And if it sucked to race for those final three top-1o places, it sucked even more to watch.

Zdenek Stybar and Radomir Simunek fell out of contention faster than a Mexican national fleeing Alabama. And they were the only contenders in the dunes of Koksijde. Everyone else? Bums, with a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

They aren’t, of course. Bums, that is. But damme if that ain’t how it looked on TV. I don’t recall even seeing a non-Belgian after the first couple of go-rounds, unless you count the finish, where one of the course’s 22 cameras kept tallying the body count.

Between sit-down interviews with the top seven, who were showered off and chillin’ in their post-race kit, Sporza would occasionally cut back to the line to show the poor shlubs finishing two or three days down on freshly minted world champ Niels Albert.

The first non-Belgian (Simunek) crossed more than a minute behind the last Belgian (Sven Nys, who groused afterward that this may have been his last worlds).

I know how he feels. There’s more action in the GOP pestilential contest. Well, more mud, anyway.

I looked very much not like this during today's cyclo-cross workout at Monument Valley Park.

The thermometer seemed pegged at 30-something, with a stiff, cold wind out of the southeast. Not exactly ideal for a fat-burning spin.

So, having spent the morning watching the first half of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in Koksijde, I decided to pull the bottle cage off my favorite Steelman Eurocross, pull on most of the kit in the winter drawer and do an hour of light ’cross over at Monument Valley Park.

Ho, ho. Was that ever a rude awakening.

Though I do most of my riding on one cyclo-cross bike or another, I hadn’t done an actual ’cross workout for almost exactly a year, since my knees started giving me trouble in January 2011. A month later I quit running and didn’t take it back up until mid-November.

Now I can jog for a half-hour without collapsing into a weepy puddle of beer fat and bone chips. But it’s a whole other game, running uphill in an ancient pair of Sidi mountain-bike shoes with 23 pounds of steel bike on one shoulder. It was slow and unlovely and caused me to gasp like a Republican presented with a proposal to tax the rich.

But you know what? It was also fun as hell. After about a half hour my chops started coming back to me (it’s just like riding a bike, surprise surprise) and I got a few of those looks from passers-by that I value so much (look at that crazy bastard running around wearing a perfectly rideable bike).

Now I’m drinking a well-deserved beer — nope, not a Duvel, a Mirror Pond Pale Ale — and looking forward to tomorrow’s elite men’s and women’s races in Belgium. Would it imperil my journalistic integrity to say I’ll be rooting for Bibleburg homegirl Katie Compton?

Jabba the Newt should be deported to Tatooine to keep all his ex-wives’ grandmothers company.

Rick Sphinctorum needs an enema. Preferably from Dan Savage. He sounds like Milton Waddams squeaking about his stapler.

Ron Paul is hereby awarded a “No-Class Warfare” T-shirt with goldbug cluster for shamelessly courting white supremacists, militias and survivalists with racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic newsletters and not having the sack to man up about having done it.

And the RomneyBot 2012 needs to be locked into a portable toilet at the U.S.-Mexico border and forced to listen to a replay of each and every lie he’s told while running for president, in both English and Spanish.

Finally, Wolf Blitzer should be welded into a 55-gallon drum full of tarantulas, scorpions and the vengeful ghost of Edward R. Murrow, then rolled off the stern of a garbage scow into the Marianas Trench, for that blindingly stupid fucking question about whose wife would make the best first lady.

Jesus. I feel like having a houseful of Apple products is the equivalent of standing outside a Foxconn factory and yelling, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

If you think this iMac is unhappy, you should see the Chinese who made it.

One of my Wall Street PowerBooks was assembled in Ireland, so there was a time when Cupertino preferred Irish slaves to Chinese. And the 12-year-old Pismo on the shelf behind me came from Taiwan. But all the rest of this iStuff comes from mainland China, and the production thereof is strictly from Upton Sinclair.

If you’ve not been following the series, here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2.

The articles make it clear that Apple is not the only miscreant in the high-tech industry, and note the company’s attempts to nudge its suppliers toward creating more humane conditions for their workers.

But still, damn. Can’t say it makes me want to dash out and upgrade the old iPhone 3GS.

Ground Control to Major Newt. ...

Newt Gingrich wants to go to the moon. I propose that we send him there as soon as possible.

Dredge up an old Gemini capsule and a Titan II rocket, stuff Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in there with him for company, and three … two … one … blast off!

The world is thus unburdened of a pair of massive egos and the bad-noise level in the United States diminishes considerably. You’re welcome.

Leftovers — they're what's for dinner. And breakfast. And lunch. Annnnd dinner. ...

Egad. Eighteen degrees with a high of 57 forecast. That sort of thing is a shock to the system. It’s also SOP in Colorado. The trick is finding the sweet spot for a longish bike ride in that temperature range. That, and trying to stay out of the wind.

I’ve been road testing bikes again — a Pashley Clubman and a Bike Friday New World Tourist — but I feel like riding one of my own machines today, maybe the Voodoo Nakisi MonsterCrosser®.

