Riders on the storm

May 5, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Looked like the Martians were working out on Cedar Crest last night.

It was fury in the foothills most of yesterday and well into the night.

The rain started as I was driving home after dropping Herself at the Sunport. Then came the wind, a few rounds of dime-sized hail shotgunning the backyard maple (which shed leaves and one sizable dead limb) and the roses (still plenty of them left for the deer to eat), and more rain.

And finally the light show captured above.

Herself’s flight to Maine was not without drama. First Southwest couldn’t fuel her plane because of lightning. Then the fuel truck didn’t have enough go-juice to top off the tanks, so another had to be pressed into service.

By the time she got off the tarmac an hour late it was clear that making her connecting flight in Baltimore was going to be iffy. The plan had been to grab a bite to eat and chill a bit between planes, but you know what they say about plans.

So Herself touches down with just enough time to hit the bathroom, join the queue for boarding, and find her seat … after which there was another extended wait for a couple dozen passengers who had been delayed for reason(s) unknown. She could’ve had a sitdown meal, an adult beverage, and a nap, but nooooo. …

The long and the short of it? A flight that was supposed to arrive at stupid-thirty in Portland instead touched down at extra-double-stupid thirty.

And it’s raining there, too.

I stayed up way past my bedtime to provide moral support encoded in bad language. Once Herself was finally settling into her hotel room I turned out the light and … and then Thor turned it back on, as you see.

The flickering electrical display that brought me out of a fitful doze was utterly silent. No thunder at all. Thor was pulling his punches. Or maybe Mjölnir needed recharging. Odin knows I do. And Herself still faces a couple hours in a car this morning before she reaches what the airlines like to call her “final destination.”

Whenever the Thunder God gets his iHammer back up to four bars maybe he can have a couple swings at Beelzebozo. The senile old fool currently propped up as “president” of the “United States” doesn’t know what the Declaration of Independence means or what the Constitution requires of him.

Riders on the storm, indeed.

Mayday!

May 2, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

We didn’t smash the State yesterday.

Herself had just returned from a nine-day trip, so she got caught up on her trail running and weight training while I settled for smashing a few climbs on the Soma Pescadero in my best socialist-red cycling kit.

I feel some remorse over not making our local May Day march, which drew either hundreds or thousands of people, depending upon your news source.

But I’m certain there will be other opportunities to hit the streets for a cause instead of just ’cause. I mean, fascists gonna fascist, amirite? We will not lack for opportunity.

Case(s) in point:

• West Coast ports are bracing for a tariff-related dent in import volume:

The number of containers scheduled to arrive at the Port of Los Angeles is anticipated to drop more than 35 percent next week compared with the same period last year, data from the port shows. And a quarter of the ships that had been scheduled for May have canceled because of light volume, said Gene Seroka, the port’s executive director.

• This means that Beelzebozo’s recession has already begun:

This is how the recession begins. In Seattle, cargo shipments are down 60 percent. Los Angeles will be next. The recession will make its way east from Seattle and Los Angeles as trucks and freight trains carry less cargo overland.

• And businesses are already planning to share the pain with their customers as tariffs start nibbling away at their bottom lines:

More companies are starting to warn that they will have to pass on higher costs to American consumers, raising prices for products like strollers, mattresses, power tools and cast-iron cookware as President Trump’s tariffs take hold.

One thing I keep seeing in stories like these is the shock — shock! — among Beelzebozo Believers that they will be among those assuming the position as his “deals” go down.

Consider Michelle Hall, a 48-year-old secretary in Snohomish, Wash. She found shopping online with Temu “addicting and fun” — until she noticed the “import charges” piling up.

She voted for Mr. Trump in November, initially thinking his trade policies could help reduce the deficit, create manufacturing jobs and make the nation less dependent on foreign countries.

Ms. Hall said she never thought her own costs would increase, and she originally hoped that Mr. Trump would quickly bring prices down.

“I wanted to have faith,” she said. “I don’t have that faith anymore.”

See you on the barricades, Michelle. I’ll take a day off the bike if you’ll take a day off from shopping.

First 100 days, blah blah blah

April 28, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

“Wake me when it’s my turn in the litter box..”

