BVD duathlon

i kicked off the multi-sport season with the underwear duathlon this weekend. as far as racing goes, i haven’t done anything more complicated than running since worlds last july, so i’m a little out of practise. some people are good enough to bring their A game to the first race of the year; not me.

so i’m flying by the seat of my pants. i didn’t check out the registrants list, so i don’t know my competition. while i know the runs are 5Ks, i have to confirm the bike distance with the woman racking her bike next to mine, and when she informs me it’s 30K, i immediately assume that’s 24 miles. 2 minutes before my wave takes off, i’m still waiting patiently in the porta-john line. it is what it is.

when the race starts, i’m feeling warped, wonky and clunky, like half of me’s in another place. i don’t look at my mile splits when we pass the markers because i’m happy in space and don’t want to come back to earth. details like this i don’t need to know. i don’t need to know my time coming into T1. i know i’m 3rd female, but that’s because a number of people have told me so. i wish they would tell me where i racked my bike, because i need it now and i cannot find it. i dart like a sparrow among the bright toys, narrowly avoiding multiple collisions with more focused racers, and finally spot and alight upon my fuji. off we fly into the wild blue yonder, urged on by gunfire thanks to the National Guard doing practise rounds at Fort Delaware.

we toil up a long gradual climb over the C&D canal and drop down the other side with Tool’s 10,000 Days. it’s time now, my time now, give me my, give me my wings…. my new bike is so swish; my zipps are so fast on the downhill; i feel so melloyello pedaling so softly going so fast…. and then some dude with a tri-spoke and rear disk shoots by me at like 50mph. he’s not even pedaling.

i feel faintly affronted, but rejoin the tool army and zone out for the next 5 miles, until i am passed by -- of all all things -- another chick!! i don’t mind being skooled by dudes on a bike, but i am not at all okay about being passed by a girl, and this one looks scary: super-aero position with a pointy aero helmet, riding a Lightspeed Blade with seatpost cages with straps that swing in the breeze, hypnotically, swing swing wings wings, you’re going home…. she blasts ahead and triggers my one lucid thought of the race: if it took this scary monster 7miles to catch me, then her run must really suck, so if i can maintain contact with her, i might catch her on the second run.

i work all this out in my head, then tackle the question of how many miles remain to be eked out on the bike. roughly, it is 30K minus 7 miles, or 4412042 apples minus 3636366 oranges. i know a K is 6/10 of a mile; i know 10K is 6.4 miles; and i know 5K is 3.1 miles; but matching any of these ratios to 30K requires too much complex dimensional analysis for my disembodied state. i’m completely at a loss until i recall that my trail race last weekend was 15K, which is happily (play along with me here) half of 30K, and i know i ran 9.3 miles last weekend, so THANK GOD i’m riding something like 18 miles, not 24. by the time i work all this out, there are only 2 miles left to ride and Scary Monster is still on the horizon (as a speck, sure, but there nonetheless), so i suck down a gel to celebrate and mentally gird my loins for the run.

when i roll into T2, i am informed Scary Monster is 2 ½ minutes in front of me. that is a big deficit to overcome in 5K. plus, i am lost in the transition zone again. where the fuck are my shoes?? this is getting really old. thankfully we’re racked by number so i’m reduced to counting back from 119 to 131, and there are my shoes. fast Wing-ed shoes.

i take an extra lap around a tree trying to find my way out of the transition zone and giggle because an unsuspecting dude has followed me thinking i know WTF i’m doing, and then we’re on the course again. i pass a bunch of guys and even for a time use one as a shield against the battering headwind on the way out to the turnaround. i see kerri and then sue coming back the other way; kerri flashes me the peace sign and sue grimaces. they aren’t MILES ahead, anyway, and look there’s Scary Monster just rounding the turn as i’m approaching it.

now my skin is prickling because the prey is in sight, and weak. i survey her from behind as i gain ground. she doesn’t look nearly as scary running as she did on the bike. she looks human, like she’s running an 8-min mile, whereas i feel like i’m spinning out a sub-6. [let it be known that i’m barely sub-7, but with my bronchitis-strapped chest it feels like 5:45ish]. when i pass her, she encourages me, “you’re third place. go get ‘em.” i chirp appreciatively, but i haven’t any such noble intentions. when i cross the line i am 100% happy with 3rd place.

does this make me a weak competitor, someone happy with settling? perhaps, but for fuck’s sake people it’s the first race of the season, both kerri and sue finished on the podium at worlds and this day i straddled the line between here and judith-marie and still walked away with 3rd place.

that night i celebrate with a rack of ribs, french fries and i-don’t-remember how many pints of guinness. after 8 months it is good to be racing again.

now, for some anti-biotics.

absurdist friday

animal-flavoured fun in honor of the vonnegut:

[was 50, now a shitload of] animals in casts. the embiggened pic shows this little guy to be in a doctor's office or something. i figure the receptionists who have to deal with shitty insurance companies all day took their frustrations out on him and jury-rigged this preposterous tube made of paper towels, snow fencing and zip-ties. after all the patients leave they probably dangle him over the trashcan and make him shred old records.


moving on, we've got some Pony Play action. alas, the "My Sexy Pony" vid link is broke, but there are some inspiring photos to fire your crafty imaginations.

did you know there are companies purely devoted to serving your Pony Play needs?? look at all these things you can buy! what a fun basement and workshop. these people may live right next door to you! neat!


huzzah, it's the hamster-Powered Paper Shredder! at first i thought there might be a good possibility for a spin-off Hamster-Powered Cat Shredder until i realised the point of this is sustainable living: the hamster works the shredder which provides the bedding for the hamster that works the shredder... ingenious!

oh, and the 2nd comment is the best. evar.



finally, danny lohner and a rabbit.

just because.


play safe this weekend, kids.

