daily dog archives

2005

2004

2003

2002

By Patrick O'Grady
Mad Dog Media

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New Year's Eve

  This wild winter weather you've been hearing so much about has been a delightful end to what has been in many ways a miserable year. I'd been in a bit of a rut, and this snow blew me right out of it. I bolted the road bike to the Cateye wind trainer with the notion of getting some exercise and then said to hell with it. We broke out the cross-county skis for the first time in four or five years, I rode my mountain bike twice (haven't done that since Moab in 2005), and I cooked up a few dishes I hadn't made before and didn't poison anyone. We had friends and neighbors over for dinner a couple times, went to a few parties, and generally had a high old time. The world was busily going to hell in a handbasket, just like always, but I paid less attention and feel better for having done so. You can't do that all the time — too many citizens napping on the job is what put the nation in its many present predicaments — but a guy who doesn't take a little downtime now and again is liable to start oiling firearms and pricing air travel to DeeCee, and not for a friendly hunting trip with Darth Cheney, either.

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One of these two psychos is hung, and it ain't W

  Well, Alfred E. Bush ("Worry") finally has had his little wet dream come all stickily true, the one about stretching old Saddam's neck. You know, the one that cost us 3,000 of us and who knows how many of them. The gift that keeps on giving, as long as you're not the poor sap doing the laundry. I'd sure hate to be the janitor who has to mop up in the Oval Office after Numbnuts screens that all-too-short snuff film. It'll make the Clinton years look like a Shaker sock hop.

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Oliphant on Ford

  My favorite editorial cartoonist, Pat Oliphant, offers his take on the passing of Gerald Ford here. It's quite a story. Give it a glance and then try to imagine him pulling that sort of thing off today. Above is an example of how Oliphant usually drew Ford back in the day, clipped from his collection "Oliphant: An Informal Gathering." Click the thumbnail for a larger version.

  Meanwhile, here in Bibleburg, the snow is back with a vengeance. I blew off hitting the grocery yesterday and paid dearly for my procrastination this morning, when a visit to the King Soopers wound up not unlike Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, or maybe a herd of journos hitting an open bar. The joint had been pretty well picked over by last night's crowd, but I managed to scavenge the makings of a heavy-duty beef-vegetable soup, plus more green chiles and other essentials for enchiladas, tacos, quesadillas and the like.

  I got lined up at the register just in time, too, judging by the queue that formed behind me. Don't any of these people have jobs? Are there no prisons, no workhouses? Thank JeezWhiz none of them eat real food or I could've been in trouble. You have to believe in an afterlife to eat the way some of these yahoos do. Sports drinks, Twinkies and frozen pizzas are not the foundation of a healthy diet. We ever find ourselves in a situation where cannibalism is acceptable, I may have to go vegetarian. Not even salsa would help me choke down a chop sliced off one of these gamy bastards.

  Late update: Today's on-again, off-again snow got down to business late this afternoon, with fat, wet flakes pounding down like God's own dandruff, so Herself and I broke out the cross-country skis again, this time shunning the local streets in favor of a neighborhood park (grass makes for a softer landing than asphalt when you do an eggbeater). It was spastic, frigid and big fun, too. We both fell at least once (my glasses iced up right away, so I pulled them off and thus was skiing both blind and dumb). But hey, a lack of technical skill means more exercise, right? Forty-five minutes later I felt like I was wearing someone else's ass, one that had been righteously kicked by a large and beefy individual wearing hobmailed boots.

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In case you forgot: Pro cycling sucks

  It's that time of year again, when everyone with a laptop, camera and/or microphone cops a look in the rear-view mirror and views with alarm for fun and profit. During today's "Morning Edition," NPR's Tom Goldman took a backwards squint at cycling 2006 and found it wanting. Give him a listen here.

  I wrote my own year-ender for Bicycle Retailer & Industry News back on Pearl Harbor Day, and with a little luck (and fewer blizzards) it should be sitting next to shop toilets everywhere by New Year's Day. Non-shop rats can read it here, illustrated by a 2006 cartoon from VeloNews.

  Meanwhile, as politicians and pundits eulogize former President Gerald R. Ford, it's worth remembering, as does The Nation's Jon Wiener, that he first set Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George H.W. Bush on the national stage. As Wiener notes:

Those two Ford appointees [Rumsfeld and Cheney] worked together ever since. The Bush White House assertion of unchecked presidential power stems from the lessons they drew from their experience of working for the weakest president in recent American history. "For Dick and Don," Harold Meyerson wrote in The American Prospect last July, "the frustrations of the Ford years have been compensated for by the abuses of the Bush years."

  And if that doesn't do it for you, there's that whole Nixon-pardon thing, too. I was working for the now-defunct Colorado Springs Sun at the time, and the elation we all felt at seeing Nixon run out of office like an egg-stealing weasel turned to rage in short order. Ford could've spent his entire unearned term in office traveling the country from coast to coast, passing out thousand-dollar bills, and he still would've gotten beaten like a gong by Jimmy Carter. As his obit in today's Washington Post notes:

It was widely assumed that Ford had doomed his political career. By January 1975, his approval rating had plummeted to 36 percent. Not even two assassination attempts, both in California in 1975, generated significant popular support.

  It's a hell of a note when they're shooting at you and nobody outside the immediate family gives a shit. But all this having been said, I'd take a dead Ford over a live Bush any day of the week.

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Frosty the Snowdog

  The snow isn't even close to gone here in Bibleburg, but my achin' pups couldn't bear the thought of a third consecutive run, so when the temps hit the mid-40s I broke out a 'cross bike, slapped a new pair of Maxxis Raze tires on it, screwed some spikes into an old pair of Northwaves and went for a sketchy ride in the snow over at Monument Valley Park.

  O, the pain. Navigating this week-old snow was like riding through a walk-in cooler full of the styrofoam inserts pulled from electronics packaging. Crunch, pop, and I'd be jinking off this way; pop, crunch, and I'd be tacking off that way, all at about 6 mph. I did a couple spastic laps on my usual circuit, then surrendered to the conditions (and my lack of fitness, and the 200,000 or so calories I've consumed in the past three or four days), and rolled slowly north along the bike path to Woodmen and back for a total outing of about 90 minutes. I can practically smell that pro contract headed my way, can't you?

  I usually run Michelin Jets, a great all-rounder for the normally dry, hard-packed conditions in these parts. Come winter, I used to go to either Michelin Muds or Sprints, neither of which survives today, more's the pity. A Mud 2 is available, but I haven't tried it yet. And anyway, no tire would've been ideal for today's wretched conditions, unless they came as a quartet attached to a 4WD truck with a bed full of concrete blocks.

  Nevertheless, in the mud, through untracked snow, and on the icy streets between Dogpatch and the park, the Raze did just fine, even pumped to 40psi. It's easier to mount than Paris Hilton, fat as a Tia Sophia breakfast burrito and sticky like spider feet. Reminds me somewhat of the equally gooey Panaracer Crossblaster, which is both narrower (700x31 vs. 700x35) and slightly lighter (280g vs. 315g).

  More snow is on the way, according to my spies at the National Weather Service, so I'll report back as to how the Raze likes a fresh pile.

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Ho, ho, ho, yo

  Happy holidays to you and yours from the Mad Dog Media Communications Empire via The Drifters and Crooks and Liars (click the image at right). While you're enjoying your trip down a snowy Memory Lane, revisit SNL's alternate ending for the Frank Capra holiday classic "It's a Wonderful Life." And get up offa that thing for the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, who finally retired for good today. KRCC is playing his "Santa's Got a Brand New Bag"; you can stream it and get down. Huh!

  Outside our wrapping-paper-strewn living rooms, meanwhile, real life continues apace. The USS Eisenhower carrier strike group is said to have moved into the Persian Gulf, with a second carrier group led by the USS Stennis en route. Meanwhile, the American military claims to have captured at least four Iranians said to have been involved in attacks on official security forces in Iraq. If you're a paranoid looking for a Gulf of Tonkin moment that the Busheviks might use as an excuse to attack a defiant Iran's nuclear facilities, this is not exactly cheery holiday news.

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Multiculturalism comes to Bibleburg

  Listen up, all you Boulder fairies. Last night, right here in Nude Life Church country, we hosted a solstice celebration that involved the consumption of homemade northern New Mexican cuisine, French wine and American microbrew by two Jews, a Catholic, a lapsed Baptist, a vegetarian of indeterminate religiosity and Your Humble Narrator, a Zen Druid who spent his entire day in the kitchen when he should have been outside pissing on trees and telling them it was raining.

  I always forget what a giant pain in the ass it is to cook for a bunch of people until I actually start doing it, and thus the original scheme quickly unraveled. The major casualty was the beef enchiladas, which fell victim to the ticking clock. After assembling the salsa, roasting and peeling a mess of poblanos and Anaheims, then getting the beans, rice and green-chile sauce going, I said, screw it — I'll make a dozen chicken enchiladas and a dozen cheddar-and-chives. Turned out that was just ducky, backed up as it was by a Cuban tomato-and-avocado salad fetched over by Susan O'Stank, bride of teammate Michael "Recovery Ride" O'Stank. Tonight I'll do the beef enchiladas to augment the leftovers. Incidentally, if you like beans, try the recipe in the Santa Fe School of Cooking cookbook (page 134). Buggers take about four hours, but they're worth every second, especially if you enjoy farting vengefully at passing Republicans.

  Meanwhile, let's take a quick glance around, see what everybody's getting Baby JeezWhiz for his birthday. We have the top ground commander flip-flopping on escalating the war in Iraq, where the hits just keep on comin'.; Ethiopia attacking Somalia; Iran pressing on with its nuclear ambitions; the Limeys wigging about the chances of a terrorist attack on the Chunnel; and xenophobic asshat Virgil Goode Jr. screeching nonsense about Muslims in Congress. Yep. Same old shit. No wonder JeezWhiz hasn't been seen in these parts in two millennia. Why would he want to come back to this?

