Awaiting fulfillment

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
“All right, group, it’s time to meditate on the Pure White Light of Stupidity.” — Firesign Theatre, “W.C. Fields Forever.”

The email read: ” Hi Patrick, the status of your order has changed to Awaiting fulfillment.“

Well. Join the club. Cult. Whatevs.

I wasn’t waiting for the electrician or someone like him. Just waiting on delivery of a product I’d ordered online because it was not to be found locally.

An earlier online transaction had gone walkabout, wandering from Abilene to Albuquerque only to pull a U and mosey right on back to Texas, where it reversed course yet again and returned to Albuquerque. Not to me, mind you. Just somewhere here in town. Me, I was passing the time watching bots, banks, and Budget rent-a-vans with Oklahoma plates perform “The Dance of Late-Stage Capitalism.”

In Chicago they have been awaiting a delivery of another sort altogether. National Guardspersons from Texas. “Be All That You Can Be,” the ads used to say. If this is all you can be, try harder. Fulfillment is elusive. I mean, I wanted to be a rich and famous political cartoonist and just look how that turned out.

Job fairs like a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement extravaganza in Texas seem popular among a certain subset of job-seekers. More so than, oh, say, working in America’s agricultural industry, replacing the people the ICEholes are dragging off to Christ only knows where.

“I’m looking for a career, not a job,” says a 25-year-old would-be masked avenger from San Antone, a contract worker in the solar-energy industry, one cross around his neck and two more in his ears.

Ho ho. A “career” in the very government being stripped for salable parts like a stolen Honda Civic in a chop shop. A fine place to be awaiting fulfillment. And ICE couldn’t care less if you’re a former sergeant at arms for an outlaw motorcycle club, or just look like one. Say, are those Iron Crosses in your ears? And is that a “Blut und Boden” tat? You got a signing bonus coming, son!

You’re gonna need those fat stacks Big Gummint is promising you, Bubba. Have you checked the price of groceries lately with the workforce gone walkabout? If you were an humble farmworker, just trying to feed America’s families and your own, you might could swipe a peach now and then for yourself.

Humbugs and gasbags

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
The Wizard of Ooze. (Behind the curtain: Stephen Miller, Generalfeldmarschall, Twatwaffen SS.)

You will recall that Professor Marvel, a.k.a. the Wizard of Oz, traveled by gasbag.

His very distant cousin in humbuggery, the Wizard of Ooze, likewise gets around on hot air, with an assist from other people’s money.

But I don’t expect we’ll see him at the 2025 Albuquerque International Balloon Festival, which begins today. Oh, sure, there’s a golf center at Balloon Fiesta Park, with a driving range and a six-hole pitch-and-putt course. But there is a distinct lack of screening foliage and even the most myopic of Repuglicunts could see him improving his lie.

The Great and Powerful Ooze might send the ICEholes in his stead (darn those bone spurs!). What a fine addition to the spectacle that would be — fats with tats in masks and battle-rattle snatching up brown people and stuffing them into locked baskets beneath unmarked black balloons, to be spirited away to Kansas or someplace even worse, flanked by escorts of flying monkeys.

But I expect those boyos are busy too, lumbering after nekkid bike riders in Stumptown or the more easily caught deep-dish pizza in Chicago.

Eat up, fellas! And don’t worry about the legs on the black olives. Ramón says they’re free-range. Organic.

‘Vengeance is mine,” sayeth The Lard

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Cucurbita clamantis in deserto.

The ever-vengeful Pumpkinhead has croaked $135 million worth of energy projects in the Land of Enchantment, part of his Punishment Tour of the Blue States.

A spokescreature for the Department of Energy said it had decided these projects did not “adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”

As one might expect, Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat, sees things differently.

“Let me be clear: President Trump is using his own shutdown as a tool for political retribution — targeting energy projects that create good-paying jobs and help lower costs for families. The president is taking jobs away from hardworking New Mexicans and jacking up costs for New Mexico families.”

The New Mexican‘s story wanders off to describe a few other effects of the federal-government shutdown on our fair state, from thousands of furloughs to unpaid salaries to parks left unattended and vulnerable to vandalism.

Well, the rest of the country has been left unattended and vulnerable to vandalism since Jan. 20. Why should the parks be any different?

Yippie!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Remember the Yippies? Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, et al.?

The wildmen who lit up the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago may have a descendant in the City of the Big Shoulders — a cyclist who gave the old razzle-dazzle to La Migra and seems to have gotten away scot free. (A tip of the Mad Dog Red Zinger cap goes out to Digby and Tom Sullivan.)

I emailed Grant Peterson about getting him a sponsorship through Rivendell Bicycle Works — a Charlie Gallop would be just the thing for Charlie Hustle there — but no deal so far.

Now if we can just get this dude to run a pig for president. No, not that pig. Some honorable swine, like Pigasus the Immortal.

Fear and Loathing in Woody Creek

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
“Now it’s the same old song / but with a different meaning since you’ve been gone. …”

From our You Have Got to be Fucking Shitting Me Department:

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is conducting a case review into Hunter S. Thompson’s death, more than 20 years after the fabled Gonzo journalist died in 2005 in his Woody Creek home.

The review was launched following a request from Thompson’s widow, Anita, and is being conducted to “provide an independent perspective” on the 2005 investigation, a CBI spokesperson said Tuesday. 

An “independent perspective,” hey? The Good Doktor had that and then some, for sure. Maybe some other poor fool in Pitkin County finally saw those goddamn bats.