Our bike shop is in the South Lake Union neighborhood of downtown Seattle. When Paul Allen decided that his neighborhood (he bought a lot of the properties in and around us) needed a trolley, well by golly, they started to build it. And since it’s the South Lake Union neighborhood, well by golly, it’s going to be called the South Lake Union Trolley. And then people caught on to it, and started referring to it as the SLUT. Even before it went online you could buy tshirts that say, “Ride the SLUT”. So they were forced to change the name to the Seattle Streetcar.

Too late. Everybody calls it the SLUT.

So the SLUT has a stop right in front of our bike shop. A SLUTstop, if you will. I went to a show the other night and I had to come to the shop to get my bike and gear on the way home. I was going to take the bus cuz it was raining like a mofo, so I just grabbed my gear and shoved it into the backpack and away I went. I didn’t make it even across the intersection when I managed somehow to get both wheels sucked into the SLUT tracks. As I started to tip over, I desperately tried to bunnyhop out of the groove I was in, but to no avail. If you’re a bike person, you’ll know the feeling of not being able to unclip from your pedals when you first tried clipless pedals… That was me, tipping right over. And sure enough, boom, right onto my right side, in the rain and all that. Now I have a sprained left thumb (don’t ask, I don’t know either), and the right side of my body is minorly bruised.

Stupid tracks….I got juiced!

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I got this email today and I laughed so hard, I figured I’d put it up for you to see.

Hooo doggy! Cold called Kolchuk last Wednesday from a concert. The day I called CK was the day those mucus guys from the commercial descended into my lower GI tract and proclaimed that I shall squirt de Hersheys for one week henceforth.  Kowabunga! Just to clarify, the youngsters had to watch Pops trash his BVDs at the Home Depot bathroom (that is one guh-narly bathroom) cuz he tried to eke out a squeaker in the car on the way the depot and . . . yea, you’ve been there. Kids did get a kick out of Dad dookin’ in his trousers.

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How about this?  This from a person calling themselves “Herwankiebank”.  Is that the punchline to a joke or what?  Here you go…

Your site has very much liked me. I shall necessarily tell about him to the friends

No.  My site didn’t very much like you.  In fact, it thinks you’re quite shady.  I mean, really, it put your comment in the spam catcher.  However I know that you will tell your friends, because that’s how spam works.  “Hey I found another domain name we can send useless shit to!  Come on, let’s go!!!”

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Normally when I check the spam filter for this site, it’s nothing but porn.  A lot of it.  I usually have to delete 50-100 “comments” left here by porn spammers, and the wording of their “comments” is hilarious.  And the style evolves over time too.  At first it was just straight up pussy-this, pussy-that and you could click any one of them.  No thanks, I don’t want to take my computer to the clinic at this time.

Then the spammers would actually throw out random words in sequence so that it looked like maybe there was real information coming your way and you’d get tricked into clicking on it or something.  But what it really looked like was if a dog had jumped up onto Stephen Hawking’s lap and was accidentally mashing buttons on that super-expensive Speak’n'Spell that he has, cuz the phrases were grammatically wrong, and in the middle, tucked in there, would be a link to, you guessed it…Some Kind Of Pussy.

Then came the Russian revolution and now I see mostly spam in cyrillic letters, and that’s easy.  DELETE!  But recently other things have been popping up from time to time as well.  Like Jesus…

Here’s one I got today.

I can find the prayer I want. I thank God for this website.

Uhhhhh…thanks?  My site is so awesome that you showed up here and now you thank God that you did?  Kinda creepy, but thanks anyway.

The next day I was dumping spam again when I found this one.  Jesus freaks are getting in on the spam now?  Dear God, please save us from your followers…

I like this website. This website helped me with prayer learning. Good job. Thank you. Please provide more French prayers. Bye-bye.

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One year, for chistmas, I hit the fucking jackpot!  Under the tree were Lincoln Logs, Smash-up Derby cars, and the ultimate, the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle! Holy shit, I was like a kid at christmas that day!  I would build a house out of the Lincoln Logs, set up the ramps from the Smash-up Derby cars, and jump Evel Knievel over the house!  HOLY CRAP, that was awesome, that’s what being a kid is all about!

Now I’m almost 40 and I don’t feel like much more than a teenager still albeit one with a bit more of a sophisticated taste in alcohols.  So imagine my wonderment and elation when I found the Stunt Cycle online today.  In fact, just read what Evel Knievel himself had to say about the damn thing!

“Next year the Ideal Toy Company is going to make a lot of Evel Knievel toys. … One toy I’d like them to make is my own idea; I think it’s the most super toy in the world. You wind it up, it goes like a little bugger, goes across the floor, grabs this little Barbie doll, throws her on the floor, gives her a little lovin’, jumps back on the motorcycle and goes whizzing out the door screaming, ‘G.I. Joe is a faggot!’ ” – Evel Knievel

Wow, people don’t exactly talk like that anymore, do they?

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Today marks the 7th anniversary of momentous occasion.  Do you remember where you were on Sept 11, 2001?  I do.  I was at my sister’s place in MT with her and my dad.  I remember that it was going to be a big day, and I was going to head right down to the store and buy me a CD.  I didn’t get to, for obvious reasons, but it still was a day that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

Yes folks, September 11th 2001 was the day that Slayer released what may be their best album to date. I realize that’s a tall order because we all know that Reign in Blood was a landmark album in the history of heavy music, but I’m gonna stick by that statement.

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I read today that Lance “I’ve never tested positive” Armstrong might be coming back to cycling?  The story here says that there is a lot of speculation, but Astana (the team that has become the de facto Discovery team, as Johan Bruyneel and Levi “always a bridesmaid…” Leipheimer AND Trek are all involved) says they have no plans for him.

