if you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin'

ahh, the magic of sport. On the one hand, you've got guys like Barry Bonds. He probably took steroids. I don't much care. It wasn't against the rules when he did it, and there's a long and inglorious history of cheating in baseball. You can say Aaron didn't use illegal drugs, but you have to admit that he may have been popping greenies like tic tacs. So what?

And then there's cycling. lordy lordy lordy. Cyclists are the East German swim team from 1976. I have a friend in France (oui!) that rides with some amateur cyclists on the weekends. He told me a couple years ago that even the amateur riders, the weekend warriors riding for club teams, have to deal with doping at every competition. He says it's just the done thing; if you're not enhancing w/ drugs, you're not going to even compete. I confess that I doubted him then, but not now.

The rider in the photo above (from Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; please don't send me litigious correspondence) was the race leader until he got booted for skipping scheduled drug tests before the race started. How did he get through almost the whole race without someone noticing that he had been booted from his own national team for suspicion of using drugs? That's the kind of oversight you only expect from the federal government.

alexei lalas hits crack pipe, talks to guardian

that irrepressible idiot Alexei Lalas is at it again, talking out of his ass to major media outlets. I analyzed his unique genius once before, so we're not covering new territory here. but I appreciate it when he says stuff that is deliberately inflammatory and stupid and we can unpack it a little bit.

Lalas and his group did a nice job bringing D. Beckham to the soccer backwater that is the LA Galaxy, but the truth is that a) Beckham is an aging, faded star that was fired from his own national team until very recently, and b) he is moving here for "branding" opportunities, not because he always wanted to play in LA and the other famous soccer cities (salt lake, houston, etc.). but that's not how Lalas sees it. He thinks that MLS is great. They pay him, so he should. I have a television and also a computer that talks to other computers through a cable in the wall, so I know better. so do you. in any case, take it away, Lexi!

We know when we're being patronised and I get so irritated when I hear the experts in England talk about David Beckham as if he's going into semi-retirement by leaving Real Madrid for Los Angeles.

I am an American, in your home market. Allow me to patronize you: Beckham is coming to semi-retirement so his wife can be in movies and tom cruise can try to convert them to scientology. She's skinny w/ obnoxious fake boobs. She was always meant for LA.

PS. Your team sucks and your product is crap.

That's ignorance of the first degree because almost every one of those critics has not even seen a single MLS [Major League Soccer] game. It's insulting to us and to our sport to say Beckham is on his way to Hollywood when he's coming to play in one of the most competitive leagues in the world.

I have watched about 5 minutes of one game and it sucked. I won't watch it again. Let me reiterate: I am in the LA Galaxy home market, and I refuse to watch it because it's shite. I do have the fox soccer channel, so I watch Premier League games. A lot.

There are a lot of stars in European football who would struggle over here. But Beckham has done his homework on this league, and his team-mates, and he recognises the merit of American soccer.

This is reductive and stupid. who cares how many 'stars' would struggle here? How many Americans are having any success in european football? (Aside from the goalies.) Three? Four? At middling or small clubs? And that's the best we can do. That's what I call merit. Man, we rule. America, f*ck yeah.

You know there's no accounting for bad taste. The fact that a segment of the world worships an inferior product in the Premiership is their business. In England our league is considered second-class but I honestly believe if you took a helicopter and grabbed a bunch of MLS players and took them to the perceived best league in the world they wouldn't miss a beat and the fans wouldn't notice any drop in quality.

You are an idiot. Anyone who has watched a soccer game in the states and compared it with the lowliest Watford v. Wigan game on the telly knows you are an idiot. Take your MLS team over there. You will get pummeled.

Lalas was really good at marketing himself. He had fun hair and a goatee and he was pretty good back in the day. Which is funny, because it's exactly what they will be saying about David Beckham when he gets here.

i'm on your computer, boring you to tears

I don't know what you think is funny and/or cute. some people like puppies. maybe you're into lolcats (explained at length over on slate). here's an excerpt:

Here's an idea: The furious social networking of Web 2.0 makes the Internet even more like high school than it already was. Message boards and blogs develop their own language, references, and games as soon as they acquire an audience. This photo [shown at left] actually contains two Internet in-jokes. The "I'm in ur X, doing Y" construction is a punch line found all over the place, and originates from an old video game taunt: "I am in your base, killing your d00ds." The other joke here is the informal competition to make the most realistic "transparent screen." Notice how the laptop appears to display what is actually behind it—geek trompe l'oeil.

Geek hits a new high. great.
but now that you got current on all of that, what about this? Maybe that's not your particular brand of humor. Maybe you don't have a sense of humor. Oh well. I laughed.
Full credit to Kissing Suzy Kolber (blog) for the lolpitbull, and slate and icanhascheeseburger for their respective content.
thanks for reading.

what if you live in a world of sh*t?

the reporters on the local tv called it a "sewage tsunami", but I think that's overstating it just a bit. A tsunami is big, and it tends to cause widespread damage, not just slurp around in your little neighborhood. This disaster was so localized that I can't even find the "region" it's in on a map. Nevertheless, when a wave of sewage washes through your village and kills 4 people, and 5k more have to evacuate, and people are floating in a lake of shit, then that's not good. at all.

My favorite quote from the Times article was from the man on the scene "Women and children were screaming at the top of their lungs for help." I'm sure the men didn't do any screaming at all. No doubt waves of poo are routine in their experience.