I'm very unique...

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I left my Vespa in Toledo, Ohio with the best girlfriend ever...

...and have to go pick it up later this week.

I got back to Chicago from Ohio last night at about 10:30...by car.

I rode out to Toledo through northern Indiana (which has some horrible signage, so I probably went out of my way by 20 miles or so during the trip - 250 miles total). Mapquest put me on a gravel road, but I knew US 20 was only a mile or two north and heading in the same direction, so I was able to cut up there.

The P200 ran great most of the way out, though the engine started to rattle at certain speeds (real low or real high). It sounds to me like the flywheel cover might be rattling against something. Every bolt I could find was tight, though, and the bike was riding fine, so I didn't worry too much about it. As I got near Toledo, I was running low on gas and the bike started to bog a little bit at the top of 4th gear.

Friday morning I cleaned my jets and checked my plug (little bit dark, but I left the mixture alone at that point). Selena and I rode from Toledo down to Columbus in a heavy drizzle most of the way. The bike really started bogging in 4th, so I changed to a #7 plug and turned the mixture a quarter-turn leaner and it ran pretty well despite the wet. Idle was screwy, though.

Saturday in Columbus was sunny, hot, and muggy. All the hot humid air east of Hurricane Ike was trapped and it got a bit oppressive. One of my gear selector cables slipped right as we arrived for the ride meetup, so while I was tightening the pinch-bolt and adjusting the cables, we missed the ride, but ended up going thrifting with some of the XYLs there for the rally. (But since we'd ridden down through the area the ride was going to the day before, and were going out that way the next day, we didn't mind, and ended up hanging out with Selena's sister). My bike would only idle regularly when it was running rich (on a #7 plug), though I'm not sure how much that had to do with the humidity. To get it to run nicely, I had to turn the mixture a little leaner and set the throttle stop pretty high so it wouldn't die out at idle - otherwise it would bog at 45-50mph even after warmed up.

I was originally planning on riding back to Chicago yesterday from Columbus, but one look at the radar map yesterday morning disabused me of that notion. Selena and I left to ride back toward Toledo, and I'd either catch MegaBus or cadge a ride back to Chicago from there. It was still pretty warm and sunny, but with some moderate wind once we got out into the country which varied from a nice tail wind to a somewhat annoying cross-wind. We were keeping an eye on the western horizon to stop to put on rain-gear if needed.

About an hour outside Toledo, Selena's bike (a 2005 Stella) broke down. We were about 120 miles out of Columbus, and had been going full throttle most of the way. She suddenly started losing power at 45-50mph and was able to downshift and pull over in a controlled stop, but her kick lever was frozen solid. After letting it sit for an hour or so, it still wouldn't budge, she couldn't shift gears, and we found a nice farmer to let her put it in his barn for a couple
days (the state trooper that pulled up behind us a couple min after we stopped walked her to his door and vouched for him) until she can pick it up.

We ended up riding 2-up on my P200 at 40mph back to Toledo right as the pouring rain started, with all the gear two people bring on scooter trips, then driving to Chicago (and hitting some rain in Indiana). Selena drove back this morning, and I'm taking Megabus out later this week and riding back on Friday, which is supposed to be beautiful. POC Phil thinks her bike might have seized but only set after she stopped, but whether it's the top end or kickstart mechanism, the engine's gotta be opened up and she's planning on picking it up and taking it in to POC tomorrow.

Looking around and talking to a couple people, I'm thinking that my 20/20 carb likely needs a thorough cleaning/rebuild, but I might as well put a new 24/24 carb on at that point.

"No, I'm not gonna be your monkey."

I remember watching this four years ago, and it's still awesome.

I'm glad that emotional residue dissipated.

I watched Ronin for the first time in several years tonight. I started at 11:30, and now it's almost 2am and I have to get up in six hours to go to work. I took a three-hour nap this evening, catching up from staying up 'til 5am on Friday night talking to Laura's friend Angela. For some reason, I couldn't nap yesterday despite my exhaustion.

