Gotta admit, this is intriguing.

Man, my kids get this cold, and they keep colliding around the house like a couple hot, happy gas molecules. The only difference is the occasional snot stream and a little more crankiness.

They give it to me, and it just annihilates me. Clearly, this is not how anyone should be spending a beautiful fall day off. Ah well.

In lieu of a post, here’s a short movie clip from my phone. The whole family on two longtails made a trip up to REI on Sunday via the Northwest Branch Trail, the Northeast Branch Trail, and the Paint Branch Trail through College Park. I took some pics as well, but I still need to get those off the camera, so for now enjoy 26 seconds of low-res, in-pursuit video of my wife and daughter on Nigel.

Back to bed for me, quit makin’ all that racket out there.

[Update]: Oo, almost forgot, if you’ve finished reading the internet and you’re lookin’ for some awesome eye candy, and you weren’t actually in Vegas last week, you could hop on over to Xtracycle’s photostream from Interbike 2008. There’s some gorgeous bikes comin’ out this year, commuters and cargo bikes are on the rise, and the events look like a hoot.

[Update Again]: Want some more? Sure ya do. Bike Hugger / Dapper Lad Bicycles has more.

[Update: now with 20% more updatitude!]: You’ve been browsing the Xtracycle photos, and now you’d like some some copy, some narrative, a little text with your feast of images, because you always want more. Well, bygawd, have more!

[Knock knock! Who's There?] [Update!]: And I’d be remiss if I forgot this: check out FatCyclist’s excllent fan’s-eye-view coverage of Interbike: the outdoor expo, star-struck on day one, Greg LeMon– er, ’scuse me, Lance’s Press Conference, fan photos with Fatty, and a touching story of how he learned to stop chasing women on videotapes so aggressively.

That it? Anyone else want to post a gallery?

Welcome to Orwell’s England.

Economic apocalypse brings to mind, this dreary gray Mid-Atlantic morning, the end of great big things. The end of America’s Empire? The Fall of Capitalism? Armageddon? Ragnarok? The final season of 60 Minutes?

No, I was thinking of something bigger and funnier. Specifically, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. More specifically, the band that plays while the Universe is coming to an end, Disaster Area.

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert-goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.

Since Disaster Area can’t be here to score the flaming wreck for us, we’ll have to make due with the next best thing. High On Fire will make an excellent soundtrack to the spectacle of Wall Street being sucked into a black hole, don’t you think? So here y’are. Turn it up, enjoy the show, and remember: invest in liquor, smokes, and ammo and you’ll be just fine when this is all over.

Have a great weekend, boom.

For an analysis of what all this campaign suspendering and town halling means, we turn to The Most Trusted Name in Gleeful Apocalyptic Commentary. Take it away, youse Who Is IOZ…

Imagine if you are Vladimir Putin. You do not drink or smoke, and aside from occasionally fucking your gymnast nymphette into catatonic submission while a 10,000 piece orchestra plays Gimn Sovetskogo Soyuza outside your window, you do not carouse. Your life is occupied with grim, atavistic fantasies, which are just now coming to fruition, and as you nurse your bloody dreams in the Siberian expanses of your glittering, Satanic soul, you flip on the teevee and see the only force on earth with any capacity to foil or retard your ambitions rapidly consuming itself in an orgy of abject ridiculousness, a Marx-brothers comedy of political ineptitude so baroque in its Vaudevillian slapstick that it melts, for just one moment, the crimson popsicle that is your KGB heart and from your mouth, for the first time since you traded your soul for life eternal and a thirst for blood one thousand years ago, you let out one brief, delicious: Ha!

I know it’s been said before, but let me say it again now: The Stupid! It Burns!!!

I don’t think that Obama’s gonna deliver a Unicorn in every garage, or achieve a balanced budget and full employment in his first month, or any other miscellaneous miracles. But mighty fuckin’ Christ, the fact that he’s not up by 30 points on these idiots just for not saying stupid shit like this is astonishing. It also tells me that approximately 4 out of 10 Americans aren’t thinking seriously about what’s best for our country, our world, and our future. In other words…

It’s been a couple days more than 6 months since my last cigarette. This week, for one reason or another, thoughts of rippin’ off a few drags sounds better than it has since I quit. Just goes to show, not only is tobacco recession proof, just the threat of a recession is threatenin’ to knock me back off the wagon.

Add Phillip Morris to your portfolio of evil, they’re one company that’s not gonna need bailin’ out.

Beautiful. Man I wish I was in Vegas this week.