Ho ho ho, Baby Jesus!

In honor of the Rapture and Il Giro …

… a favorite George Carlin bit, from “40 Years of Comedy,” with Italian subtitles.

In which bike stuff is discussed for a change

Says Miss Mia Sopaipilla: "Will y'get the hell out of the house awready and go ride y'bike? Y'makin' us all crazy!"

The Vuelta de España is over; chapeau to Vincenzo Nibali for winning, to Ezequiel Mosquera and Joaquim Rodriguez for making a fight of it, and to Tyler Farrar for taking the final stage victory.

Cheers, too, to homeboy Danny Pate — I feared he might be jobless going into 2011, but it seems he’s leaving Garmin-Transitions for HTC-Columbia instead of the dole and the Dumpster. I’m still waiting for word on Mike Creed, whose relationship with Team Type 1 appears to have soured. I don’t care who he pisses off, I like him. His old man’s all right, too.

And finally, a twirl of the jet-black Mad Dog Livewrong bracelet to Taylor Phinney and Ben King for completing a Trek-Livestrong sweep at the USA Cycling Professional Road Championships in South Carolina.

Yeah, yeah, I know — they are affiliated with He Who Shall Not Be Named, and Trek sucks, and the dormant journalist in me is mumbling, “Oh, really?” over his second beer. But at least it’s not another steer from that same sorry old herd crossing the line first.

And as for me? I have the day off. I should be in Santa Rosa, California, sipping local microbrew and contemplating a week’s worth of cycling up hill and down dale with my old pals Merrill and Chris, but what the hell? A guy can ride his bike around here, too, even if most of the routes feel a bit stale, like Repuglican campaign rhetoric. “Why, by gum, if we just give our poor rich folks some more money, we’ll soon be as right as rain. Well, we will be, anyway. Your mileage may vary.”

The road bike remains unforked at Old Town, Ritchey being somewhat slow on the uptake, warranty-wise, so it seemed like a ’cross-bike kind of day. As the Vuelta was wrapping Dr. Schenkenstein rolled by astride his ’cross bike to say howdy, a tad weak and pale from his Yom Kippur fast, so I — full of last night’s green-chile chicken enchiladas, rice, salad and Mirror Pond Pale Ale — seized the opportunity, broke out the Nobilette and flogged him like the miserable pissant he is for 90 minutes or thereabouts.

That he had an asthma attack as we were climbing the weed-lined, dusty single-track to Gold Camp Road had nothing to do with it. My triumph is untainted. God’s judgment, I call it. The Irish are one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, don’t you know. And you can tell Yahweh likes us best ’cause he didn’t dump us off in the middle of a desert bereft of whisky.

At least it’s an ethos

And now, "Bowling for Virgins," starring The Dude.

Jesus, I knew all it took to get on TV was a near-fatal case of the dumb-ass (insert your favorite stupid TV show here), but this Pentacostal pinhead from gator country has lowered the bar so far that Beelzebub can do chin-ups from it.

I’m not going to link to any of the stories about him, because he burned through his 15 minutes faster than a snowboarder does a bong hit and I’m not granting any extensions.

However, I expect the mainstream media will — the NYT is already going through an extended breast-beating session headlined “When a Fringe Figure Becomes News” in its “Room for Debate” discussion group. My news judgment! O my ducats! Choices, choices. I’m not linking to that bullshit, either.

The Rev. Billy Bob Goebbels reportedly has called off his Koran-burning, perhaps so he can spend more time negotiating for his own prime-time program (a cooking show? What kind of barbecue sauce goes with wood-fired sacred text?).

But fuck ’im, I went out and bought a Koran anyway. My copy is “The Koran Interpreted” by A.J. Arberry. I scored the fall issue of Tricycle magazine too ’cause it had The Dude on the cover. Him I will link to. Is that some kind of Eastern thing, man?

Dumb da dumb dumb

Sharron Angle (R-Religious Mania) is on record as having made any number of deranged comments in her bid to replace Harry Reid in the U.S. Senate.

One of my personal faves is that Demoncrats were turning Big Gummint into God:

“And these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward — are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.”

Today, in an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl, she denied ever saying that and explained that even if she had, it was because she was tailoring her message to suit her audience:

“Actually, that was a discussion I was having with CBN. We were talking in very Christian terms. That’s what Christian broadcast is — that’s their focus — so you speak the language of the folks that you’re communicating with.”

Well, shit, yeah. Fuckin’ A, goddamnit. I’ve always thought the commandment forbidding the bearing of false witness had a little wiggle room in it. And who doesn’t engage in a little message control from time to time? That’s why I hardly ever use the word “motherfucker” around actual Christians. Or call a retard “retard” to her face.

But I’d be delighted to make an exception in Angle’s case. Thanks to Steve Benen at Washington Monthly for the tip.

Happy summer solstice

They say a man walked on the moon, but you know he wasn't an Irishman, else he'd have fallen back to earth and blamed the drink so.

