Senator Lamar Alexander is the traitorous senator from Tennessee who voted to confirm the racist judge, Sonya Sotomayor. Never again will I vote for Lamar Alexander. He is not up for re-election until 2014, but I intend to post this reminder each and every month until then. I hope he either resigns or they run a true conservative against him in the primary. I challenge my fellow bloggers to do the same if you have RINO's in your state that need to go. I may add my other senator, Bob Corker, to this reminder. I'm waiting for him to cross the aisle again and work with Dimocrats.
It is with sadness that I have added my congresswoman, Marsha Blackburn to the RINO Reminder list. She voted for the BOEHNER bill and has voted to raise the debt ceiling, thereby COMPROMISING and selling us out to the Dimocrats and the establishment Republicans. I have let congresswoman Blackburn know that I am looking forward to voting for a primary challenger against her in 2012. I hope there is one.
American actress who first achieved fame for her role as Joey Potter in " Dawson's Creek" (1998-2003) Katie Holmes Will Star as a guest star on ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ Over the years, "How I Met Your Mother" has been very fortunate in attracting seasoned actors to guest-star as love interests for Ted (Josh Radnor) — ladies like Rachel Bilson, Sarah Chalke, Jennifer Morrison, and Laura Prepon. Holmes, likewise, makes her debut on "How I Met Your Mother" on Halloween night as Naomi the "slutty pumpkin."
The actor has been invited to appear on the show's Halloween episode next month, in a role that, on a family site, I will paraphrase as "The Pumpkin of Loose Morals." The 32-year-old Holmes was last seen on TV playing First Lady Jackie Kennedy in the Reelz miniseries "The Kennedys"; she's also currently in theatres in the feature "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark."
Craig Thomas, one of the creators of the show, said: “Katie is a lovely and talented actress, which is why we’ve saved for her perhaps the most classily named character in our show’s history.”
Well, they can't seem to derail Herman Cain on the issues so they have reverted to smear tactics. Politico reports that a couple of women have accused Herman Cain of "inappropriate behavior". Naturally the reporter coming up with this crap has stated he was not going to "get into the details" of "an incident that may or may not have happened where Cain may or may not have invited a woman up to his hotel room".
What kind of biased crap is this?
Well that is just what it is, CRAP. Ann Coulter agrees with me when she says that the left is "terrified of strong, conservative, black men". I remember the pummeling that Clarence Thomas took before his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Remember Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill? Another bunch of crap. If the media cannot de-fang a conservative on the issues they will try to ruin them personally. Clarence Thomas survived. Hopefully Herman will too.
The liberal media along with the establishment Republicans and the Fox News pundits want to choose the RINO, Mitt Romney, for us so badly they can just taste it, in much the same way they chose the losing RINO, John McCain in 2008. I even wondered if Rick Perry and Mitt Romney might have had a hand in the big Herman smear, but I kind of doubt it. They both sort of act like Cain doesn't even exist and seem content to launch darts at each other.
The liberal media would like the rest of us to think this as well, but deep in the bowels of hell I think they realize that Herman Cain is a REAL threat and they are absolutely scared to death.
what you call Halloween, and the sun is nearly up, so there's not much time.
I hope this letter reaches you, that you read it, for its your eyes its meant for. I've never had the right words, that grand sweeping prose that moves the heart, grabs hold of one's soul, but I've always thought in those ways. If only I would have known how to bring to bear those notions so powerful that I am enveloped by them, and in so doing wrap you in this ceaseless love only felt for you.
Love.... so foreign a concept when heard from my lips, more so to those whom know who, know what I've become, what I am. Nevertheless, it is my nature, though none have ever felt it from me, and it runs deeper than you will ever know.
Perhaps, in all of it, that is the most tragic aspect.... that no one, that you, will ever know those depths of my soul. And again, I search for words that won't come... forever searching for what will not come.... and maybe its just as well.
The sky is beginning to brighten just over the horizon now. The stars still shine and the moon gazes upon me, but their light dims with the coming day. I've moved my desk to face the window, removed the shades. Its been so long now since I've seen the sunrise..... I can't think of a more beautiful way to say farewell.
So long I'd spent chasing things outside of myself, anything that would give me that spark of life once more, that I missed all of everything that truly fills a man. Its led me down this dark path, left me with this hunger, this hole that nothing can fill. I've thrown away all I had, my very humanity trying to do so.....
