Buddyhead will get you free shit

i learned this morning that this shirt will get you free coffee and a dozen Dunkin Donuts for the price of 6 at the kw hwy DD, compliments of your friendly hardcore counter help. (the tall skinny guy with all the piercings. whist!)

i am in a shitty mood because rudy informed me yesterday afternoon that i've torn my hamstring again -- not as bad as the first time -- and i didn't get much sleep because i started reading The Raw Shark Texts last night and could not stop.

so i'm sleepy and i hate the world, and then some guy gives me a break cos he likes my shirt. here's where i could be all blog-closurely and claim i feel so much better but even with that act of kindness my shit's still torn, my head still throbs and and i still want to be the fuck alone.

The Raw Shark Texts is really good, though: well-written, unusual plotline and unputdownable. recommended by mark danielewski and rightfully so.

cure for draggy booty

the aftermath of the hubbubed memorial day weekend finally hit, and the alarm rang far too early this morning. christ, i could have slept until... 6:30, i'm sure.

drove to the Y listening to off-mixes of Hurt because anything more upbeat would have, well, hurt. shuffled sleepily into the locker room. ann, one of the pool faithful, cocked an eyebrow.

- somebody got a draggy booty?
- nnrrrr draggy bootyyyyyyy.
- so get into the pool. that'll set you right.

ann works with retarded juvees, so i should know fishing for sympathy gets me nowhere, but i still test her now & then.

took a quick birdbath in the shower because there's no way i can corral my hair into a swimcap dry, then stumble through the outer doors to the pool. holy mother of fuck. they've taken the bubble off and our indoor pool is now outdoors. steam rises off the water's surface because as the goosepimples all over my body will attest, the air is a lot colder than the water.

i whinny plaintively as i truck toward my lane. ann is already in the water, doing her lazy long stroke and probably clearing her head in preparation for another 10-hour day at ferris. bernie, another pool regular, slips into the water and commences his sculling backstroke. he winks at me and i bare my teeth in something like a smile. the lifeguard is bundled up in a chunky sweatshirt; she looks tiny inside it. she hunches over a cup of coffee like it's a hot brick.

i sit down on the lane wall, stuff my hair into my cap and situate my goggles, then slide off the wall. i've been out of the water for over a week and it feels wonderful to be back. after a long warmup and some kick and pull, my booty feels less draggy; then alex shows and we do a set of 4x400 free, changing up the pace every 100. that ginormous bowl of haagen dazs i downed last night in FMC's honor last night provides good fuel.

while we swim, the sky lightens. birds sing, and the scent of honeysuckle wafts across the water. ann was right: swimming is such a good way to wake up. it's a right cure for draggy booty.

not convinced? well, check out this collection of Things you CAN'T Do When You're NOT in a Pool.

ADD: Another Damn Du

this weekend i did my 3rd duathlon of the season and although i arrived at the race prepared, felt good, raced smart and had my transitions down pat, i still finished behind a bunch of women who were just stronger, fitter and more talented. i can't compete with women in their twenties anymore. i feel old and slow.

heehee. i won!! again! the "arrived at the race prepared" should have clued you -- please. a minute before the start, i was hustling to re-rack my bike and transition gear, having set up with the tri-geeks (who did the same bike and 2nd run legs, but started with a quarter-mile swim) instead of the duathletes. in my rush to move, my bike and i got tangled up in the caution tape marking the transition zone's perimeter and i thrashed about helplessly while the race director droned unintelligible instructions through a bullhorn. the more i struggled, the more entangled i got, and i felt like a mouse on one of those sticky traps. a hairy-chested grandpa in a speedo finally rescued me.

- oh no – adjured maggie, my closest competition, as i dragged my crap toward the du area – you just stay over there, finn.

i arrived at the start line with enough time to find my teammate flashmeister scandlethigh, he of the legs nicer than mine, and confirm the run and ride distances: SHORT! - 2-mile run, 12-mile bike, 5K run.

- do you ever read the race info before you show up for a race? - hotminster wondercalves asked.

- i read it, but i don't remember it. just like i can't remember your name – i think but don't say.

the field was twice as big as last weekend's – about 55 total – and my competition was slightly stronger, but only somewhat. the heavy hitters must still be recovering from short-course worlds.

i didn't dog the runs like i did last weekend so going into T1 i was approx top-10 overall and the first woman. the triathletes were already on the road, so i had plenty of people to catch. during the bike and 2nd run i passed all the tri women except for louise, who won, but that's no indication of how i'd have fared in the tri because the swim would have set me back about twelve billion years.

my bike leg literally rocked: the moderate crosswind buffeting my ears conjured the thunderolling drumline of tool's Ticks & Leeches, and if you know the song you can appreciate how easy it is to peg out a hard effort when you've got that rumbling in your head & gut.

