From Muscatine to muscatel

February 2, 2016February 2, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 36 Comments

It's morning in America. — It’s morning in America.

It seems Iowa Republicans would rather be poisoned than shot.

As for their Democratic counterparts, they split right down the middle between Billary of Wall Street and Groucho Sanders, The Last Marx Brother. Kindly Father Martin O’Malley won the third stool from the door at the Red Rooster Grill in Iowa Falls and decided to call it a campaign.

The editorial board at The New York Times appears to be about two martinis away from jumping out a window over the GOP clusterfuck. As for the Donks, the board opines that the contest has become one between head and heart. Guess which candidate is which body part. There will be a prize.

“With a few of the weakest candidates starting to drop out, weary voters can only hope that the campaign will further clarify itself and become more substantive in coming weeks as it moves to New Hampshire and beyond,” mutters The Times.

Ah, yes, that ol’ hopey-changey thing. Hope in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up fastest.

Laws a mercy!

March 4, 2015March 4, 2015 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

The renowned political analyst Mister Boo tries to sniff out the sense of it all.

I don’t envy the folks who have to make sense of today’s politics for the rest of us.

Maybe I’m just suffering a bit of tummy upset after having sipped from this poisoned well for way too many years, but I’m really getting sick of watching our “leaders” flail and squeal like over-sugared kindergartners who aren’t getting their way right this second.

When was the last time you saw a speaker of the House invite a foreign official to call the president a deluded pussy, for his own political purposes, before that august deliberative body?

When will the Clintons — and the Bushes — learn they’re not royalty, or even poor imitations of the Kennedys, and they don’t get to hide the family skeletons in an ermine closet in the Black Tower?

When will faux-populist, cash-hoovering whores like America Rising and Correct the Record be fed into shredders, or better yet, to the IRS, instead of being treated as authoritative sources and quoted in The New York Times? Incidentally, I notice that The Times’ love for false equivalency does not extend to mentioning that the Bush administration hid its emails too. Though they did get around to mentioning Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney.

When should intent trump ambiguity? Stop preening for the cameras, bozos, and give the bill another critical read before passing it. And don’t I wish the Second Amendment had enjoyed the tender attentions of a copy editor. We would have fewer, poorer lawyers.

It’s gonna be a long haul to 2016, folks. And you already know what the roads are like. So buckle up.

Hello, sweetheart, gimme rewrite

January 15, 2015 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

Merrill Oliver of The New York Times digs into the day’s big story: “Why the hell am I riding a bicycle in freezing temperatures, on icy, sandy roads and trails lined with cacti, at altitude, with some bald-headed asshole in Albuquerque?”

Gonna be a dental floss tycoon

December 15, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

This is an interesting story, and also a disturbing one, in part because of the questions it fails to ask (or answer) and the assertions it makes without supporting evidence.

Writes Claire Cane Miller: “In addition to making some jobs obsolete, new technologies have also long complemented people’s skills and enabled them to be more productive. … More productive workers, in turn, earn more money and produce goods and services that improve lives.”

Since when? Who among us has not been compelled to become more productive, not simply because technology made it possible, but because management insisted that there be fewer of us to produce? How many of us got fat raises to go along with the new chores? I don’t know about you, but I’m still waiting for mine.

Google co-founder Larry Page proposes a four-day workweek, “so as technology displaces jobs, more people can find employment.” Larry obviously doesn’t get out much, because there are plenty of people working short weeks already, some of them at more than one job, and from what I read there are still fewer jobs than there are people who need them.

“We’re going to enter a world in which there’s more wealth and less need to work,” brays MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson. Maybe at MIT, Erik old scout. But how about where you are, Dear Readers? Who’s going to get this additional wealth, and where’s that work we’re supposedly going to need less of? My mortgage lender would like some details regarding this New World Order, if you don’t mind. Or even if you do.

I mean, we can’t all move to Montana to be dental-floss tycoons. You priced zircon-encrusted tweezers lately? It’s day 12 of Zappadan 2014.

The next 60

March 28, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 40 Comments

The Soma Saga in its present configuration. I'm thinking about losing the rando' bars for some short-reach drops, beefing up the bar tape and fattening up the tires. — The Soma Saga in its present configuration. I’m thinking about losing the rando’ bars for some short-reach drops, beefing up the bar tape and fattening up the tires.

Thanks to all of you for the most excellent birthday wishes. No. 60 was a quiet day around Chez Dog — since Herself was road-tripping for business purposes, the party was an exclusive affair; just me, the menagerie, and all those voices in my head (happily, they don’t eat much, not even ice cream).

Today, a milestone behind me and various millstones ahead, I continued what I’m calling Ride the Neglected Bicycles Week. So far it’s seen the Voodoos Nakisi and Wazoo, the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, and the Jones all get out of the garage for some vigorous thrashing, and there are still two days left. Tomorrow’s supposed to be 60-something and mostly sunny. You can’t stop me!

When not riding, I’ve been reading about riding. “Life Is a Wheel” is Bruce Weber’s account of his second cross-country cycling trip, undertaken at age 57. I had been aware of his ride — a writer for The New York Times, Weber blogged about it for the paper — but the book had somehow slipped my mind. I saw the review, downloaded the book, and so far Weber and I have spent an enjoyable few evenings together.

Like other road books — “Travels With Charley,” “Blue Highways,” and of course, “On the Road,” “Life Is a Wheel” is giving me notions. Nothing so elaborate as a cross-country ride, mind you, certainly not in springtime. But taking a few days away, under my own steam, sounds like a wonderful departure from business as usual.