Up the old Wazoo

January 11, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Anyone watch the Debate to Determine the First Loser last night?

Of course you didn’t. Because you already know that life, like the GOP pestilential campaign, is nasty, brutish, and short.

I haven’t read any of the coverage and don’t intend to because see previous graf.

In other news, Chris Christie finally conceded that he’s not enough of an asshole to out-trump You Know Who, but just enough of one to hot-mic’ his rivals for the roses in what has been a one-horse’s-ass race since the starter’s pistol fired. All the other entrants are basically carousel ponies, going up and down, and around in circles, and winding up right back where they started, a reminder that money can’t buy everything.

Buy the ticket, take the ride, as Hunter S. Thompson has taught us. Better yet, get someone else to buy your ticket. That way you don’t wind up a few hundred million in the red and sitting atop a suitcase on the curb in front of what used to be your home.

Elsewhere, one of You Know Who’s judges decided he didn’t want to hear “Mein Kampf” as filtered through a damp XXXL set of gold-lamé Depends in YKW’s civil-fraud trial and thus we are spared “a closing argument” that would have made the Delta House charter hearing in “Animal House” sound like “Inherit the Wind.”

Finally, here in The Duck! City the weather is fixing to take a turn for the worse, so yesterday I decided to slip out for a short ride on the Tramway bike path.

While motoring around on errands I had noticed that while the roads were still covered in red salt and sand, the bike path was clean as a whistle, so I opted for a quick spin to the County Line BBQ and back, just to keep the muscle memory from toppling over into dementia.

Today is looking more like a run type of situation, as the wizards are calling for plummeting temps, gusty winds, and plenty of the old suckee-suckee. Cycling was cold enough yesterday; no point in adding to whatever wind chill Itztlacoliuhqui has queued up. Coals to Newcastle, that is.

Happily, I’m not running for anything. Not even Christie’s people are dim enough to chuck good money down my little pasatiempo.

Impunity

January 9, 2024January 11, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

“No paparazzi. Don’t make me call SEAL Team 6 on you.”

It’s good to know that the president can order SEAL Team 6 to swing by El Rancho Pendejo to pop a few caps in my ass and nobody can prosecute him over it, not even for littering.

I’d sort of suspected that this was the case. But it’s nice to have it confirmed.

Fuck. Me. Running. This D. John Shyster mouthpiece sounds like a real piece of work. Wikipedia says that in addition to the B.A. in theology from Oxford, the M.A. in philosophy from Notre Dame, and the J.D. from Harvard, our man has a B.S. in electrical engineering from Duke.

I guess this means that as Grand Inquisitor in the Second Coming he’ll be in charge of affixing the electrodes to everyone’s testicles. He’s getting a crash course in how to handle nuts right now.

The Benedictine monks from Saint Louis Abbey who provided his secondary-school education must be so proud. Laus Tibi Domine, y’all.

Runday

January 7, 2024January 7, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, they say.

But when life gives you snow — what then? Make snowcones? Snowballs? Snowpersons?

Nah. Just go for a run.

I thought I was underdressed yesterday when I headed out for 5K on the trails. Lately I’ve been wearing Darn Tough wool socks, some toasty old Head tights and this long-sleeved Gore cycling jersey over an ancient Patagonia Capilene base layer because it has pockets for the phone and any bits I might feel compelled to remove or add, like the Smartwool gloves or Sugoi tuque, as conditions dictate.

But I wasn’t taking anything off yesterday. I only felt overdressed at the outset because I had the wind to my back. Once I turned around into it at the Menaul trailhead I tugged the tuque down over my ears and the Gore’s zipper up over my Adam’s apple. The wind caused my right eye to tear up behind the Rudy Project shades, making me seem to be half crying, like I wasn’t really all that worked up about whatever was bothering me.

All in all, a good day for a run, though. Not many people out and those that were seemed to feel that we were all members of some open-air private club for the genially insane.

The trails were pretty crunchy; a bit of mud where the sun had shone, icy in the shade. But I managed to not fall down and/or roll an ankle, so, winning, etc. ’Ray for me.

This morning I’m getting a loaf of bread started while I try to talk myself into a bike ride. But I think it’s gonna be another run. We’re talking 33°, feels like 25°, wind from the south at 10-15 mph, and if there’s any blue in the sky I’m having trouble making it out.

