One Year Ago Today

believe it or not: someone dumber than most of the idiots on the serotta forum

it's true!  this asshole--scary scary jewzzzzz!--is probably way stupider than these assholes.  now that's scary...

One Year Ago Today

red bridgestone rb-1

unlike some, i like red.  these last-generation frames were good, with the cool fork crown and all, but i just wish they had put a tiny bit more effort into fittings and frame finishing.  the '93 and '94 frames were just a little too 'mass production' for me.  those head lugs are wicked clunky and surely could have been much smaller and more sculpted, and that dropout finishing was quick and cheap, but it looks it, unfortunately.  i'm not a huge fan of the dropout eyelets, either.  it's too bad they never had the chance to do the rb-zip.  while these rb-1's looked a little cheap, the geometry was wicked wicked!

all the dumbest white guys in america, all in one place

and i don't mean the republican party!  some assholes should just keep their fucking mouths shut.  anything beyond drooling is far too difficult for them.  some of them are too stupid to take seriously.  and being a scum-sucking weasel may pay well, but you are still spending your life sucking down the scum.

One Year Ago Today

alabama and mississippi fu--what??

no fucking way.  whoever decided to extend the franchise to those places made a grave error.

One Year Ago Today

11 o'clock tick tock: it was all downhill from there for u2

reading some slobbering praise of the inexcusably heinous u2 by a fucking moron on a newly-independent bike forum, i was once again reminded that for a band that's been around for 33 mostly-awful years, they hit their high point very early on, after only one year.  '11 o'clock tick tock', produced by martin hannett, was the absolute zenith.  u2, in their role as feckless joy division sycophants, got martin hannett to produce the single with the hope that he would produce their album.  imagine boy and october produced by martin hannett instead of relentlessly radio-friendly careerist steve lillywhite!  for people of the right age, boy was a cool album.  since nobody could see the frightening future, it was easy to overlook the bits that felt a little off, and the joy division-for-dummies zeitgeist was a step above lots of the shit beginning to bubble up everywhere around that time.  i liked october for its rushed, amateurish feel; more time only would have made it more pretentious.  what would martin hannett have been able to do with those two records?  could martin hannett have been the one to beat some reality into bono's bloated, empty head, screaming 'no, no, no you fucking useless twat!  shut up!!!  no, no, no, do it again.  try again, paul!  fuck you!' until bono finally realized that he's basically an idiot and shouldn't do such a professional job of proving it every fucking time he opens his mouth?  would martin hannett have saved us all from the dublin messiah scattering crumbs?  we'll never know.  ian curtis died at 23.  bono will probably live to be a thousand.  if u2 had had the good sense to die in a fiery, lynyrd skynyrd-style plane crash after the recording of and before the release of october, they probably would have been remembered fondly as earnest, idiot-little-brothers of joy division and not the shameless and vile rawk monster they have become.

One Year Ago Today

first world problems: eastern woods research e-motion

with my completely disheartening search for both a kid's bike for a kid and a new full-squishy sled, i think i should just give up and get an eastern woods frame.  i'd really like an e-motion in steel, but i have no idea if they even make those at this point.  i like the e-motion design, and i'm not so much for the titanium, but in steel...that would be frigging lovely. 

southland 2012

southland is certainly more modest in scope and ambition than the show that started on nbc.  this year they're down to four regular cast members and a few key guest stars.  lucy liu and c. thomas howell really seem to be having a blast with their time on the show.  the single-shift scope of each episode works okay, but i think they could keep to the single-episode story for the uniform officers and find a way for regina king's detective to have longer, more reasonable story arcs that intersect with the other three main character patrolmen.  otherwise, what's she doing there?  she's good, but out of place in the current format.  the show's good this year, though.  entertaining so far.

One Year Ago Today

virag's movie reviews: immortals (2011)

it was the worst gods-damned r.e.m. video ever!

