The nice thing about buying a trash can is that, when you come home, you've already thrown out the receipt.

I've been buying a few office supplies because, last week, I quit my job. The goal now is to find part time work with my hands (like at a bike shop or behind the controls of a radio station), and spend the remaining days of the week writing freelance. It may have made more sense to have set that up before-hand, but it just felt like the time to take the plunge. Wish me luck / say a prayer.

I've also started putting pen to paper on a novel I've had kicking around in ym head for a year. So again, luck / prayer.

* * *

A whole bunch of folks went upstate last weekend. Made some wonderful music, played games, lounged in what remained of the summer sun. Took Kay and her Batavus out on my favorite 6-mile circuit. The ride was so much fun, as was the subsequent swim we all took later in the day, then when I put on my running sneakers yet later, I had a dark and dangerous idea...

Sign up for a triathlon?


I know, I know, they're the jerks that brought us the $60 water bottle cage. But if drinking, bullshitting and food are each great on their own but an all-out blast together... you see where I'm going with this?

Dangerous stuff.

I am too tall for this city -- I just slammed my head on scaffolding.

And all I want to do is ride bikes with you And stay up late and watch cartoons

So Kay and I took a much needed break from the city this weekend and set out in the ever-dying volvo (odometer has stopped working... ?) to her parents' house in Virginia.

En route, I was examining the beany babies in the claw-game at a late-night I-95 rest stop in Delaware, when I heard "what the hell are you doing here?" Turning around, I saw Ruby who was on his way to his parents house in the great state of South Carolina. So, each suspecting that the other had been lying in wait at the Delaware House until someone they knew came along, we spent quarters on all the cheesy amusements before getting back on the road. On the road, Ruby decided it'd be a fun game to bombard the Volvo with pickles, until quickly discovering that the pickup in which he was riding shotgun had no, well, pickup. Anyway, it was great to have picked up (see what I did there? eh?) an additional traveling partner, someone to stay in cell phone contact with and spot speed traps, until we parted ways around Richmond.

Meeting Kay's parents was, for all the nervousness that surrounded it, great fun. They're smart, witty, and enjoyed showing baby pictures. They make fantastic pasta dishes. I ate better than I have all year.

And tucked away inside the garage was Kay's Batavus, a Dutch-made mid-range racing bike. Which, of course, meant that we took several trips to the near-by beach, wearing towels like capes and aviator scarves, me on the Raleigh singing "Tony's Theme" at the top of my lungs ("I am Tony, super bicycle Tony, I'm racing
Spitfire turn and pop a wheelie, burn and evil chasing ... To-ny! To-ny!") with Kay atop the Batavus looking like a flying ace in Jackie-O sunglasses.

And the Volvo made it back with both the Raleigh and the Batavus in tow, in time for next weekend's upstate adventures.

I've been tinkering with a lot of things lately and making a lot of art recently, so I haven't been making anything even rhyming with a substantive post. So maybe I'll fire up the camera and make some posts about tinkering and art.

Georgia on my mind

+ An excellent Slate piece about the Georgia situation, courtesy of Kay: (here)

+ Also good, also from Kay, the Belgravia Dispatch: (here)

I'm sorry. I'm just venting.

UNPAID INTERNSHIPS ARE THE NEPOTISM OF OUR TIME!

How are you supposed to break into creative fields when all the spots are reserved for people who can afford to live in the city / metro area uncompensated for 40 hour weeks?

Maybe marrying rich *is* the right idea.

A New York Times slide show of the Georgian conflict (here)has got me in a funk at the moment. For obvious reasons, not the least of them being that while all this suffering is going on in the world, I am buying bicycle parts and sitting behind a desk typing up reports for institutional investors. I feel useless. Sure, I could marry some rich jack-ass who would sweep me off to the peace corps (fanciful idea, right?) but even that's a sort of vacation, you know? Hang out at NGO bars and then return to normal life in the states. And the only easy way out of that, the easiest institutionalization of that life is the objectifying distance of the reporter, the foreign correspondent, held at a distance by your telephoto lens, giving up doing for the catharsis of telling.

Its so easy to see what needs to be done. It's so hard to be able to do it.

Isolationism: Gentrification's baby cousin

So, in unfortunate keeping with the classist advertisements for the SteelWorks Lofts in Williamsburg, I happened upon another disgusting apartment ad while on my way back from a (totally fucking awesome) Black Keys show at McCarren Pool. This time around, the message is even worse. The adverts for 72 Steuben, at a time when the housing market has driven the city's largely white new influx of residents to move into "new" neighborhoods (places like Bed-Stuy which New York Magazine has labeled the new Hipster Enclave and the New York Times has called a "frontier neighborhood" despite its hundred year tradition as a seat of African American culture) reads simply: "Don't Just Live in a Neighborhood, Belong."

Ad-speak for "move to Williamsburg: live with your own kind."

Roommate got mugged (is OK, if shaken), suspicious possibly (probably) armed dude walking down the street, and when I went out to move the car earlier in the night, the whole neighborhood was more still than I've ever seen.

Something, somewhere, went down tonight.

Imminent death of the net predicted

Film at 11.


Malwebolence, the New York Times Magazine piece on Trolling.

I have my own thoughts on this, but I'd be interested in hearing comments first.