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Happy solstice

  The days are finally growing longer, the traditional Mad Dog rubber tree is hung about with cheap baubles, and the credit cards are on fire. Nothing quite says "happy holidays" like massive consumer debt. That, and the annual O'Grady Awards, hosted by the fine folks over at VeloNews.com. They're free, and worth every penny.

  In other news, Herself's run of snow days has expired, and off she went to work, snow-surfing via Subaru. It's not as bad as it sounds — if she survives, she's looking at 10 days off before school starts up again. Fat city. We should all have such gigs. My commute, meanwhile, is precisely 28 sock-footed steps from bed to coffeemaker to computer, and any day I don't work is a day I don't get paid, so here I am.

  I'll eventually have to get outside, too. We're running low on grub and grog, and my ass ain't getting any narrower squatting in this office chair. Food may be problematic, given the state of the state, but I bet I can still find booze, and exercise is always available, especially if you do your shopping on foot. When the white stuff is on the ground in Bibleburg, a wise man sticks to the sidewalk. These Bible-thumpers drive like the rapture is right around the corner.

  Later that day: Resupply is complete, including fresh stocks of red and white wine (it's French, too; suck on it, rednecks) and the raw materials for a Mexican feast straight out of The Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook — organic beef enchiladas in red chile sauce; organic chicken enchiladas in green chile sauce; cheese enchiladas starring the fabled Black Diamond cheddar; pinto beans with chile; Mexican rice; plus salsa fresca and guacamole, with chips for dipping. I'll be cooking all goddamn day, but it's cheaper than driving to Santa Fe and taking a room at the Hilton.

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Happy birthday, Frank

  It is the final miracle of the Festival of Zappadan: He has risen. Or maybe not, given the weather. Coming back to life on a day such as this would make a man yearn for Hell, maybe a bracing dip in the Lake of Fire. FZ dreamt of this day long ago, according to the Book of Apostrophe, wherein it is written, yea:

Dreamed I was an eskimo
Frozen wind began to blow
Under my boots and around my toes
The frost that bit the ground below
It was a hundred degrees below zero

  Verily, the Word he gave us then will serve us even unto today, as the snow continues to fall sideways and coyotes trot blithely along the city sidewalks, shopping for toothsome household pets:

Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow

  Postscript: In honor of FZ's birthday, I asked our friendly local NPR affiliate, KRCC-FM, to play their favorites from his songbook. They obliged with "Central Scrutinizer" from "Joe's Garage," "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast" and "Father O'Blivion" from "Apostrophe," and "Treacherous Cretins" from "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar." Service like this is why we give them money, and lots of it, too. A big wowie-zowie goes out to our friend and neighbor Vicky for spinnin' the platters. Great googly moogly!

  Addendum: Herself and I went out for a jog through the snow into Monument Valley Park and back, astonished to find that the trail had been plowed, though the roads had not, and then broke out the cross-country skis and dicked around for a spell on the neighborhood streets. You want a good way to get attention, there it is. Drivers were grinning at us, passers-by addressed us kindly, and nary a dog chased us. Auto traffic had groomed the roads enough for skate-skiing, but it's been years since we were on boards at all, so we stuck to diagonal stride. Big yuks. Try it sometime.

  Coda: Happy winter solstice! As a Zen Druid, I will be hugging a tree, even though I realize that the tree and I are already one.

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By Odin's Fur-lined Jockstrap of Destiny!

  Ragnarok is upon us here in Bibleburg, no doubt the consequence of various short-arm shenanigans by the satyric shepherds over at Nude Life Church. It's snowing sideways, the NWS is talking in terms of feet rather than inches, and pretty much everything is as closed as The Waffler's mind. Seems Numbnuts still hasn't gotten the memo we sent him in the midterms. Or maybe he's just having trouble reading it, though that seems unlikely, seeing as it's mostly monosyllabic: "Get us the fuck out of Iraq!"

  Late update: Interstate 25 is closed from New Mexico to Castle Rock, I-70 is closed from Denver to Kansas, Highway 24 east to Limon is closed, Academy Boulevard is a parking lot, most flights from the Bibleburg Interdimensional Airport have been canceled, Gov. Bill "GWB Lite" Owens has declared a state of emergency and activated the Colorado National Guard (assuming any Guardspersons remain in Zone Interior) — woo hoo, ain't nothin' but a party.

  After enjoying a health-enhancing yet repellent breakfast of steel-cut Irish oatmeal, Herself and I donned all the Gore-Tex we own and mushed a block to Dogtooth Coffee Company for coffee, soup and pizza. Afterward, I shoveled a block of our street and a bit more of another in a pathetic attempt to counteract 52 years of karmic debt bordering on karmic bankruptcy while Herself troubleshot a neighbor's balky PC. Then I spent a little time upgrading my backup Steelman Eurocross from bar-end shifting to STI using a set of Tiagra-level eight-speed levers from BTI in Santa Fe (thanks, Preston). As I am an indifferent mechanic at best, this required the occasional do-over and much violent profanity, which distressed the cat. But, still, brand-new eight-speed STI, dude. I didn't even know such technology remained available in our 10-speed universe. And me a Titan of Industry, too. Go figure. Each lever weighs more than the frameset, but what the hell, at least I won't perform acupuncture on my knees every time I stand to climb a hill.

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Yappa Zappa doo!

  Now that Joseph Barbera has joined fellow animator William Hanna on The Other Side, it can be told: The original pilot of the TV cartoon series "The Flintstones" was based loosely on the life of Frank Zappa. In 1957, when MGM closed down its animation unit, the suddenly jobless Hanna and Barbera were wandering, half-drunk, around the MGM lot when they stumbled across the time machine used in George Pal's movie of the same name (which was a documentary, not a science-fiction film, as was popularly believed), and used the device to travel forward in time to 1966, just in time for the release of the Mothers of Invention's first album, "Freak Out." Envisioning a high-concept series based on a Stoned Age family of musicians not unlike the MOI, the animators returned to their own time and eagerly pitched their revolutionary idea to MGM execs, who immediately called security and ordered them permanently barred from the studio. Chagrined, Hanna and Barbera decided to dumb the idea down as a lame "Honeymooners" rip-off, sold it to ABC in 1960, and the rest, as they say, is history.

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Comp' time

  Cheers to Katie Compton for crushing all once again at cyclo-cross nationals. A tip of the Mad Dog cycling tuque, too, to Tim Johnson, who bounced back from a disappointing nationals to win the California Giant Strawberry Cup.

  Me, I'm stuck in Bibleburg once again. I haven't been to a nationals since 1999, at the Presidio in Gay Bay — but I did go out for an hour of frigid 'cross in the little ring this morning, my first actual running-and-riding outing since tweaking my back a couple weeks ago. It was bite-ass cold, in the mid-20s, with a bitter south-southeast wind taking the temp' down to about 14, and I was not impressive. But it was better than no 'cross at all.

  Elsewhere, Colin Powell crawled out from under his rock to nip The Waffler (Formerly Known as The Decider) in his shin splints, saying the Army "was about broken" and warning that another hefty transfusion of American blood is unlikely to save our Mesopotamian patient. Too bad he wasn't so chatty when it might have been possible to actually make a difference, foreign-policy-wise. Is this merely a snarky bit of the old "I told you so," a pathetic attempt to repossess his balls, or is Powell thinking about running for the White House in 2008? With everybody from Rudy the G to Newt Gangrenous lacing up the Nikes, we could be treated to a couple years of political theater that would make Max Bialystock look like an honest man.

  And thus, on this, Day 4 of the holy Festival of Zappadan, we take our text from the Book of Broadway the Hard Way:

With a big ol lie
And a flag and a pie
And a mom and a bible
Most folks are just liable
To buy any line
Any place, any time

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Busy, busy, busy

  Things got a little hectic around the DogHaus the past couple days, hence the lack of regular updates for the two or three of you who insist on reading this crap. Today, we take note that Ned Overend and Steve Tilford have added to their already-extensive palmares at 'cross nats out in P-town; a tip of the Mad Dog propeller beanie to both, may they continue to crush younger men under their wheels like so many colorful roaches. Tilly planned to race every race he could get into this weekend, while Deadly Nedly said the one would suffice, followed by beer. Good man.

  Meanwhile, The Waffler (Formerly Known as The Decider) bid adieu to Minister of Defense Ronald Dumsfeld with what should have been a firing squad, but instead was a Soviet-style military review, complete with a 19-gun salute. Launching the last of his fabled snowflakes in verbal rather than written fashion, Dummy warned: "Today, it should be clear that not only is weakness provocative, but the perception of weakness on our part can be provocative as well." Yeah, well, so can stupidity, Dummy old boy. Best of luck with the memoirs. Don't try shopping them to O.J.'s publisher, though — she's gotten the ax, too.

  Alas, while Dummy is finally gone, he is not forgotten. Word is that The Waffler is considering stuffing more grunts into the meat grinder. Oh, good. This doesn't remind me of Vietnam at all. This would give the lie to The Waffler's insistence that he gives the generals what they ask for (Gen. G.W. Casey has stressed stepping up the training of Iraqis and handing responsibility to them as quickly as possible, and Gen. John Abazaid says such a surge in troop levels would yield only a temporary advantage and might postpone the day when Iraqis "stand up so we can stand down."). This, mind you, as Gen. Peter Schoomaker says the Army is near the breaking point and the National Guard and Reserves are showing the strain, according to McClathy's Washington bureau. And a happy holiday season to you, too. Why the friends and family of America's military personnel haven't marched on DeeCee with pitchforks and torches is beyond me. Must be something good on TV.