N - 1

yesterday afternoon i was enjoying a soul-smoothing ride when my bike began making noises i'd never heard before. there was creaking and grinding, and my pedal strokes began to get rough; and -- here's where i start to get technical and get adam excited -- i thought my bottom bracket might be seizing up, and that's like someone shoving a broomstick in your spokes. you simply can't pedal anymore.

i had a bottom bracket freeze like this before and i got stranded in eastern butt-fuck MD, where the Grand Dragons hang and immolate reliquaries on their front lawns. i ended up taking off my shoes and walking barefoot to a makeshift produce stand where an elderly gent with more generosity than teeth closed his stand to drive me back home in his pickup, where heads of cabbage rolled in the bed.

but although the grinding sound's growing more ominous i can still pedal, so it's not a BB issue. i notice, instead, that my chainstay looks more wobbly than it should, and the reason's pretty apparent: i've ripped it completely away from the seatstay:


i am that much of a beast, you see. so, i need a new road bike. e posits the ideal number of bikes is N+1, where N = the number of bikes you currently have. i'm down with this, but right now i'd settle for N, as long as all my N's function.

oh, and then? - after i crept home at 5mph, blowing out my knees on the watson mill climb because i was afraid to get out of the saddle cos i thought my rear end might explode, the dog and i bricked a run and got hailed and sleeted on for 3 miles.

sometimes i think it'd be easier to be sedentary.

by request:

killing 2 burds with 1 st0n. (hurrr)

fa-fa-fa-fa-fashion

hopefully this will rub carrot-top out of your eyeballs.

i could go for same cake right now.

i love nappy-headed ho's

unless you live under a rock or outside the U.S., you've been exposed to the uproar triggered by don imus's comment about the rutger's women's basketball team.

D and i got in a heated debate about this last night. D thinks imus is a whacked, racist, misogynist nutjob who deserves the drubbing he's receiving in the vox pop.

- that's just stupid - i spat. i'm cranky, sleep-deprived and on the cusp of sick. chills rack my body every so often and i took the afternoon off so i haven't had my PM endorphin fix... and i had a crappy AM swim because i have no lung power right now. i am just ITCHING for a fight, i mean debate. - that's dumb. oh wait, my Tolerance Training says i should phrase that as a question. how could people be so fucking dumb?

- he called the whole team a bunch of nappy-headed ho's. you think that's okay?

- he's don fucking imus. that's his PERSONA. he says shit like that because people listen to him because they expect him to say shit like that.

- he basically called the team a bunch of whores. that's what a ho is. a whore.

- are you that literal? you think the only person you can call "bro" is your brother? ho is just slang -- pejorative slang, sure -- for a woman.

- a ho is a whore. he called the whole team whores.

i throw up my hands.

at the root of this communication chasm is the fact that D works with a bunch of little old ladies who ply him with baked goods, while the group of degenerates i work with includes
-- a boss who answers to fuckchop
-- the GAD who calls himself a faggot
-- an afgangsta who posed with a box-cutter for the end-of-the-year slideshow
-- the earth mother who doesn't mind being called an opium whore
and last of all,
-- loucypher, who yesterday laughed at a moaning man in burger king, then realised the dude had down's syndrome. but what, you think it's not funny anymore then? - he argued - it's still fucking funny.

so i acknowledge that my perspective may be too lax, that i'm encouraging intolerance -- or at least not discouraging it.

i still believe, though, that the uproar triggered is hugely disproportionate to the comment itself. i do have sympathy for the rutgers women, but i also think that in their lives they've endured and persevered over more adversity than a generic, off-hand remark such as imus's.

am i just being naive here?

bleeeeeee!

because imitation (or stealing verbatim) is the sincerest form of flattery...

carrot-top... i'm against him!
[and don't fuck with what i mean by against.]

someone to watch over me

i put another notch on the racing resume this weekend when i traveled to reading, PA for a 15K trail race. i did this race last year and was 1st F; this year i was second. i walked away with a pig trophy and a 2-lb bag of Godiva chocolate. that is the good bling, champs.

oh, and i bled a lot too. i was running a flat, fast section of the trail to the toon of NIN's the good soldier, when without warning i was suddenly airborne. it was pretty cool - said the guy right behind when we were telling tall tales after crossing the line - and so graceful. i thought you hit a tripwire or something because your heels actually kicked up and for a second or two you looked just like Superman.

superman never landed so hard though. i drilled my right knee pretty good and scraped up my left shin, but it wasn’t ‘til i crossed the line that i noticed my right lower leg was commendably bloody. medics are that-a-way - pointed the promoter as he ripped off my number stub.

when i presented at the ambulance, the guys waved me right in. i’m on anticoagulants, so it’s worse than it looks. i mean, it looks worse than it is. was that right? i meant the good one - i explained feebly. Mr. Take-Charge medic didn’t look as relieved by my statement as i’d intended, and he had Junior clean me up while he asked me questions which i addressed rather distractedly after noticing that Junior had a really fine ass, and the day i’m not lucid enough to appreciate a fine ass is the day you should put me down like Old Dixie.

- is that your typical bony structure? - i looked where he pointed and appreciated a lump the size of a large gumdrop at the top of my shin. it was purply-black, too, just like the licorice ones (which are my favorite, by chance).

- no that is not my typical bony structure – i asserted, racking my brain to figure out how Junior might be persuaded to fetch something from the cabinet overhead in front of me.

- i say that because with you being on anti-coagulants, we need to be cognizant of the possibility of a clot escaping from this area – he indicated my gumdrop – and traveling to your lungs. are there gauze pads up there, i wondered, or maybe IV drips. maybe i could ask Junior how big those storage areas are and he would open them one-by-one to show me.

- i had a buddy who died from an embolism caused by something just like this. a paramedic, 34 years old, 2 kids. how far are you from home? are you here alone? - erp?? my attention shifts.

- yes, and an hour and a half away.

- okay, if you feel ANY shortness of breath, don’t play around. you call an ambulance right away, understand?

you know what's really nice? here are these two people taking care of me, me whom they don't know from adam and they're not asking me for a single thing except to take care of myself. for the most part, i work off a Myself Alone MO, so when caring swoops in from left field i feel ambushed and a bit moony.

