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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Your Deadbeat Neighbor's LiveJournal:
| Friday, October 30th, 2009 | |
| 9:45 am | The secret language of trains... So I was playing around with Google Voice, specifically the automagically transcribed voicemail. As I was talking, a train passed outside my office, and I learned that Google Voice speaks train. Do you know what trains say? They say "hello". All this time, these lonely trains roaming the land, trying to make connection. "Hello... Hello... Hello..." Next time: Wave. Be nice. |
| Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 | |
| 2:58 pm | An Open Letter to Mary-Anne Hoots Just now, sitting in my office, I remember a fall conversation I had in 2nd grade. Mary-Anne Hoots asked me, "If you were a girl, would you kiss David Hasslehoff." I thought about it, SAGELY, and then responded "Yes. I would kiss David Hasslehoff." Then she laughed at me. STRAIGHT UP COLD LAUGHED AT ME. FUCK YOU MARY-ANNE HOOTS! FUCK YOU FOR JERKING AROUND MY NASCENT SEXUALITY WHILE IT WAS ALL FRAGILE AND FOUNDLING LIKE. MAYBE YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT HASSLEHOFF WASN"T GOING TO BE MICHAEL KNIGHT FOREVER! MAYBE YOU DIDN'T KNOW HE WAS GOING TO BE ON A LITTLE SHOW CALLED BAYWATCH WHICH WOULD BECOME THE MOST WATCHED SHOW IN THE WHOLE GOD DAMNED WORLD. I WOULD HAZARD A GUESS, MARY-ANNE HOOTS, THAT MAYBE THERE'S QUITE A FEW MEN THAT, IF THEY WERE WOMEN WOULD ALSO KISS DAVID HASSLEHOFF AND MAYBE I DON'T THINK THAT'S WEIRD AT ALL. Though... that whole youtube where he's drunk and on the floor trying to eat... heart breaking, right? I know the kid's heart was in the right place, but... the drink has got a dude and a dude's gotta eat, y'know Mary-Anne Hoots? |
| Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 | |
| 2:40 pm | Cutting the sticks off lollipops... I'll start this with an admission. A while back I started smoking again. See, I can always use other people as an excuse. If they do it? I can too! Anyway: I've quit again. I only got a week or so into it. I've been working on my health and cardio fitness for the last year, and it was ridiculous to start smoking right before the race season I've been working towards started... I quit via the nicotine patch. They've been the only thing that has ever really worked for me. I love them. I love the weird vivid dreams they give me whenever I use them... for about a week. After that, the patch gives me night terrors, and I wake up several hours after going to sleep with a sudden shock, and am WIDE awake with fight or flight freakouts. I had a lot of extra patches, since I quit early on, and kind of used a self-prescribed course which took me through the "Steps" very rapidly. I smoked a pack a day for a week, not 30 years, you know? During this, I was telling my boss about the vivid dreams. He was excited by this. The next day I brought him the lowest dose, a 7mg transdermal patch, which applies 7mg of nicotine over a 24 hour period. He thanked me, and took it home to try it. Nothing. Of COURSE that calls for bigger medicine. I brought him one of the "Step 2" patches I was on. 14mg of nicotine applied transdermally over 24 hours. He again thanked me, and left to try it. The next day he was called out of town for some family business, and I hadn't heard much from him until today. It turns out, he wasn't having the weird dream effects that were typical to me, so he bought a box of them himself to try over time. The next size up. 21mg of nicotine, over 24 hours. Then, he stopped. He said his head was spinning, he was grouchy... as an ex-smoker he recognized it. He was having nicotine withdrawls. He'd become addicted to the patch! He's back down to 14mg patches now... tomorrow I'm going to be bringing him some 7mg patches so he can continue to ween himself off. |
| Sunday, October 4th, 2009 | |
