrator surfed hither and thither along the Infobahn before finally zooming in on a bus-dashboard photo in the City Desk ABQ story, where I spotted an IC logo, which, hey presto — belongs to IC Bus, which claims to be “the market leader in school bus manufacturing,” though I’ve never heard of it. But Wikipedia has.

Drilling down through the IC Bus website in the faint hope of finding out where these rigs come from I find the following: “We build them right, right here at home. “IC buses are made in Tulsa, Oklahoma, using quality materials, and are tested to rigorous safety and efficiency standards.”

Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Go Furthur, ladies and gents; go Furthur.