- i understand.

Junior fashioned a make-shift ice-pack out of a blue latex glove and bound me up so that i could make a relatively unimpeded bee-line to the food table where i stuffed clutches of pink and blue peeps in my mouth until i nearly fainted from a sugar rush.

on the way home i crafted this haiku:
oh peeps i love your
sticky sweetness you make my
vi-lent heart beat fast.

friday, 6:22pm

jesus i need a beer.
or 12.

not-so-good friday

- will you be here tomorrow? - the mayor asked emma yesterday. she shot him down quickly.

- um, no? it's good friday.

- a good day to WORK! - the mayor chortled.

a good day to be grumpy as fuck, is my take on it. the only thing worse than going to work on a holiday is
-- going because you have to be a performing monkey
-- performing for high-profile, uber-duly-diligent prospective client
-- swallowing your suspicion said prospect is just toying with you, as they've done for the past 6 years
-- summoning the enthusiasm to begin performing at 3pm, 'til ...?

who the fuck schedules a meeting at 3pm on good friday?? a company you don't want as a client, that's for sure. penisfuckcuntsuckgash.

i hope you're all at home hiding easter eggs. save me the black jelly beans please.

year zero: listen

it has begun.

love: staying

last july 4th, a local runner fell in the stairwell of her townhouse, suffered a C2 spinal injury and has been in a coma since she was found, hours later, by a friend.

that much is true.

@ kim’s bed

Heya, mom. Yeah, so I’m sorry I didn’t come last week. Alex was sick, he had some kind of stomach flu where shit, sorry I mean stuff, was coming out both ends and Dad wasn’t around and I didn’t want to leave him alone. He’s better now, though. Dad took us to see 300 last night, and it was freakin’ awesome – it’s supposed to be about an ancient battle between the Spartans & Persians, but really it’s like an Ultimate Fighting match with some CGI creatures thrown in. You would have dug it. Dad hated it, of course, and when we got back in the car he yelled at me for tracking mud on the passenger side and Alex didn’t say a thing even though it’s his fault and even Dad could have figured that out if he weren’t so wrapped up in his own… stuff. Anyway, it was cool for him to take us out. And he said we might go to Aspen for Christmas this year. And, um, well it’s spring now, getting warmer, and your daffodils look really nice: the tall yellow ones and the shorter white ones. I know it sounds weird, but they remind me of a picture I have of you – you probably don’t remember cos it was a long time ago, like 10 years when we were all together, camping in Yosemite. We did this long day hike that seemed to go straight up the freakin’ mountain, and you hiked so fast that sometimes I had to run to catch up with you. My pack bounced up on and down on my back and that Nalgene bottle beat the crap out of my kidneys it felt like and I don’t remember anything about the trail, or what we passed, because all I could see was your legs in front of me and the way your calf muscles moved when your foot landed and took off. That was back when I thought you were an X-Man, remember? Like Storm. We finally got to the top, which was all wind-swept rock and a couple scruffy, short trees and you stopped at the last cairn – which was a good thing, cos I was about to freakin’ pass OUT – and when you turned around and saw me, you looked startled, as if you didn’t even know I was there. You looked down at me and there was something in your eyes I had never seen before. It was hard and wild and… oh, something. Do you remember that, Mom? Do you? You were breathing heavy (for an X-man) and you looked at me with those weird, startled eyes. “Wings,” you whispered, or least I think that’s what you said because it was hard to hear you. “Wings.”

We stood there listening to the wind, waiting for Dad and Alex, but the next people up the trail were a couple of Europeans, German maybe? – and you asked if they would take a picture of you and your son, and that’s the picture I’ve got in my desk drawer, under a bunch of back-up CDs nobody will ever need. In it you’re tall and straight, and I’m the knock-kneed, platinum-haired kid with one arm wrapped around your legs. The wind’s blowing your hair back and I can see that your eyes are back to normal, and your smile is your typical picture smile but it’s funny – if I squint my eyes and hold the picture really close, there’s a faint cluster of clouds that almost billows out from your shoulders.

Okay Ma, I gotta go. Alex has soccer practice and Dad says I can drive even more now that the weather’s getting better, so that’s really cool. Maybe I’ll drop Alex off at Ursuline instead, since he plays like a girl anyway. Heh, just jokin’.

Be back next week. I love you, Mom.

assorted whimsy

some random picks from the week:

-- pix from the LCD Soundsystem show in NYC. they sure don't resemble their sound.

-- all our clients are hopped up on the idea of Web 2.0. whatever. this is the best implementation of social networking i've seen so far: the Stick Figures in Peril flickr group.

-- also flickr'd: adam's new 365 days project, which reminds me of christa wolf's just-published One Day a Year: 1960-2000, a diary of 40 years of september 27ths, a project that wolf says was "a preventive measure against forgetting," which i can grok totally.

-- and lest we forget about the whole chocolate jesus thing, here's westolowski's take on art, religion and genitals. he maketh the coca-cola to exiteth my nose and appeareth on my monitors. if you head over there, ask him how he voted in the last presidential election cos i want to know but am afraid to ask.

-- finally, an inside look at the offices of some NYC notables: martha stewart, michael bloomberg, paul rudnick & others. do you see yourself in here?

and, for the more cerebral...

a morality tale:

hard-on 4 hard-core

it's spring. time to ditch the gloomy Radiohead and A Perfect Circle and get back to a little old-skool hardcore punk. get those vesicles pumpin.

from the east coast Agnostic Front's gotta go. to the west coast Black Flag's seminal rise above, from Damaged, their first full-length album and first with rollins. henry rollins, you might know, was just a fan 'til he jumped on stage with them in NYC in '81 and did such a rockup-sockup job that they took him on as their front-man. see, it could happen. i could set fire to the third bar. gotta go to delawhere yeah, delaware. some post-hardcore from boysetsfire: rookie n to DLo post-post-hardcore from Black Light Burns: mesopotamia. earworm fer shur, and how can you resist lyrics like mesopotamia, mesopotamia you fucking give me the creeps you fucking give me the creeps hey, it's wes borland and danny lohner, okay? not the exactly the philosopher kings of rock & roll, but sometimes you need a break from the thoms and maynards.

