Huevos del Rancho Pendejo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
This egg cooker is seven years younger than I am.
And unlike me, it still works.

With the Supreme Court slamming the Wayback Machine into overdrive, hellbent for the good ol’ Dred Scott days, it seemed appropriate to fiddle with some obsolete technology here at El Rancho Pendejo.

So yesterday I gave my G4 AGP Graphics “Sawtooth” Power Mac (1999) a brand-new LG monitor. The Mac has a DVI-I port, the monitor has an HDMI port, I had a DVI-D-to-HDMI cable, and somehow it all works, smoove like butta; go figure.

Afterward I broke out the Bloo Wazoo (1980s-vintage 7-speed, single-ring 105) for an enjoyable hour of trail riding.

And today we test-drove a vintage Sunbeam automatic egg cooker (1961) that Herself unearthed at an estate sale. We were a little light on water the first time around but the second go was spot on.

When that cooker was brand-spankin’-new, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a 28-year-old research assistant with the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, having been rejected for a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter on the basis of her gender.

I wonder how she feels about seeing that rear-view mirror turn into a windshield. Probably feels like boiling somebody’s huevos, is my guess.

Sailing over the Sandias

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
It was a warmish, slightly humid day, which must be fine for flying.
I was running through here earlier in the day and never thought to look up. Mostly I look down, for tarantulas, buzzworms and drunken Republicans.

This afternoon I cranked up the Vespa for a short runaround, just to keep the battery topped off, and as I putt-putted toward the Menaul trailhead I noticed orange windsocks fluttering in the parking lot.

Looking up, I saw a hang glider cutting didoes over the foothills, so I pulled over and snapped a couple pix with the old Canon S110.

Looks like fun, doesn’t it? But so does riding a cyclocross bike on Sandia singletrack, until you have that unexpected get-off.

There are lots of pointy bits down here on Planet Albuquerque, and as luck would have it I found one while running through this very area this morning.

A terrorist shrub stabbed me in the left shoulder blade with a broken limb as I lumbered through a rocky patch on Trail 365, my gaze focused on the water-scoured trail, which is studded with toe-grabbers, ankle-twisters and face-planters.

Maybe I would have been safer aloft. We’ll never know. I don’t even get big air on the bike.

iHump

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
To drain the swamp, one must become the swamp. Or something like that.

Just think: If Lil’ Donny Trump had gone into RoboHoes® instead of real estate, he might not have needed all his daddy’s cash plus an atomic shit-ton of fraud, tax dodges and Christ knows what all to crank up his little used-car-salesman-does-Vegas act.

A stable of Trump Humps™ might have saved him a few porn-star payoffs and a couple divorce settlements, too. Make Junior mop up afterward. That’s money in the bank right there.

O, Canada

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

Houston, we have a problem: Robot brothels.

From our You Can’t Make This Shit Up Department comes this sordid tale of e-hoes (iHoes?) in a town that’s up to its tits in the old-school flesh-and-blood models.

At the root of the problem is Kinky S Dolls, a Canadian outfit that claims to be the first AI sex-doll outfit to offer test drives. Seems our horny neighbor to the north wants to bend Houston over for its initial thrust into the U.S. market.

Hold your whoreses, say local Christians, coppers and politicos.

“This is not the kind of business I would like to see in Houston, and certainly this is not the kind of business the city is seeking to attract,” says Mayor Sylvester Turner.

And the not-for-profit group Elijah Rising has begun a “Keep Robot Brothels Out of Houston” online petition “that as of Monday had more than 12,600 signatures.” according to The Guardian.

But this is Texas, goddamnit, and at least one columnist says the goldurned gummint has no bi’ness telling a fella what to do with his tallywhacker and his android love muffin (the pearl-necklace metaphor seems particularly apt in this instance).

Anyway, just think of the jobs! No, not that kind of job, the other sort, which come to think about it is not that different from the kind you’re thinking of, especially if you’re the one who has to clean up the rent-a-robot between clients. It’s enough to give a fella the blues.

Hit it, Steve:

And they say Texas weather’s always changin’
And one thing change’ll bring is somethin’ new
And Houston really ain’t that bad a town
So you hang around with the Fort Worth blues