Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl

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.

Ten-HUT!

Sgt. Rock didn’t spend his tour of duty protecting Texas roadhouses from the Viet Cong.

I see the Alfred E. “Worry” Bush Presidential Library is to be dedicated today. How nice to see Numbnuts finally has a place to store his comic books.

They’re mostly dogeared copies of “Sgt. Rock” and “Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos,” but there are a few “Wonder Woman” numbers in there, too.

You want to steer clear of those. They’re all sticky.

Fetuses have Second Amendment rights too

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.

More room for you and more room for me

You just know it’s going to be a good day when you wake up to find that no North Korean nuclear warheads cobbled together from a radium-dial Timex, bits of this and that ordered online from RadioShack, and an old Estes model rocket kit have burrowed into the front lawn, hissing and popping like one of your old Led Zep’ LPs.

Still, it’s early yet. Grampa’s birthday isn’t until Monday.

And you just know that fingers attached to irritated politicos worldwide are tapping nervously near big red buttons. It must be an awful temptation.

“Seriously, will anyone miss the little fucker? Huh? Whaddaya think? Let’s drop the big one and see what happens.”

Not quite their cup of tea?

I wonder what the Don’t Tread On Me crowd thinks of this lot.

On the one hand, the boyos are exercising their Second Amendment rights against the tyrannical minions of the oppressive State.

On the other hand, they’re a bunch of white supremacists involved in meth, ID theft and prostitution.

Somehow I don’t see these guys dressing up like Paul Revere for the Fourth of July.

Further on down the road

Was it really 10 years ago today that I wrote this?

It shouldn’t be any surprise that on the evening Junior decided to launch his war — a war that is not, repeat not, for oil — the local ABC affiliate’s “news” half-hour featured ads, in rapid succession, for various Chevys and Fords, the Hummer H2, Jeep, Hyundai, Subaru, Pontiac and Honda. Semper finance, with easy monthly payments.

How time flies, etc. Those “easy monthly payments” sure have turned out to be a bitch, though, eh? Especially in this economy. Maybe it’s time to trade the old heap in on a new model.

In which a rhetorical question is asked

Hey, kids, what’s Austerity Clause gonna bring you for Sequestermas?

I asked for a Mitch McConnell Inaction Figure.

Not gonna get it, of course.

A kick up the Oval Orifice

You know it’s Monday when you drop your English muffin en route to the toaster and it rolls straight into the dog’s water dish.

I blame Presidents Day, which is a bullshit holiday, like Valentine’s Day, intended to herd the feeble-minded to the nearest big-box outlet to buy shit they can’t afford and don’t need.

George Washington’s birthday? That I’ll celebrate. Lincoln’s birthday? Ditto. But there have been far too many nitwits, pud-pullers and ne’er-do-wells in the presidential pantheon for me to grant a blanket absolution, even for a single day.

There’s plenty of dead wood stacked up beneath that storied office, too. Case in point: “As budget crisis looms, Congress leaves town.” You get one day off for Presidents Day. This lot has fucked off until Feb. 25.

And to think some of them have the chutzpah to say the gummint should be run like a bidness. The stoutest union shop in the country doesn’t pay out this kind of slack. Try telling the manager at Mickey D’s you need a week off for Presidents Day and he’ll give you a kick up your Oval Orifice.

Hell, try telling him you want Presidents Day off. We wish you luck in your next endeavor.

New year, new recipe

Bacon-potato cake from “The Feed Zone Cookbook”

Happy New Year to all you hungover old dogs out there. Here’s hoping you did not overdo it last night.

Herself and I actually made it to midnight, and I overslept for some reason, so breakfast turned into brunch. It being a new year, I test-flew a new recipe for bacon-potato cakes, from “The Feed Zone Cookbook” by Biju Thomas and Allen Lim.

It wasn’t bad, but was a shade bland for my taste, despite involving three of the four basic food groups (bacon, potato and cake). Next time around I’ll punch that sucker up with a little garlic, maybe some red chile powder, a bit of cumin, for sure some Mexican oregano. At the moment I’m kicking myself for not adding a dollop of the red chile sauce I made for enchiladas the other night. That would have put the old fire in the belly. Or the fire in the old belly. Whatever.

Speaking of things that need punching up (or out) I see “our” elected representatives in the nation’s capital have been up to the usual not much beyond redefining upward the definition of “middle class.” We seem to be a few hundred thousand short of that particular finish line, which is probably why the prez never replies to my brunch invitations.

You can read more than you care to about the fiscal-cliff shenanigans at:

• The Maddow Blog (Steve Benen).

• The Atlantic (Matthew O’Brien).

• Political Animal (Ed Kilgore).

• The Nation (William Greider).

More murders? More guns!

That’s a weapon for every human, cat and dog in the house, though our four-legged citizens lack opposable thumbs and therefore decline to bear arms.

Some days there are no words.

I’ve tried several times to write something sensible about the massacre in Connecticut, but there is no sense to be made of it. Alas, there is plenty of nonsense to be made of it, which may be the primary reason I’ve been keeping my big yap shut on the matter.

The Second Amendment absolutists — among them the renowned Constitutional scholar Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Asshat) — are clamoring for more guns. Um, no, shit-for-brains, issuing M4 carbines to school principals is not the solution. I wouldn’t have made it out of seventh grade alive had my principal been packing.

Our goal here is, or should be, to deny military-grade armaments to the insane (like Rep. Gohmert, who should not be allowed to carry a dime-store squirt gun, even if his mommy promises it’s unloaded).

But how do we get there past the Second Amendment, which has kept lawyers, judges and grammarians scratching their heads for the life of the Republic?

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Christ, do I ever wish the framers had hired a copy editor to work that sucker over before committing it to posterity. But they didn’t, and as a consequence a certain subset of the citizenry dasn’t answer a knock on the door without an AR-15 and a 90-round drum magazine in the old umbrella stand.

Mind you, I’m a gun owner. Actually, make that “guns owner” because I have five of them — a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 19 Combat Magnum revolver; a 7.62x39mm Ruger Mini-Thirty semi-automatic carbine with a couple 10-round magazines; a Ruger 10-22 semi-auto .22 carbine with a 30-round magazine; a .357 Magnum Marlin lever-action saddle gun; and a boxy-looking S&W Model 22A .22 target pistol that will carry 10 in the mag’ and one in the chamber.

Buying them was about as troublesome as scoring a six-pack from the neighborhood grog shop, and if making the purchase process more onerous would save one human life, well, call me a limp-wristed, tyrant-hugging traitor, but I’m all for it.

In fact, I’ve already made inquiries about selling the entire arsenal, ammo dump and all, to some responsible party in the country, for use in protein collection and/or varmint dispersal. I don’t anticipate a visit from the blue helmets and black helicopters anytime soon, nor do I feel up to toppling the government right this minute.

Besides, the goddamn things look like dead children to me.