a new day

Happy Solstice everyone! May your homes be full of warmth, joy, and hope on the beginning of this new season of light. Take a moment out of your busy day to remember your mothers - the big blue-green one, and the nice one who makes you cookies! I hope that you all receive gifts from the heart this year, and not just stuff from a department store that you'll end up dropping off at Goodwill in a week. And I hppe that you have chosen equally special gifts for those you love. Maybe a handknit scarf, a mixed tape/cd, a promise for an evening walk on the beach, a donation to their favorite organization, or some yummy homemade sweets. (If you're still in need of some good present ideas, check out this organization which has guide to simplifying the holidays with plenty of wonderful consumer-free gift ideas.)

Enjoy!

two week wrap-up

Well, yeah, I'm posting. I'm considering taking an official hiatus from the blog, but I haven't decided yet. Maybe I'll try to commit to a once a week post or something. I've just got too many things to do these days, plus the fact that the gift giving season is upon us.

Anyway, here is a completely random list of things that have happened to me lately. Nothing terribly exciting.

I made my way through the four dvd set of the Fellowship of the Ring. Really makes you appreciate the film when you know the mind-boggling effort and time that was put into the making of it. I was less than thrilled by the film when I saw it in the theater (I'm more of a dialogue fan, and there ain't much). But I absolutely love to see all the background stuff, like the props, models, wardrobe, foley effects, and, of course, the CG effects. They went to so much extreme detail that they actually manipulated the color/contrast effects of almost every scene to give a desired effect. That's why the film looks so different depending on what sort of emotion is being conveyed, and on what realm the characters are in. (Hobbiton is overly saturated and has a golden glow, while Mordor is almost deplete of color, for example.) It's sounds simple, but watching the colorist (using a technique called grading) work, you get the impression that it's an amazing amount of work.

Thanksgiving was ok. Now that the Cronburg clan seems to have abandoned the idea of a family event, it's just not the same. My stepmother, with all good intentions, has started her own tradition of inviting random visiting scholars and such who she meets at work. These folks are from all around the word, and generally are only in the US for a couple of months. This year, we had two Brazilians, a Columbian, and a guy from Spain. These people are always very nive, but it's just not what I imagine of when I think of Thanksgiving. (Last year, I actually skipped Thanksgiving for the first time ever, because I just couldn't face a room full of people I didn't know.)

Work is busy. I'm stuck doing a lot of background work on the national Police Ed. project. It's probably the first thing I've done at MassBike that I just don't have an interest in. Probably because it's less in my control. I work better when I can just run with an idea (doesn't everyone?). But I'm slogging through it all, and hopefully it will generate some interest and I'll have a bunch of other people doing a lot of the work instead of me! Other stuff at work is more interesting, and I've just come up with a new idea that I think will really be kickass. I'm going to create a MassBike Kids Club that will allow kids to join for free and provide them with a bunch of cool stuff on a fairly regular basis, to keep them interested, and provide access to the minds of budding bicyclists. (Whuaaahahahah!) Generally, MassBike is seen as pretty unhip, and I want to change that. We're gonna be so hip (to kids at least) that we won't be able to see our feet!

Ooooh, snow!

My roommates came up with a new game called ladle ball, played in the kitchen with soup ladles and a handball. There are no rules, but it's fun trying not to toss the ball into the cat's water bowl...

I spent Buy Nothing Day hanging around my house and not going outside. Not what I had planned (which was to ride in Critical Mass and then end up at a big Buy Nothing Day performance thing on Newbury Street), but at least I held true to the spirit of the day and avioded the disease of consumerism for a bit. And I know that it's more about avioding the overspending that usually comes with the Solstice time of year. So I'm trying to organize something to hand out to my family and friends that will encourage them to avoid spending money on gifts as much as possible (something like this brochure at the Center for a New American Dream. Though I'm still waffling on whether or not to send my extended family gift excemption vouchers.

I've also discovered that having a lot of things on my to do list allows me to procrastinate, yet still be productive, as I avoid doing one thing by doing another. (For example, right now I should be working on a logo for the Kids Club or writing my article for the MassBike newsletter, or making Solstice cards, but I'm posting here instead, which was also on my to do list...)

bicycling is living

Yeah, so I don't post all that often anymore. As a friend of mine said once, people who have enough time to blog regularly usually don't have enough of a life to make it interesting! (Not to say that mine is all that thrilling...)

Last night was Bike Night, and it went well. Next year will be amazing. What's cool, is that this year's Green Party gubernatorial candidate, Jill Stein, actually showed up to speak. She didn't have anything earth shattering to say, but it was nice, and she made a great point about not allowing diminished expectations — the less we ask for, the less we get. It's a fine line that activists have to walk, between looking like an extremist and being impotent.

I also apparently got some big props during my boss Tim's speech, but I was outside staffing the valet bike parking, and didn't get to hear anything except the last sentence or so. Ah, well, I did get enjoy the applause, which made me blush. And I had some nice company (and brownies!) while I was stuck outside, too, so I was happy enough.

We had an auction of bike related items and I had submitted some jewelry that I'd created with recycled bike parts that I'd had laying around the house. Surprisingly, there was a little competition for it, and the final bid was over $20. Cool, huh? If you want to see what it looked like (and learn how you can make your very own bike jewely) check out this page on my minimalist website. (It actually has three pages on it now!)

squeeeeal!

If you are like me, this will make you squeal in delight.

I watched the Episode II dvd this weekend. All of it. I'll have some philosophical discussion about it sometime soon...

broke

I have about $20 to my name. Hopefully, the unemployment stuff is all worked out (they apparently don't like it when you work temp jobs) and I'll get a buttload of money form them soon. As a bonus, though, I've been doing a lot of cooking and baking, and I'm probably eating a lot less junk food!

Been busy with MassBike stuff. Bike Night is the big event of the year, and I've been doing PR work to make it seem like people would be fools to miss it! See MassBike's event page for more info.) Yay!

I hadn't gotten a chance to mention that I saw Bowling for Columbine a while back. It wasn't any masterpiece of filmmaking, but it definitely was effective in generating discussion. The premise of the movie is asking the question of why is the US such a violent country. Many of the standard answers are pretty much debunked (video games, movies, too many guns, etc.). And the movie leave you with the question essentially unanswered. My best guess is that we have cultivated such an atmosphere of inferiority in our populace — through advertising gimmicks, test crazy school systems, and workplace/social hierarchies — that we are have turned into a country of paranoid bullies. Anyway, I highly recommend this movie. As a bonus, it's got South Park stuff in it to help alleviate the depressing tone of the topic.

my hero

Leave it to an nonagenerian to say what my last posting said in a much more elequent and inspiring way. See what Granny D has to say about the political devide that haunts this country, in this speech she recently gave in Boston.

United States of Idiots

We have spawned an entire society of imbeciles who have no idea of how the world works. I have to I keep reminding myself (and others) that people do what they do, and think they way they think because they just haven't been taught anything else. It's not really their fault that they vote for the wrong people (and referenda). Its all very simple to them - Candidate X says that he's gonna lower taxes and make more jobs, so hell yeah I'm gonna give him my vote. What's funny is that these people aren't just greedy, but in their blind greed they end up screwing themselves (and the rest of us) over.

Heck, one of my supposedly intelligent roommates voted to eliminate income taxes entirely (as did about half of Massachusetts voters!). When I pointed out what that would mean (cutting a majority of social programs such as housing and health insurance for the elderly and handicapped), she said, "well, they proposed it, they must have a plan". The State House can't even plan when they have hoards of money, I can't even imagine what would happen with no money... I also reminded her that our rent would probably double. She apparently thought that the landlord couldn't legally raise our rent that much, but the fact is that he can if he needs to cover property taxes.

Anyone can make a bad decision. But the problem is that more and more people are making more and more bad decisions. And we're all suffering for it. All I can think is thank goodness I don't have any kids. I'm utterly convinced that something big is going to happen sometime soon. It's really just an intuition, but I'm absolutely sure that some sort of world-sized metaphysical scale is getting so unfathomably unbalanced that it's starting to look more like a catapault than a scale. And day now a giant flaming ball of metaphorical pestilence is going to come hurtling at us, and we're going to be completely fucked.

Not to be pessimistic or anything.

It's easy being green

Elections tomorrow. I'm actually really curious to see how it all turns out. The country seems a lot more interested in democracy and it's inherent citizen participation these days. Leave it to King George to aggravate the moderate centrist voters enough to actually care about voting. Both Massachusetts' and Maine's Green party gubernatorial candidates are polling at at least 5%, and these polls are notorious for getting only the opinions of the stay at home wives and the elderly (though both of my grandmothers voted for Nader). Even the current governor of Maine says (off the record) that he is voting for the Green candidate. Locally, the old boy democrat state rep from the next district over, Tim Toomey, is getting a run for his money by a determined Green. The centrist (and even some of the wussier leftwing) media is so scared of the Green in the Governor's race that they have gone out of their way to either ignore her, or, now that the public is actually aware of her, to bitch and moan about the greens "spoiling" their party. The outcome that many have hope for is starting to come about—the centrist dems are moving left a smidge in order to try and court the favor of the left. The aforementioned Toomey has gone well out of his way to be really really nice to bicycle advocates lately. So much so that he even showed up at a very small meeting for the Friends of the Community Path just to let us know that he had been working hard on getting the path funded, and of course, to pass out flyers about his campaign.

