OK, it's official: Our national "leadership" is either retarded, insane or both. The New York Times reports that a GOP "relief package" for a public "dismayed by rising gasoline prices" involves a $100 "gas-tax holiday" in the form of a rebate check for each and every American family (including, presumably, their own families). This, mind you, after The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports on three Democratic senators who drove a block from their Senate offices — in separate vehicles — to hold a photo op' at a gas station during which they railed against Big Oil. Are we really as stupid as they think we are? Maybe so. And if it's true, that we're all of us, man, woman and child, dumber than a sackful of red-white-and-blue hammers, why, then, by God, we deserve this kind of cheapjack, paternalistic, condescending theatricality instead of the bold and decisive leadership we thought we had been paying for all these years.
It's official — the Bush PR machine and Fox News have finally merged with the hiring of Tony Snow as White House press secretary. Wonder who rammed this one down The Decider's throat, given Snow's penchant for occasionally pulling his swirling tongue out of W's ass to say he doesn't care for the taste?
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Up(right) in the air, Junior Birdmen
Just when you thought air travel couldn't get any better, along comes word that Airbus has been pitching a standing-room-only option to Asian carriers as a means of enhancing revenue in a time of increasing fuel costs. According to The New York Times, "Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen a proposal." Others would be strapped to the wings and fuselage, injected with amphetamines and ordered to flap their arms. This segues nicely into the Joke of the Day, from Needlenose via Kevin Drum.
Elsewhere, The Decider has decided to order the Energy and Justice departments to investigate whether gas prices are being "artificially manipulated," a bold, courageous act on behalf of millions of struggling consumers that will phaaawwww haww hawww haww haww. Sorry, I just couldn't pull that one off with a straight face. This is like Tony Soprano asking Christopher and Paulie to investigate whether Silvio is porking the Bada Bing dancers. And don't expect any relief at the pump courtesy of oil from Al Fatah.
And finally, MacWeenies may get a giggle or two out of Jon Carroll's ode to the Apple Stores in the San Francisco Chronicle. Myself, I am less amused by Apple's antics of late. Steve Jobs, a.k.a. The Great and Powerful Oz, has just uncorked a 17-inch MacBook Pro, a $2,800, 7-pound "laptop" with a screen the size of a Yukon windshield, and I'm still waiting for the consumer-level, 13-inch-screen, any-color-other-than-white Intel-based MacBook, long rumored to be in the pipeline by various Cult O' Mac sites. With Windows XP installed alongside Mac OS X "Tiger," it would be the perfect workhorse for herding pixels over at the old VeloRanch. Which is probably why it will remain as elusive as courage and honesty in Washington, D.C.
President Bush urges Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to get to work |
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Hey Moe!
The quote of the day, from Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, as reported in The Los Angeles Times:
"The president has to be like Moe Howard: At some point in every 'Three Stooges' short, Moe slaps both Curly and Larry and says, 'Get to work.' There's a window of opportunity to get things done, but the window is getting smaller every day."
Well, I don't know as I would've put it that way. For starters, The Decider seems more likely to be watching The Three Stooges (moving his lips and misunderstanding many of the gags) than emulating Moe, a natural leader with an instinct for problem-solving. Plus if he ever slapped Cheney he'd sprout boils from wrist to armpit and probably lose the hand. And finally, he's just not funny.
Something that is funny is the news that come September, the Outdoor Life Network will start calling itself "Versus," not to be confused with "Verses" (The Bible Channel); "Purses" (The Home Shopping Network); "Hearses" (The Funeral Channel); or "Nurses" (EnemaVision, filmed in ProctoScope!). I'm no marketing maven, but "Versus?" C'mon. It sounds like a combination condom and Band-Aid for people who'd rather fight than fuck.
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Sunshine Sunday
Over at The Los Angeles Times, the editorial page calls for the sacking of Dick Fudd and The Donald, while Time's Joe Klein is doing a Diogenes, looking for a pol with a pulse just as Osama bin Laden pops up again like a malignant Jack-in-the-box.
Meanwhile, The Decider was helicoptering around California jabbering about energy conservation (no irony there). And some resellers are offering Windows XP pre-installed on the new Intel-based Macs, which is like stuffing a plastic sack of runny puppyshit, fish heads and Guinea worms under the hood of a Mercedes S600 sedan. And I have another goddamn sinus infection. But at least there's plenty of work to be done, which should keep my fingers on the keyboard and out of my nose for the foreseeable future.
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More fuelishness
Gas prices in Beverly Hills have topped $4 a gallon, reports The Los Angeles Times. It's a bit of a fib — to get that price, a guy has to go for the premium fuel at the full-service pump — but still, that would hurt when you had to fill up the old Escalade for a trip to the spa, no? No is exactly right. Anyone who lives in Beverly Hills and drives an upholstered suburban battlewagon can buy $4 gas all day long, the way a chain smoker buys cut-rate Marlboros from the Indians. Here in Bibleburg we're paying $2.79 for 85 octane (or we were yesterday, last time I saw a gas station). That's a dollar per gallon more than we were paying in 2003 for 87 octane, when I wrote this, but still well short of the $6 a gallon that the Bagni Hypothesis deems crucial for getting the fatties out of their cages and onto bicycles. Amazing how little things have changed in three years. Still, some people are getting it. Karen Keen, whom The Times found gassing up her 50-mpg Toyota Prius hybrid, bought 8.8 gallons costing $27.30. "I sold my SUV for this car. I actually did the math and figured I'm now saving over $400 a month in gas. I was filling up the SUV every third day," Keen said. Meanwhile, Kevin Drum provides some interesting figures on what rising gas prices might mean for the average Joe here.
And finally, a couple time-wasters for you: The Decider and DemBalls.
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Kerry 2008?
John Kerry says he's "thinking hard" about running for president in 2008. Ho, ho. He must have found a few nifty faces he didn't use last time around, fighting the dust bunnies for space in the closet, jabbering insanely how he was for/against this or that. I'm all for recycling, but damn, some of the trash just has to get tossed.
Elsewhere, John Dean predicts an October surprise from Fart Blossom and his merry men — perhaps the resignation of Dick Fudd, to be replaced with either Rudy Giuliani or Condi Rice; or maybe the capture of Osama bin Goldstein; or maybe, just maybe, a unilateral strike on Iran. Gosh, I wonder which of those options Mr. Mission Accomplished might select after a quick check with Jesus? Are you ready for $10-a-gallon gas, daily terror alerts and the Two Minutes Hate?
Meanwhile, here's a shot of Fudd in a rare moment when he is taking a break from his labors on Satan's behalf and is, albeit briefly, not a threat to the continued existence of humanity as we know it.
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Smoke 'em if you got 'em
Yes, it's 4/20, as all good stoners know, or used to know, but things've kinda gotten, y'know, a little foggy lately for some reason, and why ain't there anything to fuckin' eat around here, anyway, y'know, like maybe some BBQ-flavored Doritos and bean dip? Huh?
I'd be out back burnin' one right now if I had one, 'cause it's been nothing but bike journalism, allergies and in-laws around here lately, and the booze isn't getting the job done. Went to Weirdcliffe for a day for a little distance, perspective and peace and what do I get? Nothing but heartache. Realtors, electricians and a wind out of the west that apparently relocated the Great Sand Dunes National Monument to Kansas. It made the Dust Bowl look like a stoner coughing out a bong hit. I already owned 43 acres in Weirdcliffe and now I have another six up my nose, straight from the San Luis Valley. I'll probably have to pay property taxes and a 6 percent sales commission on 'em, too.
Meanwhile, The Decider is distractedly rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while asking his Magic 8-Ball what to do about Iran (reply hazy; try again later), and Costa Rica is looking better all the time.
And finally, a shout out to my "nephew" Harrison Walter on the occasion of his second birthday. His dad is baking a cake in his honor, according to the usually unreliable sources, and mom no doubt has a Forester full of presents en route from Pewblo. Uncle Weirdo, as usual, sends only his love, the cheap sonofabitch.
Late update: OK, turns out I'm not done yet. With the airwaves full of nothing but bad news times a thousand, KRCC-FM laid a little Eugene McDaniels on me: "Compared to What," the live version from pianist Les McCann and saxman Eddie Harris, recorded in 1969 at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and I'm sharing it with you, just like I did back in 2003. Made my night, I can tell you.
Another night a night of love
Hangin' on, we push and shove
Possession is the motivation
That is hangin' up the Goddamn nation
Looks like we always end up in a rut!
Everybody now, try to make it real compared to what!
C'mon baby!
Slaughter house is a-killin' hogs
Twisted children are killin' frogs
Poor dumb red-necks rollin' logs
Tired old lady, kissin' dogs
I hate the human love of that stinking mutt!
I can't use it!
Try to make it real, compared to what!
Come on baby, now (WOW!)
The President, he's got his war
Folks don't know just what it's for
Nobody gives us a rhyme or reason
Have one doubt, they call it treason
We're chicken feathers all without one gut
Goddamn it!
Try to make it real compared to what!
Sock it to me now!
Church on Sunday, sleep and nod
Tryin' to duck the wrath of God
Preacher's fillin' us with fright
They all tryin' to teach us
What they think is right
They really got to be some kind of nut!
I can't use it!
Try to make it real compared to what!
Oh baby!
A-where's that bee,
And-a where's that a-honey?
A-where's my God,
And a-where's my money?
Unreal value is a crass distortion
Unwed mothers need abortion
Kinda brings to mind old young King Tut!
He did it now!
Try to make it real compared to what!
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Stoned again
The good news is, Jesus rolled back the stone today. The bad news is, he saw his own shadow and thus we can expect six more weeks of winter. That is all. Don't forget to drop a twenty into the collection plate on your way out. You can't expect to get quality preachin' like this for free.
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IRS means 'I Really Suck'
OK, so it's a cheap joke at the Infernal Revenue Service's expense. So audit me. But I keed, I keed. I love you guys, really, the way a hooker loves the crabs. I have the income of a 19-year-old assistant fryolater operator at KFC and the deductions of the dead and I still pay more taxes (as a percentage of my income, you Republican fucks) than Dick Cheney. But I'm cool with that. My butt hardly even hurts any more, as long as I keep standing. Really. Pass the Preparation H.
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Political science
OK, spring break is over. Your assignment for today is to read and consider this. Then do the same with this. I will expect a full report on your senator's desk by first thing Monday morning. Remember, spelling counts. Extra credit for anyone who can perform Gen. Jack D. Ripper's rambling monologues about preserving "our precious bodily fluids" in Texan while riding a bicycle.
