Get Your War On

The best political cartoon out there.

salman rushdie on religion/islam/church&state

"I remember a big opinion poll taken by The New York Times in which people were asked whether they would accept as a presidential candidate a woman, a Jew, an African American, a homosexual, and an atheist. In four of those five measures, the result was resoundingly yes, by a gigantic majority, but for an atheist it was no better than 50-50. Somebody who overtly professes not to have religion can’t get elected dog catcher in this country. That’s a problem, because it creates a political discourse full of sanctimony. Hypocrisy sanctified by religion."

http://www.reason.com/0508/fe.sd.the.shtml

Art in NYC

This is going to take a while, because seeing art was one of the main missions of this trek. But I'll post this colorful bit of giant cartoon elephant dung to tide y'all over for now.













oh, allright, and this eyball made of out of wax and magic markers.

NYC Vehicles

okay, NYC vehicles.





First up, we have this off-the-hizzle beater RV. Who needs an expensive manhattan apartment when you can chill in whatever borough you feel like with all the early 80's style anyone could hope for. Diggety.



What's more, as it gol-darn should be, there are a blessed number of motorized two wheeled vehicles, including lots of scooters and crazy mad max ratbike motorcycles.








I have included a wee montage of this ducati monster which typified this breed of badass moto, just oozing mystique and urban savoir-faire. Notice the M-16 sticker, the gothic lettered moto gang sticker (is that "satan's boobies" or "satan's doobies"? Either way, rock on) and the velcro-attachment for the liscense plate, which can then easily be removed and taken away by this particular superhero, so that he/she can't get parking tickets. Brill.








As one would expect, there are some strange foriegn hoopdies scattered about, including old microbusses, yugos, and this citroen I came accross. Style points for the rust pattern, the new york over french plate configuration, and of course the fabulous uni-spoke design of the steering wheel.

I

Observed Graff on NYC Streets

In addition to your regulah, ho-hum, run-of-the-mill tagging, I found a hearteningly large amount of political/philosophical/aesthetically pleasing grafiti.

lots of stickers too.

I should have done a better job documenting what I saw, but hey, it was eleventy-million degrees out.


Plus-mo, there were plenty of excellent t-shirts for sale (even "onesies" for politically active NYC tikes)

Hot, Hot Big Apple Action

NYC in mid-august. JB kept saying it felt like having a gigantic hairdryer pointed at you, but I feel that really did the incredibly high humidity an injustice. No hairdryer is that humid. Nay, it was more like the phrase I've heard recently "it's like being in someone's crotch" but I would have to add that that someone would have to have a fever, and be under blankets.

Regardless, despite being there at literally the most disgusting weather moments of the year, JB and I were still completely gobsmacked as usual by gotham.

I would like to thank the lady whose hand appears in this photo, without whose generosity the NYC trip would not have happened. You see, the view at right is from this fine lady's pop's apartment, which we got to bless for nuttin. Miraculous.

No, I Am Not Done Blogging.

FACING THE BLOG.

Must remain interesting.

Must not fall asleep on the couch watching television.

Must have discipline to keep posting.

I'm definitely going for the public shame factor, as I've never been able to keep a journal for more than 30 seconds without lapsing for months at a time.

Now when I fail to keep this, folks who shall remain nameless until I figure out what they want me to call them in this blog will give me sh_t, and I thank you, _______ for that.

But while I was semi-concious on the couch earlier this week, I saw a cool little documentary, "Broken Column " on the Sundance channel's monday "doc day" program. It was about this small city in Norway called Stavanger that let a British artist named Antony Gormley install his heavy human-shaped iron sculptures all over the place, from public squares to inside of people's houses. Not too suprsingly, Norweigian folks take a bit more kindly to modern art and its challenges than a comparible amur'cun town would. And their blissfully pinko gubmint also appears to fund public art quite handsomely as well. Hooray for Norway!