What I wanted to say to you was this..... in your life you will encounter many things, people, experiences..... most will come and go like random breezes in the night. Some will be soft and warm while others whip and bite the flesh, but every now and then you'll be forced to stop and catch your breath. And its those moments, those people, those events that change you forever that this great dream called life is all about.
Human kind..... so funny..... so lost..... they cling so tightly to the fears that keep them alive that they fail to ever live. They focus all they have on making a living and rarely create a life. They waste all their time looking for people they can live with when they should be looking for the people that they can not live without.... don't be afraid. Don't waste life like those fools.
That spark of life that I spoke of..... that's how you'll know.... not the fleeting excitement of meeting someone or doing something new and different, not the light and easy, fun free spirit of just having a good time.... its that thing that stops you dead in your tracks that won't let you move on that tells you. And in that instant the person that you were will be gone, you'll be forever changed..... that's how you'll know.
I was young once, full of life, full of that idealistic vision of better days, perfect worlds. If you could have known me then.... but alas, those days have long since passed. I am outside the world now, no longer part of it. I sit in shadow, in that place in between, neither living nor dead, unseen.
You wouldn't know it, but when my body begins to warm, when my skin begins to heat, I break into hives. At first it tickles, and then it itches, it doesn't burn.... at least not at first, not until its too late.
Those days are gone.... or so I thought.... until I saw you. And now I'm changed. Changed for the better. Changed from this despicable wretch, this vile creature I've become. All of those better parts of my youth, the perfect ideals, the best of me, of my heart, have been stirred in your eyes. You've awakened something I've not felt in....
You are someone that I can not live without. I can not go back to what I'd become before I'd seen you. You raise me up in indescribable ways, towards perfection. And I wish to be your champion. Your champion.... a long lost ideal of chivalry...
But all I touch is death. I can not go on without you.... but to entangle your fate with my own would be to damn you to an eternity of despair and suffering.... I would suck the life from your life and leave you as empty as I....
No.... no, that won't do. There is no hope for happiness with me. There is no hope. That is no life. And since I can not go on otherwise..... I await the sun.
My skin is beginning to crawl. Tears fill my eyes.... the sunrise.... so beautiful.....
(Gmail: A disturbing and unwelcome window into the self.)
As you know because you either live in the Northeast, watch news about the Northeast, or know a person who lives in the Northeast who won't shut up about it, we here in the Northeast received something of a freak snowstorm this past Saturday. It just so happens that this past Saturday was also the day I was scheduled to visit the Philadelphia Bike Expo and bore the attendees right out of their "shants." Naturally then, as the forecast grew increasingly dire, I worried that travel to and from the City of Brotherly Love might be difficult.
Sure enough, it was cold and rainy on Saturday morning, and snow was clearly on the way. But was I daunted? I was not. "The people of Philadelphia must be bored!," I announced to Toucan Sam, who was staring at me skeptically from a box of Froot Loops. Finishing my morning repast, I packed my bag, applied embrocation and chamois cream liberally, slipped into my finest Rapha, gave my bike a final going-over...
...and drove to Philly.
Sure, traveling by means of a four-wheeled internal combustion recumbent is not "epic," nor is it "smug," but I was wearing Rapha pants, and I was also using a David Byrne Air Freshener™:
(The David Byrne Air Freshener™: Smells like Smugness.)
Just because he doesn't own a car doesn't mean he doesn't want yours to smell nice. Especially since he probably needs a ride.
Sure, I would have liked to have utilized some sort of bike/train "collabo" to get down there, but I also didn't want to spend the night in Philadelphia should rail travel go awry due to the weather. It's not that I don't enjoy visiting that fair city--in fact I admire it very much. It's just that I'm something of a homebody (or, if you prefer, a "woosie") and every night I spend in a bed other than my own I lose a little piece of my soul.
Of course, the other non-"epic" option is always "If it rains take the bus," but buses in and out of New York tend to flip like pancakes. Also, I have a fear of motorcoaches that dates back to my "teen tour," during which I was trapped on a bus for two whole months with a bunch of children who had had incredibly lavish Bar Mitzvahs. (You don't know the meaning of perdition until you've seen a teenager rapping while wearing a leather Louis Vuitton cap and gold chai medallion.)
And then there was all the free giveaway crap I had to portage schlep, and as I motored along the Turnpike being pummeled by what amounted to a sampling platter of every type of popular frozen precipitation, the trunk of my 1967 Corvette Stingray (converted to run on vegetable oil) full of blinky lights and designer "taint cream," I imagined that, should the state police have to extricate me from the vehicle with the Jaws of Life, in my last moribund act I would produce a "hipster cyst," switch it on, and utter the words, "May this weigh heavily on your souls."
