Dear (_____)

Dear cyclist,

Driving a standard shift automobile involves fifty times the life or death and destruction decisions and judgement calls per 20 feet of road than piloting your bicycle.  Sorry I misjudged two of the literally tens of thousands of judgement calls I had to make today on my way home.

To be honest, diving into an intersection the instant it turned red was not a great call on your part either.  At any rate, next time, as someone who rides bicycles too and has been through several dozen mishaps, I would advise that you brush it off instead of standing astride your frame with your middle finger in the air.  Nothing makes things worse than trying to stage a demonstration of "what the hell, man?!  You all saw how innocent I was, right?! Fuck that guy!" at a busy intersection while everyone tries to make a decision or judgement call to wait or push their thousands of pounds of automobile around your tiny moment in a river of tens of thousands more.

Not everyone is trying  to fuck you.

Work and Workarounds

Cued: writing music and word inducing fluids to maybe produce some super fluidity. So lets get through this in one piece, because time is precious and hacks do two takes. I kid. But seriously, there's a lot less to worry about when you know your nose keeps bleeding because you've been snuffling coke. There's a lot more to worry about when your nose keeps bleeding and as far as you know you've kept it clean. So maybe it's just the winter crush I've been sucking into my lungs and things will balance up. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just prone to nose bleeds. Maybe I've just been sniffing too much paint. Maybe I shouldn't keep sleeping at 48 degrees. Maybe I should stop worrying because at the end of the day, if I finish up with as many body parts and organs as I started with, things are pretty much as good as it gets.

Slugging my way through another work day I got to making conversation. There's only so many times you can walk by the people you don't want to talk to or have anything to do without having to say something. As I walked in the manager shook my hand. Both managers did. And I was immediately accosted by a union lifer suggesting I was buddy buddy with management. By itself laughable. Apparently the managers have never shaken hands with him first thing in the morning in all his 34 years. Which really makes me wonder: am I that much better than them? I've done nothing untoward to provoke a positive response from the high ups. I just do my shit and go home. Apparently having that much work ethic puts me at odds with my fellows and in the good graces of the up and ups. Which is hilarious. When you think about how inefficient things can be, how many times people can spin around in a circle to collect a paycheck instead of doing their jobs, it probably doesn't occur to you that having the ability to walk in a straight line could ever be that much of an asset. I laughed, shrugged, and went on doing my shit. I'm not concerned in the slightest. If anything, I know that if I show up I'm already ahead of most of the pack.

Which brings me to another conversation. I was talking to a guy who is apparently the heir apparent or at least the stop gap when managerial shifts are changing. The guy who's supposed to keep the ship righted, but everyone's been on the ship more than long enough to know what they're supposed to do and get it done without any supervision to speak of. He's "that guy" who's been around long enough to know what's up, but is absolutely incapable of leading effectively for any length of time, and so has been thrown a bone so he doesn't realize he is exactly the same for all of his time and would be better served doing something else entirely that pays better. Probably the reason they don't out right promote me (because I will immediately leverage that shit into a better position elsewhere), but anyway...

...I was talking about a coworker whose name I did not know and talked about him being the guy who makes the dirty jokes. To which, I will refer to him here as the fucking mook, the mook responded before I could finish my thought, "ah yes, you are talking about so and so. I'm the one who makes the good clean jokes." I literally had to stop what I was doing to close and rub my eyes out of frustration and disbelief. The jokes he makes are terrible. I mention off hand that time flies, he rejoins with a long diatribe about scientific principles and a crock of other fragments that essentially end two minutes later with the punch line "time can never actually fly." I had to pause to weigh punching his lights out and the satisfaction that would bring versus the satisfaction of having a job and getting a paycheck. Pros and cons floated around for a few silent moments and I shook my head and walked away.

First of all, the fact that he would not understand that his sense of humor is absolutely terrible and steeped in enough dungeons and dragons dice rolling logic to make me want to hang myself on the hour every hour we occupy the same space is tough to deal with, but I do. Can't get paid if I'm dead. Second of all, the mook didn't even let me finish my thought. I paused for maybe five seconds to move some boxes while he stood around whining about how hard work is, citing examples of exertion fractions of what I did on the regular at my other job (holding my tongue so he could feel good about himself, because I like people to feel good around me), and he chimes in about being more valuable to me because he is the "good joke teller." My thought finished with "and the sex jokes are totally hilarious." They are. That's the thing about associating with older people. They've got smut, slut, muck in the rut down right filthy jokes you've never heard before and hearing these jokes in the family oriented brightly lit grocery store instead of a dark dive bar makes them all the more side splitting. Thirdly, few things pet me the wrong way harder than people that think they're funny. If you've got some albums recorded and played comedy central or some night clubs with success, then maybe you can say that. It's one of those things. How are you going to tell me that you are funny to me? That laugh coming out of my mouth is not directed to what you said, it's directed to what everyone else around me said about what you said. Sometimes it's in line, if you are actually funny to us. But if you are not funny at all, there's a real good chance I'm laughing at their heckling more than anything else.

It just makes me laugh most of all though that this mook tries to posture like he knows whats up. I've been on the new job for a week and already they all know I get shit done faster, more efficiently, and with higher fidelity than anyone there right now who is not also a manager. He asks me to do things and I do them, because I could care less who is actually in charge. I just do my eight and go home. The people I respect are the people that do it as well or better than me. He's not one of them. I'm not trying to start anything. We're breaking down pallets of products to carts and everything is being separated out to the finest scale, wasting huge amounts of time. Things are being left on pallets because "they're too heavy" to move. And I'm laughing the whole way. It takes this dude the entire day to shuffle five pallets. I was doing that in 1 and 2/3 hours where I was working before. People are hunching to catch their breath and rest their limbs and I am dumbfound by how weak they are. Dude is taller and heavier than me, but apparently he just wears his clothes well because he's all dough and his helper is made out of lightly whipped fluff. Tell me this isn't the average fitness level of 22 year olds these days. Seriously, if I got into a fight with someone in the backroom, the entire daytime crew couldn't stop me from killing him if they all fought against me together. I'm not saying I'm super human. I'm saying they're about as functional as cardboard cutouts with souls duct taped to them.

Then he keeps asking me if I need a hand with X and Y and I said yes at first because I thought he wanted to be helpful, until I realized he was using me to dodge doing anything actual. Because I work at a relatively high octane he was basically sucking around in my wake to put in face time. So the next time he asked and said "I would offer to give you a hand but the space you're working in is pretty small" (I intentionally walled myself into the pallets a good foot taller than me with no elbow room so I could get shit done without having to deal with bullshitting this idiot with small talk) I said "you don't need to offer me a hand ever, and yes, there's enough space for me and my thoughts and nothing else." Not trying to be rude, but I get blunt when I'm trying to get things done. Nevertheless, the mook follows me out into the aisles and starts touching the stuff I loaded up and I just walk away. If he wants to work my shit that badly then fine. Have at it. One thing I can't tolerate is people nipping at my work and then claiming it was all them when it's time to hand out kudos. Sure I could step up and say "hey he didn't do shit", but I'm much more the sort of person who prefers to let work speak for itself and hope the people up top can make that distinction on their own: "hey so and so doesnt get a damn thing done when person X isn't here too. Maybe it's all person X?"

Does that actually ever happen? I don't know if they ever do, but I guess I'm just soft spoken. Let the work speak. Like if I get an 85 on my final paper DONT FUCKING FAIL ME BECAUSE I MISSED CLASS TOO MANY TIMES YOU FUCKKKK!@#@##%!!@%!@#. Yeah, that TA phd student who wore the skinny jeans and faux hawk in my media studies class back in 2008 is still on the list of people who are going to be strangled to death with my hands if civilization and law and order give out. Maybe not. Maybe just when I have nothing else to do besides dodge the law and balance the karmic checkbook that is still pretty far out of whack. But thats years off (if I win the lottery, dodging the law is expensive) or decades. Depends on how much I actually get done. Let the work speak for itself.

I realized today that my internal conversations were seeping out when I heard someone say "you unconscionable fat bastard" in my voice while I was walking behind someone. Definitely need to restore some volume control there. People shouldn't have to feel awful just for being coincident with me in space and time. That's just not fair to chance and circumstance. Plus it's not like they made me late for something. Not like the woman driving in front of me on a one lane one way road with cars parked on both sides who cruised at seven miles per hour. I was about ready to ride my bike over her back bumper, right over the roof, and down the hood of her car while flipping her double barreled fuck yous. I was about twenty minutes in to a conversation with myself when I reached the conclusion that I had to go take a dump. What I didn't realize was that I said that out loud, in mumbling tones no less, but someone caught enough of it and absolutely shot me the meanest 60 year old sour face ever. I laughed. At how lemon juiced her face looked. She flipped her cart around and strut away. Point taken, though. Need to guard my gates a little tighter. I can't always control what goes on in the compound, but I can at least try to control who and what goes in and out. Work around it, na mean?


///Four Tet - "A Joy" consciousness is noisy

Cycling, Greyhounds, Inherited Vision and Home

Walking home from the Greyhound station downtown I was sincerely struck by the beauty of the river and my new home town. I haven't really felt homesick for a place as much as I feel homesick for Pittsburgh whenever I'm gone for a long time. It's not like I miss the people. I can count the number of people that I see and know on one hand that's gone through a meat grinder and lost two digits. I get homesick for the atmosphere. The lack of pomp and circumstance. Of course there's the college town part of Pittsburgh, but the part plays a lot bigger than it is. I don't miss that scene or the people that frequent it religiously all that much.

Sure it was great to play drinking games and have laughs and dress up on halloween and all that shit. Sure it was great to get anxious on Sunday when you know papers are due and oh so many tests next week and I haven't studied at all but you know you'll do well enough to get a decent grade, but you need something to worry about so you don't feel like a waste of life and loan money, or trust fund money, or whatever the fuck money has gotten you in there. I do miss the drinking games and the general camaraderie largely absent in life after age twenty two when people decide what they really want to do and the doing of that thing does not include meeting you every weekend to exchange war stories and play fighting and choruses of the songs you have in common and hitting on the birds. Everyone grows up eventually and it makes me sad, because my investment schedule definitely does not include the things people my age are supposed to value which puts me at direct odds with what those people want to do. Not by choice. Everyone inherits vision to some degree and I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to inherit a vision of the future that is not worlds apart, but different enough to make common ground a scratch and tumble affair at best. I don't know where to find the people that share my vision, because I spent all of my time with people who didn't share that vision, but shared temporary past times that I thought would last forever.

People aside I get homesick for the fabric of where it is that I am. The smell of it. The starry sky that just won't quit. The bridges and hills and the chopped sidewalks. The bad architecture and the good and the fact that the people there make it work and shut the fuck up about it. The low rent, maybe low brow, of it all. The fact that I don't have to make 20,000 dollars to live a life with amenities and enough security to know that I won't be ass out on the street living out of bus station rest rooms if I don't pull in 32,000 dollars a year, much less 18,000. I miss that I can go do just about anything I want a couple times a month if it's expensive and most everything else I can do at will when I'm there and working.

As I'm walking home and crossing the last bridge across the river to my town I can see the stars sitting in the water like giants blue white lilly pads looking for frogs and it's the calmest I've seen it in a while and, yeah, it made me misty. No neon lights, no car clogged Saturday night streets. Just hills rising on either side dotted with orange street lights and a few windows and an empty bridge. The moon on my shoulder, the river at my feet. It was beautiful. It is beautiful. I could walk out to that bridge every day and it would never get old. The only thing I wanted more was a joint, a cooler with a couple 40s, and a fishing rod to pass the time til sunrise. I love Pittsburgh. She makes me wicked homesick.

The only downside was the Greyhound ride from Philadelphia. I took the fools gold. I grabbed the open seat with a few open seats around it and sure enough a family sat around me. A couple of fat mothers and their snotty kid and baby and dazed and confused husband. Not a problem. I had headphones. So I thought. Immune to crying stinky children being changed in the aisle. The real problem was the extremely portly mother. Nothing against big girls, but if you can't sleep on a red eye without falling over on the person next to you and wedging your purse into my hip and lolling your arms against my ribs, I will have a problem with you.

The worst part wasn't that she baby talked to the baby for two hours. My problem wasn't that the baby kept smacking my arms and kicking my thighs while I tried to make myself as small as possible. My problem wasn't even that she refused to acknoledge that allowing her baby to run rough shod over a complete stranger was probably a bad idea, as I had to continuously repeat aloud "do not strangle them" to keep myself in my seat and facing away. Verbal reminders keep me in line. My problem was that she kept leaning herself on me with enough perfume to hide a skunk in her vagina and have the world none the wiser.

Honestly, I would rather people smelled like people. People stink. It's part of being human. Everybody has their odor. I can deal with it. Hell, I wrestled in highschool. Ever been in a practically air tight, pad walled, wrestling room for three sweaty, teen funked, hours with unwashed knee pads, shoes, singlets and sweats everywhere? Hell, ever been locked in a 90 degree house with elephantine parents spending entire days sweating into a couch with the windows locked tight and you on the top floor where all the heat and stench gathers regardless of what you do? People stink. I would rather smell your feet after a twenty mile run than stomach whatever essence of flower musk from some far off land synthesized in a lab and sprayed on rabbits. It was hard enough to breath. I had to get out on the rest stop and smoke just to get the odor out of my nostrils for ten minutes before diving back into the air freshened nightmare.

Eventually, between the run amok children, the lolling woman leaning me so hard into the wall I thought I would pop through the emergency window like a turd through a clenched bum hours away from a stall, and the perfume I took the passive aggressive route. I read a book. I was the only one on the bus reading. Got the book out and hit that light switch and within an hour the seat next to me was vacant. Had to pat myself on the back for that act of cunning. And then I put the arm rest down for good measure. I can sleep sitting stock still. Doesn't bother me. Luckily enough it bothered them enough to get every last one of them to piss off.

But anyway, wanted to mention cycling. I almost high sided the other day. A low side fall is alright. You take the shortest path from your seat to the ground. Not terrible usually. High siding is a different story. High siding is flipping over the top of your cycle. Not laying it down and going down with it, but hitting something or wrenching it in such a way that you come over the top and land. Hard.

I was coming down a nice winder. Nice tight sweeps in heavy traffic. It's usually not a problem, but I was coming to a tight sidewinder that I flirted with about a dozen times. I pushed it hard and it took it softer on rainy days, but I felt comfortable enough to give the old all or nothing pass. The pace setter. The pass that would define how I judged my future success or failure navigating it in coming months.

Of course there is a fucking minivan charging up my ass. I don't know what it is about drivers. It's like they feel they aren't driving as well as they can unless they can chase down a bicycle as though the bicycle is somehow superior in grip when in fact it is superior in dense traffic patterns and perhaps marginally more nimble, but on open roads all the advantages go to having more contact patches. And an engine. So I take the turn tight. Too tight. I have too much speed and my apex misses the ideal by several feet and I come wide toward the road's shoulder and I can see the early morning gravel from rain wash the night before not yet cleared by a day of traffic and I am coming straight for it with a big white van charging in behind me expecting me to hold the line.

The gravel and sand are two wheels mortal enemy next to ice which usually equals instant low sides, but I see it coming so I'm sliding and correcting and sliding and correcting trying to slow down enough without taking too much of my tires capacity to steer and grip by over braking and as I basically fish tail the curb is coming up and I feel that sick few seconds when you know someone is about to blind side check you straight into the hockey arena boards. As I'm trail braking and correcting I can see my wheels jamming the curb and me flipping into the fence in what would have been the worst accident I've had to date, but I pull it together and recover about six inches out and get up off my saddle and chug with everything I'm worth to keep the van from pasting me.

It sucked. I damn near shat myself with the effort and nerve racking tension. Why do I mention it? In short, certain turns don't care what you're driving or riding. I'm pretty sure part of the reason the van didn't cream me was because she had to slow down to take the bend too and I didn't think about that. The sharpness of it. Had I been riding or driving anything I'm pretty sure the fastest that hairpin could have been taken was probably ten or fifteen miles an hour without aero package grade downforce keeping you glued. And I need to keep that in mind when I'm riding too. I know I can't out maneuver most cars on open sweepers and pins, but I also need to remind myself not to push too hard, because when the turns get tight enough, they can't out maneuver me either. And I guess that's part of the human experience too. When things get tight enough the only thing that matters is how much downforce you can generate, not what drives you.


///Junkie XL - "War" on the road of life there are drivers and there are the driven