I started writing this on election day. I edited it days later. Don’t expect a consistent tense. I vote. It’s never made a difference. Whatever. I’ve done worse things with ten minutes. I even took one of those stickers to be polite. I wish they gave you a cookie instead of a sticker. Oooh, you voted, whaddaya want, a cookie? Yes, I always want a cookie. In Philly there’s a challenger to the reformist DA who promised he wouldn’t run as a Republican if he lost the primary but then he lost the primary and is running as a Republican. Liar liar pants on fire. There’s also a billionaire-backed plan to not retain a few state supreme court justices who are not MAGA enough for the fascists. They’ve spent unimaginable sums of money running ads and sending out mailers begging people to vote no to retaining these “woke” justices. (The fascists lost both of these. Cool! OK, back to before the elections:) A two hour bus ride North of here (or a one and a half hour choo choo train ride or a nine hour bicycle ride) the people of New York will vote against Trump-endorsed sexual predator Andrew Cuomo. Happy Mamdani day to all of you. (Update: Mamdani won. It was by all accounts a happy Mamdani day.)
…
I started reading Project 2025’s Mandate For Leadership document. It’s bleak. I wish my political allies had a detailed 920 page document about specific policies and goals to create the world we want to live in. There are truly evil people running this country who call evil good and good evil.
You can read their wicked plans here: It’s bad!
I joked recently that I was going to get a chest tattoo that said “FAITH FAMILY FREEDOM.” I love my family, my faith is the lens through which I can see the world in a way that keeps me from killing myself, and I hate being bossed around. What are family, faith, and freedom to the Heritage Foundation? Vehicles for perpetuating oppression that benefits them, that’s what. The outward expressions of my deepest joys and most meaningful connections are trapped within self-perpetuating oppressive hierarchical social structures. Sucks.
If you were sitting in a quiet and open meditative posture what would your gut feeling be in response to the words “faith,” “family,” “freedom?” Would you feel tense? Weird? Grateful? I don’t have a point here. It’s just the question I asked myself while typing this. This blog is free. You get what you pay for!
…
Today is my day off work. I still had to think about work a little bit, due to management engaging in enough dumbfuckery to reach an off-duty shop steward. Unto each day the misfortune sufficient thereof. I like my job, I just don’t like working. Would love to not have to work. (Update: It is no longer that day. The nincompoopery has not abated. Each day has in fact contained misfortunes sufficient thereof. More tomorrow!)
When is my day off work? What a reasonable question. Draft a grid calendar of the entire year six wide and 52 long with the weeks stretching Saturday to Friday, omitting Sundays, then draw diagonal lines in six repeating colors from top left to bottom right, crossing one grid square at a time. Voila. The color of the vertical slash in my most recent day off indicates my days off in perpetuity. Would I like to always have Saturdays off? Yes. But it’s nice to have a random Tuesday off too. This particular Tuesday I finished building a bicycle.
It’s a 56cm Surly Cross Check. But Ben, you may be thinking, don’t you already have a Surly Cross Check in that exact size? Yes, I do, but this one was $40.
I painted it with Montana Gold spray paint. After a couple layers of pink I drizzled dawn dish soap on it, spray painted it purple, then hosed off the soap for a lacy squiggle pattern.
Before all that I melted out the seized seat post with lye. Science! The wheels were unsalvageable. I took the hub, spokes, and spoke nipples from the rear wheel and re-laced them to a cosmetically blemished but fully functional Velocity Quill rim I got on eBay for $75 including shipping. Best rims. Then I took the dynamo-hub front wheel also on a Quill rim that was the first wheel I ever built and I put it on the front. I no longer needed that wheel because my other Cross Check now has a 20” front wheel and cargo fork. Detailed review of that cargo fork to come later maybe. Or not. I will have to poll all four of my blog-readers for input.
The Cross Check has been called “OK” and even “mediocre.” It gets called a Swiss Army knife of a bicycle, OK at lots of things, excellent at none. Swiss Army knives are cool and so is this bike frame. I prefer to think of it as the Platonic Ideal of a bicycle. If you handed me a crayon and asked me to draw a bicycle frame it would look like a Cross Check. I say if you don’t like the Cross Check you don’t like bicycles.