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Some remakes don't work

  I've been trying to figure out which movie The Decider and his merry men remind me of — "Moby Dick?" "The Caine Mutiny?" "Pee-wee's Big Adventure?" — and I think I've finally got it: "Blazing Saddles." Think about it. Numbnuts is the insanely stupid, pointlessly belligerent Governor William J. Le Petomane, easily distracted by trivia and interested only in poontang and politics ("We've gotta protect our phony-baloney jobs, gentlemen!"). And Darth Cheney is the greasy scumbag Hedley Lamarr, the so-called brains behind the operation ("My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.")

  At right: Cheney, Bush and White House counsel Harriet Miers.

  Tell me this exchange between Lamarr and Le Petomane doesn't sound like Backseat dealing with Junior:

Hedley Lamarr: Meeting adjourned. Oh, I am sorry, sir, I didn't mean to overstep my bounds. You say that.

Governor William J. Le Petomane: What?

Lamarr: Meeting is adjourned.

Le Petomane: It is?

Lamarr: No, you say that, governor.

Le Petomane: What?

Lamarr: Meeting is adjourned.

Le Petomane: It is?

Lamarr: Here, sir, play with this. (Hands the governor a rubber ball and paddle set.)

  Meanwhile, we may have to revisit Dubya's moniker, "The Decider," 'cause the simple shit sure is having trouble pulling his thumb out as regards Iraq. The CEO President, the dude who has spent the past six years prodding a spineless Congress along at full gallop like so many turpentined sheep, now says he needs more time to reach the right decision. Well, the right decision, as is all too readily apparent, was not to stage-dive into this particular mosh pit at all. But since the Wayback Machine is still a few years off, I'd say he ought to listen to that much-ballyhooed Will of the People, as expressed in the recently concluded elections, and get us the fuck out of that place yesterday.

  And thus, as The Aristocrats herald our arrival at the precise midpoint of the Festival of Zappadan, the fabled Tipping Point foretold by St. Roxy of Elsewhere, we take our text from the Book of Zoot Allures:

Hey now, better make a decision
Be a moron, and keep your position
You oughta know now, all your education
won't help you no-how.

You're gonna wind up workin' in a gas station
Wind up workin' in a gas station
Wind up workin' in a gas station
Wind up workin' in a gas station

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R.I.P, Dong Ngo, 1952-2006

  Oh, hell; another brother down. Dong Ngo of The Denver Spoke is gone, and our sport, state and planet are the poorer for his passing. What he sold me in the mid-1980s still works; the fond memories he supplied for free will live forever. Catch a glimpse of the man at www.thedongman.com. More later.

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No blood for oil

  Writing in The Washington Post on the economic and political forces that led us into Iraq (and will bring us back, even if we leave tomorrow), David Rothkopf opines:

We must embark on the long-term but critical task of reducing our energy dependence on the Middle East. No strategy in any Gulf war could produce more lasting change in the region than a prolonged fall in oil prices. The only dependable formula for ultimate victory in the Gulf wars will come through innovation and conservation right here at home.

  There it is. We might be less inclined to spill blood all over someone else's desert if we didn't need all the oil underneath it to grease the squeaky wheels of the All-American 24/7 Perpetual Shopping Machine.

  And while we're on the topic, who thought it was a wise expenditure of the taxpayers' money to send Ronald Dumsfeld on a farewell tour of Iraq? Sure, we're talking fractions of pennies on the dollar here, given how much dough we've already flushed down the Mesopotamian toilet. Still, I think a one-way ticket, a retirement condo in Baghdad well outside the Green Zone and an "I ♥ The Crusades" T-shirt super-glued to his heartless torso would have been compensation enough for his years of service to The Decider.

  And therefore, yea, on this the 11th day of the holy festival of Zappadan, we take our text from the Book of Yo' Mama:

You aint really made for bein' out in the street
Ain't much hope for a fool like you
'cause if you play the game, you will get beat

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Where's the sacred beef?

  A survey of a thousand men in India has concluded that condoms made to international standards are a tad too large for the average subcontinental tallywhacker. This may explain why we've never had a porn star named Gunga Dong.

  Speaking of little wieners, The Decider is doing exactly what everyone expected him to regarding the Baker commission's report: ignoring it. During a Friday meeting with Democratic leaders, Numbnuts seemed more interested in comparing himself to Harry S Truman and got into a pissing match with Senate Majority Whip-elect Dick Durbin, who called bullshit on the prez. Bush, Durbin said, "reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response" and emphasized that he is "the commander in chief."

  What an insufferable prick. Napoleon Bonehead is so focused on how history will portray him that he doesn't notice the blood puddling up around his wingtips. He knows neither humility nor shame. It's all about dick size, and he's deathly afraid this splendid little war he started is shrinking his to Indian-toddler status.

  Thus, on this the 12th day of Zappadan, we take our text from the Book of Bwana Dik:

My dick is a monster
Give me your heart
My dick is a Harley
You kick it to start
(chorus line)
When Bwana Dik speaks
The heavens will part

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WWZD? (What Would Zappa Do?)

  Happy thought of the day, from Leslie Gelb over at Foreign Affairs:

Six months or a year from now the (Iraq Study Group)'s report will be a memory and the ball will be back in the hands of the man who got the United States into the quagmire to begin with: the decider in the White House. At that point, Bush is likely to revert to his gut and heart, and decide not to be the president who lost Iraq. That honor he will pass on to his successor.

  A burnt weeny sandwich indeed, this pretentious and portentious pamphlet written for Junior by Daddy's brainy buddies. Thus, on this, the 14th day of Zappadan, we take our text from the Book of Dirty Love, yea, verily:

Give me
Your dirty love
Like some tacky little pamphlet
In your daddy's bottom drawer

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Happy Zappadan!

  The Zappatistas over at The Aristocrats are observing the festival of Zappadan, which runs from the date of Frank Zappa's death (Dec. 4) until the date of his birth (Dec. 21). This is a holy time in which Zappatistas strive to achieve Acetylene Nirvana through feasting on hot rats, mud shark and latex solar beef in lumpy gravy, with peaches en regalia for dessert, followed by meditations on the koans posed by the Grand Wazoo ("Who are the brain police?" "What's the ugliest part of your body?" And of course, "Don't eat the yellow snow.")

  Uncle Meat, the Duke of Prunes, Bwana Dik and I are celebrating this evening by listening to "The Mothers-Fillmore East, June 1971." Go thou and do likewise, Stink-Foot.

  While we're dealing with a musical theme here, a tip of the Mad Dog steel pot to Steve O'Dell for passing on this link to a "Daily Show" interview with and performance by Tom Waits. It's "Day After Tomorrow," a soldier's lament and prayer for a safe return home, from "Real Gone." And the really weird thing is, not only did Waits occasionally open for Zappa, but I was listening to that very CD when the e-mail arrived.

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Monday, Monday

  Busy day already, and it's barely noon. First, my buddy Bill Ramsay calls to say his Spike pro cycling team has lost its title sponsor, forcing him into a mad scramble to find a new sugar daddy for the 2007 season. Then Sean Weide and Kurt Jambretz weigh in with a story and photos of Steve Tilford stacking it into a not-quite-frozen-solid lake, pulling himself out of the drink and winning the KLM Marketing UCI Cyclocross in Kansas City. And Frank Rich wonders whether The Decider has started talking to the wall a la Nixon. Doubt it. At this point, not even the walls will listen to him. He has all the credibilty of a Britney Spears lecture on John Coltrane.

  Maybe we should run Tilly for president. The old boy is from Kansas, the American heartland, and he's tougher than whang leather. Plus he knows how to get out of a quagmire, or even an icy pond, if he happens to find himself in one. No bullshit about how leaving the pond will embolden international terrorism, or staying in the pond until the ducks ask him to leave, or bringing more people into the pond to help stabilize it. He just gets the fuck out of the pond and goes back to work.

  Meanwhile, the latest entry in the Forget About Iraq, Check This Out contest has to be NASA's plan for a permanent lunar base at one of the moon's poles. They've even found a base commander. Here's a picture, plus a link to his résumé.

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Enough awready

  My Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) has crashed on me for the last time. I unplugged the evil sonofabitch from its various peripherals, replaced it with Old Reliable — the G3 500 PowerBook dubbed "Pismo," and once again peace reigns in the office.

  I have no idea what's causing the crashes, and I don't care. I'm just here to drive the damn' things, not peer under the hood with a greasy bouquet of wrenches. All I know is that at some point during every working day, Mozilla locks up like W at a press conference, requiring a double force-quit that invariably queers my Internet connection. Quitting the other apps in preparation for a reboot triggers a freeze, followed by a reset, then a restart, an automatic check by Disk First Aid, the eventual phoenix-like rise from the ashes, and so on. Giant pain in the ass, is the short version. I'll lug the $50 piece of crap over to Voelker Research for a brain-scan or take it out in the country and shoot it.

  "But why work on last millennium's technology?" you ask. Same reason I ride eight-speed Ultegra. 'Cause I like it, that's why. Plus the VeloNews.com website tool has "issues" with OSX in much the same way that The Decider has issues with Jim Webb; bring the two of 'em together and you got yourself a barfight, Hoss. So rather than switch to the Windoze platform, I run the so-called "Classic" OS, in this case 9.0.4. I actually prefer it to OSX, though the little things about being that far off the technological back are starting to get to me, like web pages rendering incorrectly or not at all, even in iCab 3. The Denver Post's recently redesigned site is a guaranteed browser crash in Classic, and occasionally takes down the entire computer. Happily, this isn't a problem because there is nothing to see at the Post site, especially now that they've brought Woody Paige back on board.