the second run felt tougher than the first. the day was heating up and my hamstring was beginning to complain; so i ran a comfortably hard pace off the bike, then eased up when i thought my gap would hold. i ended up 7th overall. scarpfenster fleetinghorse was 2nd.

the bonus? -winning in front of your sponsor. i was wiping accelerade and snot off my top tube when roy, the local fuji rep, introduced himself. he congratulated me and asked me how i liked my bike. i love it - i gushed - i love the geometry and the feel of the carbon fiber, and i love fuji for sponsoring us and for unquestioningly replacing the 4-year-old road frame that i tore apart. i was a total whore for roy. i was so stoked on winning that if he'd asked me to plait flowers around my bike and pull it up on the podium to sing You Decorated My Life i would have done it in a heartbeat.

when i was packing up the car, some poor dude made the mistake of asking me how i liked my bike because his wife was trying to decide between fuji and quintana roo, and half an hour later he told me he really had to go because his mom was calling. see, roy? maybe you should consider paying my race entry fees. i'm easy.

cien cervezas por favor

FRIDAY.... the end to a long shit week of 11-hour days with a minimum of sleep and training. no morning swims with alex, no tues nite track, and strictly solo rides. solo rides lack the excitement induced by the group-ride fred who, finding himself ludicrously overgeared on a climb, suddenly crosses over your front wheel and nearly takes you down. solo rides lack the influence of E, who temporarily mutes the soundtrack in my head and wakes me to the things i normally tune out on a ride –- like housing tracts that spring up overnight or the fucktardery of asshole drivers.

case in point: a couple weeks ago E and i were approaching a busy 3-way stop. WE'D stopped, signaled and begun a left-hand turn when an SUV to our right rolled through the stop and turned left directly into us. ranking discretion over valor, i yielded but E neither slowed nor flinched as the SUV's side mirror whickered past his shoulder. as it did, he scolded the driver through the open window.

- you're supposed to STOP! - he barked at the woman inside. i caught a glimpse of a 40-year-old becoming a truculent teenager.

- i did stop!! - she squalled defensively, fully aware that we and the cars stacked behind her would testify otherwise. and E wasn't letting her off easy.

- no you DIDN'T! - he reprimanded her loud and clear. i expected him to whip out a ruler and rap her knuckles.

alone, i would have been satisfied throwing the driver a scathing glance which, along with the possible repercussions of her dumbfuck maneuver, wouldn't have registered at all. but because of E maybe next time through that intersection she'll stop.

tomorrow is another jersey duathlon; competition will be much tougher than last week. i'm putting my faith in rudy and trusting that my medial hamstring will NOT give way like an old frayed rope because the few workouts that i've shoe-horned in this week have been the only things keeping me from combusting before another “ambitious” deadline for a client deliverable. fuck “ambitious.” just be honest and say “impossible, unless you do a shit job, or give up the rest of your life for a while.”

at least there is music.
and Lapples.
Renholders.
E's, D's and F's.
and 3-day weekends. back tues. maybe.

May 24th is....

today is Talk Like Bob Dylan day, or so proclaimeth this website, where you can check out submissions from people who have a whole lot more free time than i do, or maybe they're professional bob dylan imitators.

anyway, this one's snarf-worthy:

the REAL icky thump vid

mmmmmmore mmmmmeatyness and mmmmeg on drummms.

Quite an earwormm too.

Sam Millar has discriminating taste

if you're a fan of crime-noire novels you should check out declan burke's blog, Crime Always Pays. ken bruen gets constant ink there, for one thing. and burke regularly throws a standard question set to oirish noire luminaries and posts their responses to questions like What crime novel would you most like to have written? and Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime? the answers are sometimes illuminating and many times sardonic (those snarky crime writers you know...)

this week he interviews Sam Millar:

Q - The best Irish crime novel is …?
A - Anything by Maeve Binchy. I think all her books are a crime.

HA!
stick a "cunt" in there and he could be Twenty Major.

take a guess...

... who this is. teho will prob nail it straightaway, but i was still clewless even after dudes kick it in at the 2min mark.



mmmmmeaty bass and guitar. hope this is truly representative of the new album (due next mo) cos it's tasty stuff.

reasons number 10-12 for Why I Love Mac

12. because i love the touch, response and sound of the keyboard.

11. because yesterday i trucked the Lapple^TM between desk and conference rooms all day and where there was ethernet, i wired in and where there wasn't, the Lapple auto-reverted to backup wireless. it figured this out on its own because it knows i don't want to dick away my time configuring location-dependent net access.

i had been with windoze for so long i forgot that a good OS makes your life easier without demanding an arcane intimacy with its anatomy. that said, when the moment's right, i should still be able to dim the lights, pour a double jameson, load up some Broken and stick my hands thru the cage of this endless routine. which brings me to #10.