| 7:20 am | PULL UP, DON'T SINK I jumped out of an airplane yesterday. Everyone says it's "a blast" or "really cool". It was a tandem jump, so I was pretty much just along for a ride on a big dude's chest. Holding me in his arms... looking at me with his crystal blue eyes...telling me everything is going to be fine... then we kiss and it's like he kisses my soul... uh... So we got up to 13,000 Feet and the door rolled open. The guy says "ARE YOU READY TO SKY DIVE?" and I'm all "YES SIR!" We waddle over to the door and he is doing stuff behind me, which kind of tips me out of the door in the harness. Every piece of stimuli available to me is saying "THIS IS SO FUCKING WRONG. THIS IS NOT OK! WHOOP WHOOP! PULL UP! WHOOP WHOOP! PULL UP! DON'T SINK! WHOOP!" Then he just rolls out of the plane. My equilibrium back flips and all thoughts are "FALLINGFALLINGFALLINGFALLING!" That's over in a split second. I didn't even have time to make a noise. Then I'm hit by the sheer ridiculous nature of what's happening. I'm 2 miles in the air, and ... falling. I don't have context for any of this. It's so foreign to me conceptually that I'm just...calm. I'm serene. I'm the mother-fucking Gautama Buddha. Then the next 7 minutes are me looking at my shoes. It looks like I'm standing on nothing, a mile off the ground. The dude gives me the parachute controls, and I spin us around a bunch, and laugh like I'm a kid. Then we're deposited on the ground. Thunk. Gentle as that. Like I stepped out of a car. Everyone says how fun it is. No one ever tells you about the peaceful calm. |
| Sunday, September 6th, 2009 | |
| 1:16 pm | The little creatures of nature: They don't know they're ugly. Last night, I was explaining to my friend Anna, that I enjoy pausing the TV and looking at the faces of the people caught in time. I went on further to explain my philosophy that we're beautiful graceful creatures. We're comprised wholly of motion, quicksilver and ether made flesh. As such, we're not meant to be frozen in time, and that any pictures are a lie which betrays our very being. An hour or so later, someone took a picture of me while I was talking. I was being very animated. Animated, not Statuesque. This bastard moment caught in time was the result:  |
| Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | |
| 9:42 pm | When the Baby Falls, the Doctor Calls This evening, I lay on the couch, finishing my sick day. I had set Grindhouse to record a few nights ago. Since I was immobilized, tonight was as good of night as any to watch it. I skipped Planet Terror, watching only the trailers and Death Proof. I know Death Proof is pretty much panned by everyone, but I love it. Perhaps it's my childhood fixation with the movie "The Vanishing Point." The credits rolled, then I saw it... on every stinger kick of the song, they show a "China Girl". I previously talked about my fixation with "China Girls" last December. One of the China Girls is reversed. Since I have the technology, I set my phone to take a negative picture, and watched it again on my camera screen. It was striking, so I grabbed some video of it, so that I could share. Where was this footage taken? How old is it?! |
| Monday, August 17th, 2009 | |
| 11:19 am | I need a new hobby. (TL;DR, Not LJ Cutting it! Sucks to be you.) Yesterday I completed the Portland Century. 100 miles by bicycle. As far as events go, it is comparable to a marathon. Keep in mind the first marathon runner, Phidippides, died shortly after running the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens. Saturday, as we were driving to a coworkers birthday party, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} joeyfalconetti was telling me "You'll want to quit. You'll hit this place where you wonder why the fuck you ever thought this was a good idea." Sunday morning found me eating Spaghetti for breakfast at 5am, and doing a couple last minute things. Filling up the Camelbak, and stuffing some emergency food into its pockets. A quick stop at the mechanic at the start line found a problem with my rear dérailleur that was plaguing me since last May. (Oh man...shifting is now so effort free, and it stays in adjustment. It's quiet and quick. So nice...) I was planning on going it alone, but evilscheme whom I've been training with was a last minute addition. We set out and were immediately passed for the next few hours by all of the hardcore roadies. It was somewhat expected. We're not fast, but we keep a pace. About mile 20 my knee started acting up. Pitiful. Two weeks ago I did 66 miles. No knee pain. Last weekend I did 50. No knee pain. Yesterday I did 20, and I get knee pain? It's frustrating dealing with physical limitations that are mysterious like that. I decided to pop a couple ibuprofen (which I have NOT been carrying with me, and was tucked along in my bag as a "Why not" addition.) and push on. Around mile 40 the awful climbing started. I knuckled down and put my all into it. I had several bad climbs back to back, followed by a rest stop. Somewhere in the mile 40 climb, I was trying to do math in my head. "So... 40 out of 60... 