Why a single, solitary Kurd continues to believe a single, solitary word spoken by a representative of the United States government is a mystery to me.
Those poor saps get sold more often than a hot gun in Albuquerque.
• Extra Credit Chazbo: Meanwhile, I hate to kick off the week with two “Yeah, what Chazbo said” posts, but if Joe “Mr. Clean” Biden doesn’t want to apply for the job with a vengeance, let him get the fuck out of the queue. God save us from another “But it’s my turn!” candidate.
Sports Illustrated has gotten the VeloNews-CGI treatment: Pharaoh bids them make bricks without straw.
I’m not and never have been a sports fan, though I appreciate certain subsets of sportswriting (see Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, et al.). Thus I can’t speak to the quality of today’s Sports Illustrated, though the new management’s strategy certainly sounds familiar.
“Bricks, bitches. Chop chop. No, you don’t get straw. Who do you think you are, Frank Deford?”
But boy howdy, have some big hitters ever swung through SI’s pages over the years.
I’m talking Deford, Roy Blount Jr., Dan Jenkins, George Plimpton, Rick Reilly, Kurt Vonnegut … that’s right, Kurt fuckin’ Vonnegut. Not your basic dime-store jargon-jockeys, is what.
Over at Deadspin, Ray Ratto posits that the gutting, as has become traditional, “was pointless, needlessly cruel, stupid and thoroughly corporate.”
And Ratto expects more of the same:
I want to be more depressed and affected by what seems to have happened to Sports Illustrated, but it is the fate that awaits everything. Some corporate lamprey is coming for every generation’s best and brightest, dimmest and thickest, because you can count money and clicks but not curiosity and discovery. Others will have to provide those last two things now, and will have to do so while knowing that it’s a finite world out there. We will lament its passing too late because we have come to accept the mortality of things we thought would never die, and watch with a shrug as the monuments of our formative years are demolished and turned into Stalin’s Finest coffee stands, and eventually into parking lots.
I’d say that about sums it up. Back to you, Jamie “Mr. Awesome” Salter.
Can we please impeach His Execration now? His Louis XIV act grows wearisome.
There’s a hint of color down to the bosque — not much, just a smidge, but it’s there.
Lots of folks out yesterday, on all manner of machinery, from tri-bikes to e-bikes to them stodgy old steel boys you can hang the luggage on.
I liked it so much I went back there today. Forty-five miles yesterday, but only 33 today (different routes).
Beats the hell out of keeping up with the news. Can you imagine the shitstorm if Obama … aw, who am I kidding? Of course you can.
As I was getting set to hop in the shower last night I saw movement in my peripheral vision, and holy shit, there was a largish vinegaroon, lurking down by the baseboard near the sink.
I clapped a plastic chile container over him (or her), slid a record album underneath (Stray Cats, “Built for Speed”), and ferried her (or him) out the front door.
We don’t like having scary things scuttling around and about in our house, and we remove them with a minimum of violence as quickly as we are able, because nobody who lives in our house is a fucking idiot.
Speaking of which, “What do we want? When do we want it?” Seriously? Jesus, people, find a new hymn to sing. That’s got as much white hair in its ears as “Hey hey, ho ho.”