One Year Ago Today

fred armisen is killing comedy

tee vee comedy, at least.  (seth rogen and jonah hill are taking care of whatever judd apatow missed cinema-wise.)  portlandia is excruciatingly terrible, and snl stuff is whatever the opposite of entertaining is.  it could be argued that he's doing his best to kill music, too, what with being married to sally timms and dragging the hapless carrie brownstein down with him into portlandia.  fortunately, timms was able to escape!  armisen is another of those people who have a history and a background far more compelling than anything they've done in their careers. 

virag's movie reviews: fatherland (????, make this movie)

someone needs to make this movie, an american, not a limey.  i know there was a stupid hbo tee vee movie, but this thing could make a fantastic real movie.  like the girl with the dragon tattoo, fatherland is an awful book, with a ridiculous middle-aged sexual superhero main character and a hilarious limey-centric point of view.  however, awful books often make good films, and there's a lot here to go with, especially if you were to put the defeated and useless british in their proper place in the story.  hitler's grand and ostentatious berlin architecture, the german-led european union, the american/german cold war and space race, 1980's technology in the world of the 1960's, nazis, americans, murder, anti-heroes, a corroding society, it's all here.  a good script could toughen up the story and characterization much like the swedes did with dragon tattoo, and now with the ability to portray the over the top nazi berlin with cgi, this thing could rock.  so, get to it.  make the fucking movie.

just when you thought it couldn't get any dumber

then this assclown returns.  from the pathetic star wars spiel and the worship of the world's most bloated and pompous idiots in the history of rawk music, he, she or it is as lame as it gets.  i'm convinced that it's a creation of craig gaulzetti's nephew, richard sach's wife or perhaps tarik saleh, cuz if he's sincere then somebody shoulda' drowned him in a burlap sack with kittens. 

bill o'reilly is too stupid to shut up about sandra fluke

i think that bill o'reilly is desperately trying to prove that he's every bit as dumb as plankton eric bolling and just won't shut up about sandra fluke.  he's going to get himself blown out like porkins if he's not careful.

One Year Ago Today

santa cruz nomad

the shop has sold santa cruz bikes on and off for years.  apparently they sell well some years and nothing for a while; they say that the konas and cannondales are just too good now, or good enough at least.  not that i would know; cannondale peaked for me a while ago, and kona steel hardtails rocked.  they even had a max-tubed expolsif!  wicked.  i'm not sure why but none of the santa cruz bikes ever did anything for me.  purportedly the nomad is right in my wheelhouse, but there's no way.  the geometry isn't great; something just doesn't jell for me.  years ago all the pretty girls rode blurs as their first full-squishy rigs.  the glory of youth.

whistler in '88 video

the chromag blog has a pinkbike video of mountain biking in whistler in 1988.  rock on retro brothers and sisters.

all you need to know about josh marshall, today's edition

what a douche.  some of the comments here are pretty okay, though.  kucinich is a loss that was engineered by the republicans, but of course the republicans play the game hard every day because they want it more, so they win more often.
update: another idiot county heard from.  some of the comments there are fucking sad.  we are doomed society. 

the end of the fight for porkins, uh, i mean limbaugh?

will jek porkins's rush limbaugh's advertisers really stay away this time?  were the weird, bill o'reilly-type sex-tape fantasies finally too much for some of those stupid companies?  each time in the past, the money came back, but the experts are saying maybe not this time.  huzzah!  that would be fucking great.  it might be too late for porkins to eject.  bye-bye fucker.

One Year Ago Today

cove g-spot

cove g-spot?  i got an out-of-left-field recommendation from one of the shop guys today, a cove g-spot.  it looks pretty sweet, but the geometry is a little tight.  i haven't seen a new cove bike in 10+ years, but it could be a nice alternative to the delirium or uzzi.  i'm still not super-keen on air shocks, and i might be in between travel on the g-spot and the std.  both of the cove bikes are also pretty high as far as listed standover height; maybe cove is a good rewrite away from fit greatness for me.  i'd really like a little more travel on the g-spot, a coil shock, and a longer top tube, but you can't have everything. 

slurping from obama's piss bucket

pitiful obama piss boy josh marshall is whistling past the graveyard tonight.  moron.  but mittens really spooks this asshole, and i guess he knows he has got to do everything he can to fluff the home team.  this nonsense isn't news, though.  it's not insightful analysis, either, or even useful commentary.

why is marshall so spooked tonight?  so far, mittens has been a dud of al gorian proportions, but the washington village-idiot conventional wisdom must be that obama is extremely vulnerable this fall under certain conditions, so mittens could have a chance where a fucktard like santorum would have none.

virag's movie reviews: colombiana (2011)

i think we all would have been better off if luc besson had decided to retire from the film business after nikita and open a pizza hut in nice.

