Stop the presses (or better yet, sell ’em)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

The equity-group vampires running Freedumb Communications, owner of the Gazette here in scenic cosmopolitan Bibleburg, are said to be entertaining offers to buy its newspapers and TV stations.

“Who gives a shit?” you may inquire, and it’s not an unreasonable question. I worked there briefly in the Seventies and ran away like a Tea Bagger from a meaningful deed. Plus we canceled our subscription quite some time ago, reasoning that it was not in our community’s best interest to keep feeding the retarded, right-wing Rottweiler shitting all over the Gazette‘s Opinion pages.

Still, a daily paper’s sale is almost always bad news, especially for the people who work there, and believe it or not, there are owners both meaner and more inept than the Freedumb libertards.

Take Gannett (please). Gannett is one of the unindicted co-conspirators behind the MacPaperization of the American daily. Thanks to this soulless information-homogenization device — the nation’s biggest publisher in terms of circulation — it’s become impossible to tell one town’s paper from another.

There are rare exceptions; The New Mexican in Santa Fe may be one such, with its recent attempts to focus on local content instead of the redistribution of canned, flavorless generic bullshit. (The New Mexican also kicked Gannett’s fat ass when its 1975 sale to the chain went sideways and returned to local control in 1980.) If you’re not cursed with a Gannett paper in your hometown, as is my sister in Fort Collins, you can learn more than you care to know about the outfit at the Gannett Blog.

Then there’s MediaNews, a nut-cutting outfit that has presided over the miniaturization of The Denver Post, a once-proud regional publication. Like Gannett, MediaNews thins the newsroom herd, sharing staffers among its papers the way dopers pass a bong. And the Post is already sharing content with the Gazette, as you can see here.

It would be in character for MediaNews to snap up first the Gazette, then The Pueblo Chieftain, a privately held typo distributor that should be rechristened Bob Rawlings’ Water Law Newsletter. Slash the staffs to a position or two below bare minimum and share content, ad sales and printing facilities up and down the Front Strange like a truck-stop pimp turning out a couple of new girls.

Who knows? The readers might not even notice. They’ve become accustomed to having their low expectations met, after all. Just don’t mess with the horoscope, the funny pages and the TV listings.

Wide-awake drunk

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Remember the good old days, when a guy who wanted to achieve the glorious state of “wide-awake drunk” had to horn an eight-ball of the dumb dust and drink a liter of Stoli? Expensive, illegal, yet oh so much fun.

Like, wow. Like, bow wow, man.
Like, wow. Like, bow wow, man.

Of course, that was when men were still men instead of women, only with testicles and more fashion sense. Popping some orange sunshine, drinking a case of beer and driving downtown to try to tip over a parked boxcar on Larimer Street was our idea of a relaxing Saturday evening with the fellas.

And then America underwent wussification. The old Denver warehouse district became LoDo, a hangout for art fruits, sushi-nibblers and wine-sippers. The Ell-Ess-Dizzy was supplanted by Ecstasy, immortalized by P.J. O’Rourke as “St. Joseph’s Baby Acid.”

And the nose whiskey/gullet whiskey cocktail? It went mainstream in a lamestream fashion with the debut of caffeinated booze-bombs like Four Loko, a pisspot of 12 percent alcohol, 156mg of caffeine and Christ knows what else that sounds like canned dumb-ass to me.

Thank God the FDA and the FTC have the peddlers of this weenie juice by their immature nutsacks with a downhill pull. Maybe the light-hitters who guzzle this swill will grow a hairy pair and sample a manly concoction like windowpane and Jack Daniels,  crystal meth and Schlitz Malt liquor or cocaine and whatever anybody else is buying because we spent all our money on the blow, dude. Really. Seriously.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make myself an Irish coffee.

Drummers on the roof

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment
Mia and the roofers
"What's all this then?" asks Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

Herself has been on a tear of late. Do not be deceived by her diminutive stature — like the tiny Chihuahua, she is full of energy, determination and occasionally bad noise and/or the occasional nip.

With an eye toward continuing her ruthless stranglehold on debt, she got our home loan refinanced from a 30-year fixed to a 15-year fixed, with a local lender, at an interest rate that is so staggeringly low that I am embarrassed to mention it here. We plan to use the money we save on interest to buy Santa Fe.

Then she tapped into several preposterously socialistic federal and state wealth-redistribution schemes and ordered up a new roof plus a massive injection of fresh insulation to keep the cats warm and dry during the brutal Colorado winter (high of 64 expected today). The solar collector came down yesterday, and today a platoon of Spanish-speakers occupies the high ground; shingles are flying everywhere like T-shaped Frisbees.

These dudes have little in common with free-lance rumormongers as regards work ethic. They were on the roof before I’d had my first cup of coffee, the crew boss advising, “It’s gonna get noisy.” Claro que si. Happily, I’m between deadlines. It sounds like Ringo’s drum solo from “The End” ad infinitum up there.

The cats are not amused. Even Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who like Herself is compact yet fearless, views this alarum with alarm.

Walking that walk

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones we learn that those deficit-cutting, spending-slashing, earmarks-killing Tea Bagger types aren’t quite up to snuff when it comes to acting instead of merely acting out.

Big-mouthed, small-minded “rebels” like Michele Bachmann, Steve King and Lynn Westmoreland have all turned down seats on the House Appropriations Committee, which is where the fiscal rubber is going to be meeting a very rough road come the next Congress.

Yet rather than put their mouths where our money is, they prefer to sit on the fence, where they can continue to screech like retarded crows without consequence. Imagine my surprise.

Meanwhile, what has to be one of my favorite stories of the year comes from Steve Benen at Political Animal. Seems newly elected far-right Maryland congressman Andy Harris — an anesthesiologist who railed against taxpayer-subsidized health care to get elected — wants his taxpayer-subsidized health care right fucking now, and with a public option, thank you very much.

When Harris and his fellow congressional newcomers were told that their health coverage would take effect on Feb. 1, Harris suggested that’s not soon enough and asked if he could buy insurance from the government to cover the gap.

“This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told Politico.

Well, maybe an anesthesiologist gets health care from day one, I don’t know. I can tell you for sure than free-lance cycling journalists get jack shit, but at least it starts immediately.

Steve adds:

Harris wants to know “what he would do without 28 days of health care”? I don’t know, Andy, what have tens of millions of Americans, including millions of children, done without access to quality health care for years? Why are you entitled to government-subsidized health care, but they’re not? What will those families do after you repeal the Affordable Care Act? Wait for tort reform to magically cover everyone?

It’s not class warfare we need to fear. It’s no-class warfare, and this numbnuts is out there in the trenches, pretending to lead.

Mmm, beer

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Ivywild School
Ah, remember those glorious fall school days, when Teach' would pour you a nice pint of porter before getting down to the Three Rs. ...

Here’s something you don’t see every day: The fine folks at Bristol Brewing and the Blue Star want to turn a shuttered school into a brew house, bakery and community center.

I got wind of this a while ago and my only complaint is that this project isn’t happening in my neighborhood. We got schools out the wazoo around here — surely we can afford to shut at least one of them down, make a happenin’ hangout out of it. One is an easy two-block stagger along a bike path from Chez Dog.

God knows what passes for education in this country these days lacks a certain value. We might as well get drunk and enjoy the decline and fall.

Meanwhile, early returns indicate that this WordPress blog is at least acceptable to the literati (which is to say that while it remains largely content-free, at least it will load on both Macs and Windoze boxes). More as it develops. Any Linux weenies out there? Leave your thoughts in comments, please.