So I had some time to kill before sleeping tonight. I remembered Ronin being a good film, but the last time I watched even part of it was with Marta, before we'd even started dating. I think she fell asleep in the middle, and I hadn't watched it since, mostly because it still had this emotional residue for me.

I watched it again. It's better than I remembered. I picked up things I'd missed, or subtleties that hadn't seemed important to me before. Maybe it's because I don't watch many movies or TV shows anymore, and tend to view films not just as stories, but as art with carefully crafted components, each with their own importance. Regardless, I was struck by everything from the clothes, to the cinematography, to the story arc being rather well-done and unique these days.

I'm glad that emotional residue dissipated.

When life hands you lemons, make cantaloupe juice.

Two years ago this month, my cousin John died. I don't think about it much anymore, though at the time I pretty much escaped into the make-believe world of the Honor Harrington series of books. (You can download all 17 books in the series - I recommend them if you need to kill a couple months.)

The day after the funeral I was at my aunt Susan's house before heading to the airport, and she'd taken all the leftover cantaloupe from the reception and blended it, making a rather thick juice. I don't normally enjoy cantaloupe at all, but for some reason I think it tastes excellent in liquid form, and I drank about a quart of it (approximately eating one melon whole).

That's the one positive thing I took from that trip. Mostly I just remember the heartbreak on my aunt and uncle's faces, particularly when Susan was describing being at his bedside as he died. Tonight I made juice from two cantaloupes, and it brought the memories back.

Para bailar la shut the fuck up!

There's a techno version of "La Bamba" on at work. Again, here's to my own office where I can play the Richie Valens version instead.

Dreaming is Free...

Yesterday I dreamt of a first kiss. It was so realistic that I spent 40 minutes trying to relive it as I was falling asleep last night.

In the dream, I made a move not intended to initiate any kiss, then she made as if to kiss me and I turned back and, well, reciprocated. And like any good first kiss, it started with soft lip contact before progressing.

But the best part was the emotional context. The dream delivered all the disbelief and wonder packed into any good first kiss. It's been a long time since I've experienced any of it. No wonder I tried to relive it.

Dreaming is free...

Povichian Voyeurs

Maury Povich is on at work...the topic is "I was in a coma...I can't be your baby's father!"

Cue the Lawrence Arms:

I'm a clown and I'm choking on blood, tooth and tongue
Fuck the spectators, fuck the "he was so young"
Fuck forced sympathies from lifeless glass eyes
Povichian voyeurs drinking my cries
Fuck-faced trilobytes waiting to die...

Long time, no blogging...

Three months or more with no blogging, and this is what prompts me to post...

I'm at work right now, second day here in this group dental practice where I'm going to be the orthodontist for one day a week.

Playing on the radio is a techno version of "The Harder They Come."

I'm looking forward to having my own office, where I can have the original Jimmy Cliff version playing.

Uplift...

She had a great attitude, she was cute, had expressive eyes, and was able to carry a conversation in a way that few others can. She was smart, and smiled a lot. She listens to indie-rock and grindcore, and made fun of hardcore and emo kids. She volunteers at the Art Institute and at a community center. She was seventeen years old, and my last patient of the day. The kind of patient that - even when I'm hungover, at the end of a long, full day, and underslept and exhausted - really makes me love my job.

One of the Funniest Things I've Seen In a Long Time...

I've watched this several times. Can't stop laughing. Brilliant.

Fuck February

Fuck February.

Fuck Valentine's Day. Fuck every relationship I've had that ended in February.

Fuck the ennui that starts dogging me after spending so much time inside working on schoolwork. Fuck being tired and fuck perpetual melancholy.

Fuck the virus I seem to come down with every year that knocks me on my ass and takes a while to bounce back from.

Fuck all the schoolwork that's piling up. Fuck the short days that are over by the time I get a chance to do anything.

Fuck the snow and ice that doesn't seem to melt. Today's the first time I've ridden the Vespa in three weeks.

