Boring, Boring Internetz

Seems to me that the Internet—the once-proud savior-to-be of all humanity—has fallen into a rut.

Used to be that you could count on something thrilling coming out of the Interwebby-thing almost every day: a fast-breaking story of government corruption and scandal, an hilarious video featuring a cat and a vacuum cleaner, a powerful database that allowed you to get the names and addresses of anyone who’s ever voted in a state election anywhere in the US during the last two decades. And, of course, Simpsonize Me!

Nowadays though, it’s pretty much the same old thing over and over: fashion news about washed-up celebrities, little Flash-based games that keep 10 year-olds from getting dressed and ready for school when they should, and more Youtube videos featuring cats and vacuum cleaners. And, of course, Craigslist.org.

Me, I visit that same half-dozen or so sites and that’s about it: check the New York Times, read three or four blogs by people I know, occasionally, if half-heartedly, look at some random bike parts on Ebay, and visit the .83 forum to read posts from a few folks while studiously avoiding those from others.

I remember thinking, a couple years ago, that it was only a matter of time before the Internet was nothing more than a great big huge J. Crew catalogue; it’s clear to me know that I underestimated the web’s awesome power somewhat, for it’s way more than just that: it’s also a great big Yellow Pages, a massive stack of old videotapes, and the game arcade of a divey bar circa 1983. And, of course, my diary.

One thing that’s become painfully obvious: even though the Internet may be a force for social change and expanded freedom in repressive totalitarian states around the world, here in the industrialized West, it’s mainly a distraction—on the order of People Magazine, WWF Wrestling, American Idol—from stuff that really matters.

And, of course, 327 Words.

World War Z

I realize I’m behind the cultural curve on this one, the book well-known to even casual readers and already out in paperback, but be that as it may—or perhaps, owing to the sensible admonition never to read a novel less than a year old, because of that—I’m totally enjoying Max Brooks’ darkly humorous and deeply chilling World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.

It’s sort of Studs Terkel meets Stephen King, a compendium of transcripts from interviews with survivors of the “greatest conflict in human history,” an all-out war that almost extinguished human life on planet earth and forever changed society around the world as billions died (many of whom then rose from the dead to prey upon the living) in the approximately ten year armagedon between the living and the undead in the not-so-distant future.

I love how the story unfolds, with scattered accounts of zombie infection (at first called “African Rabies”) followed by official denials, governmental ineptitude, media misinformation, all of which inevitably contributed to the crisis increasing in magnitude. (One can’t help see analogies here to how, on a smaller scale, the AIDS epidemic unfolded, and certainly Brooks is aware of that and plays with it, as he does with other geopolitical situations, from the Israeli occupation of Palestine to the US embargo of Cuba.)

And, although I’m troubled by the implications, I also can’t help being compelled by the dropped hints about how in many ways, the post-Zombie War world seems to be thriving, with a resurgent US economy, free universal health care, ships that are fueled by sea-water, skyscrapers that power themselves with solar panels, and Cuba emerging as a bastion of economic freedom and democracy.

I haven’t quite finished the book, so I’m not sure how it all turns out and I still don’t know how the infection originally got started, but I’m reading slowly now, trying to savor it—while still making sure I finish before dark.

Heat Wave

It’s pretty hot today—like 88 degrees Fahrenheit—the sun is out and everyone is kind of dragging their asses around all complaining like it’s too darn hot even though just last week, many would have given their left nut or ovary for a day like today, so I’m not complaining even if, by noting the fact of the matter, it might seem like I am.

I stood out on a sun-drenched pitching mound today, lobbing softballs at people who swung bats at them, but the good news is, a sufficient number of those hit back were caught by my team members and so, wonder of wonders, the Chuggers and Sluggers of Bill’s Off-Broadway managed to sweep a double-header, even though the first of our two stirring victories was by forfeit. But we’ll take it.

Meanwhile, you would think that, given how the media is reporting the weather, that we were being overwhelmed by a plague of locust or at least a tornado; which reminds me: I saw a guy walking down the street yesterday wearing a track jacket from Abercrombie and Fitch or something similar with the script name “Cyclones” across the front of it. And I thought that, given the recent tragedy in Myanmar, that to wear the thing smacked of cultural insensitivity if not just downright cluelessness, or both. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, but it was hard to ignore the word, given how prominent it has been in the reporting of the terrible, terrible, events in the country we used to call Burma.

By contrast, I’m down in my cool basement now, a place that for most of the year inclines me to wear fingerless wool gloves just so I call feel my digits on the keyboard; now, though, it’s my favorite place in the house: quiet, soothing, and moist—and when I’m ready for it, the Vaporizer just a few steps away.

Not saying I am, but a nap sounds good.

