h o m e d o g   d o o i n s 't o o n s c a m s t u f f r a d i o   f r e e   d o g p a t c h


Marked Territory

Following is an incomplete collection of the various rants, screeds, polemics, diatribes and harangues issued from Dog Mountain over the years in an attempt to stretch the boundaries of debate, taste and the First Amendment. Absolutely everything is © 1986-2004 Patrick O'Grady/Mad Dog Media, except for the stuff I stole from other people, who have been named as co-conspirators in my various literary larcenies in a futile attempt to guarantee myself interesting cellmates.

1 9 9 7
Fuerte the Wonder Pooch:
Her life and times


1 9 9 9
Mad Dogs & yellow jerseys:
A fool and his fashion

The Lactic Acid Express:
Alllll aboooooooardd...

The Rebellion vs. The Empire:
Flagellation for the Federation

Want the feds to go away?
Quit giving them money


2 0 0 0
Welcome to Motel 666:
You get what you pay for

I'm sorry ... so sorry:
It's the Great Pretender

The revived Zinger:
A cup check, for sure

Spare change, man?
Extend hand, not finger

A very O'Grady Xmas:
Peeing on your own tree

How to not train:
The expert shows you how

Going for the gusts-o:
Breezing through spring

Talk about un-Hygienic:
Boulder's Psycho Logic ride


2 0 0 1
How to kill the scooter:
Hook 'em up with the feds

Next-day delivery?
Not with Airhead Excess

Bears and bullshitters:
Slim pickings for both

Scarecrow as Wizard:
Heart for Tin Man, stat!

The Zen of Christmas:
Mad Dogs & Buddha nature


2 0 0 2
Bowflex and boneheads:
Jerking off vs. working out

Who loves ya, baby?
Not everyone ...

A bunch of SHT:
The Segway sucks

The real poison spider:
The oil bidniss

Dancing in the streets?
Try the trainer first

2 0 0 3
Batter up in Colorado:
Swinging at cyclists

Web sites are nice:
Safe riding spots are better

Dr. Jagoff and Mr. Hyde:
Science fiction vs. scientific coaching

The Pleasure-dome awaits:
The Kubla Khan of 'kross prepares

Dock the land yacht, Cap'n:
Gas pirates raise the black flag

Some days, you eat the bear:
Others, the bear eats you



      . . . a work in progress


    Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.

    — E.B. White, in his foreword to the collection, "Essays of E.B. White."

If you can't say anything nice ... Write it down

 By Patrick O'Grady
 Mad Dog Media


  I always wanted to be a cartoonist. And I am. But I've been a writer and an editor for a quarter-century, too, and frankly, that's what's kept the kibble in the dog dish all these years.

  If I'd had to depend on cartooning for a living, I'd have starved to death in the summer of 1977, shortly after graduating from the University of Northern Colorado with a bachelor's degree in journalism. Because while I went on to draw editorial cartoons for a number of newspapers, including The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, the Corvallis Gazette-Times in Oregon, and The Pueblo Chieftain in Colorado, they all insisted that I do something else, too, and plenty of it, if I wanted to get a weekly check with more than two digits on it.

 So I've written hard news, features and commentary; spent many an evil night as a rim rat on one or another of a half-dozen copy desks, editing other people's stories, writing headlines and laying out pages; and even scored a half-assed title from time to time, generally in lieu of a raise and normally prefaced with the word "assistant" — assistant news editor, assistant city editor, assistant sports editor, assistant features editor. I made it all the way to news editor once, at a chain of suburban weeklies in Denver, and finally quit newspapering altogether in 1991 after a brief stint as the features editor of The New Mexican in Santa Fe, where I edited copy, laid out pages, wrote about bicycle racing for the sports department, and, yes, drew cartoons.

 After nearly 15 years with my scabby little nose pressed to various grindstones of journalism, I came away with plenty of mental scar tissue, a good deal less hair to cover it, and an undiminished appreciation for three subsets of the craft: drawing cartoons, writing commentary, and writing headlines. All three are short, punchy attention-getters, the literary equivalent of yelling, "Hey, look at me!" before hanging a moon out the school-bus window, and thus own a natural appeal for an overgrown class clown with the attention span of a retarded rat terrier raised on angel dust and bong water.

 And thanks to the Internet, the best thing to happen to journalism since the invention of movable type, I get to do all three of them without having to go to work at a newspaper, where management has slowly devolved into a button-down mutant hybrid of the worst aspects of the Spanish Inquisition, the dental bits in "Marathon Man" and the highway department of your choice.

  So, by way of expressing my gratitude for your indulging my predilection for gainful unemployment all these years, I've gathered a few of my favorite diatribes together over there to your left, and will add to them as time permits. Some are exclusive to the DogS(h)ite; others you may recognize from VeloNews or VeloNews.com, where "Friday's Foaming Rant" has injected its toxic venom under uncounted kilometers of thin skin; still others are from the "Mad Dog Unleashed" column in Bicycle Retailer & Industry News, which has a smaller audience and thus gets substantially less attention, especially from lawyers, a surprising number of whom can read.

  Feel free to peruse any or all of these pointless harangues at your leisure, but be advised that like the rest of the content on this site, they contain toxic quantities of disrespectful parody and rude satire certain to cause grievous harm to the humorless clots of tight-sphinctered ninnies whose breaking of wind only dogs can hear. Mad Dog Media neither sells nor installs senses of humor . . . we simply service them.





© 2005 by Patrick O'Grady/Mad Dog Media. All rights and most lefts reserved.