Click image to enlarge |
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I Otter be there
Hemingway had the right idea when he decided that a .45-caliber submachine gun was the proper tool for shark fishing, but he was wrong about his targets. — Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt
Sea Otter has come round once more, and here I sit in Colorado. I really should be out there, because my inner dog needs fresh meat, but damn, it's a long drive at $2.50 a gallon. Plus somebody has to hang out at the old Inside Communications pixel palace, helping shove other people's words and pictures around for fun and profit.
It's just not the same, though, reading about bicycle racing from a considerable distance. You start to wonder whether it's all some elaborate con — I mean, nobody more than 30 seconds past puberty really races bicycles, right? Right. And the Apollo landing was filmed at the Bonneville salt flats and Elvis is alive and running a Conoco station somewhere in Kentucky and Barry Bonds got that way doing pilates.
I hate to admit it, but the last race I attended was the last one I raced, back in . . . 2003? And calling what I was doing "racing" is generous to the point of being delusional. It was a local cyclo-cross, and I flatted early on, without a spare bike in the pit, because I had ridden to the race. Damn glad I was of it, too, since I was getting the sort of beating W would like to give Helen Thomas if she weren't so scary. So I'm not certain I'd even recognize actual bike racing as such, much less be able to write coherently about it, seeing as how I was doing it so very badly so very long ago.
And then there's the expense. For some reason, publishers seem less than eager to pick up the travel tab for a skin-headed malcontent who's probably going to squat under a tarp next to the beer tent and start making stuff up, scribbling meandering diatribes against his betters to be published under standing headlines like "Friday's Foaming Rant" or "Mad Dog Unleashed." Never mind that I haven't bitten anyone since Interbike 1996, and she liked it. Well, she got over it. And anyway, those rabies shots aren't nearly as painful as some personal-injury attorneys would have you believe.
Last time I was at the Otter, in 2002, I nibbled the dainty ankles of some gravity geeks with a screed against mountain cross that covered a fair amount of waterfront, including Milton's "Paradise Lost," Easter, Scotch whisky and "The Road Warrior." "Have fun with it," said the editors. So I did. As a consequence, a number of other people did not, and said so, but I held up my end. And anyway, I was only following orders.
Hmm. Waterfront. Nibbles. Scotch. We may be onto something here. Maybe I should've made the trip to Monterey on spec'. There's an ocean right next door, if memory serves, and the big money these days is in fishing, I hear. I could've done a little research from a table at the London Bridge Pub on Fisherman's Wharf and pitched a new adventure show to ESPN, something that would bring together on a single canvas all the disparate elements on that great network's palette: fishing, gambling, death in the afternoon.
Call it "Fish Fry." Think David Cronenberg shooting a trio of zombies — Ernest Hemingway, Robert Shaw and Hunter S. Thompson — trolling for great white sharks in Monterey Bay, using a crapped-out Vegas high-roller in an electric chair for bait.
Okay, so it might be better suited to the Sci-Fi Channel. But they're probably busy covering the mountain cross.
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Eye, Chihuahua
OK, I'm kinda busy today, but let's take five from the nose-to-grindstone bit for a couple of quick observations. As the Daffy-Fudd administration sinks to a new low in the AP-Ipsos poll, its town crier says Daffy doesn't leak classified information that outs CIA spies as part of a political pissing contest, he merely releases information in the public interest (apparently by having one of Fudd's tools leak it to a reporter), and if you don't like the notion of Daffy listening to you chat up your girlfriend on the phone, well, tough shit, says the attorney general. All this leads Josh Marshall to warn of creeping monarchism in the White House. It seems more like galloping monarchism to me, but each to his own. Hey, has that eyeball always been there? 'Scuse me, someone's knocking at the door. . . .
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And that's the way it is (giggle)
Rocketing straight to the top of the "who gives a shit?' file is the news that Katie Couric will be reading the teleprompter evenings at CBS. Yes, that CBS, the network that brought us Ed Murrow, Walter Cronkite and "Love Monkey," whatever the hell that may be. No, don't tell me, I don't want to know. Anyway, there is no such thing as "TV news." It is an oxymoron. These dark days, it's tough enough to find news in newspapers (if you don't count the first four letters of the word "newspapers," that is). But you can occasionally find something worth reading if you look in enough places, and one such is Tim Goodman's take on the non-event of the century over at The San Francisco Chronicle. Here's a sample: "Couric will become the first solo female anchor on an evening newscast, which in 2006 is a little like saying she's been given her own channel on CB radio." There's more. You're welcome.
Meanwhile, Apple has introduced software that will let users of Intel Macs install and run Windows XP. This is like shitting in the passenger seat of your own Mercedes, inviting a crab-infested crack whore to share the four-poster bed in the Imperial Suite at the Ritz Paris with you and Eva Longoria, or downloading "The Best of Lee Greenwood" to your iPod. There's probably no truth to the rumor that there is an Easter egg hidden in the install; option-click "About This Mac" and up pops a picture of Bill Gates boning Steve Jobs up the keister.
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The old in-and-out at USA Cycling
Gerard Bisceglia is out as CEO and Steve Johnson is in. The question is: Did Bisceglia jump or was he pushed? Bisceglia told VeloNews that he was pushed; USAC board prexy Jim Ochowicz said via press release that he jumped. Over at cyclingnews.com, meanwhile, USAC board veep Mark Abramson says Bisceglia resigned following his annual review by the board. So many stories, so little news.
I can't say that I've paid much attention to USA Cycling and its machinations over the past few years — the last official meeting I attended, under the previous regime, resembled a jacking-off contest at a summer camp for spastics — but I have talked with Bisceglia on a few occasions and found him pleasant, quick to return phone calls or e-mails and answer questions, and apparently willing to face the shit monsoon head-on. One of his early moves was to sit down with the members and representatives of Colorado's breakaway organization, the American Cycling Association, and let them piss on his shoes, even though he was not responsible for the spectacular series of idiocies that led the former Bicycle Racing Association of Colorado to emigrate from FedWorld and set up its own governing body.
But I don't know whether he was a successful leader of FedWorld because nobody really does journalism on the outfit any more, telling us how many members they have (or don't have); what the budget is, where it comes from and how it's spent; and all the other data that help assess a CEO's performance. It will be interesting to keep one ear glued to the ground for any rumblings as to exactly what happened up the road at One Olympic Plaza. One thing seems certain, if the cyclingnews report is correct — they're gonna save themselves some money, because Johnson is gonna be doing his old job and the new one, too. That'll cut into the old training time.
Meanwhile, the light clicks on and a fat roach scuttles out of the congressional kitchen: Tom DeLay. His departure may make it easier for the Repugs to hold onto his House seat, which was starting to resemble an electric chair. But we may be yet compensated for that disappointment by the sight of a prosecutorial boot stomping The Bug Man flat. Alas, as The Rude Pundit reminds us, there are other voracious insects infesting our House.
And last, but not least, the curmudgeonly Ed Quillen weighs in on the immigration problem.
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Speaking of hookers
If you didn't catch Tom Boonen stomping the pommes frites out of cycling's finest during the Tour of Flanders on TV today, it's probably because Floridian Preston Clark was busy shattering the Bassmasters four-day catch record during the Santee Cooper Showdown in Manning, South Carolina. Clark landed 115 pounds, 15 ounces of fish during the event, eclipsing Dean Rojas's piddly 108 pounds, 12 ounces, set in 2001 on Florida's Lake Tohopekaliga. In addition to a shitload of fish, Clark earned hissef $100,000 for the feat, and he claims to need the money. "I have a lot of additional responsibilities coming in the near future," Clark told The Associated Press, referring to his wife, Katrina, who is pregnant with triplets. "We also recently decided to purchase a house, but a good deal of this money will go to college tuition." Hey, fuck a bunch of college, Preston. I've been to college, and if I ever see $100,000 all at once, it will be because I have just robbed a bank. Save the tuition. Teach the little boogers how to fish.
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Sport v. game, round 786 and counting
Here's another good reason to shoot your TV with a 12-gauge loaded with double-ought buckshot: ESPN, a onetime sports network whose biggest deal these days is the World Series of Poker, thinks the next big thing is dominoes. In a chat with The New York Times, player Augusto Montan says: "I've been playing dominoes all my life, but I never thought I'd see it on TV. We always thought of it as a game to pass the time. . . ." Right you are, Augusto. Dominos are a game, just like poker. Anything a fat used-car salesman from Cooter Corners, Nebraska, can do drunk, in Vegas, with a cigar in one hand and a hooker in the other, is a game. It is a sport, however, for the dealer and the hooker. For them, it's not gambling, it's hunting. Jesus, is there anything people won't watch, if only it's on TV? I thought we'd hit bottom when scumbags like Donald Trump and Anna Nicole Smith got shows, or maybe with the endless "Survivor" retreads and the sadomasochistic "American Idol," but this elevator just keeps on going down. I'd rather watch the security-camera tapes from a 7-Eleven in Branson, Missouri. Hey, look, it's Donny Osmond, and he's shoplifting a 40 of malt liquor!
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Fifty-freakin'-two
I've finished another lap around the sun, and once again The New York Times overlooks me in its "Today's Highlights in History." Oh, sure, they mention that on this day in 1958, Nikita Khrushchev became premier of the Soviet Union, but not a word about me having been born four years earlier, not even down in the lesser "Current/Historic Birthdays" list, where the likes of Mariah Carey managed to slip past security and into the public prints. Maybe if I had tits? Nah.
What does a guy do with a 52nd birthday? It's not exactly something to crow about, like 18 or 21, or even particularly noteworthy like the decades that follow (30, 40, 50, etc.), alarming mileposts on a long dead-end road in a moonless night with a head full of controlled substances and no brakes. Well, for starters, you dispose of the official celebration early and quickly, as we did last night at The Blue Star, with some of their always tasty grub and a bottle of Heitz Cellar Cabernet Sauvignon 2001, which is ordinarily out of our price range; happily, The Blue Star does half-price bottles of wine on Sunday nights. A snifter of Herradura Añejo tequila afterwards is optional, unless you're me. Then you get up the next morning on the actual day itself and go for a 52-mile ride on your favorite 'cross bike.