Rack and basket went on there simply because that’s how the light was mounted on the other Cross Check pre-cargo-fork and it works. But I kind of want to make it completely rackless and fenderless just for the aesthetics of it. This is a FASHION choice. Bikes look cool and they look right when they’re speaking the design language of one particular kind of bicycle. 50mm tires but also a delicate rando rack with an off-brand basket cable-tied to it? Picture one of those guys who smoke cigars, wears tight t-shirts and plastic aviators. It's a type of guy. You may not like how he looks but it's a type of guy. What kind of bike is this? No type. It's like somebody in gym shorts and a trenchcoat. It’s fine. You can dress yourself or your bicycle like that. There are no rules but there’s stuff that looks wrong. ACAB includes the fashion police. (& the grammar police) But once that rack is off it's like oh boy, that's a kind of bicycle. A cool kind. A fashionable bicycle, like a fashionable individual, can say shit like, "I'm here for a good time," "I'm rowdy," "I wish to be taken seriously," "I am unaware of how I am perceived," etc. It feels good to me when a bicycle looks like itself, the way it feels good to take off your work clothes and put on something where you're like, Aah, I feel like myself.
…
The Platner debacle. There’s some jerk off with a Nazi tattoo running for Senate in Maine. People are up in arms about it and some thoughtful articles have been written about it. Here are my two contributions to the conversation: 1. Notice then ignore the costumes, 2. Don’t trust cops and soldiers.
Politicians are like pro wrestlers. They’re not real people. Those clothes they wear are not their real clothes. It’s a costume they put on. George W Bush, who like most of these clowns, is a New England purebred elite, put on a cowboy hat and a Hollywood Western accent and people were like, “This guy is just a regular one of us. He’s a down-to-earth cowboy!” He in fact was not. John Fetterman’s costume made people think he was a real working class guy when in fact he came from an influential wealthy conservative family then put on unflattering baggy clothes. Some, like Addison Mitchell McConnell The Third, or Rafael Edward Cruz, abbreviate their names to sound like normal people. They are in fact not. They’re hollow husks of humans both shaped by and driven by an insatiable desire to amass power to amass riches to amass more power to amass more riches. Don’t be fooled by the costumes. Anyone aspiring to a position of that much power is probably already awful. It's not natural to lord oneself over others. It is a bad and not admirable trait.
Anyone who can afford to run for Senate can afford whatever costume they choose.
Platner was a marine and he’s proud of it. That is in fact not good. He was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Americans were the bad guys for those of you who don’t know. Then he went back as a private mercenary with Blackwater. Bad! Don’t vote for people who have previously signed up to a job where they killed people to make a living.
There are other good points to be made re: race, performing class aesthetics, the inaccessibility of a Senate race to an actually non-wealthy candidate, whatever. Other people can write those think pieces. I’m done thinking about this guy. Of many books there is no end.
…
Book recommendation: Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis. I loved this book. It’s a quick read. One of the most pernicious orthodoxies of every context and community I’ve ever lived in is that it’s taboo to question the Goodness of Family as an institution. Turns out it’s not great. Kind of sucks actually.
…
Election Day went OK. Bad guys mostly lost. Wealthy cruel people are sad. Good. Rich people! Weep and wail for the misery that is coming upon you for your riches are rotted and your clothes are moth-eaten and all your money is corroded and its corrosion will destroy your flesh like fire. Or so the Bible tells me.
...
I signed up for a print-on-demand service for shirts that don't sell fast. I don't have space to stock hundreds of tees but I always feel bad when someone wants one that's out of stock. The samples from printify seem great. Direct-to-garment prints on decent tees. Click around to "shirts" on this website you're already on. You'll find it if you care. And if you don't, that's fine. Buy less stuff. You're better off with less stuff.
…
I believe that we will win. I believe that we will win. I believe that we will win.
…
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things unseen. That one’s from the Bible too. Hope is a discipline. Mariame Kaba likes to say that. There will be a just world one day. There will be a world safe for children, a world we will be eager to bring more children into.
...
I played catch with Francis today. He looked so accomplished each time he actually caught a moving ball. If that isn't nice I don't know what is.