Tag: Jim Harrison

Boom times

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Miss Mia in the sack.

A thunderclap yesterday afternoon startled Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who was curled up in her favorite sack, enjoying her eleventy-seventh nap of the day.

I did not tell her, as did Johnny Lundgren’s dad in Jim Harrison’s “Warlock,” “That’s God barking at you for being such a miserable little pissant.”

No, I reassured her that it wasn’t God, probably, or even the work of a (much) lesser (would-be) deity — say, Felonious Punk, commanding a few of his masked ICEholes to shock-and-awe us back to wherever we came from, or didn’t, whatever.

Even if fascism were to come a-calling at El Rancho Pendejo, Miss Mia should have nothing to fear. She’s a Russian blue, and since the Punk just blew a Russian, she should be A-OK with him and his goons. Cream for all my apparatchiks!

Now, me, I’m an Irish-American Red, so who knows where I’d wind up? Where would a Adderall-snorting asshat send a sober Mick scribbler with a bicycle fetish? A Boston pub to pull pints on St. Patrick’s Day? The International Space Station, to chronicle its “retirement,” slated for 2030? Couldn’t log much saddle time up there over the next five years, but I’d get to rip one helluva descent when NASA — if it’s still around — pulls the plug.

And Herself? Conscripted into the Punk’s platoon of librarians, I expect. Condemned to catalog the pestilential archives of fuck books, Truth Social screeds, and unpaid bills.

And she wouldn’t be allowed to shush any of his minions, who never ever give their festering gobs a nanosecond’s respite from telling the FreeDummies that Making America Great Again requires chop-shopping it into a Dollar Store knockoff of Pooty-poot’s Russia.

Troops to Ukraine? Hell no! But troops to DeeCee? That’s the real global trouble spot, amirite?

The best intel I can muster tells me that the enemy is bunkered up at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Careful with the arty and airstrikes, lads, and try to avoid damage to the facility if it’s feasible — it is a National Heritage Site, but may have been desecrated beyond resurrection.

I mean, have you seen what these terrorists have done to the Rose Garden?

Brown Dogging it

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Back in the saddle again.

“I hate to get hit myself as it digs a hole you don’t quite get out of for a couple of weeks.” — Brown Dog in “The Seven-Ounce Man,” by Jim Harrison

Brown Dog, a.k.a. B.D., didn’t burn a lot of daylight worrying about politics or getting his ass kicked.

He got drawn into both from time to time, as we all do. But they didn’t leave any lasting marks on him. Not for long, anyway.

Preparing to do battle with a couple of bruisers whose women he’d been romancing B.D. mused that “it wasn’t likely to be the end of the world, just a real expensive way to pay for getting laid a few times.”

All the world cares about, his grandfather once told him, is that you get to work on time.

Well. Shit. We got boned and beat up last Tuesday. I still feel as though I’m down in that hole, but I guess it’s time to get back to work.

Sour note

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
“We should get $2 mil’ for this gig. One for the snatch, the other for this cool ransom note.”

I hope none of yis paid this tab.*

March has been heavy on various home “improvement” projects, visitations, landscape maintenance, a decline in the healthful and refreshing outdoor exercise, an abnormally spastic conga line of nightmares in the headlines, and an accelerating oscillation between exasperation and ennui that eventually led me to declare — and mind you, I’m quoting from memory, which is an unreliable source in the best of times, but it seems to me that these were more or less my words — “Fuck this shit.”

When even I find my musings unamusing, concerning perhaps, possibly even actionable, and yet the only place to run is off at the mouth, well … it’s time to batten the gob. Tick a lock. Zip it. Nobody wants to hear that shit, not even me, not even for free. “Tell it to Anne Frank,” as Jim Harrison’s titular character in “Warlock” was said to quip to those who whined about life’s difficulties.

So, yeah. An extended period of the shutting the fuck up seemed prudent. You’re welcome. We now return you to our usually scheduled blog, which is already in progress.

* Sorry, no refunds. Yrs., etc., The Kidnappers.

Stocks and bombs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

More bucks for your bang.

You know, without having to be told, that conversations like these take place.

Nevertheless, reading the actual words is something of a stunner.

Q.: “Hamas has created additional demand, we have this $106 billion request from the president. Can you give us some general color in terms of areas where you think you could see incremental acceleration in demand?”

A.: “I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.”

— from a General Dynamics third-quarter-earnings call on Oct. 25.

“Lord Death is a real big eater,” as Jim Harrison once wrote. And His shit is pure gold.