So fuck February. Fuck it.

Eat a Pine Cone and Buy More Shit

As Paul Krugman pointed out on his blog, he called the housing bubble burst - and, to some extent, the dollar fall - years ago:

Sorry, but no. A housing slowdown will lead to the loss of many jobs in construction and service industries but won't have much direct effect on the trade deficit. So those jobs won't be replaced by new jobs elsewhere until and unless something else, like a plunge in the value of the dollar, makes U.S. goods more competitive on world markets, leading to higher exports and lower imports.

I'm in a bad mood. Pissed at the state of politics in this country, and pissed at myself for being so cranky, and pissed at my mom for sending me more it's-"Merry-Christmas"-not-"Happy-Holidays"-or-you're-disrespecting-Christianity e-mail bullshit and then wondering why I'm upset at what I refer to as "offensive bullshit," as if the annotated 2-page e-mail I sent her in response wasn't clear as to why it could be seen as offensive. A deer in the cultural headlights, as it were.

I said I was in a bad mood. Fucking Christ. I'm finishing off a bottle of wine that's been in my fridge a couple weeks, though, and that's calming me down. Except for the reading of old Krugman columns which just stokes my flames a higher.

Seriously, Fuck Christmas. Let's exchange our gifts at the end of January, when we need some cheering up from seasonal affective disorder, and we can buy gifts for cheap from after-x-mas sales.

In that vein, here's Don's photos from the Dreidel/Santa Rampage. And video. And more video. And yet more video.


Happy Pagan Solstice Festival. Eat a pine cone and buy more shit. Fuck.

Also linked to from Krugman's blog:

Capitalist shitheads! Fuckin' A!

Paul Krugman linked to this BusinessWeek story on health care credit companies and their costs to the uninsured. Read it, it's a good article. Even more ridiculous are the several comments accusing fucking *BusinessWeek* of having an anti-capitalist, anti-free-market bias.

That's not Kool-Aid you're drinking anymore, it's pure bullshit. How's it taste?

One commenter made a very good point:

So in this way health care becomes not just a paid for service but a way to create and profit from debt, thus joining the remainder of the economy. The difference being that almost all other spending is discretionary (if perhaps not wise) and its cost is definable and "choosable" prior to the purchase. And, finally, what is most discouraging is that the geniuses who designed this almost certainly consider themselves good people.

The comments on Krugman's post were much better, and seemed more nuanced as well - and hopefully that isn't because they match my prevailing patterns of thought. Still, they begin with this:

The current political leadership told us in 2000:

“Bush is the first CEO president. He will run this country like a business.”

Only in America did people think that was a good thing.

Despite being a health-care provider looking at a career of private practice, I'm becoming even more in favor of universal healthcare. The outcomes are simply better, for every segment of the population, and usually for lower cost. I realize this will likely impact my future practice, but I'd still be making a more than decent living doing work I enjoy and doing good for people. Of course, orthodontics is effectively elective care and as such is unlikely to be covered by any universal plan.

I'm wondering how healthcare providers in countries with universal healthcare are doing within their systems. It's something I'll have to look into.

Meanwhile, I read an argument years ago in an ethics textbook which went something like this - I'm paraphrasing from memory, so be nice: A free society is one in which the personal choices of the largest number of people are maximized to the greatest extent. A person in pain or suffering from a painful or debilitating or otherwise serious medical condition is in many ways incapable of free choice as a starving man or a man with a gun to his head would be. Yes, there are still choices to be made, but if it can be called "free choice" then every society, even the most totalitarian, is "free." In a just society, then, resource allocation would be directed first toward adequately meeting the material needs of the whole population before other discretionary desires were addressed.

Of course, the mechanism by which those needs are met doesn't have to be governmental, but right now charity doesn't seem to be cutting it - especially if you read that BusinessWeek article I linked to above and noted how non-profit hospitals are still selling their patients' medical debts to predatory financial lenders.

All these songs with narratives reinforcing our cultural folkways...

