Aromatherapy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
The best part of waking up, etc.

I spent the early morning self-quarantining with a medicinal cup of French Roast-Black Lightning from Aroma Coffee of Santa Fe.

No, no, I don’t have the coronavirus. Not yet; not that I know of, anyway. Just the usual attitude. Gotta beat that shit into submission before greeting the day.

I’m not what you’d call a power user of the iPhone, but today I used mine to check the news while propped up on the pillows, enjoying my coffee. Oof, bad idea. The rest of the world seems at least as dumb as I am, which is not reassuring.

For example, I thought people might stop shooting each other for a while. You know, let nature take its course. Nope. What’s next, drive-bys on the drive-up testing sites?

“Yo, I got a test for you, bitch! How fast can you run?” Pow pow pow, etc.

Year of the Plague

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 34 Comments
Everyone’s world is getting just a little bit smaller.

Has everyone settled in to The New Normal yet?

Herself had to make a supply run to Herself the Elder’s assisted-living home yesterday, but since she forgot her biohazard gear and breathing apparatus, she had to leave the goodies on the porch. The joint is on lockdown, with the drawbridge up and the moat full of gators, piranha fish, and plugged-in toasters.

She managed to snap a selfie at mom’s bedroom window, though. And of course, when you can’t get actual facetime, there’s FaceTime.

Elsewhere, the noobs are trying to figure out how to work from home. Lucky for me, I have a black belt in social distancing, which I have been practicing since 1991, when after 15 years in the Petri dish of daily journalism it was suddenly just me, my Mac SE, and a Hayes modem, in a spare bedroom.

Also, as a geezer with a broken ankle and the Socialist Insecurity due to start rolling in next month, I don’t have much to do or a pressing need to go somewhere to do it.

So I got that going for me, which is nice.

The hard part, for me and for thee, is the temptation to go all COVID-19, all the time. Don’t do it. Send a daily hate mail to the White House and then call it a day.

Watching this lame reboot of “A Day at the Races” ain’t doing it for me. There are more horses’ asses than horses in this one, and I don’t think the fat fuck playing Dr. Hackenbush is even a vet, much less an MD.

And now, today’s musical selection:

 

Happy birthday to Herself

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Herself gets a happy-birthday snuggle from Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who borrows a lock of her hair as a fright wig for her famous Agent Orange impression.

Herself just swung through the start-finish for another lap around the sun.

We’re celebrating by hosing each other down with bleach, hoarding canned goods, and watching our portfolio turn into more of a postcard.

We’re in the soup

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
This soup didn’t come out of a packet.

We were not Jewish. But whenever one of us was sick, Mom would break out the chicken soup.

Well, kinda, sorta.

It was the sort of soup a harried Midwestern Presbyterian considered suitable for ailing children, a saucepan of rehydrated Lipton chicken noodle, with a side of Premium saltines. And if I played my cards right, I could work Mom for the fake soup and a couple of comic books. Winning!

Well, here we are again. The Plague is upon us, we’re shivering under the comforter, and someone is bringing us a plastic bowl of industrial soup with some dried-up old white crackers.

Say, who is that wearing Mom’s apron? It’s … it’s … oh, my God, it’s. …

Yes, it’s another thrilling episode of Radio Free Dogpatch!

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: It’s another low-and-slow-fi episode this week. I used an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic, and skipped the Zoom H5 Handy Recorder in favor of recording directly to the MacBook Pro using Rogue Amoeba’s nifty little app Piezo. Editing was as usual, in GarageBand. You’ll recognize Babe and the gang from The Firesign Theatre (“How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All”) and the doctor from “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.” The background music is by Your Humble Narrator, assembled from bits and pieces in the iOS version of GarageBand on a 9.7-inch iPad Pro.