It’s Bike To Work Day here in Colorado, but it seemed silly to go out to the garage to fetch a bike for the 27-step slog from bed to coffeemaker to iMac. So I walked instead. Sorry ’bout that.
I don’t see a word about BTWD on either of the websites attached to the newspapers that grace our fair community, surprise, surprise. In fairness, there are other stories to be covered, like the Supremes wiping their black-robed asses with the Voting Rights Act, Fort Cartoon losing a brigade and our summer-tourism piggy bank roasting on a very big spit.
Still, if more of us were encouraged to cycle to work instead of firing up the family battlewagon, maybe we would be less inclined to build our homes 30 miles from the cube farm, up in Yahweh’s kindling pile.
The known terrierist “Banzai” Buddy Boo, captured from my iPhone. (Actually, he’s more of a spanielista.)
C’mon — you don’t think they put a camera in that phone of yours so you could take cutesy pix of puppies and kitties for teh Innertubes, didja? Wave hi to your Uncle Sammy.
I guess I’m with Kevin Drum here. I just assumed that once the surveillance genie was out of its bottle, the ratfink stool-pigeon bastard would never get stuffed back in, no matter which crypto-Mooslim Kenyan socialist tyrant happened to be occupying the Black House. And thus whenever I plot the smashing of the State I make certain that I’m out in the open, safe among The People, far away from that snitching corporate stooge, my iPhone.
I do have one question, though. As a nominal journalist and underemployed rumormonger, I consider myself to be in the entertainment business. And everything I do — from writing columns to drawing cartoons to making prank calls to the Queen warning that the Irish Republican Navy plans to dispatch an armada up the Thames — is part of the Work. Shit, I spend more time and effort editing my emails than some people devote to entire magazines. I’m saying I take my comedy seriously, is what.
So my question is this: By data mining my phone is Uncle Sammy violating my copyright, and if so, can I sic’ the FBI on him? Seems to me I can’t watch a goddamn “Game of Thrones” DVD without enduring a multilingual series of dire threats regarding the high crime of piracy from the Feebs, Interpol, the Sûreté, MI6, the Mossad, SHIELD, the Illuminati and Captain Video.
I think the sonofabitch should at least be picking up part of my AT&T tab.
• Late update: More on this revoltin’ development from The Old Gray Lady.
• Ever later update:More here, praising the leaker, from The Atlantic.
What with helping Consigliere Pelkey live-blog the Giro, cranking out the comedy for Bicycle Retailer, logging saddle time on the Jones Steel Diamond and the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff in preparation for reviews thereof, and assisting Herself with a new project — turning our House Back East™ into a vacation rental via airbnb.com — I haven’t had much time to follow the doings in DeeCee.
But now that I’ve had a minute to cast an inquisitive eye about the Innertubes, I have a question for those of you who have been paying closer attention.
Is it time we abandoned our flirtation with representative democracy and begged the Queen to take us back? God save the Queen!
Speaking of limeys, back at the bike racing, Brave, Brave Sir Wiggo’ went from descending like a girl to descending the Giro’s overall standings like a sick girl in a Radio Flyer full of anvils on Mount Doom. Defending champion Ryder Hesjedal has had even worse luck; they’re timing that poor sod with a calendar. I have no idea who’s gonna win the goddamn thing, but it sure is fun to watch. Join Mr. P and me at Live Update Guy for tomorrow’s stage, the Giro’s longest.
In California, meanwhile, it’s Jens Voigt making everyone look sick. The 110-year-old father of 16 crushed Tyler Farrar and Thor Hushovd under his chariot wheels en route to victory in stage 5 of the Amgen Tour. He told VeloNews reporter Matthew Beaudin that when he finally retires, if ever, it will take two people to replace him — “one to do the funny part, and one to be the bike rider.”
And me? I didn’t ride a meter today, in victory or defeat. Work, work, work, that’s all we have around these parts. That, and dinner with friends at Springs Orleans. Somebody had managed to FUBAR the house lights but we couldn’t have cared less, because the food was top notch. We just let our forks follow our noses.
Do you suppose a mass shooting of fetuses might move the Senate to action on gun control? Naw, they’d just vote to station armed guards in American wombs.
Herself and I sent the usual NastyGrams® to our senators, for all the good that does. Two more mutts yapping. You don’t even hear it after a while. I’ve lived next to runways and railroad tracks, crack houses and frat houses, and if I’ve learned one thing it’s that a fella can learn to sleep through any kind of godawful racket, even me screaming at you over the phone.
If the killing of 20 children in Newtown can’t motivate “our” elected representatives, I don’t know what can. Oh, yeah, right — money. How silly of me.
The National Rifle Association spent $500,000 on Wednesday alone, for advertising critical of “Obama’s gun ban.” Of course, this is above and beyond what they’ve already invested in the best Congress money can buy.
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