mail order MOUNTAIN BIKE sales return to homepage MOUNTAIN BIKE accessories bicycle frames built bikes MOUNTAIN BIKE kits winner of the suckiest mountain bike magazine contest On December 1, 2005, news organizations carried a story about Iraqi newspapers printing stories written by the United States military. To anyone with a brain, this is called propaganda. When questioned about this, the CIA released a statement, "These news stories were printed in exchange for advertising, a proceedure that is traditional in Iraqi journalism." Well, the Iraqi mountain bike press has been doing this for years here in America. Here is an email I received recently from Mountain Biking magazine, making it THE magazine that crosses the line between honest journalism and blatant dishonesty for money FIRST!

Lee
Nice talking to you today regarding Dreamride Bike Tours, Hawaii. As we discussed, we are planning to run a special section from Oct thur Dec or Jan. Your company would be one of the advertisers that we would run a story on each month of this special section. We would also run a special cover each month with that section being mentioned. If you could either send me info on your company and photos we can start to put this section into works.

We are a monthly publication and have be in circulation for 20 years with a monthly cir of 125,000. My special rate for those months would be $1,500.00 and we would also offer a rebate of 5% if you sign for the 4 months of this special.

I have sent you a copy of our latest issue today and I look forward to talking to you within the next week or 2.

Take care
Jeff

Yup, that's how it works. If you understand just what is between those lines, you don't need to read the rant below. Basically, if you advertise, they say good things about you in the magazines, even if they don't know what you do and how you do it or whether or not the product is a turd or a vacation. This is the state journalism in the greedy, vampirish, oil sucking, Shock-and-Awe USA. Sunrise in Moab

Magazine Rant Redux

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A PERSONAL HYSTERY OF MOUNTAIN BIKING
DREAMRIDE'S MOAB OPERATIONS

While on a flight I sat next to a guy playing solitare on a microscopic cell phone, huddled over with his ballpoint pen, picking and grabbing the tiny images of playing cards, dragging them thousandths of an inch onto tiny imaginary piles. I was reading Sky Mall, the in-flight shopping magazine, looking at crazy shit this idiot probably owned--a solar powered hat with a fan, a phalic handheld bug zapper, a golf bag with a DVD player, a giant stainless steel replica of a sword from an insanely bloody movie made for little kids. Feeling a bit dirty, I picked up the New Yorker and realized that despite the snotty banter and intellectual babble, the folks that read this big city ass wipe probably own a forged autographed baseball and a chair that massages their backside. The American perspective is decadent, souless, ultimately fake, and I feel like a shithouse rat out here in Moab singing about the media cancer--lies for money--misinformation for the sake of profit by all means. Maybe these reviews are harsh, but only because they are true. Maybe they are a waste of time. Don't read them.


MOUNTAIN BIKE ACTION

It is the FOX News of mountain biking, BUT . . . I wrote a scathing, farcical, brutal and nasty review of MBA right here on this page. I know the staff read it, but here is the grabber: They proceeded to write positive things about Dreamride in the magazine despite the fact that I made fun of them, did not advertise in the magazine and said offensive things about the magazine being owned by born-againers. Years ago they published an article that I wrote on the negative aspects of mountain bikers coming to Moab and riding all over the cryptobiotic soil (the plankton of the desert--ride through it and do hundreds of years of damage in one fell swoop). They got more negative responses to that article than any other they have ever published. So much for telling stupid snot nosed mountain bikers about the environment, but at least they published the article. I must admit, I used to read this magazine, too. And, despite the fact that I cannot read it anymore because I am just too mature at this point in time and prefer to spend my reading time learning about culture and modern history, I have to say good things about them, because MBA has always been the best. Period. So, I removed the nasty stuff because in the end, it was proven false. These guys really are mountain bikers, as honest as they come, and they really are trying to do their best to provide a service without being bent by advertisers (well, not too much, anyway). Here is what I left of the original review:

The VERY good news is that this magazine is driven by equipment, a pornographic vision of mountain biking where we all put teflon lube on our dicks and jack off to pictures of cranks and forks. As a direct result of this focus on "parts," it is fair place to look for reviews. Not COMPLETELY accurate, but close enough for younger "Christian" mountain bikers who can afford to buy stuff with Mom's money, but where else are you going to look for accurate product reviews in magazine form? DIRT RAG?