I haven't done that in a while. And I've never done it on this particular trail, not past the Air Force Academy, anyway. This time I rode the bugger all the way to Palmer Lake and a little bit beyond to get the requisite mileage, then turned around and rode home, straight into a 20-mph head wind. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway, just like the Cheerleader-in-Chief, who also suffers from notions. Stupidity should be painful, but Mr. Mission Accomplished appears to be immune. Alas, I am not, judging by the way my legs feel. So the second half of the birthday observation will commence as soon as Herself gets back from dance class — the consumption of a $52 bottle of Laurel Glen 2001 Sonoma Mountain Cabernet.
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Honk(y) if you love bigotry
And you thought your congressman was a tool. Fifty thousand people cram into Denver's Civic Center to protest legislation that would make illegal immigration a felony and all Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo can say is "that the crowd would have dispersed rapidly had Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shown up with buses and started checking identification," according to this story in The Denver Post. I note that this witticism came during a telephone interview. Like the rest of the faux tough guys infesting today's GOP like roaches in a Dumpster, Tancredo is only too happy to phone it in from some safe, undisclosed location.
Meanwhile, Kevin Drum weighs in on the guest-worker issue here, arguing that "guest worker programs end up perpetuating both a culture of low-wage labor that's ripe for exploitation and insular communities that have no incentive to think of themselves as Americans — because they aren't. It's the worst of both worlds."
And finally, the indispensable Knight Ridder Washington bureau provides yet another fresh perspective on the immigration issue — this one, from south of the border.
Gratuitous pun of the week: Frankenswine.
Blast from the past: One of the Mad Dog Media cyclo-crosses at Bear Creek. |
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Fore-get about it
Talk about a good walk spoiled: A couple of "golf enthusiasts" want to turn Bear Creek Regional Park East, where the Mad Dogs once adopted trails and ran cyclo-cross races, into a golf course. "It's a beautiful piece of property," says Judy Bell. Yes, it is, and it should be left the hell alone. This town does not exactly suffer from a paucity of golf courses. The city runs two, one of which sits right next door to me; private operators run several others; and there are courses at Peterson AFB, Fort Carson and the Air Force Academy for the troops. Not much happens in Bear Creek East, and that's the way some of us like it. Park users walk dogs, ride bikes or horses, hike, jog and grow vegetables in an organic community garden. Anyone with a hankering to play golf has plenty of other options. A public meeting on the idea is scheduled for 7 p.m. April 11 at the Bear Creek Nature Center, 245 Bear Creek Road.
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Whatever it is, I'm against it
Now and then I feel the urge to rebel against ... against ... well, what've you got? I'm agin it. So when Herself, who is elsewhere for a library conference, crowed via cell phone that she had transformed me — me! — into an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, well, shit, I decided to stay up late one night while she was gone. This is it. I watched "Swingers," a 10-year-old flick that didn't suck nearly as much as I thought it would, in part because I had confused it with "Showgirls." I drank some wine. I stumbled across the news that USA Cycling had hired a BMX director. And I heard Jimi Hendrix's version of the "Star-Spangled Banner" and a snippet of "The Dick Ballentine Show" from "That's Not Funny, That's Sick!" by The National Lampoon on KRCC. And now I'm going to bed. By the way, in case anyone I happen to be married to thinks it might be funny to call me when she sees this at, oh, say, 6 a.m. Eastern time, that someone might take a moment to consider how long a walk home she'll have from the Bibleburg Intergalactic Airport come Sunday. Good night, and good luck.
Later that same day: A friend and colleague notes via e-mail: "Whoa! 'Swingers,' NPR and wine. You are livin' la vida loca, my friend. Tell Shannon she should be careful about leaving you on your own like that." To which I riposte: "Hey, what can I tell you? This is what passes for a wild night in Bibleburg, where people abstain from engaging in marital relations while standing up for fear it will lead to dancing." And he knows whereof I speak. When we both worked for the local fish-wrapper in the late Seventies, we referred to this no-horse town as either "a cemetery with lights" or "a suburb without a city." The restaurants have improved in the past quarter-century, but the politics remain somewhere to the right of Conan the Rotarian and the spiritual ambience is strictly New Testament (before Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple). As Bill Moyers notes, "No wonder Baptists have been compared to jalapeño peppers: one or two make for a tasty dish, but a whole bunch together will bring tears to your eyes."
Meanwhile, it seems late nights are good for something, depending upon your definition of the word "good." I found a notebook I'd forgotten about from my February trip to Arizona and used it to dash off a quick screed for VeloNews.com. You can read it here.
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Zbigniew! Gesundheit
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former Carter administration national security adviser, now professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University, ripped new ones for both the Bush administration and his own Democratic Party today on "All Things Considered."
Dismissing Dubya's standard blather about being "a nation at war," used to justify a limitless expansion of/kowtowing to presidential authority, Brzezinski argued, "We can't be at war with an abstraction," correctly describing terrorism as "a technique for killing people." And he proposed what seems like a sensible four-point plan that would get the United States out of Iraq, leverage support for rebuilding among other nations, and encourage Iraqis and their neighbors to take some responsibility for what Numbnuts keeps calling "the neighborhood," as if the Middle East were a suburb of Midland.
Brzezinski proposes that:
1) The United States ask Iraqi leaders to ask us to leave Iraq (many of them already have).
2) The United States consult with Iraqi leaders on a date for departure (a year from now should be suitable).
3) The Iraqi government call a conference of neighboring Muslim countries to discuss the stability of Iraq, which is in everyone's interest.
4) The United States organize a donor conference among richer countries who would be more likely to participate once we're gone - to help rebuild what we have broken.
Jesus, that sounds about half smart, doesn't it? Sure sounds better than what the Cheerleader-in-Chief keeps snarling into the microphone whenever Rove forgets to give him his daily lithium. And it also sounds better than what the Donks have been up to, which mainly involves running away from the prez, the war and Jack Murtha and toward pollsters, focus groups and image consultants.
"Democrats should have a credible plan for dealing with the problem of Iraq," said Brzezinski. "If Democrats have a better plan they should offer it. But simply criticizing the war, in my view, is insufficient. They do have the responsibility to offer an alternative."
You can hear the interview here.
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Equinoxious
It is the suckee-suckee here in Bibleburg as the first day of spring whistles in looking an awful lot like a frosty blast from the icy black bunghole of winter. As usual, there isn't enough snow to shovel — just enough to glaze the streets like a Krispy Kreme donut, setting the stage for an entertaining round of amateur demolition derby. Clearing the sidewalks is like chiseling ice off a really big concrete windshield.
In short, it's one of those days when I'm glad I don't have a real job, until I realize that if I did, I might not have to go to it. Herself got the day off due to inclement weather, but I didn't; me, I get to sit here in the old home office and read a bunch of sniveling bullshit from Tyler Hamilton fanboys who think the big, bad System is putting the pork to their hero. Read the rules, children. They're online, and they're even in English. Salient points include:
Forbidden races
1.2.019 No license holder may participate in an event that has not been included on a national, continental or world calendar or that has not been recognized by a national federation, a continental confederation or the UCI.
And while a national federation may grant special exceptions for races or particular events run on its own soil — which USA Cycling does, for American Cycling Association events and (apparently) the other U.S. pros racing the Stazio series — they can't very well turn a blind eye to a convicted blood doper taking a start in a race whose promoters don't toe the UCI-WADA-USAC line on doping, can they? The rules for Denver-Boulder Couriers-conducted events make no mention of doping that I can find, barring an oblique reference to misconduct, to wit, "causing any race to have a result other than on the merits of the competitors." So I'm guessing you could turn up with a bong, a bottle of Herradura and white powdery rings around both noseholes as long as you didn't write a hot check for your entry fee, crash a junior or call the chief ref a cocksucker.
So excuse me if I fail to weep for Tyler on this one. You want to play in the UCI's oom-pah band, you got to read from their sheet music. He knew the rules, or should have, since he signed a license form saying as much:
1.1.023
2. I hereby undertake to respect the constitution and regulations of the International Cycling Union, its continental confederations and its national federations.
I declare that I have read or have had the opportunity to become acquainted with the aforesaid constitution and regulations.
And the insular Boulder race scene being what it is, the two-wheeled equivalent of a clan of hillbillies bent on dating their sisters, I suspect that Tyler's enforced absence from local competition will not cut deeply into turnout at DBC events. Not nearly as much as this friggin' weather, anyway.
Late addendum: A correspondent notes that Tyler does not hold a UCI license. Duh. More proof that drunken Irish scribblers should be denied Internet access.
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An ode to spring
Must be spring, 'cause it looks like winter. Thirty-something and damp, with snow on the way. Somebody has hidden the mountains behind a giant gray sheet. Why people schedule bike races in March eludes me. ACA has wised up — no events on their calendar until April — but the Stazio crit series is one-for-three, having pulled off just one of its four events scheduled this month. Who would rather be racing in September, or even October? Raise your frostbitten hands. I'm not racing, but I am going out for a ride, because I'm stupidly vulnerable to peer pressure. Thank God for neoprene clothing, cyclo-cross bikes and brain damage.
Update: OK, so it wasn't that bad. I wore a long-sleeved polypro undershirt, two long-sleeved jerseys, bib shorts and neoprene leggings, ski socks, toe covers, a stocking cap and winter gloves, and I was plenty comfy. We rode to the north gate of the Air Force Academy and back just in time to dodge a dribbly little rain that apparently pre-empted this allegedly massive snowstorm that, like democracy in Iraq, ain't happening yet no matter what you hear on TV — like, say, Dickless Cheney on "Face the Nation," trotting out the same stale horseshit about all the fuss in Messypotamia being the work of some bitter-enders who just won't wake up and smell the napalm. Meanwhile, former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi tells the BBC, "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is." Jesus. I'd spring for the aviation gasoline if someone would volunteer to air-drop the Veep into Shutthefuckupistan. The lies fly out of his fat yap like teeth fleeing Shane MacGowan's mouth.
Later update: Well, hell, make a liar out of me. Now we have a thunder-snowstorm going on. The rain of toads is on deck, followed by various plagues (locusts, Christian Scientists, etc., and so on). Glad we decided to skip dinner at The Blue Star in favor of a massive marinara over linguini currently under construction in the kitchen. This dish has its roots in the basic tomato sauce from "Dad's Own Cookbook" by Bob Sloan (thanks to food bully Jim Harrison for the tip), but I've added a few flourishes, including a pound of hot pork sausage (part of my share of a pastured pig from Doug Wiley's Larga Vista Ranch near Boone); a little medium-hot Chimayo red chile powder from the Santa Fe School of Cooking; plus some red pepper flakes, a little cumin, a few Alamosa 'shrooms and some chopped black olives. The recipe makes 2.5 quarts, so I freeze the leftovers in 3-cup lots for lazy evenings and/or alternatives to roasting the neighbors when we're snowed in and I'm too drunk to cross-country ski to the Safeway, which to date has happened exactly never.