  Speaking of horror, how's this? NASA chief Michael Griffin hopes to bring the solar system under humanity's "sphere of influence." Says Griffin: "In the long run, that's what the expansion of humankind into space is all about." Uh huh. 'Cause, like, we've done such a stellar job with the one planet we've already got. The Clampetts fleeing their polluted holler in hopes of finding an extraterrestrial Beverly Hills comes to mind. If I were God, I'd want a hefty damage deposit.

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Wanted: Tan lines

  Oh, bugger. It's snowing again. A balmy 22 degrees. In short, it's December in Colorado, instead of December in San Diego, Tucson or Cancun. My buddy Hal was thinking out loud the other day that he felt he could stand extreme heat better than extreme cold, but I recalled my brief time in Tucson back in 1980 and noted that during winter in Colorado, a guy can always pile on the layers, but come summer in Arizona you can strip down only so far before the cops take an interest.

  I hated Tucson. The Arizona Daily Star, where I worked, was infested by Reaganites, fascists and other evil spirits. And it was a 20-minute drive from my rental house off Orange Grove Road, in a 1973 Datsun pickup without air conditioning, in temperatures that routinely approached 110 degrees. The only upside was the University of Arizona pool, which offered bikini'd scenery that made the Catalinas look like a pile of mine tailings. Nevertheless, I only lasted a year before fleeing back to Colorado, then California, and finally Oregon, for another rotten newspaper gig at The Corvalllis Gazette-Times. Talk about shitty weather. William Least Heat Moon mentioned it in "Blue Highways":

In western Oregon it can rain a hundred and thirty inches a year, making weather so dismal that even a seadog like Sir Francis Drake complained about it four centuries ago when he sailed here on the Golden Hind in search of the Northwest Passage.

  A few years of that noise and I was back to Colorado again. I must not dislike snow all that much. Not as much as I dislike boiling heat and pissing-down rain, anyway. I hear they mostly don't get either down in San Diego. Or in Patagonia, a locale favored by author and poet Jim Harrison. This place also came up in a conversation with Hal, who apparently is suffering a mild bout of cabin fever. Right now Patagonia is 64 and sunny, according to Weather.com. Meanwhile, we're down to 13 here, with more snow likely.

  If I had any brains I'd be in Patagonia right now, working my way through a platter of barbecued Mescal Gap Ranch prickly-pear baby-back ribs at Cafe Sonoita, instead of jogging gingerly along unshoveled Republican sidewalks, wearing everything in the closet except the hangers, wondering which hidden sheet of ice will be the one to send me back to the chiropractor.

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Ho, ho, ho

  Another month down the rathole. Christmas looms like a red-and-green Hummer piloted by a drunk Republican. And there's a fresh rant up at VeloNews.com. You're welcome.

  Speaking of VN.com, I occasionally edit the letters column, and today I slapped a cheeky editor's note on the bottom of a self-confessed gearhead's letter bemoaning the rising cost of componentry, asking him to send us his castoffs 'cause we're still riding eight-speed Ultegra. This in turn brought the following from a reader: "Bull &8#*!!!  When is the last time any one of you rode Ultegra 8. Maybe on your beater bike; unlikely. Get Real and Honest to your readers." Ho, ho. I wrote him back, noting that I have not one, not two, but three 'cross bikes running eight-speed Ultegra — two of them with bar-end shifters — and a mountain bike running eight-speed XT/SRAM. I only went to nine-speed Ultegra on the road bike so I could use its eight-speed Ultegra on a 'cross bike, f'chrissakes. All due respect to the propeller-heads at Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo, but fuck a bunch of nine- and 10-speed. Who needs it? Today's chains snap like dry fettucine. I want to be off the bike and running for short stretches only.

  Meanwhile, a study of psychiatric outpatients suggests what many of us have suspected for years: that there is a demonstrable link between being a batshit, whacko, tinfoil-beanie-wearing, blue-helmet-fearing, come-to-JeezWhiz nutjob and supporting The Decider. Christopher Lohse's study, backed by Southern Connecticut State University psych prof Jaak Rakfeldt and statistician Misty Ginacola, "found a correlation between the severity of a person's psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush." In-bred, blue-blooded fucktards, meanwhile, favored Kerry. OK, so I made that last bit up. Thanks and a tip of the Mad Dog propeller beanie to Carson Stanwood.

  And now, Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," from "The Nutcracker Suite," as performed on bicycle parts. Thanks and a raised glass to Big Jonny at Drunkcyclist.

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What reality-based community?

  "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." George Santayana wasn't talking about The Decider when he penned this observation in The Life of Reason, but if the shoe fits, eh? Piss on the midterms and the Iraq Study Group — Numbnuts has snapped right back to his old stay-the-course, complete-the-mission, content-free talking points. What, exactly, constitutes "success" in Iraq, with the bodies stacking up, the government crumbling, the smart folks (those who haven't already fled the country) getting assassinated, and the militias running the show? Don't ask W, 'cause he doesn't have a clue. But he's plowing remorselessly ahead just the same. It only looks like jogging furiously in place.

  Speaking of dysfunction, Microsoft has released its new operating system. Can the first patch be far behind?

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Poge vs. jarhead

  Ho, ho. Freshman Senator Jim Webb told The Decider to go fuck himself at the White House the other day. Not in so many words, of course — but that's what it boiled down to, according to The Washington Post:

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

  The Decider apparently lacked a suitable talking point for that unscripted encounter. If I were Webb, whom The Hill said "was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief," I'd start wearing a flak jacket and hire a food taster. He doesn't have to worry about the Chickenhawk-in-Chief getting all up in his grill, of course, but he might have some of his frat buddies jump the ex-Marine, Vietnam vet and former Navy secretary in a dark alley. They'd better pack a lunch.

  In other good news, the fucktards running the Loma Linda Homeowners' Association in Pagosa Springs have resigned amid a firestorm of local criticism and national press over their decision to order Lisa Jensen to remove a peace-symbol-shaped holiday wreath from the exterior of her house. Two of the nitwits have disconnected their phones, the third isn't returning calls, and the town is planning its own peace wreath, to be installed on a bell tower in the center of town. Maybe America is finally waking up from its long nap. Here's the Durango Herald's follow-up article on the controversy.

  Meanwhile, winter has returned with a vengeance. It's snowing here in Bibleburg and colder than the other side of Ann Coulter's bed. We've surpassed today's expected high of 19 by a single degree, and I'd be burning the furniture if we had a woodstove to stuff it into. Could be worse. My buddy Hal up in Weirdcliffe had to spend his morning chiseling the ice off a horse's hooves. Ain't nothin' but a party.

  Late update: Man, nobody wants to be seen with The Decider. Jordanian King Abdullah II and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blew off a joint meeting with the Cheerleader-in-Chief, with a spokesman saying: "The Jordanians and the Iraqis jointly decided they did not feel it was the best use of time." Hey, I can dig it. Dude is always going, "Yo," at you and talking with his mouth full. Let 'im ride some laps around the palace or boink Condi on Air Force 1. Don't suppose it has anything to do with national security adviser Stephen Hadley's memo calling the PM either a liar, a fool or a pussy.

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Bush whacked

  The Decider should not be allowed out of the White House without an alert keeper, clad in a white uniform, carrying a net and a grease gun full of lithium. Speaking at the University of Latvia before a NATO summit (must not be any good mountain biking in those parts), this jabbering asshole declined to acknowledge that Iraq has descended into civil war or worse, blamed al-Qaeda for the anarchy that is taking hold there, tried bullying NATO in accepting "difficult assignments" in Afghanistan and bellowed: "There is one thing I'm not going to do. I am not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete." Is this complex insanity, simple stupidity or code for, "Fuck this noise, I'm out of here in two years, gonna build me a presidential liberry to hold all my old Sgt. Rock comix. Let someone else mop up the blood."

  Whether you call it a civil war, an insurrection or simply "bloody confused" (and what a masturbatory semantic argument that is), the wiseguys say there is little the 140,000 troops we have there can do with the $2 billion a week we spend on military ops. Says Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University professor and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point: "We're not in control any longer." Even the Marines are pessimistic, Sweet. Rummy must be getting set to collect a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Eurobike aborts Portland show

  Sheeeeeyit. Bicycle Retailer & Industry News reports that Eurobike has bailed on its plans to challenge Interbike with a rival trade show in Portland, Oregon, and will instead partner with Sea Otter honch' Frank Yohannan to do . . . something. Says Messe Friedrichshafen CEO Klaus Wellmann:

"We do visualize a spring and a fall show, the first of which is the Sea Otter Classic in Monterey in April," he said. "With Sea Otter being one of the world's largest cycling festivals, we feel that both organizations complement each other. Our aim will be to serve the industry's changing needs without a lot of bureaucracy."

  Too bad. I was looking forward to visiting Portland on someone else's dime. Still, Eurobike is one of the sponsors for Sea Otter 2007, slated for April 12-16. And BRAIN will be taking on some additional chores at the Otter this year, too. Sounds like I need a spring road trip.

  Meanwhile, it was pleasant to learn that Bibleburg didn't get all of Colorado's tinfoil-beanie, black-helicopter, come-to-JeezWhiz nutbags. There's at least one in Pagosa Springs, where the Loma Linda Homeowners' Association has ordered Lisa Jensen to remove a peace-symbol-shaped holiday wreath from the exterior of her house. Says LLHOA Mullah-in-Chief Bob Kearns: "The peace sign has a lot of negativity associated with it," he said. "It's also an anti-Christ sign. That's how it started." Uh huh. Somewhere, Christ, Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, Vishnu and Coyote are all laughing their ethereal asses off.

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'Cross and The Times

  The New York Times has a nice writeup and slide show on last weekend's U.S. Gran Prix of Cyclocross finale outside Portland, Oregon. Local 'crosser Matt Slavin lays it down thusly:

"Every race, you want to vomit, you want to quit, your bike's not working, and then you come up a run-up and everyone's cheering and you get pepped up. As soon as you're done, you can't wait for the next race. It's kind of like a cruel drug — addictive."