I almost forgot. Here’s a shot of the moonlit alley the Irish are stumbling through this fine solstice evening.

Scrambled Easter eggs

Up from the grave he arose,

With a mighty triumph o’er his foes

And a corncob pipe and a button nose

And two eyes made out of coal.

Hm. I seem to have scrambled my religious holidays again. No wonder the Easter Bunny didn’t leave an iPad under my pillow in exchange for that tooth.

OK, ’fess up, now — how many of you crazy kids rushed out to score iPads yesterday? I won’t make fun of you, I promise. You can trust me; I’m in the media.

If you had one and were able to figure it out in time for the Tour of Flanders this morning, you’d know that Fabian Cancellara crushed Tom Boonen to win the cobbled classic. Dropped him like a used syringe on the Muur, he did. But you might not have been able to watch any of the live video feeds ’cause they’re probably Flash-based, which makes the iPad hork. Pray for the rapid expansion of HTML5.

What is the sound of one fat lip flapping?

Don't do something ... just sit there.

Faux News dingbat Brit Hume has tromped in the Dharma with his big ol’ Bible-beatin’ feet, saying that the errant Tiger Woods should abandon Buddhism and come to Jesus, sparking fits of enraged zazen at sanghas worldwide.

Like Steve Benen at Political Animal, I couldn’t care less about Brit Hume, Tiger Woods, golf and industrial Christianity as promoted by a fake “news” network that is less interested in reality than is The Onion.

But I take a very un-Buddhist glee in watching loudmouthed nitwits step on their own dicks, as long as they aren’t me. But of course, they are.

Image lifted from CafePress.

Ho ho ho, Baby Jesus!

Turkish seeks Jesus in my drawing board's lamp.

We haven’t even sat down to Thanksgiving Day dinner and the pulpiteers at Focus on the Fambly are already trotting out their annual Christmas In Peril fantasy. Focus Action spokescreature Carrie Gordon Earll breaks it down for us in Palinesque style (and I’m not talking Michael here):

“The eradication of Christmas is a politically correct idea that we can’t have sacred ideas in our culture.”

Uh huh. Can someone please ask Spock to pop round with his Universal Translator? I assume it handles Cretinese.

The more I see of industrial Christianity, Bibleburg style, the more I like Zen. You never see a mob from the local sangha berating the manager of a Best Buy because he won’t hang banners inscribed with the Four Noble Truths on Shakyamuni’s birthday. George Carlin had this crowd nailed, you should pardon the expression.

Meanwhile, thanks for all the music recommendations. I’d forgotten how much I like some of your suggestions, especially The Band’s “The Last Waltz.” Wouldn’t you know the sumbitch isn’t available on iTunes? Yo, Carrie, forget about that eradication-of-Christmas bullshit — we got a real problem right here.

Here comes the King

Lance Armstrong says he's excited about his three-year association with Michelob Ultra, because it complements his active lifestyle by injecting it with a shitload of money.

Just think — if Bristol Brewing made worse beer and more money, they could have Lance Armstrong as their celebrity spokesperson.

Instead, the former Shiner Bock drinker will be pimping Michelob Ultra, one of the jillions of brands belonging to industry titan InBev, and a concoction described as “a great-tasting beer with lower carbohydrates and fewer calories.”

Uh huh. I haven’t sampled an Anheuser-Busch product in many a moon, since I discovered what actual beer tastes like. But I suppose that given the proper incentive — a Brinks truck full of greenbacks and free Michelob Ultra backing up to the house every Friday — I could learn to lower my standards, too.

As a much younger dog I would drink pretty much anything as long as it was cheap — Falstaff, Buckhorn, longneck Buds. But as it is written in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.” Including watery beer.

In my dotage, I favor IPA from Bristol, Lagunitas or Second Street Brewing in Santa Fe, when I happen to be in town. Anchor Steam or Anchor Porter. Guinness, of course. And the Deschutes beers are all excellent, whether you’re talking ale, porter or stout. I’d recommend any of them for free.

In fact, I just did. No wonder I remain so distressingly unwealthy. I will never be smart.

• Extra-credit snark: This is not Anheuser-Busch’s first marketing coup, of course. More Americans can recognize the Budweiser Clydesdales than can find Afghanistan on a map. I recall enjoying a semantic analysis of the original Budweiser jingle in college. Don’t recall if it was in journalism class or semantics, but the gist of it was that the jingle said absolutely nothing about the beer — it was a series of empty statements punctuated with references to Anheuser-Busch trademarks.

Think about it for a second:

“When you say ‘Bud,” you’ve said a lot of things nobody else can say.” (That’s because ‘Bud” is a trademark.)

“When you say ‘Bud,’ you say you care enough to only drink the King of Beers.” (“King of Beers,” another trademark.)

“There is no other one.” (One what?)

“There’s only something less.” (Than what?)

“Because the King of Beers . . .” (That trademark again.)

“. . . is leading all the rest.” (Of what?)

“When you say Budweiser — you’ve said it all.” (The complete name, which is also a trademark.)