Anything about everything and somethings about nothing. If it doesn’t have it’s own category it’s going to be here.
I have always liked Flying Coffin but I have never seen any size small for the stuff I dig. Today they re-stocked some cool shirts and I was actually able to grab a small! I’m actually kind of happy it took this long because it’s a pretty ill shirt and it’s a good way to start off. I know you know you want one too.
Bike shorts are awesome, I adjusted my seat a tiny bit and I’m all good. My first day riding with them was like “Oh, that’s why they all wear these things!” All in all a good thing. I foresee purchasing a few of them because washing and drying the same pair daily is pretty annoying after only a week.
My bike chain indeed was an awesome super dark black (CHING!) and the black water cannon lid fit my neon pink bottle just as planned. However I ordered the wrong size seat post clamp, like for no good reason. It was ridiculously beefy and I look forward to having the proper size. It’s quite the odd giant hunk of metal but I welcome it to my bike.
Next purchase should be a helmet, so many options… all so terrible. We’ll see though.
So let’s just say I been getting a little roughed up in the soft spots down below since I recently adjusted my seat. However I can’t just put my seat back to how it was because it is much better positioned now and I can ride more aggressively and it gives me a better posture. I was reading around that it could be from riding with cotton, which is usually what I’m wearing. I have been commuting for like 6 months now in cut off jeans and it’s never been a problem. More reason to believe it is related to the damn seat positioning.
So in hopes that the seat can stay where it is and I can get some crotch relief I purchased a pair of gel padded biking underwear. These can go under any regular pair of shorts and hopefully will work out for me. It is the next logical step (well I guess adjusting the seat would be, but hey…) They actually feel pretty cool and I can see why roadies would dig on dressing up in cycling gear. Although the gel chamois makes it feel like I am wearing a tiny diaper under everything. I will be giving them a chance today. I may report back depending on how great or terrible the whole thing is.
Pretty cool movie, it’s an intermediate learners guide to conspiracy theory. It touches on a few topics that were new to me. Mainly Agenda 21, Codex Alimentarius and the Kyoto Treaty. The thought of a secret society planning the planets depopulation from 6 billion to 500 million was a bit mind blowing.
It also reminded me of other stuff had forgotten about like Fluoride and the effects of living in fear based society on genetic human evolution. If any of this is true it is safe to say we are fucked and must embrace the idea of dystopian blue jump suits, soylent green and Orwellian newspeak. It looks really bleak and it’s only like a year and half away from starting:P
Picked up some goodies a few days ago from… get this… Amazon. Let it be known I have never ordered a thing from Amazon, ever. First time yo! And the best part is I didn’t even click on my own link to get credit on my affiliate account (dumbshit!)
Anywhoo, I picked up a new chain, seat post clamp and a huge black… water bottle (the shit was only $2.99!!)
The chain is a Spanky’s Tweet Tweet chain, I got the black one. It looks tough, has half links and is black. It looks really black like that stuff foot ball players but under their eyes or burnt cork. That being said I’m hoping that the chain looks like the one in the above pic with something of a thick black coat of paint rather than being anodized like the red and blue. Maybe the black is also anodized and it just looks better who knows. Either way my bike has been doing me well for over 9 months so it deserves a little love.
Next is this hefty hefty seat post clamp. The Surly Constrictor is friggin massive and flat black so I’m down. I’m super into hefty, I want my bike to be a tank. Flat black everything is the way to go. I read around before buying it and it’s a good clamp if you are a fat ass and you keep pushing your seat down or if you are not a fat ass and your seat is sliding down on it’s own. I don’t really have any problems with my seat post slipping but my current clamp is dying, it is wound very tight and the screw is sticking out of it even though there is no exit hole for it. It’s a P.O.S. and needs to replaced so this part will be greatly appreciated.