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Kicked to the 'Curb'
Some St. Patrick's Day. We drank California wine, ate Chinese leftovers and watched Jews on TV. Not exactly a Frank O'Connor short story, is it? But somehow Guinness didn't sound as good as Laurel Glen Reds, I didn't have time to whip up a pot of lamb and stout casserole thanks to work and the second installment of court-ordered traffic school (more on that later), and I'm starting to appreciate Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm." When the show first came out I thought it sucked; he struck me as the unfunny love child of Woody Allen and Junior Soprano. But Herself borrowed Season 4 on DVD from a co-worker, and it's definitely growing on me. Of course, you drink enough wine and anything seems funny, even traffic school.
Speaking of serving your time, Tyler Hamilton shitcanned himself from the Stazio crits in the People's Republic after the UCI leaned on USAC, which in turn leaned on its UCI-licensed pros for participating in an unsanctioned event alongside a suspended rider. If you ignore the blood-doping angle, it's vaguely reminiscent of the bad old days when USCF tried leaning on its members over their participation in NORBA events, before road and mountain became one big happy dysfunctional family here in Bibleburg. Now that Hamilton has stepped back to the sidelines, all is forgiven, apparently, and like Old Man River the bandit crits just keep rollin' along. ¿Qué triste es la vida loca, no? Do a California roll on a stop sign, go to court, pay a fine and spend two nights in traffic school; have too much blood in your blood, miss a couple Tours, a hometown crit series and a shitload of paydays. Notice how all this wanton criminality doesn't stop either of us from getting our names in print on a regular basis.
And while we're on the topic of print, check out Dan Neil's excoriation of the 2007 Mercedes-Benz GL, Big Oil and regulatory inaction at The Los Angeles Times website. Here's a teaser:
It's well established that the vast majority of these vehicles never touch gravel, never carry more than a couple of people, and never tow anything heavier than the weight of their owner's childhood traumas.
Most people who buy the GL won't know a Class IV hitch from a Mark 48 torpedo. And I, for one, am not going to congratulate some Bel-Air singleton for his wise vehicle purchase when it is so patently purblind and morally retrograde.
There's a reason the dude won the 2004 Pulitzer for criticism, and I bet the guys at Daimler Chrysler would like to shove the plaque right up his ass.
The O'Grady coat of arms. Writing, poor vision and impulsive deviltry apparently are a genetic trait; Tom "Spectacles" O'Grady wrote a notorious poem satirizing a limerick banker and subsequently fled to France to dodge the libel suit. |
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Póg mo thóin
Oh joy, it's St. Patrick's Day, that hallowed event on the retail/amateur-drinker calendar, when shitfaced nitwits bearing surnames full of consonants pack pubs to the rafters to bawl off-key renditions of "Londonderry Air" while downing endless plastic goblets of green Coors that looks even worse come midnight, swirling in the bowl with the remnants of that microwave corned-beef-and-cabbage dinner; a ghastly sight indeed, one to be topped only by the flashing red lights in the rear-view mirror on the rambling drive home. No, thank you. If the constabulary wants to chat me up, it will find me in my living room, enjoying a pint or two or three of Guinness, a dollop of Bushmills and a scattering of CDs from the Chieftains, Planxty and the Pogues (who, incidentally, took their name from the phrase that forms the headline of this entry; pronounced "poge ma-hone, it means, "Kiss my ass."). Maybe I'll break out the old flute and tin whistle, take a whack at "Danny Boy." It might scare the skunks out from under the back deck. Sure as hell rattles the neighbors.
Meanwhile, this will be the last St. Patrick's Day you will have to deal with drunken fucktards belching cigarette smoke into your face while you try to draw that staggering hottie's bloodshot eyes to your "Kiss Me I'm Irish" button, if you spend March 17 in a Colorado boozer. The House and Senate have approved anti-smoking legislation and the governor says he'll sign it. I'm still hoping for the addition of a death penalty, but it's probably tits on a bull, since these silly shits are digging their own graves one filter tip at a time anyway.
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All the news that fits, we print
In a front-page Chamber of Commerce infomercial headlined, "Look how we've grown," The Gazette trumpets that El Paso County has surpassed Denver County in terms of population, which means ... uh ... which means ... well, that a whole shitload of people live here. Anyone who's ever sat through a half-dozen light changes at Woodmen and Academy could tell you that. A year ago, The Colorado Springs Business Journal reported that there were some 280,000 people driving to work around here, up from about 180,000 in 1990. Noted Fred Crowley, a senior economist for the Southern Colorado Economic Forum and a professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs: "So, we've almost doubled the amount of people working — all trying to get to work and home on the same roads. We haven't improved roads, we haven't built highways, we haven't done much." Other than crow over it, as The Gazette has done, hoping to attract more of the same. Apparently nobody on the city desk has visited Phoenix, Las Vegas or Los Angeles recently. Or even Denver, for that matter, a nine-county metropolitan area containing some 2.6 million people.
The G's bit of Babbitry teases a full page of non-stories on Metro 5 that basically tell you what the front-page piece did, which is to say absolutely nothing beyond, "Woo hoo, we're No. 1!" Who these new people are, where they come from, what they do, how they think, what they want, whether they're bringing their own water with them, how we're going to pay for it all — it's a mystery. Lobbyist Larry Kallenberger confesses: "This one's for bragging rights." Bragging rights? Who brags about metastasis? "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell," wrote the late Ed Abbey. Where's George Hayduke when we need him?
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Quick, someone, throw him an anvil!
As the Cheerleader-in-Chief's approval ratings dip to a new low (Dubya remains more popular than amoebic dysentery but polls slightly behind bird flu), he rattles his plastic saber at Iran, boogity boogity boogity. This is akin to flipping the bird to a largish, crazy spectator who already thinks you're a dick while getting your ass kicked by a one-legged midget in a barfight. This is a weak analogy, of course, because Dubya is not a fighter; he just plays one on TV. One wonders how much different America might be today if either his parents or his contemporaries had pounded the mortal shit out of him a few times when he was younger.
One also wonders about Numbnuts's potential to go all like Curtis LeMay on Iran if Ahmadinejad keeps jacking his jaw and grabbing his crotch, snickering about "pussy" this and "faggot" that while Dubya's splendid little war starts to look an awful lot like a double Vietnam with booby-trap clusters, complete with flag-draped coffins at the airport and the copters warming up on the embassy roof. If you think Mr. Mission Accomplished doesn't have the script for that one queued up on the teleprompter, you haven't been paying attention. Next time we're hiring, what say we read the résumés a little closer, eh? Maybe ask some tougher questions during the interview process? I'm all for the Second Amendment, but for Christ's sake, let's keep the feeble-minded away from the weaponry, if only for the troops' sake.
Meanwhile, now that it's March, winter has finally arrived. Yeah, right. I horned more snow than this off a mirror one night back in the Eighties. |
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A free ride to nowhere
This shouldn't surprise anyone, but taxpayers coughed up more than a million smacks last year so members of Congress could lease vehicles, "including dozens of gas-guzzling SUVs and expensive luxury cars," according to the Knight-Ridder Washington bureau. Nice work if you can get it. No wonder they hang around Congress year after year, getting rug burns on the knees and elbows of those thousand-dollar suits as staffers in hazmat suits mop up the goo, squirt another jet of Astroglide on the old bullseye and usher in the next lobbyist.
Still, it's just not enough for some folks, who dream of becoming the next Casey Jones on our American gravy train, otherwise known as "the president." The Pachyderms began shuffling through their presidential résumés at a Nuremberg rally in Memphis, where Senate Majority Whipdick Mitch McConnell called the reigning Cheerleader-in-Chief "one of the great presidents in the history of the United States," and the audience actually rose to applaud, then goose-stepped round the Peabody Hotel screeching "Bush über alles!" as Sen. John McCain disappeared up his own bunghole, apparently in search of his head, which was barking like Cujo with his nutsack wired to a Sears Diehard. OK, so I made those last two bits up. The truth is even worse. Go see for yourself.
Meanwhile, Darth Cheney is so over (Condi is the new Dicki). Democratic hopeful Sen. Russ Feingold wants King George censured for being, among other things, a tyrannical, mendacious plastic sack of ice-cold dogshit (I would prefer that he be sent on the first manned mission to Mars, since he thinks it's such a swell idea, but each to his own). And The New York Times has a windy piece on the Donks' hopes for a "Contract with America"-style revolution that mostly boils down to one cautionary fashion: "Just because voters have tired of one party doesn't mean they're ready for the other." It's gonna be a long three years.
And finally, there's some fresh Dog Doo'ins stinking the place up here.
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Welcome to the working week
Where the hell did the week go? All my days are starting to look the same — get up, inhale a mug of java, read The Gazette, grab another cuppa, head for the Mac, check the mail and start pushing pixels for VeloNews.com. We have two ProTour races running simultaneously (Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico); a National Racing Calendar event (the Central Valley Classic in California); the Taipei International Cycle Show; and an endless parade of other stories (an electric Dura-Ace prototype, rider diaries, EuroFiles, and so on and so forth). Throw in a VN.com staff meeting in Laramie, Wyoming, a 450-mile round trip from Dogpatch, and shit, no wonder time seems to fly like a turpentined bat out of a meth lab.
Most working stiffs do their commutes a handful of miles at a time, day in and day out, but I like to consolidate mine in big blocks. Interbike is the big one (a 2,000-mile round trip the way I do it, through Santa Fe, Flagstaff and once, Moab, where I know many fine places to eat and drink). Occasionally I hit some cycling extravaganza like Sea Otter (2,706 miles if you take the basic Las Vegas route but jink south through the Mohave and north to Monterey, then head home via Reno, U.S. Highway 50 — "The Loneliest Road" — and either the Industrial Tourism Corridor of Interstate 70 or the Black Canyon of the Gunnison).
This Laramie excursion was an interesting digression in that I rarely drive north anymore because I despise the Denver metro clusterplex. But the VeloNews.com staff is a far-flung mob — we have bodies in Spain, Boulder, Colorado Springs and Laramie — and the Wyoming office had other commitments that precluded his coming to us, so we went to him, just in time for a snowstorm that shut down I-80 west of Laramie. Wyoming wind being what it is, the real storm was in Eastern Europe by the time we'd wrapped things up and begun heading for home, and the only ugly portion of the drive was through Telephone Canyon, where it was snowing sideways. But it was either deal with it and sleep in our own Colorado beds with our wives and/or girlfriends or spend the night in Dick Cheney country, and I was unarmed, if you don't count a folding Buck knife, which I don't, not when the other party is an undead fascist holding a shotgun and staring at a registered Democrat.