[mothers dont let your sons grow up to join bands like Skrew, or Angkor Wat, or NIN.]

april fools

- so, were you the butt of any april fools jokes yesterday? - i asked the mayor.

- no, i totally forgot about it 'til last night. google's was pretty good, though.

- how 'bout you, loucypher?

- i woke my wife up and told her the kids were dead. then i did the same thing to ash. "gamgam sarah is dead. so's your mom. here's a tissue. clean yourself up and go back to sleep."

- i love you, you know that don't you.

- you just love my doggy style.

- that too.

not going to du Worlds this year...

… not in short-course anyway. plans/hopes/pipedreams to rock the qualifier down in virginia beach this weekend passed away like so much diarrhea down the crapper when i came down with a stomach flu. i might have been okay to run 5k, ride 30k and run another 5, but there was no way the 5-hour trip down to VA was happening saturday morning.

so i spent the weekend curled on the sofa reading, switching off between sean o’casey’s autobiographical Drums under the Window and dan brown’s Deception Point. in my muddled state, a pretty interesting story emerged: something about the irish republican brotherhood planting a meteorite in the arctic ice shelf, and the head of NASA causing massive protests and rioting when he used the word “shift” in a public address. it made a lot of sense yesterday, anyway.

having done absolutely nothing but inhabit the couch since friday afternoon, i finally roused my lazy bones to attempt a trail run with the dog yesterday afternoon. people are beginning to emerge from their winter lairs and when we popped onto the park lot it was jammed with cars. i stopped to chat with teej, who’d just finished his run; and while we talked, i saw in my peripheral a child beginning to gravitate toward jack. any dog exerts some measure of gravitational pull over a child, and jack’s particularly cute, so i’m on constant alert for children and soft-hearted people in general.

and sure enough, now we’ve got an incoming. here we go.

child toddles closer; father strides forward protectively and establishes his ground, softly.

- what a cute dog. what do you think of the nice dog, jemmy?

jemmy better get the fuck away, is what the nice dog thinks.

both jemmy and his dad are still advancing. i pull jack closer to me, a movement registered by the dad, who for the first time looks at me.

- what a cute dog – he reiterates, then utters my favorite line: he doesn’t bite, does he?

- sometimes - i say cheerfully - and he’s not very good around small children. right on cue jack emits a guttural growl and curls his lips, freezing jemmy and his dad in their tracks. jemmy starts to cry and his dad glares as me, like i’ve just garroted the easter bunny in front of his kid. he grabs jemmy’s hand and jerks him toward the trail, looking back with one withering glance.

- i don’t get it – i said to teej – would they rather i lied, and let their kid get bitten? he shrugged and petted jack, who’d transformed back into dr. jekyll and was looking up with adoring eyes.

- he’s good protection – he said.

i like that reasoning. i feel tons more secure knowing that any would-be attackers under 3-feet will have a divil of a time getting past my dog.

what will the easter bunny bring you?

i'm hoping for a 6-foot, anatomically-correct chocolate jesus. i wonder whether he is hollow or solid. i wish for the latter, but experience has taught me to expect the former.

put your thinking caps on people!!

now, what rhymes with sock??

ooh i know!!

dan le sac vs scroobius pip

my fave comment:

Lektrogrrl (2 days ago)
Love the lyrics, but the music is damn annoying/repetative ("Though shalt not make repetative generic music"). I don't think I'll listen to this ever again. But it has a good message.

nostatus (2 days ago)
That's the whole point. It's called satire you retard.

slouching toward virginia beach

went to track again last night hoping our workout would be something like "nap like a kittycat in the sun ‘til dusk," but fisch dealt us 600s and 300s instead. while we lazily contemplated a warmup, the steeplechaser was finishing up his 40x200m workout, knocking out his fast 200s in the low 30’s and slowing down maybe 10 sec on the backstretch.

he ran 5 miles straight, toggling between 4min and 5:20min mile pace while fisch timed and hen and i gaped. i was drooling out the side of my mouth like that guy who turns into toad in O Brother Where Art Thou; hen was uncharacteristically at a loss for words.

- damn – was the only thing he could come up with.
- he makes it look so easy – i contributed.

you have the steeplechaser run an 8min mile and he looks just like the rest of us mortals, kinda hurky-jerky but bobbingly determined. but you loose the jesses & leash and he soars into fluid flight, tilting into a widening gyre like he was born to be flying at that height, at that speed. at 4 minutes a mile.

snap back to reality, oh there goes gravity

- so, any du’s or tri’s coming up? – MB asked during the warmup we eventually got around to.
- um, yeah. this weekend. du.
- is that the one down in virginia beach?
- yep.
- it’s a qualifier for worlds, isn’t it?
- yep.
- what are the run & bike distances?
- i’m not sure. i got a sharp look for that answer. well, i know it’s short-course – i said feebly. then i rallied. i got a new bike, see, and i’m relying solely on it to get me through this race. bite my lip, squeeze my eyes together, will he bite, will he?

- oh?? what kind of bike? YES!!! and we are off to the races, cos if i don’t know shit about the VA du, i can bore you to tears with tedious facts about my bike.

still, while i rattled off componentry and composites, weight and speeds, i realised that even this diatribe highlighted my half-assed approach to the upcoming season. i still don’t have a bike computer, which is pretty vital for measuring your progress across the course (assuming you know how long it is); i still don’t have a 10-speed cassette for my zipps, and my new bike won’t run off a 9-speed one; and every 15 miles a couple bolts drop out of one of my cranks and i have to stop to find them and screw them back in with little rocks or other stuff i find in the road.

and consider my lack of focused training and the fact that i’ve done just one brick this year. and transitions? let’s not even go there cos i’m getting the fuck negged out. the only transitions i’ve practised are Guinness to Smithwicks to Bushmills with results unpredictable at best.

but the beat goes on…

beautiful night at the track: temps warm enough to keep you limber, with a cool, invigorating breeze on the backstretch. UD’s women’s 4x100 relay team was in the outer lanes practising their handoffs at speed, passing off the baton in a flash of metallic red; and during our recovery intervals we marveled at their turnover.

