I've been idly collecting content on this year's burning man to post on vagabender at some point. Came across a photo of our camp-neighbors from 2003 while looking for supporting evidence. For a fun quiz, spot my playa crush. You know the one.

And I thought it was just because I wasn't 18 anymore:

A raft of new studies suggest that cyclists, particularly men, should be careful which bicycle seats they choose.

The studies add to earlier evidence that traditional bicycle saddles, the kind with a narrow rear and pointy nose, play a role in sexual impotence.

Some saddle designs are more damaging than others, scientists say. But even so-called ergonomic seats, to protect the sex organs, can be harmful, the research finds.

Holy shit! This is really bad news! I've always been a fan of the cleft, which reduces the appearance of numbness, but apparently it falls short of a real solution, and may make the problem worse:

In men, a sheath in the perineum, called Alcock's canal, contains an artery and a nerve that supply the penis with blood and sensation. The canal runs along the side of a bone, Dr. Goldstein said, and when a cyclist sits hard on a narrow saddle, the artery and the nerve are compressed. Over time, a reduction of blood flow can mean that there is not enough pressure to achieve full erection.

In women, Dr. Goldstein said, the same arteries and nerves engorge the clitoris during sexual intercourse. Women cyclists have not been studied as much, he added, but they probably suffer the same injuries...

Today's ergonomic saddles have splits in the back or holes in the center to relieve pressure on the perineum. But this may make matters worse: the ergonomic saddles have smaller surface areas, so the rider's weight presses harder on less saddle, Dr. Schrader said. The perineum may not escape injury because its arteries run laterally and they are not directly over the cutouts. The arteries can come under more pressure when they come into contact with the cutouts' edges.

It's hard to talk about your penis not getting hard, or as hard as you'd like, when you're gettin' it on. But this is an important topic for men to get used to dealing with, and it's only going to be more of an issue as time marches on.

This plays a part in pride and enjoyment, as the advertising world reminds us. The vast majority of consumers of Viagra and its kin aren't trying to treat full-on impotence; they're trying to go from 60% (which is on the border of functional for intercourse) to 100% (the punishment!). It also affects people's sexual health choices. All the people I know who have unprotected sex do so not just because it's a different world of sensation, but also (and even primarily) because putting on a condom exacerbates any problems you might be having at that moment maintaining your boner.

Personally I haven't had frequent problems here. I still use protection rigorously, and I've been fortunite to be with women haven't made me feel bad when I have had problems with my circulation. Bully for me. However, the phrase "loss of libido" makes me nervous. Apropops my moments of romantic longing, I've writting in my private paper journal before about how I seem to have less and less of a hunger -- less acute, less often -- for the sensual things in life. Part of this is without a doubt a product of hormonal maturity, and part of it might be lingering depression, stress or fatigue. But what if my love of two-wheeled human power is also a culprit?

"We make kids wear helmets and knee pads," Dr. Goldstein said. "But no one thinks about protecting the crotch."

Well, I sure as hell am thinking about protecting my crotch now. I'm going to be getting a new larger track bike at some point when I get back to NYC. Looks like it's time to invest in a noseless saddle too.

And I thought it was just because I wasn't 18 anymore:

A raft of new studies suggest that cyclists, particularly men, should be careful which bicycle seats they choose.

The studies add to earlier evidence that traditional bicycle saddles, the kind with a narrow rear and pointy nose, play a role in sexual impotence.

Some saddle designs are more damaging than others, scientists say. But even so-called ergonomic seats, to protect the sex organs, can be harmful, the research finds.

Holy shit! This is really bad news! I've always been a fan of the cleft, which reduces the appearance of numbness, but apparently it falls short of a real solution, and may make the problem worse:

In men, a sheath in the perineum, called Alcock's canal, contains an artery and a nerve that supply the penis with blood and sensation. The canal runs along the side of a bone, Dr. Goldstein said, and when a cyclist sits hard on a narrow saddle, the artery and the nerve are compressed. Over time, a reduction of blood flow can mean that there is not enough pressure to achieve full erection.

In women, Dr. Goldstein said, the same arteries and nerves engorge the clitoris during sexual intercourse. Women cyclists have not been studied as much, he added, but they probably suffer the same injuries...

Today's ergonomic saddles have splits in the back or holes in the center to relieve pressure on the perineum. But this may make matters worse: the ergonomic saddles have smaller surface areas, so the rider's weight presses harder on less saddle, Dr. Schrader said. The perineum may not escape injury because its arteries run laterally and they are not directly over the cutouts. The arteries can come under more pressure when they come into contact with the cutouts' edges.

It's hard to talk about your penis not getting hard, or as hard as you'd like, when you're gettin' it on. But this is an important topic for men to get used to dealing with, and it's only going to be more of an issue as time marches on.

This plays a part in pride and enjoyment, as the advertising world reminds us. The vast majority of consumers of Viagra and its kin aren't trying to treat full-on impotence; they're trying to go from 60% (which is on the border of functional for intercourse) to 100% (the punishment!). It also affects people's sexual health choices. All the people I know who have unprotected sex do so not just because it's a different world of sensation, but also (and even primarily) because putting on a condom exacerbates any problems you might be having at that moment maintaining your boner.

Personally I haven't had frequent problems here. I still use protection rigorously, and I've been fortunite to be with women haven't made me feel bad when I have had problems with my circulation. Bully for me. However, the phrase "loss of libido" makes me nervous. Apropops my moments of romantic longing, I've writting in my private paper journal before about how I seem to have less and less of a hunger -- less acute, less often -- for the sensual things in life. Part of this is without a doubt a product of hormonal maturity, and part of it might be lingering depression, stress or fatigue. But what if my love of two-wheeled human power is also a culprit?

"We make kids wear helmets and knee pads," Dr. Goldstein said. "But no one thinks about protecting the crotch."

Well, I sure as hell am thinking about protecting my crotch now. I'm going to be getting a new larger track bike at some point when I get back to NYC. Looks like it's time to invest in a noseless saddle too.

Going up to Portland was nice. It was good to see old friends, good to be living with people for a change, good to have peers. The isolation of Eugene is getting a little bit boring. In some ways I still relish it, but I'd like to add some contrast to my experience too. Solo Koenig is getting old.

I think I'm pretty much done decompressing, and I'm starting to want to get started on the next phase. I've got things pretty much cut out for me work-wise, but socially it's a little more fuzzy. I'm not really the greatest initiator of social contact, something for which I find I rely on my social network.

I'm also lonely in that missing the women way. It's not a problem, but I find now that I'm sleeping in a regular bed it feels more empty. I'm sure something will happen sooner or later, but I'm wondering whether or not that attitude -- "something will happen" -- isn't maybe due for review. It seems suspect.

Looking back, an awful lot of my experience with women, especially lately, has happened when I get picked up, fixed up, or otherwise just let a situation run its course. Now, there's nothing wrong with this per se. I love my experience and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I do feel like I should try and break this trend.

For one thing, I think it might be healthy for me to take a more active role in my own love life. It's important to invest yrself in things but this is something you can sort of skate by on if the whole affair is someone else's idea. I'm tired of this, and not entirelly comfortable with it morally.

It also just doesn't seem practical. In a lot of places, perhaps most places, waiting for women to pick you up just isn't very effective, misses a lot of opportunity.

Variety is the spice of life, and if I keep thinking along these lines I might even get to make out with someone. I've got nothing but time.

I have an attitude problem. Existential ennui has me in the grips. My health has improved almost to the point of full recovery, but the general droopiness of spirit doggedly remains.

I was trying to write it out in my paper journal the other day. My angst seems to be very much rooted in what people call the quarter life crisis. It also has to do with my pessimistic assessment of the institutional foundations for contemporary life. To put it simply, I don't see any ladders worth climbing out there.

The obvious alternative is to engage my creative and enterprising nature and begin the development of some new venture, life-project or institution around which my future can revolve. The trouble with this is I'm very much aware of my limited capacity to fulfill responsibilities, and I worry that I lack the clarity and commitment to actual break ground on something that big.

In thinking these directional questions over, a perennial favorite is to go back to school. A masters degree wouldn't hurt my future life chances, and it would be pleasant to have structure and mentorship again. If I decide to get any more serious about this after The Road, one of the first orders of business will be to begin researching programs and opportunities which might address at least a plurality of my interests.

I'm also bedeviled by the knowledge that if I wanted to I could find gainful, even prosperous, employment with the kind of ease that amounts to a supreme privilege in this modern world. I worry about descending into some kind of pomo quasi-yuppie hell, shopping at banana republic, getting caught up in the kind of consumer lifestyle that seems so popular these days. I want to work and make money and have health insurance, but I also want to retain my self-respect. On the other hand, as a prosperously employed friend of mine noted today, "self respect is a luxury." What with the debts pressing down and my recent experiences outside the health-care umbrella, maybe it's time to consider sucking it up for a change. I'm just not sure.

On top of the life-direction worries, I also have a lack of harmony in my personal life. I think about enormous and abstract things too much (e.g. the impending thermodynamic doom of the American Empire) and have far too little room in my life for the kinds of human-level interactions that, when you get right down to it, make life worth living. I find conversation difficult, and idea of Love impossible.

There's the great hope that going on the road this summer will shake things loose, provide a frame-breaking experience to help resolve these nagging questions and open up my personality. I'm skeptical. I worry that it will be boring, that there's nothing out there, that nothing will happen.

As I said, I have an attitude problem. Being in motion helps, but I wonder if (like being "busy") that's just another tactic of avoidance. I wonder if my pessimistic outlook on our modern world is really a reflection on my own self-image, that I have unresolved feelings of failure after going 0 for 3 in politics (stopping the war, Dean, stopping Bush) and cutting myself loose from MFA. I wonder what it will take to turn this around, to get me juicing, high on myself again. I don't really know. I can only hope that time and experience will bring a resolution to all this uncertainty. On the plus side, they usually do.

I have an attitude problem. Existential ennui has me in the grips. My health has improved almost to the point of full recovery, but the general droopiness of spirit doggedly remains.

I was trying to write it out in my paper journal the other day. My angst seems to be very much rooted in what people call the quarter life crisis. It also has to do with my pessimistic assessment of the institutional foundations for contemporary life. To put it simply, I don't see any ladders worth climbing out there.

The obvious alternative is to engage my creative and enterprising nature and begin the development of some new venture, life-project or institution around which my future can revolve. The trouble with this is I'm very much aware of my limited capacity to fulfill responsibilities, and I worry that I lack the clarity and commitment to actual break ground on something that big.

In thinking these directional questions over, a perennial favorite is to go back to school. A masters degree wouldn't hurt my future life chances, and it would be pleasant to have structure and mentorship again. If I decide to get any more serious about this after The Road, one of the first orders of business will be to begin researching programs and opportunities which might address at least a plurality of my interests.

I'm also bedeviled by the knowledge that if I wanted to I could find gainful, even prosperous, employment with the kind of ease that amounts to a supreme privilege in this modern world. I worry about descending into some kind of pomo quasi-yuppie hell, shopping at banana republic, getting caught up in the kind of consumer lifestyle that seems so popular these days. I want to work and make money and have health insurance, but I also want to retain my self-respect. On the other hand, as a prosperously employed friend of mine noted today, "self respect is a luxury." What with the debts pressing down and my recent experiences outside the health-care umbrella, maybe it's time to consider sucking it up for a change. I'm just not sure.

On top of the life-direction worries, I also have a lack of harmony in my personal life. I think about enormous and abstract things too much (e.g. the impending thermodynamic doom of the American Empire) and have far too little room in my life for the kinds of human-level interactions that, when you get right down to it, make life worth living. I find conversation difficult, and idea of Love impossible.

There's the great hope that going on the road this summer will shake things loose, provide a frame-breaking experience to help resolve these nagging questions and open up my personality. I'm skeptical. I worry that it will be boring, that there's nothing out there, that nothing will happen.

As I said, I have an attitude problem. Being in motion helps, but I wonder if (like being "busy") that's just another tactic of avoidance. I wonder if my pessimistic outlook on our modern world is really a reflection on my own self-image, that I have unresolved feelings of failure after going 0 for 3 in politics (stopping the war, Dean, stopping Bush) and cutting myself loose from MFA. I wonder what it will take to turn this around, to get me juicing, high on myself again. I don't really know. I can only hope that time and experience will bring a resolution to all this uncertainty. On the plus side, they usually do.

Passing through my instant message window today:

i used the line, "seeking strategic partners that synergize with our core competencies" with no irony whatsoever

i felt dirty.

People are getting back into business, and while it doesn't look like regular people have much hope of advancement, my guess is that in the next decade there will be an opportunity for the well informed/connected to get another little boom going for themselves. Given that I see this coming, it brings up a bunch of interesting questions on the subject of "career."

I'm forever entrepreneurial, that's just how I am, but there are real conflicts over what I really aught to do with my energy and expertise. I don't really know if it's possible to do a "tour of duty" in the business world. I used to think I might be able to sell myself out for a year, get rid of some debt, bank a little cash and the strike out on my own, but the reality is that at the level where you're getting that kind of pay they tend to want more from you than you really want to give.