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War Is Peace
On Tuesday, Minister of War Don "De-Don-Don" Rumseld accused Iran of dispatching Revolutionary Guards to "cause trouble" inside Iraq. Meanwhile, VP Dick Fudd blusters that the Busheviks are keeping "all all options on the table" regarding Iran, adding that the White house "supports as well the democratic aspirations of the people of Iran" and the removal of its "fanatical regime." Oh, good. Let's start another war. 'Cause, y'know, the ones we've already got going are ticking along so smoothly.
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Yesterday's News Tomorrow
This just in:
Bush Administration
Admits Head Up Ass
Regarding War in Iraq
But you knew that.
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The Briefcase of Doom
Meanwhile, as if Friday didn't already present enough surprises, Herself scored an early departure from the library gig courtesy of a misplaced briefcase with the numbers 9-1-1 on its combination locks. Sucker weighed 40 to 50 pounds, according to the cops, who X-rayed it and found some class of giant laptop inside, no doubt a surplus Zil Triumph of the Revolution People's Komp-U-Tron Model 1917 from the old Soviet Union, crafted of old T-55 tank parts. Glad I'm not schlepping it back and forth to Interbike. I don't need a double hernia to go along with the bad back, Achilles' tendon and drinking problem.
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No power, but plenty of water
I had intended to scrawl something snarky this morning, just to loosen up fingers and forebrain for another day in the VeloNews.com barrel, and then funk, the power goes out, followed by sploosh, the clothes washer pissing soapy water all over the basement. This double disaster had its genesis in Herself's pre-work beauty regimen, which involves National Public Radio, much bright lighting and a hair dryer that makes my ancient Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum look like a Pez dispenser. This pompadour pistol, which emits a whine reminiscent of the space shuttle coming in for a landing with a payload of cranky Aliens, apparently drowned out the sound of the washer's outflow hose leaping out of its sink like a spastic water snake in the laundry room, which adjoins her bathroom, while the combination of radio, dryer, lighting, washer, hair curler, et. al, sufficed to trip a couple of circuit breakers and croak my computer in mid-screed. Sorry about that.
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Smoke 'em if y'got 'em
OK, so I was only kidding in yesterday's post about how smokers should be executed. Truth is, I think they should be tortured first and then executed. Bonus torture awarded to any smoker who voted for the Daffy-Fudd ticket in 2000 and '04. That's the good news for you bozos. The bad news is, the Ministry of Retribution is gonna keep you alive, and nicotine-free, so you can derive the maximum enjoyment from seeing the consequences of putting cartoon characters in the real-life White House.
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Beware the snides of March
Oboy, it's March! My birthday! Shannon's birthday! St. Patrick's Day! Lent! Let's celebrate with a shitload of bad news!
Intelligence agencies warned about growing insurgency in late 2003
Video shows Bush was warned before Katrina
U.S. troops in Iraq: 72% say end war in 2006
Smoking ban needs few exemptions
This last I could care less about. Smoking bans are so much monkey-spankage. Tobacco should be illegal and anyone caught smoking should be executed. They like smoke so much, let's set 'em on fire, on national TV. Prime time, baby, prime time. Sell advertising at Super Bowl rates and use the money to buy matches and gasoline so we can have more, bigger and better fires (using state-of-the-art emissions controls, of course). Seize all their shit, scrub off the nicotine glaze and auction it off, use the proceeds to pay down the national debt. Think how much cheaper our health insurance will be once we've thinned the herd of these sluggardly suicides-in-waiting who don't have the balls to jump off a bridge, nosh a little rat poison or gobble a shotgun. Naturally, the hardcore will huddle in dank basements, furtively toking roll-your-owns with eyes flicking left and right in fear of the Nic' Narcs and gobbling Tic-Tacs to take the stank off their breath (too bad it doesn't do shit to take it out of your clothes, Smokey). Smoke 'em out and light 'em up, is what I say. And don't forget to piss 'em out. It's been a dry winter.
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Tour of Forever
Jesus, I can't wait for the Amgen Tour of California to be over and done with. It's like some two-wheeled Groundhog Day. Get up, grab some java, scan the headlines, then plug in and go to work pushing pixels for VeloNews.com. Come 9 p.m. or so, eat some ill-considered meal, drink heavily, collapse, awake, repeat. In point of fact, it is an awful lot like doing a job of work, and you know how I feel about work. It is the curse of the drinking class.
Still, things could be worse. For example, how fucked up is this? It's enough to turn a guy into a Republican.
Meanwhile, for those of you who find ESPN2's coverage of the Tour of California execrable, take heart in the knowledge that the Deuce and its big brother ESPN will be providing 15 hours of bass-fishing coverage this weekend. Break out the PBR and let's rip us some lips, Bubba.
And finally, speaking of fucksticks: Ladies and gentlemen, Bode Miller. In spin worthy of a Bush-administration apparatchik, U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Jim Scherr described the U.S. team's multitudinous failures — which included stumbles, fumbles, fistfights and feuds — thusly: "This team has taken a little bit of a hit in terms about their comportment here in Italy because of a couple of incidents by our high-profile athletes coming into the Games. But we want to say we're proud of this entire team and how they represented our country on the field of play." Yeah, right. No wonder the snowboarders haven't tested positive for THC yet. Jim's been bogarting their bud.
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Quick fix
The Cheerleader-in-Chief is bringing his endless presidential campaign to Colorado today, paying a call upon The National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden to push his astounding new theory that Americans are addicted to oil. I imagine it's only a coincidence that the Energy Department on Sunday announced that it was restoring a portion of his administration's funding cuts for the lab, which forced it to announce on Feb. 7 that it would be laying off 32 staffers, including eight researchers.
According to The Associated Press:
At the direction of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, $5 million was transferred to the Midwest Research Institute, the operating contractor for the lab, to get the workers back on the job, the Energy Department announced Monday.
Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said the decision restores only $5 million of the $28 million budget shortfall at the lab that forced the layoffs.
"The $5 million stopped the bodies from going out the door, but it doesn't provide the money for the (renewable energy) programs," Clapp said.
"We want you to know how important your work is," (Bush) said. "We appreciate what you're doing."
Oh, yes indeedy. Better cash that $5 million check before Karl Rove stops payment, boys. And keep those résumés up to date.
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Local boys make good
My old college roomie Chris Coursey did a fine job
covering the prologue of the Amgen Tour of California yesterday for The Press Democrat, the paper that covers winner Levi Leipheimer's hometown of Santa Rosa. Alas, we share a bad habit, it seems: injecting that ol' demon politics into our cycling coverage. The J-school at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, was a subset of the School of Business, which may explain why Chris and I just can't stop ourselves from giving people the business.
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Ministry of Silly Television
PBS will carry a six-part retrospective of "Monty Python's Flying Circus," Monty Python's Personal Best, beginning Wednesday, according to The Los Angeles Times. Whether this treasure trove of anarchic absurdity extends beyond the reach of KCET is anyone's guess — I don't see it in our local TV guide — but if you're in the Greater Los Angeles Auto Park, you should give it your full attention, if only to watch the parrot on top of your TV explode. While you wait, you can visit the official Python website here.
Update: Not everyone is running the Pythons on Wednesdays, it appears. Our local PBS affiliate will show "Monty Python's Personal Best" at 11 p.m. on Saturdays. And me without a DVD recorder, too. In prime time they're showing Barbra Streisand in "Yentl," which any self-respecting video store will pay you to take off their hands. No wonder their pledge drives last longer than many civilizations.
Meanwhile, raise a glass of the old Gerolsteiner mineral water to Levi Leipheimer, who won the prologue time trial of the Amgen Tour of California today in San Francisco. It was an all-American top five, with Bobby Julich (CSC), George Hincapie (Discovery Channel), Floyd Landis (Phonak) and David Zabriskie (CSC) following Leipheimer, who will wear the tour's first leader's jersey in Stage 1 from Sausalito to his hometown of Santa Rosa. "I spent all winter dreaming about winning the prologue and wearing the leader's jersey into Santa Rosa," Leipheimer told longtime cycling correspondent Sam Abt of the International Herald Tribune. In Abt's article, AEG president Jim Leiweke makes an interesting and encouraging observation about the non-participation of a certain seven-time Tour de France-winner from Texas: "We'd love to have him involved. But I'm glad he's not here today. Because, guess what, none of these people came to see Lance (Armstrong). It doesn't get much better than this. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people came to see this race today and it's not about Lance. It's all about cycling."
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Tour of California
These AEG guys may just be onto something here. A quick tour of various California newspapers' online editions finds widespread pre-race coverage from Santa Rosa to Ventura, everything from your basic chats with hometown athletes to extensive packages with maps, lexicons and suggestions for spectating locations (one of the best is put together by The Press Democrat, in Santa Rosa, where my old cycling buddy Chris Coursey works as a columnist; he'll be covering a couple of stages. I haven't seen any snarky sports columns deriding cycling as gayer than "Brokeback Mountain" yet, but I'm sure they're out there, or will be soon. The only thing dumber than your average sports editor is a sports columnist (apologies to Jim O'Connell and Pancho Morris, two of the few who get it).
Meanwhile, VeloNews has sent about half its staff to the race, including, apparently, whoever cuts and/or signs paychecks for contractors. The only thing I like better than leaving a 75-degree desert playground for a subzero seven-day work week is finding a mailbox full of bills and Victoria's Secret catalogs. Sure, a guy can wax the weasel to the catalog and use the bills to clean up afterward, but sooner or later someone named Guido is gonna turn up on the front stoop demanding the keys to the house and both cars.
I thought I was being smart by roaring off to the desert for a week of R&R before settling into a long week of long-distance race coverage, but now I realize it was the equivalent of taking a hot shower on a cold morning, only more expensive. Sooner or later you have to get out of the shower. Now it's 7 degrees outside and 68 degrees inside and I just wrapped up an hourlong ride to nowhere in the basement, listening to The Allman Brothers and wondering why the fuck I came home. I had a car full of camping gear, a computer and a credit card. There was free wi-fi at the Seattle's Best java shop in Fountain Hills. Food and liquor were readily available. Jesus. If I were any dumber I'd be a Democrat.