Almost Too Nice

Here’s a reasonable criterion of success in bicycle-combined mood adjustment: you’re outside in a humorously lovely Hobbit-land of a city park, so charming even angry 9-toed hippies admit they love the place; the waxing gibbous moon bathes the lawn in silver through fingers of pine while a couple dozen cyclists tell lies to each other between slugs of beer; you take a fancy hot dog bun from its bag, slather it in squeeze-bottle mayonnaise, yellow mustard, and ketchup, then crunch up some Harvest Cheddar potato chips on top as substitute for one of the meaty-meat sausages sizzling over the nearby grill’s charcoal-bag flame, but then here’s the thing:

It tastes fucking awesome!

You scarf it up, making that “num-num” sound, sharing just one bite with a friend, who himself, even without having imbibed your own particular combination of flavor enhancers earlier in the evening, has to admit it’s not bad.

If all’s not right with the world at that point, it never will be.

It was almost too nice on last night’s .83 ride, the kind of perfect weather with the dangerous potential of spoiling folks so that they never again want to ride bikes in the far more typical gloom and wet of Seattle, so fortunately, there was Derrick, on his Stinky McStinkster Huffalicious Stinkbike perfuming the air all around as he loudly escorted us on our path—except when we were ON paths—from downtown, through Interlachen, the back way around Husky stadium to University Village for supplies, then up to Ravenna and the aforementioned sylvan glade, before eschewing the Knarr in favor of the College Inn Pub where the Evil Mike and I had one beer each, just the thing to prepare for mashing up the hill to Louisa Boren Park and one final safety meeting of the night, admiring the view across Lake Washington to the east, on this, a night of cycling almost too nice to be believed, much less lived.

Elephant in the Room

Last night, I saw a pretty good panel discussion at the UW called “Elephants Among Us.” It featured a director of research or something from the Woodland Park Zoo, a head organizer for the animal welfare organization, PAWS, an ethical philosopher from the University of Texas, and an expert in elephant behavior from the department of biology (or some such) at the University of Washington, all talking about various ethical issues related to the care, conservation, and management of pachyderms.

Each speaker brought something interesting to the discussion; the guy from the zoo was very practical and humble; the PAWS person passionate and committed; the philosopher did a good job of developing a philosophical conception of why elephants deserve our moral consideration; but the biologist blew everyone away with hard scientific data and real-world examples of elephant behavior in the wild, including fascinating information about how he can determine the animals’ stress levels by analyzing the chemical components of their dung.

And it made me wonder, as such experiences often do, whether my career choice—such as it was—to go into a field where arguments, rather than data, are the means by which points are made was the right decision.

As a kid, I loved biology class; had I not had such a lousy science education in high school, maybe I’d have ended up a botanist; but somewhere along the line, I got more interested in manipulating words than test tubes, and next thing you know, there I was, spending all day in a chair reading Hegel rather than wandering about in the woods clipping ferns.

I don’t regret it, but sometimes, philosophy does seem like such a luxury, and that’s when I fantasize about starting a bicycle-based small package delivery service or investing in a fleet of pedicabs or even going back to school to get a degree in forestry or something, something that would obviously make the world a better place for people, and elephants, too.

Why Live Like That?

The other day—last Thursday, I guess—I rode from school to downtown for the .83 ride prefunk at the Whiskey Bar in Belltown. It was a lovely afternoon—mid sixties, partly sunny, and all was right with the world as I pedaled from Bothell, through Kenmore, along the Burke-Gilman trail past the UW and then over the University Bridge to Eastlake, arriving on the south side of the ship canal near Furhman and Eastlake Boulevard right around 5:30.

Usuallly, I can predict it taking about twenty to twenty five minutes from there to downtown and last Thursday was no exception—at least on two wheels. Had I been in car, I’m almost sure it would have been more like an hour, if I managed to make it that far without pulling over, getting out of my vehicle, and setting it on fire.

There was pretty much a solid line of traffic from the end of the bridge all the way to my destination downtown. Cars were backed up bumper to bumper as I passed the familiar landmarks of the Eastlake Zoo, Hooters in South Lake Union, the Buca di Bepo near Dexter, and then all along that street and up Second Avenue to the bar.

I slid by on the right as automobiles inched along, their drivers looking bored, frustrated, and helpless, trapped as they were in their metal cages. Any time the least little space opened up—crossing intersections for instance—they would gun their engines and shoot across, relieved to have even a moment’s movement.

I felt smug, of course, but even more, just terribly sorry for all those drivers and I wondered why they had to live like that. How many saw themselves as having no other transportation option? How many believed they needed to drive? How many were as trapped by the automobile paradigm as they were by traffic?

I pondered these questions as I spun merrily by and then some more over beers at the Whiskey.

Pick Me, Pick Me!

