Food.

Yesterday was Cranksgiving In June... A new version from friend Thomas (http://www.ypsivelo.org/) to compliment the traditional Cranksgiving I usually organize near the Thanksgiving time. Always a fun sort of event to spend one's money and time and effort for a good cause...

But this time, since I was riding instead of organizing, and it wasn't so much a timed race as it was a weight-hauling competition, it allowed for a certain amount of time for thought. From past Cranksgivings, and food donation sorting a Foodgatherers, I've come to an opinion on food donation, and I decided to compete for the pounds-per-dollar category... Basically, I want my donation dollar to go as far as possible, to provide as much food as possible.

And it really got me thinking. About what we are paying for when we buy food in this country. About how our food dollars are spent.

Not in the trendy Urban Agriculture/Locavore/Organic silliness that has taken over these days (something that advertising marketeers have co-opted to sell you more Tide and Twinkies and Toothpaste), but about basic sustenance. We're in this recession, and hundreds of thousands of people are losing jobs and houses and retirement savings and college funds and whole urban economies (Flint, MI anyone? Detroit?).

And so I'm in the Chinese Grocery store yesterday, calculating that this 20lb bag of rice at $10 is more food/dollar than the 20lb-er at $13, but at the same time, how many meals 20lbs of rice will provide. But then today, not 24 hours later I bought 4 bagels and a cup of coffee for $5 and change, and that's not even a meal, and it kind of made me a little bit sick to think about. And then I'm sitting here in Meijer waiting for a friend to finish shopping, watching a lot of Well-Fed Americans do things like buy 24-packs of bottled water and Mountain Dew. I'm kind of unsettled by this.

There's not exactly anything I can do about it to affect the opinions and habits of My Fellow Americans (aside from the usual blog post and such), but it's one of those things that just gets me thinking. About what we do, and how we spend money, and why we eat some of the crap that we eat, and the daylight between these moments of clarity (or best intention), and what seems to just happen.

MacAskill, Danny

If you haven't already seen this, you NEED to. Every minute is better than the previous.

It is no exaggeration to say that I watch it and get all choked up and weepy, and not just because that is some really really pretty riding. There's so much bike love going on right there, it's a beautiful thing.

USPDF

Seems I've had a change of heart...

I used to sneer at pole dancing. You know, wisecracks about parenting... that you can say you've been a good parent if, and only if, you've managed to, until they are 18: a) keep your kid from getting arrested/imprisoned, b) kept your kid from becoming a parent themselves, and c) keep them off The Pole.

As of today, I'm taking back that last one. Check this out... I think I'm going to start calling Pole Dancing as much of a sport as Rhythmic Gymnastics. If you're bored at the beginning, skip ahead to the last half - it gets more and more impressive. Oh, say... somewhere around 1:55 or 2:35 or 2:55.

(it's PG-13 for adult themes such as pole dancing, but there's no nudity, so I'm calling it "safe for work")

kapow-kapow

I'm not going to make any grand pronouncements (as I'm usually inclined to do) about this, but let it be known that I've had it just about "up to here" with white guys talking about how Obama is going to take away people's guns. About how "just you watch... the fascist state is right over the horizon. I'm going to be prepared when the revolution comes. Me and my guns."

Just so you know where I'm coming from: I'm an able-bodied, college-educated, straight-acting, adult, white male with a haircut and a clean shave. Among other things, I: am an Infidel, am an ex-Boy Scout who enjoyed earning Rifle Merit Badge, am pro-marriage-equality (marry as many consenting adults as you want), am anti-Affirmative-Action (it's socially/morally/politically intractable), am a supporter of gun rights AND gun control, love it when women are in power, don't believe in Global Warming(tm) but fervently believe that renewable energy sources are the only future, and dearly love nuclear power as a bridge technology to get us to where we need to go. There's more about me that you can ask, but hopefully that tells you which demographics I don't fall into (as I doubt there are any simple ones that I DO fall into).


So back to the gun thing and 'when the revolution comes...'

I'm worried that I'm going to have to defend myself against the crazies among the citizenry. That I'm going to have to take up arms against my oppressors, and that they will be my neighbors.