Lastly for no reason other than the fact that it was $2.99 I picked up this massive 28 oz water cannon! I believe a regular old bottle is like 11 oz so this thing is over twice the size. Really, I don’t ever see myself needing that much hydration. While the thought of aiming a massive bottle at my face while on the road is pretty awesome I really bought it because the lid on my hot pink bottle has bitten the dust and I think I can take the black one off of this one and apply it to the pink one. If toy collecting has taught me anything it’s that you can make some plastic do just about anything you want if you hit it with a hair dryer for a little bit.
And a good bye treat, if you don’t think this is funny I don’t wanna know you. I apologize if the skanky pizza girl is offending to you but I found it more appealing Howard Sterns stunning visage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7UNG8a33AQ&NR=1
This place is undergoing a face lift of sorts. Everything is where it should be. I think I will be getting rid of the flickr plugin, it’s not really supported anymore and I don’t think it’s been updated since wordpress 2.7. It was an awesome plugin for the last few years and let me access my flickr photos like a charm. So long Tan Tan Flickr. Also doing away with google ads, it was a fun experiment that yielded absolutely nothing, not even 7 cents… so good bye ads hello cuss words!
is sun burnt, sore in the legs, dreading the return flight, getting sick (flu?), almost finished with private parts (thnx Conor!), a little annoyed with mom, very annoyed with T-mobile (49 cents a minute to dial out in Puerto Rico!!), hungry as a drunken frat girls vagina, feeling slightly taken advantage of by the locals (EXPENSIVE!!) and waiting for Tito Lolo to stop by and say goodbye… fucking LOVE that guy! All in all a slightly mind blowing experience, it’s always a trip to see where you come from. I am an end branch in a complex weave of tree branches yet to rear fruit. My moms side of the family is so cool, they made my father cool.
I can’t help but feel a little sorry for my family out here, it’s too crazy. You learn to adapt but I like my little bubble with perfect weather much too much to ever be a resident. At the same time I am amazed that there is a tiny island full of people here who represent a huge part of who I am culturally and feel this pull to join them. Sort of like a black man from Chicago going to Mother Africa.
As a PR x CA transplant I think I am Puerto Rican but upon arriving I realize I’m not loud enough haha. More bitching and a few photos when I get home y Los Simpsons son mucho mas mejor en espanol jaja. Love.
Indeed, retention is a good thing. I’d used cages and straps in the past and found them to be a bigger pain to get into and get out of than they were worth. I always wanted them as a child because grown up bikes had them. Up until now I never had used a bike for serious commuting and had never really been exposed to the road for such long amounts of time.
Having a few hills to battle on my way home I figured some retention might help make the climb a little more tolerable. After a while of looking around at different toe clips and stuff I realized I did not want to deal with it and figured maybe straps would be more what I wanted. After deciding on the straps I wanted they had sold out so I picked up a less expensive alternative from Burro. I figured they should get the job done and that they did. It was quite an epiphany. I had been riding with half of my pedal potential just pushing pedals downward when the whole time I could be pulling up too. I knew this before hand but just felt it didn’t apply to me because I wasn’t doing tricks and shit.
Now my legs are enduring a sort of revamping of their routine, new muscles being used. While my pedaling has become twice as effective my legs become tired almost twice as fast… or something close to that, who knows the point is you are never too cool for some good ole’ foot retention. By next week I’m sure my legs will be stoked and they will pump like pistons up those pesky hills.
It is worth mentioning that while I don’t really dig messenger bags and stuff Burro makes some really cool stuff from recycled billboards (NICE).
My black friday splurge, well the part of it that didn’t get oversold and left me without nice jeans 🙁 Haven’t actually seen the flannel in person so I don’t know if it’s gonna be a super soft flanny or something more like the other ludwig flannels I own which are like polyester or something kinda thick and furry. It is very much yellow the alternate being a black and purple one which I just couldn’t see myself wearing.