I'm sitting at school on a Saturday slogging through the data entry for my thesis. My brain is just beginning to sizzle; it's not quite frying yet.

Gary's sitting in the lab doing some work as well. I asked if he minded if I put on some music; he said no, as long as it's country. Couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but I said OK and put on a playlist of (mostly) country songs, because I like a lot of that shit.

The whole reason I noted that is because I've been listening to all these songs with narratives reinforcing our cultural folkways, and I'm wondering how much of my enjoyment of derives from their resulting position in our sociocultural matrix and how much derives from the inherent worth of their musicality and lyricism.

This week was good professionally: I've hit what I hope is the magic number of responses required for my thesis, and finally worked out with my advisors what statistical analysis we're going to use - which is why I'm powering through data entry at the moment. My least favorite patient told me she absolutely has to have her braces off by March, no matter what, so I know she'll be done then. And I got a lead on at least a part-time job for next year, who I have to call on Monday. So that's some shit off my chest.

You should get to know your town, just like I know mine

The Magnificent Seven SC's City of the Dead Photo Scavenger Hunt was a success! It was a gorgeous day, sunny with a forecasted high near 60 F. Which is awesome for November in Chicago!

People started arriving at the Pontiac a little before 11am. After a bit of chit-chat and after a few attendees had a few bloody marys, I started passing out clue sheets. Nick commented that it was too easy to make collages like that on the computer now, but acknowledged that they don't look the same or have the soul of a cut-and-paste, copy-and-destroy job.


All said, though, it was kind of a pain doing all that cutting and pasting; I'm done doing ride promo and fliers for a while.

Anyway, being scooterists, our 11:30am start time went to pot pretty quickly. At half past eleven, we started our random pairings. Patrick picked up some cheapo chopsticks and numbered them; they were drawn and that was how your teammate was chosen! Everyone seemed to get along though, so no problems. Of course, Josh the Cop was running late, and held everyone up until he got there at noon. Two more guys showed up in the meantime, but of course they both pulled matching numbers, so Brian was stuck waiting for Josh (and I held everyone else from starting to make it fair). Nick and John had come by but ended up not participating. Kyle also pulled over in his VW van to say hi, but he was headed out to the 'burbs for domestic tasks. Everyone else there was going crazy figuring out clues. Except for Rich, that is; he read the clue sheet and stated he knew where they all were. The others were all feeding their internet addictions on their DiCKPhones and Crackberries, or in Nick and Chandler's cases, their laptops. Ben made phone calls. Sid and Dan had their maps and atlases.

Like I said, I let everyone go at the same time. They had seven sites around Chicago, from Rogers Park to Hyde Park (way north to way south, with some west side thrown in for kicks) to visit and photograph with both bikes from each team. Some of them tore off north, some of them south. Some of them sat at the Pontiac and worked on their route for a while. In fact, Sid and Dan (and Dan's wife Jane) were still sitting there when Millie, Durso, and Silent Ron rolled up at quarter past twelve. Apparently, Millie'd broken down and was riding 2-up with Durso, so Team Maryland was able to compete together despite our rules and random team assignments - although I suppose having to ride 2-up on Dursos 125cc smallframe was somewhat of a handicap.

Sid and Dan took off shortly after that, while Team Maryland worked out clues and Silent Ron commiserated. I think they finally left at 12:30. At which point Patrick and I, as the organizers and planners unable to compete, went for eats at Dunlay's on the Square in Logan Square along with my friend Nikki. Good eats. We dropped Nikki off at the Humboldt Park Fieldhouse and proceeded to the Garfield Conservatory to hang a bit and see which teams stopped by.