The actual sculptures themselves were not as visually cool (*to me*) as those pictured here...(which come from Antony Gormley's most excellent website, which I recomend you peep--> http://www.antonygormley.com/ ) but instead look more like very large rusty "oscar" trophys but without the wank-bulge. These were arrayed around town in precisely according to the elevation of the site they were installed on....if all the sculptures at all the different elevations were put together, they would form a column.

Here is a link to the Sundance channel's weenie little page on this documentary.

Anyway, I went to NY with the S.O. for 4 days, and the evenings after than I've been too comatose and spanked by the end of my days to post. And other, winey, piss-ant excuses, etc. etc.

The images on this page are from antony gormley's website, and are titled thusly:

CAPACITOR 2001
Mild steel tubes,

BODIES IN SPACE V 2001
Forged ball bearings

The price of oil

Bush was an oilman.

The price of oil when Bush came into office in January of 2001 was $22.50 a barrel. And
now it's $64.27 a barrel. Which is an increase: +180%.

link

Now don't go getting paranoid.

Speaking of which, f--k the f--king f--kers that okay'd the 4 jet flyover of boston today at 7pm at the start of the red sox game, which believe it or not most people were not aware of, and the tremendous racked from which scared the crap out of everyone and sounded like a big old terrorist attack. That sucked.

Riding the mohawk trail.

Just following up on the pitifully small amount of recreational riding I have achieved this year.

Here is a link to a website created by a fellow VFR rider from wester Massachusetts that has some deep knowledge of great roads in the foreign-to-Bostonians regions of our fair and tiny state.

Motoing

I rode out to massmoca last weekend, and this weekend I rode down to Cape Cod.

Route 2 out near North Adams is a fabulous road. I was literally whooping in my helmet with glee.

Not much can be said about riding down to the cape from boston, other than it's stimulating, and takes a long time. (And it's purty once you get there.) There are ways for motorcycles to deal with long backups of SUVs stuffed with inflatable rafts and bicycles at the Bourne Bridge. Mu-haa. Mu-ha-ha-hahaaaaa.

I look forward to adding a northward component to this map in the near future.

this sh--t is ON!!! the iraq war debate meets the gun belt

I don't reckon how all y'all sicko liberal bluestaters do it, but down Kentucky-way, men are men:
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/state/12317968.htm

(pro war guy shoots and kills anti war guy.)

Just to ensure that everything stays the proper shade of grey, the anti-war guy pulled his gun first and threatened "I'm going to blow your f__king head off" to the pro-war guy. Who then shot him in the heart.

Mega Unicycle

Man, I am just in the worst possible mood.

F---king F--k humidity in the motherf--king face. I'm sick of this crap.

I need days and days off. Preferrably without having my loud-ass siamese cat waking me up at quarter to 6 to be fed.

Everbody and everything is extremely annoying at this moment.

At least I have this image of a futuristic one person vehicle

I don't know a damn thing about it.

The image comes from www.gizmag.com , which I found out about because I finally signed up for NEDOD, which is a mailing list for nerdy new england motorcyclists (New England Denizens of Doom) and sends my gmail account a sh-teload of weird emails in digest form.

Can I ask, at this point in the internet's development, what the point is of maintaining a featureless mail-only list? What is this, 1987? Anyway, I'm off to have a lousy, hot, sticky day.

Spend my tax money on bike paths and....space exploration.

Nasa is proposing to ditch the shuttle, which has turned out to be a pain in the ass, and is going to go back to good old fashion rockets.

Check out that big mutha in the middle. The NYT article says it should be ble to carry 100 tons.

Here is a link to the article....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/space/02nasa.html?hp&ex=1123041600&en=9382d2755684e5f3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Free German Techno!

From www.slate.com comes a review of the current state of German Techno.

I've been down with Mouse on Mars since 1994, but I have been woefully ignorant of other good things coming out of that country (except for Kraftwerk back in the day) and this article has set me straight.

I've been listening to this mix by an artist named "Ellen Allien" over and over and over again, and MiniDisked it over the weekend for posterity. She kicks ass.

Check it out before it goes away http://www.ellenallien.de/popup/radio/radio_content.htm

sweeet.

Here is the techno article

http://www.slate.com/id/2123495/