There's even a write in campaign in Senator Kerry's (essentially) unopposed race to let him know how upset many of us are about his locally unsupported decision to vote to give Georgie the keys to the toy, I mean, war chest. The woman's name is Randall Forsberg and she's a democrat, not a green, but she's an anti-war activist from way back. To vote for her (all across Mass) for Senator, you have to write her name and address in in a specific way, for it to officially count. For instructions go to www.rforsberg.com.

I didn't go to the protest yesterday. Fortunately about 15,000 other people did, including Tim Robbins. Someday I'll make it to a protest, really I will.

party people

The rest of the household went out to a Halloween party at ManRay. On a Wednesday. At 10:30. If I didn't have to work tomorrow, I might have gone, but I'm pretty much ready for bed now, so no big fun for me. Eric was dressed up minimally, but had on these Clark Kent glasses and has just bleached his hair and he looked shockingly like this guy I used to have a huge crush on (and did, eventually, do the nasty with). So it was creepy looking at him all night. I had to ask him if he had any percings, just to be sure that the resemblence was only above the neck...

Busy week again. I've got a big meeting on Friday in which I think I'm going to have to tell them something that they don't want to hear. But I've got to say it and I've got the backing of a state representative, so I'm not terribly worried. As long as it doesn't snow or freezing rain on my way there (it's about a 15 mile bike ride there), I think I'll be fine.

SCUL was great on Saturday. Not so much the ride, which was quite short and derby-filled, but the award ceremony before the ride. I actually got an award. I got the Stone Cog award for "embodying the spirit of SCUL". Pretty damn cool, if you ask me. Especially since I'm such a wallflower at these things. The trophy is the best - a tower of bike gears and axles welded together in a particularly pleasing sculptural shape with a plaque and everything. I now have two, count 'em, two bicycle trophies. I'm so cool!

life as we know it

Wow, it's been a while. It's been so long that my browser had forgotten the address of blogger...

So, yeah, I've been insanely busy. I'll be working full time for a couple of weeks while Tim is off campaigning for his Senator pal. It's a lot of work to be a bike advocate! The police education program is going full steam ahead, and we got a contract to make a national version for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Damn! I think I'm going to try to learn Flash to make it look spiffy.

The Critical Mass Halloween ride was a wash last night. I don't know what's wrong with some people. We're going to need a few people to do some organizing, as much as we prefer to avoid it. I wish I had the time...

I'm trying to make myself go to SCUL tonight, as it's the last official ride of the year. But it's pouring and I'm so damn busy, that I might just go for the closing ceremony and then head home instead of riding. I miss the gang, but I'm just so burnt out on biking stuff lately. I got a nice little distraction last week when my roommates and I went out for dinner and saw a free showing of Jackass the Movie. I vehemently opposed going, but I had a hard cider on an empty stomach and was completely unable to coordinate myself enough to figure out another movie to sneak into. So I went and I actually really enjoyed Jackass. There were definitely some really stupid bits, but there were a lot of really funny, and not so violent, stunts. Plus, there were bicycles :)

You know, one of the reasons that I don't post as much as I should here, is that Blogger has a lot of glitches. I still haven't figured out what is wrong with the archive list on the left side of the page. Some people can see it but I can't. And then there is the problem that every time I want to post Blogger/my browser gets stuck and I have to log out and back in to post. Grrrrr.

plenty of pixels

Sorry about the complete lack of posting goodness in the past week. Just been pretty quiet, and that last post about the war pretty much said it all. I did forget to mention that our long lost roommate finally returned from his overseas mission playing computer games. Yay! Because of this I've now been sucked into playing some of the video games that our new roommie brough with her. The snowboarding game is pretty cool, even in my opinion. And I also just found a pretty nifty 3D generating program called Groboto. It is primarily a building block type program, but it has some pretty bizarre tools and forms. You can create images that look like they're straight out of Age of Empires, or you can do some amazing organic fractal looking stuff. The problem I've got is that I can't seem to be able to export it so that I can use it in a more powerful rendering program like Bryce. If I can get it working, I'll probably use the images for graphics on my temporarily abandoned Random Turtle Productions site.

Tomorrow, I get to testify (well anyone can, really. Want to come?) at a state legislative hearing about pedestrian and bicycle safety. I have no real idea what I'm gonna say, beyond the fact that people are woefully uneducated about the rights and responsibilities of bicyclists. I'll probably play up school-age education, with a hint of police education for good measure.

4 out of 5 FBI agents agree

The war on terrorism is a failure. Apparently, in both FBI and CIA internal studies, last year's war on Afganastan is officially a bust. According to an article in the New York Times:

"Classified investigations of the al-Qaeda threat now under way at the FBI and CIA have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the United States ... Instead, the war might have complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area."

Another article on Alternet.org goes into detail about how badly we did at accomplishing the goals that were espoused by the US warmongers. And guess what, we're about to do it all over again. More and more, this country seems like it's stuck in some made-for-tv movie.

Speaking of movies, anyone notice how the highly acclaimed "Wag the Dog" has suddenly disappeared from the TV guide listings?

grey, green, and orange

It must be fall.

I'm spending more and more time inside, and it makes me a little mopey. Though I've been staving off mopeyness these days with advocacy, letter writing, mapmaking, and lots of junk food.

I didn't make it to SCUL this past weekend. But I did do some tabling at the MassBike tent for Harvard Square's Octoberfest. It was ok, but we need to be more organized to appeal to more people.

Over the weekend, I also came up with my preliminary checklist of priorities for bicycle advocacy. The order is relevant, but not set in stone. I think it's a good starting point for coming up with a vision for bicycle friendly transportation design planning. While this may be reinventing the wheel (spoked, of course), it was important for me to break it all down into categories that I could put in an order of priority. This isn't a perfect list, call it a rough draft. In planning for transportation, facilities should be designed with these priorities in mind:

1. safe for all users
2. accesable/comfortable
3. environmentally responsible
4. convenient/efficient
5. inexpensive

With transportation being so intricately connected with everything we do as a society, and with it currently being a major problem area (traffic jams, serious accesability issues, and unbelievable death rates caused by dangerous behavior) I think that this may be a really good time to seriously reconsider our transportation policies. And I think that bicycling advocates can play a major part in addressing some of these issues. If we look at a broader picture, we cyclists may be able to tap into a huge collection of advocates who share an overall goal. This would give us a big, booming voice, rather than the tiny (but muscular) voice that we currently have.

where is the line?

There was an editorial in the Boston Globe today which brought up the ethics of medical experimentation on captive subjects. In nazi Germany in the 40s, medical experiments were conducted on subjects who were given no choice in the matter, and were heartily tortured in the name of science and for the "good of mankind". Given some thought, most people will quickly come to the conclusion that subjecting an unwilling victim to pain and misery for research purposes is immoral. My question is this: Why do people suddenly do a 180 with their ethics when the victim's DNA composition varies by more than 1 percent?

As most people are well aware, some of the other members of the primate order are within just a couple of percentage points of human DNA. Chimpanzees, specifically, have a cognitive development that is estimated to be roughly similar to that of a 4 year old human (in linguistics, mathematics, social relations, and self awareness). Jane Goodall, of all people, is quoted as saying ''As a mother, I would do anything...to save my child.'' as a begrudging acceptance of medical experimentation on chimpanzees. Whe I hear this, I have to wonder if she would be willing to sacrifice another human child to save her own. Obviously, the life of a human child is indeed important, but why is an individual of another species so much less important that we would consider torturing it acceptable behavior? Modern researchers have the resources to develop medical solutions to disease without the needless abuse of other "higher-level" life. Why don't we concentrate our energies on developing more ethical medical models, and leave the other inhabitant's of this planet unscathed? It's gotten better in the past 20 years, but people are still making excuses, and it's most definitely not a priority.

Obviously, as ethical humans, we do have to draw a line between higher morals and our human instinct for survival, but I am continually shocked that we, as a society, have chosen to draw the line so close to our own species as to exclude all other forms of life.

If anyone is interested in this debate of ethics, I highly recommend a book called "Defending Animal Rights" by Tom Regan.

bully

In the same 24 hour period, the US (via Ari Flescher) publicly stated that we would be happy to see Saddam Hussein murdered, while we also want to be given immunity from the International Criminal Court so that we can get away with this sort of murder. It's amazing how obnoxious we've gotten. We not only refuse to support a world court, exatly the sort of thing that could readily deal with people like our long lost buddy bin Laden, but now we are trying to bully individual countries into signing agreements allowing the US to be exempt from the court's jurisdiction. If we keep this kind of thing up, you just know that there's going to be a huge backlash throughout the rest of the world. We are fast becoming the new enemy. And the few of us who are intelligent enough to say "Hey! Wait a minute!" are being stifled by not only the media, but by the police as well. In one location, the police started a spy file on a woman simply because she had a "Free Leonard Peltier" bumper sticker on her vehicle. And with our new police nation, courtesy of the homeland security whitewash, millions of dollars of our tax money are being spent spying on peace groups. PEACE groups! People wandering around wearing butterfly costumes and toting handmade cardboard signs that urge the US to stop killing people and singing hymns are being classified as extremest criminals.

The chief of police in Washington DC has openly declared that his policy is to arrest people who have not committed any crime, just to get them out of the way. This policy just recently saw the mass arrest of people in the area of the WTO meetings in DC. As an example of how widespead the "premptive" arrests were, the some of those tossed in the wagon included a Washington Post reporter and Oliver North's official photographer.