10. OSX i love your sleek and swooshy interface (like the transition between Preview's index sheet and individual shot views; jesus give me a cigarette right now) but i adore your unix brain even more. i love the fact that i can bypass your GUI and root through your innards with a “cd ..” here and an “ls -al” there, grep-ing and pipe-ing and man-ing [because i'm hazy on the “chmod” options and don't want to de-access my drive (more on this shortly)].

- what are you up to?? - D asked bewilderedly as he came down the stairs i was galloping up with splitting smile and lolling tongue like J-dog when he's chasing the B-A-L-L.

- i'm fetching my Unix in a Nutshell book! - i sang happily as i skipped into my office.

i am transported back to nights in grad school, when instead of gathering with my department to engage in FUN i'd spend hours huddled in front of my Mac Classic, dialed into the university's Solaris composer machines and up to my ears in C shell prompts. this is when D flashes me the L-sign because he Loves me so much.

but i digress. the point is that i can't do shit with a c-prompt but a bash shell makes me schoolgirl giggly. thank you OSX.

finally, i can't resist a big fuckyou to windoze, who's rendered most of a 250G hard drive read-only. congratulations – i can't chmod my way out of this one. and unchecking the “read only” option in windoze-properties only has me sit and wait as it chugs through each gig “resetting” permissions that are never truly reset and yet i continue unchecking the box and dumbly waiting like a lobotomised monkey pushing the shock button expecting a banana.
push push push. pzzzzt. pzzzzt. pzzzzt.

there's life beyond vista peeps. can i have a witness...

you make this all go away...

if i can't have nails i shall settle for tool, BRMC and BLB. bring in da joon.

[i find it ridiculous, btw, that the ticketmaster "convenience" charges nearly conveniently exceeded the base price of the black light burns ticket.]

meanwhile please to cross your fingers that this afternoon rudy finds only tight bits in my hamstring, and no tears. xxxNOTEARSxxx.

loucypher on the approaching conclusion of The Sopranos

it's like a super-size soda that's now warm and flat, but you feel like you should finish it because you did pay for it afterall...

delaware rox the barrens

so there ya go. but before you begin formin' misconceived ideas about my studliness, consider that the du field stood at about 20 before we First State people showed. at packet pickup i found hen, looking totally pimp in our new kit and conversing with a similarly-pimped dude.

- hey – i greeted hen.
- 'sup.
- who's he? - i gestured at pimp no.2
- that's [spoonmaster foreigncups]. you met him before, remember? at e-town's? - forkmeister scandleflash didn't seem to mind being discussed in third-person.
- oh. hmm. he has nice legs.
- yes – hen agreed magnanimously. i pursed my lips and thought for a couple long seconds.
- you do too – i finally admitted.
- thank you.

there is no “i” in “team,” you see. and The Team ended up with 3 spots in the top 5 overall: flashmonster boodlesnatch and his carved, shaven legs won, hen took 3rd and i popped in at 5th.

this race was a world of difference from last week's. there was no suffering, i rocked solid on the bike, and running and i got back together after being on a break for a week and a half. i held back on the runs, though, because the hamstring is querulous and i'm not challenging it before i see sir rudy tomorrow. expect bruiseporn, friends.

the soundtrack? the doobie brothers' "black water" and kenny rogers' “she believes in me.” i don't know where this shit comes from, but there have got to be corporeal synapses and once i find them i'm gonna open my skull and carve them out with a melon scooper. replace 'em with a GPS unit so i don't end up in lost in south jersey ever again.

pix from the Griffith Park fire

colin brown's posted on flickr a set of photos that vividly shows the destruction wreaked by the fire in LA's Griffith Park. it's powerful stuff. sorry kids, not all the animals outran the fire.

here're some pics travis keller took before everything went black.

brazenly false advertising

dear columbia tristar,

the DVD cover of your movie The Mother starring daniel craig promotes it as "A Brazenly Sexual Film."

it is not.

there is one scene that is a little hot but that is all. the rest was very mike leigh.

i like mike leigh but that is like giving someone melba toast when they asked for a brownie sundae.

i suggest you speak with your marketing agency about setting false expectations. without Fight Club, my saturday night would have been a total wash.

sincerely,
F

it's thong friday!!

fatcat i see your knob-breasted relic and raise you an ex-NIN bassist, with gimp hood.


hooray for thongs!!
i don't feel like working any more today!!!

pine barrens

tomorrow hen and i represent at a sprint du in the jersey pine barrens, 18,00 acres of which have burned since an air force flare hit the ground still burning during a training exercise on tuesday. ooopsie.

