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.

Theme song redux

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments
A screenshot of what the new DogS(h)ite might look like.

Hear ye, hear ye: I’ve been experimenting with two newish WordPress themes on two unused blogs — Penscratch 2 on New Wheeled Order and Independent Publisher 2 on Town & Country — and I’m getting close to a verdict on which one might be best suited to serve our little coven of malcontents here.

Not knowing exactly how readers “interact” with this blog leaves me thinking I should probably focus on how it looks on a phone. I prefer working it on a laptop — and a laptop hooked to an external monitor when possible — but I am a confirmed Luddite and may be the lone exception.

With that in mind, Penscratch 2 looks cleaner to me. There’s a menu right at the top for easy navigation. In Independent Publisher 2 I seem to be restricted to parking items like search, archives, bio, and whatnot in a widget area, like a sidebar or footer. And to my amateur designer’s eye, which is deeply rooted in the Before-Time, it seems to waste a lot of space.

Penscratch 2 seems easier to work, too, even in the Block Editor (curse its name, yes). I spent some time with it yesterday and almost got to where I was feeling comfortable. Dropping a photo with caption into a post was nearly as simple as working in the Classic Editor. In the editing window a sidebar at right gave me the option of selecting a resolution, aspect ratio, and a custom width/height.

And really, that’s all I want from a new theme and editor, if I absolutely have to have them, which is coming to feel inevitable given the ongoing hiccups with the old setup. Publishing should be easy, because writing sometimes is not. Also, any changes should not blow up Ye Olde Blogge, which has muddled along for 15 years in its present incarnation.

I’ll spend some more time tinkering over the weekend, as the weather is forecast to be heavy on the suckee-suckee.

Meanwhile, if you can spare a moment, have a look at the two links up top and post any comments here (if you can). I’m starting to think I need to either embrace the Block Editor with a new theme or relocate the entire operation to Substack, Medium, or some other alternative, all of which is unknown country. Who knows what dragons might be there?