While they are metaphorically tweaking out about what the metaphorical police thugs are doing, I'm going have to metaphorically sneak up behind them and metaphorically pop a metaphorical cap in their metaphorical ass so that their crazy shit doesn't get me killed by accident.

Maybe it comes off better if I call it: Doctrine of Preemption. Because that's really what it boils down to, an arms race. A Cold War in our own backyards. Cuban Missile Crises in neighborhoods.

The end will not come because the Big Evil Federal Government destroyed the US of A in a fit of totalitarian fascism. The end will come because neighbor will be afraid of neighbor and we will tear each other apart in the process.

Constitutionally guaranteed freedom to royally fuck ourselves over. And you better fuck over your neighbor, unless they do it to you first.

---------------------------------------

So here's the funny thing from last week. As a group conversation turns to an episode of gun/Obama/we're-doomed-to-socialism banter, this one guy (who lives in a suburban white-bread neighborhood, and commutes to/works in a suburban white-bread neighborhood) tells a funny story about how... he has a CCW, and keeps a loaded gun in his car, but he sort of forgot, and this a friend borrowed his car, he said OK and handed over the keys, but forgot about the gun until the friend was miles down the road, and... gosh, isn't it funny that I had to call him and tell him not to freak out that there's a loaded gun in the car that he's driving, so don't go to Canada, don't speed, and if you get pulled over by the cops, well, this is why they have their guns drawn when they are talking to you.

Ha-ha-ha, isn't that funny. He Forgot That He Keeps A Loaded Gun In The Car.

On what planet is that responsible gun ownership?

Here's what I'm thinking... When The Revolution Comes, I know where I'm going to get myself a gun. There's this guy I know who keeps one in his car, and from time to time he sometimes even forgets that it's there. Seems like a pretty easy way to get my hands on one.

dang.

That's kinda messed up. So much for trying to help someone out. Goes to show... if you're thinking about helping out a stranger stranded on the side of the road, at 2:30am, watch your back.

Motivated Smiling

People who practice "intentional smiling" creep me out like you wouldn't believe...

Don't look at me to figure out what you're supposed to say, say what you mean, dammit. And when I don't smile back, don't assume that I'm angry, just because you expect your smile to be met with a smiling response from me. I might just be a non-smiling person. Deal honestly and explain your position instead of trying to persuade with your demeanor.

Facts, not feelings, folks. Learn to live with them.

Veggie Pets

There's all this over-inflated hoo-ha these days about gardens, "urban farmers", and all sorts of fluffy notions about how planting plants in your garden will save your food bill, the planet, and the children all at once. Me, I planted some tomatos in a pot, and it's like they're little veggie pets. "Bob" (seen here) seems to be doing well, though I'm inclined to rename him "Seymour". "Chuck", his upside-down cousin does not yet seem to be as ambitious, but he might be angry about the rough handling while getting repotted in the inverted orientation..

I'll have to add though, that since transferring the kale to the bed with the ground cover, the slugs that have started eating it are, in effect, eating a pet, and thus essentially attacking a family member. If any of those slugs are reading this blog, let it be known that you've been warned. That kale is a friend of mine. You better back the hell off.

More Eulexia

While my favorite use of eulexia used to be transmogrifying "god bless america" into " goat-blast a marigold", it seems that what's taking prominence these days is transmogrifying "buy american" in to "buy a merkin".

I'm doing the fancy-phone "MMS blogging from lunch", so I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to find their way over to Wikipedia to find out what a merkin is.

what to do with that

So I got a new phone and I'm migrating contact information from one to the other, which requires a certain amount of massaging of data, going through and cleaning it up so that it imports cleanly, and as I go through, the entry for my grandmother has to be cleaned up. But you see, that'd be my dead grandmother. So the question becomes... shouldn't I just delete it? I mean, it's not like I'm going to call her or anything.

It's like when I enter people's birthdays in my calendar - I punch it in, then hit the "repeat" feature, which then has a choice of "no end date" or "repeat until..." I my mind, I always run the imaginary dialog of "ok, well they're not immortal, so how long do I think they're going to live?" I never enter an end date, but still, it's like this tiny little bit of mortality entering into the silly virtual world.

Do it... To it.

Right. So here's the deal... if you didn't know this about me before, it's time you heard about it - I like me some punkrockmusic.

And it was just on a lark, a fluke, a happenstance, that this morning I switched the radio station away from the news and to a music station with annoying drive-time radio, hoping against hope for something new. But I was rewarded with the old. The old and good. And new.

Pennywise is coming to town.

There's a bunch of hardcore punk out there that doesn't grab me. And we won't talk about that. But every now and then, I need some Minor Threat. And Bad Religion goes well most of the time, but if you've heard 3 songs, you've heard 'em all.

Pennywise, they just have that thing.

Goodness. Get me some.

embarrassing food revelations

I newly, dearly, and enthusiastically love Soy Vay Teriyaki sauce.

What's embarrassing? Let me put it to you this way... I had never had it before until I bought the first bottle 2-3 weeks ago. I accidentally dropped it on the kitchen floor while unpacking groceries and it made a sticky, goopy mess. But it smelled so good I couldn't help but dab my finger in the broken-glass-strewn puddle and risk my tongue to have a taste. Delicious. So I bought another bottle. But that bottle, every time I take it out of the fridge for potstickers, or just on rice... well, I sneak a little swig of it.

Yes, I've come to terms with the statement: I do shots of teriyaki sauce. I'm not ashamed. I think.

The sweet and salty, with enough chunks of ginger, garlic, sesame to chew a little bit at the end.. This is a sickness, isn't it? I bought my 3rd bottle today. Not because I was out of it, but because was going to be out, and I don't want to not have any when the craving hits me.

The other revelation is about popcorn. I've always wanted a hot air popper, so I finally went out and spent the $22 on one, and now I'm stylin'. The thing is, I always thought "corn is corn". I mean heck, how big of a deal is dried out corn? Well, I have learned that the people I was scoffing at all those years buying fancypants dried corn kernels - well, that's me. I now see how the $1.99 2lb bag of crinkled, ugly kernels is not exactly a bargain. They pop all weird, small, and unsatisfying. When I'm out of this stuff, I'm buying the fancypants stuff.

it'll do for now.

Loyal and devoted readers will remember a certain broken bike from last season. Well, due my lack of disposable income and the simple existence of winter, that bike sat around something fierce. Not being able to put it down, not wanting to spend money to make it healthy. Something to be said for not throwing good money after bad.

But the thing is, it's getting really, really, reallllly pretty out, and the dirt trails have been calling to me somethin' fierce. So I gave in... I've got a crappy wheel that was just laying around, and it works. But the derailleur hanger, that was a different trick. Last weekend, I got by with a little help from a friend. M got a new TIG welder and would let me use it, so I went about fixin' me some bike. I had a loose replaceable derailleur hanger, access to TIG, a burning desire, a steady hand, and intentional ignorance of the possiblity of failure.

Now, former fellow bike mechanics and metallurgy professors of mine will surely be horrified to see that I welded a wrought alloy to a cast alloy. But you know what? It might not be kosher, but I really don't care right now. There is simply so much that is wrong with this bike that it's just time for something new. But I'm still not in a financial comfort zone (at least not for a few months) and so I just want to ride in the meantime. What other compelling reasons are there for the retirement of this bike?

- 125 mm rear axle spacing really limits wheel(hub) and drivetrain options.
- Limping along on a crappy junker rear wheel.
- Hardnose/hardtail (i.e. rigid, non suspension) frame... it's served me well, but the riding out in Arizona on the big rocks has shown me how keeping wheels in contact with the earth can be beneficial to traction... especially in those high-pucker-factor moments when pointed downhill at speed into The Chunky. I do, however, like passing the sissies on the $3000 bikes who marvel that someone can even ride on trails [gasp!] without the cushy boing-boing bikes. So I'll miss that part, surely. Of course, I'll be one of those sissies sometime soon, but only by half.
- Aluminum. I'm done with it. Great to make airplanes out of, I'm sure, but I'm a Clydesdale and honestly, I'm thinking steel. A bike with some chutzpah to it. Not a single-speed noodle-bar freak bike, but not something that's made 3 million at a time in a sweatshop somewhere.

