I'm Now All Out of Thanks, and I Had No F*cks to Give in the First Place.

Well, it's the 21st century holiday known as Cyber Monday:

And obviously you should look no further than the right-hand margin of this blog for all your online holiday shopping needs.  Seriously, what can't you buy from my generous sponsors?  Bikes, coffee, tool rolls...even humorous how-to manuals informed entirely by this blogger's own highly subjective precepts!  I dare say you could go from layperson to jaded cyclist who's totally over it in a matter of days simply by ordering your way down my ads.

It's like 20 years of cycling experience distilled in like a dozen banners.

Oh, and if you're looking for Cyber Monday discount codes from all my generous sponsors, you can find them here.

Speaking of being totally over it, Malcolm McLaren's son burned a bunch of pants on a boat or something:

The items set on fire included a pair of bondage trousers that had been tailor-made for Mr. Corré as a child; rare posters; live punk recordings; and pants that had belonged to John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, the lead singer of the Sex Pistols, according to a news release sent by a publicist for Mr. Corré.

This was apparently to protest the fact that punk has become a marketing tool:

“Punk has become another marketing tool to sell you something you don’t need,” Mr. Corré said to a crowd of dozens gathered on the shore in London’s Chelsea district, as flames licked at a trunk of punk paraphernalia and fireworks shot from the boat into the late afternoon sky. “If you want to understand the potent values of punk, confront taboos. Do not tolerate hypocrisy. Investigate the truth for yourself.”

This bold statement comes at least 39 years too late and would have been trite even then, so who better to make it than the son of the person who conceived of the punk style as a marketing tool in the first place?  If you really think about it, punk is basically an entire musical genre based on complaining about its own inherent marketability.  It's just people in riveting wardrobes singing songs with irresistible pop hooks and then getting mad when people like them, which is the perfect formula for success.  Indeed, as every lovelorn soul out there knows, it's this very seduce-and-rebuff cycle that perpetuates the entire human species.  So the pants burning seems lame even by marketing standards.

Nevertheless, I fully intend to burn a bunch of fixies on a barge in the East River in 2047, so mark your calendars.

(I wonder if he ever got brakes, and if so did he modify the tattoo?)

In other fashion news, Eurodouche coglomerate LVMH is sniffing Rapha's chamois for potential purchase:

Helped by the boom in road cycling over the past decade or so in the UK and elsewhere – the US, Australia and Japan are all significant markets for Rapha – the company achieved turnover of £48.8 million in the year to 31 January 2016, with pre-tax profit of £.1 million.

The Mail on Sunday says that while a source confirmed the two parties were in talks, neither LVMH nor Rapha would comment.

Paris-based LVMH, owner of brands including Louis Vuitton, Moet & Chandon, Marc Jacobs, Dior, TAG Heuer and Bulgari, is known to be keen to build its presence in the sports and leisure sectors.

And let the record reflect I totally called this after it was reported LVMH was kicking Pinarello's tires awhile back:

I commend them on their choice, as Pinarello will make a fine addition to their exquisite portfolio of Eurodouchery.  After this the next acquisition is going to be either Assos or Rapha, and by this time next year you can expect them to offer an $8,000 leather Louis Vuitton pool noodle.

So to recap:

1) The nexus of professional Fred cycling is shifting to the Persian Gulf:

2) Used to be the last thing you saw before getting doored on the Upper East Side was a Vuitton bag emerging from a town car; now they're going to be making both your plastic bike and your bib shorts:

3) President of Trek Bicycle John Burke may already be positioning himself to succeed former stage race organizer Donald Trump as President of the United States:

Given this it's abundantly clear to me that not only is road cycling being wholly appropriated by the word's ultra-rich and well on its way to becoming the new horse polo, but it's also probably somehow going to figure into the nuclear apocalypse that is certain to put an end to life as we know it sometime during the next administration--though if somehow we make it through a Trump presidency unscathed then President Burke has the solution to nuclear security going forward, so we'll all be able to breathe easy again:

Reduce the risk of nuclear war. This one scares the hell out of me, especially with you in charge. We have over 2,000 missiles on active duty. We don’t need 2,000 missiles on active duty. There is a great op-ed published in the May 23, 2010 edition of the New York Times  written by civilian employees of the US Air Force, Gary Schaub Jr. and James Forsyth Jr., in which they adeptly calculate “that the country could address its national defense and military concerns with only 311 strategic nuclear weapons.”This move would reduce our chances of accidentally causing a nuclear war by over 93.91%, and significantly reduce our costs. Remember we have a debt of $19 trillion.

Yes, why have 2,000 nukes when you only need 311?  That's why President Burke will be introducing the Domane ICBM.  Billed as a "quiver killer" that will reduce the size of your stable while still maintaining mutually assured destruction, it's equally at home menacing nearby neighbors and far-flung republics alike thanks to its Classics-proven IsoSpeed decoupler:

THE SMOOTH ADVANTAGE

Domane with IsoSpeed has it all: Blistering speed. Devastating power, even on the punishing pavé of Kim Il-sung Square. Don’t endure. Conquer.

Powering over centuries-old empires, vaporizing upstarts, descending from the sky to rain death upon our enemies. That's how America refrains from firing its Domane in the name of maintaining a precarious détente. How will you refrain from firing yours?

It even has an integrated chain keeper for some reason.

Yes, with a mere 311 cutting-edge "gravel nukes" hand-crafted in Waterloo, WI* and Jens Voigt as Secretary of State, America will regain the global respect we're sure to lose during the next four years:

*Project One missiles only

("SHUT UP ISIS!!!")

Hey, John Burke vs. Mike Sinyard with Grant Petersen running as a third-party candidate?  Stranger things have happened.  In fact all of them happened during this most recent election.

Lastly, I was perambulating through Central Park over the Thanksgiving break when I encountered this rider braving the forbidding (and forbidden, no bikes allowed) bridle path on a fat bike:

Might be time to launch the fat bike-burning party barge.