  Speaking of which, I laid out a nice new training course at a local school Saturday morning. It's 1.7 miles long, looks like an anatomy text's layout of the small intestine, and has a lot of grass, plus two short run-ups on stairs and two longer ones on grass, a short stretch of parking-lot asphalt and a couple sections of concrete sidewalk, a log-hop and a trip around a pulverized-gravel running track, a notion I swiped from the Sea-Tac course in Washington state. I was turning eight-minute laps on it and glad I wasn't wearing a heart-rate monitor. This would make a fun race course. I'll bet someone who was less enamored of the Seven Deadly Sins would be zipping around the sumbitch in six, seven minutes.

  Feeling a tad fried, dyed and whipped to the side after yesterday's exertions, I scheduled a short trail ride on the 'cross bikes today for me, Herself, Big Bill McBeef and Mikey O'Stank, just out to the border of the AFA and back. The Soma got a solid review from Herself on their first real ride. McBeef will be test-driving a new ride, too — he went away with my Bloo Voodoo Wazoo post-ride because O'Stank had to repo' the vintage Steelman CC he had loaned him (the StankMan needs a pit bike for the next couple weekends of racing).

  The day's multitudinous bike swaps required no small amount of measuring and wrenching — pulling Egg Beaters off the CC and replacing them with SPDs so McBeef could ride that bike today, then pulling the SPDs back off the CC and putting them on the Wazoo so he could ride that bike the next time around, first removing its Time ATACs. The Egg Beaters, natch, went back onto the CC. All this grand-doo and fooferaw required two different pedal wrenches and had me genuflecting like a bog-trotter at St. Peter's Basilica; naturally, as a consequence I popped my back out of whack for the first time in several years. So some chiropractor will be getting my next week's wine money tomorrow, 'cause ibuprofen, stretching, a hot bath and booze are falling woefully short as palliative care.

  Extra-credit reading: The Oregonian on Portland's bicycle-business boom.

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Shannon's Soma

  OK, here she is: Herself's brand-new Double Cross from Soma Fabrications. It isn't perfect yet — I'm probably gonna swap out the gack-box handlebars and seat post for a Salsa Poco bar and a zero-setback Thomson post; I may have to order up some R600 reach-adjustable STI levers; we may drop the bars a spacer or two down the steerer tube; and the Candys may give way to plain-vanilla Egg Beaters. But it's rideable as is, and I'll report back with a ride review as soon as she takes it for its inaugural voyage.

  Post-ride report: Herself's initial opinion of the Soma Double Cross is: "Zippy. Very light. Responsive. Fabulous trail bike." She's getting used to the Candys (her mountain bike has a pair of thousand-year-old Ritchey SPD knockoffs), and she is becoming acquainted with the joys of riding narrow clinchers without suspension (the Monument Creek trail is rutted all to be-damn from fucktards who insisted on riding it while it was soaked to the bedrock by our only real snow so far). Haven't got her to leap on and off the bike yet, a la Sven Nys, but it's early days yet. And with a low gear of 34x32, she may never need to get off the bike. I'm working with a 36x26, about 75 more pounds and seven more years, so I get off a lot, if only to wheeze and spew.

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Black Friday

  Nitwits nationwide are going batshit for bargains today, and oh aren't we glad that we don't work in a mall. Herself did, once upon a time, and life has become so much sweeter now that she is a librarian instead of a retail manager. Black Friday and the day after Christmas were bleak days indeed around the DogHaus back then. She still has to work today, but not behind a cash register.

  Speaking of traditions, we missed a Thanksgiving Day mainstay yesterday — KRCC's annual airing of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant." We were out for a ride with Big Bill McBeef when the tune "came around on the guitar," as the man says. So I hunted it down on the 'net today, and if you missed your annual helping of holiday humor, you can find it in MP3 format here.

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Thanksgiving

"That was absurd, let's eat dead bird." — Robert Downey Jr. in "Home for the Holidays"

  Another turkey bites the dust. I can't wait for leftovers, which as you know are the best part of Thanksgiving dinner. I've been casually picking at the carcass ever since my sister and her husband hit the trail back to Fort Collins, and it being just 5:30 p.m. there may be time for a hobbitesque second dinner before bedtime, once Herself (at right) has dealt with the consequences of preparing the first one.

  I'm talkin' organic Oregon turkey from the Whole Paycheck, plus stuffing; giblet gravy; an arugula salad with slivered almonds, mushrooms and mandarin oranges, drizzled with Badia a Coltibuono olive oil; green beans dressed with garlic and sesame seeds in soy sauce; spuds mashed with butter, cream, garlic, salt, black pepper and chives; cranberry sauce; and pecan pie with coffee for afters. And a bottle each of 2005 Schug Carneros Pinot Noir and 2004 Clos Pegase Mitsuko's Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc, which was surprisingly tasty, since the local grog shop was blowing it out at half price. We've been drinking it all week. I had intended to uncork a sparkling rosé, a Vin du Bugey-Cerdon La Cueille that bears the Thomas Jefferson quote, "Good wine is a necessity of life for me," but spaced it out, the same way our national "leadership" has spaced out Thomas Jefferson.

  But before we tie on the feedbag again, it's time to give thanks. I'm thankful that some of you enjoy what I do for a living, and that some of you don't. Both sorts keep me at it. Herself is thankful for her health, her husband (that asshole), her family, a home in Colorado, and Ike the Cat. And Ike is thankful that our house guests have left. She enjoys company the way Darth Cheney does a nice on-the-record chat with Seymour Hersh.

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Beat it

  Jesus H. Christ, these dildos still don't get it. A Pentagon group is using puerile sporting terminology to describe a trio of plans for the actual war going on in Iraq — Go Big, Go Long, or Go Home — and The Washington Post is likening a combination of the first two to notorious weirdo Michael Jackson's moonwalking. Isn't it time we all got serious about this shit? I don't think Capt. Stephanie Bagley feels like she's enjoying a football game or a sock hop.

  Late update: Shit, now they're even killing the funny people.

  Still later update: My man Chris from Old Town Bike Shop just phoned to tell me that Herself's new bike is ready for fitting. It's a Christmas present of sorts, in that I decided she wanted and needed it, the same way I decide you want and need whatever I think is funny. So what is it? A cyclo-cross bike, naturally — a Double Cross from Soma Fabrications of San Francisco, in British racing green.

  Finding a steel 'cross frame for a 5-footer is no day at the beach, and I was thinking in terms of a full custom job until a little research (and a lot of common sense) took me to Soma, which designs a 42cm frame, welded up in Taiwan, with a Tange Prestige front triangle (a tip of the Mad Dog cycling cap to Jim Porter for the assist). The top tube is a little long, but with luck Herself's position on the Double Cross should be smack in the middle between her road-bike and mountain-bike setups, especially if I sneak the STI levers up the bars a tad the way the cool kids do these days. Top-mounted Salsa brake levers should help further diminish the fear factor on those evil descents.

  I went with 105 STI levers, an LX rear derailleur, an FSA Gossamer Compact front derailleur, a Sugino Swiss Cross compact crank with 48/34 rings and an LX 11-32 cogset (ordered up with a big assist from velo-bro Preston at BTI), so she should be able to climb trees with the little sonofabitch.

  In point of actual fact, Herself now has the only nine-speed 'cross bike in the family, which puts her only one iteration behind current technology. Like all its retarded eight-speed country cousins, however, it is something of a Frankensteinian amalgamation based not so much on advanced engineering as on economic necessity. I swiped the Mavic Cosmos wheels off her Cannondale road bike for the Double Cross, replacing the Cosmos on the C-dale with the elderly Mavic/Ultegra wheels I'd hung on my Bianchi Castro Valley, in turn replacing those with the Bianchi's original wheelset. The seat post (Titec), handlebars (Scott) and brakes (Suntour canti's) are out of the Mad Dog gack box, and all will be replaced by better stuff, eventually; probably some ultralight zero-setback post, Salsa Poco bars and Spooky or Shimano stoppers. Tires are new Michelin Jets. Pedals are Crank Brothers Candys. Saddle is a Terry Butterfly. The headset is not from the illustrious Chris King, but should be serviceable; the stem, whose manufacturer's name also eludes me, looks like a Civil War mortar parked at the county courthouse adorning an HO railroad setup.

  We'll hit Old Town for the final fitting tomorrow, after Herself gets off work. I'll post a few shots for your edification, and mine, unless she or Chris beats me to death with a pedal wrench.

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Rats flee sinking USS Shrub

  Ho, ho. Henry Kissinger, John McCain, Richard Perle and Kenneth "Cakewalk" Adelman are all putting as much daylight as they can get, Iraq war-wise, between their ratty little selves and the Maximum Rodent. Quoth Adelman: "This didn't have to be managed this bad. It's just awful." The poor dear. I expect his faith in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy has been shaken as well. Maybe we could take his mind off his troubles by issuing him a steel pot, a flak jacket and an M-16 and sending his sorry ass off to show the Iraqis how a Yankee chickenhawk dances.

  I was doing a little two-step myself today, up and down the hilly paths through Bear Creek Regional Park to Gold Camp Road and back, with Herself, Big Bill McBeef and Spike Professional Cycling Team director Bill Ramsay, who like me was on a 'cross bike, a fresh-out-of-the-box Raleigh RX 1.0. The Spike honch' claimed to be overweight and undertrained, but I notice he stayed ahead of me, turning over a low gear of 39x26 while I minced along in a 36x28. Don't nobody do fat and out of shape better than me, Bubba. McBeef had an altimeter going and it seems we picked up a couple thou' of vertical on this little out-and-back. This may explain while I feel like having a glass of wine or six and going to sleep.