When are we going to grow up and act like a civilized country?

bloat

I've been taking the past few days off of stuff. I really needed some of that "downtime" that those in the business world so covet. The whirlwind that was my September is over, and I'm feeling back to normal now (whether that's a good thing or not is debatable...). I'm now spending time going through all the reading material I picked up along the way to Minnesota and Maine. In looking at it all it really hits me that activists really need to collaborate more often instead of reinventing the wheel (and the spokes, and the brakes, and the blinky...). So many people are working on so many similar and related projects, not just in the bicycling world, but very few know what everyone else is doing. So I've decided to make an effort to put together a broad view of where we want to go, who is alredy heading there, and what they are riding (metaphorically, I mean!). My problem is that I can't decided to just do it, or if it would be better to do a bunch of research first...

Having nothing to do with research, I managed to drag my ass to the SCULympics event last weekend, and had a blast. I actually wish I had participated in more competitions. The bike limbo looked really fun, and, after a few modifications to the bikes (like removing the seats and flipping the handlebars upsidedown) a few pilots managed to ride under a 30 inch bar (that's only two and a half feet)! The event that I thought that I had a real shot at was the donut eating event (while riding a bike). I figured with my many years of practice, I'd be a pro at eating a donut faster than anyone else. I was surprised to discover that it is significantly more difficult than I ever imagined, especially since one of the elements that I hadn't prepared for was the military style heckling by the audience. I've always said that if I was subjected, for some unimaginable reason, to a real boot camp commander yelling in my face, I'd completely break down in hysterics. Well, that's what happened when my SCUL buddies did this while I was stuffing a donut in my mouth. So, sad to say, I didn't even place in the top three in the event. Oh, well. Next year...

testy

Blogger has some technical difficulties periodically, and I lose all my archives. I can't figure out how to fix it.

basking in the blue glow

Tim and I spent the day in some random place called Duxbury working on the final edit for the Public Service Announcement. It wasn't terrible. Actually the final product was much better than I expected. However, it was almost nothing like what we had wanted. The guy at the government agency who contracted us to produce the spot nixed the kinda cute idea we had for the ad, and ended up leaving us with a pretty dull script. And then the production company (and the director) went in and pulled out pretty much everything else that was interesting or important. I have a feeling that our compatriots in the bicycle community will be disappointed with it, and there are some questionable behaviors that should definitely have been avoided when shooting it all. But, at least the general public will probably get something useful out of it. Plus, I got my cute little bicycle bell sound in the ad, and it works quite well at the very end as the image fades to black. And the experience of organizing the thing was definitely a learning experience for us.

On the way back into Boston, Tim and I had a couple of hours to kill before the annoyingly infrequent commuter train came, and we just so happened to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with a Toysareus store within walking distance. Tim hit the jackpot when he discovered a Star Wars Trivial Persuit game on clearance for 10 bucks. We got in an entire game (I won!) before we got back into civilization.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the big SCUL olympics. Bike limbo, bike tossing, and competetive donut consumption (while derbying) are just some of the events I'm curious to participate in... It's been too damn long since I've made it to a mission and I'm looking forward to it bunches. Hopefully Ms. tropical storm Isadore will be fizzled out before then, if she hasn't already.

I also really need to go food shopping, I've been surviving on Wheat Thins and M&Ms since I got home.

back

A nice trip, nothing shocking. I realized that old time Mainers had road design all wrong, and instead of putting the roads (and homes) in the valleys where it is level (and there is water for farming) they just put the roads in where ever they wanted to. Thus, roads go up and down the mountainous terrain. No fun for bicyclists - at least not ones carrying their homes on their backs like turtles do! Anyway, the trip was productive, I watched kids play with clay and paint in the children's area, helped them walk on stilts, parked bikes for all the people riding to the fair, ate a ton of good food which was all organic, (batter fried shiitake mushrooms, mmmmm), listened to a bunch of folks play the fiddle, heard my mom's friend's band Tree By Leaf (who I love), and walked 'till my feet nearly fell off for three days straight. I also picked up the new Critical Mass book, and several t-shirts with turtles on them. Oh, and I got more of the best maple syrup ever! I had some two years ago and only this year found the farmer's market table which had it again. I think they might put cocaine or something in it. It's just that great.

I didn't get that much time with my mom (as she was only at the fair for a few hours on Saturday), and she seems a bit depressed by my stepfather's continued illness. I felt bad that I didn't really get a chance to talk to her about it. She's kind of lonely up there. I don't know why she wants to be out in the middle of nowhere like that, especially in a place where she is utterly dependent on others to get her anywhere. The more involved I get in transportation issues the more insane it seems that in most parts of the country, you are really screwed if you don't drive a car. A woman at the fair found out that I'd biked the 20 miles from my mom's house with my camping gear and her response was "Good for you!" I had to explain to her that it wasn't like I had an alternative - walking was pretty much out of the question, and there really is no public transit. If I'd had an alternative I would have taken it.

off again

Well, now it's off to Maine. Tomorrow I head up for the grand event of the Common Ground Fair. Yay. I wish I was ready to go. Yesterday I got this sneaking suspicion that there were a bunch of things that other folks needed me to do, but I didn't get a chance to do them, or even remember that I was supposed to. Erf.

The new roommie came home lst night for the first time since I've been here. She was up at the Toronto Film Festival hanging with Bruce Campbell. She's funny. With all of us residents together there was a big push to get her cats to be social with my girl. Seth broke out the catnip tea (yes, for cats) and brewed up a bowl. It was pretty amusing to watch the three of them take turns growling, hiding, and rolling in the bwl of tea. I don't think cats really know what to do with catnip tea. Sometimes they would drink it, but most of the time they would just stick their faces in it and get all wet. Poor, silly fuzzy people.

Today I get to watch my boss try to present our Bike Law Education to a crowd of police officers. Should be fun.

drugged into submission

The masses that is. Not me. I got into a depressing argument with Mr. MP7 last night about the need for peace and how little the US is doing to work for it. He countered with his belief that sometimes you just have to kill people. Funny thing is he calls ME defeatest. I posted something on one of Kevin Smith's (movie director) sites about how people tend to give the impression that the US is full of arrogant, ignorant, racist, and self centered people, and that we don't actually want peace - we love war because it makes us feel all puffy and important. I was posting this just to make up for the deluge of postings that went on and on about how great "America" is and how the whole world should care about our little tragedy of 9/11 because Washington, DC is the "seat of democracy for the world". I try to remember that most of the kids who post on Kevin's site are 13 year old boys, but still...

On a lighter note, I put in a bunch of time at MassBike this week, and we managed to accomplish most of the stuff we needed to do. We got our campaign questionnaire mailed out to members. The responses were very, very encouraging, and reading them all, you'd think that all of the folks running for governor were avid cyclists and were out there ever day or something. One of them does do triathalons, and another did do his campaing tour of the state on a bike, but neither actually consider using a bike for day to day commuting. But, hey, it's a start. We also put together our script for the public service announcement that MassBike is getting paid to produce. It's going to suck though, I bet. And we are being forced (by the government contract) to use a really crappy videographer to create the spot. And it'll most likely air only at 4 in the morning during reruns of the Golden Girls... But I'm going to chalk it up to a learning experience - someday we may get to do a real one, and we'll know what not to do. Also this week Tim and I went out on a mission to take some example photos of dangerous bike/car interactions. Unfortunately, we had no car. (We bike afficianados are pretty much a car free lot, especially those of us in urban areas.) Tim plans to hang out at his parents house this weekend and wants to use his mom as the stunt driver for the photos. Cool.

Now that I've finally settled back into life in Beantown, I'm ready to go off again. This time I'll be biking/camping and generally hanging out at the Common Ground Fair in Maine. The fair is just so me. It's huge (though nothing compared to the Minnesota State Fair), filled with Miane art, crafts, non-profit organizations, music, kids, and 100% organic, healthy, delicious food. If you volunteer a few hours a day you can attend the fair for free and get a camping site too. I did it last year and had a lot of fun even though it rained almost the entire time! This year, I'll do a little no-rain dance before I leave. I'll also get to see my mom a bit. Yay.

(Originally posted Sunday, Sept 15th)

365 days

Well, it's been a whole year since the suicide hijackers took over four planes over the US. So where are we now? Have we learned anything as a society? Are all of those patriotic flag waving folks recommitted to creating a healthy democracy? Are we more more concerned about our communities? Are we taking measures to wean ourselves from Mid East oil? Are we providing the needed political support to our newly installed government in the country we tore up while seeking the big guy Osama B? Have we brought justice to those he plotted to kill by putting him in jail and on trial? Have we learned that negotiations are at least as effective as bombs in dealing with others? Are we making our own elected leaders accountable for their actions? Are we paying attention to the root causes of political problems and looking for solutions and not just bandaids? Are we putting people before profits? Are we working to make our world a better place?

Inclusion

In the interests of keeping this post from rambling too horribly, I'm going to try to keep my thoughts in little sections. Let's see if it works...

The Minnesota State Fair:

I got into Minnesota early on in the day, and had plenty of time to wander around confused until I found a hotel willing to provide a shuttle and a somewhat cheap rate. I checked into the hotel, called the information line for the State Fair and found out that I could catch a bus at the Mall of America to the Fair. So I hopped on the hotel's shuttle to the Mall. I made a lame attempt to check out the mall but was instantly bored (even the promising "Legoland" was highly disappointing). So I managed to find the Fair bus and was on my way. Now, I've been to the Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts, and that's pretty big, but it's nothing compared to the Minnesota State Fair. The place is gigantic. The size of a small city. It took me 4 hours of walking around before I even found the midway. It's about 70% food, I'd say. With "everything fried or on a stick" as the locals claim. I'd already eaten myself ill when I found the batter fried candy bars that are apparently so popular in England, so I had to pass. But I watched a very reluctant man take a bite, and he to live to tell about it, so I assume it was edible. In the agricultural hall, I encountered a room full of plant "art", including pictures made with seeds and several scarecrows made to look like Jesse Ventura. The governor is not particularly popular with his constituents these days... Other things of note I found at the fair included: a local, but fairly professionally done, version of robot wars; a huge dinosaur sculpture made from various intreguing peices of trash (including some bicycle parts!); more white people than you could imagine; and to top it all off, REO Speedwagon and Styx (Ok, I didn't actually get to see them, but I could hear them outside the stadium).

Thunderhead:

No, not an eighties big hair band, but a bicycle advocate's retreat. Every year representatives from bike coalitions from around half of the United States get together to join forces and share ideas with the goal of making people realize that bicycles are the coolest thing of the roads. Being a relative newby to the profession, I had a lot to learn, and talk to everyone I could about stuff I've been thinking about. The group was mostly all warm fuzzies and fun, though I had no idea how passionate people were about the segregation vs. integration issue of bike facilities (more on that on a later date). But as long as I didn't say the dreaded four letter words "b*ke l*ne", it was all good. I met a ton of great people, including my new buddies Clair from the brand spanking new North Carolina Bicycle Coalition, and Steve from the Sonoma County (CA) transit department and also a board member of the Sonoma Bicycle Coalition. I also got some much needed advice on the public service announcment and the candidate questionnaire projects that I've been working on lately, and I learned all about America Bikes' efforts to reinvigorate the US' trasortation policy through the renewal of the TEA-3 legislation. The idea is to spend a little less of our tax money on encouraging automobiles, and more money for other more effecient forms of transit, such as biking and walking. One of the big pushes these days is for a program called "safe Routes to School" which works directly with communities, schools, kids, and parents to provide safe ways for kids to walk and bike to school like they did in the old days when I wa a kid. (I was shocked to find out that only 2% of all kids walk or bike to school now, as opposed to something like 40% in the 60's. And I know of at least one parent who drives his kid 6 blocks to school, double parks, and then drives home because he says he doesn't have enought time to walk.) To finish off the great time at the Thunderhead camping extravaganza, we had a disco party, complete with a polyester requirement. Boy, are great incriminating photos of people from that party... And the morning after was spent riding the 40 miles from the camp to downtown St Paul. I was highly doubtful that I could make the trip, especially on a rental bike not really designed for such touring, but I was happily surprised to find the 40 miles an absolute joy. The easiest ride I've ever done. I think we passed a total of about 10 cars for the first 38 miles, and I've not seen terrain as flat as that in all of my adult life (If there is one thing that New England ain't it's flat). So yay, for that ride.

Pro Bike/Pro Walk:

So then it was on to the suit and tie bike advocacy event. Pro Bike Pro Walk is the big conference for professionsl bicycle and pedestrian planners. Mostly government traffic planning folks, some contracters, and a bunch of us advocacy organizers. Lots of lectures, with some good stuff, and even more of the dull stuff. But definitely a great place to schmooze. Andy Singer, the incredibly talented gentleman who draws the "CARtoons", was there and I got an autographed copy of his very cool book CARtoons. Oooh! I also got a chance to attend a discussion by David Engwicht who is a pioneer in the field of street reclaiming and wrote the aptly titled book "Street Reclaiming". He's a visionary in that he's promoting the idea of taking the streets back for our communities by putting the communities back in the streets. And he's got all sorts of really neat ideas on how to do that, including putting random art, toys, and furniture in the streets to slow car traffic down. I'll definitely have to do a little article about the idea when I get a chance.

The most fun I had at the conference was, of course, the partying with my new pals. We made an effort to storm Minneapolis one night, but ended up only finding some very dead clubs. It was entertianing though. And we got to see some pretty weird bike lanes. On the last evening there I managed to get myself into an arguement about the aforementioned b*ke l*ne dilemma and I ended up in tears while our audienced tried to shut us up by singing silly dirty songs about biblical characters. I still haven't quite recovered from the arguement, and at some point will need to get it all off my chest. But for now, I'm just happy to start making my way through the piles of reading material that I collected all week, and waiting to develop the pictures I took of my buddy Steve french kissing one of the Lucy (from Peanuts) statues that was dotting the streets of St. Paul.

Air travel:

I was under the impression, post 9/11, that airport security was searching people who happened to show up on some sort of FBI profiling list. But it doesn't seem to be the case. The searches were truly random, and were conducted by people who had not even seen people's tickets. And they didn't seem to be taking people who looked "suspicious" but pretty much a sampling of everyone. That's cool. I did forget to take my bike tools out of my courier bag on the flight home, and had to surrender my swiss army knife (and it's requisite phillips head). They also made a big stink about my 6 inch adjustable wrench for some reason. They had to go through four people before they decided that I wasn't a risk (I was wearing a bright yellow "safe routes to school" t-shirt with a cute little mouse riding a bike on it) and let me keep my wrench.

Finally, I can't strees enough how absolutely gorgeous the Earth is. From an airplane, you can really see this world for what it really is, a beautiful blue-green planet. Seeing it like that it reminds you of how important life is, and how stunning and precious the grass, trees, water, and dirt are. Humans with their technology may impressive, but nature is truly the master here.

astounding

Well, I made it to Minnesota and back (or was it all just a dream, like it seems right now?). What a week! I tell ya, that was one of the best adventures I've ever been on. 500 bicycle advocates and their bikes took over a fancy schmancy hotel. A significant portion of them worked for the government, including not just one but two mayors. I also met a few very awesome people on the first part of the trip, and was innundated with all sorts of information about running a bicycle advocacy organization, aas well as getting the lowdown about a whole slew of bike projects going on across the world.

I'll have a big wrap up of my trip as soon as I get a chance. Now, I'm just trying to deal with the having-been-gone-for-a-week stuff. It's a little depressing, because I came home tonight to find the house empty of people but full of someone elses stuff (the new roommate is even more of a packrat than I, and she's already put a ton of her stuff all over the house!), and two less than nice cats (I was only home for a couple of hours before one of them made me bleed!). But my little girl is very, very happy to see me, and that's cool, and I'm happy that I have web access again.

Always look on the bright side of life...

The US Environmental Protection Agency is finally admitting to the fact that global warming exists (against the whinings by King Georgie):

"Potential benefits could include extended seasons for construction and warm-weather recreation, and reduced heating requirements and cold-weather mortality."

Well, that settles it then.

Also, playing in the streets is officially now a no no. At least in Fairfax, Virginia, where the city council voted on an ordinance to send a message "that it is not ok to play in the street". And other communities are removing "children at play" signs because they think that the signs give the wrong impression: "The street should be strictly for cars." Ok. got it. No more using the streets for fun. Only serious car business. And Shriners.

In an odd twist of activism, the band Chumbawumba sold one of their songs to GM (no, not THAT song) for $70,000 and then turned around and donated the cash to IndyMedia and CorpWatch non-profit organizations which work to expose corporate greed and illegal activities.

veggie whopper

I never intended to bother trying one, but the house posse went to the mall yesterday and Mr. MP7 pointed out that B*rger K*ng had a veggie burger. And so it just seemed like the thing to do. I even double checked the ingredients list posted prominantly by the registers (vegans need to ask them to leave out the mayonaise). It was bland, and that's being kind. Nothing unique, just a plain old veggie burger with some lettuce and a cardboardy tomato and a bun apparently made of sofa cushion foam, and it didn't even have any ketchup on it. But, the fact that they even offer it is pretty impressive. I wonder how widespread this trend is.

Also, on our little adventure yesterday we all went in to Mr. MP7's work (at a software company) and discovered that they've got quite a setup there. A coffee bar, a large screen tv, another humongous screen tv, a huge room that looked just like a private club, and a pool table. The last thing was the spiffiest, as we played a couple of games and I just so happened to be the best player of the three of us. Shocking, because I pretty much suck - I know what I'm doing but I'm just to uncordinated to do it right. I even won one game. Yay for me. I haven't won a pool game in a decade, at least not by default.

Then we trudged (well the bus trudged, some folks are too lazy to attempt a 15 minute walk...) on to T*rget. I made sure to remind everyone how evil it is, but was kind of shocked to find out that the store is just an ordinary discount department store, like KM*rt (I'd imagined that it was more like a Best Buy or something more high end). I got a blender and some storage bins, because I'm just not able to get those kinds of things in a locally owned place (and I'd been looking for a blender at Goodwill for months with no luck). When I got home I made myself a big glass of pina colada (I tried putting some rum in it, but it was terrible, so I'll be sticking to the non-alchoholic type from now on).

To round out the afternoon's journey, I bumped into an ex who I hadn't spoken to in years. We had a nice little chat while riding the bus, and he offered to let me know when his band plays next time. It's always interesting to find out what art school graduates (and exes of course) end up doing with their lives. He's been working for years at a photocopy/print shop and plays in a couple of bands very occasionally. For comparison, other friends from MassArt have gone on to become a wildlife caretaker, a warehouse guy at an indy music label, a punk rock spoken word performer with the day job as an ad guy at an anti-cigarette campaign, a designer at an automotive book publisher (actually, several MassArt folks got sucked into this one!), an art teacher, a bicycle activist (Hey! That's me!), and a music producer with an Emmy nomination (wow!). Thankfully, all of us still do at least some sort of art, even if it is wedged into that infinitesimal scrap of time between work, chores, and sleep. It's really in the blood, as they say.

stuff

Mopey. Just trying to adjust to the new, "just roommates", version of Mr.MP7. Gah. And people wonder why I'm antisocial. Anyway, I think I'm pretty much done adjusting. So, hopefully I won't be going on and on about it all anymore.

I've been avoiding work stuff. So much to do. When I get overwhelmed sometimes I just shut down. But today I made myself work on one of the big projects I needed to do, and managed to do a pretty darn good job, if I say so myself. We had a questionnaire that we sent out to all the gubernatorial candidates in Mass, and got a few responses. Sadly, we didn't get one of the biggies (one that I would be happy to see in the statehouse), but we got the frontrunner and two of the really progressive ones, so it's a decent result. I made the questionnaire look all pretty and I'm kind of shocked. If any of you readers are MassBike members you'll get to see my handiwork (and the candidate stuff too) in a week or so when we send 'em all out. Now I just have about ten more things to do before I leave for Minneapolis...

Including get a roommate! Eeek.

It's 1:30 am, do you know where your weapons of mass destruction are?

It's not that I'm not tired, it's that things were weird here tonight, and I wanted to see what came of it all. What I revealed is that it is a very, very bad thing to lack some sort of outlet for your frustrations. Not me, I should say, but someone I've quite apporpriately named after an explosive weapon. Mr. MP7 is like a loaded gun, and he just doesn't have a release. His stress is oozing out though, and it's oozing right toward me. I don't know whether I should take it as a compliment that I'm trustworthy enough to be oozed on, or if I get it just because I'm an easy target. We drive eachother crazy, and we're not even a couple (not that I would mind if we were...). It's all very complicated, and I have a feeling it's going to get worse before it sorts itself out.

On the less confusing front, we've been interviewing a lot of people for the fifth room in our household, and we've gotten some really interesting folks. At least two of which were crossdressers. Cool, huh? Our missing roommate is also coming home from his overseas mission (to play video games in England) soon. I really missed the guy and his extra long tongue! (Heh.)

We had a power outage tonight (odd that it happened now that the temperature is back to normal), and it was enjoyable. The world, especially the city, is such a different place when there aren't televisions, computers, radios, florescent lights, and so on. People are nicer, and you can see the stars. As I was sitting out on our porch listening to the neighborhood, I saw the most impressive shooting star I've ever encountered. It must have been a huge meteorite, as it looked more like some sort of roman candle fireball than something way the hell up in the atmosphere. We are supposedly in the middle of a big meteor shower event this month, but you usually can't see much in the city. So I feel blessed to have caught one. Thank goodness for power outages.

heat stroke

I managed to do two out of the three events that I was planning on for the weekend. I did the SCUL mission, which was kinda a dud, but enjoyable enough. Then, on Sunday, I went to the Lars Anderson Bike Show, which is chock full of stuff I couldn't care less about. It's mostsly collectable parts and fance expensive old bikes that I just can't work myself up for. Fortunately, there were plenty of cool folks to hang out with, and I got some white kids tires to stick on my SCUL bike that I've been working on. As I was leaving, there were a couple of boxes of free stuff that I was happy to sift through and I grabbed a bunch of random things which struck me as good material for some art, so it wasn't a complete bust. Which is good, because I seemed to have destroyed my body riding in all this heat. I knew it was bad when Mr. MP7, who's been pretty much ignoring me lately, kept coming up to my room to check on me to see if I needed anything. He even brought me a bag o' ice to cool me down. It's bad enough that I'm thinking of taking the T into MassBike today.

This week promises to be at least as busy as last week, and Tim, big guy at MassBike is off to do some campaigning for some politician in Pennsysvania or something, so I get to be in charge of the office for a bit. Oooooh!

bikes, bikes, and more bikes

Yeah, I'm busy these days. Finding a new roommate, planning two count 'em two working vacations for September, working on a bunch of amazing projects for MassBike, trying to avoid being grumpy with Mr. MP7, and reading Neil Gaiman's latest book, "American Gods" has been keeping me busy.

This site's apparently back in Google's search list. I hadn't gotten any hits from search engines in a very, very long time, but I seem to be getting them again. I just got one person from New Zealand looking for pictures of eye cataracts. Funny thing is, they actually hung around for a bit and browsed. (Do they know something I don't?)

So, speaking of my vacations, I'm going to be in Minnesota during the Minnesota State fair. My buddy Tim wants me to check out the rodeo, but I pointed out that they do some nasty S&M stuff to the poor bulls to get them to act the way they do, so no rodeo for me. But blooming onions, carny games, and fast spinny rides sound good to me. I wonder how far away the fair is from St Paul...

exorcise

I can't sleep. Too many demons running around in my brain tonight. I'll see if I can exorcise them here.

Rafi - I dated a guy (a boy really) once, a beautiful boy, who was a street musician from Isreal. He had gotten out of the manditory Isreali service by claiming that he was a heroin addict.

There really is no more to the story. It just seemed like that information wanted to be let out.

Nader - I watched Bill Moyer's "Now" show this evening , and my buddy Ralph was on. Seeing him makes me sad now. He just reminds me of how horrible a country the US is - a country that believes that might makes right, and that greediness is next to godliness. During the interview, Moyers read a whole slew of whiny, accusatory letters to Nader, which pretty much regurgitated the same old crap about third parties messing it up for the "good" old boys (the democrats, of course). These people are even more annoying than the republicans. These people are like the ten year old kid on the playground who gets beaten up by the 13 year old bully (who got held back a couple of years), and when the 10 year old stops crying he then turns around and kicks sand in the 5 year old's face, in order to save face in front of the girls. Anyway, at the very end of the interview, Moyers reads a letter praising Nader for his neverending quest to bring real fairness to our world. The letter also asked Nader how he is able to find the strength to keep fighting the inhuman giants, and Nader's response was so matter of fact that it made me cry: "because the alternative is worse." And it's true. That's why we continue to fight, even though we are up against the almost insurmountable enemy of human greed and ignorance, because there simply is no choice in the matter.

Mr. MP7 - Eh. I don't know whether this happens to other people, or if it's just a symptom of being me, but I tend to find these people who are, at first, incredibly interested in me, and lavish me with attention and warm fuzzies. But then, almost immediately, their little inner lightbulb goes off and Poof! all the good stuff disappears. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with what I'm doing. Mr. MP7 went from being the most flirtatious person I'd ever encountered (and a really cool buddy to have philosophical debates with), to being, well, cordial I guess is the best word for it. Is it a guy thing? You know, turn on the mojo first, ask questions later? Or what? I keep getting sucked into these people, and then being left with a kind of empty feeling in my lower intestine when they change their minds about me.

Soulmate - You know, I'm not a big believer in the idea of a soulmate - one person in the whole world who truly completes you - its just too wishy washy for the Vulcan blood in me. But I do know that out of all the people I've met, there's been only one who was really someone who made me a better person, and who really understood me and all that traditional soulmate crap. But, alas, he didn't want me. I scared him off like I do with 'em all. What's interesting, though, is that I don't even know if he knows how important he was (and still is) to my life. It's not like I spend any great amount of time thinking about him or anything, in fact he was the very first guy who I wasn't obsessive about (well, after he broke up with me, I had a bit of an episode of Ms. Sinade O'connor's classic syndrome of wanting-what-I-haven't-got). Actually, he's not even much a part of my normal life anymore and I only rarely think about him, but I have also yet to meet anyone else like him. And as I get older, I become incresingly convinced that I never will. I know that there are lots of really great people out there, and I haven't given up hope yet. But, hey, I'm starting to peak I think, and it's only downhill from here :)

Goodwill - Having said all that, I've discovered a rather amusing little added attraction to one of my favorite shopping experiences. One of the fine young gentlemen who works at my local Goodwill thrift shop seems to have a bit of a crush on me or something. Its sweet. But dangerous. I almost bought a box full of Barbie dolls the other day. Barbies! Eeek. (Well, I was planning on doing something evil to them, but still. Barbies!)

Ok, the demons seem to have quieted down a bit, as have the neighbors (who were having a party that I ended up avoiding for no good reason). So I'll give the sleeping thing another try. Sweet dreams everyone.

picktures

And here are the Critical Mass photos. Please excuse the infinitesimal thumnails, just click on 'em to get a normal sized image. If you want any of these for any reason (bribery, perhaps?) let me know, and I can get you a decent TIF.

Also, here's a picture of my roommates and their buddies lounging around our living room.

be the media

Here is the Globe article.

just sittin' here, melting

So I had all these big plans for last weekend. But I bailed. No SCUL ride to Rhode Island for me. Instead I hung around and did absolutely nothing except for a little walk with the roommies to do some grocery shopping. Oh, and we played a card game, called Munchkin, that is supposed to be a parody of role playing games. Its obnoxiously complicated, but the characters were very cute and often hysterically funny (for example, Mr. MP7 was cursed with "a Chicken on Your Head").

I've been feeling a bit under the weather lately, and when I went to the doctor to see about my weird ankle, the nurse told me that I had a fever of 100.something degrees. The doc said that my ankle was fine - "sometimes these bumps on bones just happen, it may go away in a few months or you may have it forever" - but I'm still suspicious. And the fever has dropped to a more low grade one, but I still feel like crap. My guess is that the fever is a result of the infection that's been raviging the hole-where-a-tooth-used-to-be. I'm hoping it'll all sort itself out soon. I'm really not up for another traumatic event at the oral surgeon's...

A funny coincident keeps happening to Mr. MP7 and me, we keep bumping into a couple of my friends at the supermarket. It's happened three times in a month now. When we remarked on it, Mr. MP7 said that it was because he was everywhere, like a god, but without all the other powers and stuff. We declared that he was "omnipresent, but omni-impotent". He and I both thought that it was very funny. Also, at the supermarket, we discovered the latest trend in shopping technology - the electronic cashier. Sometime last week our supermarket ripped out a couple of the 12-items-or-less lanes and replaced them with these human-free monstrosities which are supposed to allow you to do self serve checkout. You scan your own groceries, and then stick in some cash (like you would at a vending machine) or a credit card, and Voila! you're done. Sounds fine, except that almost every single customer had a problem with the machines which required a human employee to come fix, and at least once it took a good 5 minutes with not one, but three, employees to figure out the problem (the machine wasn't giving a 2-for-1 discount).

Oh, and this past Sunday's Boston Globe had the Critical Mass article in it. It was pretty good, though it had a few glaring factual errors. No pictures of me, though they did mention a person with a black veil and someone who was handing out flyers about the dangers of riding in the door zone (me and me). I'll try to get a link up for the article today (and I'll get my pictures from teh ride scanned and up, too).

Finally, I found out last week that, even after Ms Laird's horrible tragedy in Cambridge, Somerville is still planning on striping a bike lane in the door zone on the full length of major throughway. I had no idea! Apparently, the bike committee knew about this from before I was involved, but weren't aware of the dangers of this design. I'm a little surprised at that, but I'm much more shocked that the committee (aside from my one dissenting vote) decided to do nothing to stop this dangerous stupidity, and, in fact, they are sending a letter to thank Traffic and Parking for accomodating bicyclists! It just boggles my mind.

shoulderless roads are the devil's work

Or is that MDC?

So yeah, Critical Mass (I know that was four days ago, sue me) was quite an event this month. We had the media, we had mourning, we had asshole cops on motorcycles, we had fun, and we had a ten foot by ten foot trailer with a four person rock band on it being pulled by two extremely in-shape cyclists on a tandem. We even injured one of our own (she got squeezed between a parked car and the trailer) and had her sent off the the hospital. Pictures will be forthcoming (though getting a good picture of a ten by ten trailer with a rock band and a tandem is surprisingly difficult). Oddly, there are no articles in any of the newspapers which sent reporters/photographers. Weird.

The weekend was very quiet. (Well, except for the SCUL ride, which was gravity filled, with a gummy penis filled party at the end.) I followed Mr. MP7 around and had some Indian food and visited with the scruffiest looking sheep I've ever seen (maybe it was because they lived in Waltham...). My ankle, which I twisted on a malfunctioning sidewalk a few weeks ago, seems to have some sort of serious problem. My best guess is a chipped bone which has set crooked. It doesn't really hurt, but looks really wrong and feels icky. I had to spend half an hour on the phone to get an appointment, but was impressed that my little subsidized community health center has a podiatry department.

As if that wasn't enough, the hole where one of my teeth use to be is hurting. Did I mention that I hate my body? When are those cybergenic replacement bodies going to be ready?

Don't you hate it when your whole outlook on life is tied directly to one person's relationship with you? I do.

Someone told me the other day that I was beautiful and it made me cry.

RIP Dana Laird

Tonight's Critical Mass ride will be a memorial ride in Dana Laird's name. As I mentioned before, she was the woman who was killed when a careless SUV driver opened his door into her and pushed her under the wheel of a passing bus on Mass Ave in Cambridge, MA. This CM ride should be quite an event. The media has been invited, there will be mourners in black, the couch will have a New Orleans style funeral jazz band, and who knows what else will show up. I, myself, am properly dressed for mourning - with a veil and everything - and I have "don't get doored"/"don't door someone" flyers to hand out with info on the back about Ms. Laird's tragedy.

thunderbumpers

Yay! I just made it home before the downpour started. I had a nice ride out to Bedford, just 'cause I felt like it and I was already near the bike path in Arlington. I took a course in grantwriting this morning at some employment and training place. it was really very well done, and I learned a bunch of stuff. Yay for free social programs!

On my way home from my ride, I had to yell at some asshole who nearly hit me and told me to get off the f'n road. I asked him why, but to no avail. (He probably doesn't test well, I should have known.) Then he called me a "stupid cunt" at which point I reminded him that it was he, not me, who was spending a good $5000 a year to drive his vehicle, and that my vehicle was clearly much cooler than his big ass Chevy. After I left the jerk (to waste some more of his cold hard cash at a gas station), it occured to me that I should try to use the patriotic thing next time another oblivious individual pulls something dimwitted like that. Maybe something along the lines of this:

Dimwit: Get outta the road!

Me: Ahhhh, I see. You're one of those un-patriotic-Americans. Well, I'm sorry you don't like this country, maybe you should leave.

Dimwit (with stunned look on his face): ???

Confusion is always a good tactic, I say.

I'll leave you today with a not so terrible picture of me, along with Tim and Tom, from last week's bike trip to Maine. Look at how hip I am!

tailgunner

I really wasn't going to go on the SCUL bike ride last night, but I wanted to see the video from last week, so I figured that I'd just say hi, watch the video, and then go home and sleep. But I ended up discovering a perfect ship for me! So not only did I ride, but I really enjoyed it, and even did the important job of tailgunning (sweep). Sadly, my walkie talkie was being flakey, so I didn't get to be all cool with the radio. But now I really want to get a pair of the things. I'm such a geek. My MP7 buddy says he'll pick some up for me at Costco, cause they're really cheap there.

Speaking of geeks. I was wearing my "geek" (on the front) "/geek" (on the back) shirt up in Maine at the bike rally, and some elderly gentleman asked me what a geek was. I actually had a hard time explaining it!

Finally, I've been noticing several recent appearences of Jethro Tull. Is it a comeback? I hope not. Not because I don't like the band - cause I love 'em - but because revivals almost always suck. And that would just be depressing to have one of my escapism bands from my childhood be turned into some lame pop band for the kiddies. (For heaven's sake kids, leave the classics to us old folks!)

banana powered vehicle

I managed to pull myself out of my moping this afternoon and get myself, my bike, and my hastily assembled banana costume down to the Art Beat parade in Davis Square. It rained a bit the whole time, but there was a great turnout, and I had fun. The theme this year was "food for thought". My neighbors Joel and Lynn had a canoe and the life cycle of compost (complete with bin, real compost, and even a tomato plant), respectively, being towed behind their bikes. Yay!

fermented cat?

Alcohol. Throughout my life I've always had a very suspicious feeling about alcohol. Its just never seemed like a good thing. Having had a pretty messed up childhood due to a mom and stepfather who treated alcolol as self medication for whatever ailed them certainly created a solid base of dislike for the drug. But above that experience, I think that I have too much appreciation for my mind to want to subject it to a substance that turns the brain all sloshy.

I do understand the benefits of one of the side effects of alcohol - relaxation - but I'm just not sure that its worth the effort. The other effects of the drug seem to be overwhelingly negative. Why would I want to make myself lose motor control, be more vulnerable to suggestion, and generally function less than optimally, all added to the possibility of getting a crippling addiction? Sure, sounds great, sign me up!

So, when I have friends who are particularly fond of the stuff, I find myself at a loss. I want to trust that people know their limits and that they can take care of themselves, but I'm afraid that they're screwing themselves up. And lately, I've been around a whole lot of friends who have a bit of a drinking hobby. Hmmmmm.

fame

I came into work today and was told that I was now famous. Apparently, after years of trying, I managed to get a letter to the editor published in the Boston Globe. Sadly, and somewhat inexplicably, they didn't see fit to put my letter online. So, no link for you. The letter was about a proposed piece of state legislation that the Segway company is dragging around the country, in a bizarre attempt to ban the vehicle from roads, while making it legal to ride the thing around on the sidewalk.

Also this morning I had my first meeting with the VIPs about the police bicycle edication program that I've been working on. It went incredibly well, and the participants were very supportive and excited to be getting closer to having a real curriculum (a DOT person, someone from the Governor's Highway Safety Bureau, a couple of transportation planners, and a bunch of cops).

Its continually shocking to me to be working with a non-profit, environmentally friendly, somewhat radical cause and have the general public and even politicians honestly be interested, positive, and gasp! helpful.

What's next? Linux going mainstream?

back in civilization

Well, whether the city folks are any more civilized than the country folk is debatable, but there are certainly more people here in the city.

Maine was lovely. The weather was gorgeous, the company was great, and the biking was very nice. I didn't do as many rides as I would have likes, as logistics got in the way a few times, but I did have a lot of fun. I got a chance to kayak down the Androscoggin River, which was fantastic, but shockingly shallow in many parts. I got to go on a stargazing ride to the top of one of the local mini-mountains (the area I was in was right next to the Appalacians). And I twice visited a lovely waterfall/tidal pool area called Screw Auger Falls (I just like saying the name...). I actually drove the car more than I rode, at least milage-wise, which made my guilt muscle twinge, but I figured that it was only a moderate slip in the grand scheme of my transportation policy. (I also made a point of letting the Maine Bike Coalition folks know that they should do their best in the future to locate the bike rally near public trasportation.)

Now that I'm back, I'm horribly busy and a bit on the grumpy side (mostly caused by a lack of attention by certain males of the species). But I'll probably be too busy to notice my grumpiness in a few hours, when I get cracking on activism stuff. Actually, I already wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe about some horrible proposed legislation forcing a specific kind of vehicle (the Segway) off of public roads and onto the sidewalks, setting up a terribly discriminatory and dangerous precedent for vehicular law.

Oh, and I thought of another nickname for the new roommie - one that I think he likes better than Fairy Godfather - the "MP7". It's a reference to some insanely deadly weapon given to "peacekeeping" forces in the military that is featured as a centerfold in this month's Wired magazine. The guy is obsessed with weapons, but is essentially a very nonviolent man. Ironic, to say the least. Kinda like me, with my love for technology being completely out of line with my desire for life of Thoreau-like simplicity. What can I say, irony is my pal.

watch out for those spider webs in the morning

The Fairy Godfather woke me up early this morning and made me drag my sleepy ass into the kitchen, because he wanted to show me a spider web that connected one side of the room to the opposite side of the room via a chair in the middle. The web stretched a good 10 feet at least. The tiny little thing must have been damn busy while we were sleeping. And we had to go and have breakfast and destroy it's hard work.

It's off to Maine for the Maine Bike Rally. Sadly, we won't be camping (I love camping and never get to do it), but it should be lots of fun anyway. I'm sure I'll be unbelieveably exhausted by Sunday. And next weekend is the Art Beat festival. Wheee!

lane striping

Tonight I happened to sneak my way into the Cambridge Bicycle Committee's monthly meeting (ok, it wasn't the slightest bit sneaky, but it sounded better than saying I walked right in, didn't it?). I thought it might be interesting to hear what they had to say about the death of the cyclist who was riding perfectly "correctly" in their badly designed bike lane. I don't have any particular animosity for the people who recommended the dangerous lanes, but I am bewildered at their insistance that having a bike lane is always better than not, even if it is clearly causing danger.

Anyway, I got to make a suggestion for a different approach to bike facility design, one that I came up with for Somerville. It was not only well recieved, but someone else had independently come upon the idea as well. We're very likely to try my idea on a road or two in Somerville, and now maybe Cambridge will try it out too. It could mean a transportation revolution! Or not. If this design ever gets applied to an actual roadway I'll show ya all pictures!

question

What is the male version of "nymphet"?

full

I gotta say, I'm pretty happy with things these days. I've got a fantastic job/volunteer thing going at MassBike and other places, have great roommates, and I'm having lots of fun. The school-based bicycle safety program that I've been working on is promising to be amazing. I'm having an absolute ball with my new Fairy Godfather (I'm still working on a nickname for him, as he isn't entirely thrilled with that one, but I kinda like it). And riding with SCUL and Critical Mass is keeping me heathy and weird. Now all I need is a nice guy, who is willing to put up with the likes of me, to flesh out my life (pun intended!).

Last weekend's SCUL ride was one of the best ever. We rode out to a pond in the Fells (somewhere near Medford, MA, I think) and went skinny dipping. I've never been really thrilled about getting naked in front of anyone (being fat in this "thin is in" society does that to people, especially women), but I just went for it and had a blast. The water was absolutely perfect, and I rode the very comfy, good looking chopper known as "Greed".

On a down note, a local woman, who was riding in the bike lane on Mass Ave in Cambridge, was killed when a thoughtless SUV driver hit her with his door causing her to fall under a bus that was passing by insanely closely. Several factors contributed to the tragedy, including an ignorant and careless automobile driver who illegally opened his door without checking for traffic, a really poorly designed roadway which squeezes way too many "lanes" of traffic into a very small space, and a bicyclist who didn't know enough road safety to avoid the dangerous bike lane and it's accompanying "door zone". (See a picture of the crime scene here.) I visited the roadside memorial that sprung up, and took a moment to mourn the woman's needless passing. I also stuck a "share the road with bicyclists" pamphlet to the tree, in case it might be able raise a tiny bit of awareness.

I am the Steve Buscemi character

We rented Ghost World (the film, not the comic book) since I was babbling on about it anyway. I'm Seymore, not Enid, just to clarify.

On the fourth, I had, for the first time ever, been invited to three different events. I attended none (missing the giant penis piniata that was alledgedly painted with the stars and stripes of old glory), but had a lot of fun anyway. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to catch up on my complete lack of sleep this past week.

In another few days a bunch of MassBike folks, including myself, will be heading off to Maine for their bike extravaganza. In preparation, I picked up some nearly slick tires which should help me zoom along a bit faster on the long rides, I also got some sports food goo to power me up on said rides, I lost around 8 pounds, and finally I managed to lightly twist my ankle while walking all around Somerville and Cambridge yesterday doing errands with the new roommie. I'm not sure if I'm going to want to ride in SCUL tonight on this ankle, especially since there's a possibiliy that we're going to be riding out to Walden Pond.

The new roommie (I know, he needs a name, but I'd like to come up with some sort of nickname for him rather than using his real name, for a few reasons. I'm thinking about "Fairy Godfather"...) likes to do housework. He bought two sixpacks of Coke and poured them into the tub, saying that it was the most corrosive thing you can get in the supermarket. It didn't really do all that much, but it certainly didn't take much effort, either. If he'd let it soak for a couple of days, it might have really made a difference. Or not. Right now, the guy is doing my dishes. Sometimes I feel like I should be paying him for services rendered...

celluloid laundrybasket

Why am I up and writing here at 4 in the morning? Because my life has very recently become some sort of independent movie. This movie includes all the requisite oddball characters who seem to float in and out of the plot, having philosophical conversations and getting involved in really non-traditional relationships with oneanother. This particular film that is my life has elements of a Richard Linklater piece ("See that tree? See those leaves shining in the light? That's why you're alive." he said when I told him that I didn't have the ego to believe that I needed to be alive.) My movie also has some bits straight out of Daniel Clowes' Chost World ("I'm not sure if I should show you my comics or not." I said, completely unaware of how surreal it was in the context of lounging on a bed with someone who you probably shouldn't be lounging on a bed with). He's only been here for four days and I've already lost nearly five pounds. It's the first time in a long time that I've had someone who I feel completely comfortable discussing philosophy with. As a first impression, I've decided that he's a fairy godmother and the devil's advocate all rolled into one (maybe that's why he's so large...).

I think I said something about this new roommate being someone who's going to be very interesting to live with. His response was "You don't know the half of it." And I'm absolutely positive that he's right.

I love Massachusetts

And for once I'm not being facetious. Critical Mass tonight was followed by an unusual amount of cop cars. Near the end of the ride (does it ever really end?), we encountered a couple of officers, in a paddy wagon no less, who simply didn't want us to be in their district. When they finally succeeded at completely blocking the road and forced us to stop, I ended up getting into a very respectful debate with them for at least 20 minutes. The rest of the gang sort of fizzled off in various direction, but I stuck around because I was having a grand old time. They seemed less interested in arresting us for any real infringement of the law, and more interested in generally telling us that we were wrong. I love it when cops are just annoyed enough to start making laws up. What's ironic is that people usually are, in fact, doing something illegal, only the police are so unfamilliar with the laws that they don't know it. Their basic complaint was that we were holding up traffic, which they eventually decided was grounds for arrest as we were "disturbing the peace".

Some of the highlights of the argument included:

Grumpy Cop - "I don't care about the law. The law is irrelevant." (This one really cracked me up.)

Grumpy Cop - "There's a minimum speed!" (Completely untrue on Comm. Ave in Boston)

Grumpy Cop - "Half of you don't even have helmets on!" (And your point is what?)

Me - "If we were in cars, would you have pulled us over?"
Grumpy Cop - "Of course not."

Significantly Nicer Cop - "You obviously have a talent for arguing." (To me. A nice complement, coming from a guy with a badge and a gun!)

And, finally, as we were finishing up our little debate, a guy, also on a bike, came by to mock the couple of Critical Massers who were left. He seemed to be genuinely pissed off (though I have no clue why), and he told us that we were lucky we weren't arrested, riding in the middle of the road like that. He rode off in a huff, cruising right on down the sidewalk - an action that is, of course, illegal in Boston (a fact that neither he nor the police seemed to be interested in).

All in all is was a fine evening. I got to eat at Grasshopper finally, met a nice young gentleman who I had known about but never gotten a chance to meet, hung out with Jef and Rich, participated in some wonderful dinner conversation, and got some vegan cherry cheesecake that I plan to devour tomorrow. Yay!

He is a bit annoyed, to say the least.

Hear what the big guy in the sky himself has to say about his name being used in the Pledge at this Indymedia report

Don't praise the lord in my school!

50 years after president Eisenhower snuck a bit of lord praising into the Pledge of Allegiance, essentially turning it into a prayer, the supreme court's west coast district appeals court has declared it unconstitutional to say the Pledge in public schools. Thank goodness someone is finally paying attention to this blatent disregard for the founding fathers' idea of the seperation between church and state. Jefferson, Madison, and the gang were adamantly opposed to any sort of Federally-sponsored religion. They were wise enough to have looked at Europe's wartorn history and see that the cause of much bloodshed was (and still is!) the conflicting beliefs of various religions. So, it was no religion for the US of A, at least not officially. And, as old as our constitution is, it still provides the basis for an incredibly well run country. The US is first and formost based on freedom, and that means that citizens are completely free to believe whatever they wish, whether that is an omnipotent creature who wants you to eat fishies on a certain day of the week, a blue elephant with eight arms who likes to have sex, or something else entirely. Sad that our politicians see fit to ignore the wisdom of their predecessors in this matter.

