Trying to cough up some laughs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Tea time.

Whenever I skip the second cup of strong, black coffee for a tall, steaming mug of tea with honey, you may be certain that I am unwell.

Herself picked up a bug (not The Bug) about 10 days ago, one of those raspy coughers that keeps everyone in the house awake, and come Thursday I was quietly congratulating myself for having dodged it when I began to sense a disturbance in the Force during a short trail run.

By Friday it was me hacking away like a lunger with a three-pack-a-day habit, chain-smoking Luckies through the port in my windpipe. Kane didn’t make that much racket when the baby Alien did his “Heeeeeere’s Johnny!” number at dinner on the Nostromo.

I hit the couch early on and stayed there, and when that proved exhausting I went to bed, around 7:30. And I stayed there until 7:30 this morning.

The fun part about having a bad cough is trying to find a position in which you can grab a bit of shuteye between eruptions. I usually sleep on my left side, but that was right out. So was the right side.

The only position that worked for me was flat on my back, just like Kane on the galley table.

The good news is, there was no blood on the sheets this morning and no midget Aliens chasing Miss Mia Sopaipilla around the house.

The bad news is I don’t feel up to throwing out a few half-baked zingers like “Rudy the Mook should be tossed in the sneezer until he can remember his bank balance,” or “The U.S. House of Reprehensibles resembles a legitimate legislative body in the same way that a tank-town dog pound resembles the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show,” or maybe “How is it that we still care more about Matthew Perry than anybody in Gaza?”

Denuded

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Leaf me alone.

Must be December.

God left Her leaf blower on high all day yesterday and the trees got stripped faster than an Escalade with Texas tags parked overnight at a Duck! City Motel 6. Now they look like backgrounds from “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” which was just selected for the National Film Registry.

It’s beginning to look a lot like … Dec. 14.

Overnight the rain swept in, nearly a quarter inch of it, followed by the fabled “wintry mix” and then actual snow this very dark morning. Sort of a heavenly apology to the trees for pulling their bloomers down, I suppose.

In her office Herself is sipping some vile tea that recalls the scented-candle section at a Nordstrom, staffed by a retired exotic dancer who applies her eau de parfum using a power washer.

But she can drink whisky neat for breakfast if that blows her dress up, because she makes all the money around here. Herself, not the stripper. Though a stripper would too. Don’t ask how I know.

The private sector — Herself’s little corner of it, anyway — pays a damn sight better than anything I’ve got going on, especially if we’re talking about stripping. If we had to depend on the spare change Uncle Sammy drops in my tin cup or the singles drunk bachelorettes stuffed in my G-string we’d be fighting the cat for her kibble, and not just for fun, either.

Meanwhile, it’s 9:30 in the morning, but outside it looks like 9:30 at night, and if I had the sense God gave a stripper I’d start taking off clothes and … go back to bed.

Parliament O’Hoors

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
A Parliament sans Funkadelic.

In his classic examination of the U.S. government, “Parliament of Whores,” P.J. O’Rourke included a section titled “The Three Branches of Government: Money, Television and Bullshit.”

If P.J. were writing what he called his “Devil’s Civics Text” today, his three branches might be the Fed, the Supreme Court, and social media.

The Fed decides which of your dreams you won’t be able to afford as it arranges soft landings for Wall Street. The Supremes decide which ones won’t come true at any price, unless you’re one of their deep-pockets pals. And then everybody hollers about it all on social media, which seems to be one-third Nazis, one-third child molesters, and one-third people who just like to watch.

Money, television and bullshit are still very much with us, of course. P.J. is not, more’s the pity. I’m thinking we could all use a good chuckle right about now.

Error 666: Devil in details

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Did Fatso eat the upgrade? Read on. …

As anyone with access to the Innertubes and one functional eyeball can see, we have not upgraded the DogS(h)ite to a new theme and the Block Editor (curse its name, yes).

Further discussions with the WordPress elves lead me to think there’s more to this holiday package in the skull-and-crossbones wrapping than meets the eye (What’s this scrawl on the card? “Happy Solstice from The Unibummer?”) and I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy about tugging on its black ribbons until the bomb squad has given it a good going-over.

Frankly, I’d rather talk shit than fix shit, especially since Herself has had a wicked cold for a week and the onliest one of us getting any sleep around here is the cat.

So, ignore anything you see melting down in my labs (New Wheeled Order and Town & Country). This old jabber factory ain’t burned down to the foundation yet so I’m gonna go with convenience over modernity for a while.

Sunset for Kubrick

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
The sun sets on our old WordPress theme.

Thanks to everyone who tooled around the dimly lit, undermanned, and poorly maintained corners of the Innertubes to inspect and comment upon the options for a virtual urban-renewal project here at the DogS(h)ite.

I think I’ve touched all the bases, repackaged the necessary bells and whistles, and preserved all data for the Permanent Record. And thus, sometime today or tomorrow, I will probably tell the WordPress Blog-O-Mat 9000™ to knock down this old hovel and erect in its place a Shining City on a Hill.

Or maybe it’ll look more like rattle-canning a fresh coat of camo’ on the old single-wide, hoisting a new Anarchy flag, and raking up 15 years’ worth of dessicated dog turds. I tell the neighbors they’re Art, but they don’t believe me, about that or anything else.

If all goes well, you shouldn’t notice a great deal of difference. I anticipate a round or two or three of Whac-a-Mole, but the plan remains to hawk the same old hooey, just out of a new window, minus the bullet holes and duct tape.

If it all goes horribly wrong, well … let’s not think about that, shall we? You’ll probably be able to hear from me without need for a computer, browser, or Innertubes. (“Gaw dam cog sug muh fug sum bidge. …”)

But if you can’t hear the caterwauling, leave a message at the New Wheeled Order sandbox or email me at maddogmedia (at) gmail (dot) com.