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President Who?
Credit where credit is due: Gunner Cheney has copped to what we already knew, that he shot his hunting buddy. A baby step as regards full disclosure and forthrightness, Dick old boy, but a step nonetheless. Now let's try moving on in our little 12-step program:
"I wanted a war in Iraq and I got one."
"Those energy-task-force meetings you've all been so wound up about? Wasn't anybody at 'em except me. I already knew where to send the cash."
"I'm getting rich and you're getting fucked and there's nothing you can do about it."
"If you think I give a shit what the press, the citizenry or that fuckwit in the White House thinks or says about what I do, you're dumber than he is. Handing expanded presidential authority to that assclown is like giving a howler monkey the keys to the starship Enterprise."
"You know what sucks? Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy and Ted Kennedy are never around when I've got a bottle of Jack in one hand and a loaded shotgun in the other."
"The thing I hate about being Undead is I don't feel a thing when Brit Hume is gobbling my mummified, ice-cold knob on national TV."
"Hell will be a breeze after Wyoming."
"The best part of George W. Bush ran down the crack of Barbara's ass."
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Big Dick and the money shot
OK, I want to know when the White House plans to put a stop to all this filthy pornography coming out of Texas. I mean, since when do we have to put up with a Dick shot splashed all over the news? And a facial to boot? Puh-leeze. Where's Jerry Falwell when we need him? There's probably no truth to the rumor that Cheney sent his victim a Valentine's Day card (a red construction-paper heart with a BB taped to it).
The ultra-swank Mad Dog Media training facility.
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Desert-er
Well, strip off my stripes, snap my sword and call me branded: I deserted my post on the front lines of pointless comedy about bicycling, politics and life its ownself in order to take some downtime in the desert. No, not that desert, where Americans and cartoonists are as welcome as sand fleas, but the Sonoran Desert, where even an irreligious Yankee scribbler is free to ride his bicycle without fear of kidnapping, beheading or freezing his nutsack off. That last was the real deal; after way too many consecutive days of wearing three jerseys and neoprene leggings for an hourlong ride, I split for Arizona in a Forester stuffed to the gills with bike crap, camping gear and some industrial-strength sunscreen, the kind Nosferatu might use. More later — this is just a quick note to disappoint any literary critics who might be superhydrating in hopes of pissing on my grave for Valentine's Day.
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Regarding America's oil addiction
Just kidding. Set 'em up, Abdul.
Meanwhile, Tom Toles is taking some heat over at The Washington Post for this cartoon — from the Joint Chiefs, no less. I'd be more interested in what these brass asshats have to say about editorial cartooning if they had figured out how to run a fucking war before taking up art criticism. More Sun Tzu, fewer funnies, boys. Maybe you can find a Classics Comics Illustrated edition somewhere.
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State of the Union: The recap
From The Rude Pundit: "Bush sayin' that Americans are 'addicted to oil' is like your crack dealer standin' over your shakin', shittin' body and tellin' you it's time to get off the crack, but, hey, while you're doin' that, you wanna buy some crack?" Damn, I wish I'd said that.
Meanwhile, a real showman, Stew Albert, has shuffled off the stage. More on the man here, here and here. I remember trying to register as a Yippie when it came time for me to vote in my first presidential election (Nixon v. McGovern). The county clerk wasn't having any of that bullshit. Apparently a party that would run a pig for president could not be considered serious. Unless it was the Republican Party, that is.
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State of the Union
My fellow Americans. Iraq is a bloody quagmire. Al-Qaida is hatching more evil schemes in secrecy, and so is Dick Cheney. The nation's health-care system is a protection racket that makes the Black Hand look like the Red Cross, and I'm dead set on making it worse. The rich are getting fat at the national table and we're sticking the rest of you with the tab and some pretty wicked dishwashing. Gas prices are soaring like a big oily buzzard while a living wage and your savings are going the way of the dodo. The Indians are suckers and, come to think of it, so are the cowboys. You may think you're watching me tonight, but I am watching you. And for those among you who are counting the days until my second term is over, remember that I will be with you for the next three decades in the persons of Justices Roberts and Alito. That is all. Return to your shopping, you silly shits. Dis- miss!
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Year of the Pig?
I just looked back over my "training log" for the first month of 2006, and the best face I can put on it is, "I'm not dead." ("You're not fooling anyone, you know.") Started strong, then tweaked that tendon and it was all downhill from there, with a limp to portside. The final week was especially pathetic, with the weather a tad inclement and the running program on hiatus. No wonder my heart rate exceeds six figures whenever I uncork a bottle of tonsil polish. We Dogs are a piteous lot so far this season. Big Bill McBeef has suffered another attack of the nose boogers and O'Schenk keeps falling off the damn' bike. Maybe he's contemplating a run for president.
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Lies and the lying liars who tell them
Every now and then The New York Times awakens from its slumbers and performs the duties required of the nation's paper of record. Today's editorial, calling the Cheerleader-in-Chief and his goons a ruthless crew of mendacious buccaneers, reminds us that The Old Gray Lady isn't ready for the nursing home quite yet. Meanwhile, The Washington Post runs an op-ed by Lewis Gould stating what should have been obvious for a couple of decades now: The State of the Union speech has all the relevance of a cable-TV infomercial and should be shitcanned, or, at the very least, ignored until it goes away of its own accord. As an ex-newsman, I suffer from the twisted notion that I need to watch this thing, a misconception I've tried curing with strong drink (take a shot every time Shit-for-Brains says "noo-kew-lur"), but I'm trying to cut back on my boozing, and watching the State of the Union under those rules is not conducive to sobriety. So I'll be giving it a miss this year and reading the postgame play-by-play in some newspaper — probably The New York Times, if the old gal is still awake.
A key topic in this annual Symphony for Jawbone will be health care, according to Knight Ridder. This should be at least as amusing as Dubya's dance along the third rail of Social Security. I have a catastrophic insurance plan with a $5,000 deductible and a Medical Savings Account (MSA) through my wife's employer that allows her to specify an amount to be deducted from her pay, pre-tax, at the start of each fiscal year (July 1). Don't use it? You lose it. This makes picking a number an exercise in precognition: Set aside too much and you're flushing money down some insuror's toilet; set aside too little, as we did in 2005, and you pay for your medical care out of your own pocket, post-tax, until next fiscal year. One trip to the dentist for teeth-cleaning and another to the podiatrist for a tweaked Achilles' tendon cleaned me right out for this year, which means I'm on my own, healthwise, for the next six months. And I've only paid half the cost of my new orthotics.
For that reason alone, a Health Savings Account (HSA) that lets a healthy person roll over any unused money from year to year seems like a better idea for people like me, who don't have traditional jobs with employer-provided health insurance. But for 2006, I could only set aside $2,700 in pretax contributions — which would leave a gap of $2,300 between the end of my HSA and the start of my catastrophic policy. Sure, I could always lower the deductible to $2,700 — but I already pay $170 a month for my present coverage (which has already risen $20 a month, though I have yet to file a claim); a lower deductible would crank that figure up the better part of quite some. For the sake of argument, say my catastrophic-coverage cost rises to $250 a month. Then I kick another $225 a month into my hypothetical HSA. Unless my math is wrong, that's $475 a month, or $5,700 annually, for a guy who is far from a heavy consumer of health-care services. A lifelong asthmatic, I use albuterol before exercise, and ordinarily visit a doctor once a year, for treatment of a post-Interbike sinus infection. I wouldn't see a sawbones even that often, if I could buy a five-day regimen of Zithromax over the counter when my beak locks up. Somehow, I don't see insurance as being the problem here. Josh Marshall has a health-care blog going on over at Talking Points Memo. The Economis breaks it down, too. Check 'em out.
And, oh, yeah: This is the Year of the Dog. Cash always makes a thoughtful gift, don't you agree? Just ask any Republican.
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Cyclo-cross world's
Well, so far, so bad, if you're a Yank. Poor Troy Wells suffered a start-line mishap in the under-23 race and spent the rest of the day bleeding from the face. Top U.S. finisher was Jesse Anthony (41st, at 5:36). Bjorn Selander cracked the top 10 in the juniors race, finishing seventh. Sunday the elite women and men will take the field; neither U.S. national champ will compete, which tells you just how big my favorite niche has gotten. Oh, well. I rode my 'cross bike today, thank you very much. I wasn't racing anyone, and a good thing, too, because I have the fitness of the dead and the legs of Long John Silver once afoot. Arrrr. The Achilles' tendon is healing, slowly, but it is very much not interested in helping me run anywhere for a while yet. Hell, walking just got comfortable this past week. At least I'm not a national champion bleeding from the snout in windmill country. That's got to hurt.
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Another chapter closed
First Colorado Springs loses its venerable Chinook Bookshop; now Denver's Cherry Creek is losing The Tattered Cover. The store, which has been in Cherry Creek for 34 years and in its present location for two decades, will move to the old Lowenstein Theatre at Colfax and Elizabeth this summer. The place has always been my idea of Heaven, with plenty of books and places to sit and read; I was just there on Wednesday, and will miss it more than many a dead relative. At least the place will survive, with the Lowenstein location and satellite shops in LoDo and Highlands Ranch; the Chinook is gone forever.
Speaking of great literature, there's a fresh "rant" of sorts up at VeloNews.com. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this sucker runs about 2,412 words.
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Good news and bad news
First,
the good news. Now, the bad news.
Meanwhile, as the Cheerleader-in-Chief says photos of him and GOP money faucet Jack Abramoff are "not relevant," Josh Marshall reports that Reflections Photography, "a studio that does photo shoots for many Republican political events and sells copies to the individuals who attended the events and other members of the public through an online photo database," is scrubbing photos of Abramoff and Dubya from its archives at the behest of the White House. These yahoos get more Stalinist every day. At least Uncle Joe only had folks airbrushed (and rubbed) out. Dubya, in typically ham-handed fashion, shitcans the entire photo. The late Richard Pryor comes to mind, too: "Now are you gonna believe me, or your lyin' eyes?" That's an easy one.
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It's Only Money
The homicide rate would spike faster than gas prices if all a civilian got for torturing someone to death * were a six-grand fine and some short-term restrictions on his movements. I can think of a few swine I'd test my Visa limits on; what the hell, it's only money, and I'm not moving all that well these days anyway. I can also think of a few people I wouldn't turn my back on if there were a cleaver, pistol or ball-peen hammer within reach, what with the lackadaiscal national attitude toward murder and the high price of meat. But I suppose this leniency regarding shoving people off prematurely would apply only if it were a white Christo-Repuglican American who suffered said shoving. I don't expect, for example, that I could feed Ann Coulter to a pack of jackals and expect to get away with it, and not just because no self-respecting jackal would eat her, either.