One of the only things I remember from my days as an aspiring actor is this idea that in every human interaction, everyone involved is trying to get something from someone else. The lesson we were coached in was to try and figure out what the character you were playing wanted from the other people in the scene; that way, you would have some kind of intrinsic motivation which would enable you play your part with authenticity and verve, positioning you well for what all actors inevitably want: a chance to direct (or so I’m told.)

Anyway, whether this principle is really true in all human exchanges is probably debatable; I can’t see Mother Theresa, for example, as being so calculating as she administered to the starving children of Calcutta, but there’s certainly an element of truth to it and sometimes, like this morning, as I rode around town on my Sunday errands, it seemed particularly apropos, as at every turn (and straightaway for that matter), it seemed as if another person or organization was reaching out towards me, trying to get me to buy from or give something to them, if not both.

It started with the guy spare-changing me outside the QFC, then the woman who wanted me to buy her last newspaper, followed by the kid who tried to sell me a probably stolen DVD of some Jackie Chan film; but then, it just began to seem like everything, from the advertisements on the side of the bus, to the “Prices Reduced” signs in the grocery store windows, to the “For Sale” notice on a parked car, to posters for upcoming shows stapled to telephone poles, handbills for dance parties lying in the gutter, a guy ranting into his hands-free cellphone making me think he was a nut talking to himself, all of it, all of them just reaching out at me, the “helots” as Walter Brennan called them in Meet John Doe, yikes!

Aurelia's Oratorio

Thanks to a tip from Gurldogg, I bought tickets for last night’s performance of Aurelia’s Oratorio at the Seattle Rep Theater. Jen, Mimi, kid’s best friend, Ani, and I took the bus down to Seattle Center and after wandering around to all the other venues in the complex (I couldn’t recall which building the show was at), we eventually made our way inside with plenty of time to spare for the start of the show.

Good thing, too, because the performance was marvelous: magical, whimsical, acrobatic, funny, sexy, goofy, amazing, and above all, an authentic work of art. As someone for whom these days, entertainment is as likely as not, eating dinner with the family in front of the TV set when American Idol is on, it was indescribably refreshing to see the artistry of true professionals, performers steeped in a tradition that goes back generations in their own families, centuries in the domain of theater they work in.

The show was made up of a series of short vignettes, linked thematically by movement, stage design, sound, and props; there was never a dull moment in the entire 80 minutes or so; even with just essentially two performers, something interesting was always happening on stage.

One of my favorite pieces was the opening bit with a dresser from whose drawers arms and legs emerged, preparing, it seemed, for an evening out.

I also loved one where Aurelia stood behind curtain of lace that settled slowly down like snow, knitting; a puppet dog monster with huge teeth appeared suddenly and bit into her leg, unraveling it all the way up to the hip joint; our star then had to frantically knit her limb back together, which she did, finishing her toe with a flourish.

Other charming pieces featured wrestling coats, musical alarm clocks, upside-down worlds, endless scarves, surrealistic tableaus, embodied reflections, and finally, an electric train that ran round and round, right through the belly of Aurelia herself.

Hasty Generalization

One of the more common errors in reasoning and argument that people make is what philosophers call a “hasty generalization” or the “small sample fallacy.” That’s where you base your conclusion about something on insufficient evidence, or more typically, on just a single data point: your own personal experience.

So, for instance, just because you—or make that I—gag at the sound of Kenny G’s saxophone playing, I come to the conclusion that everybody should hate Kenny G (not in itself an unreasonable thing to conclude; point being simple that it’s fallacious to draw that conclusion based purely on my own reaction.)

Or, perhaps more commonly, just because when I do something—say have a couple beers and ride my bike—something else follows—say, I’m still able to ride without hardly being a menace to society or even myself—it’s illegitimate to conclude that others will behave in the same way, and even less legitimate to base decisions about public policy on that data.

But see, I’m doing the very same thing I’m complaining about right here: just because my experience of using my own experience to draw conclusions about other people tends to yield errors, doesn’t mean that’s the case for other people. Maybe most folks are more like most folks so that their experiences more closely mirror the norm.

Nevertheless, I think it’s pretty certain that it’s difficult to draw conclusions about how other people ought to act simply from investigating one’s own actions, or lack thereof.

That said, I still think it’s way past high time for Hillary to withdraw from the Democratic presidential nomination race. And not simply because if I were her, I would have done so long ago. (But of course if I were her, I wouldn’t have, because then I would be her, not me.)

In the end, all these counterfactuals make me very confused; but if they weren’t counterfactual, then, if I wasn’t confused, what would I have to write about?

