Category: Uncategorized

Dear Hipster Bicyclists

Bicycles are a fine mode of transportation, excellent exercise, and an absorbing hobby. As such trends go, the current fashion for bicycling among the children of the rich is laudable. I greet you from my own bike as we pedal along! Ting ting!

However, I do have some nuggets of truth to share with you, in bullet point format:

  • Use a real bicycle. The fete champĂȘtre use of imitation 30-year-old bicycles is painfully precious. Good bicycles with more than three gears are available cheaply on the used market. The esthetic distinction between “retro” and “broke down rusty-ass old” eludes the Mexican gentleman pedaling to work on his 15-year-old Huffy. Conspicious consumption is for tools.
  • Use a helmet. If you manage to survive a severe head injury, you’ll wish you hadn’t.
  • Stop at stop signs. It’s totally uncool to do so. You lose your momentum, it feels way less Easy Rider, and you feel like your mom. However, when you blow through an intersection at full tilt out of my left blind spot as I’m pulling forward, I’ll hit you with my car, changing our lives forever for the worse.
  • Use lights. This is, again, uncool. Big dorky flashing lights on your messenger bag, headline in front, light in rear: christ, it’s like wearing black socks with shorts! Except that you get killed otherwise. Just do it.
  • If you are unwilling to follow rules 2, 3, and 4 above, stop already with the activism. Yes, cars hit bicyclists. It’s awful. Drivers should pay more attention, and better bike lanes and education are necessary. But if you’re gonna head out on Saturday night with no helmet, no lights, and no sense of traffic safety, your Paul Frank Tinkerbell Spanglebutt Special Cruisy Cruiser is gonna get wrapped around a Camry.

Open the drawer, give me the change you said would do me good

Middle class retail is so dead now.

Bob and I went on an expotition yesterday to get him some clothes. Off to Adventure 16 we went! He needed some swim trunks from Patagonia and a jacket and pants thing from Sierra Design that folds up into its own bag.

Because it’s September, the store had no swim trunks. They’re still in the Patagonia catalog, however. We asked if they could order them for us, and they indicated that this might be possible. They all stood there looking uncomfortable; we were the only customers in the store. It was clear that they just wanted us to leave.

One employee did find a jacket (but no pants) of the folds-into-its-own bag line. We again asked if they could be ordered for store delivery and there was another uncomfortable silence with mumbling. The manager had his back to us most of the time and was on the phone otherwise, and fiddling with pieces of paper.

We left. Expotition: failed.

Today we met at Panera and I fired up the laptop. The Patagonia website had the swim trunks he wanted at half price, $18 instead of $36. We got him three pair. The Sierra Designs site had the pants he wanted and referred us to the REI site, where we bought those as well.

The REI site wanted us to go to a store to pick up the stuff, and pointed out it was FREE! shipping this way. So we clicked that button, only to find out that “items for store pickup may have an extended delivery time compared to mail delivery.” Clearly they just wait for your item to show up in the regular weekly shipments and then at some time you get a phone call. Fuck that. We spent the shipping charge for Internet order.

When I was a kid, there were lots of stores. We had department stores, toy stores, specialty hobby stores, hardware stores, discount stores, all kinds! Some of the stores were in malls and others were not. Not all of them were chains.

That’s just gone now. The department stores were eaten by the big box chains. Same with toys and hardware. The discount stores became the big box stores. Everything is a chain.

Now it’s all poor folks or rich folks, no bourgeois. The middle-class shopping experience has disappeared. If you have a shitload of money you can go to Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus or some boutique place like Restoration Hardware and blow five bills on a few things. If not, you’re going to Target or Wal-Mart.

Bob is 60 so he finds this incomprehensible. But he likes the Internet. Click, click, done. He gave me $140 in cash to buy his shit with my laptop and then we had iced tea and bullshitted.

I keep forgetting to post this

Seen a while back while waiting on the freeway for roadside assistance: A large pickup truck, painted on the tailgate in huge letters with:

I’D RATHER BE CUMMIN THAN STROKIN

In or out of context this is a jarring thing to see on the road. I hereby provide context:

The owner of this truck owns a Dodge pickup which uses a Cummins brand diesel engine. He feels strongly that said brand of diesel engine is superior to Ford diesel engines, which are called “Powerstroke.”

I understand the intent of his message. Clearly he wants to indicate that his engine choice implies a sexual choice: he does not wish to masturbate, hence “strokin.”

However, the activities of “cummin” and “strokin” are not exclusive. Aficionados of masturbation will immediately object: Hey! We stroke in order to come! And then we’re cummin!”

Since I was stuck on the shoulder of Interstate 710 at Atlantic/Bandini at the time I didn’t have time to follow this gentleman and point out the contradiction inherent in his signage.

Perhaps he should have said: “I’d prefer to be cummin due to my conquest of a female human than strokin my own male member in order to achieve orgasm on my own, which is humiliating to me, and I feel the same way about my engine choice of Cummins Diesel over Powerstroke Diesel. It is the right choice for diesel engines without a doubt and gives me the same sense of control and desirability that mutually consensual coitus does over masturbatory activity.”

Or maybe he should of just gave the fuck up and not painted his truck with that sign.

Stereotypes seen at grocery store

cake yeah!

Very tall very fat gamer dude with long ponytail

Tough ‘n’ angry monobrow Santa Ana gangbanger with apologetic smiling girlfriend/sister

Two very sunburnt bro-dude gay guys, one of whom was drunk enough to eat a bit of the wrapper of his candy bar while staring at US Magazine on the newsrack

A guy who couldn’t find the beer and then announced that he was having one before he drove home

Doah (Hi Dasan!)