Lance Armstrong is not my hero
(or why I'm sick of all these silicone bracelets)
by Dave McAwesomeYes, even Dave, a model human being in every other right, can be so callous as to hate Lance Armstrong.
Now that his Live Strong campaign has infected the wrists of most North Americans in the form of little yellow silicone bracelets, the time has come to rally against it.
I was going to order up 100 of these little gems to piss off the first hundred people I ran into.
Unfortunately, custom printers I checked out weren't charging less than a buck apiece for such a small run. That's about $100, if my math skills serve me. I spend a fair bit of my meager disposable income on beer. At my favorite happy hour haunts, $100 stretches out to, like, 33 beers and who knows how many buy-backs. (If you are a New York area bartender, please be advised, that I DO, in fact, tip buy-backs. Do send me a note if you want a new, tipping customer.) So we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 happy hour beers. I can't be giving that up, no matter how cool my bracelet would be.
But Dave, you say, the Live Strong bracelets are for a good cause--increasing awareness of a terrible disease. Hang on, Albert Schweitzer. Are you saying there are still people unaware of CANCER? Is Cancer jealous that AIDS and SARS have been grabbing more headlines lately? Is it resentful about the fact that it is not an acronym? Fine. It is now LAD, short for Lance Armstrong Disease. It's also a gay club in the city (or at least should be if there already isn't).
I was thinking, rather naively, that perhaps the government could invest a few more dollars trying to cure this jealous and insecure disease formerly known as cancer. Where to find the money? I'm glad I asked myself that question, because I was proposing an amusing and witty answer at just that very moment.
A few of our portly Congressmen recently spent 70 big ones (one 'big one' is approximately $1,000, or two 'small ones') to take a field trip to see the NASA Space Shuttle not launch. First of all, I didn't know Congressmen took field trips. I thought that ended in, like, fifth grade. Second, who here couldn't guess that a seatbelt malfunction would scrap yet another NASA coming-out party? God, NASA non-launches are like birthday parties for the senile grandparent in your family who smells like curdled cheese--nobody wants to be there, and the fake smiles are wearing off.
Call me nuts, but that $70K plus the carefully embezzled billions that went into NOT launching the much-vaunted Discovery Space Coffin could've gone a fair way into this whole cancer deal. Instead, you saps got yer bracelets, an' I gots mine. Mine is waaaaaaaaaaaay cooler.
