look seed

i didn't make these, they came from this guy's photostream here i just thought they were too cool not to re-blog. via boing boing.

stealing

another day wasted

didja know that "okele" means "butt" in hawaiian? well now you do.

this just in!

good things DO happen to good people...
makes me feel good inside to know that somewhere out there there are folks who want to make sure that you know if your neighbor is a nazi.

nothing to report

i have this weird drive to write lately but when i sit down at the machine nothing comes out. i have cerebral constipation.
things i want to write lately...

-prop stuff for work splicing the "wobbly shop" into our little co-op procedures

-fiction involving spontaneous development of paranormal/occult abilities across the u.s.

-lyrics that go with the song title "me and gene debs"

i'm sure there's other stuff as well.
meh.
parting shot...

after a short hiatus in the golden land of somnolence...

...we're back to the iron kingdom of insomnia. blerg.

starting to hit back

feeling a bit better, going to try running tomorrow.
formulating some thoughts on where most self-described "activists" shoot themselves in the foot. keep in mind, i won't be talking about "issue activists" like union organizers or abortion rights activists, i'm talking about people who describe and define themselves as "activists" in a sort of brando-esque "whaddya got?" sense. stay tuned, it'll be fun.
in the meantime i recommend getting your read on, it's getting cold up here in the great white north.

...and coming

and now i have the plague. i quit.

the hits just keep on coming

in the proud tradition of "the best laid plans of mice and men" my 'cross season looks pretty well torpedoed at this point due to a broken fork on the 'cross bike that i can't afford to replace and a single speed mountain bike that i don't have the bars that i need for.
even if i could afford the fork by the time i'd get it 'cross season would be pretty much over.
i'm fucked, i hate this shit, i was really looking forward to racing 'cross since i missed the ENTIRE mountain bike racing season due to work.
blerg.
-willis

now we're getting somewhere

47 degrees, drizzle and rain, 10 miles on the girlfriends steamroller, 2.5 miles running, fork or no fork i'm going to be ready for 'cross. now i just need a working bike...

dispatch from the front, sah!

all bikes broken, going running. yes, running, like without cops chasing me and everything. it's a funny old world innit?

ups and downs

good news: getting tipped a sixer of "fat squirrel" beer for being the (admittedly lesser) half of the mechanical team that got jennifer nowlin from peace coffee racing through a kickass season, kickass like first overall in her age group for women's elite mountain bikers, extra kickass because she just had a kid 6 months ago! whoop whoop!

bad news: having the 43 lb, 8' trailer that you're pulling full of bikes for your job be so poorly maintained that it flips 3 times during the course of two store to store transfers and breaks the fork on your 'cross bike. the week before you are going to start racing. and the warranty won't cover it. and the aforementioned job won't cover it. ugh. looks like i'll be racing 'cross on my single speed mountain bike. and a new fork will run me $220 that i don't have. anyone need some plasma?

blerg.

backsliding

so my bike and i may go back to working for the jimmy johns bike delivery empire. all indications are that there aren't going to be shit for hours at my current job so i gotta make some adjustments.
oh well. being a shop mechanic in winter in minnesota is boring as hell anyway.

the national health care debate as performed by cuddly, non-partisan children's characters

one fine day ollie the elephant and danny the donkey were walking to go visit their sick friend in the hospital when ollie the elephant said, "i think that the government giving people things makes them feel bad and not want to do things for themselves".
danny the donkey thought for a bit and replied, "if the government gives people just a little then they will want to earn the rest"
to which ollie the elephant said, "but danny, you can't take things away from people just to give them something else, what if they don't want it?"
"come on ollie old buddy" brayed danny the donkey, "everybody wants to have nice things that they can take for granted. we know whats best for everyone right?".
"the government can't be trusted, we can prove it", trumpeted ollie without irony, "we have to leave it to the market to decide. it's the only fair way".
danny snorted "oh of course ollie, we'll let the market decide, but what about when 'the market' decides to only give a little bit to some people, none at all to others, and all the rest to a privileged few?"
"be careful my good friend", laughed ollie, "you're starting to sound like a socialist. people won't sit still for that you know."
"i am not a socialist!" insisted danny, shaking his mane, "all i'm saying is that if everyone gets a piece of the pie the picnic is more fun."
"we're not talking about picnics danny", said ollie, "but what if i made the pie, what if i worked very hard and got everything together for it and someone else didn't help at all. how come they get a slice?"
"well it's just rude to eat pie in front of someone who hasn't got any" said danny the donkey, "that's all."
"it's not hard to make a pie danny." said ollie
"it is if you don't have a pie tin", replied danny, "not everyone has pie tins just laying around you know".
"ah, but everyone can have a pie tin if they want it badly enough", gushed ollie, "that's the magic of the market" he said knowingly.
"that's just not true!" retorted danny, "what if they're allergic to shiny stuff, what then?"
"no one is really allergic to shiny stuff", grumbled ollie, "it's just that some people are lazy and want my home-baked pie for nothing".
"they're not lazy, they have a condition!" cried danny.
"well if they have a condition they probably shouldn't have pie anyway, what if they got all barfy from too much potato salad and wieners and can't eat their slice but then they felt better later and then they ask me for another one?" asked ollie.
"well it's not their fault" said danny, "they can't help if they are allergic to shiny stuff and can't make their own pie and they get barfy at the picnic just when they are going to get some pie and then they can't have any at all. everyone else gets some."
"but that's just my point", crowed ollie, "what if me and my friends all make our own pies but no one else does. should we have to give them our pies? that's redistribution of pies! that's marxism!"
"no one want's to take your whole pie ollie", reassured danny, " i just think it's nicer if you share. after all, it's not like everyone will get the same sized slice anyway" he said slyly.
"all right", agreed ollie, "i guess sharing is ok as long as we get to have the big slices".
"of course", said danny, "i wouldn't have it any other way".

insomnia can suck my ass...

...but holy shit does the workhorse chronicles kill!
now i want to say "fuck off" to my grown-up work-type responsibilities and obligations and ride bikes, play guitar and party* all day.
i can make all of these things happen, it's just that i tend to piss people off when i demonstrate that no one can really make you DO anything...

*yes, i use it as a verb. if you don't like it then don't fucking use it...

no name XXXIX

i was going to do this other alleycat that the jimmy john's kids throw but my man altan told me the wrong damn day, so i took the wrong day off. boo.
so i went and rode out to the end of the minnetonka lrt trail instead, 63 miles of mostly crushed limestone on top of 50 miles of crushed limestone to hit the end of the southwest lrt trail the day before. oof.
so then i have this ingenious idea that i'm gonna go and do the no name since i'll be stuck at work during the jimmy john's thing.
took 5th, did this to do it, won a fancy-schmancy spoke card. ended up at anitra's shindig at grumpy's ne. cool party, great cause, saw some folks i haven't seen in a while and generally had a rockin' time.
some thoughts on the evening at large...
-i need to fix my venerable hudson map co map of mipples/stp as it's no good to me falling apart
-those complimentary transit maps are worse than useless unless you already know where everything is
-35mm knobby cyclocross tires will slow you down over 22 miles of pavement
-nothing beats a $2 tall boy of pbr after a bike race, except for 4 of 'em

why do they call me mr. happy?

it's because i'm so. fucking. smart.
all that aside i got a bunch of crap sorted depression or no depression...
-i got all of the files off of the old non-stolen computer and onto the new laptop
-mariko got a letter from the cops that her mess bag and wallet with her cards have been recovered and are sitting down town in central property as we speak
-it's getting cold at night which means only one thing, epic lights-off rides!
-i'm gonna help mariko build her new creamroller this weekend
hot shit. apologies to anyone i've been unreasonably crabby with lately, not finding any enjoyment in life makes me grumpy.
oh, and i want to see what warren ellis does to these folks when he finds them. i can't wait for the "viral video as heads on pikes" phenomenon.

this just in!

apparently the po-po have recovered mariko's stolen wallet and messenger bag. sweet.

and we're back

nothing feels quite as nice as dropping roadies when you're on knobby tires with a 20lb messenger bag. whee!

a headwind, a bag full of books and a laptop...

and 41 miles. that's a lot further than i've ridden for a while, though to be fair the books and the laptop were only with me for about 2o miles or so but were replaced by groceries for the last 3 miles or so. good times, i feel a lot better than i have in a while.
g'night.

follow the yelow brick road...

there was a tornado in my neighborhood the other day. no for real, check it out...
i was at work at the time over on the west bank but the storm touched down about 10 blocks from my apartment. weird, i had always thought that the urban heat island effect kept tornadoes at bay but i guess not now that i think of it.
...and where there's bad weather there's always someone waiting to take the level of discourse back to the dark ages for the advancement of their own boneheaded agenda.
seriously?
i've always wondered how these conservative christians get up the gall to go on the t.v. or the radio and announce to the assembled public that an invisible man in the sky has expressed his displeasure at, well, whatever it is that they don't happen to like by sending a storm or disease or something to, you know, smite something else.
idiots.

first post on the machine

got a new laptop to replace the one that was stolen when our apartment got burglarized, works sweet. nothing else to report.
except this. hot damn, i want to be that guy when i grow up...

good...bad...ugly?

so it's been a weird month, i found out 2 days ago that my dad is being laid off from his job of 17 years as of the first of the month, my sister just had surgery on a pinched nerve/bulging disc in her neck and about 3 weeks ago someone broke into me and my lady's apartment (while we were home sleeping!) and stole our computer and her messenger bag with her wallet and camera in it. blerg.
on the good side my pops has a 27 year navy pension and probably some kind of severance coming from the last 17 years, my sister's surgery went well and even though it's really fucking annoying (not to mention expensive) to have to replace things, they're just things and nobody got hurt.
now on to the really important stuff, i went on my first ride of any length with any kind of elevation change in it and it kicked my ass. "really?" i said to my legs, "really!" they said to me. depression-related vacation is officially over, 'cross season is a month or so away and i gots to get on it or i'm gonna be that dude at the back of the C race struggling not to let the 13 year old with athsma on the magna get away from me as they try to stay on their grandma's wheel. no thanks.
all city championships are this weekend, don't know if i can get out of work for it but if i can, maybe i'll even go get myself humbled...

nothing to report...

long time no blog but here's the quick run-down; i've been slacking off (ie. not doing any) on training and still haven't raced at all this year, works been dead as shit and i haven't really been having enough to do at the shop which makes me depressed and bored (see above) and i think i'm going to go back to delivering sammiches for the winter. that's right, sub-freezing temperatures, icy roads, on a bike, i'm that dumb.
on a brighter, or maybe just warmer, note i might try to head down to tucson at some point and sleep on my friend mareesha's floor and ride my dinky little 'cross bike up mountians with road racers. i'm beginning to think that i'm a masochist...

challenge failed...

...but in my own defense i didn't have intardnet access for a few days there, in any case i didn't write anything for a few days. crap.
well since i last wrote i blew up my crankset on my 'cross bike on monday morning and got to walk about 7.5 miles home to get my mountain bike and then be late to work. it was a great start to the day if i do say so myself. blerg.
in better news i think that we've made progress towards getting mariko's single speed to fit a bit better and i handed her down my d.a. cranks. hopefully they'll be as nice for her as they were for me.
i've been reading more again, it's not that i ever stopped enjoying it, it's just that i've been lazy about going to the library. of course i could try going to the one that's 12 blocks from my house if i didn't want to ride all the way downtown buti like the central library too much. right now i'm re-reading "the scar" by china mieville, one of my all time favorites, and next up is "no country for old men" by cormac mccarthy. sweet.
next up i'm going to try running. we'll see how that goes, running has not generally been a strong suit of mine but it's been 3 years since i quit smoking so maybe it'll go a bit better this time. i'll let you know.
i'm out, go ride.

the challenge

so i'm going to try to write something everyday for the rest of the month, it doesn't have to pulitzer material but something substantive everyday. it'll be a good substitute for a social life.
last night i went to my first ever pro bike race and it was pretty fucking rad if i do say so myself. yes i know that to the 4 people who know me who read this it's probably a shock that i had never been to a non-alleycat bike race but it's true. first one, for real, cherry popped and all that.
i digress, back to radness...
after making 2 abortive attempts at mountain biking(my parter in crime bailed on me in the a.m. and i did not have my head on right and was overgeared in the evening so i bailed out halfway through the trail to avoid grievious bodily injury) i headed to uptown with my coworker benjamin to go watch the criterium. we got there in time to see the womens field take the line including kristen armstrong who kind of kicks ass the same way that water is kind of wet. she has raced the entire nature valley grand prix without a team to back her up and is defending her title from last year just fine. (this is not an easy thing to do for any of you that aren't familiar with bicycle racing, your team runs interference for you tactically and allows you to shelter in the draft of the domestiques to save energy for the sprints or breakaways.)
all in all the women's race was awesome, the women were riding much more aggressively than the men did later on and it was way more fun to watch. the men's race was super fast and was impressive in both the tempo and the team tactics that were going on but there were fewer breakaways than in the women's race.
i was watching from about 25 yards before the finish line so i got to see all of the sprints go off but apparently i missed out on the crashes, benjamin saw a guy pop loose from his cleats in turn 1 and skip through the turn with sparks shooting out from under his shoes!
to get an idea of the speed these folks are going go grab a bike with a speedometer and get going about 28mph or so. got that? now hold that pace for 25 (for the ladies ) or 40 kilometers (for all the dudes) and maybe pop it up into the low 30s every 10 minutes or so. it's much harder than it sounds and if you can do it i recommend you start racing now, for real, that's some pro-grade fitness.
anyway,i had a blast and i think i came out of it more stoked than ever to try actual (rather than alleycat) racing. good times.

slacking off on my intardnet duties

it's nice out and we are finally picking up at work so it goes:
ride
work
eat
sleep
repeat daily
i'm trying to ride as much as i can and eat well as i'd like to race some cyclocross this fall and maybe do a few mountian bike races before the season ends. so i'm trying to get a good ride in every day and to lose about 20-25 pounds before fall. i'm about a 175 these days and i'd like to be in the neighborhood of 150 or so to race. i've also discovered yesterday that all of my hill-climbing fitness that i built up last year has gone to shit. blerg. i fucking hate climbing and unfortunately it is a big part of the whole mountain biking thing and i really like mountain biking. i'm totally fucked.
in other news our beloved bass thumper paul has been devoured alive by gainful employment and our drummer john managed to sprain his wrist and tear mucles in his forearm at the aforementioned paul's last show with us so we are out of commision for a bit. oh well, more time to ride i guess but any smokin' bass players out there drop a line, particularly if you're one of those female types.
going riding.

a question of nomenclature

since we call people who write weblogs "bloggers" can we call people on twitter "twits"?
there it is, your snark attack for the day.
in other news, i'm leaving my current rodent-infested shit hole and relocating to a hole sans rongeur et merde at the end of the month and am very much missing the days when everything i owned fit into a messenger bag. because now i have stuff. hmm. i must have been drunk at some point and decided that was a good idea.
as far as the new digs go i guess i won't get to watch my cat kill stuff as often although i will get to see her spazzy ass try to corner at high speed on hardwood floors. whoever came up with the combo of cats and hardwood floors, i owe you a drink. genius.
now go ride your bike.

apparently i have a secret admirer

weird...but now whenever i need a little ego boost i can remember that i've officially met the "craigslist standard" of attractiveness.
unfortunately for my "secret girlfriend" i already have a real girlfriend but i'm very flattered. and slightly weirded out.

techno people update

just as i was getting up to go pound on their door and inform them that although they might want to rave 'til dawn doing so directly underneath my apartment would be a bad mistake they finally turned it off. granted it took them 2 hours of going "oons oons oons oons" to get it out of their system but they turned it off.
fuckers.

seriously downstairs techno people...

...you get six more minutes.

addendum to idiocy

in case anyone out there thinks i'm just an asshole or exaggerating i have acquired this really nice grayish-purple bruise about three inches long and an inch tall on my right thigh from where my chapstick was in my pocket at the point of impact. good times.

innatentive, lazy, drunk, i dont care...

i can put lights on my bike, i can watch out for you even when i have the right of way, even when i'm in a fucking bike lane, i can yell so loud a guy from two blocks away comes running and you still won't even know i'm there.
fuck you you fat, dumb, arrogant sack of shit.
look at me all pursed-lipped as i hit your fucking window while you talk on your phone and then you have the chutzpah to look the fuck away as i bounce off your dumbass bronco and keep fucking driving.
fuck you.
i hope you have some freak accident where your car keys get lodged in your rectum and the emergency room staff can't use anaesthetic on you and your fucking proctoscopy footage becomes the next internet viral video meme, you fucking turd.

and back to bumming...

i've been awake since 2:45 this morning, i have to work from 1 to 9 and now it's fucking snowing. blerg.

in rare non-bummer news...

i'm moving out of my crappy apartment at the end of the month and moving into one that's much nice and sans mice and roaches. hot shit.

a short list of things that are currently bumming me out

i've been doing some reading and now i guess i know why i can't make it the 4 or 5 miles to work without some turd pie almost taking me out.
on other news the weather sucks, i'm stuck fixing other peoples bikes all day and all i want to do is to go ride so of course mother nature obliges by kicking in some 20+ mph winds with some "wintry mix" precipitation. boo-fucking-urns.
i've been having mechainc's angst of late, i've found myself getting irritated, no fuck it, offended by people who just won't take care of their bikes. i mean seriously, you ride that shit every day, how hard is it to wipe off your chain once or twice a presidency? would it kill you to put some air in your tires? and don't even get me started on oiling chains, every fucking day i'll be on my bike somewhere and my ears will tell me that there is a horde of rampaging mice on pcp charging up the street behind me and yet, every time, it's just someone whose chain hasn't seen lubrication since the factory. blerg.

bees got nothing...

sorry i haven't blogged of late, i have been busy fixing peoples bicycles and haven't had time to do anything else except eat and sleep.
i work in a coop and have a lot more responsibilities than your average run of the mill bike mechanic. in the conventional business world i would also be working in HR, legal, logistics, PR and probably touch on a few other areas i can't think of right now.
fortunately the work is rewarding and even on days like today when i hate my job i can power through knowing that at the end of the day if things are still fubar i can snarl, piss and moan about it and maybe get the things that piss me off changed.
as far as my day or days go, please just remember that when you find a beat up bike in the trash or with a big ol' free sign at the garage sale or ditched in a sewage lagoon, it's probably there for a reason. no amount of hiked-eyebrow, "you're ripping me off, aren't you?" looks will turn that trashed 70s bike boom department store 10 speed into a totes hottt fixie "whip" for $40 worth of parts and labor.

feeding it

I have to laugh when comes down to something as trite and cliche as booze and pills but all of the would be, could be, should be critics can go get fucked. Sometimes you just need to throw yourself into the volcano, to stare into the figurative abyss in order to get grounded again, in order to find anything but nothing.
I'm full of nothing right now. I'm a soviet warehouse, a banker's soul and a politicians conscience. I need to dive in to see how far down it goes, to plumb the depths so to speak.
That's not exactly true, I'm just missing some of my more vagabondish traits. I'm dragging sea anchors with me the older I get, possessions, obligations, responsibilities and I keep looking for something sharp to cut them away with. Therein lies the problem. I miss my old life but my old life was fairly solitary, no responsibility means exactly that, off the grid, off the books, off the radar but it's hard to get someone else to do that with you and I have someone else who wouldn't survive that kind of life for long.
Maybe the cliche isn't far off, I am a "lost boy". It's not that I won't grow up, I can't, there's nothing for me. Just like most of the people that I relate to I'll probably end up a teacher or tradesman, ekeing out a living on the fringes of polite society, participating just enough to avoid suspicion and savoring the bitterness that I was never meant for this world.
Regret is a sour word and a bad place to live, fortunately I have little to regret.
Honesty kills me but not quite as fast as it kills everyone else.
That's the regret, I never learned to play nice, never learned to fake it, to hide the weird. I never learned social niceties beyond that you lie to people all day long just to get by the legit world. It gets me, the lies, the glad-handing and the submerging of the self in the greywater flow of the normals.
I'm part of the fringe world, proud of it too. The bar-folk, the bike nerds, art kids, musicians and weirdos. The lost tribe that you walk past every day, the ones who don't get it, who don't play well with others. The ones who drink the sun into the sky, who pick through your trash to find our treasure who live hard and fall harder. We take the bruises and scrapes home with us and make them into our monuments, quiet memorials that are lost while we live only to be found later and wondered over. Graffiti, demo tapes, paintings and journals. Sculptures and sketchbooks. Gravestones for the taunts, the shoves, the rapes and beatings that we have suffered to be who we are. Tributes to our loves and heartbreaks, the drinks, the drugs, the stolen kisses and borrowed sex that mark as well as our tattoos and scars. Welcome to the land of misfit toys, population us.

1000 yards

I don't sleep more than a few hours a night anymore. I can't, it's like there's this intense manic drive behind me no matter how exhausted I get I can't make myself sleep. Someone must have put some shark DNA into me when I wasn't looking or something.
Insomnia leads to strange revelations, like the fact that I can't stand a word that I'm writing right now but I'm going to keep writing because eventually I have to write something that I'm happy with...
Blogging is just a journal that everyone gets to read. An invitation to voyeurism.
There's no such thing as a sentence fragment, they are the solid state of thoughts when transcribed. It's physics not grammar.
I'm the only one in my immediate family that can't play the piano which may explain the odd fondness that I have for piano music. It has to be punchy though, not so much the Kate Bush for me thanks.
Like any music for me there has to be kinesis, an undertow, something that puts a hook in your guts, plants the seed that germinates into full-voiced yells when you see them play it. Head back, eyes closed, the drinks you've had becoming a conduit to the energy stored inside every body in the room, a furnace within you shaping that energy into the heat in your lungs that pushes its way out of your throat at full volume, unashamed and ecstatic. Ignore the looks from the scenesters and be-seen-sters, they don't matter. It's a culture war between those who see music because it's a thing to do and those who make music because it's what they are.
As I'm writing this I'm listening to a song that a friend told me is about fucking on acid. I don't know if it's true or not but thinking that's what the song is about gives it a cool shade of meaning.
...Nothing stands against the ocean.
Nothing. All I can think of is the grey green waves, their onrushing fronts glassy. Untold tons of force driving them to shore, the pulse and blood of the planet. The direct line to the rest of the universe, tides pulled by the moon that's pulled by the earth in turn pulled by the sun who is pulled around a spiral arm of a galaxy pulled around untold millions of other stars and galxies.
Whew.
I'm pretty much out of (semi)coherent thought for the time being.
Later kids.

the winter of my discontent

I think my grandmother said it best; "Living in Minnesota in winter is like being trapped in someone's sock". The grey clouds seem like they're about ten feet above your head and they grey from the sky seems to leach out and mute the whole world.
Here in the city winter is like a meth-rotted tooth; brown, jagged and nasty. The D.O.T. dumps enough salt out onto the streets to mummify all of Egypt and the soot from the exhaust pipes of ten thousand cars seeps into the snow and reduces it to smoker's lungs. The mercury dips into the science fiction zone, wind jerks tears from your eyes like smoke and the cold becomes a frozen ghost that can pull the breath right out of your chest.
Winter means all of my little shortcuts dissappear, that if I wear the wrong piece of clothing parts of me will start to freeze off and that at any moment my bike may go out from under me and I'll go under the wheels of someone's car that they can't stop because they're on the same black ice that pulled me down.
Winter means long nights, withdrawing into the percieved safety of blankets and piles of rented movies. Winter is lethargy, having to fight to get on my bike everyday and make my sore muscles do the work of turning the cranks. Winter hurts; frostbite, depression, isolation, feeling the walls close in on you, breathing the same stale air for months until all you can smell and taste is claustrophobia.
Winter is hell without fire and yet still beautiful. Sterile and stark, leafless trees stretch imploring fingers to the gunmetal sky as if pleading for the return of the sun. Fresh snow softens the unrelenting lines and angles of the city, buries the cars and makes every lampost show the way into Narnia. The silence while snow is falling is profound, like the whole world is holding it's breath. The cold is bracing and the air is sharp and clear. When the sun makes an appearance the air itself seems to blaze blue white, so bright you have to slit your eyes or go glare blind.
Winter is that girl who knows she is so pretty that she'll get away with it when she hurts you. And that you'll always be there, rapt and dazzled, the next time.

On a related note, A.F.P. has been the bottomless bottle of booze that is getting me through the dark, ice crusted ass-end of the year. Her and this.