After a late night and far too little sleep I had to get cracking on paying chores this morning, so I’ve been unable to crack wise about the abject failure of the Elefinks to accomplish much of anything in Election 2012 beyond spending other people’s money.
Look for snark to resume sometime this afternoon or evening. And thanks for playing.
It’s been 20 years since I had the traditional five-day, 40-hours-per-week job, and as those of you still manacled to same at wrists and ankles might expect I don’t miss it.
I quit for a reason. More than one, actually. Walking out of The New Mexican for the final time felt like taking one of those endless beer leaks after a long ride in an old truck on a bumpy road. Total relief.
To be sure, there are (or were) perks — health insurance, 401(k), two days a week off, sick leave, paid vacation and The Company buys your gear and puts a roof over your workaday head. But otherwise it pretty much sucks. I know, because during most of my 15 years as a newspaperman I was keeping a journal — you know, sort of an analog blog that nobody else gets to read.
So, having hard evidence that doing journalism eight hours a day, five days a week is like volunteering to get a daily pepper-spraying from Lt. John Pike, why in hell would I agree to go back to it? Especially considering that this time around, I don’t even get the perks because I’m an independent contractor and hellbent on remaining one?
Larry’s wife knows the answer. As for me, I’ll just note that when VeloNews.com lost both senior editor Charles Pelkey (involuntary retirement) and web editor Steve Frothingham (fled like a rat out of an aqueduct back to a former employer, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News), there was nobody left to ladle sludge out of the old VeloBarrel and onto the readers’ titanium-and-carbon-fiber plates save Your Humble Narrator (and Lennard Zinn’s daughter Emily, who recently clambered aboard as a part-timer).
So when The Company came a-callin’, I picked up the phone, even though we have Caller ID.
Call it equal parts stupidity (“Well, shit, someone has to do it,” a knee-jerk reaction common to journalists) and avidity (“There’s a pink slip out there somewhere with my name on it and I’d better start stockpiling fiat currency if only to save money on toilet paper.”)
All this is the long way around to telling you that if you see anything outrageously defective on VeloNews.com from Saturday morning to Wednesday afternoon during the next month or so, while The Company shops for iEditor 4.0, you’ll know whom to blame.
And if the bloggery gets a little thin around here, well — you’ll know whom to blame for that, too.
Welcome to the new DogHaus. Please park your fleas at the door and pee only in the designated corner. No, not that one.
I got the Hostcentric weenies to cut my monthly fee in half for the digital injuries I’ve suffered while tap-dancing through their virtual minefields, but they still piss me off. So I’m gonna try playing in this virtual sandbox for a while, maybe test-drive a few features WordPress 2.6 doesn’t have while I try to drag maddogmedia.com/wordpress into the 21st century.
Until then, please leave your critiques in comments. And seriously, not that corner. Christ, where’d I leave the mop?
This is weird. Kevin Drum just wrote a post that in spirit mimics a draft column I decided not to send to Bicycle Retailer & Industry News.
Mine had more bicycle crap in it, of course. And hardly any political snark, barring a quick left hook to Caribou Barbie’s spastically winking phiz. So they were practically identical, except for content ’n’ stuff. Plus Kevin says “fuck” less often than I do.
But we both are clearly in need of a vacation. Any ideas? I’m contemplating a hot-springs cycling tour of south-central Colorado on my kinda-sorta “touring bike,” the Soma Double Cross, but I’m absurdly vulnerable to peer pressure. Leave your suggestions in comments.
Incidentally for all you wisenheimers, Thomas McGuane already penned the definitive Hell-as-a-vacation-destination gag in “Nothing But Blue Skies.”
OK, I’ve done a little research, hollered for help, cursed a whole bunch, sipped a glass or two or three, and finally repaired and optimized my WordPress database, so let’s see if this has sent the censorship gremlins packing.
If for some reason you find yourself unable to comment on one of my brilliant online observations, please fire off a NastyGram® to our retarded IT guy, otherwise known as Your Humble Narrator, to wit, me. But if I were you, I’d spend my time enjoying the Fourth of July weekend instead of hanging around here, waiting to see if I can come up with a fresh way of saying, “This fucking sucks.”
Or, if you’re truly, hopelessly and spectacularly bored, pop on by VeloNews.com at 9 a.m. Mountain time on Friday, when the Boulder-based Journal of Competitive Cycling will be running its second 2010 Tour de France Round Table. It’s set up like one of Charles Pelkey’s live updates, but instead of following a bike race online you get to ask the editors and reporters how we’ll be following a bike race online — to wit, the impending three-week dash around Frogland.
I skipped the first TdF Round Table for reasons that are better left unsaid, but I may chime in tomorrow, because it will be the last chance I get to crack wise for three long weeks.
Mad Blog Media 