my legs are have been pretty chummed all week, because sometimes i train like a total 'tard. but if Dr M invited you to run with him at tues nite track, i bet you would, even if he was running a 1600m -> 400m ladder at sub-6min mile pace that made your heavy legs even heavier. you would do it because you finally had someone to run with, someone with infectious optimism (not to mention total sponge-worthiness). training, for as much as we do it, is more than training -- it's also life, and it'd be shame to let your vision narrow too much, unless you're training for something huge. and even then you would reconsider your singular focus once M stripped off his shirt.

so hen and i are returning to the site of my very first triathlon (for there's a tri that runs concurrently). 4 years ago, when i was dumb and stubborn, i blithely ignored the fact that it was raining and about 40F; i ignored the woman racking her bike next to mine when she looked up at the dark sky and commented, the people who know how to dress will be the ones who do well today.

i don't know if she dressed and finished well, because i pulled out of the race midway through the bike leg with hypothermia. i sat in a course marshal's lincoln continental with the heat blasting, waiting for all cyclists to clear the course so i could be driven back to the parking lot, where i snuck out with my tail between my legs and my jaw still aching from trying to keep my teeth from chattering too violently.

can't wait to return to the barrens -- that is, if the barrens are still there and not burnt to a cinder.

britney spears is blessed

praying pays off, bitches. look -- britney says i truly helped her. i'm living in some "brighter state" by her side, bein a "light of the world" lookin to that "higher power."

i prayed for paris and jerry falwell too.

want me to pray for you? do you want a pony?

norman mailer is boring

blow up the balloons and load the confetti, champs: after six long weeks i finally finished The Executioner's Song, a "real life novel" about gary gilmore, executed by firing squad in 1977. why would someone commit to this 1000+ page tome of mediocre prose?

i submit these excuses:
-- you should probably read mailer before you die. this goes for stendahl, mann, proust and erica jong.
-- the Song is an example of how an author assembles a cohesive story from hundreds of hours of exhaustive interviews and background research
-- there's some sex, and some violence, for about 6 pages. not the best salacious ratio, but it's something.
-- ummmm, sometimes your library gets shut down for renovation so you feel obliged to address your overflowing “to read” shelves?
-- maybe you're an insomniac??

i know norman mailer can write: dude won a pulitzer prize, and his 3-page afterward to the The Executioner's Song is concise but deft – so why is the bulk of the Song written like this:

Gary was kind of quiet. There was one good reason they got along. Brenda was always gabbing and he was a good listener. They had a lot of fun. Even at that age he was real polite. If you got into trouble, he'd come back and help you out.

bleeeah. for a Song, nothing sings. and most of the book is short paragraphs like the one above, which makes it difficult to develop any complex thought. did mailer consciously choose to write what he heard in the interviews and not what he heard in his head? did he fear that transcribing the head voices would drop the telling of gary's love, murders and execution into melodrama?

whatever. i soldiered through to witness gary's execution and have now moved on to arlene hunt's False Intentions, where the writing is more fun & rewarding.

any mailer apologists out there? did i just pick a misrepresentative work?

possible hire @ quasar's desk

[GAD] he's hired
[GAD] i don’t care what his skills are.. the more eye candy around here, the better
[finn] well so far he doesn't seem fazed by my tourettes or belching, so that's a good thing.
[GAD] he thinks the test is the stuff quasar gave him on the computer, but the real test is sitting next to you for 20 mins.
[finn] just wait 'til the general tso's starts rollin thru ma bowelz...

[stomped by work, part deux]

you know what?? fuck it. i'm just going with chickens.

[stomped by work]

the old folks get some loot

the old people rocked the weekend:

exhibit A:
friday afternoon my mom learns of a 3-mile race the next morning. a fundraiser for a neighborhood park, it's called A Hill of a Race, which offers an idea of the terrain it covers. my mom's not a big fan of hills, unless they're in switzerland or austria and she's hiking up them, but she races, feels great and walks away with a trophy for the first-place 50+ woman.

my mom's 60.

exhibit B:
saturday morning i enter a local 5K for a patented Finn Race Brick, which is where you park at the start line an hour before the race, hop on your bike and ride as far as you can in 40 minutes, then turn around and race back to the start, where you throw the bike in the car and swap shoes. you have to seriously negative-split the ride or else you miss the start of the 5K, so it's great -- if painful -- training.

i wanted to see what would happen if i raced the 5K without worrying about pacing or splits, so i started out fast and didn't look at my mile splits until after the race. so what happened? this happened:
mile 1: 5:59
mile 2: 5:50
mile 3: 6:41
what happens that i crash and burn after 2 miles. but i still won a $50 gift certificate to the local brewery that sponsors the race for finishing 1st female, 12th overall.

i'm 39.