Some of you may remember that, back when I was being sworn into office for the Bicycle Committee, I wrote about the problem that I was expected to swear "so help me god" before the city would allow me to serve on the committee. I was worried about the best way to deal with the problem. Should I politely decline, admitting that I am an atheist? Or should I lie? Lying while entering a public office obviously seems like a very bad idea. But declaring oneself an athiest means opening oneself up to government-sponsored religious prejudice. And, while I'm proud to be an athiest, I know that a lot of people who I need to work with in City Hall and the State House would be much less likely to want to work with me if they knew that I did not share their beliefs in an omnipotent big-guy-in-the-sky. I ended up choosing to lie, promising myself that I would try and do something about it all later (but, in the meantime, making me no better than any other two-faced politician).

Well, it seems like now is the time to get this issue off my chest (both here and in a more public view): It is not only unAmerican, but it is also completely unconstitutional to make someone pledge their allegiance to a religious figure as a part of any federal business:

The US Constitution, Article VI, Section III
"...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

And furthermore, the First Amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Seems pretty clear to me that there is no place for gods in government. So, why are politicians so adamant in their persecution of anyone who wants "God" left out of public affairs?

modern primatives

The average American, when confronted with a proponent for peace (like myself), generally reacts with one of two emotions: violence or inquisitiveness. The violent ones react that way because they are lost and confused about life. But these people are not the ones I want to talk to right now. I want to talk to the ones who, when discovering that I'm anti-war, say "well then, what SHOULD we do?" I applaud anyone who is willing to ask this question. My answer probably isn't what most people want to hear, but it's the truth: I don't know, but I'm sure if we put our heads together we could come up with plenty of good ideas.

Think about it, the human species has been evolving for millions of years, and we've been civilized for several thousand. You mean to tell me that in all of this time we haven't been able to come up with an effective way of dealing with our problems other than resorting to violence? Seriously?

Sure, I know that violence is a holdover from our fight-or-flight days when our species was constantly in danger. And violence served us well when we encountered bigger, faster, or more clever species who wanted to eat us. But hey, we've pretty much taken care of that little inconvenience by wiping out most of these species' habitats, and running them over with our automobiles. Violence simply isn't necessary anymore for the majority of us humans who live in modern society. Its, literally, overkill. With all of the billions of dollars we humans pour into the fields of psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology, theology, epistomology (the study of learning), and other human behavior-based sciences, you'd think that we could develop a vast array of potential non-violent solutions to our problems of getting along with eachother.

The fact is that we do actually know of many solutions already. There are multiple tomes out there that offer ideas. And there are scientific studies to back up these solutions with concrete evidence. These non-violent solutions may not all work in all situations, and many may take a long time. But I'm absolutely convinced that there is always a non-violent solution to a given problem that will work as well or better than violence. If only the people in power would listen to the possibilities, instead of reaating the way humans have been reacting for millions of years. And, the only way to get the politicians, and those pulling their strings, to change their kneejerk responses is to change the way society itself responds. And that means opening people's eyes. In other words: education.

Education doesn't have to mean boring lectures in stuffy classrooms (that's not real education, anyway). Education means talking to one another. It means writing letters to the editor of your local newspaper or tv station. It means participating in your community in whatever form you feel comfortable with. School committees, hobby clubs, neighborhood picnics, coffeehouses, even bars, are all great places to talk to people and engage them in meaningful dialogue about the world. As cliche as it sounds, the pen (or spoken word) really is mightier than the sword.

As a place to start when talking about solutions to world problems and the violence caused because of them, think about why people act the way they do. As you already know, acts of violence stem from the basic premise of fight-or-flight. When people feel scared the have the choice of either running away or of lashing out at the perceived danger. (Those who choose to run away are generally less of a problem to the world.) Those who choose to lash out are the ones who we are worried about. Anger and hatred are just extensions of fear (as the wise Yoda reminded us all), and would not exist without the basic fear emotion. So, terrorists, suicide bombers, and other violent, angry, and hateful persons do what they do because they are all deathly afraid of something. Whether that threat is real or just perceived is secondary to the fact that they are quite simply afraid, and are not at all "evil". When we start thinking this way, we're able to understand these dangerous people, and only them are we able to address the root of the problem by helping them alleviate their fears. If the fears are real - like starvation, political oppression, or the threat of violence - then we can easily do something about it. We can offer sanctuary, food, education, healthcare, and other humanitarian aid. If the threat is perceived, then we can educate them or work to un-brainwash them if they've been subjected to a violent cult/religion (obviously a bit more difficult and time consuming, but perfectly doable). I guarantee that such humanitarian actions are infinitely more productive than reinforcing their fears by exploding these people's homes, families, and friends would be.

Its funny, we like to elevate the human species to be better than the rest of the animal family tree. But we really are no better than any other species when it comes to getting along with one another. If we truly want to be "eveolved" then we have to come up with a better way to live together.

bags under my eyes

Man am I busy for the next several days. I've got events up the wazoo. So much so that I've run out of room on my calendar for Friday through Tuesday. (Does this mean I have a life?) Yesterday I went to a Rail-to-Trail conference out in the town I term "the suburb in the middle of nowhere" (Waltham is a very rich suburb which is mostly surrounded by quaint rural towns). The conference was ok, though I didn't really get to participate much as I ended up getting monopolized by one fellow there. He had some unique viewpoints on folk music and it's lack of republican (or libertarian for that matter) songs. After that it was on to Boston for the Fort Point Channel art party. It's funny, last year, under the aegeis of Random Turtle Productions, I held a bike ride on the Solstice (in celebration of the Rolling Blackout energy policy protest event). It was very successful, and I had hoped to keep doing it as a yearly event. But I was just too busy this year,a nd I felt kinda bad about it. The funny thing is that the Fort Point Channel artists ended up having a bike ride on the Solstice. It was even cooler than my ride, because most of the riders had gone all out decorating their bikes. (I'll get some pictures up soon.) Very cool.

Today, I'm going to try to make it to the Solar festival around the corner from me. Then I hope to get to the first ever Boston tatoo fair. Tats were banned for several decades in Massachusetts. But the state supreme court ruled the ban unconstitutional last year. Yay! Then, finally, if I haven't collapsed yet, its yet another funky SCUL ride. Hopefully, I'll be alive enough to get up early and do the Bike to the Sea benefit ride a few hours later on Sunday morning. Ugggh. What's bad is that I've already got bags under my eyes!

So anyway, happy solstice everyone!

one eye is looking through rose colored glasses

The other seems to be looking through cyanish-green golored glasses. I've had this weird color difference in my eyes since I was a kid. I only really notice it on bright sunny days, and it's not really obnoxious. It does occasionally freak me out a bit though, making me think I've got a cateract or something. But then I remember that I've had this since at least age 12, so even if it is something wrong, it ain't getting worse any time soon.

So we've finally got a new roommate. He promises to be a pretty interesting guy to live with, and he definitely fits in as far as personality goes. For one thing, he's married, but his wife is going out west to forage for a house and a job while he hangs around here and toils away at a tech job. I'm sure I'll have some interesting stories about him soon enough. (He's mentioned that he's got a really good one that he only tells when he's really drunk. I'm just waiting for he and the "alchohol connoisseur" to get together for a bit of liquor...)

70 pound paper

If you ever have something printed on paper, like a book, magazine, or brochure, you've encountered the weirdness that is the paper thickness/density measurement system. It starts out fairly understandable, the paper's "weight" is defined by how much a specified number of sheets weighs. I can live with that. But then, for some reason the whole weight system shifts when you have a cover stock of paper. You can have a 70 lb. text paper, and a 70 lb cover paper, and they are a completely different thickness. Maybe it's because they use different kinds of fibers and screens, but it's really confusing. And then I just discovered some sort of cardstock measurement system expressed in points (a 7 pt. cardstock is about the weight of one of those annoying business reply cards that always fall out of magazines). The only sure way to know what you want is to get a sample of the exact paper you think you'd like. Having said that, I just ordered some brochures for MassBike and I have no idea what the actual paper is going to be like. But at least it has an impressively high recycled content, and that cool matte coated surface that became so popular on Generation X fiction books by the likes of Bret Easton Ellis.

SCUL last night. A quiet ride, but enjoyable. I spent the afternoon and evening working in the SCUL fort. I'm really finally putting together my own chopper. Skunk is helping me out, and will be doing the welds on the fork extentions, when I get the chopped up kid's bike forks ready to go. It won't be a fantasticc machine, but it will be mine, and it'll be my size. Before working on the fork yesterday, I had no idea that you could cut the steel so easily with normal tools like a hacksaw. I'm not sure why I didn't know this, since I spent many a day in college happily hacking away at metal in a jewelry class. I just had that picture of steel being neigh invulnerable like the Tick (Spooon!). Now that I have this information readily available in my brain, I'm having all kinds of weird ideas about chopping up trashed bikes and reassembling them into sculpture. If I can figure out a way to stick the various pieces together without involving massive amounts of flame, I'll be all set.