"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Outlandish Josh

Published on Wed, 2007-11-07 03:03

Baby Fever Bears Fruit For Frank And Laura (!!!)

My comrade Franko and his lovely lady Laura are preggers. Way to be procreative, kids.

Also, nice to know that years of bike-riding did nothing to deplete Mr. Robbins' virility. Big ups to the ball-channel.

I'm looking forward to visiting them this New Years. It's been too long!

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Published on Sun, 2007-11-04 19:03

Back In Black

Well, I have a new lappy. A late-night food run on my bike resulted in me marinating my old computer in Sprite for 15 minutes or so. That's not so good. It may or may not be resurrectable, but with deadlines looming I pulled the trigger and drove over to Walnut Creek to get a fancy new black MacBook (the Apple store in Emeryville was sold out).

It was a necessary thing, but the whole experience gave me The Fear. I don't like the Apple retail experience, a strange mix of yuppie consumer snobbery and cultish fanboyism. It's a dark future, and the "upscale exurban shopping area" kind of scene around Walnut Creek only served to increase my paranoia. It seems like the sort of place that will be caught in the vice pretty soon -- too decadent, too soft, lots of useless luxuries to lose.

But I can't complain. BAD Camp is rolling on well. The weather here is gorgeous. Mighty Oregon prevailed over the Sun Devils. And the new computer is pretty sweet. It's got the latest OS, and it really is way cooler to have a matte black laptop as opposed to shiny white. With any luck the old machine will live again and it can become the new house computer. At the very least, I think I'll be able to get my old data back. Lots of ancient email that I like so search through from time to time.

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Published on Fri, 2007-11-02 12:56

Authentic Experience

Commenter yesterday alerted me to my 2nd favorite example of my google footprint. My enduring favorite is the person who found my site with "give meaning to my postmodern life" or something like that. Google oracular. Anyway, it seems I'm number three on a search for "Authentic Experience." Sweet! And, for what it's worth, the post in question does really read like a bad grad-school draft:

bq.. Urban living requires a certain amount of intellectual and emotional buffering on the part of the individual for the sake of survival. You have to be able to be very close to other people and treat them like objects. Coupling that with the observational perspective I’m trying to describe, the view that everything is made up of something else and that this can be investigated, unpacked, it’s easy to get hung up on self-anthropology, a blend of narcissism and the deconstructing gaze.

I think this is part of the reason alcohol is such a popular drug. If you deaden enough of your forebrain, you’ll eventually loose the mental capacity to maintain a critical perspective, at which point you’re free from all this garbage. Problem is that you may find in reaching this point that you’ve scraped much of your personality off in the process, and may be unable to maintain a coherent conversation, an erection, or a number of other things which you might wish you could keep up in the moment.

p. That's pretty good stuff as the archives go. I've corrected some spelling mistakes in this quote -- ah, the days before FireFox told me when I was mangling language; fuck you, phonics -- but otherwise the thought holds up over the distance of a year and a half.

In terms of what's been going on lately I'll have a few good things to crack open when the spirit next moves:

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Published on Thu, 2007-11-01 16:25

Mission Bicyles

So in following the advice of Wu-Tang Financial Services to "diversify our bonds" and "protect our goddamn necks," Chapter Three LLC is launching its first offshoot business venture, which is naturally a boutique fixed-gear bike business: Mission Bicycle.

Today we (or mostly our bike-savvy partner John from Cincinatti) were interviewed by the influential Bike Snob NYC blog, where the snobs are sounding off (fwiw, the frame does not "cost $25 including shipping."). We're doing biz in the Bay, with no immediate plans for east-coast distribution, but this is still a good chance for us to define our brand and get our name out there.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

bq.. This is a San Francisco-bred bike. It can be pretty wet there. How come no braze-ons or fender eyelets?

It's a slippery slope. A fender eyelet here, a brake mount there, and pretty soon you'll end up with with 27 gears, lazy-boy geometry, and both of your Docker pant flaps pinned down by reflective yellow ankle bracelets. You can always toss a seat post mount or clip on fender if you're really in trouble.

...

Will riding without a hooded sweatshirt, colored chain or top tube pad void the warranty?

We are consulting with our legal team on this one. Likely we would probably need to know a little bit more about the musical tastes, coffee shop preferences, ironical abilities, and jean size of each rider before passing final judgement.

p. While my own disdain for hipsters is well-established, this is clearly a part of the market we're looking to hit once we've cleared our first and second-degree social connections. Don't hate the player, hate the game, etc.

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Authentic Experience

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Nerding Out

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