One less cracker in the barrel

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Scott Pruitt is going back to lifting twenties out of the collection plate at First Baptist in Broken Arrow, sneaking tips off nearby tables at Cracker Barrel, and surreptitiously peeing in Tulsa’s municipal pools.

As Hunter S. Thompson once said, “Well shucks. It makes a man’s eyes damp, for sure.”

The Good Doktor was speaking of Nixon fluffer Pat Buchanan, who was whimpering publicly about the harsh treatment afforded The Boss as the hyenas of Watergate gnawed on his political carcass, and what Thompson had to say about that administration 44 years ago goes double for this one:

“By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers and fascists to run the Government, [Nixon] was able to crank almost every problem he touched into a mindbending crisis. About the only disaster he hasn’t brought down on us yet is a nuclear war with either Russia or China or both but he still has time, and the odds on his actually doing it are not all that long.

“This is the horror of American politics today — not that Richard Nixon and his fixers have been crippled, convicted, indicted, disgraced and even jailed — but that the only available alternatives are not much better; the same dim collection of burned‐out hacks who have been fouling our air with their gibberish for the last twenty years.

“How long, oh Lord, how long? And how much longer will we have to wait before some high‐powered shark with a fistful of answers will finally bring us face‐to‐face with the ugly question that is already so close to the surface in this country, that sooner or later even politicians will have to cope with it?

“Is the democracy worth all the risks and problems that necessarily go with it? Or, would we all be happier by admitting that the whole thing was a lark from the start and now that it hasn’t worked out, to hell with it.”

I’d let Pruitt run the siren all the way back to Oklahoma, if he didn’t mind that his personal vehicle was a splintery rail. Meanwhile, his replacement as EPA chief is a former coal lobbyist, because of course he is. Right again, Doc.

• Bonus Extra Credit Venom: Read HST’s obituary of Richard M. Nixon, who many of us thought — wrongly, as it turned out — was as bad as a president could get. 

 

Yankee doodling

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
Sam hasn’t been keeping the place up. Why, I remember when they used to call it “The White House.”

Uncle Sam has become that neighbor nobody likes.

Mind you, Sam has always been prickly. All over the map politically, and a stickler for the letter of the law as defined by the neighborhood association, though truth be told he’d been known to cut a few corners himself.

But he subscribed to the newspaper, walked the dog morning and evening, and kept up his property. From time to time he might have some pointed advice as to how you might improve your place, too. But Sammy meant well. Plus he was always good for a box or two of Girl Scout cookies.

Now he’s old and querulous, and if there’s a loon campaigning for something, you’ll see his sign in Sam’s yard, which is not nearly so well kept these days. Fox News is on what appears to be an endless loop, with the volume cranked to the max so he can hear it out in the garage, where he’s perpetually working on … something. The dog has likewise gone gray and mean, and stays chained up out back in what’s become more salvage yard than back yard.

And when the Girl Scouts come calling he runs them off, threatening to call the cops, or worse, especially if the kids are Brownies.

His old pals from the war don’t come around anymore. But there’s this new crowd nobody’s too keen on. Loudmouths with attitude, the sort you don’t dare turn your back on, guys who break things because it’s fun, and because nobody cares to stop them.

The neighbors all hope the family takes charge, because property values are dropping like a stone and it’s just plain bad for business. But they have their own problems and don’t seem to much care what goes on in that old white house any more. They’ve got the time to put on this big barbecue, though. It’s a national holiday or something.

Albatross!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
The Soma Double Cross in townie configuration.

Lots of bikey stuff going on around here lately. It makes a welcome distraction from the news, which as per usual is mostly bad. And likewise from the weather, which is mostly hot.

Since my Voodoo Wazoo has become a kinda-sorta 700c mountain bike, I decided to turn the Soma Double Cross into a townie for short hops hither and thither, or even long ones.

The Double Cross had been rigged as a light touring bike, with XT triple crank and eight-speed XT rear derailleur, drop bar, bar-end shifters, and aero levers (augmented with top-mounted brake levers) to operate the Paul’s Neo-Retro and Touring cantis. Now it sports an Albatross bar and Dia-Compe SS-6 brake levers from Rivendell, and of course the bar-cons stuck around for the ride.