One Year Ago Today

delirium or uzzi?

well, it sure as shit ain't gonna be the fucking knolly.  i didn't realize until this weekend that all the knolly frames are made in taiwan now and forever, so unless they're selling them for a grand, i would never buy one of those pieces of shit.  if you can't employ american or canadian craftsmen, then you can't charge three fucking grand.  obscene.  and even better, they can't manage to get any delirium frames this year anyway!  what a fucking disaster.  i can only assume that knolly bikes is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of dorel.  if i owned intense cycles or kona bikes, i would have such a fucking hardon now and would be sure to send noel a big ole xmas card every fucking year.  i'd also make sure to play on my american fabrication or huge price advantage in my advertising and spiel to really twist the knife.

and, surprise, surprise, it might not be the uzzi, either!  apparently the test rig isn't gonna be here for a while, a long while, so who the fuck knows when they'll actually be able to deliver a damn frame to a customer?  jeez, what a shit show. 

winning at the minimum

minimum wage? another winner.  the war on women?  voter suppression?  wealth disparity?  imperial wars?  these are all winners, but only if we actually have candidates who are willing and able to advocate for them and campaign on them.  as long as we have the obama democrats and romney republicans fighting for the solid heart and rock ribs of the american conservative oligarchy, well it's lose lose.

oooh, baby, o'reilly wants to falafel naughty coed sandra fluke

keester falafel and loofah pervert bill o'reilly got himself all hot and bothered over naughty coed sandra fluke tonight.  i'm sure he'd like to give her the andrea mackris treatment.  of course that same technique wasn't such a big hit with o'reilly's wife.  whoever would have guessed that shoving a greased falafel up o'reilly's ass on a regular basis if you ever want to get pregnant is not the hot married sex that women dream of??

One Year Ago Today

daily kos birth control shenanigans

i call bullshit.  i don't believe a word of this.  i doesn't pass the smell test, and all the hand-wringers are fools. 
i’m pretty sure that even at band camp, the other little scamps could never find out what pills you are taking, especially if it is under the care of a doctor on the trip.  a doctor would be wicked paranoid about just this sorta shit because the signed releases and all the other documentation point right back to him or her.  unless you tell someone yourself, but then the little scamps in your class woulda known what a huge ‘birth control whore’ you were already.  i call bullshit.

and besides, when you put a young girl on ortho tricyclen because of bad periods or pcos or whatever, you don’t generally refer to it as birth control when you are writing the script.  those sorts of treatments are therapy meds.  certainly the patient should be able to understand this concept by the age of 16--or six--unless we are talking about some kind of special ed student--and should never have to ask her mother if she's a slut because of her meds.  i mean, christ, at 16 you should know what the fuck the word slut means. 
and exactly what 16 year old girl on this planet would refer to herself or another girl as a ‘birth control slut’??   jesus, my daughter is almost half that age, and she’s way more sophisticated than that.  plus, she sure as shit knows about some of the different uses of hormone therapy.  if she got put on that sort of medication, i’m pretty sure that even now she wouldn’t react like this 16 year old supposedly did.  nope. don’t believe it.
limbaugh’s a giant douche, but the kos thing reads like bad jonathan lethem.  this is either a clumsy fabrication or documentary of life in the palin family.  

is malcolm gladwell the dumbest son of a bitch on the planet?

this art-garfunkel-looking motherfucker was on the 60 minutes tonight while i was making dinner.  jesus h. christ, anybody who'd do anything more significant than wiping their ass on the advice of this cocksucker is probably just about too stupid to breathe, so any day now we should have a much smarter planet.  would you really like to be 2 years older than the smart kids in your class like some oversized, pockmarcked stayed-back fucking beetle-browed goon?  sure, sure, if you're a fucking canadian, maybe.  otherwise, graduating at 17 only gives you back some freedom and one of the best years of your life just in case you have some imagination or intelligence.  stupid parents make for stupid kids.  assholes.

eject porkins!

what a maroon.  now that he's had to eat a foot-long shit sandwich, just maybe this will be the end of that bloated fucknozzle limbaugh.  couldn't happen to a more deserving specimen. 

kirsten powers: a new definition of useless

fluffing rush 'jek porkins' limbaugh.  that is too disgusting to even contemplate, but somehow she manages to do it with relish.  roger ailes must be so proud of his girl.

ok, one more

maybe this one.  looks good in the picture.  top tube routing.  haven't seen it in person yet.  we may be opening a new scott dealer to sell one kids bike.  or not.  the shop does need another mass-market road bike, so we'll see.  otherwise i gotta go a little ways.  color is not ideal, but...

