Untitled Lance Armstrong Thing

OK, I can't think of a title for this post and I'm tired of trying.  I'm going to start reading A Farewell to Arms again soon, maybe it'll help inspire me.  Anyway...

Did you hear that Lance Armstrong supposedly confessed his use of performance enhancers to Oprah?  That's right! The worst kept secret in the history of sports, the shocking truth that you've already pretty much known for ten years, will be revealed on a channel you probably couldn't find on your TV even if you wanted to.  Get excited!

I'll be honest and say that I've never really liked Lance.  He always seemed like kind of a tool.  And you couldn't even call him a tool because people would be like "hey jerk! look at all that money he raised for cancer", and then you feel shame.  But I'm on Lance's side here.  Let's be clear about what happened.

First, Lance got cancer and everyone said he was going to die.  Then, instead of dying, he won the Tour de France seven times.  Then, he raised half a billion dollars for cancer research.  That's billion with a B, as in, holy fucking shit that guy raised half a Billion dollars for cancer research! And now, we're about to find out that he cheated at riding his bike.

And now I'm supposed to think he's a bad guy and he betrayed everyone and fuck him?  Are you fucking kidding me?  They couldn't even give away some of his Tour de France titles because all the other guys were cheating too.  You try to ride your bike around the alps without drugs sometime and see how it goes.  Do you want to be buried in Europe or would you like us to fly your body back to the States?

I heard a guy on ESPN today compare Armstrong to Joe Paterno.  Seriously?  Joe Paterno employed a guy who sexually assaulted children right under his nose.  I heard a guy on the radio today compare Armstrong to OJ Simpson.  OJ SIMPSON!!! OJ Simpson murdered two people!  Lance Armstrong cheated at bike riding.  What the fuck is wrong with you morons?

(Yes, I admit that, outside of New York, sports talk radio is always awful.  Sometimes, on the ride home, I listen to this crazy Jesus freak just for laughs, or sometimes I just listen to static.  They're both better than listening to local sports radio talk about minor league basketball and high school golf.  So it's not the best example of what people might actually be saying.  But still, morons.)

Yes, Lance is a bully and kind of a dick, just like every other great athlete you've ever met.  But he didn't steal our money.  Let me ask you something?  Did you give money to the Lance Armstrong Foundation because you think French cycling is awesome and you have to support any charity associated with it, or because you thought maybe it would be nice to cure cancer?  It's a simple question.  If we find out Lance was using the Foundation money to buy steroids, then he stole your money.  Otherwise, shut the fuck up please.

OK, yes, there's some anger here that should be rightly directed at gun nuts and Congress people who won't give money to Sandy victims.  And I'll deal with them as soon as I can write one complete sentence about either group without using the word fuck.  But for now this is the best I can do.

If you want to hate Lance Armstrong, that's OK with me.  I never really liked him to begin with.  But don't sit there and tell me he betrayed everyone, or that you thought he was a great guy until just now.  You gave him money for cancer research and he used it on cancer research.  If you were inspired by him, it was because he beat cancer.  He still did that, it wasn't a magic trick.  Would he have been significantly less inspirational to people with cancer if he had decided not to use performance enhancers and finished 9th in the Tour de France seven times.  I highly doubt it.  It sounds to me like we all got the deal we were promised.

Binders Full of Women And (More) Things I Don't Care About

I've mentioned this before, but there are still a great many things in this world about which I do not care.  Now, to be fair, I'm not exactly the model for caring about stuff.  At any given time in my life, there are a few things and/or people that I care about very much, and everything else can pretty much go fuck itself.  So, I wouldn't suggest that everybody should not care about the same things I don't care about, but there are some things that make me wonder why anybody would care about them.  Like...

The superbowl halftime show.  I'm done with this, OK?  Beyonce is great, and maybe she'll bring her husband and that would be even better.  And maybe he'll bring some people he's worked with in the past.  I'm not saying I won't enjoy the Beyonce/Jay-Z/Rihanna/Eminem halftime show, I'm just saying I don't care.  My superbowl Sunday wouldn't really be any worse if they had just decided to dig up another bunch of fossils to throw on the stage. 