Should you trust MBA? Why not? They are not completely stupid. They know you are. You get a lot of pontificating and safe, fuzzy, lifestyle reiforcment in those pages, and if you see that coming, it's not a problem. So, if you don't have a clue, let MBA think for you. It could be a whole lot worse. You could be reading Mountain Bike Magazine:


MOUNTAIN BIKE / BICYCLING
(This was written before Zap left. Now, they suck without his help, but he sure is fun to make fun of, so I am leaving the review in tact. Just know that when Zap left, the magazine got REALLY stupider.)

How do you make a square publication with no imagination like MBA look great? By publishing a flashier, more mainstream rag that is totally full of shit and doesn't even make good toilet paper on a lame mountain bike camping tour of the White Rim. This magazine is so bad that they have to sneak it into your Bicycling subscription just to get you to TAKE IT, PLEEEASE. It is a pamphlet. Everything is fake. It is obvious. Rodale Press has been producing the most disgusting, phony line of bullshit to be found outside of the White House. They get an A for being so stupid that they make me laugh AT them, and a D for not hiding their lies well enough for the average Joe to spot them from a mile away. Factor in the small dick and they get a D+ over all. Trendy. Stupid. Tiny dick. That fat Dan guy in the back of the magazine made me stop reading it all the way through years ago. Hey, fuck you, stupid. Die already from those fucking doughnuts. Painful loneliness should not be a feature article for more than one month. I cannot believe people read this shit. I used to, so duh, too.

What really gets my belly laugh going is the way this mag sucks up to women. Anyone with a college diploma can see that this taco-licking tone is phony as the smile on a television talk show hostess. I guess these guys think that by putting pussy all over the pages of the magazine that it might draw in some cunts. The only cunts that read this magazine have very small dicks--white posers with tattoos who really hate women. These GUYS make everyone realize that women really DO need their own magazine, sort of a fashion-sick tea party rag with a staff of wannabe dikes reviewing wide saddles with holes in them, pink bikes, breast implants and riding on your period. Hey, girls, fuck you, too. Having a hole doesn't qualify you for anything other than getting fucked. Join the crowd.

The folks at MOUNTAIN BIKE blatantly lie, and blatantly review only those companies that spend money on their adverts. The higher the budget, the better the review. This is easy to verify--just look at the magazine. Fascism grows like a weed on in that kind of manure.

Folks, if you want a good reverse barometer, then buy this magazine, read it and, if they rave over something like the Santa Cruz Blurr, for example, you know it is a piece of shit. If they rave over a feature of the subculture, you can bet it is passe, as dead as mini-skirts and bell bottoms. If they feature a certain person or persons, you can bet their popularity is overripe or they bribed their way into the MOUNTAIN BIKE hall of shit. If it already APPEARS to be hip, then they will jump on the bandwagon, and "turn you on." If you want to be part of the in-crowd, poke a hole in your head, put a stud in it and for the rest of your life folks will know just how unhip, plastic and phony you are, wearing the desperate message jammed through a hole in your flesh, "I'm HIP, REALLY I'M HIP. SEE MY FUCKING EAR RING!"

Even when I get this magazine free, I immediately toss it in the garbage. This is coming from a real mountain bike nut! I read everything! But I cannot bring myself to look at this magazine one more time. It is offensive the same way that watching the Bush state of the union address is offensive. I know when I am being lied to. MB sucks so hard that it creates a black hole in the garbage can.