One Year Ago Today

one i'd like: serotta csi

serotta may be the most misguided bike company on the planet, but i would like to own a serotta csi at some point.  of course, they don't make them anymore, and if they did they would probably try to charge $10,000 for them, but it is (was) a cool frame nonetheless.  if i could find a stock geometry serotta csi in my size with an original steel fork, i'd be pleased as punch.  i'd even go if it had a fade paint job!

the next stop is the security concepts ed-209

the cops?  i'd buy that for a dollar!  when do the ed-209's hit the street, limey?

fucking morons.

the last of the best of a bad bunch

another choice, i guess.  don't see how this is better than the jamis.  looks awful in the picture.  good shop though.

One Year Ago Today

taibbi should be ashamed for saluting breitbart

even if most conservatives are functionally illiterate--remember: not every conservative is unintelligent, but most unintelligent people are conservatives--that does not excuse matt taibbi for showing far more respect to that vile douchenozzle cokehead breitbart than he deserved with a cute sendoff.  (and yes, i understand that taibbi was doing his part to generate publicity and hits for himself and rolling stone, but it sucks that he had to fluff such a reprobate motherfucker for money.)  breitbart was a profligate liar, vicious idiot, shameless koch-sucker, and one of the worst people who ever lived.  perhaps the best treatment he received yesterday was from olbermann who didn't even mention his death, condemning him to the utter invisibility and ignominious anonymity he deserved on earth and in hell. 

obama's killed breitbart; are the koch brothers next?

those sleazy bastards had better be watching their back.  obama's already killed breitbart, and it looks like the koch brothers may be next.  it is refreshing to finally see obama delivering on his promises to make america a better place.  i wonder if the whitehouse is taking suggestions for their hit list?

porkins is pulling the lever for obama

jek porkins porky pig rush limbaugh is doing his best to both coax a little blood into his pig fucker and deliver the 2012 election to obama with his very public masturbation over hot sexy college babes.  whatever it takes, obama should make sure that limbaugh and his dittohead catamites keep pulling their puds all over the place right up until november. 

jerk-off cookie party over sandra fluke

the he-man loser circle jerk chugs along in a sticky clown-car crackup caused by mild-manned super hero sandra fluke.  the more these dumb fucks keep yapping, the fewer votes the republican assholes will get in november.  the asshole contingent led by rush 'greasy chunks' limbaugh is sending the whole party into the shit.

One Year Ago Today

serotta fanboys lose the plot

things are a bit tense for the serotta fanboys these days in their new treehouse.  the website is not a big hit, and some of the free spender types are decrying the obscene and idiot prices for 2012.  there is not talk of the real future of serotta, namely the sub $3000 titanium stock road racing frameset, sub $3000 titanium stock cross racing frameset, and the sub $2500 stock titanium mountain bike cross country/racing-style frame.  that's the real deal; they could be the titanium racing sled in the style of the gaulzetti aluminium frames.  (gaulzetti ripped off his sizing mojo from ridley, so ben serotta should not be above appropriating it himself if he doesn't think that serotta stock sizing for racing bikes 25 years ago was good enough.)  for once these people should listen to poor zathras!
the 2012 serotta steel frame is 3800 bucks with a carbon fork.  who would be crazy--and stupid!--enough to buy one of those?  there cannot be enough assholes out there to keep serotta afloat.  as a companion to their stock ti frames, serotta should have an otherwise identical stock welded steel frame, $1200 with a steel fork, $1300 with carbon.  listen to zathras. 

cenk screws the pooch with breitbart again

tonight, cenk's show was excellent with bertha lewis skull-fucking breitbart's corpse on live television, but he fucked up big time by having some chicken-fucking lackey named joel pollack on afterwards to continue the breitbart tradition being the most repulsive human offal in america.  this is the second time that cenk has fucked up the breitbart story.  it doesn't speak well of cenk's ability and integrity.  breitbart was one of the worst of the worst, and to give him any quarter at any time is an insult to all the good people in the world.  both of them.

a great day on earth

and a bad day in hell.  eternal damnation my have finally become intolerable for everyone else.

by the way, if you want another of the innumerable examples of what is wrong with our political class and their toady boot-lickers and boot-licker wannabes: this slimy turdball from the inexcusable josh marshall.