exhibit C:
after the race i met an older lady named peggy for whom this 5K marked a return to racing after a 15-year layoff. her son had inspired her to start running when she was 45. yeah, 45. i was always one of these people who would rather run than walk - she said. when i saved a place for her in the post-race buffet line while she fetched a sweatshirt from her car, i didn't fret even though i was ravenous. i knew i wouldn't have to wait long - i told her when she returned even quicker than i thought - because i know you ran to your car.

peggy was thrilled because she finished in 37:14, 5 minutes faster than she'd run in training; and she netted a gift certificate for winning her age group. you know it's really impressive that you won overall - she told me - even though you're in an older age group. i took that as the compliment it was intended to be.

peggy is 72.

exhibit D:
beckyY, the pig-tailed waif who's a fixture at local 5Ks, finished the race after persevering through cramps in both calves. it was a beautiful day - she said to me and peggy afterward - and i can't imagine anywhere i would rather be than running with you all.

granted, what becky calls "running" we might term a shuffle or energetic creep, because it took her over an hour to complete the course. but she still walked away with an age group prize: one of the much sought-after growlers. here's becky with her growler:


can you tell she's 87?

wanted: Tool fan

woke up at 2am with LCD Soundsystem's north american scum banging around in my head. i wish there were an "off" switch for the musical jukebox in my head. barring that, i wish it offered up more variety. it would be nice, for instance, to wake up with mozart's serenade for winds or something.

stopped by the bike shop yesterday to pick up my new road bike, the one fuji offered up as a replacement for the one i done tore up. it's brushed silver, red & black, and it's upgraded to 10-speed.


2 brand new bikes and a Lapple^TM. jesus, can life get any better?? - wellllll, i could be seeing Tool in a month. oh wait, i am!! shaZAM. but since all my friends are from Planet Ghey, where they listen to Bright Eyes, Fall Out Boy and Death Cab for Cutie all day long, i can't find anyone who wants my extra ticket.

i figure, though, that rog at the bike shop is a shoe-in, based on the fact that he's hooked me up with APC and Tool bootlegs; he's got tats over half his body and is attacking the remaining half with a planned, phased offensive; and he's a veteran of white-trash mahem like Am-Jam. shoe-in, right?

-- hey rog, you wanna go see Tool in AC in june?
-- DUDE. when?
-- 2nd saturday of the month. like the 9th or 10th i think.
-- seriously? i'm gonna be in AC that weekend anyway. big tattoo conference. what, you can't go?
-- i have an extra ticket. floor, 19th row.
-- aw, no way. that's too close for me.

i stare at rog and, like always, have to struggle against the temptation to pass any object at hand through his earlobes. he's got lobe-rings that are about the diameter of your index finger, and every time i see him i want to stick stuff through those holes. i have the same fascination with F's Nike Shox running shoes. holes need filling. it's just a fact of nature.

-- too CLOSE?!? what are you, fucking 60? - he shakes his head.
-- my days of that shit are OVER.

the argument that he'll still let Bubba the Tat Artist stick him in the ribcage with needles for 20 hours goes unsaid. but he did get me to thinking. should i just grow up and start buying seats in the stands or, better yet, cultivate a taste for lucinda williams and shawn colvin?

i will think about it.
meanwhile, u want to see Tool u let me kno. finleynineatgmail.com

have a good weekend and happy MOTHER's day kath & AH.

gary & sting as gay lovers...

... or, Every Car You Chase.

love: leaving

@ Kim's bed

Behind the veil of her Condition she hears Tad. He's telling her about a movie he, Alex and Geoff saw, something about Spartans and Persians and CGI creatures, and how Geoff hated it. Kim's chest opens a little; she feels as though she's back in the old world. Of course he hated it -- Geoff's cinematic tastes ran more along the lines of Bergman, Kieslowski and Lynch; anything that smacked of bourgeois, post-production excess was sure to invoke his ire. On the first awkward date, the one where you eagerly define yourselves in likes and dislikes, this passionate young man with the choirboy eyes insisted Eraserhead was the best movie ever made, that Kim really didn't know what she was missing. So on the fourth date they rented Eraserhead, and it was truly awful. But since it was a test of her suitability, and she really did like this aspiring artist with the brooding eyes, god forgive her, she effused about the movie's objective correlative and bleak existentialism, dredging up remnants of a college Lit Crit class and acing Geoff's test. And that set the precedent, of course; she could never tell Geoff what she really thought of David Lynch without rewriting her husband's entire definition of her.

Lost in the past, she'd realised she'd neglected Tad and mentally castigated herself. She wished she didn't fade and out like this because every word that dropped from his lips was a feast to her, for it opened up a host of memories she could feed off until the next time he appeared at her bedside. Did he know how much his visits meant to her? Why else would he keep coming?

