Shock of the Old

¡Operación: el juego stupdio por medicos locos!

Operación Puerto claimed its latest victims: the entire Tour de Fucking France. Seriously, when is this shit going to stop!? When is the pro peloton going to organize, and use their union or some other body to stop taking this bullshit? When are team directors going to grow some sac and start defending their riders? Bjarne Riis: "I believe Ivan, but it's out of my hands." Bullshit! Same thing goes for T-Mobile.
Let's review: coded names are found in a Spanish blood-doping doctor's notebook, one being "hijo de Rudicio" - the son of Rudy. Rudy Pevenage? Jan Ullrich's long-time trainer and advisor. Maybe. Enough evidence to throw out a rider who is favored to win the Tour? Is it a circumstantial case? Barely. How far would it go in court if it were a legal proceeding? Not very. What has been accomplished? Whose life has been saved? What good has this done cycling? Even if Jan, Basso, Mancebo, et al. are taking autologous or homologous transfusions, do we think for a minute they are the only ones? Is it remotely possible that whoever comes out on top of this year's Tour isn't doing similar things to enhance performance? I'll say it again: we need to grow the fuck up and admit that this is how people win in professional sports: cycling, baseball, soccer. Get over it. The hypocritical rhetoric over "purity" and "cheating" is far more nauseating than the knowledge that great, talented riders like Ullrich, Basso, Hamilton, and yes, Armstrong used whatever means at their disposal to make the human body do something it was never intended or designed to do, to push it beyond its limits. These men are adults, they're professionals, they're supervised by teams of physicians. There is no "purity" in professional sports, where millions upon millions of dollars and euros are at stake. You want purity? Go to a park and catch an ultimate frisbee game. But thanks, UCI, WADA, et al. for ruining another Tour de France.

Canadians Behaving Badly

On a three hour flight to Vancouver I sat next to a Canadian who drank 4 red bulls and 8 (eight) bottles of airline size vodka. For those of you who might be curious that's about 400 mg of caffeine, 160 grams of sugar, and the equivalent of about 14-16 shots of Finlandia.

I began to worry a bit, kept my iPod on, sipped my Shiraz, but he was unfailingly polite, if loquacious.

This is how Canadians behave badly. They drink too much, and try to start unwelcome conversations. Yet it does reveal something about the Canadian psyche. They are capable of badness, or at least naughtiness. Is it any coincidence that Steve Nash, Canadian, and the NBA's model citizen on the court and off (despite a curiosity about Marxism), looks exactly like the super-bad kid from the Bad News Bears?