Before I proceed further, I should tell you which sites our seven clues referred to, in chronological order:

1. Rosehill Cemetery
2. Union Stockyards Entrance Arch
3. Finkl & Sons Steel
4. Garfield Conservatory
5. Biograph Theater
6. Chess Records Office and Studio
7. Henry Moore's "Nuclear Energy" sculpture at the site of the first self-sustaining controlled nuclear reaction

Patrick and I hung out at the Conservatory for a bit, and saw Sid and Dan ride by south of Lake Ave, coming from the Garfield Park Fieldhouse, and head east. A couple minutes later they came back west and found us sitting in front of the conservatory. Apparently Dan had been shot by some douchebags with a paintball gun while riding through the west side. He was not a happy camper. They told us they had to hit Rosehill and then they were done. Patrick and I were surprised, as it was only a quarter past two at this point.

A couple minutes after they stopped by, Brian and Josh the Cop showed up. This was their last site. They got their pictures, and headed back to the Pontiac. Patrick and I left almost as quickly, but took a different route back; we jammed down Lake Street - AKA the Death Star - with only a little weaving amongst the pillars when necessary to pass. Brian and Josh still beat us back to the Pontiac - we were a block or two away when I saw Brian's Zuma pulled into the lot.

We rolled up a few seconds later, and there's Todd with a half-drunk bloody in his hand, smiling like a tow-headed devil. He and Rich and Amy had gotten back a while before, apparently. Amy showed me their photos, and I declared them the winner and relieved myself of banking the ride's winnings. $65 to the winning team, and $10 to Brian and Josh, setting them even for the day - minus gas and beer money. (Brian and Josh the Cop were running red lights all day, and Josh even tried to get a squad car for escort - to no avail. They still came in first loser.) Ben and Chandler - Team Stella - rolled up soon after, and the rest of the teams came trickling in after that. I think the motorcycle guys were 5th or 6th to arrive, after Tim and Stephanie. Team Silent Ron and Maryland showed up soon after, and we were hanging out front of the Pontiac waiting for our stragglers.

Sid finally pulled up, followed closely by Katherine on her Stella, and Dan and Jane were a couple minutes behind. We ended up shootin' it until the sun set near 4:30 - damn Daylight Savings Time ending is messing me up. Everyone said no when I suggested going for a group ride, but fun was had by all.

UPDATE: So, a few people took some wrong turns - Josh and Brian went to Graceland instead of Rosehill, and the motorcycle team went to UIC instead of U of C to find Henry Moore's "Nuclear Energy." And Chandler dropped his camera on Michigan Ave. and Team Stella had to backtrack to get it. And some team I can't remember went to the Apollo Theater instead of Chess Records.

Next time, I'm not planning at all. I wanted to ride!

Pictures are available on my Flickr and at the Mag 7's Flickr.

Fucking Media Monopolies

So, the videos I posted in my last post have been deleted from YouTube, due to Viacom's claim of copyright infringement.

Now, while technically accurate, the decision is marketing idiocy. Without any sort of viral video presence as in those two clips, would Yo Gabba Gabba's audience demographic expand in that direction at all? Is there a huge overlap between YouTube users and Nick Jr. viewers? I don't think so.

What it is is corporate media producers defending their right to total information control. It's not this instance that scares them, but the precedent of any of their material being used for any reason not sanctioned prior to its use.

Anyway, they've been put back up on YouTube, go there and search for "Yo Gabba Gabba Pick It Up" and "Yo Gabba Gabba Aggrolites" and you should find your treat.

Hands down the best kids show ever!

Yo Gabba Gabba! is officially the best kids show ever. How come there was never anything this cool on when I was a kid?

Oh, yeah. It was the late seventies/early eighties.



As Sid pointed out: note the Vespa and the skinhead train. I don't think he said anything about the Mod Target or the English Beat imagery. Now if only the sax player in the dresser band were a pickle rather than a banana.

Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up!

And speaking of bananas, here's the Aggrolites, on the same show!



Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up!

As if I needed another reason to hate the Republican party

I'm still exhausted from riding Wisconsin's Rustic Roads yesterday,or I'd write about it.

Meanwhile, watch this:

Worth sitting through. Naomi Wolf is an engaging speaker. Beware, though, it's 40+ minutes long.