Then again, tomorrow looks worse. Maybe a short ride on a fendered bike? Thank Itztlacoliuhqui we have one more meal’s worth of green chile stew waiting patiently in the fridge. Also, there is a sack of pintos that needs cooking, and it will be a frosty day in The Bad Place when I don’t have the ingredients for some variety of south-of-the-border rice, either rojo or verde.

Now that I think of it, if I just had some shredded chicken and some corn tortillas, I could make enchiladas.

Shit, I better get outside pronto. I can feel myself dollaring up like something a fella might use in a stew.

On (and off) the job

January 6, 2024January 6, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Never tease the Snow Gods. They will take a frosty dump on you from a considerable height.

True, it wasn’t much of a dump; just a few heavy, wet inches. Still, during round one on Thursday the roads got so slick that Herself refused to take me back down to Reincarnation to collect the Fearsome Furster after its semiannual pulse check. And even I could see the wisdom in not tackling the trip on two wheels, especially after I nearly faceplanted on an icy spot while shoveling our ski jump of a driveway.

Round two overnight was strictly a broomer, but the icy bits remained, and I checked my footing as I swept this morning.

“I break a hip and she’ll put me down for sure,” I mumbled to myself. “She’s a sensible woman, albeit a bit ruthless, won’t let the Medical-Industrial Complex suck the nest egg dry rehabbing an ill-tempered ould villain who’s months away from the brain fleas even if he gets back to limping around the property, acting out all the parts in whatever noxious play he’s producing in that scabby, hairless head. Hire some 19-year-old stud-muffin to handle the shoveling and other personal services. …”

Speaking of jobs of work, I see Joe reared up on his hind legs and talked some smack, so I guess he wants to keep the job after all. Christ only knows why. He has to have enough tucked away to sweep Jill off to a white sandy beach somewhere, let the SS boyos fetch the umbrella drinks and fajitas, take the weepy calls from Hunter in gaol. No, no newspapers, thanks all the same. And keep that TV turned off.

Meanwhile, Wayne LaPerrier, that fizzy little firearms fancier, is stepping down from the NRA to spend more time with his lawyers, guns, and money, because the rest of that wonderful Warren Zevon lyric.

And I guess Doug Lamborn finally got tired of being the King of El Paso County. Surely some worthy Democrat can finally snatch that House seat from the cold, cruel clutches of the GOPee hee hee hee haw haw haw haw as fuckin’ if.

The Duck! City may have frozen over but Hell hasn’t. I just checked The Weather Channel.

A ‘new’ year

January 4, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

January’s getting all, well, January on us. New year, same old song.

It’s been chilly, but not so much so that a fella can’t ride his bike for 90 minutes with three or four layers of 30-year-old cycling kit, adding and removing same as conditions indicate while awaiting the fabled Snowpocalypse, which by noon Thursday was as you see.

Betimes we are reminded that rich people, politicians, and rich politicians can be insufferable, twisted, lying, featherbedding assholes. This is not an annual or even seasonal event.

Meanwhile, just to keep things interesting, evildoers found a back door to our credit card while Herself was in an personal-electronics-free secure area and I was out on the bike, oblivious to my my own digital alerts as I removed and added layers of this and that while rolling around to no particular purpose beyond taking pix of the Sandias.

So, once I had been made aware of the breach in our fiscal defenses, I had to race home, doublecheck my receipts, mumble several filthy words, block the attempted piracy and croak that card over the phone, go get two new cards from a local branch, and then go back to get two even newer ones because the Top Secret Your Eyes Only Three-Digit Security Code was buggered on the first batch.

Now I get to work my way down the long list of bills set to autopay in order that we do not suddenly find ourselves freezing to death in the dark with no Innertubes and The Blog up on blocks.

It should go without saying that today was the day I had to drop Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster at Reincarnation for its semiannual pulse check. I did not ride a bike home from the shop and will not be riding one back there to pick up the wee beastie.

Thirty-three, feels like 25°? No thank you, please. I’ve seen the way Burqueños drive under warm and sunny skies. There aren’t enough layers in my winter drawer and none of them are Kevlar.