– i can’t see her feet. is she even wearing shoes? – wondered MB.
- i can’t tell. all i see is a dervish of leg.
- no shoes. how cool would that be - mused Queen T, who maintains a princess & the pea relationship with her shoes – they’d never feel funny or come untied.

the rhapsody, and the reality.

kinda reminds me of Kilroy Was Here

guess i shouldn't have made that crack about maynard and "art is resistance" yesterday:

from: Bureau of Morality - Year 0000 Search
to: finleynine@geemail.com
date: 26 Mar 2007 22:45:25 -0700
subject: YOU HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED AS UN-AMERICAN
mailed-by: thepriceoftreason.net

<TRACE>
<INITIALIZE: DCS1000 v24.5.3>
<SEARCH>
<IDENTIFIED: http://www.iamtryingtobelieve.com>
<IDENTIFIED: http://www.anotherversionofthetruth.com>
<IDENTIFIED: http://www.artisresistance.com>
<ERROR:http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims>
||||| date-time failure |||||
<RESUME SEARCH>
<IDENTIFIED: finleynine@geemail.com>
<END TRACE>

--------------------

ATTENTION!

The Bureau of Morality has identified you as A CONSUMER OF DISSIDENT MATERIAL.

This is a one time warning. Any further attempts to view, consume, or distribute un-american content will result in the loss of citizenship increments and/or the imposition of fines, penalties, or imprisonment.

You have choices. Make the RIGHT ones.

For further information on making good choices, visit http://www.thepriceoftreason.net

--------------------

Bureau of Morality
One Nation Under God

i can't decide whether trent's brilliant or on his way to the nuthatch.

but, you can't get much more american than peyton manning, right?

Snow Patrol in NJ

saw Snow Patrol this weekend in camden. yeah, friggin’ Snow Patrol cos for weeks straight i played the shit out of Eyes Open so call me a big fat gay pussy for seeing them live; i can take it.

i missed the first fluffer band cos i was busy being lost in camden, which is one of the last places on earth you want to be lost in. gary lightbody, the Patrol’s lead man, was razzing us about the crime in camden and he’s from fucking glasgow so you know camden’s got some serious street cred.

i arrived in time to see part of OK Go’s set, which i found a little chaotic cos there were 4 dudes on stage playing in front of a massive screen showing video of a wall-papered man dancing, mannequins in various stages of undress and a lot of other junk. i didn't know where to look; i felt sorry for the drummer who didn't get his own spotlight; and i grew weary of the vocals that were high, nasal and flat, like they graduated from the Coldplay-Radiohead-Death Cab for Vocalists School. summary: love the logo, even if it's for a band called gook; not so wild about the music.

Snow Patrol puts on a solid, if not dazzling, show; and the articulate & animated lightbody quickly established a rapport with the audience by dissing camden. he pulled a volunteer onstage to sing the martha wainwright part of “Set Fire to the Third Bar” and i'm still mega-bummed because had he plucked me out of the crowd and not some chick named amy who didn't even know the damn words to the 2nd verse, i could have been Discovered and vaulted into fame like courtney cox. right now i could be in LA laying down trax with DLo and hangin' out with maynard and them guys, talkin about how art is resistance and all. instead i'm in delaware drinking ass coffee. the world's not fucking fair.

anyhoo, back to camden. with the exception of “The Finish Line,” which kicked off Snow Patrol's encore with each band member adding another layer to the sound as they staggered their entrance back on-stage, the songs sounded pretty much like they do on the CD: v good, but not earth-shattering. but hey, not everyone’s Nails. i’ve been spoilt.

i tell ya, though – it was a little weird being at a PG show, with maw and paw and chilluns in tow. where were the piercings, the tats, the morbid goth-ness and the sea of black? and as far as i could tell, security didn’t have to pull anyone from the pit. i wonder if those guys draw lots for shows, or whether there’re some homeboys who’d rather pull 60 bodies out from a Nails pit than sit through a entire Damien Rice or Snow Patrol show. i’d like to think so, but i’m a romantic at heart.

if you made it this far, here's Treats for EarsnEyes:

-- SP's "The Finish Line," from Eyes Open. if it weren't such an earworm, i'd just lay me down to eternal sleep with this song. i'm done with this, i'm counting to 10...

-- NIN's "eraser," live from the fall of '05. now this is performance: freese lays down the drums; aaron "it's not gonna suck itself" north arrives en scene with sinuous guitar that curls around your guts and pushes them right up to the space behind your eyeballs; reznor chews up a back-up guitar line; and even skank-ass twiggy sounds good on bass. plus, if you haven't been in a pit with a bunch of angry white dudes bawling KILL ME you haven't fucking lived brah.

-- "failing" - obligatory lohner. a little outtake action from Black Light Burns, the brainchild of DLo and wes borland, who used to play dress-up for limp biskit but the photo below wipes away all his black sins, past & future. "failing" didn't make it onto the Cruel Melody album (due to hit the streetz in june) prob bec it just noodles around & goes nowhere, but i like the guitar.

[danny lohner & wes borland]

don't ask me to get you a cup...

last of the snow is giving way to the first ephemerals, and E and i rode in shorts yesterday, a lovely ride after a 4-hour high-tension meeting with a high-maintenance client whose social tourettes is worse than mine. the mayor was running through introductions when i entered the conference room, lured by the presence of REAL coffee. i was struggling to get the REAL coffee out of an alien, impassive machine when the mayor got 'round to me.

- and that's finn, our customer experience director. she'll act as your user advocate, getting in the heads of your customers to figure out how your application should work.

- only, i can't figure out the coffee machine - i said. my back was to her so i didn't see the client's face so she could have been joking when she gibed, THAT'S not a good sign then - but it didn't sound jokey.

i flounced to my seat and sulked while F made me a cup of french roast from a little packet thingie that would surely confound the most practised user experience expert. after 20min, we'd come to an Understanding, though, bonding over an intolerance of bullshit, vapid sales-speak and obsequious toadiers.

and when i finally got out of there, it was spring. and now it's friday.

newest must-have from Apple

...that's just the beginnings of synergy...

why blog?

y, e?

to remember all the things jameson makes me forget.
e-z.

hush.

the Not-Pretend People

last night i returned to the track after almost a year's lay-off to find the same Tuesday Nite Irregulars. i don't think they ever age.

- hi, my name's jim fischer. nice to meet you - quipped coach, then hugged me.
- i'm glad you're back - JG admitted - the humor's been far too sophisticated. we need you to bring it back down to potty level.
- nice bitch slap you gave me when you passed me with 2 to go at CR - sniped hen.
and AJ, rider of the Stealth, commented - heard you got a new bike. mine's still faster.

it felt good to be back with da homies, and i slept like a rock.

on another note, looks like my plot to hone in on the anna nicole fortune may be scuttled should this dude twig to me as one of the Pretend People. i think i dated him, said GAD.

staying, part 1

if it’s true that only the dull are brilliant at breakfast, an axiom is that only the truly dull are brilliant in the grocery store before breakfast on a sunday morning. that’s why i eschew all communication, shop in a fog and just shove my debit card at the zingo’s cashiers when they cheerfully sing out my total.

but then there are the lonelyhearts, the desperate old people that emerge from their bedsits on a sunday morning and i swear just roll prop carts around the aisles for hours, striking up inane conversations with likely-looking victims. then they ditch the carts and go to church, probably, where they have more inane conversations with god.

at the entrance to zingo’s early sunday morning, i found myself trapped behind a large, pear-shaped elderly gentleman. he was wearing an obnoxiously bright DuPont Jeff Gordon jacket -- a DuPont pensioner, maybe, or a big NASCAR fan, or both. he’d just accosted a red-vested manager and was telling him what a great job zingo’s did clearing the parking lot after friday’s ice and snow and how was that possible with all those shopping carts floating around.

move it big guy, some of us got places to go - i thought, because i couldn’t maneuver my cart around his ample hips. when he did move along, he did so ponderously, rocking from side to side like a boat anchored in the bay.

i was searching for fennel when he rolled into the produce area. “jenny was a friend of mine” was playing, and a couple stockboys were nodding their heads in time and chatting.

- you like this music? – Pear Man asked them. they once-overed him, then nodded. – it’s interesting. who is the group? what are they called?

- the killers – one replied. Pear Man was taken aback.

- the killers. imagine that. i do like the bass line, though. i used to play bass. do either of you play instruments? - he moved aside as i excused myself past him, shrinking under his slightly wall-eyed gaze, hoping he wouldn’t say he was getting the band back together and was i in. i fled to the juice aisle, and from then on, whenever i peered down an aisle and spotted his rocking hulk, i’d skip that aisle. i did notice that he’d acquired a cart with a bag of potatoes, ground beef and burger buns.

the next victim i saw was a kid stocking frozen pizzas. he was wearing a bright orange Clemson football jacket, and Pear Man went straight for him like a slavering dog to a meaty bone. serves you right, i thought; you don’t see me wearing a Planned Parenthood tee.

Pear Man launched his sally.

- i like your jacket. – Stockboy smiled at him. a genuine smile.
- thanks. so do i. are you a Clemson fan?
- i went to school there. i didn’t play football, but i went to every game i could. that was back in the days of Gary Barnes. have you heard of him?
- heard of him?? his jerseys are still up in McFadden. he’s a legend, man. you were lucky to see him play.
- he was my roommate freshman year. his mother made wonderful oatmeal cookies.
- no shit. that’s awesome.

Stockboy moved away. making an escape, i thought, but no, just moving to the frozen vegetables.

- was he a cool guy? Barnes? – he asked over his shoulder. Pear Man paused before answering.
- yes, yes he was. he could be very quiet, but when he spoke you knew he had carefully considered whatever he was saying. he’s a judge now, you know.

a well-coiffed, attractive woman approached Pear Man and placed a hand on his shoulder. she indicated the frozen spinach soufflé she was holding.

- do you think Sam and Jody would like this, or just peas & carrots?
- oh that, definitely. Sam’s always the one for spinach.
- good - she said, dropping the box into the cart. - are we done here?
- i think we’re done. – Pear Man agreed.

the block of butter i’d been pretending to study was getting soft around the edges. i stole a glimpse as Pear Man and his wife passed by, and he offered me a serene, if somewhat quizzical, half-smile.

i owe, i owe...

... and that's no fucking joke. i did my taxes this weekend -- well, my tax guy did them because life is too short & precious to spend agonising over a 1040 form -- and i owe the feds 6K and the state of delaware another grand.

it seems that while my salary over the past year has increased, my withholdings have actually decreased so now i'm taking it up the ass from uncle sam. huzzah!

but as i see it, there's no cause for immediate alarm because i've got a host of promising schemes ideas to come up with the money and a month to do it. i can:

-- claim i'm the father of anna nicole's kid (the one that's still alive)
-- sell a kidney
-- kidnap & ransom one of the brangelina kids. maybe i'd get brad in the bargain. and the ducati.
-- play lotto and win
-- marry a rich, dying old guy whose will can be executed before april 15th
-- return all the big-ticket items i've bought this year: the sofa, the TV, the bike. ha ha just kidding!!!!! lol.
-- sell my liver. no scratch that; it's too battered. sell the other kidney.
-- hold up a bank . i'll use chocolate so i don't get in trouble.
-- win super-big in the March Madness Pool
-- learn how to play golf, and get invited to and win the Masters Tournament in augusta, GA. no chix allowed tho, so i'll have to duct-tape the ole mammaries.
-- teach my dog how to talk and go on Oprah

any additional ideas would be much appreciated. i'd even cut you into the profits.

irish drinking songs, and cats

in honor of the wearin' of the green, here's marc gunn & the dubliners' tabby cats singing and mrowing irish drinking songs for cat lovers.

if you're a "wonderfully demented kitty cat fanatic," the Wild Kitty version of The Wild Rover may win you over with its charm and whimsy. you may delight in When Kitty Eyes are Smiling and Lord of the Pounce.

but if you're normal, like me, it's truly fucking horrible and you will want to drive pencils into your ears. and mr. gunn's mood-setting invitation to "imagine for a moment all of the crazy little things your cat does" works me into a murderous lather. crazy little things like that time begheera nearly clawed off my nipple when she took flight across the bed. ha ha funny crazy cat.

