An Amusement & Diversion for The Genteel Cyclist. Daily.

Friday, November 21, 2008

The Economy is So Bad That I Want to Buy Photographs of Myself Suffering

Everyday, people ask me how bad the economy is. It is very bad. They slow down on their bike rides in order to speak to me at length. What should I do about my 401K, they ask. Let's take a left on Garfield, I say. Why are farming and other seasonal jobs excluded from the unemployment statistics, they ask. I prefer Murphy-Hanrehand, I say, because there aren't so many artificial impediments and barriers. Will the emerging middle class in the BRIC nations slow their consumption, they ask, or will their appetite for Western-style goods and services continue unabated? I actually run a 38:21 on the singlespeed, I aver, which is awesome in the woods but hell on the approach.

I noticed today that Marathon Foto has considerably extended the deadlines they have been threatening me with ever since about one second after this year's Chequamegon. I have, over the years, always gotten a kick out of seeing their photographs of me, in both the Fat Tire 40 and the Birkie, generally suffering like a dog and looking like I just took a big bite of a crap sandwich, and well gosh, that's the best crap sandwich I ever ate, can you pass the mustard, yum! I usually open my envelope from them, and then take a scissors and cut out the tiny little proofs, and stick them on the refrigerator, where they yellow and curl and take me back about a decade everytime I go for the ketchup or the pickled herring, and I can't really imagine wanting or needing anything more than that, but I do wish Marathon Foto good luck and godspeed in this terrible, terrible economy where people are buying pretty much just rice and Cialis.



If they were really smart over there, they'd — well, the first thing they'd do is learn how to spell "foto" correctly. But if they were really really smart, they'd realize that with this here Internets dingus, they could indefinitely store every photograph they ever took of me, and then they could give away this year's photographs, and then sell archival access to all those bygone years, the one where I went fast, the one where I puked grape Cytomax out my nose, the one where I blacked out afterward and spent an hour under a space blanket, the one where I wore that ugly Rock Shox jersey that almost every other rider wore too, and so on. Maybe even make an animated GIF, a sort of time lapse documenting how I've gotten older, fatter, more wizened, but how I always pick the right line going around Lake Helane -- clever rider!

6 comments:

decay said...

Maybe Marathon Foto should start taking fotos of us just sitting in front of our computers and suffering as we watch the world disintegrate...

Unknown said...

Utah Philips:

"...dude throws down his fork, stands up and yells, 'BY GOD, THAT'S MOOSE TURD PIE!'......Good, though."

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