Thanks to everyone who high-fived this old dog after he hit the VeloDoor a-runnin’.

Mostly a scribe doesn’t hear from the readership unless he’s managed to piss them off somehow. This will certainly come as a surprise to longtime readers, but despite my gentle demeanor I myself have received the odd bit of criticism for an occasional lighthearted, vicious attack on All We Hold Dear. So to read all these cheerful comments on my New Year’s Day post really made my day. Kicked 2012 off on a high note.

Today I had planned to celebrate my deeper embrace of underemployment with a long ride, but quickly got tangled up in e-mails, phone calls and social media. So instead Herself and I went for a short run in a nearby park.

It was the kind of January day the Greater Bibleburg Chamber of Commerce wishes it could bottle and sell at single-malt prices — beautiful blue skies, temps in the 40s and nearly windless — and we discussed strategies for moving forward as we … well, moved forward. Very, very slowly. Ask anyone who’s seen me run. So stay tuned.

Meanwhile, the Old Guy Who Gets Fat In Winter is still very much alive, as is the Mud Stud, who hangs around Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. And if you prefer bicycle travel to industry news, I crank out the occasional piece for Adventure Cyclist magazine, too. Thanks to Marc Sani and Mike Deme for keeping kibble in the dish.

But for pure filth — rock-bottom, unadorned snark — this is the place to be.

So thanks again for getting the gags, and I toast each and every one of you. May the road rise up to meet you in a fashion that does not require cosmetic facial surgery.

You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone. …

I started the New Year off with a bang, resigning my temporary commission as a junior officer aboard the sinking ship VeloNews.com.

It may sound impulsive, but it was a decision long in the making. I had been with VeloNews (now Velo) for nearly 23 years, since March of 1989, and had been a contributor to VeloNews.com for some nine years, eventually rising to the lofty post of online editor at large. As the MarketSpeak® has it, I felt some “ownership” of the “brand” and wasn’t eager to simply walk away as some equally frustrated friends and colleagues had done, among them former editor in chief Ben Delaney and former web editor Steve Frothingham.

But VeloNews.com has been rudderless since Steve moved back to Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, and though I agreed to fill in as web editor five days a week until a replacement unit was located, acquired and installed, I was a having an unusually difficult time getting management at Competitor Group Inc. in San Diego to commit to a basic two-days-a-week contract for Your Humble Narrator as 2012 approached.

Contractual squabbles were nothing new. Rassling management over contracts became an annual Feat of Strength after CGI acquired Inside Communications Inc. back in 2008, and excising toxic bits from their reams of legalese was like unbuilding Frankenstein’s monster.

But before there had always been a web editor or magazine editor standing between me and San Diego. We would exchange pleasantries (“Fuck no, I ain’t signing that. And where’s my check for January?” “Didn’t get paid again, eh? Why don’t you go on one of your pain-in-the-ass strikes?”) and eventually the exasperated intermediary and I would reach a deal that graciously permitted me another year’s earnings (unless CGI woke up cranky one day and decided to sack me), the retention of my copyrights and some limited freedom of speech.

This time around the website was on its own for budgetary purposes, the digital herd had been ruthlessly thinned and I stood alone against the Pirates of Mira Mesa. Repeated inquiries as to future employment were met with: “We’ll take it up with the new cap’n soon’s he’s piped aboard, matey. Now grab hold of an oar, the admiral wants to water ski.”

Well. Call me paranoid, but having seen the cutlasses come out for Charles Pelkey, John Wilcockson and other more senior members of the crew, I was starting to hear the sound of whetstones on steel in my sleep. So rather than wait to walk the plank, I used it as a diving board and went over the side.

The coward’s way out? Maybe. Truth is, I just didn’t feel like fighting tooth and nail for half a chance at the dubious privilege of repurposing magazine content, rewriting press releases and picking a new featured image in an old photo gallery to make it look fresh. I’m too old a salt for that. It’s cabin boy’s work.

I hate to leave the boyos in Boulder behind, facing heavy weather, but I won’t miss the buccaneers in San Diego. It’s a Bounty full of Blighs and not a Christian in the lot.

OK, I think I have Freedumb Communications’ little content-distribution problem solved. Let’s run this one up the strategically repositioned collaborative flagpole and see who facilitates a transformative salute in real time.

First you buy up a metric shit-ton of Berg’s Little Printers. You’re buying in bulk, so there should be a deep discount.

Next you pre-program the cute little dickenses to download updates from The Associated Press, Mayor Bach’s smoke-and-mirrors dispensary and the Colorado Springs Police Department blotter. And finally, if there’s anyone left in the art department after the last round of layoffs you get him to redo the face so it looks like Tim Tebow just before you have security escort the poor, no-longer-useful sonofabitch off the premises. Hell, the fucking thing already has orange feet — give it a blue body and you’re golden.

Then you sell ’em to the readership — whoops, pardon me, the community — at a steep markup.

And hey presto! Content delivery without all the hassle, expense and human interaction required in content creation. You’re welcome.

The Bibleburg Gazoo continues to bleed like a hemophiliac with Ebolla in a sandpaper suit.

Yesterday word came — not from the Gazoo, natch — that owner Freedumb Communications had sacrificed another dozen or so staffers to The Invisible Hand of the Free Market.

It wasn’t clear whether editor Jeff Thomas was among those fed to the Beast or resigned in protest.

Today, the G finally issued a statement — in MarketSpeak®. Any journalist who would write content-free spooge like the following should be slapped in the mouth with a copy of “The Elements of Style” (duct-taped to a baseball bat).

The goal is to reposition The Gazette’s content center strategically to create and facilitate community conversation around issues that are important to the region, and deliver relevant information that serves the needs of readers on any platform.

“We need to evolve to meet the changing needs of our audience,” (content director Carmen) Boles said. “We’re embarking on a transformation. We want to collaborate in real-time with the community in defining what is relevant.”

Talk about spinning a story about continuing layoffs at a struggling newspaper in hopes of showing vision rather than myopia. This would be good for an F-minus in any tank-town community-college journalism class. George Gladney would have stuffed copy like this up the author’s ass back in 1977.

I still know people at the G, folks who are doing good work under difficult circumstances. But there are some dreadful hacks on the payroll, too, as the above clip shows all too clearly. And frankly, any newspaper that gives Michelle Malkin a platform is going to have trouble “defining what is relevant.”

It can’t be long before Billy Dean Simpleton at Digital Fist-MerdeNews adds the poor old Gazoo to his odiferous collection of bumwads. There goes the neighborhood.