BIKE
When I reread this little review to edit and place here for anyone to read, including the children, I thought, "Jesus, that's harsh." So, now Jesus knows that it is harsh. He hears my every word. I asked him for forgiveness and he forgave me. He told me that I should go forth and kill the infidels, so, I figure that maybe that wasn't Jesus, after all. It was Osama, who looks a lot like Jesus. So, I'll just lean on my church learnin' and go and sin no more, but leave this stuff right where it is. It is harsh. True, but harsh. I don't know whether it is me that is harsh, or the facts. You decide, as pointless as it may be.

Some time ago the advertising rep I dealt with at BIKE was killed in an automobile accident. He was always helpful and friendly, even when I told him the magazine sucked. I would end up advertising in BIKE just because he would put up abrasion--basically, he conned me. He was no dummy. He agreed with me, but business is business. BIKE is about making the money. This guy was a real gem, a real catch for a crummy magazine. His endearing personality and warm social skills made them money. After his death, I got emails from the magazine, keeping me abreast of the progress of other staffers hurt in the accident. They passed along email addresses of family so that I could send condolences. After emails about the funeral, passing along thanks from the family for sincere support during this rough time, I received an email inviting me to advertise in the next issue. Well, he's dead and buried, now, about that ad?-- Yea, it ain't too funny. It made me realize that a dead sales rep is in a better place. At least he isn't working for fucking BIKE magazine anymore. The brutally sad fact is that the final years of his magical short life were spent grabbing dollars for a stupid mountain bike magazine. What a tragedy. What a waste of a beautiful young man's goodwill and boundless energies. It makes you want to blow your brains out. It would have been better if he had washed the feet of junkies. Stupid Fate! Stupid God, the son of a bitch sitting on his golden throne in the clouds making good people work in shit and telling them that it is soup. What kind of universe has this asshole created when a life can be dedicated to marketing hardware in a creepy lying magazine based on an absurd machine that is only good for turning the Garden of Eden into a freeride area?

So, forget the frustration over mortality and the inability of mankind to take it seriously, . . . just what do I REALLY think of this piece of shit mountain bike rag from hell?

Yawn. "Nice" photography from the "sunsets school" of pretty landscapes, moody moments of drool that hide the fact that mountain bikes are being used to tear up the surface of the planet.

As with all of the current magazines on newstands, BIKE is missing a golden opportunity--the chance to champion the environment. It's like they do not even see that the issue is out there. Nature is for us to dominate, not preserve. It is the "Judeo-Christian aesthetic." Hell, we have to ride, don't we? And, where do you think we got all that paper?

BIKE got a C- until I saw a recent "Buyer's Guide"---a series of multi-page ads, re-printed catalogs and corporate lies paid for and laid out by their corporate advertisers, then bought by you as the "BIKE Product Guide." They have finally found a way to sell pamphlets that the advertisers do for them. So, BIKE gets an F, straight up. Can they get any more blatant? After seeing a "guide" like this, they cannot be trusted. At least BIKE is making money on this crap, all the while showing the true colors of the mountain bike press. It is the only obvious honesty displayed in their magazine--showing a total lack of integrity or work ethic. If this were MOUNTAIN BIKE's buyer's guide they would at least disquise the stuff and take credit for writing it. Which brings me to:


The TOTAL LOSER!
DIRT RAG
I am going to dumb this down. American culture is based on appropriation. No one has an original idea and, if you are a true Christian, like all Americans must be, even if they don't say they are, want to be, or are practicing Satanic ritual, you surely know that only God can create. So, we take an idea or a design and we rewrite it or move it around, edit it, change it, hopefully put some jazz in there that is unique to the "publisher" and sell it.

If you studied Greek, then you know that the true meaning of the word, REALITY, is "what the King says is true." Listen to the King, appropriate others' research and ideas, pay them nothing or next to nothing, put moronic, insincere bullshit into a form that a 4th grader can understand, tempering it with omissions for the sake of selling ad space, and print stuff we know already. That's Dirt Rag.

But, they DO try harder. Why? Because they have to. They are so off the back that you have to wait twenty minutes for them to catch up, but you don't mind because they are sooo cute and apologetic. You WILL find silly pictures in DR, which is a relief. No pictures of gay people out of the closet, but silly pictures. Some very pathetic pictures, too, which is refreshing. The equipment reviews in DIRT RAG are a disaster. Amateur porn, but not as good as amateur porn. I suspect it has to do with the "buddy system" (I'll get my buddy to write the damn thing for free).

DR was the only mountain bike mag that came out against the war, at first, anyway. They did not push the issue. Too dangerous. That might hurt sales to the stupids who are real American bubbas at heart. I once sent DR pictures of cyclists in the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco. I dared them to publish the photos and they looked like they were going to, but I won the dare. Try harder, fuckheads. You turds might just catch up before the whole world goes down the toilet two miles ahead of you.


MTBR.COM

I had to include this website, because it is the current state-of-the-art in equipment fetish and USELESS BULLSHIT. The good: Some people have fun, find a reason to live and are able to spout useless information that makes them feel like they are actually doing something with their useless lives. I have seen articles full of passion and healthy obsession, sure, but I recently surfed the site for some technical information on a fork and could not find one helpful piece of information, just praise, some tech talk that was as thin as potato chips and a lot of obvious ignorance and vacant parts worship. There is a cultural thing going on here that reveals more thoughtlessness and lack of spirit than anything else, something that permeates White Society---madness, denial of responsibility, and a despiritualization of nature. If there are any colored folks, or women even, reading the MTBR mindless reviews, I would be very surprised. It seems like the worst in people comes out like water out of a wide-mouthed glass in these forums. Young white people are horribly without soul and MTBR is a good example. Even the worst porn site is better, because it is honest about what motivates us. The percentage of bile on MTBR is a gauge of the pain on the souls of our youth. Not to mention the fact that most people who write reviews of equipment don't even ride enough to find its flaws.

Editing shuttles one quickly to the Truth with imagination and economy. If you don't take time to edit, you can be misunderstood or worst. When quoting someone or paraphrasing, you can completely change the meaning with creative editing. This is what happens on MTBR. Babble, misquotes, rambling neurosis, paranoid people getting back at somebody who "done them wrong" in their imagination, and the lonely ones thinking about buying something they cannot afford. Anyone can have an opinion, and the booger pickers seem to leap at the chance to share one. 14 year old kids are trying to look bigger on MTBR and it is getting harder and harder to tell the 14 year olds from the 40 year olds. I must be getting old and the wisdom of old age is that youth is totally wasted on the young. It is true, true, true.

MTBR offers a service and a forum, but like the mags, makes money as advertiser for the very products reviewed on their site. I have seen them pull honest comments and reviews from pressure from an advertiser. As a log for bored people who have nothing better to do than to spend their time online trying desperately to have an impact on something, it is a sad reminder that the value of life is going down. Jerry Daniels calls these folk, "Etards." Then there are the <10% that don't have time or money to know shit about bikes from experience and are working at being smart buyers, rifling in vain through the strings of babble to get at real opinionated testing info that the mags cannot provide. But, you must understand that the <10% are wading through the other >90% for days on end, slogging through bullshit and fantasy. Advertising is there to make you feel at home and safe in the dirty filling station bathroom of the forums.

MTBR is sad, really, AND I MEAN REALLY--I am talking about the forums that represent a portrait of our vacant consumer society and the pitiful lonely, angry white males who have nothing better to do than look for something or someone to hate. The reviews and forums are kinda like those dating sites, where losers fish for other lonely souls, get a nibble, then babble on about how their astrology charts are soooo compatable. The hatred spouted on the forums has nothing to do with mountain biking and everything to do with anger and frustration arising from the despiritualization of everything, . . . . and young males' inability to connect with a woman. Having a forum on the MTBR.COM web site on your list of domain "favorites" is more about loneliness than buying. A good reviewer is hard to find in magazines that pay folks to do this, so don't expect to find one for free on MTBR.

Oh, and, by the way, if you want something that will really get your panties in a bunch, click on: THE MOAB 24 HOUR RACE IS EVIL.

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