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Schwing-'l-track

  Brother Dog Michael O'Stank, Dennis "Constructo" Collard and I spent a couple hours chasing each other around the single-track in Palmer Park today. Well, they did, anyway. I hung off the back — well off the back — in hopes of staying out of their way and alive. Lord, do I suck on the technical bits these days.

  It was fun and all, don't get me wrong. But we were on trails I hadn't been on in quite a while, and I was riding the Voodoo with an Alpha Q carbon fork, so I had this squishy rear end and a stiff front end (damn, that sounds dirty), and what the hell, I could've been riding a Moots YBB with a full Dura-Ace group, a RockShox post and Zipp carbon wheels and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference. O'Stank cleaned a rock garden that I've tripped over running, and Constructo just made us both look silly until O'Stank got out in front of him to slow his ass down.

  They're both racing tomorrow, at the Red Rocks series event in Golden, but I'm not. No way, no how. I needed a retard helmet and a white cane out there today. Maybe I'll go back to Palmer Park instead and lay down a few practice runs, see if I can remember where I left my chops.

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In vino veryfast

  Finally, some good news. Resveratrol, a minor component of red wine, may be a miracle substance capable of transforming the average fat-assed, bald-headed cycling journo into an immortal athlete, without the need for all that talent-and-training nonsense. Naturally, there is a downside, according to The New York Times:

Though resveratrol has long been known to be an ingredient of red wine and other foods, its presence there is minuscule compared with the doses used in experiments.

Dr. Sinclair dosed his mice daily with 22 milligrams of resveratrol per kilogram of weight, and Dr. Auwerx used up to 400 milligrams. No one can drink enough red wine to obtain such doses.

  Haw. Clearly the author has never seen me in action. Maybe I'll drink a case of dago red tonight and go kick ass at the Red Rocks 'cross tomorrow.

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Even a blind dog finds a Milk-Bone now and then

  So I'm running through the light snow frosting the trails in Palmer Park today, and I see this skinny tire track running everywhere. Looks like a slick, too. Either that or the sun melted whatever minimal knob spoor there was. Dude was taking some innovative lines, especially on the rocky, technical bits, and I'm thinking, no way am I ever racing cyclo-cross again, not as long as this dude has both legs. He could shoulder an angel off the good line across the head of a pin while upshifting and nibbling a Clif Bar. And then I notice the dog tracks bracketing the track. Shit. It's a dog, dragging his leash, probably while running with his human. Does this mean I have to license up for 2007?

  Elsewhere, as the Elefinks prepare to stand down while the Donks stand up, the top American military commander in the Middle East told a Senate committee today that ordering a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq is a bad idea and suggested that he might need more troops to step up the training of Iraqi forces and, in the words of The New York Times, "prevent the nation from tearing itself apart." A little late, that, with the cold meat stacking up in quantities that ConAgra would have trouble processing, even if there were a market for long pig.

  So what do we do? Seems to me the recent elections unearthed a strong sentiment for pulling our troops out. We wrecked the place, it's true, and one could argue that we have a responsibility to pick up the pieces, no matter that we were stampeded into this clusterfuck by a pack of REMFs chanting a cadence count full of lies. But while our proxies are busily weaving a noose to hang the guy W had the creepy, Ted Haggardesque hard-on for — the only dude all the other Iraqis apparently were scared of — they certainly aren't scared of us. They know we're leaving, it's just a question of when. Sticking around is just postponing the day when all local scores are settled. In the meantime, they'll use American flak jackets to sight in their AK-47s and American vehicles to perfect their IEDs. And this notion of beefing up Baghdad as a bastion against the onslaught of "Islamofascism" has a strong sense of the Maginot Line about it, or Khe Sanh, even Saigon, with helicopters pulling people off the U.S. Embassy roof.

  As a certain Vietnam vet said back in 1971, before he acquired a taste for his own shoe leather, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" The answer may be another question: "How badly do you want cheap gas?"

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Veterans Day

  Seek out the grunt, squid, jarhead or zoomie of your choice and buy him or her a beer or six. Promise to elect better civilian leadership in 2008, the kind that won't go swaggering around like Rambo cubed, blowing giant holes in Third World dictatorships and filling them back up with dead Americans just because some propeller-head REMF has notions about "bringing democracy" to someone, the way you might deliver a pizza. Let's wait 'til they order the damn thing next time so we know what kind they want.

  Meanwhile, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has some interesting post-election observations. Actually, "hysterical" is more like it. You gotta like a guy who fantasizes about Leatherface chasing Jeff Greenfield off the CNN news set, brandishing a chainsaw.

  Got an hour of lackadaisical 'cross in this afternoon over at Monument Valley Park, which has been bisected by a fenced-off-road leading to a massive drainage project in the creek to the west. This fucks with my usual course more than somewhat, so I spent the first 15 minutes just rolling around, trying to devise a suitable alternative. What I came up with took about four minutes per lap at fat-bastard pace, so I'm going to have to get a little more creative to stave off boredom, 'cause this project's scheduled completion date is something like May 2007.

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If your mama had a dick, she'd be your dad

  Ho, ho. The Monday-morning quarterbacking has commenced with a vengeance, according to The Plank, which cites a Time piece as saying the Elefinks were that close to holding onto the House and Senate. Uh huh, yeah, right. Y'know what we call "second place" in bicycle racing, Karl old man? "The first loser."

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Bye, partisanship?

  Hardly. Though he lost both houses of Congress for the Elefinks on Tuesday, The Decider is trying to ram both John Bolton and Robert Gates through the lame-duck Senate before the Donks take charge. But a member of his own party, Linc Chafee — who lost his Senate seat on Tuesday — says he will continue to oppose Bolton, and The Washington Post predicts the Walrus is harpooned for good. Says Chafee:

"The American people have spoken out against the president's agenda on a number of fronts, and presumably one of those is on foreign policy. And at this late stage in my term, I'm not going to endorse something the American people have spoke out against."

  Meanwhile, Robert Parry doesn't think much of Gates, who like James Baker is another one of Bush 41's fixers, recruited to keep 43 from getting any more Florsheim prints on his pee-pee. Neither does Ray McGovern. Both men say Gates is a master chef when it comes to cooking intelligence to suit the tastes of whoever is seated at the big table, waving the Amex card. Swell. When does the Deecee fire marshal step in to say, "Sorry, but this town has exceeded its capacity in terms of lying assholes. Some of you will have to return to looting the private sector instead of the Treasury."

  Meanwhile, we're already off and running toward 2008. Iowa Gov. Tom "Who the Fuck Am I?" Vilsack has announced that he is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

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It's morning in America

  Or not. The Jackasses have the House; now let's see what they do with it (and what the GOP does to it before they turn it loose). Thirteen House seats have yet to be nailed down one way or the other, according to Talking Points Memo, and the Senate remains too close to call, with Montana and Virginia hanging fire, but the Donks holding onto narrow leads. Nevertheless, The Decider is already making bipartisan noises, which for the Donks must feel not unlike a prison sissy getting a dry peck on the cheek from the jocker who's been boning him up the ass for six years. I can't wait to catch his act in this afternoon's press conference.

  I clearly did not drink enough evil-spirit repellent last night, as Doug Lamborn, an empty suit topped by a mouth full of GOP talking points and a forked tongue, defeated Jay Fawcett in the Fifth Congressional District race to replace Joel Hefley. But hey, this is El Paso County. There ain't enough beer in the world to send every race the Democrats' way.

  The president's presser: "I thought we were gonna do fine yesterday. Shows what I know." You fuckin' A, Bubba. The Decider looked like a chicken-thieving weasel backed into a corner of the coop, staring at a shotgun. He's finally tossed Donald Rumsfeld over the side, about five years too late. No doubt the son of a bitch will get a multimillion-dollar book deal and the rubber-chicken tour, but he should be sent to The Hague for a war-crimes trial, or maybe Devil's Island. It's a bit early to be awarding prizes, but I think it's fair to say he has been the finest instrument for the extermination of young Americans to be devised so far this century. Ask Joe Galloway what he thinks. Then step back and put a couple of fingers in your ears if you want to keep your skull from exploding.

  After enjoying a few moments of Numbnuts alternately squirming and fulminating before the cameras, I clicked off the idiot box and went for a ride. It was far too nice a day to stay indoors listening to Bubble Boy trip over his tongue, trying to describe his hallucinations. Almost 80 here, and sunny. I rolled north toward the Air Force Academy and back, smiling and nodding at joggers, strollers and dog-walkers, thinking of lids blown off, wriggling vermin exposed, retribution exacted. I live a rich fantasy life.

To read the DogPage's election-night ramblings, click here.

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Throw the bums out

  I don't have any illusions about the honor and virtue of the Democratic Party. The Donks have aided and abetted this administration's evil deeds at home and abroad, and if they have been marginalized in governance as a consequence, well, the punk-ass bitches had it coming.

  That said, I think we have no choice but to hold our collective noses and pull the lever for the Ds right on down the line. Michael Schwartz lays it out pretty well over at TomDispatch.com in his "One-Stop Guide to Election Night 2006." While he notes that the Donks' strategy "has been to 'lay low' and let anger towards Bush sweep them into office" (a strategy best described by Mark Twain, who said, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."), he concludes:

If the Democrats prevail, however narrowly, against a world of massively gerrymandered seats, Republican finances, blitzes of dirty ads, the presidential "bully pulpit," and well-planned campaigns of voter suppression, American — as well as world public opinion — will interpret it as a repudiation of Bush administration war policy. And this will become a mandate for those who oppose these policies to speak and act ever more forcefully.

  The country can't afford two more years of one-party governance, if that's what you want to call what the Elefinks have been up to. It's been like watching your drunk Uncle Vernon, the one with the steel plate in his head where the horse kicked him, going to work on your cherished '57 Chevy, the classic ride your granddad left you, with a bottle of Beam and a claw hammer. "Now don't you worry none, boy, I was workin' on cars when you had pot rings on your ass. Pass me that Constitution, we got an oil leak here."

