Democracy dies, yadda yadda yadda

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Slogans, like talk, are cheap.

Ho, ho. I beat the rush to the exit after The Washington Post‘s management stepped on its editorial dick by declining to endorse a candidate in the pestilential erection. I had already canceled my account based on the plummeting value of their homepage, not the cowardice of the ownership.

Not long ago the WaPo was beating The New York Times like a dusty rug when it came to good, old-fashioned, nut-cutting hard news. Now they pretty much both stink, but at least Mother Times offers some good recipes to take the vile smell out of your nostrils. Plus she still employs a friend of mine.

So I’ll try to forget that the topside of today’s homepage is spattered with shit like “25 Jump Scares That Still Make Us Jump,” “What’s It Like to Tail the Vice President?,” and “Nobody Told Me This Would Happen to My Body in My 40s.”

I’d serve up a critique of the content, if I had clicked on any of it. Alas, I moved on with great haste.

At least the NYT doesn’t start bullshitting you right up there in the flag, like the WaPo. “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” me bollocks. What management does in the darkness you can see in the balcony at any adult theater. Tidy up afterward and check the phone to see if anyone Bezos has business with has invited you to a cocktail party. No? Might as well go lay off a few columnists, if they haven’t all quit already. Only one opinion counts at the newspaper in the nation’s capital, even if it’s mostly being expressed from mansions in Miami, SoCal, or low earth orbit.

Of course, if Jesus Hitler prevails on Nov. 5, it won’t mean much to the WaPo’s owner. Bezos is a podium billionaire, runner-up on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. And when JH (No. 432) croaks any and all contracts with Blue Origin because Elon (No. 1) was the last guy in the Oval Office to kiss his ass when the deal went down, well … maybe the internment camps can double as Amazon fulfillment centers.

Hey, a dollar isn’t red or blue. It’s green, baby.

Riding the great Divide

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Shades of autumn in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.

O, the weather outside is far from frightful. And the fires are mostly prescriptive. And since we’ve no place to go … even so, let’s just hold off on the snow for a while, if you don’t mind.

Fall rides are my favorite rides. While I occasionally miss aspects of Interbike — the paydays, the feasting and roistering on various publishers’ credit cards, the simply Getting Out of Dodge — I do not long to waste another week of prime cycling weather motoring to and from Sin City in a clattering Nipponese four-banger, with long miles of trudging from casino to expo and back again through the low-hanging clouds of Marlboro exhaust and Bud Light sweat.

On Friday I was muscling the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff around the Elena Gallegos Open Space when I came up on a couple mountain bikers standing about where I saw a good-sized rattler in the grass on Tuesday. So I stopped to see what was what.

They’d seen a tarantula hairy-legging it across the trail and stopped for a peek, so I had one too. Didn’t take a pic, because I always feel like some sort of half-assed journalist — or worse, a tourist — when I’m doing that sort of thing where people can catch me at it. But it’s always educational to see one of the critters who actually belong here in the Upper Chihuahuan Desert.

Speaking of things that go bump in the desert, thanks to everyone who lent an ear (sorry, no returns) to the revival of my long-dormant Radio Free Dogpatch podcast. I have no idea what’s next — I mean, shit, do any of us 10 days away from the pestilential erection? — but as soon as I do, you’ll hear all about it. Oyez, oyez, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.

It’s not dead yet. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Just another bonehead with a podcast.

I’ve been casually pestering my friend Hal Walter, telling him he should launch a podcast to support his magnum opus recounting his adventures with son Harrison as the two navigated the postsecondary labyrinth at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville.

Whether this was a good idea is open to debate. Because it got me to thinking about my own long-neglected sonic sideline, Radio Free Dogpatch.

I have a love-hate relationship with the goddamn thing. It’s kind of like an old bike in a garage full of them. It’s been gathering dust out there, and you can’t remember what it was that you liked about it, so you pull it down from its hook, air up the tires, and take it for a spin around the block.

And holy hell, it all comes rushing back to you. Nothing works like it should. It makes funny noises. And you can’t quite remember how to make the old dog hunt. Is the braking U.S. or Euro style? Is the indexing buggered or are these friction shifters? And what in sweet holy motherfuck is all that racket?

Finally you manage to herd the beast back into its slot in the garage, mop the fear-sweat from your forehead, and limp into the house (because of course the sonofabitch bit you somewhere).

And you think: “Well, that wasn’t so bad. Needs a little work, but it’s not like I have a bunch of other stuff that needs doing. …”

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Also short on gas stations, rest areas, and cute hitchhikers. Might as well unplug the Bluetooth and surrender to the yellow fangs of the first Radio Free Dogpatch of 2024.

• Technical notes: The reboot was recorded using gear that was already available in the Infernal Hound Sound studios: An Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; my trusty Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, a soupçon of Auphonic to sand off the rough edges, music from Zapsplat, and crickets from Freesound. All the other racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.

You deserve a brick today

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
We’re all bozos on this bus. Some of us more than others.

Ronald McDonald’s criminal brother Donald doesn’t exactly inspire me to hit the drive-thru.

Not in the traditional sense, anyway.

I wonder if the folks who actually do a job of work at this location — which was closed to the public for this campaign stunt — got paid for the day.

The union that represents food service workers called this dime-store clown show “a slap in the face to the men and women who work those jobs in real life and make a poverty wage of $7.25 an hour in Pennsylvania.”

What do you suppose would’ve happened if this Mickey D’s had been closed to the public if Fatso just happened to drop by for his usual — two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish burgers, and a large chocolate milkshake? He’d have probably told his SS detail to send the grunts to Gitmo and burn the joint to the ground.

But not before he got what he came for.

Some punkins

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
It wasn’t the last leaf on the tree.

Why, hello there, October. Nice to see you could finally make it.

Yesterday we enjoyed a chilly eastern breeze, which by evening was expected to pack a bit more of a wallop — say, 30-40 mph with gusts to 55, plus rain — and with any luck at all this seasonal weather will strip our pines of their remaining brown needles.

On Thursday I filled three 39-gallon bags with downed needles from the last blustery day after a friend complained that she needed 4WD to scale our driveway with a load of product for Herself’s eBay sideline. The bags filled our trash bin to overflowing with three days before pickup. I had to pull one back out to shoehorn a sack of kitchen garbage redolent of jambalaya fixins into the sonofabitch. The raccoons will rejoice.

Not so the deer, who have eaten all the class foliage in the back yard. They’ll have to settle for silverleaf nightshade going forward or start mowing the lawn.

But yeah, rain. I can’t remember when last it rained. Mid-September, maybe? That’s the most recent mention I can find in the training log. I described it as “a short, sharp downpour” that I just beat home at the end of a 25-mile ride.

This latest blessing from heaven started coming down around bedtime last night and it hasn’t let up yet. We might see a quarter inch before the second cup of joe, which, yay, etc.

I can almost accept that it’s 45° outside, and that the sun doesn’t show its face until breakfast is a fading memory, and that I may be forced to start wearing pants in the morning.

No, not that. Not yet, goddamnit. It’s not even Halloween, f’chrissakes.