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.