It’s taken a few months but I have made a little progress. I coated my frame and fork in hot rod black primer after stripping all the paint off. I was rockin’ the raw steel but was noticing little rust spots appearing anywhere water had been for more than a few seconds. So I sanded it down, threw some paint on it and boom. Also got the bigger pink tires in. It’s still missing a few ingredients but all in due time.
Lat night I was at a cool little Japanese food spot me and the old lady frequent and as I was slurping my Miso soup I noticed that as it sits it is perpetually in motion like a cloud that is constantly growing into itself but never actually grows in size. I stared into it and realized that is what it feels like is happening in my brain whenever I did psychedelics in the past.
In a sense the bowl of Miso was like a brain with lines in it, but after a while of growing into itself like my brain would on psychedelics those lines began to turn into holes. Xty pointed that out once I told her “this is your brain on psychedelics.” Then it hit us… Opening your mind = holes in the brain! Which we all know drug are known to make caverns in the brains if abused. If psychedelics causes the brain to grow inward and that causes the lines in your brain to turn to holes you literally open the space necessary for viewing life as it really is (whatever that means to you and your kinfolk) Either way love those around you, eat the Miso it’s delicious and enjoy your small estate on this planet < universe < time + space… our time is short… ummmmm… Flash Forward!
I woke up late for church this morning and decided to clean up around the house a bit. I got outside to my patio and noticed that my plant has again been covered in tiny orange balls with legs (??) For the past few weeks I’ve noticed these things attacking my plant. After a few minutes on Google I discovered these things are called Oleander Aphids. For a while I tried burning each one with a stick of incense but found that just hosing them off works fine.
These things are pretty weird. They only appear on one of my generic white flower plants(no idea what it’s called). I also have strange little black aphids on my Ficus but have yet to discover exactly what they are. These little orange guys reproduce really fast. Every few days I hose down a few stems on the plant. Peep this though:
Aphids don’t have sex. In fact, in natural colonies there are no male aphids. The females reproduce by cloning themselves (pathenogenesis). They also give birth to live nymphs, rather than lay eggs. When a colony lands on a host their population explodes. When it gets a little crowded, some of they aphids will develop wings so that they can fly to new host plants. If you have an aphid infestation the best way to get rid of them is soapy water or certain kinds of oils. Generally if you give them a good spray down with the soapy water they won’t be back.
Read more: http://www.ayavaya.com/bug-photos/oleander-aphids
I am apparently up against some shit right out of a sci-fi (or syfy) channel original movie. This is the stuff that keeps me happy we have yet to discover other lifeforms or alternate universes because there has to be one out there somewhere where these things are king. Maybe they even walk upright and resemble us in some weird way. Asexual beings that birth live miniature clones of themselves. Not only that but they also secrete some sort of nasty toxin so other bugs that try and eat them are poisoned and those who don’t die from it are condemned to a life of deformed wings and wonky web spinning (according to link above)
Naturally my thoughts drift and I think back on how earlier this week the Vatican Observatory stated it would indeed consider extraterrestrial alien life part of Gods Plan. “If biology is not unique to the Earth, or life elsewhere differs bio-chemically from our version, or we ever make contact with an intelligent species in the vastness of space, the implications for our self-image will be profound… Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God’s creative freedom.” said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes. This goes to show that humans are kind of greedy in their quest for knowledge, preparing to understand extraterrestrial life forms while our own is in shambles. There’s oodles on this out there, here is a nice starting point: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120291244
Which then makes me wonder, would the average Christian welcome an intelligent life form from another dimension before a person with a different lifestyle or ethnicity from his own universe. How pretty would said alien need to be? If it were more like the Predator would we just attack? Would we befriend the aliens if they were more like the ones form Earth Girls Are Easy?
I mean who knows? I know most folks probably aren’t ready for that sort of thing. I like to think of myself as slightly ahead of the herd and I know I aint ready for aliens. I can barely figure out how to wrangle the remainder of my small family. Just the thought of aphids cloning live nymphs in my side yard is enough to urk me.