Meanwhile, as I was ensconced on The Throne this morning, fruitlessly searching The Gazette for signs of human intelligence, a periscope popped up betwixt my thighs. I didn't actually see an NSA logo on the thing, so it was probably just an acid flashback. But if it wasn't, it's time to Simonize the sub, Bub. I've been eating a lot of chile lately.
* We do not torture. Y'all quit funnin' now, boys. Wink wink, nudge nudge. You let that nice Mister Abu Whatever-his-name is have his little nap in that damp sleepin' bag. Now off to church with ya, y'rapscallions.
This just in: Editor & Publisher raises doubts about Gen. Michael Hayden's familiarity with the Fourth Amendment. But I wonder, given the general's argument and the White House's never-ending drive to grab more of what it considers its proper executive authority, if there isn't a bigger issue here. The amendment reads as follows:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
So my question is this: Is the general arguing that a "reasonable search and seizure" does not require the issuance of a warrant and thus an "oath or affirmation" that probable cause exists? This makes my brain hurt. Christ, no wonder you never see a lawyer driving a Forester. And here's another thought for you: If the Cheerleader-in-Chief can run an end-around on the Fourth Amendment as commander-in-chief in his War on Terra, what's to stop him from doing the same to the 22nd? And if he tries it, will anyone notice, or care? Just wondering. More on this topic from Kevin Drum. (And a tip of the judicial wig to Cursor.org for the news from E&P.)
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Something Under the Bed Is Drooling
Ordinarily I frown on casual copyright violation, but I asked Bill Watterson's syndicate if I could interview him back in the day, cyclist to cyclist, cartoonist to cartoonist, and they told me to get stuffed.
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The White House has begun a vigorous and shameless defense of its God-given right to hunt for jihadists under your bed without even informing the dust bunnies, which in any case will be packed off to Neveryoumindistan for a good vacuuming in a spotless dungeon run by a former Soviet satellite. The Warrior-King says it's all okie-dokie 'cause he doesn't break the law 'cause he doesn't have to obey the law. Congress passed a law that says so. Got it? Good. 'Cause if not, there's plenty more sleeping bags in Smotheredbyapsychoistan, Bub. Calvin and Hobbes were right all those years ago: There really is something nasty under there, and it's banging a teensy pair of tarnished brass balls together, trying to scare us.
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The (Not-So) Great Dictator
That paragon of investigative journalism, Parade magazine, today asks "Who Is The World's Worst Dictator?" This glossy blat's cover includes head shots of the recently denutted Muammar al-Qadhafi, perennial GOP boogeyman Fidel Castro and Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il — but our own George W. Bush doesn't even crack the top 20, despite starting two wars that have killed uncounted civilians while leaving Osama bin Laden at large, imprisoning whomever he pleases and spying on those of us who have yet to be invited to assist the Ministry of Homeland Security with its inquiries. Chalk up yet another failure to the Boy-King, whose résumé would fail to impress an assistant manager at K mart. In case you're curious, the podium is as follows: Omar al-Bashir, Sudan; Kim Jong-il, North Korea; Than Shwe, Myanmar. "Let's not lose sight of those heads of state who terrorize and abuse the rights of their own people," trumpets the subhed on page 4. Indeed. And thus, in that spirit, we present today's sermon, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchial Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein. For extra credit, see 1984, by George Orwell, who must have taken H.G. Wells's Time Machine for a spin before plopping his bad self down at the old writing desk.
But a guy can't spend all day sifting Parade for gems like "How To Get Organized," "Laugh Parade" and "Ask Marilyn" (Jeff S. of Middleton, Wisconsin, asks, "Why don't plastic containers dry in the dishwasher's heating cycle the way ordinary plates and glasses do?" Quit smoking that ditch weed and staring at the dishwasher, you nitwit, and get yourself a job.). No, a guy has to drag his ass outside for 90 minutes of pissing in the chamois while navigating ice floes if he wants to avoid becoming part of the bad fattitude that afflicts our nation in these dire days. I couldn't face another day on the trainer, so the Schenkster and I bundled up and performed the Ice Capades, cyclo-cross style, along the Monument Creek trail. It was in surprisingly good condition — some city worker is apparently plowing the bugger, which is more than they're doing to the streets. The Schenkster crashed twice (yesterday and again today), but never on the trail. Seems the ice likes to congregate in rumpled sheets at intersections and snatch at passing bikes like Frosty the Klansman. I nearly ate it a couple of times myself, but escaped thanks to my snail-like reflexes.
This just in: Sucks to be Jake Plummer tomorrow, when The Denver Post goes thump on the doorstep (or maybe CRASH! through the window. Never played football, but I got the chance to be both hero and goat on a couple different swim teams. Hero is better. Thank God I never had anyone stuffing a camera and mic' in my face after I swam like an anvil in the anchor leg of the crucial 400-free relay. The post-game chat is where the real idiocy of sports journalism rears its pointy little head. Jake knows what happened (Pittsburgh 34, Denver 17, with Plummer 18-for-30 for 223 yards plus two lost fumbles and two interceptions), and the sportswriters know what happened, if they stayed sober, but both parties to the fiasco have to talk about it anyway: "What happened out there today, Jake?" "Well, I sucked, and I fucked up a lot." "That's gotta hurt." "Yep, having a couple-three 400-pound 'roids-ragers using you for a trampoline and a tether ball makes for a long afternoon." "Pays pretty good though, huh, Jake?" "Better than your stupid job, ass-face." And so on. Now, of course, is when Colorado will turns its true face to the hirsute Denver QB: "If'n y'dint hafta squint through all thet gah-dayam hair, y'fuckin' hippie queer, y'might be able to see a fuckin' receiver now 'n' then!"
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Whiz, whiz, whiz, whiz
O, the pain of the winter's first indoor Ride to Nowhere. I said pretty much everything I need to say about riding the wind trainer back in 2002, when we were still hunkered in the bunker outside Weirdcliffe. Exercisewise, it's a last resort, when simply pacing back and forth in the living room isn't getting the job done. The Schenkster tried to coax me out into the ice and snow for a little two-wheeled game of demolition derby, but I don't need any more medical bills, thanks all the same. I need to save some money for strong drink, thick pizza and all-too-short vacations in desert climates.
Speaking of vacations, here's one that would pay for itself, if only I could get the gig. I spent 10 years on swim teams, know exactly fuck-all about recreational scuba diving, and can spell my own name correctly when endorsing a check. Alas, I lack passport and positive attitude, have to be Stateside in Februrary to help VeloNews.com with its coverage of the Tour of California, and haven't written anything longer than 750 words in about 10 years. Still, I do have "an engaging personal narrative style," if you're drunk enough and not too picky.
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La Niña strikes again
The local fish-wrapper recently ran a story about La Niña taking a crap in our snowfall probabilities, so naturally, it snowed last night. 'Bout time, too. Another day or two and my lawn, such as it is, would've spontaneously combusted. It wasn't much, just four or five inches, but good, heavy, wet stuff, the kind you can really make a killer snowball with. Downside is, it means I have to ride the wind trainer, which I hate the way Dick Cheney hates the living. But I'm still a couple-three weeks away from being able to run again, so it's either ride indoors or start selling advertising space on my ass, maybe rent it out as a movie screen.
Meanwhile, we're going to try something new here at the DogHaus. "The Daily Dog" is now the homepage, and the recycled columns from Bicycle Retailer & Industry News, VeloNews and the like will be relegated to the Dog Doo'ins page. New year, new wrapper, same old shit. Hey, just like the Bush administration! Unlike that crowd, however, I'd like to know if I'm getting it wrong, so if you see anything that's gone completely sideways or is even dumber than usual, drop me a note here.
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The God Squad
Is it just me, or is there all of a sudden an inordinate number of arseholes pretending to know what God is thinking, and saying as much? George W. Bush, Pat Robertson, Ray Nagin — they all claim to have God's private number, but you know He screens their calls. I asked God about this just the other day and He just snorted. "Oy," sez He. "Don't get Me started. Like I'd tell a little gonif like Bush to go to war, put a hit out on Sharon because a shande like Robertson said so, or whip a hurricane on New Orleans because they have a few feygeles prancing around. I got bigger fish to fry. You got any idea what's going on in the Horsehead Nebula these days? Don't ask. I got a headache like you wouldn't believe. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to whip a case of boils on Dick Cheney and then catch a cab to Betelgeuse. Clean up this mess yourselves. What am I, your maid?"
Meanwhile, if you thought that was funny, check out the latest "So this guy walks into a press conference" gag from DeeCee. Dennis Hastert tells a questioning reporter during a gaggle: "Well, you know, a year ago most people around Congress couldn't tell you who Jack Abramoff was and didn't know who his associates were or what connections there are. As this thing unrolls, people understand that we need to learn from what happened in the past and try to rectify that if we can." Ahhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Laugh, I thought I'd die. But then I have a notoriously odd sense of humor. The funniest part is that none of the assembled reporters thought to ask the obvious followup, which is: "Jesus, just how full of shit are you? Abramoff's been stuffing greasy wads of cash into GOP undies like he was Tony Soprano and they were lap dancers and nobody knew who he was and what he was up to? Puh-leeze. I mean, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night, you fat fuck."
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TGIF the 13th
Bring it on, as the Cheerleader-in-Chief is fond of saying whenever there are plenty of young grunts between him and "it." Whatever Friday the 13th has in store for me, it can't be any worse than the rest of this miserable week. I didn't exactly test that theory by actually leaving the house, but that's mainly because I'm not walking so good. My left Achilles' tendon woke up screaming Tuesday — something to do with a week of illness-induced sloth followed by a week of vigorous exercise capped with an hour of cyclo-cross on Sunday and a 45-minute run in new shoes on Monday. We won't be doing that shit again anytime soon. I've got quarter-inch cork heel lifts in both shoes, orthotics on the way and a fat bill from a podiatrist to amuse myself with in the meantime, along with an icepack, a 55-gallon drum of ibuprofen and strict orders to cease and desist from running for a month.
