Meatmachine.info

I haven’t gone for a real bike ride in a few weeks, wish I had the time to do so.

I am still coughing like a cheap lawn-mower set to rabbit. I should be sleeping more, and drinking more OJ.

I am supposed to be taking Wednesdays off from work to give myself one other day besides Sunday to rest and ride and rehearse and relax. Last week I spent a few hours at Paul’s shop, and this coming Wednesday I’m covering for Steve at Pullins. I can’t wait for my next day off.

I’ve got a valentine, and I’m making something nice for them. Something that will perforate their heart.

I bought a ticket to see Modest Mouse when they come to town next week. I’ve loved them since high school, and I can’t even remember the last big act I’ve seen live. About $40 for a ticket doesn’t seem like too much considering how many of their albums I’ve stolen. I hope they play weird older songs, and I hope they are incredibly loud.

I might try to start a band with my neighbor, I really miss being in a band.

I’m going to go to bed now so that when I wake up I’m not tired, at least that’s the plan.

And last, tangentially, Heidi Swift reminds me that suffering should at least be interesting to read about.

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WNYC’s Radiolab is one of my very favorite radio programs, one which I used to hear every week while at work until Northstate Public Radio decided it wasn’t worth keeping in their Saturday morning lineup. Luckily Radiolab has a wonderful blog and podcast. Here’s a short video they recently released to go along with their latest episode.

The rest of the episode, “Yellow Fluff & Other Curious Encounters”, can be found here.

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Whenever I find myself unable to blog regularly, it means I probably need to reevaluate the ways I’ve been wasting my time elsewhere. Until I return, enjoy this cover of La Vie en Rose by Pomplamoose.

My favorite part is the rhythmic hand clapping game.

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Andrew Bird is a phenomenal musician, and watch him dance the whole way through.

via From The Basement.

Additionally, his newest album Noble Beast is available as a free stream from NPR.

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My brother says it’s started snowing in Portland so I looked out the window, and by “window” I mean internet. I saw that it was true. I almost miss all that whiteness.

Which reminded me of all the super sweet white bikes I’ve seen on Flickr recently, all of them hand-built in Oregon.

• First off, a perfectly photographed albino travel/touring rig built by Aaron Hayes of Courage Bicycles.
• Another white touring bike, this one features some really nice matching fenders and is built bySignal Cycles.
• Then there’s this beauty from Pereira Cycles, a slick single speed winter trainer.

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From the second half of Mike Huckabee’s interview with Jon Stewart:

Some choice quotes:

Stewart: “You know, segregation used to be the law until the courts intervened.”

Huckabee: “There’s a big difference between a person being black, and a person practicing a lifestyle”

Stewart: “…religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality, and people that choose, and the protections that we have for religion? We protect religion — and talk about a lifestyle choice, that is absolutely a choice — gay people don’t choose to be gay. At what age did you choose not to be gay?

Stewart: “I think it’s an absolute, it’s a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case, that they deserve the same basic rights as someone else.”

Huckabee: “One of the things that I want to make sure that people understand, that if a person does not necessarily support the idea of changing the definition of marriage, it does not mean that they’re a homophobe, it does not mean that they’re filled with hate and animosity and anger.”

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It’s a strange thing to read George Orwell’s blog.

8.12.38
Two eggs.
In the morning dust-storms, then fairly heavy rain. The afternoon cold & misty, just like England.

Each post has been pulled from Orwell’s diaries and posted just as it was written seventy years ago. It seems these entries were never intended to be read by anyone else, and often record nothing more than simple happenings in Orwell’s life.

6.12.38
Two eggs.
Nights now are distinctly chilly.

Orwell writes about the seasons, about animals and plants, and about numbers of eggs.

29.11.38
One egg.

Alone, the above entry doesn’t really say much. Seen as part of a whole though, these points of information can resemble something like a personal almanac.

In this spirit, I’ve started another blog. It’s a small, simple, and silly thing to do for my own amusement (and possibly yours as well). I’m going to try to record things that I eat, starting tonight.

I will call it eatmachine.

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“Trying to get fast on the cyclocross course is hard enough. Throw in a marriage and two full-time jobs, and you’ve got a whole new level of complexity – one that has forced a lot of people to make some hard choices. … That’s the recipe for Rhonda and Erik and their boy Gus during this year’s cross season…

…While the rest of his competitors are warming up on trainers and taking practice laps and stretching and focusing on themselves in the thorough way of experienced racers, Erik walks the course with Gus in his arms, interrupted frequently by people who admire his boy, want a little advice on the course or their equipment, or just say hello. Gus and Erik play a game called ‘Let’s stick our tongues out.’ … Erik continues his course wandering, cheering when Rhonda races by, and taking a little time to stretch while Gus climbs over his back.

Rhonda’s race goes fine, but not great. She doesn’t spend much time mulling it over, though. While the other women warm down, Rhonda dashes for the Kona tent, pulls off the muddiest and wettest of her clothes and pulls on a few layers of fleece. Just ten meters away, Erik dresses with Gus at his feet. Gel packets tucked into a short. Chunk of cheese stick in Gus’ mouth. Arms into the skinsuit. Put Gus’ hat back on. Stretch a hamstring. Keep Gus from leaving the relatively dry ground under the tent. Pull on some bike shoes. Put Gus’ hat back on, again. Helmet on. Another cheese stick for the boy, and it’s time to pass him to Rhonda.

‘There were several times during the season when I wondered if it’s really worth the effort,’ says Rhonda one evening after Gus is asleep and before she heads downstairs to do an interval workout on the trainer. ‘But we’ve chosen not to do athletics as our sole purpose. We’re just living life and we’re at the stage in our lives when we wanted to have a child. We still enjoy pushing ourselves in races, though.’

Just another fast family in the city of muddy bike riders.”

Words and photos via the fantastic pdxcross, where you can read and see much more.

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“…people who live in absurd places – like construction cranes atop the Burj Dubai, or extremely distant lighthouses, or remote drawbridge operation rooms on the south Chinese coast, or the janitorial supply chambers of inner London high-rises – in order to capture what could be called the new infrastructural domesticity: people who go to sleep at night, and brush their teeth, and shave, and change clothes, and shower, inside jungle radar towers for the French foreign legion, or up above the train tracks of Grand Central Station because their shift starts at 3am and they have to stay close to the job.

How do they decorate these spaces, or personalize them, or make them into recognizable homes?

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In fact, consider this an official book proposal – to Penguin, say: a quick, 210-page look at strange inhabitations, like that guy who lived inside a bridge in Chicago, only not some mindless catalog of quirky stories – like, ahem, that guy who lived inside a bridge in Chicago – but profiles of people with amazingly strange jobs who have to sleep in places no one else would even imagine calling home. Down beneath the streets of Moscow in a subway switching HQ in a little bunkbed. Out on the Distant Early Warning Line of the U.S. Arctic military – where it’s just you, a toothbrush, and the Lord of the Rings on DVD. You dream about forests.

Or perhaps there is a suite of individual employee bedrooms in some South Pacific FedEx re-routing warehouse, where long-haul pilots are required by labor law to sleep for ten hours between flights; they come through twice a year, leaving Robert Ludlum paperbacks behind for themselves to read later.

The micro-tactics of dwelling inside strange but temporary homes.”

Via one of my favorite blogs, BLDGBLOG.

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