He was describing a hike they did in Yosemite, how long ago was that, oh he couldn't have been more than what, eight? God he was incredible taking on that mountain – Half-Dome it must have been. She thought she was alone, battling demons every step up that mountain, seeing her past in black and white; but when she turned at the last cairn wanting to throw herself off Half-Dome's rocky profile, she instead found her eldest son staring up at her. God he was incredible. He was her one good thing... and Alex too. If nothing else, she could at least say I made these kids. Geoff and I could put something together at least.

She never pictured this. She never pictured herself lying in a hospice bed, groomed and cared for by a phalanx of aides, at the mercy of others, relying on their sense of duty and pity. She never pictured a son who visited all the time, and another who existed purely though his brother's narratives. She never pictured being forty; she never pictured motherhood. That was Geoff's fault. He had to let the propane run down... typical of her husband, who was so good at engaging at the moment of an idea's conception – honey, we need a gas grill, it'll make dinners so easy – but then melting away when the glamorous idea became dull reality. So of course the propane tank ran empty while she was grilling ribs, so she loaded the tank in the tiny trunk of her Miata, cursing Geoff when paint chips flaked off the tank to drift around her trunk.

She drove to the Texaco, where the tattooed teenager behind the counter summoned his manager to the filler tank. “Elle” read the name tag beneath a deeply lined face that seemed much older than the arms that took the tank from Kim. Elle hefted the tank experimentally.

-- Still a little bit in here. - but not enough to grill ribs, thought Kim.
-- Oh really? How do you know?
-- By weight.
Unable to argue, Kim just nodded, then stepped around the filler tank so she had a clear view of her car and its wide-open trunk while Elle began the refill.
-- Gotta be careful when you fill these things because the propane can escape if you top off, and you don't want want that smell all over you, do you.
-- No – Kim agreed – you probably don't - then craned her head for a view of the Miata and its popped trunk.
-- You got a baby in the car?
-- Excuse me?
-- You got a BABY in the car.
Kim laughed; what a silly notion. Me? With a baby? Elle stared at her, awaiting an answer.
-- Um, no. A baby? No.
Elle stood motionless while propane whirred into the tank, and Kim felt as though she must justify herself.
-- No baby. Just, er, my car's wide open. And it's kind of my baby, you know?

Elle looked as though she didn't know, and Kim felt a chasm open in front of her. The undeniable fact was that she wasn't 17 anymore, and having a baby in the back seat was perfectly natural in Elle's eyes. My car's my baby? What was I thinking?

Kim drove home in a daze and found a message from Edward, who'd dropped off her radar a year ago. Hey so I had this dream last night, that you have twins now, twins with your sun-catching blonde hair, and their names are Thaddeus and Karl. So, um, confirm or deny, since my dreams have a way of creeping into reality. Be well. Kim was overcome, weakened by coincidence and fear of a growing distance in her marriage; and that night she made a point of staying awake until Geoff finally came home and she's certain that's when Tad came onto the scene.

He's gone now; Kim doesn't remember when he left. What did he say about Half-Dome, she thinks. Goddammit I wish I could stay present. She wars against herself for ten minutes then drifts away.

reason #603 for Why I Love Mac

shhhhh.... my mac is sleeping. know how i know? cos the snooze light is softly pulsing.

my mac is snoring.

<3     <3     <3

and here's why my happiness is good for business, and why Inscrutable Chinese Man is shooting himself in the foot every time he allocates another crappy e-machine POS:

In multiple studies, Isen, a professor of psychology and S. C. Johnson Professor of Marketing at Cornell University, made subjects feel happy through a number of means, including gifts of candy and words or pictures with pleasant associations. The subjects were then asked to perform tasks that measure creativity; over the course of 20 years, Isen and her colleagues regularly found that subjects exhibited much more creativity when they were in a good mood.

And conversely, Norman says, when you're in a bad mood, when you're tense, you tend to be less creative--and less patient with the tools you're using. "Someone in a positive mood," Norman says, "faced with something that doesn't work, might say, 'Oh, I'll get around it.' But someone in a negative mood will get frustrated and have a 'Damn it' moment." That's where design comes in. "Studies tie attractive design to positive attitude," he says.

read more about the beauty of apple here:
The Secret of Apple Design
The inside (sort of) story of why Apple's industrial-design machine has been so successful.

spring

like love, spring comes quickly: one day you run down the same old trail to find it's now green and cloistered. the trilliums have popped down by the pond:


there's vibrant columbine in the bed by the kitchen door:


and the jack-in-the-pulpits for the most part have sprung from their phallic tubes, but here's a late bloomer:


the women's locker-room at the YMCA is undergoing spring cleaning. this morning i walked in to find half of the floor spotless, brand sparkly new, as though someone had taken a massive pressure washer to that area, leaving an unfinished half as contrast so we could appreciate the effort. and i was sure appreciative.

