My coworker recently saw me barefoot out on my porch and said, “You’ve got the piggies out I see.”
Why are our toes piggies? And why are these swine participating in market economies?
•••
I find feet pretty and fascinating. Hands get all the figure-drawing attention. I don’t have a foot fetish. My friend Nate has suggested I start an Onlyfans account called Feets Of Strength. I’m not going to do that. His reasoning is that I walk and bike everywhere and I like being barefoot so I must have strong feet or something and there must be a market for somehow-erotic photographs of muscular feet. I don’t think any of that is true.
Let me tell you some things I have seen Nate do:
He likes to put real pig bacon on a vegan Impossible burger.
He has served me a shot and a beer featuring real whiskey and non-alcoholic beer.
His culinary abominations are not his only endearing traits.
One time I was saying that tattoos are too expensive for a cheapskate like me and he said, “Barring dismemberment it’s something you get to keep until you die.” That’s a very Nate thing to say.
I love Nate. He’s wrong about the Feets Of Strength thing. And other things too. Aren’t we all.
•••
Naomi and I had talked for years about getting an e-cargo bike and finally got one this year. It rules. It has completely removed the consideration of ever owning a car from my brain. Possibility deleted. I will be car-free forever.
It’s quicker to get kids in and out of than carseats. It’s more fun than driving a car.
As I was shopping for e-cargo-bikes over the years leading up to this I found myself drawn to the ones most different from the kinds of bicycle I love to ride. I began describing my ideal e-cargo-bike as a sort of anti-Rivendell. The Atlantis is my bicycliest of bicycles and what I’m shopping for here is the most automobilsh of bicycles. I want the belt drive and hydraulic disc brakes, tons of cargo space, a cupholder or flower vase, a canopy to keep the kids dry when it rains, and of course a big ol’ mid-drive motor from a reputable and established company.
We got the Urban Arrow and have no regrets. We got it from upway, a big secondhand e-bike retailer. It had like 30 miles or something crazy small like that and was missing one of the seat harnesses which was easy to get a replacement for. At $3000 below the list price it’s still the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought besides the house. Oh well. Money’s no good come judgment day. I’ll never have a car insurance or car loan payment ever.
Here’s a sad story: A driver failed to yield while making a left turn from Spring Garden eastbound onto 5th St as my friend Dale, aforebloggedabout for his bicentennial quarters collection, was continuing straight through his westbound green. Kaboom! The car was about as banged up as Dale which is to say hopefully just superficially. He called me as I was heading home from the delightful New Spring Garden Market where I’d just acquired various foodstuffs including three restaurant packs of tofu and a case of IndoMie Ramen which is ever-so-slightly elevated packaged dry ramen which I ate a fuckton of as a high schooler, often in my van, so it tastes like freedom.
Before the Urban Arrow, the only motorized vehicle I’d ever owned was The Yellow Submarine. It was a Nissan Vanette. The front seat was a single bench and the the gear shift was mounted up by the steering column. The end fell off and I replaced it with a golf ball. You could squeeze three or four people in the front. Then three seats behind that then behind that yet two fold-down seats facing each other to seat even more. It cost significantly less than the Urban Arrow. I could drive to Kainantu. I could drive to the quiet field where we’d stargaze, smoke and drink. We did a lot of what we called “cruising.” We would just drive aimlessly. Driving is fun on unlit dirt roads at night when you’re seventeen.
The car could be started with a butter knife. Word of this spread. It became a common joke to move my van. A few times it caused real problems because I had a deal worked out with my parents that they could use it any time they wanted as long as they paid for all the petrol. So then my mom would walk outside and be like, oh no, someone stole Ben’s van and just walk home. Eventually I pulled the wires out from the key-turnie-thingie and I attached them to two switches and a button I mounted on the underside of the dashboard. So you flipped the one switch on and that puts it in the “Accessory” position of the now-defunct key shaft. Then the next switch puts it in the “on” position then the third button is turning the key all the way to “on.” Then I put the keyhole assembly doodad back on but with no wires attached to it anymore so anybody who sticks a butter knife or house key in there can still turn it but it just doesn’t do anything. Eventually word of how to actually turn the van on also spread but then I think the joke just got old. Everybody stopped stealing my van.
This story’s not about that van. Back to the cargo bike. Back to Dale. He calls, I miss the call, he calls Naomi, I call him back but it’s busy because he’s talking to Naomi, I keep biking, Naomi calls me and says, “Dale got hit by a car at 5th and Spring Garden,” so I said, “I’m on my way,” and I turned that tofu-hauling chariot about-face and turned the electric assist all the way to eleven and raced down there. He was flustered but apparently not very injured and I said something which while not worded like this I hope was perceived like this: “I’m the boss of you now. Do as I say. Take this fella’s license and insurance and license plate number. Take some pictures. Then go to urgent care to make sure you’re not concussed. Then go to the police station to report the collision because the pigs aren’t ever gonna show up. Call Stuart Leon and give him all the facts of the case and do whatever feels right then.” He said OK so I loaded him into the Wildflower Ambulance and said wee-oooh-weeeee-ooooh until his partner called and I got quiet and eavesdropped. So now it’s more of a taxi situation than an ambulance situation. Call Wildflower Taxi. I will pick you up from the bar if it’s not too late and I feel like it. Try me. So anyway Wildflower Taxi formerly doing business as Wildflower Ambulance pulls up to urgent care and Assertive Dominant Friend Ben reminds him what he’s gonna do next. Hugs, farewells, gratitude and love expressed, normal dudes being dudes stuff.
