Suiting up

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
A whitened wisteria.

Snow is good. Don’t gotta water the lawn.

Snow is bad. Gotta shovel the driveway.

Snow don’t care what we think of it. Snow gonna snow. Y’know?

There are times when I wish we lived someplace that never sees snow. Like, right now, for example. I’d rather be riding a bike today than pushing a shovel. Especially when I know it’s gonna snow some mo’.

But when you take one from Column A (“No snow, please.”) you must also take one from Column B (“Hot as balls? Fuck.”).

You can always add layers as the temperature plummets. But when it skyrockets you can remove only a few before the gendarmes take an interest.

During my short stint in Tucson I rarely rode a bike. What I did was swim — or, more precisely, lounge around at the University of Arizona pool and gaze mournfully at the coeds therein. I had 10-foot-pole marks all over my body that year. But a nice tan.

Nobody was thrilled to glimpse this pendejo at poolside sporting a Speedo, and they would be less so now, 44 years further on down the road. A hunnerd-fiddy pounds of turkey jerky wearing a coin purse? No thank you, please.

“Jesus, Terri, I can’t deal with this. Let’s move someplace where it snows.”

Walk it off, son

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
If you feel too punk to ride or run, you can always walk.

It’s gonna be one of those holiday seasons.

The minor plague working its way through the household is taking its sweet time about the project. Herself still has a cough but otherwise feels fine, while I am yet in the early stages and feel, eh, not so swell.

As problems go, this is strictly First World, which ain’t bad for a couple of gabachos who live in the Third. We know people who have real diseases and realer troubles and never seem to go all Gloomy Gus on us.

Instead of being a whiny little bitch all the time I make my little japes and go for short walks, all the while hawking and snorting and spitting and in general trying to encourage the boogers to abandon this crumbling temple of the soul and jump on someone else, like a cat-burning Nazi.

“Gee whillikers, pal, you mean you don’t feel good enough for a nice bike ride in the late fall sunshine? Shucks, it makes a man’s eyes damp, for sure. My dog just died and the wife’s right behind her. And our kid’s having gay sex in a congressional hearing room so I had to change our phone numbers and cancel the Internet. Plus we have Nazis marching around the ’hood every night shouting “Blood and soil!” But I feel ya, bruh. ’Scuse me, be right back, I need to put out the cat. One of the Nazis set her on fire.”

So, yeah. Instead of being a whiny little bitch all the time I make my little japes and go for short walks, all the while hawking and snorting and spitting and in general trying to encourage the boogers to abandon this crumbling temple of the soul and jump on someone else, like a cat-burning Nazi.

It helps, for a little while. Haven’t seen any sniffling Nazis out there yet, but I remain hopeful.

This would actually be a fine time to wander over to the Main Attraction and start swinging the old sledge around. But instead, here I am swinging something a little less impressive around, and to no particular purpose, either.

Sick leave

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
Instead of a second cup of strong black coffee I went straight to the hot black tea, with honey. Though I’m sweet enough.

The Grand Experiment with a new WordPress theme and the Block Editor (curse its name, yes) has been postponed due to a medium-heavy case of Snotlocker Surprise.

I call it that because I’m always surprised to find my snotlocker running like a broken pipe in winter.

Herself got it first, and we ran a Bug Test on her (negativo), so I’m assuming I’ve got whatever she had, only more so. I’m considerably older and treated my Temple of the Soul like a rented mule for decades, so my little adventures with Sick Headaches, the Vapors, and Snotlocker Surprise tend to be a tad more rugged than hers.

Also, dudes are weak. Or so people keep telling me. You know the ones. They said “I do” way back when, but they meant “You will.”

Anyway, since I feel like Death eating a cracker I’m fooling around over here, where I can’t make much of a mess, instead of back at the Main Event. This blog only has two posts. The other has 15 years’ worth.

One good pendejo deserves another

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
If this picture isn’t in the dictionary illustrating the word “pendejo,” well, it should be.

Good Gawd Awmighty. Another blog. Hasn’t the Internet suffered enough?

Apparently not. Because here we are.

This all came about thanks to a series of irritations at Mad Dog Media, where I usually hang my sombrero.

And before we get to them, a word about that. I don’t really wear a sombrero, because I am a gabacho who — despite running around with some San Luis Valley Chicanos for a number of years — picked up the word “pendejo” from “The Milagro Beanfield War,” which was written by another gabacho, John Nichols.

“Pendejo” was the name of Cleofes Apodaca’s dog in that book, and as Nichols wrote, translated loosely the word means “idiot” or “fool.” My old blog has a “dog” in it, and I have often been a pendejo and will be one again, here and elsewhere. Coincidence, you say? That’s just what they want you to think.

So, yeah. Here we are. Cultural appropriation, and second-hand, too. Guilty as charged, Your Honor.

But we were speaking about a series of irritations at Mad Dog Media, were we not? So let’s.

Mad Dog Media, in its blog form, dates to 2008 here on WordPress, to 2002 at Hostcentric, and even further back at a succession of Tinkertoy outfits that are no longer with us; only the Wayback Machine can find the remains, and trust me, it’s not worth the archaeology.

Being old, like its proprietor, it has developed a variety of hitches in its gitalong. And I am preparing to perform corrective surgery on them with the usual cleaver, duct tape, and ball-peen hammer in hopes of restoring the doddering old pendejo to Health and Vigor.

Should the patient fail to survive these heroic measures, I should be able to reanimate it here, because I have taken the precaution of collecting its soul and caging it on a local drive.

And if for some reason I can’t? (I am a pendejo, after all. ) Well, we’ll have this brand-new site for a pasatiempo. Bienvenidos, pendejos.