The new alternatives seem to be either gearing down, going neo-boho, or getting ambitious again. Basically those mean:

• Gearing Down: continuing the frugal lifestyle I've been leading for the past four months, adjusted for a more sustainability; probably going somewhere with a lower cost of living than NYC. Looking to settle into some kind of easy groove. Probably not likely, but always a possibility.
• Neo-Boho: more or less continuing on-course in terms of work activity; freelancing; living a slightly more materially comfortable lifestyle (e.g. my own apartment); continuing to seek and sample. This is kind of the default plan, though I'm skeptical that I will find it very fulfilling for much longer.
• Ambitious: making some solid choices about what I want to do and where I want to go and really attempting to go all the way with it. Putting my social and cultural capital on the line; calling in favors; starting to ask for what I want rather than just what I need.

When I write it out like that, the obvious gravitation is towards the latter choice. The problem is in the "making some solid choices" bit. I'm not really in a position to do that at the moment. So I'm sort of in default mode, and that's getting to be exhausting and a bore, so I entertain thoughts of going to ground and hibernating for a while. Maybe that's what I need to do in order to figure out my path. I'm not sure.

In any event, I'd like to have some of this square by the fall. Hopefully the road trip will help. Time's a-wasting.

Here's something I've said before: I'm superficially as well as substantively attracted to intelligence in women. On the one hand, conversation is a must for any real interest. On the other hand, for me having a woman tell me she's got (or getting) a degree is equivalent to great cleavage in terms of an immediate turn-on. It's kind of cheap and tawdry, but also true.

What prompts this re-revelation? Well, last night I went to see a rough cut of this movie about a guy named Zizek, who's an intellectual rockstar from Slovenia. It's actually quite good. The woman who made it, Astra Taylor, interviewed me last weekend for a book she's writing. I'm kind of fascinated with her; book-writing, film-making, all seems very exciting and triggers my IQ fetish.

Also at the screening by complete random chance was this other woman from whom I've had a long-standing yen. She was the main office person at ETW while I was there, working on her PhD the whole time -- I always thought she was super hot, though very clearly unavailable. Anyway she was there and we chatted for a moment after. She's finished getting her degree, said I could call her doctor (really! yowza!), and I actually got quite nervous and don't think I made any kind of impression at all. Yes, that still happens to me from time to time. Kind of a treat, actually.

What can I say? It's spring, and the warm air makes the blood run. Yesterday riding round the city from meeting to gym to screening it was a cavelcade of city girls. With the farenheight pushing 70, the great unveiling is on, and everyone's looking fresh and pretty. The nite-ride back to Frank's place was dusted with very light warm rain; just lovely all around.

Pulling a hit from the past: What Does It All Mean? There was this:

I really have to redesign my website, man. I really have to launch vagabender, man. I really have to get some more work done, man.

Actually, what I really have to figure out is why I’m doing what I’m doing. Work, Life, Art, Friends, Politics, Philiosphy, Vice, Places, Stories, Hopes, Dreams, Revelations.

And this lovely slice of life:

I'm happy to say I've made some progress. I redesigned (if not relaunched) this website, and I'm realizing more what I want to do with that project. I just got server space set up for Vagabender. I'm getting work done.

I've started to hit a kind of bohemain rhythm here again in lovely old New York. I don't know if it's ultimately the place for me, but it's a place I can exist and have fun and perhaps prosper for a good while longer. Nothing is set, but I wouldn't mind moving back here in the fall.

As for the spiritual bit; well, it's gets a letting better all the time. I get by with a little help from my friends.

While I was working on the election, getting down to the nubbin on about a daily basis, frequently spending the weekends in service of the Job and less frequently sleeping under my desk, my substance use ticked upward. Coffee in the morning has been an addiction for years, but became a more dire necessity of late, and a constant throughout the day. Alcohol and marijuana were a regular, if not always daily, way of scaling down stress and lightening up after hours.

Now, I don't have any compunctions against these chemicals. I've known them all for at least a couple years, and I find them benevolent and positive additions to my life in most cases. However, there was a bit of a grind going on. It wasn't even so much the level of intake -- not really astounding by anyone's standards -- but rather the routine nature of the thing. Fun was often (thank god) a side-effect, but not the primary intended consequence. It was more like maintenance. Clock-punching Boring.

Since the new year, things have been slowly dialing back. The concept of "tolerance" has re-asserted itself. While clearly I can handle myself in a state of inebriation at this point, it's a bit of a shock to have three beers and be fumbling with my pool stick. How quickly the body returns to homeostasis. Chemical virginity reclaimed. Huzzah. I'm a relatively cheap date again.