So not actually a terribly sad story. One bike is kaput. One car’s metal exoskeleton is wrinkled. One Dale is banged up but neither fractured nor concussed. The moral of the story is I can just carry someone somewhere.
I’ve strayed from the topic at hand. The Urban Arrow is a taxi, ambulance, minivan, party bus, pickup truck, portable park bench.
The kids’ bench is comfortable. You can sit your grown ass adult in there and it’s kind of cozy. I feel good sitting in there so I bet my kids do too. They always seem to be enjoying themselves and I love discussing my commute with them in real time. They’re both observant in their own way.
Mary points things out. “Car! Car! A car! Bike! Bike! Tweet tweet! Tweet tweet!” She’s enthusiastic about life. Every morning as I lift her off the cargobike to walk her into daycare she’s smiling from the thrill of the commute. She got shuttled about on a magical vehicle that shares the view with one of her favorite people to point things out to. She’s beaming. She’s grateful.
Francis asks questions. It’s nice. You know how nice it is to run errands with a friend? Try it. Hit up the neighbor group chat with, “Anybody wanna do an Aldi run with me?” Why not? You get into the best conversation posture: facing the same way instead of toward each other. Whether you’re taking the bus, driving, biking, being the passenger in a bakfiets, or walking, you get to hang out in this, the least awkward arrangement and therefore most conducive to natural intimate conversation. Bike rides are a great time to talk to friends about whether they’ve had a colonoscopy or if they and their partner plan to have children or how their sobriety journey is going or really anything at all. I credit the premium facing-the-same-direction conversation posture along with the sort of public privacy cone of silence created by the rushing wind as you fly through the streets and the quiet natural comfort of pensive silence and periodic lulls in conversation. I get to have that bike ride chit chat with Francis every day. If that’s not nice I don’t know what is.
This is barely a review of the Urban Arrow now. This is what happens without an editor. Next thing you know I'll be reviewing this shockingly comfortable lounge chair footrest combo I bought for sixty bucks a couple weeks ago.
It's luxurious. It's a bedroom reading nook. I brought it home on the cargo bike.
It’s a great vehicle. People compliment it and ask questions about it every day. They think it’s cool as hell. They’re right.
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I’m slowly degoogling. I’m reading this book now. We are reading this book now. It’s a book club. You can join. Or you can make your own which would be better because this book club already sucks at scheduling without throwing you in the mix. As I was saying. We’re reading this book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff. It’s a good read so far. It’s often said if you’re not paying for a product then you are the product. She says you’re not the product, you’re the raw material. That’s a better Marxist analysis in my opinion. You are not the coal; you are the strip-mined mountain. They collect information about you to sell predictions to people eager to manipulate you. Pretty bad!
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I love John Prine. Fun John Prine fact: He was a mailman.
Here's a little write up from the Smithsonian's Postal Museum. It's a fun read if you're a John Prine fan, and if you're not a John Prine fan, today's a good day to start. Also the Smithsonian Postal Musem is worth visiting.
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One of my many problematic faves, Slavoj Zizek, has this whole bit where he’s communist in spite of the failures of communism. There’s this philosopher (yay) from England (boo) named Marika Rose who wrote this book called Theology of Failure which I was mostly lost while reading one third of. She’s asking what it is to be Christian in light of the failures of Christianity. This is a framework I often use to ponder my relationship to institutions I’m deeply invested in. What is it to be a union organizer in light of the failures of organized labor? A Democrat in light of the failures of the party? And like, there’s something about the ESSENCE of those things that has failed. I mean essential as opposed to accidental. When you make the Democratic Party not imperialist it ceases to be the same institution. It’s not like imperialism is the lettuce you can pick off the Democratic Party hamburger sandwich. No institution has a right to exist. None of them last forever.
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Written on my phone at the bar a week or two ago and copy-pasted right in here:
Went to sneak out behind the corner of Atlantis to take a hit of the devil’s lettuce just now and remembered one time maybe 10 years ago I was the only one here at opening and Fritz had some left-wing-rant talk satellite radio show on. He commented on something or other about the state of the world. I said something like “You’re not wrong,” or “Fuckin’ hell, man,” one of the things you say to someone you don’t want to hear rant but you agree with their rant. He stopped cleaning behind the bar, breathed in deep and said, “You wanna go smoke a fuckin’ joint?”