  If this is what happens when the adults run the country, I'd say it's time to give the children a chance. Keep the belt handy and take 'em to the woodshed as necessary. Remind 'em daily that as long as they live under our roof, on our money, they'll do what we say and like it or get the fuck out and get honest jobs.

  But first we've got to throw this current crop of bums out. Do it now. Your own children will thank you.

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Tick, tock

  The clock is ticking down to the Big Day tomorrow, and finally we'll be awash in endless, pointless, full-throated analysis about what did happen instead of what might happen. Oboy. Then we can dig right into the 2008 presidential election, which should have all the gentility and statesmanship of a satchel charge in a septic tank.

  I wrenched myself away from the shit monsoon to watch a little bicycle racing this weekend in Longmont and Boulder, and man, was it a nice change from business as usual. I jotted down a few disjointed musings on the events; you can read them here, here and here. If you drink enough beer they'll eventually start to make a twisted kind of sense. Or not.

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Tree'd

  I spent Saturday shooting a few pics and collecting a few notions at the U.S. Gran Prix of Cyclocross stop outside Longmont, on behalf of the fine folks at VeloNews.com.

  I call this piece at right, "OK, Pay Attention, I Want to Do This In One Take, All Right?"

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A ''New Life' indeed

  Holy shit, as the saying goes. The Associated Press is saying Ted Haggard has copped to some of the charges against him, and NPR says New Life Church has confirmed as much in an e-mail. The Gazette here in Bibleburg quotes acting senior pastor Ron Parsley as telling KKTV that there "has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission of all the material that's been discussed, but there is an admission of some guilt." My, that Satan is a busy fella, isn't he? I expect that any day now, James Dobson will announce that he is a Cylon sleeper agent and Ann Coulter will be caught in The Nation's men's room, peeing while standing up and perusing a copy of Noam Chomsky's "Keeping the Rabble in Line." The only way this story could get any better is if Haggard had been trysting with a 17-year-old illegal alien with a penchant for dressing up like Laura Bush.

  ¶ LATER THAT DAY: Ho, ho. Now our boy has copped to scoring methamphetamine from the hooker, but continues to deny playing hide the hot dog with him or even horning the crank. Uh huh. I wonder how that plays with all the wingnuts who found Bubba Clinton's "I never inhaled" nonsense so risible. Meanwhile, KRCC is being under-the-radar snarky, playing tunes like The Killers' "When you Were Young" and Depeche Mode's "Blasphemous Rumors." Good thing the pledge drive's over.

  ¶ BLAST FROM THE PAST: Yesterday, while engrossed in the Haggard story, I overlooked what has to be the Quip of the Day, from Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., regarding Darth Cheney:

"He's such a real son of a bitch, he just enjoys a confrontation," Rangel fumed, describing himself as "warm and personable." Rangel said Cheney may need to go to "rehab" for "whatever personality deficit he may have suffered."

"When you have those sorts of problems, you're supposed to seek help," Rangel advised. "He acknowledged that he has problems with communication."

Asked whether he was resurrecting over-the-top charges he made last year that he believes Cheney is mentally ill, Rangel cracked, "I don't think he's shot anyone in the face lately, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt."

  It can't be long before these guys start caning each other and fighting duels. Thanks and a tip of the Mad Dog propeller beanie to Russ Vandermark and The New York Post.

  ¶ INSPECT THIS, BITCH: Speaking of caning, whoever queered the military authorization bill to croak the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction needs an ass-whuppin' with the fat end of a really big stick. Dig this passage from The New York Times story on the matter:

Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen's supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

  Naturally, politics played no role in the decision, and everyone is shocked, shocked, that such a thing could happen in our representative democracy just because one party runs all three branches of government: Money, Television and Bullshit (see Parliament of Whores, P.J. O'Rourke). Round up the usual suspects.

  ¶ Last, and most definitely least: There's a fresh bit of nonsense from Dogpatch up at VeloNews.com.

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You'd never catch Merle doin' this

  "Take, eat; this is my body. And here are a couple of C-notes for your trouble. Same time next Friday?"

  OK, so I couldn't stop myself from cracking that joke. I'm no Christian. And I have no use for smug, sanctimonious sons of bitches prone to issuing pronunciamentos on all and sundry, unless, of course, they're me. But still, this rap against our lesser local Elmer Gantry sounds a little too good to be true. A gay hooker claiming a three-year relationship with New Life Church's Ted Haggard on the eve of an election with an anti-gay-marriage initiative and a domestic-partnerships proposal on the ballot? I know God has a sense of humor — I mean, look at the anteater; the giraffe; Rush Limbaugh. But this is a bit over the top, even for Him. The Bibleburg blat has a slightly more extensive story here. It had 241 comments when I checked it at 8:45 p.m. local time, and some of 'em were real howlers.

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Halloweenies

  Well, it was another disappointing Halloween here at the DogHaus. Maybe it was the bitter cold; maybe it was that I relish spending warmer days drinking gin on the front porch in a tattered bathrobe that I casually let flap open as children pass while brandishing GOP campaign literature and screeching, "Bush über alles!" Whatever the underlying cause, we got all of seven trick-or-treaters, which means we have a few metric tons of sugary goodies left over for Herself to transport to work.

  These kids today. When I was a sprout, we spent Halloween out in the frosty dark clad in elaborate homemade costumes, experimenting with cheap booze and/or dangerous drugs and destroying private property. Now their parents buy them cheap Chinese-made plastic disguises modeled after Hollywood movies and take them trick or treating at the nearest mall, which is just shopping in silly clothes.

  ¶ ONE MORE REASON TO DRINK RED WINE: Besides numbing oneself against the absurdities of the midterms madness, that is. Researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute of Aging report that "a natural substance found in red wine, known as resveratrol, offsets the bad effects of a high-calorie diet in mice and significantly extends their lifespan." This is, of course, that one wants to continue living under a succession of Bushes — King George I, Emperor Jeb I, Princess Jenna (as advised by Regent Neil); and so on. 'Course, we could always get ourselves all wined up and start building tumbrils and guillotines. Hey, it worked for the French.

  While we're discussing wine and bloody revolution so enjoyably, let us take up the question of whether the 2003 Terre Rouge Syrah, Les Cotes de l'Ouest (pdf), is drinkable. Oh yes indeedy. A couple drams of this tasty California wine and you just can't wait to topple a tyrant. Or over, one or the other. Rush right out and buy yourself a few cases before I corner the market. Thanks and a tip of the Mad Dog chapeau to Scot Nicol.

  ¶ Jackboot, meet genitalia: First the Senator from Easter Island steps on his dick with a hamhanded gag about how dim The Decider is. Now The Decider has trodden upon his own withered wee-wee, saying in an interview that he wants Darth Cheney and Donald Rumpot to stick it out through the end of his shift two years hence. Does nobody want to win this election? Can we get a third Stooge here to make this shit funny?

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Be afraid — be very afraid

  It's Halloween, and The Fearmonger's Shop is open for business. "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses," Bush told a crowd of Georgia Elefinks on Monday. Meanwhile, Darth Cheney tells Faux News that the evildoers are timing their outrages to "break the will of the American people" and thus queer the midterm elections in favor of the Donks.

  You'll have to do better than that, boys. Nothing is as scary this Halloween as the thought of your spending the next two years continuing to misuse and abuse what has become unchecked executive power. Nothing is as horrifying as the realization that the Brits could withstand The Blitz and prevail, the Japanese could dig out from two atomic bombings to become a global economic powerhouse, and Manolo Saiz could walk away with a 2007 ProTour license after getting busted with 60,000 euros in cash and a cold bag full of controlled substances, but the United States surrendered its birthright in a hot New York minute over two destroyed skyscrapers, a dinged-up Pentagon and fewer casualties than we take in a month on the nation's highways. They got lucky, we got scared, and five years later here we are, swimming upstream in a river of blood. Time for a change.

  While we're on the topic of scumbags, some evil swine ripped off two bikes belonging to U.S. national cyclo-cross champ Katie Compton and a third belonging to her husband on Sunday night. Mike Creed's TIAA-CREF car got broken into, too. You can read the whole vile story over at VeloNews.com If you're a Bibleburg resident and happen to see some meth-head riding a custom Primus Mootry 'cross bike around Acacia Park, call the cops.

  One final note: There's a new rant up over there, too, in case you're drifting off there in the old cube farm.

  Another final note: Today being Halloween, it seemed a propitious day to cast my ballot in the midterm costume ball. So I did, in the process running into Alison Dunlap, apparently struck by a similar notion. She was dressed up like a semiretired bike racer and coach. I was dressed up like a baldheaded asshole. We chatted briefly about this and that, and then my name was called and I voted resolutely against everything the Elefink holds dear. Go thou and do likewise. We need every Donk, independent, Libertarian, commie, Green Party-er and disaffected Elefink we can get to counteract the bellowing of the insanely tone-deaf John Kerry, who has been caught singing off key again.

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Finger-lickin' bad

  Gourmands everywhere rejoice — KFC is switching from partially hydrogenated soybean oil to low linolenic soybean oil for the preparation of its culinary gems. Clucks KFC President Gregg Dedrick: "We've tested a wide variety of oils available and we're pleased we have found a way to keep our chicken finger-lickin' good - but with zero grams of trans fat." But before you dash out for a bucket of the Colonel's extra-crispy, consider this: My buddy Hal, who has made a study of such things, warns that much of the polyunsaturated fat in soybean oil easily oxidizes at high heat, "thus creating cancer-inducing and LDL-precipitating free radicals." He says lard would be the way to go. Me, I think the Colonel oughta fry his pullets in reclaimed 30-weight from Grease Monkey and serve 'em up in recycled-plastic replicas of Willie Nelson's Tour bus, with a pint of Iowa gasohol to wash the sludge down and hemp napkins for the post-pig-out cleanup.