Much chin music among the chattering classics lately re: the hackneyed “his first 100 days” bushwa.

This is the ho, and also the hum.

In his first 100 minutes he took a giant shit on us and then wiped his ass with the Constitution.

We’re just waiting for him to come out of the toilet now, is what.

Maybe the old bastard nodded off in there. Smells like he died in there. Christ, light a match, can’t ya?

Smoke ’em if you got ’em

April 21, 2025April 21, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 27 Comments

“Does that mean new pope or new SecDef?”

I see The Media have a couple new chew toys this morning — a brain-dead SecDef and a completely dead pope.

That should fill The Void for a nanosecond or two.

Now we await the various conclaves. If we see black smoke from the Pentagon, that means that SecDef Yog-Sothoth has burned his Signal passwords and has gone back to using NextDoor for all secure communications involving war plans, pub crawls, and no-strings hookups.

White smoke means that Baby Daddy Musk has sent him on ahead to set up shop on Mars.

Red smoke from the Office of the Vice President means that Hillbilly Boy has failed to convince his god that he had nothing to do with his pope’s death, even though he was one of the last people to see him alive.

Fwooosh! Straight From servicing Beelzebozo to serving Beelzebub in one seriously hot DeeCee minute. Not exactly upward mobility, is it? Sure as shit ain’t the golden escalator Beelzebozo rode down back in 2015, either. More like that elevator ride that Mickey Rourke took at the end of “Angel Heart.”

And the pope? Well … Dad was a ring-kisser, Mom was a Presbyterian, and I turned out to be neither. So I haven’t paid much attention to Holy Mother Church since 1978, when I was still a newspaperman in Bibleburg and we burned through a couple of popes in a month.

If I recall correctly, which is unlikely considering the circumstances, we had finished newspapering for the evening and had retired to Jinx’s Place for cocktails.

A late arrival burst in, as they will do, and told us the pope had just died.

“Catch up,” we replied. “That was last month.”

“That was the old guy,” our informant revealed. “This was the new guy.”

And soon we had a new new guy, to be dubbed “J2P2,” because back then newspaper people knew how to treat anyone who claimed to speak with God’s voice, whether they were in Vatican City or DeeCee.

NOAA shit?

March 7, 2025March 7, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

Maybe it’s just that NOAA has been swept away by a tsunami of unitary-executive idiocy, but the weather reports around here lately are bordering on the comical.

Sure, that photo up top looks plenty ominous, but lots of stuff does first thing in the morning, especially since Jan. 20. By 10:30 the temps were in the mid-40s, and after checking the forecast I decided to drop my plans to go for a run and instead took my old road-racing bike out for what I said would be “a short ride.”

In terms of First World Problems this was an iffy proposition. Last time out on this rig I flatted the rear tire just a mile or so from El Rancho Pendejo, and trying to lever the sonofabitch loose of its rim to swap tubes was like trying to pry a Texas Republican’s lips from Beelzebozo’s diapered ass.

I did not want to be doing this in wind and rain. Or snow. But tomorrow’s weather looked worse, so off I went.

And whaddaya know? It was glorious. Bit of a wind, but going out and up it was mostly behind me. And when I turned around to head home I was able to duck in and out of various suburban neighborhoods and mostly keep it out of my face. Stayed out for 90 minutes of hills and even felt a bit overdressed.

Also, I didn’t flat. So, bonus.

When I got home, my iPhone told me it was raining. Huh. News to me. And fake news at that.

Herself, coming back from a run, said her iPhone was telling her the same thing.

I made us some lunch, then she hit the gym, and I rolled out to the bakery and the grocery. Still not raining.

By 4 p.m., it was still sunny enough for a haircut, so Herself broke out the clippers and had at me. Near the end of that process, which is like shaving a particularly lumpy and unlovely blue-eyed coconut, we thought we heard some raindrops on the skylight.

Nope.

And now my iPhone promises it will be raining in 26 minutes.

Huh. I guess it’s true what they say. You can’t believe everything you read. Especially if it has to do with stormy weather, in The Duck! City or the Oval Office.

P.T. Barnum was right.

• Postscript: And naturally, as of 7:24 p.m., it’s snowing.