One Year Ago Today

talk me down

i gotta buy a kid's bike.  they're horrible.  my go-to bike-shop bike brand, kona, is just awful for kids.  the decent kona with the 24" wheels is a thousand fucking dollars.  not doing that.  no fucking way this kid is gonna have a nicer hardtail than me!  and the sub-$500 kona's are nasty.  jesus.  i think the specialized is the way to go, for the love of pete.  it looks like a real bike.  but i don't wanna do it.  fuck.

One Year Ago Today

boulder six fifty bee

this is an interesting not-racing bike.  much to like here, even if it's not my off-pavement bag.

top gear fluffs the saab fanboys

top gear did a bit last sunday on bbc2 to give a little kiss goodbye to saab and a cheap thrill for the saab fan boys.  regardless, this was a decent episode, and bbc america should show all the top gears at full length. 

One Year Ago Today

a century after bradley manning

bradley manning, his treatment, and the his place in the shameful history of 21st century america will be hot topics in a hundred years even though they are totally invisible now.  manning is clearly a hero of the hightest order, and his treatment by the murderous empire is a crime against humanity.  long after the fall, manning will be a prime example of the distance between america's purported ideals of freedom and liberty and its reality at the start of the 21st century. 

virag's movie reviews: 50/50 (2011)

seth rogen is a cancer in the colon of american comedy.  the other guy was okay, though.  and the girl was cute, even if the part was absurd.  i thought the destruction of the painting was horrible; even if the painter was a shallow, talentless person in the movie; to revel in the destruction of a piece of art in a scene that was a in itself was a shallow ripoff of office space's copier dance was a little too meta in a lame, soft-headed comedy.

what's the definition of a non-believer?

i think that full-of-shit crossed with teabagging asshole is a pretty good one.  if by some remote chance the standard jeebus-style of heaven and hell is correct, then this asshole from the acton institute and all his no-reading-comprehension butt-buddies are gonna be right up front in first class on the express train to hell.

One Year Ago Today

is ron paul trying to buy his idiot son a spot on the ticket?

or possibly a cabinet post as secretary of galtian idiocy?  paul the elder can't have hopes of getting himself the second spot, but is it actually possible that rand paul could be a sufficient substitute for tom coburn?

One Year Ago Today

virag's movie reviews: the rum diary (2011)

the rum diary was a total surprise.  going in, i had no idea what a softhearted trifle johnny depp's labor of love would be.  i mean, it is hunter s. thompson after all, so if you had crafted your love letter in the style of your dear friend, the result should have been engaging and interesting.  casting in this wreck was very uneven.  giovanni ribisi and michael rispoli were excellent.  i'm not sure what ribisi was doing should be called acting in the purest sense of the word, but he turned in an entertaining performance that never quite became annoying.  rispoli's work held the film together; this could have been yet another time when some fool cast paul giamatti in this sort of role only to once again have giamatti destroy the film with his shameless, jackleg presence.  instead, rispoli was clearly an inspired choice, bringing real humanity to the film.  on the other hand, i had high, high hopes for amber heard in this film, absolutely none of which were fulfilled.  she's quickly proving she's as wooden and useless as january jones.  i was really expecting more, certainly different, from the rum diary as well given not only the source material but also the 50 years of the hunter s. thompson published and public experience.  perhaps depp was just too close to the author.

One Year Ago Today

neil cavuto on the short list for biggest douche in the universe this week

bloated fox news cockbag and festering syphilitic lesion neal cavuto is campaigning hard today for 'the biggest douche in the universe this week' award with his koch-sucking bullshit heritage foundation talking points about half of the people in america paying no taxes.  he's either a full-on ocean-going retard or a lying fucker if he doesn't understand how the income tax fits in with the total amount of taxes paid by people living in the lower rungs of the 99% of americans.  of course, when the economy sucks and close to 20% of the workforce is unemployed or underemployed and wages have been falling for two generations, that's going to leave many more americans too fucking poor to pay income taxes each and every year.  if that cocksucker neal cavuto is really interested in more americans having skin in the income tax game, he should spend every second of this tee vee time pushing for universal union representation, and a higher and ever-increasing minimum wage, and living wage laws in the united states.  of course he doesn't, and he would never, ever support such things, so fuck him.  he's a lying, hypocrite scumbag and fox news propagandist asshole.