D's leaving tomorrow morning to climb in the adirondacks for 3 whole days. ah joy. because i have my own song that i sing the second his tail-lights fade:

outdoor kitties sing this song
doo-dah, doo-dah
outdoor kittes all day long
dum-di-dee-doo-da-day
[to the tune of camptown races]

me and the GaySquad to see the Pogues tonight in philly -- if shane can keep his shit together that is.

APC, black lab & lohner

i believe in runners' highs.

sure, i've read evidence to the contrary, experts dismissing them as simple endorphin spikes that can occur anywhere, during any activity, but i submit there's something special about running, something i've never felt riding or swimming, climbing or skiing, or throwing steak-knives at my cats. the experience that most closely approximates that feeling is listening to music, or reading prose or poetry where, for a couple fleeting moments, all the pieces drop together and everything connects. seraphim hum in the heavens, string theory makes sense, and john lennon's still alive.

i said it was fleeting.

anyway, i had one of those moments this morning, on the treadmill of all places. 15min into an easy 50min run, rolling along at a 7:40min mile pace, i felt the hairs on my arms begin to prickle as the high settled in. my stride seemed effortless and fluid. i was utterly relaxed and felt like i could run forever. i left the Western Family YMCA and went somewhere else. sure the high gradually wore off, dropping me back into a reality of gossipy rattlemouths, out-of-order water fountains and lockerrooms that smell like urine; but it's these runs, the handful a year, that make the others worthwhile.

do non-runners get this feeling? i wish i could bottle and share it, but i can't, so here's some music instead. who invented music? was it some dude just out of the sea who started humming a ditty? but wait, which comes first -- the ditty or the humming of it? fuck if i know.

this is the good shit, champs:

• an acoustic version of APC's 3 libras. i love the violin and i love the way maynard wraps his voice around the line and here i am expecting just a little bit too much from the wounded.



• black lab's weightless, from the new cd passion leaves a trace. speaking of voices, i can only describe paul durham's as langorous, like amy lee's of evanescence. they both fill out out a vocal track like beyonce fills out a pair of sevens.



• finally, because there has to be lohner, here's counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums, DLo's remix of APC's pet. is that the new NIN? - d asked, squinching up his face in distaste. if it turns D off it's probably good stuff. no it's not, but you can feel the little reznor bleeding through. which was lost on him too.

jesus i love music.

obligatory morselness

to counter my verbosity of late, here's some eye candy: an amazing shot by roger federer against andy roddick in the swiss open last year.




i love the way roddick chucks his racquet over the net and how federer returns it with such aplomb. he's got roddick's balls, so i guess he can afford to be magnanimous.

don't surprise me like that

ran into kel this morning at the Y. even at that hour of the day, when vampires aren’t yet nervous, she's cute as a button and scintillatingly engaging, whereas i’m still moving through the sludge of sleep. only the dull are brilliant at breakfast i reminded myself, taking some solace in wilde, who i’m sure was brilliant at every meal.

- how did you feel after sunday? did you know they had you listed as a male at first? – she asked.

- yeah, funny. and i was SORE. i’m STILL sore. how 'bout you?

- i’m not sore at ALL.

- wow. – i was impressed, but that wasn’t the proper response.

- i don't have one ache to complain about, so i SUCK. i guess i just didn’t go hard enough.

personally, i’d be thrilled to have quads that don’t scream every time i descend stairs or lower my ass onto a toilet seat, but runners are quirky people. kel always runs with headphones, for one. fisch prevailed upon her to give them up during track workouts, but she still races with them; therefore i can creep up and sit on her shoulder for 200m, assessing her sitch by the sound of her breathing whilst she’s totally oblivious, and then pass her. at the end she’ll ask me, as she did sunday, where did you come from? -as though i'd dropped down in a meteor shower.

see, if kel had a jukebox in her head like i do, she’d KNOW where i came from, or maybe she wouldn’t let me pass her at all. for the 90min of racing on sunday i was clicked into a perfect circle’s “pet," footfalls in time with counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums. i couldn’t have planned it better. 'course, the jukebox doesn’t take requests, and there’ve been times when i’ve raced to “the littlest worm” and the theme from The Godfather and those races last a fucking eternity.

- hmmm, i don’t think it’s an issue of sucking. maybe your post-race recovery was just really effective.

- no, i think it’s an issue of sucking. you know, i saw fischer afterward and he said, “kel, you looked… emotionally stressed.” and i thought, how do you know that? how can you see that when i’m wearing sunglasses?

- maybe that’s what 20 years of coaching affords ya: the ability to recognise when your runners are stressed. you looked fine to me.

