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It’s Not About the Book, Except When It Is

By admin · On July 16, 2011

Occasionally, Cyclismas will feature the work by guest contributors with timely and topical observations. This piece is by twitter pundit @jasenthorpe.

People’s Anti-PaperCut Society Threatens Existence of Cycling.

It’s Not About the Book, Except When It Is.

by Jasen Thorpe

Never has there been a generation so afraid, though with so little to fear than the generation of American so-called baby boomers. A quick inventory of boomer gifts to the world confirms this: mandatory helmet laws, child car seats until middle age, Department of Homeland Security, safety latches, safety locks, seatbelts, airbags, anti-smoking campaigns… Fucking even OSHA is theirs.

Because of this, there also has never been a generation so easily fooled with basic, fear-based cynical PR tactics and diversions. The reasons for this are simple. A largely unquestioning society, or majority of a society, in a managed amount of chronic, ingrained fear, is easy for its masters to manipulate to their desired goals. These boomer attributes, in combination with the Boomer Trump Card (their ability to drop dead at any moment, taking their tax revenue with them and crushing the economy), make them perfect segment of society for said masters to manipulate as a means to control other factions of society as well.

So the important questions to ask: Who are said masters, and what are their goals? The answers are many – many masters, many goals. But foremost among them: The highly secretive People’s Anti-Papercut Society. Their goal? With all other real and imagined safety issues having already been addressed by other organizations, PAPS, has set their sights on eliminating one of the unaddressed true menaces of our day: paper cuts.

Their society is as militaristic as it is secretive and they have tactical savvy enough to employ various means to protect said secrecy. In some instances, they hide in plain sight. They may be your neighbors, your teacher, your friend at work. They are everywhere. Those in the know, and the rare few who have defected and live to speak of it, suggest that this same hiding-in-plain-sight tactic is used with their bible, their guidebook, the Word of their Founder, Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.

Thought to be a dystopian criticism of society, and ironically (in an effort to attract hipsters to the cause) produced in a form that PAPS endeavors to eliminate, Fahrenheit 451 establishes basic protocol and goals for PAPS, and in fact, was the catalyst for future PAPS leaders to invent the Internet.

Yes, that Internet. The one heralded for facilitating communication, expanding freedom of speech and freedom of press. The one credited with fueling revolutions, keeping governments in check, and enabling continued public interest in Charlie Sheen. Two words for you about the Internet and those claims: Red. Herring.

The Internet’s true purpose is to eliminate paper cuts by eliminating all forms of print communication. Books and newspapers have suffered. Magazines quake at the words dot-com. Postcards, letters, and greeting cards are all elements of the past. Amazon will soon release an electronic means to customize and download patterns for an e-asswiper, eliminating even toilet paper. (Yes, you can get a paper cut from toilet paper, says PAPS. We declined to do independent research.)

Infuriating, terrifying, even, no? (The toilet paper thing, I mean. Well, that and the politics and manipulation.)

But the greater travesty, the greater betrayal: Rupert Murdoch, print media mogul, is actually the leader of PAPS. Having received a horrendous paper cut as a small child (the scarring from which he still bears on his anus today, confirms Rebekah Brooks), he made it his life’s mission to destroy print media. Rising to power, gobbling up media outfit after media outfit and newspaper after newspaper, Murdoch’s goal: only to erode their relevance or, once completely consolidated, to send them to their fiery demise (while pulling a fat insurance check).

And the greatest travesty? The greatest betrayal? Sit down, if you’re not already. This comes as a brutal shock to the cycling community – @UCI_Overlord is actually Rupert Murdoch. @FestinaGirl is his lackey, Rebekah Brooks. Together, they have conspired to produce diversion after diversion to distract from the greatest offensive ever waged by PAPS: the assault on Professional Cycling.

World Cup/ProTour/ProTeam, TV rights, SportAccord, criminal investigations, rider safety, race radios, doping, saddle tilt angles, bont shoes, aerodynamic and tech restrictions, arbitrary relegations, inconsistent enforcement of regulations. All of these and more horrors unleashed on cycling by @UCI_Overlord, with the purpose of inciting rage and dominating the attention of cycling fans. And then there’s @FestinaGirl’s role: adding fuel to the fire lit by the passionate cycling fan base, all the while knowing it plays to her master’s cause.

You see, Professional Cycling is the last remaining significant promotional and revenue driving resource for the print media industry. The whole fucking sport was conceived as a means by which to sell more newspapers, spreading across the globe based on the popularity of the Tour de France. This relationship continues to this day via ASO and L’Equipe. But now, it has so much more power, as individual riders, no longer concerned with sport or cycling in its own right, simply use their power on the bike to sell books off the bike. Even if it means making up atrocious lies, crushing friends and enemies alike, and/or managing a modest profit from the efforts. Even if it requires them to occasionally win a race, or just make some damn fool attack to maintain popularity and sell more books.

David Millar, anyone? @FestinaGirl, via a retweeting of @Halgh on Twitter, went as far as to suggest he would win a TdF stage for the sole purpose of boosting middling sales of his shit autobiography. Lance? How many books based on how much crap? And perhaps more importantly, Armstrong, from on high, has publicly identified the same motivations among others: Floyd, Tyler, Kimmage, Walsh? Even seeming enemies are all united in one cause: leveraging cycling into book sales. At. Any. Cost. Even George W. Bush rode a bike with Lance. Why? Just to do advance PR for Decision Points. Rest my case. Period.

Digging deeper into the activities of PAPS, we have learned that, not content to merely wage war on the current generation of professional cyclists, PAPS has infiltrated cycling advocacy and industry, targeting future generations of cyclists, and playing on the same boomer fear model. That’s right: Safe Routes to School is a PAPS offensive against cycling. Strip away it’s Orwellian guise, and it becomes obvious: while pretending to guide children to one of ten safe routes (nationally) that happen to go by a school and allegedly facilitate safe cycling (if you also wear full protective gear and walk your bike), the true point of Safe Routes to School is to deliver this message: It Is Not Safe To Ride Your Bike ANYWHERE Except These Paths. Fear, people, fear. And for those who do ride on Safe Routes? The agenda has a hidden anti-book message: riding to school is way better without books. PAPS has seen the enemy, and it is us.

What can you do? As appropriate, provide shelter to cyclists on the front lines: pros and children. Trust few. Encourage and enlist the support of your family and friends. Think for yourselves. Ride, protect and cherish your bikes. Read, protect and cherish your books. Stock the bomb shelter to overflowing with toilet paper and non-Murdoch newsprint. Be Safe. And be prepared.

I’ll leave you with this: