It's cool to put your $1,500 mountain bike on a rack and drive to a park. It's even cool to put on clown clothes and ride your $2,000 road bike down certain specified scenic roads. What isn't cool is using your bike for transportation. Well, that's not quite true. If you do use it for transportation, it's cool only if you wear enough expensive bicycle clothing to advertise the fact that you don't HAVE to ride your bike to work, but you are CHOOSING to in order to get more exercise. Also, it's imperative that you use the right kind of bike: hybrids or touring bikes, not mountain bikes (or maybe road bikes), are for transportation.
I'm not sure why I bought that $150 used mountain bike back in 1999 -- I think it may have had something to do with their being cool. But I'm glad, in retrospect, because I can ride around the lake, and having no point of comparison, pounding the pavement with mountain tires isn't an awful experience for me. But I'm starting to feel sort of stupid with my knobby tires, riding back and forth to work along the sidewalk.
According to mandate, biking when it's not necessary while wearing idiotic bicycle clothes is good. Biking when it's necessary while wearing something like a mcdonalds uniform is bad. Bikes are supposed to be cheap, reliable, fast forms of transportation, but they've become part of the american fitness-masturbation scene. The way america has 'discovered' the bicycle completely casts it in a new role. Instead of thousands of thais riding their bicycles to work, we have thousands of americans driving their bikes to a manufactured mountain bike obstacle course. There really is such a thing around here; it's called 'shaeffer farm', and it's quite popular.
Everything in america is a status-symbol -- every product can be a sign of wealth and power, or a sign of poverty and impotence. It's the nature of our economic machine. A bicycle can be either an indication of standing on the top rung, or the bottom rung, depending on some variables.
I shouldn't criticize americans for things that are totally beyond their control. Americans are influenced not only by the wealth of their nation, but by their own culture. Americans aren't, as humans, particularly stupid or base. If bangladesh were suddenly given to producing 30k a year in per capita income, bengalis would be driving their bikes to a nearby park to ride them around in ridiculous bicycle clothing.
I find it totally stupid (but perhaps inevitable) that it's become impossible for most people to incorporate physical activity into their daily lives. So, the fitness-minded have to do things like strap their bikes to their cars, drive to a park, ride their bikes around in a circle, re-mount them, and then drive back home.
I guess this is the only way to do it, and we should consider ourselves lucky (as a species) that some people do even this. It just demonstrates how totally screwed up we've become as a society -- wealth and the service/information economy have lead to the virtual abandonment of the physical body. But this is old news -- everybody knows this shit. Harping on it is boring.
I'm going to get a headlight (riding home in the dark the other day was difficult), replace my rear derailleur with a cheap but non-bent model, and possibly replace my mountain tires with road tires. When I can bring myself to re-install my kickstand, I'll know I've reached the point of no return, ie, my bike will be purely a practical device. Currently, my kickstand is sitting in the basement.
There's this particular thing currently going on now-a-days regarding kickstands: they are DEFINITELY not cool. No way. No one who is serious about riding has a kickstand installed on their bike. I think the source of this jihad is the riding weight-obsessing of professional bicyclists, but it's irrational when adopted by the casual rider, or even the casual rider who goes crazy on the track, timing himself, eating endless power bars, etc. Maybe even irrational when adopted by the pros.
A 5oz kickstand isn't going to make a perceptible difference in your ride. Bikes move horizontally -- you aren't picking them up and carrying them over the ground. A time difference of a few seconds is more likely attributable to slightly less pedaling at some given moment than horizontally rolling the added weight of 5oz. What's even funnier is when overweight riders demand ultra-light frames and leave off their kickstands. If someone above a certain BMI threshold buys a bike, they should be legally required to install a kickstand. Maybe two.
We (the bicycle community) are in the midst of an anti-kickstand mass-hysteria. The worst part is that I partook. But I can forgive myself by admitting that my concern was purely aesthetic -- I wanted a stripped-down looking bike (i also removed my water bottle hanger, tire pump, rear reflector, lock, etc). I may put the kickstand back, but it is really easy to lean a bike up against something. There are endless things in life against which to lean a bike (trees, other bikes, walls, fire hydrants, fences, etc).
I might put my kickstand back on just to be contrarian, or because I became very used to using it -- sometimes, finding something to lean the bike against is a chore. Call me a sheep if you will, but the truth is that I sort of prefer it off. Anyway, I still think this is a mass hysteria, and something should be done, generally.
This blog is now anonymous. I've removed the link on my main site, and cleared out of this blog all mentions of my name. Now, this blog will be less likely to deter people in a position to hire me, if I ever go the route of socially responsible employment. Hey, it could happen.
But then, I think of my bunnyranch, seven locks, and anti-christianity papers, all sitting there in plain view on db.net, and realize that my public image is more or less screwed anyway. For one thing, a lot of people link to my bunnyranch piece, and mention my name. So, there's really no point in fighting it -- I have no control over the web's link structure, and what other people choose to say about me. But, every little bit helps, as they say, so I've anonymized this blog.
A lot of the writing that's posted on db.net is just bad and dumb. There are much better essays here in my blog, but I'd have to go through every entry and title the good ones. I guess it's not that daunting a project, but it's still pretty time-intensive. It helps that I wrote the content, so my skimming is very effective.
On Friday, I'm going to guitar center to look at effects pedals. I feel like I'm 19 again.
TACKER: barnacle () SUBJECT: problem --> upset --> inability to solve DATE: 26-Mar-05 16:50:02 HOST: sverige (sorry for long post) this has happened to me twice here when I've done dumb things. once, I messed up my $PATH, and was unable to run programs like vim, mutt, and even ls, cd, and other bins I don't usually think of as 'programs'. the other time, I chmodded myself out of my home directory (i was stuck hanging out at root level). both times, I got so upset and flustered that I couldn't think, entered com (with another account in the first case) and whined to acquaintances until they gave me the suddenly obvious and trivial solutions: $ /usr/bin/vi .profile (then delete the $PATH line) and.. $ chmod 744 /arpa/ag/b/barnacle I'm pretty sure that if I had been in a better state of mind, I would have thought of these solutions myself. But being freaked out utterly destroyed my logic and problem-solving ability. All I was capable of doing was curling up in a ball on the floor and howling, or possible bursting into com and typing 'plz help'. i guess this is why they say 'sit down, get away from the problem, have a cool drink, and re-approach it in a few hours (or in the morning).' let's move from the practical to the abstract. When I (and many other people I've talked to) are faced with a problem, the problem upsets me so much that I become unable to solve said problem. this CAN'T be an evolutionary advantage. Imagine a caveman being chased by a wooly mammoth. A logical solution might be to climb a tree, but the caveman is so freaked out that he just keeps running, and then is caught and trampled by the faster wooly mammoth. i suppose it's a holdover from our lower primate-days, when being faced with a problem would upset the lower primate, and trigger fight-or-flight and reliance on instinct (run away, which instinctively included climbing trees, or attack and bite the offending problem). we as homo sapiens don't have many (if any) instincts. We're more or less defenseless without weapons, not to mention that our usual problems don't respond too well to being attacked and bitten. Society has evolved far quicker than our own innate neurological responses, and our primitive brains are faced with problems that require responses that are more 'evolved' than are the primitive brains. maybe now, 'evolution' has taken on a different meaning as our reservoirs of cool, left-brained logic are used to solve problems that are coming up and changing faster than for which biological evolution can compensate. This, of course, will culminate in artificial intelligence and nanotechnology cleaning our underwear. ::barnacle attacks and bites his $PATH:: maybe the behavior of remaining calm in a crisis can be learned. But I just wish it weren't inherent (at least in me). problem --> upset --> inability to solve problem --> upset --> further inability --> upset --> suicide via ballpoint pen it's in a crisis situation that one is most in need of quick problem-solving ability, and it's also in as crisis situation that one is least able to solve problems quickly. sucks, eh?
When we were about 14, a couple of friends and I used to listen to a parody punk band called 'the meatmen'. When I read about them now, I realize that they did in the 80s what 'anal cunt' didn't do until the 90s: the meatmen were out to offend. But unlike AC, to which anal cunt is sometimes euphemistically referred, one could actually listen to the meatmen.
The meatmen wrote such tasteful songs as 'crippled children suck', 'what's this shit called love?', 'pope on a rope' and 'fast food fist fuck'. AC put out 'songs' like 'wind chimes are gay', 'connor clapton committed suicide because his father sucks', 'i sent concentration camp footage to america's funniest home videos', and 'laughing while leonard peltier gets raped in prison'; clearly an evolutionary step in the offensive punk/metal genre.
The reason I put 'songs' in quotes when referring to AC's creative output is that an AC 'song' essentially sounds like white noise: guttural screaming, no bass player (amounting to, along with the small, trebly amp and high pitch screaming, a limited dynamic range), distorted guitar played through a cheap, overdriven transistor amp, and purposefully abysmal production. You have to hear it to believe it.
Song titles and lyrics are clearly the areas of AC's expertise. Like the meatmen, AC is significantly comprised of one frontman who embodies the spirit of the band, with other personnel revolving and changing around him. The meatmen had tesco vee, and AC have seth putnam.
As far as I can tell, AC perfected (i don't think it's possible to be more offensive than AC) a technique honed by the meatmen, but certainly predating them: shock rock. But not all songs by the meatmen were offensive; some were just weird, like the rock 'n' roll ballad, 'centurions of rome'. Also, to their credit, the meatmen wrote songs that were actually songs: therein was some tune, rhythm, and discernible voices (drums, bass, guitar, vocals, keyboards).
Here's an email I sent to the two friends, deciphering the lyrics to a favorite meatmen song as well as I was able. I played it over and over, skipping back in 5-second segments and re-playing to construct words out of muddled phonemes, over and over and over again. I hope you appreciate my efforts.
From: barnacle Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 21:11:07 +0000 To: mark, peter Subject: centurions of rome if you can believe it, there are NO lyrics for MEATMEN: CENTURIONS OF ROME on the web. You can try to find some yourself if you'd like. This is the first time the internet has let me down in terms of lyrics. So, I have do my part here; I'll post them later. I'm on my 'lunch break'. Harhar. -- CENTURIONS OF ROME by the meatmen 'this is the best -- that's because we have an iron motto: we live well, we die well! Unchain them.' lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds citizens of rome have but one vital need humbling suppliance with staff and with steed an empire of excess, and lusting, and greed ahhhh-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh-ahhhh ahhhh-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh-ahhhh forty fight and twenty will die young ????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????? we are centurions KILLED FOR SPITE! centurions of rome SHOUT TRUE PRIDE! for julius the caesar-man WIN FOR ROME! we know we can the hedonist battlers, we knew mortal gods paid for the slaughter: bronze-armored, rough-shod bohemoths: chain-wielding, who wallow in gore crowd-cheers and pagan tumultuous lore ahhhh-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh-ahhhh ahhhh-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh-ahhhh forty fight and twenty will die young ????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????? we are centurions KILLED FOR SPITE! centurions of rome SHOUT TRUE PRIDE! for julius the caesar man WIN FOR ROME! we know we can [[guitar solo]] ahh-ahh-ahh we are centurions aah-ahh-ahh centurions of rome ahh-ahh-ahh we are centurions aah-aah-ahh centurions of rome ????????????????? we are centurions KILLED FOR SPITE! centurions of rome SHOUT TRUE PRIDE! we are centurious WIN FOR ROME!
Lately, I've been going back on subsequent days and correcting/editing the most recent blog, rather than write a new one. In this case, I've been obsessively editing and improving my interpretation of 'centurions of rome' since yesterday morning.