You know why?  Because you know what always sucks no matter how good the artist is?  A fifteen minute concert in front of a crowd that may or may not even like the performer because that's not what they came to see.  Especially since halftime is the best time for the crowd to go pee and get more beer and a nacho refill.  Even when The Who played it wasn't really that good, and they've been practicing ever since they played the halftime show at the Civil War (which was also terrible and caused President Lincoln to quickly declare "Christ this is awful, can we just get back to killing each other?").

Speaking of sports, I don't care about any summer sport once football starts.  Seriously.  Baseball, NASCAR, golf, whatever else i forced myself to watch all summer in the gap between hockey and football; please stop.  All of you need to have your championships in late August or on Labor Day weekend and then you need to shut up and watch football like the rest of us. 

If you don't care that nobody is watching, then just think about your poor athletes.  Baseball players have to spend three hours every Sunday in September playing baseball instead of watching football.  NASCAR drivers don't get to watch football until some time in November.  Don't those leagues feel bad about that?  They should.

I don't care if Lance Armstrong cheated.  First of all, seriously, who gives a shit?  He cheated in a French bicycle race.  Read that last sentence a few times and ask yourself what part of that should matter to anyone.  I never liked Lance Armstrong that much anyway, but hasn't he raised like eleventy billion dollars for cancer research?  But now fuck him because he was the one guy in cycling who was taking performance-enhancing drugs, except for, ya know, EVERY OTHER FUCKING PERSON IN THE SPORT!?! 

The chances of a Tour de France winner eventually getting stripped of the title for using performance enhancers are basically the same as the chances of everything that John Calipari does at Kentucky eventually being vacated for recruiting violations.  Like 98%.  Cycling is a perfect example of why sports really need to think twice and make sure they really want to know what's going on before they start with a testing program.  But somehow Lance Armstrong is now a big evil man.  I don't understand people sometimes.

I still don't care about reality TV.  I mentioned this last time http://somethingclever13.blogspot.com/2009/12/things-i-dont-care-about.html but it's only getting worse.  The Learning Channel used to air legit valuable television about science and stuff.  Now it's amish people in New York City and honey boo boo.  When I was a kid, the Real World San Francisco was the best thing I'd ever seen on TV, and it's been all downhill from there for reality TV.  Where's Puck when you need him? 

The bigger point is, by replacing actual, valuable, educational TV, reality shows on channels like TLC are, literally, making us dumber.  To paraphrase; honey boo boo, you are one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever seen. At no point in your rambling, incoherent nonsense are you ever close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this country is now dumber for having experienced you. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Finally, I don't care about Mitt Romney's binder o' hoes, er, I mean, binders full of women.  Honestly, we all know what he was talking about and it wasn't anything offensive.  He just worded it a little strangely, which is kind of his thing.  Ginning up outrage over some stupid little comment is the Republicans' thing, and when the Democrats try it they pretty much always fail miserably. 

More importantly, wasn't the actually bad part when Romney suggested that a necessary part of hiring women is making sure you let them leave in time to go cook dinner?  I mean, you wouldn't want the hard working husbands of the women you hire out of pity to come home after a long day of working way past 5 just to find an empty table because you kept their wives at work too late.  Is it even possible for dinner to happen without a woman cooking it?  I don't know, and Mitt doesn't want to find out.

And what about all the other stupid things Mitt said Tuesday night?  He said his answer to gun violence in America involves 1) not ever considering any new gun legislation, but 2) telling people who have babies to get married.  This one statement alone should disqualify anyone from holding any kind of public office, but somehow binders full of women gets more press. 

Did you also notice how Mitt quickly threw in that the two parents had to be a mother and a father?  The only thing Republicans hate more than single moms is multiple homosexuals.  Ya know, as far as I know, Mitt had a mom and a dad, and he still turned out pretty useless.  Maybe it's time for the country to stop taking family planning advice from these idiots.