So many things the bike needs, that I'm just not interested in throwing good money after bad:
- New middle chainring. Now that it's not single-speeded anymore, I had to put more chain on, so I put a new chain on, but the worn out ring made such a problem that I had to dig up old worn out chain, and that's what's on there now. Don't get me started that it's a Wipperman spliced with a section of Shimano in it. Yet another kludge-job to limp along on.
- New rubber. Tire sidewalls excessively crackly. But why spend $100 on tires when I'm in the market for a whole new ride?
- Aggravating U-brake setup.
- 7-speed thumbshifters on a banged-up short cage XT derailleur. Not so crisp with the shifting any more.
- I've already blown out 2 freewheels (i.e. broken all the pawls) in the life of this bike, and this one doesn't seem too healthy. But no one makes freewheels anymore, and besides, it's a 125 mm rear, so that's a problem too.

Anyway, why am I complaining? Just ride the fucking thing, I sez to myself.

I'm not ready to stimulate (nay, rub the the nipples of) the economy, but when I am, it's going to be with a bike, not some stupid fucking iPhone. (we'll ignore for the moment that I'm actually shopping for a new phone these days too)

Hardy's "Apology"

I've had it laying about and been meaning to get to it, and tiny little thin wisp of a book (not much more than an essay) called "A Mathematician's Apology" by G.H Hardy. Written 70 years ago, in a British style that sometimes takes my American eyes a second glance to adjust to, there's all sorts of nuggets that I latch onto as an expression of something similar to what I was trying to say, sometime, in some conversation, to someone, at some point or other.

Hardy regards the comparison between the nature of chess (or puzzles) as problems/questions of mathematics, and the proofs of mathematical theorems:

In the first place, the superiority of the mathematical theorems in seriousness is obvious and overwhelming. The chess problem is the product of an ingenious but very limited complex of ideas, which do not differ from one another very fundamentally and have no external repercussions.

This, I like. Specifically, on seriousness. It's one thing to think an idea important, or fundamental to a topic of study. But is it serious? Not how stern it is, nor whether it lacks whimsy, but the scope of "external repercussions".

How art or poetry are patterns, like mathematics, but constructed of colors and words rather than ideas and that it is ideas that have permanence greater than objects or languages or colors or sounds. That a prime number is always a prime number - across generations, eons, cultures, and (at the risk of sounding too poufy) across space and time.

A painting may embody an 'idea', but the idea is usually commonplace and unimportant. In poetry, ideas count for a good deal more; but as Housman insisted, the importance of ideas in poetry is habitually exaggerated: 'I cannot satisfy myself that there are any such things as poetical ideas... Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it.'

And as this sudden sleepless morning draws on for me, I leave off with this little bit that I keep touching back to:

There are many highly respectable motives which may lead men [sic] to prosecute research, but three which are much more important than the rest. The first (without which the rest must come to nothing) is intellectual curiosity, desire to know the truth. Then, professional pride, anxiety to be satisfied with one's performance, the shame that overcomes any self-respecting craftsman when his work is unworthy of his talent. Finally, ambition, desire for reputation, and the position, even the power or the money, which it brings. It may be fine to feel, when you have done your work, that you have added to the happiness or alleviated the sufferings of others, but that will not be why you did it.

2 things right, 1 thing wrong... I'm calling it *win*

Have I mentioned I really enjoy FailBlog? No, I haven't. I haven't mentioned much lately. Anyway... whoomp, there it is.

But more importantly, can you put your nerd hat on and spot the two things right with this picture?


The first one is easy - it's in the upper left hand corner, it's starts with "b", rhymes with "eer", and is dark and delicious.

The second thing that is currently judged as most awesomeness is the USB-powered 5MHz digital oscillioscope, datalogger, spectrum analyzer, and arbitrary function generator, for only $250. Picoscope, you fucking rock. For all the nerds out there that deal with integrating disparate systems and the wacky questions that come up about line noise, dropped encoder counts, and any of a billion ponderables (but not-easily-answerables) there's halfway decent o'scopes out there for about the same price as your trusty Fluke 77. Picoscope isn't the only one out there making products like this, but I just got one, and it looks like it's gonna come in really handy in the ol' bag-o'-tricks that you don't always need, but comes in really handy when you do.

And so you're wondering - what one thing is wrong with this picture? Count it as 3, maybe... location, location, location. What kind of fucking dork brings instrumentation into a bar and plays with it while drinking beer? Well, tonight... it was this particular dork, thank you very much. Whatever. I don't care. The box arrived with the widget, I wanted to play with it, I wanted a beer. So that's what happened.

I'm still calling it a win.

irrational fears

Whenever I'm walking with my keys in my hand, I'm always on the lookout for drains, sewer grates, and other sorts of crevasses with abysses below. Why? Because the simplest lapse of attention or fumble means that the keys disappear, never to be seen again, and I'm locked out of my car, stranded somewhere, locked out of my house, etc. etc. Especially troubling is the 1-2" gap on the floor as I cross into an elevator. Somehow, that abyss is a more perilous abyss than the sewer grate. Don't get me started about my key and wallet security concerns when leaning over/against a railing over a bridge...

So I put my keys in my pocket all the time, even if it's only for 15 seconds.

I wonder - is this some sort of subconscious mistrust in my own ability to hold on? Or putting too much importance on self-reliance? Or fear of the unknown? Or fear of lack of control? All rhetorical questions, but just what I'm wondering to myself at the moment.

On Sincerity.

The other day during a momentary break in the rhythms of the day/hour/moment of the project, in one of those space-filling conversations at the table between me and two other guys (both of them about 10 years my senior, we'll call them Stretch and Stripey), Stretch makes an offhand comment-ey question asking "can you explain how your generation got so cynical about everything?" Now, I don't recall any particular cynical talk that preceded it, but Stripey chimed in with some agreeable mutterings, so apparently the opinion is not an isolated one.

I felt I had to respond, especially since I take great pains in my personal life to Give A Shit about certain things. Frankly, I fear for the minds of the trendoid hipsters with their wallet chains and skinny jeans and adoration of 80's fashion that have tried to make Irony the meta-fad. Like that marginal 20% of undergraduate art students who have no talent, or eye, or skill, or intent and try to use kitsch as some sort of statement... In both cases (irony and kitsch), what it shows is simply laziness, and even worse, dishonesty about that laziness. Trying to disguise that laziness in some sort of mumbo-jumbo about Lo-Fi this or "weaving a narrative of unspoken voices from the debris cast off from a throw-away society" that.

... blah, blah, blah.

But back to Irony. The thing is, I've been thinking about it lately... about how criticism serves only organization, and never creation. That derivative work requires a steady stream of original work. That while there are very few Truly New Ideas, attempting to find that daylight between centuries of Prior Art can, while bouncing against them, actually create its own daylight. Good ideas are easy - doing them is where it's at. Web 2.0, 3.0... 17.x might be great strides for blogging, twittering, or whatever-comes-next, but advancing biology requires petri dishes. Google Earth is a wonderful toy/tool, but the construction of bridges will always require someone to have taken a core sample or place survey stakes. And art will not just make itself.

I've started to see others similarly rejecting Irony. Like bacon, Irony has jumped the shark. Hipster/Mod/Fad Irony, that is. (there will always be irony just like there will always be tragedy, comedy, and satire.)

... but as I'm starting to explain that I sincerely think that Irony has jumped the shark and that Sincerity Is The New Black, they interrupt me with their laughter - about how crafty I am, responding to observations of my generation's cynicism with a cynical description of sincerity painted in an ironic way. ("AHA! I know, that you now, that I know, that you know, that...")

But see... I was being sincere. About sincerity. Circular, but sincere nevertheless.