Meanwhile, VeloNews has decided to advertise for a full-time web geek, which may or may not imperil my part-time gig pushing pixels around the site in the absence of a dedicated professional. And the new-used Forester has a rattle in the dash and a cracked passenger-side mirror that needs attention, so it has to go into the shop when? Uh, on the same morning I have my appointment with the podiatrist. So I drive down to Motor City at 8 a.m. on the coldest day we've seen in weeks and the dealership's Windoze computer has wiped its digital ass with my appointment. No record thereof. Just viruses and worms riding Trojan horses. We'll squeeze you in, says the service guy, who is way too big to get Western with should he decide he can't squeeze me in. Probably won't be ready until closing time. So off I roll toward my podiatrist appointment, on my trusty Bianchi Castro Valley, pedaling into an Arctic headwind with a bum Achilles' tendon and a catastrophic health-insurance package that pays for fuck-all and one bloodshot eye peeled for God, who is clearly out to get me for ... whatever. Millions of reasons. Pick one.
The podiatrist dispenses several hundred dollars worth of bad news, which is to my deductible as a glass of tap water is to an empty swimming pool, and I climb back onto the Bianchi and ride home into the same headwind as before, only colder. Just shy of closing time, the giant dealership dude calls to say the dashboard problem is solved, but someone ordered the wrong mirror, so we'll have to do that some other time. He'll call. God laughs.
Then I get a couple of e-mails, from Herself and various friends: My site is displaying, not the usual rapier-like wit, but rather an extremely pedestrian and unfunny Network Solutions page that says I haven't coughed up the domain-name registration fee. Oopsadaisy. Seems I've changed ISPs and e-mail addresses a few times since the last re-up in 2003 and the usual dunning correspondence has gone walkabout. Even worse, my old user name and password no longer work at the NetSol customer-service site, which in any case is on hiatus for the day because of a companywide meeting, which may or may not have been called by God. Try again tomorrow. Print out this page, sign where indicated, fax to this number, and we will send a confirming e-mail to the address you haven't used since two years before your Forester with the bum mirror hit the streets.
What fuckin' next? I thought. Someone who hates me, probably God, will snag my domain name and I will have to go back to spray-painting libels on freeway overpasses. And then I noticed a button that said something like, "Renew Your Domain Name." Click. And whaddaya know? My user name and password didn't work, but my Visa card sure did. And here we are. You're welcome. That'll be $500. And if you don't pay up, I'm sending the giant Subaru dude after you, with God as his backup.
Chairman Meow with my copy of the Little Red Book |
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Sam's not here, man
The Rude Pundit weighs in on Sam Alito, saying pretty much what I was telling Herself this morning between gulps of coffee and ibuprofen: I remember most of the evil shit I did in college that would be certain to come up during my confirmation hearings should I ever be nominated to the Bizarro World U.S. Supreme Court. "Yessir, Bizarro Sen. Biden, I was taking dope, and plenty of it, too. You needed some to get pussy when you were too drunk to fuck." I drew filthy cartoons about God, Nixon and a superhero called Loadedman, got fired from the University of Colorado Mirror for various offenses against decency, read The Militant, The Call and other commie rags, marched in antiwar and May Day parades, joined the October League, boned anything with a pulse and in general made a big, hairy thing out of myself in a small, hairy kind of way. Hey, it was Greeley, not Berkeley. You could only get away with so much. In any case, when Alito says he doesn't remember being a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton back in the Seventies, he's either full of shit to the sideburns, was doing a lot better dope than I was, or is too stupid to be on the Supreme Court. Take your pick.
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A Forester on Expedition among the Yukons
Driving a car (the Forester is to SUVs as George W. Bush is to Abraham Lincoln) sure is an eye-opener. Now I know how the wife feels at 5 feet tall. It's a land of giants out there. Driving my midget rice-grinder I have a swell view of everyone else's lug nuts. And have you ever tried to find a silver Forester in a Whole Foods parking lot in Colorado? "Is this one mine? Nope, W sticker. Shit! Is this one mine? Nope, Kerry-Edwards sticker. Shit!" And so on. Once the dealer plates are off the sonofabitch I'm hosed.
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DeLaid
I used the last of the medicinal Bushmills last night to toast the passing of Tom "The Hammer" DeLay. Let us hope that this is only the beginning of a long, steep and painful bare-assed slide down a splintery banister that ends in a dank Texas hoosegow, preferably with a grinning Native American public defender promising to file an appeal just as soon as Crazy Horse comes back to life and a serial sodomist nicknamed "The Dong" for a roomie: "Some days you The Hammer, baby, and some days you just nailed," y'know what I'm talkin' 'bout?"
Yeah, right. In a just world, we'd slap this shameless whore into the stocks, where the citizenry he betrayed could pelt him with rotten produce and damp turds. Instead, DeLay will shed a few tears, a couple of bucks and some public authority, and if by some mischance he winds up in tennis prison like the rest of the rich white guys, well, he'll remember where he left the baby Jesus and write a book. Ho, hum.
Me, I'm busy making my own costly mistakes. We traded the Tacoma in yesterday for a 2005 Subaru Forester, which means I have a car payment for the first time in several years, and an actual car to go with it instead of a truck. The last car I owned was a 1964 Chevy Biscayne, which I fed to a train back in 1973. Did four years without a driver's license and it's been trucks ever since — a '73 Datsun, an '83 Toyota 2WD, a '96 F-150 4WD, the '98 Tacoma, a '83 Toyota 4WD and the crème de la crème, a '78 Toyota Chinook pop-top camper that is presently sitting on two flats, with no battery, in Weirdcliffe. Talk about your costly mistakes. I'm surprised the wife didn't insist on a brain scan after that one. And as mistakes go, trading the Tacoma probably wasn't one, despite my misgivings about taking on additional consumer debt in an economy controlled by GOP asshats. I suspect that the tranny-bearings/clutch replacement of a couple years back was botched, and for sure the bugger needed brakes, some rear-end work, a timing belt, rear shocks, new rubber all the way around, an alignment, a replacement for the cracked and leaky Brahma topper, and various other upgrades that, once tallied up, would start to look a lot like a monthly car payment anyway. And it just rolled over 187K on the way to the dealership, too. The Subie has 16K on the odometer and a giant moon roof, so I can motor along with my head out the hatch, standing on the driver's seat and using cruise control, just like Jim Harrison. I'll look like a very butch lesbian tank commander.
Meanwhile, the New Year's rehabilitation regimen continues apace. I got four rides in — two 90-minute cyclo-cross rides through Palmer Park and Bear Creek East, a 90-minute road ride and an hour of lackadaisical 'cross in Monument Valley — plus two 45-minute runs. Today's hour of 'cross was high comedy. After about 40 minutes of fighting a killer wind on the longish northbound leg of my little circuit, my "run-ups" got slower and slower until I looked like a drunk husband trying to tiptoe upstairs and into bed without waking the wife. Look out, Sven Nys.
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No, George, "checks and balances" is not a breakfast cereal
OK, here's some news that should make even the dumbest Bush-backer nervous. Seems King George I has been appending "yeah, right" notes, called "bill-signing statements," to legislation he signs, announcing that he reserves the right to ignore the will of Congress based on what he and his handlers have determined to be the all-encompassing powers of the presidency, stemming from his constitutional designation as commander in chief. Naturally, there is some doubt as to whether the GOP-controlled Congress has the sack to take Numbnuts to the mat over this presidential coup, which effectively denies Congress and the judiciary any significant role in governance. If Congress doesn't act, the electorate should, in the 2006 midterms. Whaddaya think, Bubba? Shit-for-Brains won't be president forever, unless Uncle Dick finds a way around the 22nd Amendment. You want someone like Hillary Clinton to have the free exercise of what Cheney and the gang call "unitary executive" power? Think about it. I know it hurts your pointy head, but try, anyway. Think about black helicopters full of married lesbians coming to take away your guns, Bibles and children.
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The coinage of corruption
The Medium Lobster flexes His mighty claws in re: the Abramoff Affair. We need twisted humor in these dark days, especially those of us with friends or family serving in Iraq, as this New York Times story — about the casualties stemming from the Pentagon's reluctance to supply body and vehicle armor to the troops — indicates all too graphically. As has become traditional in this administration of chickenshits, liars and fools, "Pentagon officials declined to discuss details of the wound data, saying it would aid the enemy."
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Operation Photo Op
The newly crowned Mr. Humility will be meeting with secretaries of state and defense past and present today during an attempt to make himself look like more of an in-charge president and less of a retarded king. Think of it as like renting living wallpaper for the Roosevelt Room. Don't expect much in the way of "news" out of this one. After the White House photog gets his snaps, it's off to the Phantom Zone for Madeline Albright and an special Agent K memory wipe for everyone but Colin Powell, who has a unique ability to shut down portions of his mind when it encounters anything unpleasant, like whatever it is that Karl Rove is doing behind him.
In unrelated news, those of you who are accustomed to enduring the rigors of Interbike might find David Pogue's visit to the Consumer Electronics Show Jan. 5-8 in Vegas an interesting read. This geek-fest makes I-bike look like a parking-lot crit.
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You Can't Make This Shit Up Department
Fat bastard driving Dodge SUV. Cigarette in left hand dangling outside the driver's-side window. Bumper sticker reads: "Partnership for an Idiot-Free America." Not his auto, or just not doing his part?
Meanwhile, could this loogin look any more like a dime-store gunsel straight out of a Dashiell Hammett potboiler? The musical notes of a series of dimes dropping should trigger a Pavlovian response in Congress — but this time, the mutts won't be salivating, like they were when Jack "Big Jelly" Abramoff was passing out the moola.
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The 2005 O'Grady Awards
In the rush to wrap up the holiday season I forgot to mention that there's a fresh Foaming Rant up at VeloNews.com — the fabled end-of-season O'Grady Awards. Read 'em and weep.
Speaking of reading and weeping, check out this excerpt from "Feet to the Fire: The Media after 9/11," by Kristina Borjesson. It's a chat with John Walcott of Knight Ridder, the outfit that has done the only solid, consistent reporting on this administration — and which is on the chopping block, thanks to its shareholders' greed. Apparently a 19.4 percent profit margin just doesn't cut the mustard anymore. Fuck the news, what we need here is more money. And more shitbag rags like the ones Gannett, Freedom Communications and Lee Enterprises put out. Hell, you're better off reading tea leaves, the entrails of some small animal or your old Magic 8-Ball.
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Tabula ralpha
Mistook tequila for a widely known ginger ale last night, hence spent much time yodeling into the thundermug, as the Irish would put it. I stole that from Jim Harrison. The line, not the tequila. That I had to pay for. Twice. O, the pain.
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