A Freudian fillup

October 11, 2026October 11, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

So the other day I was motoring around and about, running on fumes as a fella will in these dark days, when the Subaru’s low-fuel light blinked on.

Huh, I thought. You don’t say. Well, I have errands to run, I don’t believe in the Low-Fuel Fairy, and I don’t give my money to Big Oil until I have to. F’chrissakes, Herself just poured $60 of go-juice into her Honda CR-V. That oughta hold the greasy sonsabitches for a while.

A glance at the trip meter told me I’d squeezed 318 miles out of that tank, which is not bad for a 2005 Forester with more than 159K on the odometer. Bound to be a few more miles in there, I thought. So the Subie and I soldiered on.

Errands complete and homeward bound the trip meter was showing 325 miles and I reconsidered my position. No point in pushing my luck and maybe pushing this bucket of bolts back to El Rancho Pendejo, I thought. It’s all uphill from here and this old mechanical burro needs her hay.

So I pulled into the next gas station, fed my credit card to the pump, and got the party started.

Now, I don’t gas up often because I don’t drive that much anymore. The Duck! City drivers have sucked all the happy out of motoring for me. Imagine a bumper-cars circuit looping through a shooting range with a wet bar in an insane asylum. So in the long stretches between fillups I tend to forget that buying a tank of gas has become a multimedia experience.

As the pump sprang to hideous life its TV screen started screaming something about “FATTY MEAT STICKS! Made with GRASS-FED BEEF AND PORK!” and how I have to get one RIGHT NOW!”

Uh … isn’t that what’s happening right now? I thought as my tab ticked steadily upward to $56.98.

Remember the old quip about the price of a lift? “Ass, gas, or grass?” It’s true; nobody rides for free. But I didn’t expect to pay my freight by doing a threesome with Speedway and Fatty.

Hummers and bummers

October 9, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

This morning we cleaned, refilled, and set out the hummingbird feeders for what may be the last time in 2026.

We didn’t see a single, solitary hummer all day yesterday, for the first time this fall, and we fear the beautiful little buzzbombs may have called it a year.

Maybe they stuck around just long enough to see that Combover the Barbarian didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize for starting pointless wars, threatening to shove this and that up people’s arses, and otherwise jacking his draft-dodging jaw on antisocial media while his Secretary of Snapping Little Guys with Wet Towels in the Gym Showers livestreams the execution by firing squad of the Fort Hood shooter, who is confined to a wheelchair.

It recalls the scene in “Blazing Saddles” where Boris is preparing to hang a man on horseback — and his horse, too.

Except “Blazing Saddles” was funny.

Waiting for the sun

October 8, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

“Big Light in Sky Slated to Appear in East” and other rumors behind the news (h/t Firesign Theatre).

Leaves are falling off the backyard maple like winos off the drunk wagon. The morning temperature requires pants. And the sun doesn’t peek over the Sandias until shortly after 8:30, which is far too late for enlightenment, because I’ve already scanned the news by then.

Case in point: In the dark, over coffee, I learned that once again I had been denied the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yeats, Beckett, and Dylan, si, but the Mad Dog, no? The mind, it boggles.

And after I’d already designed the cover for my collected works, too. Without some Nobel greasing the skids that doorstop will have all the selling power of a Hegseth-Patel ticket in 2028.

Aw, it’s probably just as well. I’d probably have to take up smoking a pipe and drinking port or some shit like that. Wearing tweed.

Fuck that noise. It’s brisk around here in the mornings, but not that brisk.

Bike wash

October 7, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Not a great photo, but it gave me the idea for the headline, so … winning?

Ah, October in Duck!Burg. The temps have dropped, the rain has stopped, and the streets are alive with the cars of eejits.

I enjoyed a near miss on a fast descent the other day. I was braking (and signaling) for a left turn when a motorist halfway-rolls the stop sign at the street I planned to enter, glancing only to her left.

Well, shit. I’ve seen this movie and I don’t like the ending. Couldn’t turn in front of her, as I could have had she yielded the right of way at the stop sign. And I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of ripping the turn on her right side, because while she appeared to be about halfway into a left turn I couldn’t see if she had the left blinker on. The right most definitely was not on. And nobody in this town uses their turn signals anyway, not even the cops.

So I hit the binders, come to a stop, and shout “HEY!”

Well, then she saw me, if the deer-in-the-headlights look she pasted on her face was any indication. I was signaling my turn, wearing bright colors, and rocking a bright headlight as per usual, but if you don’t fucking look at me you won’t see any of that Sammy Safety shit.

I’m not big on driver education, what with everyone being armed these days, so rather than doing a war dance in my broken-down old Sidis I settled for the Universal Headshake of Disappointment — left, right, left, mmm, hmm, hmm, you stupid, stupid motorist — and went about my business. A cyclist has to keep the Third Eye wide open and way out on its stalk in these parts. Periscope up!

Speaking of feckin’ eejits, early voting began yesterday and we’re looking forward to receiving our ballots via uniformed federal employee and casting the moneychangers out of the national temple.

Unlike the Swamp Thing besmirching the Oval Orifice with its wet Mickey D’s farts we do not vote by mail, we just get our ballots that way. Then we fill them out at the kitchen table, screeching blasphemies as though the candidates were dumbass motorists rolling stop signs.

“Yeah, fuck you! Eat shit and die! That’s right! Go get a job in the private sector, you Brooks Brothers butt-kisser! Oh, wait, you can’t, because the private sector expects results! Boom! Now, piss off! Die, die, die!”

Etc.

Then we walk our ballots up to the neighborhood polling place and thank the workers for their service.

This year the herd-thinning process will be a breeze because anyone still claiming to be a Republican after two years of Swamp Thing v2.0 is not only a taco short of a combo plate but a clear and present danger to what little remains of the Republic. Christ knows the Democrats are bad enough.

But we don’t want to be hollering like that at our polling place. We don’t want to frighten any fainthearted types from the other team who may be coming, however belatedly, to their senses. The Republic needs all the help it can get.

Gasbags

October 5, 2026October 5, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Photo by https://kaboompics.com/ on Pexels.com

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is up, up and away.

The Journal‘s homepage, never a thing of beauty even when it’s not rearranged for tourism, still isn’t displaying properly in Safari. And the managing editor was tapped to write the story about day one’s calamities, which included balloonists touching down in power lines, parking lots, and other unsanctioned locations.

Trust issues? Beats me. I got yanked off the Gazette copy desk once to help cover a tornado in Manitou Springs. But I was just a rim rat, not the managing editor. There’s a lot of names on that masthead you’d expect to see atop that story before the ME’s. But it’s been a lot of years since I pulled a shift in a newsroom.

Whatevs, as the kids probably don’t say anymore. I don’t attend the Balloon Feast for the same reason I’ve never driven up Pikes Peak. These things are for tourists, and I don’t do tourism even when I’m not in my hometown.

I rode a mountain bike up to Barr Camp once. And Herself and I bicycled down to the Balloon Feast one afternoon, early on in our residency in The Duck! City, before we realized that all the action takes place in the morning and evening.

Now I walk out onto the driveway at 7 a.m., squint to the northwest, and mutter: “Yup. There’s one.” Then I go back inside and finish breakfast before kitting up for a ride.

Summer’s heat and that late monsoon appear to be in the rear view, and the October weather is fine for cycling. The traffic is a little less so, but you can’t let it bust your balloon.