Just Slow Enough

In the latest issue of the Rivendell Reader, there’s an article about how high-intensity training—what people do for events like the Ironman Triathalon—where you try to go as long as you can at as high a heart-rate as possible, probably isn’t really all that good for you in the long run. The author bases his claim, in part, on an appeal to evolution; he notes that human beings were adapted, as a result of our hunter-gathering lifestyle, to two kinds of activity: long, steady walks across the savannah while hunting, gathering, and migrating during seasonal changes, and quick bursts of speed to avoid tigers and other predators. To buttress his case, he notes a whole slew of world-class marathoners and triathletes who have suffered heart disease, kidney failure, and other ills in the wake of their high-performance careers

His point is that we weren’t designed to go fast for long stretches and to do so requires us to burn way too much glucose (or something like that) and fuel up on far too many carbohydrates to do so, something our bodies weren’t intended for at all.

Makes sense to me, even without the questionable appeal to human nature; I feel like it’s obvious, every time I ride my bike that my body, at least, wasn’t meant to push beyond its limits—or even anywhere all that close to them.

I try to ride just below the speed of sweat, at a pace that I can maintain more or less indefinitely. Any time I find myself breathing very hard—except when I’m climbing—I reckon I’m going too fast.

Yesterday, coming home along the Burke-Gilman at dusk on the Tournesol, it was all I could do to rein in the bike; it kept wanting me to go just a tad more quickly than I wanted; balancing on that fine line between too fast and not fast enough was just right, though; I got home pretty quickly, but could have ridden all night, easy.

Tax Holidaze

Hilary Clinton and John McCain (now there’s a dinner-party duo you probably wouldn’t want to be seated between) have apparently proposed a federal gas tax “holiday” this summer so drivers can save the much-needed one dollar and eighty cents or so per fill-up, just enough to keep your average citizen from teetering off the brink of financial danger into outright economic collapse.

Cooler heads have pointed out the folly of this idea, which would eviscerate the already underfunded federal budget for road and transportation infrastructure repair, and Thomas Friedman, whose praises I generally don’t sing, has continued to beat his sensible drum for raising gas taxes, not lowering them, but by-and-large, and I guess not all that surprisingly, people are actually taking the gas-tax “holiday” proposal seriously, even though, to me, it sounds like something out of a late-night comedy talk show host’s opening monologue.

Presumably, if the plan really takes hold, we’ll be apt to see other such holidays, also strategically scheduled for maximum effectiveness in pandering to the basest and most-self-interested impulses of voters across the nation.

No doubt we’ll see a “sales-tax” holiday during the Christmas season, so people can save a few pennies at the mall while stocking up on plastic and Styrofoam from China for their families’ gifts; and we’ll probably get a “sin tax holiday” at New Year’s so smokers and drinkers can have a few extra pennies to spend on noisemakers for the big day; and certainly, we can look forward to an “income tax holiday” so that as April 15th rolls around, folks can turn their instant refund checks from the check-cashing places into much-needed commodities like fortified wine and department-store bicycles that much more quickly.

And why should we stop there? Why not just have holiday tax holidays? On Christmas, Easter, Independence Day, and Halloween, nobody pays any taxes! On Presidents’ Day, though, we do; pandering to them the way candidates for the job do all year long.

Derby Day

Today is Derby day and the field looks wide open.

The unbeaten colt, Big Brown, is the morning line favorite, but people have their doubts since the last time a horse with so little experience won the Derby, Grover Cleveland (or somebody like that) was in the White House.

Me, being the father of a 10 year-old, can’t possibly bring myself to put money on an animal named Big Brown, so I’m looking elsewhere.

A child of Western Pennyslvania, I was drawn to Cool Coal Man, but his last time out, he finished 9th, and I’m skeptical he’ll do well in such a large field and at this distance.

You’ve got to like the filly, Eight Belles, unbeaten in four starts this year, but I wonder if she’s outclassed in this field; I put five bucks on her to win, anyway.

My pick is Smooth Air; granted he’s not bred for this distance, but no other horse in the race with this much experience is so accustomed to finishing in the money. At 20-1 as of this writing, I’m taking him across the board for 5 bucks. Even if he just shows, I may break even.

As for exotics, I’ve boxed a 2 dollar exacta with Smooth Air, Big Brown, and Pyro and another one with Pyro, Eight Belles, and Colonel John. If either of those hits, I think I’ll be buying dinner for the family.

So far this season, I haven’t had much luck at the online track, but for me, the horse racing season never really starts until after my annual Father’s Day bike ride out to Emerald Downs. This first Saturday in May thing is just for fun; pari-mutual betting in earnest doesn’t really take hold until those long days of summer when I’m out of school and in front of the computer with way too much time on my hands and way too many virtual tracks to make just one little bet at.

Amateur

The word “amateur” has at least two connotations for someone to which it refers: being a lover and being someone who recognizes his status as a doer of things in a manner that pales in comparison to those who do those things with professional expertise; I felt both meanings last evening as I adored the skill with which the Church of the Bicycle Jesus put together with their May Day event, Dead Baby Presents, a film festival/speakeasy that set the bar for bicycle/movie/drinking extravaganzas and, for me, effectively kicked off the season’s pedal-powered festivities in grand style.

Held in Belltown’s underground clubhouse that is also home to the Punk Rock Flea Market, Dead Baby Presents attracted many of the usual suspects and more; it’s always a delight to cycle up to a place where dozens upon dozens of bikes cover a chain link fence like English ivy; inside lots of familiar faces: Alex from 2020, working sound, Messman, fully-recovered from the messenger smackdown, Reverend Phil, holding forth on matters aesthetic, Cara of BCClettes fame, down from Vancouver, all the while Dead Baby Terry and his mates kept proceedings moving smartly along while simultaneously fostering the requisite sense that all could be careening towards disaster at any moment to make for a spectacularly fine time.

I also got to meet Josh of Gurldogg blog, as whipsmart in person as he is online and to conjecture with him the ethics of liberating abandoned bicycles, in particular, this noble Centurion Super Tour I’ve had my eye on all year long as it sits rusting outside Condon Hall at the UW, progressively losing first its front and recently, its rear wheel, too.

And oh, the films were uniformly excellent and curated superbly; I especially enjoyed the bike dance troupe mockumentary, the Trike Messenger, and clever parodies of the Columbia Pictures logo and the Film Rating slide, DB13, for “Bike, Cussing, Drinking, and General Carrying On.”

Last night had all that and I loved it.

All By Myself

This morning, because the car has been acting funny and because in one of the only traditionally gender-specific activities around our house, I’m usually the one to take it in, (another might be flower-arranging; Jen does that), I put my bike on the back of the Focus and drove it to the Ford dealership for some overpriced (but probably necessary) service.

I’m pretty sure this was the first time so far in 2008 that I’ve taken the car for what will be a round-trip all by myself. Every other time I’ve been alone in it, at least one of the legs of the drive has been to pick up Mimi or Jen and even those are a small minority of my times behind the wheel; on most of the occasions I’m in the car, I’m with at least one member of my family, if not both.

I say this only in part to brag—and to some extent, I’m not even sure it’s brag-worthy. Mainly, I propose it as an aspiration of sorts: think of what a difference it would make to our country’s consumption of fossil fuels if lots of us tried to do this. Consider of all the one-person car trips that are taken and how different our roads, environment, and pocketbooks would look if we really tried to minimize them.

Now granted, I’m incredibly lucky: almost everywhere I go—especially when I’m going there myself—I can get to by bike or through a combination of bike and bus. And because I have a racks, panniers, bags, and if I’m dealing with bigger stuff, a trailer, to haul stuff around, I can run nearly all my errands on two wheels.

But I’m not the only one, either; I have a couple other friends—one of whom has three kids—who are also trying not to drive unless they’re driving their families.

None of us always succeed at this goal, but we’re not alone trying.

Albert Hofmann

The Times today reports that Albert Hofmann, the “father of LSD,” “died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland.”

Godspeed Dr. H., and may your hope that one day your “problem child” be treated by modern society in the way that that primitive societies treat psychoactive sacred plants—ingested with care and spiritual intent—come to fruition.

I’ve read Dr. Hofmann’s book, LSD: My Problem Child, and I found it a thoughtful, clear-headed, and somewhat ambivalent reminiscence of his experience as the person who discovered the most powerful “mind-manifesting” drug of the 20th century. It’s a shame that the good doctor’s approach to use of LSD—essentially he advocated its use under controlled conditions of respect for the substance and the person ingesting it—didn’t become the dominant model.

If so, we might be able these days, to take a three-day retreat to some sort of spiritual center in the woods or by the ocean for the opportunity to gaze inward via the unique effects of synthesized extract of the ergot fungus and, as Dr. Hofmann put it, become “aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to experience Dr. Hofmann’s creation first-hand, and indeed, I may share the attitude he expressed in a 2006 interview that having known LSD, one doesn’t need it anymore, but I can’t help feeling there is still something to learn from his discovery, and I’m still enough of a hippie to believe that if we could just get George Bush and his cronies to turn on, the world would be a way better place.

The enduring image for me, as a cyclist, is of Dr. Hofmann on “bicycle day,” April 19, 1943, riding home after experimentally ingesting 250 micrograms of LSD, overwhelmed by visions of radiant nature and feelings of bliss.

I get that all the time on two wheels, LSD or not.

Something to Live For

I had to get to school a little earlier than usual today to be on a panel discussion for UW grad students about the exotic world of community college teaching, so I took the bus, and having nothing else to read, picked up the latest book—in unproofed galley form—by Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro, Something to Live For: Finding Your Way in the Second Half of Life.

And you know what? It’s pretty good; I liked it a lot.

In a slim volume, just over 150 pages, the authors propose a not entirely original thesis: that satisfaction in later life is to be found through a healthy balance between the urge to, as E.B. White put it, “save and savor the world,” exemplified by a wholehearted and authentic willingness to put yourself into all that you do.

But they do so with such a lack of preachiness and with so many simple and often rather lovely stories from their own lives and the shared experiences of friends, family, and colleagues, that you can’t help being drawn into the story and carried along as if a participant on the African safari that functions as a centerpiece to the narrative.

Admittedly, I’m a bit biased, but I found myself getting a little bit choked up at times by some of the more poignant reminiscences and I laughed inwardly if not altogether out loud at a few of the more amusing anecdotes, notably one in which Dave finds himself unable to get down from a massive rock he’s climbed hoping to find some real African adventure and getting much more than he bargained for in the process.

Also, the story that in some ways the entire book builds towards, a somewhat rambling tale of cross-cultural communion between the safari group and a band of Hadza tribesmen led by a 94 year-old leprechaun named Kampala; doing the hokey-pokey and putting your whole self in, that’s what it’s all about.

Ou Sommes Nous?

Jen, Mimi, and I are going to France for a few weeks this summer—our big holiday gift to ourselves and, if the dollar keeps dropping against the Euro, in all likelihood the last chance any of us will ever have to sample the delights of Gallic architecture and culture.
At first, we were hoping to stay with friends, but as soon as we started writing and letting them know we were on our way, none have written back.

Then, for a bit, we were looking into a house swap, but all the French people who want to come to Seattle want to come in August when their country is on vacation, and strange as it may seem, we’re not particularly interested in being in France when all the Francais are gone, so that’s off the table.

Later, for a couple weeks, we were looking into renting an apartment short-term, but it looks like prices are almost comparable with hotels and as long as we’re going to be on vacation, it’s nice to have somebody else to make the bed; and besides, staying in a hotel will give us more opportunities to relate to the locales, whereas if we’re in our own apartment, it’s entirely likely we’ll cocoon and watch videos, just like at home.

So, I’ve been poking around the internet looking for possible accommodations; it’s remarkable to me how sophisticated the whole system has become—a far cry from reading “Let’s Go” and sending letters like we did 20 years ago, and of course, it’s also shocking how expensive rooms are going to be.

When Jen and I lived there in 1988, I thought that someday we’d come back and we’d have plent of money to stay wherever we’d like; eat at all the fancy restaurants, and take taxis everywhere. Ironically, even though we’re way better of today than then, it looks pretty much like we’ll be in the same centime-pinching mode as always.

Vive La France.

Softball

For some years, I was the coach of a softball team at a software company I worked at; we were called the Joysticks, and got written up in the Santa Fe paper as probably the worst team ever in that league—deservedly so: it took us to the 8th game of the season not to get “mercy-ruled,” and in one game we played, the opposing team batted around three times in the first inning, finishing their half of the frame ahead,, 22-0.

Then, I played on the Philosophy Department team at the UW; all the requisite jokes are appropriate: we used to wonder what it really meant to win and, one time, a philosopher who argued that a priori knowledge—that is, knowledge that comes to us without the aid of sensory impressions—had us winning a game that we actually lost by four runs. His point was that you didn’t really need to keep score; you just had to introspect as to which was the better team and determine the winner.

So, I’m used to being on softball teams that suck; consequently, it was great fun today to be a part of the Bill’s Off-Broadway sponsored team, the Chuggers and Sluggers, because even though we got swept in a doubleheader by the Victory Lounge, we remained competitive throughout.

I pitched and didn’t walk a single batter in either game which, as far as I’m concerned, is mainly what it’s all about as a slowpitch softball hurler; I was a complete bust at the plate, though, going something like 0 for 5 with a couple walks and reaching once on an error.

So be it, though; pitchers aren’t supposed to be good hitters. All I ask is that sometime in the next couple months that I manage to drop a line drive over short and figure out how to stretch a single into a double.

Most importantly, nobody got hurt and all the beer got drunk.

Go Chuggers and Sluggers!

Booze Cruise

I went out with my colleagues after work yesterday for a glass of beer which eventually became four and also a shot of Jamieson’s; then, I had to quickly extract myself from the conversation and ride home as fast as I could about 15 miles to pick up the kid from my neighbors who had retrieved her from school, fed her dinner, and watched over her until my return home.

All the booze in my system made my feeble attempts to spin the Tournesol’s cranks relatively painless; but by the same token, the alcohol coursing through my system made me even slower than usual. I found myself grimacing and grunting out loud a lot, exhorting myself in vain to go faster.

Eventually, I just gave up and decided to proceed with due alacrity but without killing myself, a strategy that got me home in plenty of time not to be taking undue advantage of my neighbors’ generosity, but certainly far later than it would have had I not sampled the whiskey.

