You @#$%^&^! Bite, UCI "Live"!

Worlds? What Worlds?: So, here I am, all excited about watching the elite men's road race at the Worlds, eager to see if a ticked-off Paolo Bettini's dream (according to our faithful pals at gazzetta) of personally accepting the rainbow jersey from the dirty hands of Pat "Dick" McQuaid is be realized due to the collective anger over at the squadra azzurra over Danilo DiLuca inexplicably being barred from the race over crap that may've happened in 2004 when certain actual confessed dopers are allowed to race (tho' one less giant champion ego on board the Italian team is probably good news for Bettini, not that I'd have any idea right now), or whether we love Oscar Freire is gonna take advantage of both the chaos and his unusual good health and take him out at the line, or perhaps even if one of the baby Germans is going to surge to a wholly unexpected win as they've been doing smashingly all season, when lo and behold, *two and a half @#$%&^% hours* into the promised "live" UCI coverage I gacked up 28 euros for--and I don't even blame their proxy cycling.tv for this, as I'm sure they can't control what they get the rights to from the control freaks over at UCI--there's nothing--nothing!--on my computer screen but some giant-fonted "CHANNEL IS OFF-LINE" bull@#$! Really? Thanks for the insight, guys, 'cuz I could've sworn that the humungous red "X" pulsating on the screen was really exciting live coverage of the field reeling in the early (or late, at this ridiculous hour) breakaway! Of course, I can be genuinely comforted by the fact that our bass-fishing-obsessed friends over at Vs. are dedicating a fabulous full hour of cycling coverage to us US fans later today--of the *Vuelta*, for !@#$'s sake, not only completely irrelevant to me at this point, but also an insult of such heinous proportions to that beautiful race that they might as well just show 24/7 coverage of rodeo clowns tormenting 3,000-pound hunks of charging enraged living roast beef instead. Meantime, cyclingnews is hovering over at page 20 of their written live race coverage, as I fruitlessly click again and again on UCI's "live" webcast in the dim and pointless hope that these smug hypocritical selective-rider-persecuting vigilante goons'll cough up the goods I paid for before the winner, who I'm sure they'll whiningly protest anyway, is smothered in champagne, trophies and podium babes at the awards ceremony. Aiiiggggghhhhh!

Correction and Update: in the interests of total fairness, cycling.tv can in fact blow, as well, as they allowed me to purchase and pay for UCI "live" coverage without first drawing attention to the obscure disclaimer, and rather pertinent up-front fact I should think, that people in the US do not have the right to actually *view* the live coverage they just bought. Fortunately, of course, the race being barred but the festivities not, live video coverage *did* kick in just in time to allow me to see the top finishers climb the podium for their medals, photo ops, and smooches, thereby rendering my last three hours of self-restraint avoiding the written live coverage on cyclingnews utterly &^%$#$# pointless. Thanks, cycling.tv--that sure saved me a lot of trouble! Y'know, if I find out that Vs. bagged the rights only to promise to air the last two kilometers of the race sometime in December between fifty hours of coverage of doe-pheromone-soaked hunters hunkering in bushes whispering admiration for the miraculous wonders of nature as expressed by the stately Bambi's ten-point rack just before they kill it, I'm going to really, really be annoyed. Is it me, or would my money have been better spent buying a hammer and whacking my freakin' computer into a thousand tiny pieces for all the use it's been to me this morning? Again, I say, aaaaiiiiggggghhhh!