Fortunately, none of this happened, and I made it to and from the Expo smoothly and without any sort of problem whatsoever. I attribute this to the David Byrne Air Freshener™, which doubtless served as a talisman.
Anyway, when I got to the expo, I savored the irony of the fact that, even though I had been invited down there to talk to everybody, I didn't actually have any friends to hang around with since nobody likes me, and so I bided (bidded? bade? bode?) my time by lurking in the rafters like the Phantom of the Opera:
From there I surveyed the proceedings, including the "epicness" that was the Rapha booth:
Speaking of Rapha, they were one of the three concerns generous enough to provide stuff for me to give away, the others being Knog and the Just Coffee Cooperative. I'd like to give them all my sincere thanks. I'd also like to thank Bilenky for inviting me. Most of all, I'd like to thank the people who actually showed up to listen to me for actually showing up and listening to me, and here's picture of them that I found on the Internet:
(They're only smiling because I haven't started yet.)
Thanks very much to all concerned.
Then, after my talk, I stopped by the Brooks booth:
This sort of thing happens to me more than you'd think, since it turns out the councelors on my "teen tour" were putting some sort of experimental drug in our frozen yogurt.
By the way, if you want to style yourself as a dashingly cosmopolitan urban cyclist, you can do no better than getting some Rapha jeans, a Brooks jacket, and then riding around on a "smugness flotilla" that's powered by a leafblower:
It's the only look that shouts "class" loud enough to be heard over the flatulent din of a 50cc engine.
In any case, even though my visit to Philadelphia was brief I enjoyed it quite a bit. In fact, it was exactly like racing cyclocross, inasmuch as I drove a car 200 miles round-trip just to make a complete fool of myself for 45 minutes.
And I'm pleased to announce it's been sitting atop my Big Dummy since then, where it's been both serviceable and comfortable:
It's also become all tanned, smooth, and shiny, like Mario Cipollini after a two-week vacation in the islands of Greece. (Every morning, he pours three liters of olive oil on himself and then lies in a hammock for 14 hours.) Oddly, this didn't happen gradually. Instead, it seemed to happen all of a sudden after I rode home from the beach one day in soggy salt water pants. I can't explain the reason for this since I'm not a scientist, nor am I versed in the subtleties of having a dead animal's hide bolted to your seatpost, but it looks good and it feels good and so, like most consumers of animal by-products, I'll just switch off my brain, absolve myself from any responsibility, and enjoy it.
In other saddle-related news, I also saw this Fizik display at the expo:
And I'm not sure I've ever seen anything that begged so plaintively for a Richard Gere reference:
(Richard Gere says: "It's gerbil time!")
I'm happy to oblige.
As it happens, I find Fizik saddles comfortable and have for quite a number of years, which is why I have one on my Ritte von Finkelstein:
(I very much enjoy riding my Ritte von Finkelstein roadening bike.)
This is both creepy and ridiculous, and categorizing people as "snakes," "chameleons," or "bulls" based on the way they wriggle and writhe while they straddle something sounds like the way Mario Cipollini probably categorizes his various sex partners. Can't they just call the saddles "soft," "medium," and "hard?" I guess that sounds sort of dirty, but it's positively chaste in comparison. Still, it's great that Fizik have managed to bring the irritating Starbucks sizing concept to bicycle saddles. Hopefully one day I'll be able to go into a bike shop to buy a cyclocross tire, and when they ask me what size I can say "sawtooth eel."
Lastly, for decades, people have argued about the point at which a pop-cultural trend is officially dead. Some say it's when it's used in advertising campaigns for mass-market products. Others insist it's when the trend is available for purchase in "big-box" stores such as Walmart. I suspect, though, that the true sign a trend is dead is when white people start rapping about it non-ironically, as in this video that was forwarded to me by a reader:
In it, this guy makes contorted hand gestures and says things that rhyme:
And my favorite part is when he says, "Fuck that fixie hipster shit we ride fixed gears" and then gives us the finger:
I realize that, as the father of 17 children who owns a luxury cargo bike and who drives to Philadelphia, I've officially reached the point in my life at which I'm hopelessly pampered and "out of it." Nevertheless, I can't possibly be alone in hearing a line like "Fuck that fixie hipster shit we ride fixed gears" and then wondering, "What could possibly be the difference?" It's like saying, "Fuck that hippie shit we listen to Phish." Evidently though, according to the video, the difference between "fixie hipster shit" and non-"fixie hipster shit" is doing this:
