In 1996, cycling champion Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer. By 1999, he had recovered and made a miraculous return to win the Tour de France. Five years later, the LIVESTRONG charity, which battles cancer, started distributing yellow rubber bracelets emblazoned with "LIVESTRONG" in honor of Armstrong's courage and tenacity. And now, eight long years later, it's time to cut that dirty motherfucking bracelet off your wrist and throw it into the trash.

I mean Jesus Christ, sure, the guy was inspiring and all, but he ain't Nelson fucking Mandela, for Chrissake. He rides a bike. Yet for eight long years we, the non-rubber-bracelet-wearing majority, have been forced to tolerate the sight of those garish little wristbands peeking inappropriately from under the shirt cuffs of peppy, cockstrong assholes from Usher to John Edwards to George W. Bush. And then every god damn charity in the world had to start handing out their own colored rubber bracelets, and then came the humorous spinoff colored rubber bracelets, until the wrists of America and, indeed, the world were awash in colorized rubber, like a bunch of fucking four-year-olds set loose at the grocery store 25-cent toy machines.

Well, now Lance Armstrong is appropriately disgraced as a lying cheater and Nike has dropped him and, most importantly, Armstrong himself has stepped down as head of LIVESTRONG, so all you people who were so god damn inspired by him that you felt compelled to wear those yellow rubber bracelets for very heartfelt reasons, the world hereby gives you permission to take those fucking bracelets off, throw them away, and never again purchase or don a colorized, slogan-emblazoned yellow bracelet ever again for as long as you shall live, so help you god.

Want to wear a god damn bracelet? Get a watch. This is America.

[Photo: AP]