The Georges disagree (at last)

Like most Americans with half a brain or more, I was appalled at Dubya's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. The woman hasn't even worked as a judge, and the village idiot think she belongs on the Supreme Court? But when a right-wing asshole like George Will can't support Bush's selection, you know she's a shitty choice. I'll just leave it at that, because if I get going on how demoralized I am over this presidential administration, I'll have to open two more bottles of wine to get through this post. Harriet is quite happy, though.

Condolences to fellow Anchorage rider and fellow trail builder Randy, aka Endo Rando, who happily headed south for a couple of weeks of fat-tire fun in southern Utah, only to crash his nice Turner rig over the weekend and bust his kneecap into three pieces. Seriously. three distinct pieces. Oooh, he's gonna feel that in the morning. Unless the doctor has a heart and doles out the really good shit, like some Vicodin.

My kids' teachers nearly went out on strike recently before their union and the Anchorage School District agreed to a one-year contract. I want all teachers to receive a decent salary, but I'll be a lot more supportive of their demands when they stop sending home newsletters full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, and start being honest about where their salaries rank compared with other people. Sure, America's teachers are shaping the minds of the future, blah, blah, blah. But let's face it, they're just like people in any other profession. Some of them are great and some of them are morons. But they've done a better job than other professionals at creating a public image of themselves as underpaid martyrs, and they eagerly play the guilt card. ("We're educating your kids, the future of America.")

How about the other people who help your kids? My wife is a neonatal and pediatric intensive care nurse with a master's degree. She can safely put a needle into a vein under the scalp of a premature infant with a head the size of a baseball. People like her are the ones who bag a kid to put air in his lungs when he's crashing and the doctor is still being paged. They're the ones who can perform CPR on 2-pound babies and 200-pound teenagers. They take care of kids in their final hours as terminal diseases finish them off. And they make less than an elementary school teacher on the upper end of the union pay scale. But they don't get summers off.

And can someone explain the thinking behind cell phone ring tones? I picked up new phones for my wife and I yesterday now that our two years of crappy Cellular One service have finally come to an end. As I set up my new phone — storing numbers, programming speed dialing, etc. — I waded through all the ring options. "Beethoven." "William Tell." "Tap Dance." "Espionage." Hey, I have an idea: How about a tone called "Dignity" that sounds like a phone ringing?

I don't want my phone to take pictures, play games, surf the web, keep track of my appointments, play music or get my ass kicked when it rings in a bar. I want it to ring and let me talk to people. Is that too much to ask?

And speaking of too much to ask, I'm a guy who likes to eat his cake and have it, too. I want to ride as much as time allows and still have Mr. Happy fully functional. My schedule doesn't allow enough riding to imperil any nocturnal activities but apparently, the threat is still out there. And we all know what this means. Uh, huh, that's right. More expensive and over-designed bike saddles will be showing up on the shelves of your local bike shop next spring.

Maybe it's time for the first-ever Bicycles and Icicles readers poll. If your riding time was affecting your nether regions and you had to choose between sex and cycling, which would you choose? Feel free to cast your vote by commenting on this post. Sex, bikes. Sex, bikes. Hmm.

As Latka Gravas said when his taxi was stuck in a blizzard and the woman he was with declared that they needed to have sex or they would freeze to death, "Sex, death. Sex, death. (long pause) So, why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself?"

Thanks for stoppin' by.