The thing is a tank but it’s become my go-to bike for some reason. The 700×38 rubber suits pavement, gravel and single-track alike, and the low end of 22×26 means I can climb a tree if being chased by an angry reader.

Speaking of angry readers, James wants “more cycling and foodie things, less politics.” We’ve covered cycling, so let’s move on to foodie things.

I’ve been trying to stretch the food dollar lately, having bid adios to Los Zopilotes de San Diego. And it ain’t easy, because I dearly love to commit eating.

Pork chops are a fave, and the other day I pulled a pound and a half of same from the freezer to thaw. But I got to thinking that a pork chop disappears pretty damn’ fast, as in during one meal, unless you’re a nibbler, which I am not.

Leftover enchiladas, beans and posole. Much more of this sort of eating and Tom Tancredo will demand that I produce a birth certificate or be deported. Hah! Slipped some politics in there, didn't I?

So I diced a pound of the chops and made a pot of posole, which inspired the cooking of a pot of pintos with chipotle and the assembly of some sausage-and-cheddar enchiladas in red chile sauce. We’re still eating on that mess — in fact, Herself brown-bagged a small container of leftovers to work for lunch.

The remaining red sauce, beans and sausage, meanwhile, will get turned into tonight’s dinner of sausage-and-bean burritos smothered in red with a side of posole and salad.

And that half-pound of pork that didn’t make it into the posole? It was featured in last night’s nuclear kung pao pork with rice. The leftovers from that will be my lunch today.

So there you have it. How to stretch your swine into a fine line, by Chef Dog. Bon appétit.

More in the morning.

"Sorry, Callista, but you're gonna have to share me with the American people."

Well, here we go again. Time for the annual call-and-response comedy that pits Repug against Donk and man against booze.

I thought about a drinking game that involved taking a snort every time Weepy John Boehner pulls a frowny face, rolls his eyes or nods off from martini and/or tanning-bed poisoning, but I don’t think my liver could take the pounding. I’d be drunk-dialing Callista Gingrich 15 minutes into the speech: “C’mon, all I wanna know is what’s he make ya wear? Hah? Does he make ya dress up like Michelle Obama and then chase ya ’round the water bed with a riding crop, callin’ ya uppity? You can trust me, I’m a media elite.”

SOTU addresses drive me to drink far too easily already. Especially when the Congress pulls some monkey-spank bullshit like encouraging “bipartisan seating.” That’s about as far as bipartisanship extends with this lot: “I’ll sit with you, but I won’t put out.” Right. Saving themselves for Wall Street.

Me, I like watching the Repugs squat like dyspeptic toads as the prez delivers applause lines and the Donks rise theatrically to their lightly loafered feet, smacking their limp wrists together in a mimicry of human applause. And I pay taxes at a higher rate than either Newt or Mittens, so I should get what I want.

More after the jabberwocky.

The RomneyBot 2012 puts the squeeze on Newt.

These guys watch the Repuglican debates so you don’t have to:

• Charles P. Pierce: “(Newt) Gingrich’s political gifts are solely those of an arsonist. Challenged with the reality of what he’s always been, he will bluster and fume and light a dozen strawmen on fire, but he’ll never actually answer the damn question in a way that anyone with the intellect of an andiron would find to be adequate. Asked any kind of decent follow-up, and you can almost see his megalomania collide with his insecurities while he gropes for what comes next.”

• John Nichols: “Ron Paul and Rick Santorum took some pokes at the front-runners—indeed, Santorum got off a decent “there is no difference between President Obama and these two gentlemen” riff late in the debate. But neither of the other contenders stated the obvious: the leading contenders for the GOP nod embody everything that leads Americans to dismiss politicians as crooks.”

• Conor Friedersdorf: “Republican voters, who like the connotation of ‘conservative,’ say it’s a quality they prefer; revealed preference suggests what they actually want is an inconsistent right-leaning opportunist (George W. Bush, John McCain) who helps them evade certain kinds of cognitive dissonance (like hating deficit-financed government health care in theory and loving the budget-busting Medicare prescription-drug expansions in practice).”

And so on.

Meanwhile, the RomneyBot 2012 outputs some tax info and it ain’t pretty. None of his more than $42 million in income in 2010 and 2011 came from wages — it came from “a profusion of investments, as well as stock dividends and interest payments,” according to The Washington Post. And his tax rate last year? 13.9 percent. Ouch. That’s gotta sting. I tip better than that for bad service.

Notes Steve Benen: ”(E)ven if Romney argues that he’s simply playing by the rules — taking advantage of existing tax loopholes to pay lower rates than much of the middle class — this doesn’t explain why Romney is eager to exacerbate issues on tax fairness with his tax plan that makes the problem worse.”

Steve adds: “Romney and his aides believe these materials should end the discussion. That’s backwards — the larger debate is just beginning.” Let’s hope so.