-- wow, what a difference a little cleaning makes – i noted to Fashionista Blondie, who shames me with her knee-high, pointy-toed boots and pencil skirts while i’m shucking my cargo pants and Blunnies.

-- i was just thinking about what we’ve been walking on all this time – she says, tight-lipped and frowny. poor woman. her boots must pinch her toes real bad.

we take it for granted, spring, but what if you knew this one were your last?

reason #602 for Why I Hate Windows

mr twisty strikes again, sends to me this Cry from the Wooly Windoze Wilderness:

Oh, and now you won’t be worrying about shit like this…context is “I want to know where I should store templates on my hard drive”

Download a template

The first time that you download a template, you see a dialog box explaining that this feature is available only to people with genuine Microsoft Office. After we verify that your software is legitimate and fully supported by Microsoft, the template is downloaded, and you never see more messages about genuine software again. Subsequent template downloads just happen immediately.

Note We check the validity of the software every time you download a template. However, you won't see the dialog box if you select the Don't show this message again check box or unless we determine that the software isn't genuine.

If you do not have genuine Microsoft Office, another dialog box tells you which Microsoft Office programs that you have installed are not genuine. You also see the list of the nongenuine programs. You can either close the dialog box or click a link to get more information. The link to more information takes you to a Web page on the Microsoft Web site that provides you with additional details about your status and lists the steps to take to make your software legitimate and fully supported. If you do not have genuine Microsoft Office, you cannot download templates.

Fuck genuine Microsoft Office – where do downloaded templates go?

me? i'm out of the office all day doing stakeholder interviews.
with my MacBook Pro.
huzzah.

NJD sprint tri

in the spirit of full disclosure i must state that i'm writing this outside, at the picnic table, while the dog worries his ball, the birds twitter and schools of harleys rumble by. ah, serenity. i love my mac.

today's tri was a long sprint: ~0.6mi swim, ~23mi bike and 4mi run. the first leg was utterly chaotic: it was an in-water start, but i never heard a starting gun or nuthin' – suddenly everyone was windmilling toward the first buoy. i drank a lot of mucky water, had to sight every 4 strokes, and never settled into a bilateral breathing rhythm. it was just a mad, mad dash, and by the time i felt like i was doing more swimming than fighting, the swimming part was done.

i then clocked one of the longest transitions in sprint tri history. an epic struggle to remove my wetsuit is par-for-the-course with me, but here, try this: get really wet, and chilly around the edges so your fingers don't work as expected, then try to pull on a pair of double-ply coolmax socks and when you're successful after a half-dozen tries, then try to yank on a pair of armwarmers. now you may understand why i had such a in-depth, spirited conversation with a 62-year-old gentleman 3 bikes down. i'm the only one in my age group, so i'm racing against myself! - he concluded cheerfully, providing me that final kick-in-the-arse i needed to get myself out of transition.

the bike leg was very windy, so when you'd round a corner and a wall of wind would take you down from 26mph to 12, you just had to be stoic. at least if you were on a stretch straight into the wind you wouldn't have to worry about the gusty cross-winds that'd just as soon see you in a cornfield. i got as small and tucked as i could, which meant my vision was fore-shortened so that obstacles came up on me rather quickly. and what's your gut response when a small obstacle suddenly presents itself? why, to run right over it, of course! i must have run over a dozen monkey balls... me, who has to dismount to get my bike through a 5-foot gap in the park's gate –- yet give me a wide-open road and a square-inch monkey ball and i will roll right over that little prickly thing with unerring precision. i rode over a variety of rocks, some sizable sticks and something that looked like a dead pheasant but i might have hallucinated that.

with all the Pantera i had pummeling on the drive up, wouldn't you think i'd have something like “rise” or “by demons be driven” looping in my head during my tour of the NJ flats?? but no, i've got the fucking Pet Shop Boys and “love comes quickly.” WTF??

anyway, i pass a lot of people on the bike, because most of the world can swim faster than i can. another long transition prepares me (ha!) for the run, which took FOREVER last year. the run course is just out & back, on wide country roads, totally exposed to wind, sun and farmers on their tractors. there's no cat & mousing, no hunting of the prey; it's just run down anyone you can run down. snooooooozers.

i finished 5th female overall, not much of an improvement over last year's 6th, when i felt absolutely horrid, but bodies are funny. sometimes you feel god-awful, and you do great; sometimes the opposite occurs. like last year, though, the highlight of the race was hanging out with joss afterward. she's encouraging her swim team to do a kids' triathlon in june and described to me a parent's anxiety about the idea.
-- what if emily falls? - her mom asked joss. like many swimmers, emily's grace in the water doesn't carry over to running or cycling.
-- well, then she'll get back up – which pretty much sums up joss's attitude and the reason why i wish our schedules meshed more.

did i mention i'm writing this outside? in the sun? if i had such a thing as net access i could post it now, but that would too, too... 90s.