It is not, all things considered, an entirely unusual experience for me to be riding a bike while I’m inebriated; usually, however, it’s not still light out when I’m doing so, and even more typically, I’m not in any rush to arrive anywhere; that makes drunken riding kind of fun.

Last night, by contrast, I kept thinking of those old photos of Tour de France riders sharing glasses of wine before starting their hill climbs; however, whereas their level of consumption was probably calibrated just so to assuage the pain of scaling Mt. Ventoux or wherever without compromising their riding abilities, I erred, last evening, heavily on the side of pain relief, much to the detriment of any momentum I might have been able to achieve.

Still, I appreciated the adventure and was glad that my new bike is so predictably stable; even though I was practically falling down the whole time, I never fell over.

Expelled

According to Wikipedia, “Godwin's Law…formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990…states: ‘As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.’”

In his recently released cinematic diatribe, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein demonstrates that Godwin’s Law also applies to documentary films, as about halfway through, Stein implies that the target of his polemic, members of the “scientific establishment” who support Darwinian theory, have—at least—an intellectual kinship with Nazi eugenicists, if not, when all is said and done, essentially the same attitude about the value of humans as Hitler himself.

I made the mistake of paying to see the movie rather than sneaking in at the multiplex as others have advised, but since I assigned it for students in my philosophy of religion class to see, I guess it’s just as well I entered it on the up-and-up.

The film had its moments—notably when end credits began to roll—and if it’s really true, as Stein argues, that serious scientists are being unjustly censored by their colleagues, then he has a point, but in any case, to me, his whole schtick is undermined by the following two glaring gaffes.

First, he commits the very same error in reasoning that David Hume pointed out way back in 1750 or so in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: that it’s a mistake to infer anything about any sort of designer of nature from nature itself; just as (I say) we can’t really imagine what the Eameses were like from looking at their ottoman, we can’t conclude anything about God from looking at DNA.

Second, he makes the silly suggestion popularized by Dostoevsky that “without God, anything is permissible.” But that’s true only if things are made impermissible by hellfire and brimstone; if, on the other hand, things are made right or wrong by reference to the here and now, then we can make ethical judgments about all sorts of things—maybe even cheesy documentaries—without God’s help.

Earth Day

I sort of remember the first Earth Day back in 1970; seems to me that my 6th grade class spent a few hours in the afternoon picking up trash in the neighborhood. That was enough to save the planet back in those days; now a kid’s got to invent a hybrid automobile that runs on plastic gimcracks and pet feces to make any kind of dent against environmental destruction.

Back then, the idea of saving the planet seemed sort of quaint, at least in retrospect; in Pittsburgh, where I grew up, efforts to clean up the air, polluted by the effluvia from the dying days of the Pennsylvania steel industry’s golden age, actually worked: by the time I was in high school, you could no longer really smell the rotten-egg stench of burnt sulfur in the spring breeze. You still got amazing sunsets from the magnesium and other chemicals in the air, but the days of really awful air pollution were over.

Problems like that seemed solvable, though; all they had to do was put scrubbers on the smokestacks of the steel mills; that, combined with the closing of all the biggest factories in the region as they headed off to China or wherever, led to huge improvements in the quality of air and water in my old hometown. Nowadays, though, there’s nowhere for the polluters to go; the whole planet is Pittsburgh, if you will, and those sulfur-laden sunsets are all but unavoidable.

It’s ironic, of course, and I’m sure many others have noted this, that there’s just one day a year for the Earth; these days, even Halloween gets the whole weekend and Black History, which everyone realizes is horribly marginalized, has to make due with a mere month.

We used to complain to our parents that there was a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day, but not Kid’s Day; they would respond that “every day is Kid’s Day!”

Why not for the earth, too?

420 Day 08

Because I’m a traditionalist—at least about traditions I like—I rose early this Sunday, April 20th, visited my downstairs vaporium, and got out on my new bicycle before 8:00 to ride a big loop of Seattle’s edges: along Madison Park to the Arboretum, then up through the U-District and across Wallingford to Ballard, over the locks, and around the bike path in Discovery Park before skirting Magnolia and Myrtle Edwards Park, arriving at Pike Place Market just as crowds were showing up; getting tulips from my favorite flower vendor and French pastries and a baguette at Le Panier, then riding home to beat the snow showers for petite dejeuner with Mimi and Jen—exactly the sort of homage to sensuality and appealing visuals appropriate for this special day.

And it occurred to me that one of the things I really like about cycling is that you’re never alone (you’ve always got your bike), but you don’t ever have to stay (all you’ve got to do at any time is just hop on and ride.)

But I also couldn’t help thinking how lucky I am to be able to experience such a lovely morning; most people have lives that are far more serious, I think, than me. I try to console myself with the notion that I do make some effort to give back and I attempt to reign in my greediness when I can, but if that’s not enough, then my only response is to throw myself on the mercy of the court, so be it.