Albatross!

At 27.2 pounds it’s nearly 5 pounds lighter than either of my Soma Saga touring bikes, so it makes for a sporty little errand boy.

The Bianchi Orso 105, up against The Wall of Science.

Meanwhile, the next bike in the Adventure Cyclist review pipeline is a Bianchi Orso with 11-speed 105 STI, hydraulic stoppers and thru-axles. Quite the technological advance from eight-speed XT with bar-cons, rim brakes and quick-releases, or so the industry would have you believe. Engineers gotta engineer, marketers gotta market. Still, I wonder when we’re going to run out of 50/34 cranks and 11-32 cassettes so a brother can get a touring drivetrain up in this bitch.

All this wrenching and riding and whatnot makes a feller hungry, so last night I whipped up a mess of chicken tacos in salsa verde with a side of Mexican rice. Anybody who thinks I make a shambles as a mechanic should see what I did to the kitchen. It was worth it, though. And now we have leftovers. Huzzah, etc.

The deer hunter

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Our new lawn-mowing service.

This little guy materialized in the back yard last evening as Herself and I were enjoying a refreshing beverage on the patio and giving the cats a good airing. Never even saw him hop The Wall.

But Bambi appeared instantly on the radar of Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Force).

His aide-de-camp, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, has always worn a harness when she goes outdoors, and as the interloper arrived she was quartered on the southeast side of the compound, tucked away in the shady remains of the irises, near a favorite scratching stump.

But El Turko was free-ranging it to the northeast, inspecting the perimeter, and he froze, watching the interloper nosh on his lawn, as he had been doing himself just a few moments earlier.

It was something of a moment. We didn’t want to extract His Excellency and risk disturbing the deer at his dinner, the pickings being slim in the foothills. But we didn’t want El Turko to choose the better part of valor, leap The Wall, and beat a strategic retreat to Placitas, either. Until this evening he had only monitored trespassing deer through the stout double-pane windows of the ultra-secure Turkenbunker.

Then abruptly the dilemma resolved itself. The deer turned his back on the Turk — which is almost always a bad idea, as we have learned through bitter and painful experience — and the old soldier charged into battle.

“Santiago!” he may have screamed, but probably not.

Bambi bolted for The Wall, but a heartbeat too late. El Turko gave him a good swat before he cleared it.

Afterward I saw to it that the field marshal had an extra helping of Feline Greenies with the usual spartan rations he permits himself in order to stay in fighting trim. The best defense is a strong offense.

R.I.P., Harlan Ellison

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
One of the many dispatches from Ellison Wonderland.

The crickets are already chirping merrily by the time I arise at 5:15.

“Won’t be long now,” they sing. “Soon the world will be in the mandibles of its rightful heirs, the insects.”

Harlan Ellison won’t be there to see that day, and write about it. The prolific and famously pissy author of speculative fiction checked out yesterday at 84.

A winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards, Ellison may be best known for “The City on the Edge of Forever,” which many call the best “Star Trek” episode ever. Gene Roddenberry and his drones took the liberty of editing the mortal shit out of his script and Ellison was very much not amused. Legal action followed, as did a settlement, and he eventually released his own version of the script as a book.

He went after and won a settlement from James Cameron, too, saying “The Terminator” nicked bits from two “Outer Limits” episodes he wrote. I always thought that franchise had roots in “I Have No Mouth, & I Must Scream,” a tale of a globe-spanning supercomputer that became self-aware, even godlike, and wiped out the human race, save for a handful of people it kept alive and immortal to torture throughout eternity for blessing it with sentience to no particular purpose.

“He could not wander, he could not wonder, he could not belong. He could merely be.”

“A Boy and his Dog” was another you might know. And there were more, many, many more.

In the foreword to “I Have No Mouth, & I Must Scream,” he called his stories “assaults,” adding: “And science fiction saved me from a life of crime. Honest.”

I hear you there, Harlan. I may not have become a Writer of Stature the way you did, but even swinging a metaphorical bat in the literary bush leagues beats banging on the jailhouse bars. Thanks for doing so much more than “merely be.”