Food for thought

November 22, 2011November 22, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

1, 2, 3, 4. ... — Whose peppers? OUR peppers!

There may be an upside to working five days a week, in addition to the obvious (a heftier paycheck): I spend more time reading cycling news and less time reading real news.

That’s got to be good for the blood pressure.

For example, today I got up at 7, grabbed a cup of Joe, assumed the position before the iMac and began the process of rerouting the contents of my in-box toward the sprawling server farm in Spaminacanistan that hosts the VeloNews.com website. This took the better part of quite some time but upon reflection seems very little like working for a living when compared to covering the interminable GOP “debates.”

The day’s chores included rewriting a press release; editing, augmenting and posting a few Agence France Presse wire-service stories; uploading a couple tech pieces; editing and posting a half-dozen bits from staffers and contributors; finding art to illustrate all of this; changing the marquee pic; and putting the finishing touches on a weekly e-mail newsletter The Company sends out.

I also managed to communicate electronically with distant colleagues in San Diego, Boulder, Laguna Hills, Brussels and Leon, Spain, without once using the word “fuck,” which may be a first.

So I didn’t get around to noticing that our friends at Fox News had decreed pepper spray to be “a food product, essentially,” until pretty late in the day, as I was self-administering a mild sedative that the French supply in liquid form without a prescription.

Pepper spray. A “food product.”

Well, shit. Don’t tell her momma, but it appears that I stealth-sprayed Herself last night. Slipped four dried red New Mexican chile pods into the posole I whipped up for dinner.

She never knew what hit her, the little commie.

Forward, into the past

November 20, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

It’s been 20 years since I had the traditional five-day, 40-hours-per-week job, and as those of you still manacled to same at wrists and ankles might expect I don’t miss it.

I quit for a reason. More than one, actually. Walking out of The New Mexican for the final time felt like taking one of those endless beer leaks after a long ride in an old truck on a bumpy road. Total relief.

O'Grady at The New Mexican — I don't recall which job I held at The New Mexican when this mugshot was taken — I went from copy editor to assistant sports editor to assistant feature editor to feature editor in less time than it takes to say, "Why the hell am I still working here?"

To be sure, there are (or were) perks — health insurance, 401(k), two days a week off, sick leave, paid vacation and The Company buys your gear and puts a roof over your workaday head. But otherwise it pretty much sucks. I know, because during most of my 15 years as a newspaperman I was keeping a journal — you know, sort of an analog blog that nobody else gets to read.

So, having hard evidence that doing journalism eight hours a day, five days a week is like volunteering to get a daily pepper-spraying from Lt. John Pike, why in hell would I agree to go back to it? Especially considering that this time around, I don’t even get the perks because I’m an independent contractor and hellbent on remaining one?

Larry’s wife knows the answer. As for me, I’ll just note that when VeloNews.com lost both senior editor Charles Pelkey (involuntary retirement) and web editor Steve Frothingham (fled like a rat out of an aqueduct back to a former employer, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News), there was nobody left to ladle sludge out of the old VeloBarrel and onto the readers’ titanium-and-carbon-fiber plates save Your Humble Narrator (and Lennard Zinn’s daughter Emily, who recently clambered aboard as a part-timer).

So when The Company came a-callin’, I picked up the phone, even though we have Caller ID.

Call it equal parts stupidity (“Well, shit, someone has to do it,” a knee-jerk reaction common to journalists) and avidity (“There’s a pink slip out there somewhere with my name on it and I’d better start stockpiling fiat currency if only to save money on toilet paper.”)

All this is the long way around to telling you that if you see anything outrageously defective on VeloNews.com from Saturday morning to Wednesday afternoon during the next month or so, while The Company shops for iEditor 4.0, you’ll know whom to blame.

And if the bloggery gets a little thin around here, well — you’ll know whom to blame for that, too.

Charles Pelkey has some ‘splainin’ to do

November 18, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

A beautiful friendship — "There are many exit visas sold in this café. ...

My friend and colleague Charles Pelkey has a couple reasons to celebrate today.

First, he’s over the hump as far as his chemotherapy treatments go — just nine rounds left.

Second, the former VeloNewser — who got his cancer diagnosis and a pink slip on the same day — is taking his popular “Explainer” column to Red Kite Prayer, an online project by another friend and colleague, my dopplegänger Patrick Brady (you have no idea how many Patrick Bradys and O’Gradys there are in the journalism biz).

In welcoming Charles aboard, Patrick called his decision in part “a protest against MBAs who focus on the bottom line above all other considerations.” But he added: “The greater truth here is that I love his work and I believe by bringing him into our fold I increase the value of this blog to both you our readers and our advertisers.”

Truer words, etc. Where Charles goes, eyeballs will follow. Congrats to both Charles and Patrick. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Let them eat scenery (or bullshit)

November 16, 2011November 17, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Once again satire runs a very poor second to reality: Bibleburg recently pissed away $111,000 to come up with a new tagline — “Live It Up!” — along with a logo that would look right at home on a bottle of something or other.

Never mind that drunkards living it up in the Tejon Street saloon district, and then beating the shit out of/knifing/shooting each other in the streets after last call, are hardly the stuff of a solid Chamber of Commerce campaign in a town shunned by venture capitalists, where unemployment was pegged at 8.6 percent in September, slightly above the statewide average.

The new tagline is reminiscent of a similar campaign in Richard Russo’s “Nobody’s Fool,” led by a dimwitted huckster of a bank president who has the brainstorm of hanging a street banner that reads “Things Are Looking ↑ in Bath,” equating its brilliance with the fabled “I ♥ NY” campaign.

The citizenry and merchants of Bath “were not fetched by this argument,” wrote Russo. “They were waiting for something tangible. …”

As are the citizenry and merchants of Bibleburg, no doubt. Given our reputation for religious intolerance and right-wing idiocy, perhaps “Live It Down!” might have been closer to the mark.

Or how about this? “We’re Jobless, Broke and Hungry, and We Can’t Eat Scenery.” Or bullshit, either, for that matter.

Dear Mayor Bloomberg: Occupy Hell

November 15, 2011November 15, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Comrade Buddy strikes a Socialist Realism pose while defending Occupy Caramillo Street against The Man.

The 21st century with its instant access to evil tidings can be hard on a news junkie. Real-time updates about the billionaire Mayor of Wall Street sending cops out to slug city councilmen and jug reporters whenever they’re not otherwise occupied fixing tickets or kicking the shit out of the citizenry are guaranteed to raise the blood pressure and trigger the deadly head-desk effect (thud, ow, thud, ow, thud, ow).

Occupy Wall Street’s muddled message doesn’t resonate with everyone (though OWS does poll surprisingly well). But even those who dislike the movement should agree that the government has no business manhandling the media as they struggle to figure out and explain to the curious folks Occupying their couches just what class of something is happening here (what it is ain’t exactly clear).

Since when do U.S. cops get to arrest journalists, ignore court orders and in general behave like SA brownshirts? Who thinks the militarized police attacks on protests in NYC, Oakland and Chapel Hills were smart strategically, tactically or financially? Since when does repression quell expression?

Jesus. I finally had to leave the office to Occupy Palmer Park for an hour, me and the Voodoo Nakisi. Neither of us got beat up, arrested or even had our First Amendment rights violated.