Uhhh, okay.  7 time winner of the Tour (doped or not doesn’t matter) wants to jump on board?  You let him.  If only to see him take a disgraceful nosedive so that you can rub it in later, hell, let him try.  Most cyclists are Type A personalities, and Lance is from TX to boot, so I doubt he’d phone it in.  Especially when his alleged plans are to race in 5 races, including the Tour.

Whatever…it is what it is and it will be interesting to watch.  Drunkcyclist made mention of this piece of news today, and you should read the comments that people had posted about it.  If you know some of the names in the sport, you will laugh your ass off at comment #14, posted by sommerfliesby.  I was rolling when I read that shit.  In fact, I think I’ll go read it again.

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So McCain hires a vagina for his running mate in the hopes of being able to go up against a black man in November’s election. Cuz when you get down to it, that’s how the Republicans seem to be thinking. A black man on the ballot is historic enough that he may get elected based solely on that. Never mind the fact that he’s intelligent and charismatic, to the Republicans he is only a thing. A Black Man. OOooooooo, scary! How to combat that? Well, let’s get an equally Historic Thing as a running mate and fight fire with fire. You guys have a Black Man on your ticket? So what! We’re gonna get a Vagina on ours and guess what? Maybe some of your people will vote for our Vagina, because you guys had a Vagina running against your Black Man a few months ago! So THERE!

Whatever happened to Merit? You know, get somebody who can do the best job possible so as to fortify your position of being able to lead this country into the Bright and Wonderful Future? No, we don’t have time for that shit here in ‘Murika. Here we slander the competition as vigorously as we can because it’s much easier to point out other’s failings (real or fabricated) than it is to point out one’s own merits.

So what happens? Quotas get filled and people who aren’t qualified get promoted into positions that they have no business being in. (I’m not even referring to Palin in this case, because that particular shitstorm is raging all over the internet right now and doesn’t look like it’s going to subside any time soon. I’ll provide as many links as I can at the end of this post.) Zeno’s dad, George, once put this into perfect perspective for me one time back when I was in high school. He was dealing with Equal Opportunity in his job and the end result was that quotas of minorities were being put into jobs that they were unqualified for. Mind you, this isn’t a racist view. If you are a person who is unable to think, you might see this as being a case of, “Minorities aren’t qualified to do the same job that a white person can.” Again, this is not the case that George was making all those years ago. But, what he said to me one time was, “You know what Equal Opportunity means to me? Equal opportunity to fail. Show me that you can fail at your job and I don’t care what color your skin is, you’re outta here! Black, white, red, brown, purple, yellow, whatever…if you show me you can fail, then you don’t get to have the job anymore.” Those weren’t his ABSOLUTELY EXACT words, but it was close enough that I put quotes around it. Sorry George, if you didn’t want to be quoted on the Intergooglewebs…

So what does this all mean? It means that, as far as I can tell, the GOP is bringing a woman onto the ballot simply because she’s a woman. And they expect you to be dumb enough that you’ll just jump on board if you were a Hillary supporter because clearly all women are alike right? They’re just women, right? Their job is in the kitchen and so just to have one transcend that station to the office of Vice President of the United States of America, well…geez, I’d vote for that! Wouldn’t you?

Holy shit!

I was at a friend’s house last Weds night and 5 of us were watching Palin make her speech and we were talking politics and whatnot, handing the laptop back and forth and generally getting worked up because our once-fine country is about to capsize, I believe. Think Roman Empire 300CE…sure there’s a couple hundred years left, but the decline is happening. America is running purely on inertia at this point. And as that inertia winds down, it’s not going to be oil or Iraq or the Fed or any of that shit that America is going to have to worry about. By America, I mean those with money who are in charge of and/or okay with the horrible foreign policy that is in place at this time. Manifest Destiny and all that. Anyway, what’s it going to look like in 100 years? 200? Oil will be over by then, theoretically, and we will have moved on to something else, hopefully sustainable, but maybe not, in which case somebody else in charge of resources will have you and me by the balls and it just continues. However…that’s not my point here. In 100 years, or maybe more, there will be over a billion Chinese and over a billion Indians and, as there are already a billion Muslims in the world, there will be over a billion of them too. Guess what, whitey? YOU’RE a minority! OH, THE HORROR!!!

Whoa, I meandered a bit. But I guess it comes full circle, because the GOP, the party of good ol’ boys and their secret club that only rich dudes can get into, is making silly waves right now and it’s both hilarious and scary to watch. I understand that they’ve put Palin through Press Boot Camp, and nobody will have access to her for two weeks. Believe me, I’ve never really given a crap before, but I’ll be watching the hell out of the VP debates when they happen, and I’m sure as shit making certain that I’m registered at my current address so I can another big Fuck You to the Republicans on election day. Not that it mattered in the past two elections. Holy shit, if they steal it again, I don’t know if I’m gonna go postal, or if I’m moving to Finland for real.

I’m gonna shut up and go to bed, but before I do, I’ll leave you with some Zappa lyrics that fit the mood right now. The song is called “What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body?”.

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I don’t know if I’ll get digitally yelled at for posting this without the author’s permission, but I just HAD to! You can find these at Cafepress, where I have some of my own designs for sale.

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I have a huge post that I started and saved.  I don’t know if  I’m going to simply edit it into a nice and concise piece or if it will need to be pared down and turned into more than one post, but let’s just say that it’s about politics.  I was going to write a nice quick one about the GOP choice of running mate for McCain.  It grew.  And grew.  And so I stopped and I’ll just give you this for now.

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