He rolled it on a frisbee he kept in his truck’s glove box. I got too high to read my book or carry on a conversation. The bar slowly filled and I smiled at the lights of the TV screens as I twirled my glass at the table, my beer growing warm.
He died a few months later. I was far away. It affected me a lot more than a lot of deaths of a lot of people a lot closer to me. I never know which deaths will really fuck me up and which ones I’ll stoically sail through. Everybody dies. I’m open to being devastated by any death. I don’t know how sadness works at all. Feelings and thoughts come to me unbidden. I’m not the captain of this ship or the master of my fate.
•••
I keep rereading B.H. Fairchild’s poem “Beauty.” He never heard a man say "beauty" then later in the poem says he heard a man uses the word when his wadded up Frito bag hit its mark.
I call things beautiful all the time in a way my father and grandfather never got comfortable enough in their own skin to do.
“Aren’t necklaces for girls?” I remember my grandfather asking me when I was maybe eight. Nobody asks Francis that.
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Things aren't all getting worse.
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I was rifling through some of my deceased grandfather’s belongings not too long ago. His home was always a good place for snooping. He had a lot of stuff. To get an idea of how much stuff he had consider this anecdote: I was a child and my grandmother suggested I go tidy my grandfather’s shop which is the one-car garage attached to the two-car garage. My idea was to put like things together. To my eyes this was just a mountain of mystery. So I took things I understood and I collected as many as I could in one place and declared that their place. A jar for pens. A spot on the shelf for Philips screwdrivers. A pile of flathead screwdrivers. Et cetera. I amassed a pile of eighteen (18) claw hammers. Ball peen hammers and mallets were separate categories. I remember the eighteen claw hammer fact vividly and specifically.
He had probably fifty or sixty ties. Which he would buy because they were beautiful patterns and textures which is just to say they're cute accessories, but in a way boys are allowed to appreciate and express.
•••
Lynx:
There are Bobcats which are different from Canada Lynx, but there's some territory overlap. There's also the Eurasian Lynx and the Iberian Lynx. Cool cats.
Links:
head-on collision between e-scooter and bicycle kills both. Happened in NYC on Queensboro bridge. Bad news. Cycling is safest when not sharing space with heavy fast motorized vehicles. Slow down, everybody. Don’t be hasty.
Wikimedia union-busting. Bad! Capitalist logic ruins beautiful things. It must be stopped.
Olufemi Taiwo has been using the term “vice signaling” which I find to be a very helpful concept. The party of cruelty is appealing to people because they are cruel. Lawn signs that say “Drill, baby, drill,” and the way Republicans will use the word “illegals” in casual conversation while smiling and maintaining eye contact just to see how you react makes more sense once you realize that the condition for being in their group is being comfortable with cruelty. They celebrate vice! They communicate to each other, and to the virtuous, that they are on the side of vice. Helpful framework. Quick read, worth your time.
Article in Chronicle of Higher Education: My Students Can’t Read.
Sometimes I think this, of all my rants, is the most conservative-coded. Damn those smartphones! Read motherfucking books all goddamn day! That was the text of a colorful sticker affixed to the window of Phil’s Appliances, which was the set for the weird resistance group in the movie 12 Monkeys, and which I walk past frequently but which burned down last year. Books. They’re good for you. Not having sustained attention is bad for you.
And it’s bad for democracy. Here’s an article in First Things cited in the above article. Reading shapes your brain which shapes society. Can we have democracy without literacy?
I was trying to find myself some facts about the Basilisk Lizard AKA Jesus Christ Lizard so I navigated over to Wikipedia and whaddaya know, old Bestiary woodcut pictures. Hell yeah. Wikipedia Basilisk article
I was raised among wacky anti-science types who convinced me that dinosaurs walked the earth in recent memory and might actually still be around and that's what the Loch Ness monster and all dragon stories are actually from. It's just people who saw dinosaurs. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who is a horrible person, claims to believe the young earth conspiracy theory. Maybe he's right. Maybe basilisks, brachiosaurs, and bigfoots roam the earth. Maybe one of these ancient serpent king deities will lock eyes with him and zap him dead with its lethal gaze. Maybe. Could happen.
Anti-intellectual cryptozoological conspiracy theories have their appeal. Look at this cockatrice a doodle doo basiliskish beast! Hell yeah.
We're still doing links. Wikipedia article of Harry Everett Smith, compiler of the Anthology of American Folk Music.
Naomi and I feel vindicated, validated, and affirmed in our rankings of vanilla ice cream, as listed here in NYT's Wirecutter.
I'm all outta lynx.
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Sometimes I buy a product just because it looks like an affront to God. These things are awesome.
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I keep trying to take macro pictures of bugs with my iphone. Sometimes it works. Here's a spider on a relay box.
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Some photos with no or minimal context or explanation:
Dead bird season coming to an end soon I hope.
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Route cat
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Adios amigos
I once moved cities because I felt like I only ever got to talk to my friends head on and not side by side.