I’m not sure I saw anyone else out marking the day as I did; at one point, though I observed a couple guys enjoying their donuts and coffee with unusual relish, and a group of five hikers near Fort Lawton seemed to be finding the morning light especially smile-inducing, but it’s hard to say given the tint of the rose-colored glasses I donned before leaving my basement workshop with this morning’s traditional lift.

Bike Cleaning Day

I’m not really that anal about the cleanliness of my bikes—not like I am about my desk, for instance, which I like to buff with Windex at least twice weekly (in fact, I just stopped writing for a moment to do so right now)—but I do appreciate a clean drive train and I prefer not to go too long with filthy wheels and brake pads, not merely for aesthetic reasons, but also because of how it makes the rims wear out faster, so today, after what seems like an endless number of consecutive days riding in rain, rain showers, sleet, hail, and mist, I spent a few happy hours cleaning and doing minor tune-ups to every one of my bikes except the tandem, and it was only a couple weeks ago that I did the same for that one.

Now I feel all proud of myself and everything and wish it would stop spitting rain so I could go out riding without messing up any of my good work; but of course, that’s lame; the whole reason I cleaned the bikes up was so I could take them out and to prevent myself from doing so just because they’ll get dirty again is like not wanting to live because you’re afraid you’re someday going to die.

Or something like that.

It does strike me odd, when I think about it, that right after I’ve cleaned something, I’m reluctant to get it messed up again. You’d think that with all that new room for spots and blotches, I’d be more willing to take my tidy shit out into the world.

But it’s pretty uniform: when I put on a fresh pair of jeans, right from the dryer, that last thing I want to do in them is work on my bike; strange, since that’s way they probably got so yucky in the first place.

I therefore resist this strangeness—out I go into the wet, clean bike be damned.

Just A Little Bit Off

The inimitable Jen Dixon has been known to say that “timing is everything.” I myself am not quite so sure, but it’s definitely many things, as yesterday, for example, I just seemed to be slightly out-of-synch in all that I did, even though, in the end, it all turned out fine, if just a little bit off.

So, case in point: when I came upon Surlykat on the University Bridge fussing with a flat tire, instead of just donating a tube to her and proceeding on my way, I probably should have hung out, patched her tube and kept it for myself; that way, spending a few more minutes near the U-District, I might have avoided the drenching cloudburst that hit Belltown ten or fifteen minutes later and I also would have had a spare—if patched—tube to carry along with me.

Or,another: instead of cutting out from the Woodland Park park shelter where riders were firing up barbecues and grilling things, I should have split directly from the QFC earlier; that way, I might have made it to Ballard in time to see my friend Matt play bass in his band Gravy and the Biscuit Rollers rather than just get to witness him dragging his amp to his car after the show.

Or even earlier in the day: in the Medical Ethics class, I probably should have begun with a couple of case studies instead of going directly into the theoretical stuff; that way, students would have had a better idea of why the issue we were taking on was supposed to be of critical interest to health professionals and patients.

Nevertheless, there were a number of times where everything seemed right with the world and I couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else; all of those, as I think back on it now, though, were after I stopped for a safety meeting on my ride home, while pedaling with delight on the new Tournesol.

Words and Pictures

Allegedly, a picture is worth 1000 words, so the three photos of the Tournesol I’m posting here ought to cover almost ten of my blog postings.

I guess that seems about right, but it probably depends on what the pictures are and what the words are.

For instance, Shakespeare’s words compared to a snapshot I’ve taken, would probably come out no worse than even. Certainly the word “perchance” as in “perchance to dream” has got to count for more than that photo I took of my index finger in front of the Space Needle the other day, doesn’t it?

And no doubt there are pictures that are worth way more than merely 1000 of their scribbled counterparts, right? Some of Van Gogh’s pictures run upwards of 50 million bucks, don’t they? Seems to me that would buy a lot of talking.

And I think I heard this week that some guy paid like a million and a half dollars for a film of Marilyn Monroe performing fellatio on an unidentified male; granted, those were moving pictures, but still, if you paid me $1.5 million, I’d be happy to give you as many words as you could stomach.

Anyway, the photos of the bike look great; they were done by Steve Hampsten’s photographer, Michael Matisse, and to me they are definitely artistic enough to do the shutterbug’s namesake artist proud. (Granted I’m biased because I’ve ridden the bike, but suffice it to say that it rides even better than it looks.)

There’s a saying that I read all the time on the internet when people are bragging about some experience or another they had: “pix or it didn’t happen.”

As for me, I don’t really buy that; for me, it’s enough to have a written account; there’s something that makes it even more real for me when it’s in text. And that’s especially true when I’m writing about things in my own life and especially in 327 words.