UPDATE: official results say i was 4th F.
meb someone had a sex-change mid-race?

black flab motorcycle lights

if only we didn't have to work.
if only i weren't trapped in this office.
if only i were outside riding my bike.
if.
if.
if.
but at least there is music, and i've been looping black-ly all day: black flag, black lab, black light burns and black rebel motorcycle club. BMRC's Baby 81 is some earwormy shit yo. try some "american X", or download it.

FWIW, 1st tri of the year is on sunday. last year the water was so squalid i almost threw up during the swim, the bike loop i swear was a headwind the whole time, and the run was a fucking death march. it was easily my worst race of the year, way worse than doing worlds with a torn hammie.

it would be nice to wear our new kits -->
but after one use, the chamois in the multi-sport shorts (@ left) has pulled halfway away from the shorts after i made the mistake of pulling a seemingly innocuous thread. shoddy italian craftsmanship. that's why i ride shimano, not campy.

have a good weekend, all.

My girl friend asks me which one I like better
Six pack!
I hope the answer won't upset her
Six pack!

and on the fourth day...

i just finished tweaking this afternoon's Performing Monkey presentation in OpenOffice Impress on my Lapple^TM, instead of grinding through PPT on my e-machine. intermittent burbles of triumph and joy may have erupted,
causing loucypher to moan
how long are we going to have to listen to you orgasm over your mac? get a ROOM.

and prompting mr. twisty to email
Reason #503 for Why I Hate Windows…
It likes to rearrange my Desktop icons, just to fuck with me. Where’s my shortcut to the TCC folder? Why, it’s where it was 2 months ago. Oh Windows, you crazy kid. You’d switch up Helen Keller’s furniture, just for shits and giggles.

i need a case, cover or sleeve now. any recommendations? does someone make a version of the ipod & nano clear-skin cases for a 17" MacBook Pro?
of course, there's always this.
halliburton. Z series. Gun Metal.
unalloyed sex appeal. safe enough for eye-raq. w0rd.

Lapple^TM is a licensed trademark of FoxMammyCat/Paramour, i think.

yesterday was Loyalty Day

i sincerely hope that yesterday my american readers properly observed Loyalty Day, per this proclamation Our Glorious Leader issued on monday:

Loyalty Day, 2007
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

America was founded by patriots who risked their lives to bring freedom to our Nation. Today, our citizens are grateful for our Founding Fathers and confident in the principles that lead us forward. On Loyalty Day, we celebrate the blessings of freedom and remember our responsibility to continue our legacy of liberty.

[bunch of jingojangojungo stuff snipped]

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2007, as Loyalty Day. I call upon the people of the United States to participate in this national observance and to display the flag of the United States on Loyalty Day as a symbol of pride in our Nation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

GEORGE W. BUSH

P.S.
and to celebrate, ima gonna veto that motherfuckin House spending bill.

DAMN it feels good to be a gangsta.

a public service announcement

the morning commute stuck me behind a DART bus with this billboard on the back. obviously wilmington is getting serious: "clen wotrr" wasn't just an Earth Day campaign:


i love the accompanying illustration by 11th-grader david winston:


i imagine poor david's still in therapy after he witnessed his best friend bugsy get washed down a sewer drain after that tragic dumpster explosion. i wonder if the "winston learning academy" designation means david is home-schooled. that might explain why he's a little off. regardless, remember that clean water begins with you!! so keep your damn dog litter, extra strength soap, fertiliser and home-schooled kids out of the storm drains.

cats arse sharpener

Mother's Day is just around the corner!

Introducing the Cat's Arse Sharpener. Sigh. There are no words that readily spring to mind to soften the blow. It's a cat, you stick your pencil in its derrière, it meows, and it sharpens your pencil.

purr-fect.

mac: because life is too short for shitty UI

i am in love. witness the simple little things:
-- the start-up chime. baby i am BACK.
-- the power cord snaps magnetically into the right socket
-- autodetects & instant connections to wifi networks and available printers
-- the finder issues split-second search results
-- with insufficient ambient light, the keyboard auto-backlights
-- the apple glow, o the glow. that is why i can't disguise it, kath. it'd be akin to dressing a jaguar like a ford escort, thus perpetrating a universal Wrong.
-- Hot Balls. you heard right. according to the GarageBand layered audio file, NIN's Capital G is a mix of Hot Balls, Drones, Crowd Greed and Shaker tracks, in addition to the standard Vocals, Bass, Drums, etc.

23 audio tracks comprise that song, compared with 10 on Me I'm Not. thanks,teho, and props to trent for releasing the layered files "as a reward for stealing Year Zero," and making them available via "torrents you certainly know how to use." heh.

it makes joy.