  Elsewhere, the folks who run Eurobike have announced plans to launch an American show to compete with Interbike. The show is slated for mid-September 2007 in Portland, Oregon, and if the Eurobike folks pull this off I am so going there instead of Vegas. If there is an anti-Vegas, Portland may very well be it. The local cyclo-cross series draws nearly 800 webfeet per race, the place fairly reeks with bike culture, and it's not fuckin' Vegas, which I consider the prime selling point. I'd rather go to Lubbock than Vegas.

  Speaking of worthless pieces of Texas shit, The Denver Post reports that The Decider and Darth Cheney are on their way to Colorado stump for their fellow Elefinks. And Bubba Clinton is not far behind, lobbying for the other team. There goes the neighborhood.

  Whether anyone is paying attention is up for debate, because newspapers are in the toilet instead of next to it. Lots of spin out there in the industry, but my personal take is that newspapers are sucking wind because most of them are as relevant as George Allen's review of a 30-year-old James Webb novel. For years, your local daily has been neglecting its newsroom staff in favor of filling the holes around the ads with cheap wire-service copy, and the upshot is a country full of newspapers that all look like USA Today, which (funniest thing) is the No. 1 newspaper in the country. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it sure makes for shitty journalism, especially with the rise of the Internet. My own local cage-liner is responding to this challenge by asking its own readership to write stories and shoot pictures for a thing called YourHub at ColoradoSprings.com. Got to be a whole lot cheaper than hiring pros, and fun to edit, too. Whatever happened to hiring a newsroom full of cantankerous whiskey addicts with a penchant for barking unpleasant questions and a working familiarity with the English language?

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Ghost dog

  I dreamed of my dead dog Fuerte last night. She was curled up atop on a bed in some house we used to live in, and greeted me amiably as I wandered in. Jim Harrison wrote in the essay "Going Places" from "Just Before Dark" that he hoped one day to discover an old gray farmhouse wherein he'd find "all my beloved dead dogs and cats in perfect health . . . ." This could be less than a pleasant homecoming if a guy, especially Harrison, also encountered all the animals he'd eaten over the years. The crowd he had gobbled up and crapped out would be considerably larger than the one he'd stroked and petted and might be understandably upset about the bias shown, especially the bear I had a taste of back in Weirdcliffe. Nothing like a restless night to disorder the old thought process.

  And while we're on the topic of dogs, restless nights and disordered thought processes, let's examine this interview in The Observer with the below-mentioned Tom Waits, who apparently has been off the sauce for 10 years now and credits his wife for all the good things that have happened in his life, as must we all. He's written another antiwar song, called "Road to Peace," but like me he has doubts about the efficacy of art in the face of animality. "It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla," says Waits. It's an interesting read. Check it out.

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I can't Waits

  ANTI.com is running a sneak preview of the new Tom Waits three-disc set, "Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards." What you get online is three weeks of 30-second clips from each song in the set, which is said to include "30 new recordings, plus two dozen more songs taken from Waits' various collaborations with artists in film, literature, and music ­ equaling over three hours of rare and never-before heard music ­ along with a 94-page booklet." Look for it in stores come Nov. 21.

  I first listened to Waits in the Seventies, even saw him live a couple of times in Denver. I first listened to George McGovern back then, too, and voted for him in my very first presidential election. A shame more of us didn't. Happily, The New York Times says he's still out there, spreading the word.

  And while we're on the topic of spreading the word, m'man Scot Nicol of Ibis Cycles (who lives in Waits Country and is also a fan) has seen the latest screed over at VeloNews.com, which mentions the tasty and inexpensive table wine Reds from Laurel Glen Vineyards, and he recommends another California red to my attention — the 2002 Terre Rouge Syrah, Les Côtes de l'Ouest, from Terre Rouge Wines. The winemakers say, "We find the wine is very forward and drinkable shortly after bottling, making it a great everyday Syrah and perfect as a restaurant glass pour." Scot says, "All I can say is 'Yum.' Did a wine tasting here at the house last year and this was the standout winner of probably 30 wines on the table." I ain't exactly Robert Parker or nothin', and all I could find here in Bibleburg was a couple bottles of the 2003 (pdf), so I'll have a few drams of that and get back to you.

  It's a fine October afternoon for drinking wine, too. The temperature hit the high 60s/low 70s today, and didn't I feel like a putz for wearing jeans for the weekly grocery-and-grog shopping. That snow we got Thursday is melting away faster than The Decider's grip on both houses of Congress (knock on wood), to say nothing of his tenuous hold on his own mental health. The MSM are just now starting to figure out that he's stark raving bugfuck batshit, which tells you all you need to know about the Fourth Estate, which has been more like a fifth column in the battle for the electorate's hearts and minds. Blind pigs and acorns, as they say.

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It's worse than you think

  Follow Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi as he chronicles the doings (or not-doings) of The Worst Congress Ever. Best of all, two of the Stone's top-10 worst congressmen are from Colorado: xenophobe Tom Tancredo and homophobe Marilyn Musgrave. I feel so proud.

  Another overfed hog at the trough: Pennsylvania Rep. Curt Weldon, of whom the McClatchy Newspapers DC bureau says: "It's often difficult to tell where Weldon's official business ends and his family's and friends' personal business begins." McClatchy and the FBI may give us a hand with that little project.

  More good news can be found in the latest earnings report from Chevron, which scored a $5 billion profit in the third quarter. Chevron made its greatest gains at the pump, according to analyst Fadel Gheit. "They really cleaned up there," he said. The Chicago Tribune reports on the costs of staying the course. And there's fresh silliness from yours truly up at VeloNews.com.

  But the feel-good story of the day has to be the Vice President for Torture stuffing his flabby tit into a media wringer with his advocacy of water-boarding. Let's quit jerking off here, y'all. We are talking about a practice dating to the Spanish Inquisition, used by the Japanese on American POWs during World War II, in which the subject "is strapped down and his head is held under water or his mouth and nose are smothered by a cloth soaked in water to induce a sensation of drowning." The only question you need to ask yourself about this despicable business is this: Would you want someone doing this to your wife, one of your kids, the guy across the street? Would it be torture then? If so, it's torture now.

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Snow day

  Nothing says "Colorado" better than a 65-degree ride in bibs and a short-sleeve jersey on Wednesday followed by a ton of snow on Thursday. That, and the news that The Vice President for Torture will visit Bibleburg to stump for Doug Lamborn, a far-right, Bible-thumping shyster whose Fifth Congressional District contest with Jay Fawcett is closer than the Pachyderms would like — especially when you consider that Elefinks outnumber Donks better than 2-1 here. Notes Fawcett campaign manager Wanda James: "If you need any more proof the campaign is in serious trouble, they have to bring Dick Cheney out for a seat that for 20 years has been solid Republican." It hasn't helped that outgoing GOP Rep. Joel Hefley declined to endorse Lamborn, calling his primary campaign "sleazy and dishonest." Plus Lamborn is the numbnuts who got I-25 renamed "Ronald Reagan Highway" in El Paso County. And the dude has a journalism degree from the University of Kansas, but there's a typo in the lede of his bio. Sorry, Doug, we're full up with flag-pin-wearing, highway-renaming neocon numbskulls in Congress. If you're so into roadwork, buy a snow shovel and make yourself useful.

  Meanwhile, back at Frantically Trying to Change the Subject (No. 235,788,506 in a series), The Decider has signed H.R. 6061, the fabled border-fence bill. The measure includes no money to actually build said fence, but reality is rarely a consideration in Potemkin-on-the-Potomac (maybe Exxon Mobil can kick down a few bucks). Mr. Subliminal prefers that you fret about legions of filthy beaners slithering across the border to top-dollar stoop-labor jobs in the agricultural industry and back-seat dates with your blonde daughters, and bringing Osama bin Whatsisface along with them. Maybe we could render the sneaky devils down for their oil. The Cheerleader-in-Chief has also weighed in on gay marriage, hoping to rouse his nutcase base. Hmm. How many Marines will gay marriage kill, I wonder.

  Post-shoveling update: Son of a bitch, I should've gotten out there earlier. This snow has beaten the mortal shit out of my poor apple tree. Two, three, maybe four sizable branches have had the schnitz. This is heart-attack snow, man. I bet more than a few fat bastards go to meet Jeezwhiz today in mid-shovel.

  Post-power-outage update: Ho, ho, that was amusing. After a succession of blips that kept croaking my DSL modem, the power blinked off at 2:30 and didn't come back on until I'd reassembled the old Weirdcliffe emergency kit from the depths of various Bibleburg closets and vehicles (propane heater, portable dead-car jumper-slash-flat-tire inflater-slash-power source, battery-powered radio, candle lantern, kerosene lamps, flashlights, propane stove, massive comforters, and so on). That would be, uh, six o'clock or thereabouts. We're probably better equipped for this sort of weather emergency than many of our neighbors, in that we have all this crap plus four-wheel drive, various firearms and no religious or moral objections to dining on "long pig," if that's all we can get. But damn, a woodstove would sure be nice. Cooking haunch of honky over a Coleman two-burner would be quite the project.

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Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!

  Why does Dick "The Organ Grinder" Cheney keep sending his monkey out to do press conferences if he's not gonna say anything? He's "not satisfied," Rumsfeld is doing a heckuva job, ook ook ook chee chee chee. Jesus H. Christ. Remember when it was the White House instead of the Primate House? It can't be long before he devolves to waving his dick at us and throwing shit.

  I'm not the only guy who thinks The Decider was wasting the nation's valuable TV time this morning.