johnguinness's Diaryland Diary
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Clown Shoes
Note: the head of the International cycling union will now have the nickname of "Clown Shoes", because that's how a European cycling fan described him in the forum. I think that in general, it implies he's not to be taken seriously. Hopefully he won't make the diary much longer.
I'm sure you've been wondering all day if I made it out to the dumpster with the trash, to which I'll give the heart reply, "Yes, ma'am, yes ma'am, three bags full". I left the first footprints in the three inches of nice, powdery snow, that sparkled under the safety lights like a bed sheet on New Year's morning. (That's not from personal experience - girls tweeted about the shower floor and various other depositories being covered in glitter).
I also found the missing Butterfinger.
I watched Pretty Little Liars. That's one of the shows where I follow the actresses on twitter. It's meant to be really dramatic, and they're way too into playing games like Lost (didn't watch it) where you're meant to look for clues and things. But it's OK.
From there I moved on to Castle, home of one of the ten hottest female TV cops of the last five years. She totally gets by with facial expressions. The episode centered on the murder of a magician, and there were tricks, and I'd really like to learn some that could be done at a table for a handful of people. I've got the time. Maybe I can find a couple of card tricks I could do well after forty hours a week of practice?
Sleep came early, with unpleasant interruptions from the office with he hardwood floors above my pillow. Hopefully he New Year's resolution of spontaneous clog dance will pass gently into the night (when I'm awake and in a distant room).
I got up, fired up Firefox, so I guess we could say I foxed up(?), and was met by articles of Clown Shoes suggesting that Contador will probably miss the July Tour de France because of delays in the case CS blamed on everyone but himself and his organization. I snapped. The guy had just been proved by his own staff to be a liar or incompetent, and a simple Google News search for my favorite cyclist had his evil Irish personage staring back at me.
I don't get angry often, and certainly don't care to have it forced on me before a proper breakfast. I removed the eight friendly followers I'd allowed on my twitter account, and deleted all my cycling tweets. I posted a new one about hating pro cycling, and left the account open so passersby could see I'm not playing any more. I added even the friendly International cycling sites to my Blocksite, and left an encouraging farewell comment to the Contador Fan Club.
I never ever go looking for an article about Clown Shoes, but it's impossible to look for cycling news and avoid him.
I started having withdrawal symptoms a few hours later. I imagine it's easier to get out of a street gang, or the Ch�teau d�If in olden times, than it is for a serious pro cycling fan to stop following the sport. There's just too much unfinished business, even after trying to wean yourself off it like I did the past few months. The Sports Illustrated article is still promised, always just out of reach, like when you're trying to catch a beach ball in a lake and your swimming motion keeps moving it ahead of you. There's also the Pellizotti declare tomorrow that you're not taking this to arbitration or else my lawsuit against you grows by 800,000 Euros gauntlet that's been thrown down in front of Clown Shoes and his mini car full of fellow clowns. I HAVE to see who wins that skirmish.
So, I'm down to all or nothing, everything is banned, or disable the Blocksite and look at everything. I really wish I could afford rehab. Six months in the Caribbean with no Interwebs should just about do it. Just keep the rum drinks coming to my hammock.
I watched The Biggest Loser, but it was more about game play and manipulative editing than anything else. I followed that with The Good Wife, an episode where almost everyone lied and no one did anything likable. I followed that with Vince Vaughn on Letterman as a palate cleanser, then went berserk for cycling articles and forum posts for an hour. Time to squeeze in a movie or two before I track down NCIS, then take it to the (air) mattress.
In real life, if I was on a hammock between two palm trees, my weight would bend the trees towards each other as the hammock sunk to the ground, then the rope would break and I'd be flung to the nearby beach where people from Greenpeace would try to help me back into the sea.
I learned to do that in third grade. I guess it hurt that the boys in the class chose me to pick on, but it really bothered me that they weren't clever enough to come up with good material. I shut them up by making up the lines myself. You don't see it here, but I've always been hilarious, at least before the crash.
1:56 a.m. - Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011
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