So whither and whence the origin of yonder cynicism and irony? Maybe it is so ingrained that I can't even see it as it subconsciously leaks out. Or maybe it what I've learned to do because the previous generation expected it, so I learned to deliver it. Maybe it's all they could hear when I opened my mouth because that's what their ears are trained to hear. Or maybe the source of it, the handing down through the years, is what has brought it so strongly to its current height of fashion.

wow.

just... wow. I want to fly too now.


wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

oh yeah, well fuck you too...

Yeah, I've been out of blogging mode for a while, and while part of that has to do with just being busy, part of it has to do with internal dialogues about sharing too much vs. not being interesting to read. I guess I'm in one of those transitional areas where I'm skittish about potentially sounding like just a complainer, but also not interested in being boring or composing something eminently disposable.

Well, it kind of pushed me over the edge, this day of mine. That which, over the course of the day included:

- Day 3 of getting through a cold/flu.

- Having to listen to constant, yet subtle insinuated and veiled racist, sexist, homophobic chit chat among people working in the SE Michigan auto industry. Yes, I'm talking to you, Big Three/UAW. You have a huge culture problem among your mid/high-seniority people - they are a bad example to the younger generation of workers, and offensive to anyone with a decent bone in their body. It's not one incident, it's not "just a few bad apples". I'm so tired of it, but like many people these days, I need the job, and that means not being "difficult" about such things, so I just keep my mouth shut and my blood pressure down.

- Noticing multiple, clearly intentional scratches on my car that indicate that I got the "key those fuckers" treatment in the parking lot at a GM site. I don't drive a GM vehicle, and in your actions, you've ensured that I never will. You can't intimidate people into buying your cars. It's not surprising that Toyota & Honda are kicking your ass in sales and quality. I have no sympathy for you, or your austerity measures caused by your bailout. The only power consumers have to negotiate with is their wallets and feet - walk away or not. So fuck you - my dollars will go elsewhere.

- Getting home to a message on the machine from the fraud prevention division of my credit card company about suspicious purchases on my card, which turned out to be good that they called me. Seems that someone wanted to buy some World of Warcraft and other computer gaming crap, as well as a hotel room in the UK, with my card. Well, I'm glad they (fraud prevention people) caught it, but I'm not happy about it, for obvious reasons. Having my card declined last night now makes sense, and now it's canceled and chopped into tiny pieces.

- Idiots commenting.

There was more... more that made today bad. And I was soaking in it, riding it somewhere mushrooms would grow. Somewhere with dark, and damp, and stone, and shit. Imagining all sorts of this or that - wishing bad fortune, imagining revenge, darkly fantasizing here and there. But the The Clash came on, and a little ska is something that it's hard to maintain a hateful spiteful attitude through. So I'm done... I'm sure it will come back to me, but tomorrow starts everything over again, and I'm just going to move on through another cycle of night and day.

http://robotcomix.net/

revelations

No, it's not the End Times or anything. But I had some laundry issues that reached critical mass. One pair of clean underwear left. No clean towels. No clean dish towels. So I go to the laundromat, take up a whole row of washers, and do 8 loads of laundry. But what do I come home to?

This.

A closest that's... well, basically full already.

And I ask myself... what am I doing with all these clothes? The issue is not that there is a set of clothes here. The issue is that there is a whole other set of clothes over there that I just finished washing. And I'm just one dude. And I'm not even fashion-conscious.

Too many, too many.

I counted 17 pairs of jeans, but only 4 or 5 make it into the regular rotation, some too small, some un-presentable to decent folk. And don't get me started on the number of T-shirts. What you see here is only the remainder. I suspect there are Aleph-0 ("al-eff-naught") of them - infinite in number, but countably so. Not because they're interesting, but just because they've accumulated.

I'm feeling a purging coming on.

It's time to thin the herd. Lot of that going on in other places... I'm wondering why I have 2 shelves of fiction paperbacks that are already read... I'm not likely to re-read them any time soon, and the library has so many wonderful other books available, right?

And what do I need with 21 coffee mugs? I'm one person. And I'm annoyed that I don't have enough cupboard space, but it seems that I'm the cause of my own problems.

Slowly, slowly... the realization, she comes.