Positive dope testing for make shame glorious nation of Kazakhstan

Man, is Borat gonna be pissed.

It was reported today Kazakh cyclist Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for blood doping following his Tour de France time trial victory Saturday. He's been kicked out of the race, along with his entire Astana team. And this in the shadow of the race leader Michael Rasmussen's missing a bunch of out-of-competition drug tests. Which, had it been know at the start of the Tour, would have resulted in his being banned from the race.

Cycling sucks. I love the sport so much, but the continued doping issues all but render the entire peloton suspicious. It's like being a bodybuilder in the '70s: doping is so widespread that you have to assume everyone is doing it.

I have no idea what it would take for this sport, which has probably always been dirty, to become clean. But right now, I've lost all tolerance of it.

Weirdness in One Act (or Maybe She Should Carry that Bible Between her Knees)

A man dressed for running in shorts and a t-shirt sits in front of a burrito shop at a wrought-iron table. He appears to be waiting for someone. A young couple sit, talking and drinking margaritas at another table, on the other side of the restaurant entrance. A large shabby-looking black woman carrying a bible approaches, enters stage right and approaches the runner:

Bible Toter: Hey baby! How you doin'?
Waiting Runner: OK.
(BT glancing down at WR's legs, which are propped on a chair)
BT: Oooh...them's some nice legs!
WR: Um...thanks.
BT: You shave your legs?
WR: Yeah...for cycling.
(BT still looking at WR's legs)
BT: Ooooh...I like 'em. That your real color?
(WR looks bewildered)
WR: Um...yes?
BT: Buy me some food, baby. (telling, not asking)
WR: I'm getting ready to go run. I don't have my wallet with me.
BT: I think I got knocked up.
(BT pauses, looks around, as if searching)
BT: I can't find the man who knocked me up.
WR: It wasn't me.
BT: Shit...I know it wasn't you, baby.
(BT walks to the next table)
BT: Buy me some food. (telling, not asking)
Young Woman: I don't have any money.
BT: You got a credit card. (telling, not asking)
Young Man: No.
BT: I got knocked up.
YM: Maybe you should read your bible.
BT: Fuck you, motherfucker.
(BT walks off down the street cursing unintelligibly, exits stage left)

Overheard on CNN

Homer: What do you call that thing where a guy's gay for a woman?

Marge: Straight!

Overheard at work

"He had gotten a quote on a 600-pound ball valve..."

Hopefully to have it excised. Maybe I'm a freak, but I prefer much smaller ball valves. Once you get past a couple of pounds, they just become unwieldy. Not to mention the chaffing issue.

It's not just the cyclists that dope

Apparently, I spent last week on vacation at the Tour de France, working on my tan.

"Discontinue use...

...if you have urges to gamble or f*ck compulsively" the drug commercial might as well have said last night. "Wha?" I thought as I looked up from my magazine last night to see an ad for a drug called "Mirapex". So I thought I must have misheard, so I googled "drug side effects" and "gambling" this morning, seriously thinking I'd find nothing but "Jim is crazy", but sure enough, I heard correctly:

"One of the side effects of Mirapex has been the development of compulsive gambling in people who have not had a problem with gambling before taking the drug. For example, a retired government intelligence worker lost thousands of dollars in slot machines before he discovered that gambling was a Mirapex side effect and stopped taking the drug. A 68-year-old man lost more than $200,000 before his medication was adjusted. A 41-year-old lost more than $5,000 in Internet gambling.

Gambling is only one of the pleasure/reward-seeking activities that can increase in patients taking Mirapex. Other obsessive behaviors include:

• Excessive shopping


• Overeating


• Hypersexuality "

Sounds like a party. I wonder how hard it is to fake Parkinson's.

Strong is the pull of the dark side

If the Athens Banner Herald is Morris Communication's “most liberal (paper) in the district” as they say, they must be running editorials suggesting aborted fetuses be used as pet food, because his home-town paper again slid further to the side of the defeatocrats. “The U.S. military surge may be working, but few are convinced of it. And can folks be coerced at the end of a rifle to live in peace together?,” they asked.

Only if you pull the trigger.

Secret agent man

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a column by Ken Silverstein defending a Harper's article he wrote earlier this year where he went undercover as a guy working for a fake firm trying to get DC lobbyists to improve the image of Turkmenistan--a neo-Stalinist regime--for the benefit of his fake energy trading company. The lobbying firms, of course, took his fake money gladly, and promised stuff like planting editorials, sending congressional delegations to Turkmenistan and arranging "independent" media events in DC. Of course, they got bent out of shape when the article ran.

But the interesting thing is so did a bunch of newspapers who took issue with the "ethics" of his undercover tactics, despite a rich history in this country of undercover journalism. It’s interesting that the Washington Post apparently thinks lobbyists should have the reasonable expectation to do their shady business without pesky journalists mucking about.

And it also begs this question: why no undercover journalism in Augusta? I guess the not about to plant someone inside the Augusta National, for example. But surely that’s Chronicle’s something the Spirit would love to undertake (we miss you already, Corey). Think about it: get someone hired on as a waiter, locker room attendant or even--the holy grail of insider positions--as a caddy. The insider would be privy to I can only imagine. It'd be the story of the century here in Augusta. But it's not just the National that's ripe for infiltrating. Think of the possibilities: a fly on the wall at Olin (how much mercury are they really dumping?), a plant at an apartment-leasing office (are they really renting equally to blacks and whites?), or even a mole intern at the Metro Spirit (do they really slay pigs at going away parties?).

I do some of my best thinking in bed

Jim: You know what I'm tired of?

Amy: I have no idea.

J: Panini.

A: What?

J: Not the sandwich so much as the word.

A: Why?

J: It sounds too much like punani.

A: (snerk)

J: I mean, it doesn't sound like something you should eat.

(thinks for a second)

Well, at least not at a restaurant or out of a damn microwave.