- well thanks -she said glumly as she slipped into the water.

denise tells me she just got engaged, that her doctor man knocked her off her feet by proposing in front of their running club at the annual awards dinner. he set her up to present an award he received, calling on her to announce the plaque she was handing over, a plaque with a strip of tape she had to peel off before reading aloud, “will you marry me.”

don’t ever fucking do that shit to me, unless you seriously want to see emotionally stressed. not in public. IMO that constitutes unreasonable pressure, mental arm-twisting, unless you two’ve discussed it beforehand and all parties come to an understanding that the answer is yes yes a thousand times yes, in which case get a fucking room and have done with it. these public proposals, where we bear witness and become your extended family, really tear my knitting.

but at least my quads don’t feel so sore now.

first race of 2007

so i did my first race of the season on sunday -- the sneezer rodney half-marathon. it was considerably gnarly for no other reasons than my own fucktardery. i haven't been training conscientiously, for one, and then i let a bunch of friends talk me into going rock-climbing the day before. we had a grand time, but my shoulders and traps were burning the next morning. it was like that time i went halibut fishing in alaska the day before the homer half-marathon. if you've never fished for halibut trust me when i say the challenge isn't in catching the fish, it's pulling that fucker up from 300ft. ronan the first mate likened the process to pulling a cadillac up from the ocean floor and after nearly weeping with fatigue pulling up a 23lb specimen i have to agree. [the fact that ronan sniffed disdainfully and pronounced my prize a "chicken halibut" before loosing it back into the sea only added insult to injury.] the next day i could barely lift my arms to pull on my sports bra, and when i ran i looked like those girls that do that goofy irish step-dancing with their arms at their sides.

after i blew out my upper body rock-climbing, we went to the Victory Brew Pub, which produces some great stout: thick with smokey chocolate and a bit of a bite, both in taste & alcohol content. i was okay with a handful of pints, but then somebody suggested shots of absolut red [and the red don't stand for desi(red)] and from thence the evening went rapidly downhill. i know i got home somehow because when the alarm woke me at 6:30 i was in my bed. i like when magical shit like that happens. if you make it home safely when you're twelve-cocked like that there are definitely gods at work.

i was still a little pished when i got up: i pitched from room to room looking for my glasses (on my nose of course) and i forgot what the lights on the espresso machine meant. i tried to center myself with some vinyasa yoga but every downward-facing dog re-introduced my petite fillet dinner. and when i filled out my race entry form i was so woozy and weak that the promoter couldn't read my chicken scratch and filed me as a male.

yet despite all this crapola, the day was actually quite lovely, with plenty of sun that felt so good on winter skin. nothing failed acutely: my hamstring, posterior tib and iliac artery all performed admirably and anymore those are my criteria for a satisfying run. i saw friends and training partners i haven't seen in months, and even though i couldn't remember their names and offered a neanderthal grunt in response, i appreciated them cheering for me. finally, there is nothing like a brisk run for detox.

with the exception of 2 slower miles on the hills, i ran an even pace through the race, with the 2nd half just 10sec slower than the first. i averaged just under a 7min mile to finish with a chip time of 1:29:35 (officially at 1:29:47), 12th out of 363 chicks, cos yes i am one even when i'm shit-faced. i didn't even stick around for the awards; i beelined from the finish line to my car to some V8 and then the sofa where i drooled all over the pillows for about 2 hours.

my body did retaliate yesterday at about 10am when i was visited with explosive diarrhea, the kind that makes you beg off work because NO ONE should bear witness to that. when i got home i raced to the can and released such a blast that the dog began to howl from the kitchen. he howls when the birdsong clock chimes on the hour, and i think he thought i was leading a new call, like that of a striped poofisher.

yes indeed, a very auspicious start to the 2007 racing season. first duathlon -- and qualifier for short-course worlds -- is in 2 weeks. i gotta start training.

dublin, 2007

- so, what did you do in dublin? - asked F.

- what did i do in dublin. well let's see, i went to church (twice); visited 4 museums; browsed 6 bookstores; went to gaol (kilmainham, that is); saw 2 plays; attended the irish blog awards; got wasted, lost and hit by a spitball in the stephens green shopping centre; got sneered at, celebrated, felt up and overcharged for being american; ran through the ringsend wastewater treatment center; got very wet, very cold and very lost; celebrated my birthday with a bunch of strangers and a very cute, earnest german boy straight out of university; and did NOT get shit on by a cat. it was awesome.

- gosh, and to think i'm going to acapulco instead.

sure i'd be in acapulco too if the pints were decent and if i weren't bone-poor right now but they're not, and i am, so it's delaware for me.

meanwhile, here are some more pix, and here's fatmammycat's Tale of Glendalough (which means Cat&Finn of the Many Sorrows in gaeilge).

happy friday and i need some sleep.

jetlag blues

boy it's just great to be back in delaware, where the alarm bleeped at 4:15 so i could stew in chlorine for an hour before beginning the workday by corralling 1868 emails, 1800 of which were spam and 60 were snarky inter-office emails spawned by a typo from our technical staffing manager who's apparently seeking java programmers with particular "skillets". the only email of any interest was from GAD directing my attention to one elephant eating another elephant's poo.

i already miss my irish breakfasts and the thick black coffee from Insomnia and Greene's bookstore (where i scored a first edition of sean o'casey's 3-volume autobiography) and the walk through stephens green on the way into town and the poseur chicks with their BT bags and the Temple Bar pub where you can pee at any time of day and the Dublin Writer's Museum with its lunchtime lectures and cheap, good eats. i even miss the dude begging for spare change under the construction underpass by Grafton street.

i don't miss the congestion, or having to wait at crosswalks for the light to change before crossing the street, but that's a small price to pay for a decent pint of guinness.

you better love americans, you feckin' oirish, cos i did my part to feed the tiger. to wit:


observe the books:

what kind of moron brings a ton of BOOKS back from vacation? the paperbacks weren't so bad, but i did curse the name of o'casey as i lugged his trilogy on my back while circling aimlessly through the economy lot of the Newark airport, searching for a non-descript snow-covered sedan that looked like every other snow-covered vehicle in that lot.

note to self: this is a good reason to buy a Hummer. maybe the only reason.
note to wilmington crack fiends: maybe you can quit stealing my rack, assholes. i used to be able to find my car in the zingo's parking lot, no prob, when i had a bike rack. now, when i can't find find it readily at zingo's, i'm sure as shit not gonna find it in the sea of cars at newark international.
note to newark international: i'd hardly call $105 for parking a week in your lot "economy" parking.
note to FMC: you're my hero. LGK will turn out just fine.