4/6ths... 2/3rds... So I'm 2/3rds done... but... 33 miles is a third of 100... so... 66 would be 2/3" I kept going over that in my head, over and over. Turns out, that's a symptom of fatigue where you just go dumb. The next 15 miles were filled with brutal rollers. I powered through them. Around mile 53 there was a rest stop. They were running out of everything. Not even PBJs were left. Our cloud cover that kept things nice and cool had burned off in the last 30 minutes. A quick application of sunscreen and a time check... we had 11 miles to the next rest stop. And 45 minutes to get there before it closed. If we missed that one, we'd miss the next one, the one after that, and consequently miss the finish line. Leaving the rest area, two ladies were checking their map. We made a comment about the hills being over. The told us we were wrong. There was still an awful climb at mile 57 on the map. Hitting that... I was beat. My legs were out of gas. I had given everything I had to get up to the 1575 foot peak. I burned it all out in the several thousand feet of climbing. Here I was, with about 2500 ft more of climbing to go. Looking back at the data I pulled, the elevation guide for the route was close, but WAY off. So defeated. I kept having to get off the bike, stand there for a second, and then get on and ride to the next patch of shade. Sometimes it was only 20 feet. Sometimes it was a couple hundred. People in inferior shape than me kept passing me. I had blown myself out. I completely miscalculated where I was. I wanted to cry. Doing the math now, it is as though I had done the steepest hill I've ever done, coming back from the Falls, twice. Back to back! Awful things kept going through my head. I was not prepared for this. Why did I choose this as my first century? This very obviously is a ride for seasoned riders. Here I am, basically my first year of riding... So stupid. "I am a mediocre cyclist". We hit the rest stop at mile 64. It had JUST closed. Saw the handful of slowpokes that we did the awful second climb with. One of the folks we climbed with got there just before us. She never stopped. Just kept pushing. evilscheme commented to me as we were refilling our water bottles. "You know what echelon of cyclist we are? Middle aged lady on a city bike." God, he was right. She blew the doors off us on that climb.Ended up hanging out with a lady that I climbed with for a while. She was out from New York. Manhattan. For her it was either this or an MTB triathlon out at Haag Lake. She wasn't prepared for this either. She just finished a century at Lake Tahoe! Fuck me! The next downhill lifted my spirits. It's funny, I commented in my head that my spirit was light like a leaf on the wind. "Leaf on the Wind" never ends well. Mile 65 had a 500 foot climb, no shade, steep grades. I walked portions of it. Humiliating. "Just keep going." I had to repeat over and over. Mile 70 we hit the Historic Columbia River Highway. Familiar turf! This is the route evilscheme and I took back from Mult Falls! There are NO MORE HILLS! We knew we weren't out yet though, as we knew this route to be hot, close to high traffic roads (smelly exhaust), and leads right into the headwinds of Marine Drive. The last 25 miles up to 100 were going to all be against a stern headwind. We took turns riding close to each others rear tire. Alicia from New York, evilscheme, and I. We powered through. We hit the last rest stop with 11 miles to go. There was food there, but it was covered in yellow jackets. The three of us pushed on through downtown, each step becoming easier. If anything I recouped quite a bit on Marine drive. I'll take headwind to hills any day. It was clear that barring debilitating injury, I was going to complete the century. We crossed the line a little after 6:30. 9 hours of riding, 2 and change of standing around. Almost a 12 hour day. Our goodie bags had a beer in them. They were not twist caps. I pressed mine open with a brick and drank it right down.  No beer in the universe has ever tasted better than a 105 mile, 12 hour beer. As I was organizing my thoughts on the ride home, I voiced that I live in 2 worlds. Among most people in my life, they see what I have been doing as amazing. Out there on the road though, it is clear that I am the bottom rung of what is possible. I finished. I didn't ride in the sag wagon. However...of the people that finished I am DFL. Don't get me wrong. I showed up, and I did it. I would have done it if I had to crawl. Next time... Faster. Better.   P.S.: Someone took a sandpaper covered sledgehammer to my crotch, and my right leg no longer works as advertised. |
| Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 | |
| 1:14 pm | Meme Stream Dream Team! I advanced one year last Friday. Had an awesome birthday. Sang some songs and drank some beers. RODE 66 MILES: A NEW PERSONAL BEST.   Rode from SE Portland out to Multnomah Falls (Which is something I've managed never to see in all the time I've been here.) There was a poetry to arriving at Multnomah Falls and seeing my odometer at 33miles on my 33rd birthday. It was anti-climactic in a sense. This will be my longest ride until the Portland Century. The big goal. At the end of it...no knee pain. I'm ready for the century. This weekend: PDX Bridge Pedal... going to ride there, do the ride, then ride home. That should give me a meager 50 miles. A paltry recovery ride. Then: The big show. |
| Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 | |
| 11:51 am | Volcanic Masses: Treacherous Bile Passes I really REALLY fucking hate computers. Let that soak in. I FUCKING HATE THEM. THERE AREN'T ENOUGH F-WORDS TO EXPLAIN HOW MUCH I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY hate computers. I don't even computer things for fun at this point. For fun, I leave my house. FUCK ELECTRICITY. I'll LiveJournal, I'll twitter, I'll even MyFace around a bit... NO GAMES. NO PRODUCTIVITY. HERE, I DREW A LITTLE PICTURE TO HELP ILLUSTRATE HOW I FEEL ABOUT COMPUTERS.  THE LITTLE WAVES ARE ANGER. ANGER IS TOO WEAK A WORK. HATRED? CONTEMPT? GUT-WRENCHING-SOUL-LOATHING? HELP ME OUT HERE GANG? BLOODRAGE! I WILL EAT YOU COMPUTERS! DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME?! |
| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | |
| 8:09 am | "Why do we always hurt the ones we love? Why Banjo? Why?!! Banjo. Banjo! Banjo!!!" Went to Florida. Drank a lot. Smoked some cigarettes. Ate a crap tonne of fried food. Gained some weight, but I managed to fall asleep on a beach holding a beer in my hand. I consider it a fair, but embarrassing trade. I'm back. Getting ready for the Portland Century. I can make it from my home to my office in just over an hour. That's how long it takes by car, and I have what would be considered a LONG bike commute by Portland standards. Now, I just need to stack 6.25 of my commutes end to end and I have the PDX100. In related news: This morning two fat guys* on mountain bikes passed me. I saw them far away in the mirror, and they just laid on it to catch and pass me. Do they reach down and snap their yellow power bracelets and utter these solemn words? Lance... let your power flow over me, through me, guide, invigorate, and protect me. I am your vessel. LOMBACKEE KREEGO PLOMO AH-AH**!!! I'm not competitive...mostly, I'm really just trying to build endurance and get to work at a reasonable time. There's a river there, and it's quiet. It's nice scenery that I'm riding by. So... I'm not in any HUGE rush. The second guy though... These unchecked acts of aggression cannot stand. So I pushed a bit harder and got right up behind him, where I knew he could see me in his mirror, then I just stuck there. As he sped up and slowed down, I kept pace... but I tried to look as nonchalant as possible. Havin' a drink of water. Eatin' some of my condensed compact high protein food product bar. Lookin' at my phone. Nappin'. This went on for about 3 miles until he left the Esplanade. * - And they weren't so much as fat as kinda chunky. ** - These are the sacred power words. They're also useful for a mantis to hypnotize a space ghost. |
| Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 | |
| 4:57 pm | Possibly inspired by Steve Gototen. "Jobs says in a Playboy magazine interview that he was not happy that he learned, from a video tape he was not supposed to see,that every US nuke operated out of Europe was being aimed using an Apple II." NEW RT 45 FD 200 PENDOWN END |
| Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | |
| 4:06 pm | Time Machines Only Move Forward If you weren't at the Young Fresh Fellows show: YOU LOSE! They were there supporting their first album in 66 years. It was like I was 16 again...except drinking beer. Please listen to my first favorite song off their album. If You Believe In Cleveland There country music station |
| Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | |
| 4:25 pm | Hey there Portland...  You are big and awesome, and I'm going to ride all the way the fuck around you. You hear me? 8/16/09. 2 months. Etched in stone. |
| Monday, June 8th, 2009 | |
| 6:57 am | ... This year my allergies have been ridiculous. Today I woke up with pink eye. Seriously, body? This is what we're doing now? |
| Friday, June 5th, 2009 | |
| 3:28 pm | |
| Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | |
| 10:46 am | Monday Night's Alright (For Driving) Setting: In the car on the way back from the Gorge. Shawn.We could go home, get drunk and play that surgery game. Daks. That would be a hoot and a holler. Time passes silently. Daks. (singing) Saturday, Saturday, S-S-S Saturday Shawn. (singing along to a different song) Saturday Ni-HIIIIIIIGHT Daks. No! No no no! Shawn. S A T U R D A Y...NIGHT! Daks. YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! Shawn. Bay City Rollers? Daks. No... The Who did a cover of Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting... Hoot and a Holler got me to a belly full of beer, my old man's drunker than a barrel of monkeys and my old lady she don't care. (singing again) Saturday, Saturday! Shawn. and that got me to the Bay City Rollers, Saturday Night! Daks. and THAT'S how you got that scar! |
| Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 | |
| 2:10 pm | On the topic of eyes... Here's something you don't know but probably suspected: Most often my car is actually some form or fashion of a spaceship. Last night as I was driving from one place to the next, I was getting into one of those moving picture shows pretty good and was fiddling around with the non-essential automobile controls... you know... to pilot the spaceship. Later on a lane change brought me back to reality. Upon inspection my left and right mirrors were pointed some pretty random directions instead of just beyond my rear fenders. Think Marty Feldman. |
| 1:37 pm | At least there's pretty lights... Sean. Oh hey, Colin Hay is coming to town! Daks. Who's that? Sean. (singing) I can't get to sleep. I worry over situations. Daks. Oh! You like him! Sean. (interupting) Yeah! Daks. He does that thing... with his eyes. Sean. Well... more like he can't NOT do that thing with his eyes. Daks. ... His horrible... horrible eyes. |
| Sunday, May 17th, 2009 | |
| 1:34 pm | What I do on Saturdays...  evilscheme and I set out from Amity around noon, meeting up with the B*ds, already in progress. It was a beautiful and uneventful ride. My legs held up fairly well. Between the shoes, the stretching, and the PattStraps I had under my bike shorts it seemed to make a difference.At about mile 30 my mood darkened somewhat. It was there that I made the realization that I've gone as far as I've ever gone. I was tired, and uncomfortable. If you look at the route profile below, you can see that I had been climbing for a while. The odometer slowed. Everything seemed harder. I could feel black despair setting in. Then everything got steeper. I was starting to feel my knee. I had been taking ibuprofen to try to mitigate the onset of the pain. In my head I started rounding. I still had a little under half the distance to go.  Then at mile 37 there were some bikes pulled off on the side of the road next to a sign that read "Now Leaving Suislaw National Forest". We overheard a little of the conversation. We were at the summit. The lowest summit of the Pacific Range. "It's all downhill from here, more or less...there's still one really bad hill, it's short but brutal." We pressed on and instantly everything was wonderful. All of the vegetation magically changed the moment we crossed the rain shadow. We were riding in the shade under a thick and lush canopy. We stopped at mile 40 for the last rest stop. There was more talk of the rest of the course. Stories were traded. I told a lady that I didn't know any of the hills grades, but I could explain the course based on how I felt about life in general and the last 10 miles were best described as "HEY! MAYBE BEING ALIVE IS PRETTY OK!" A few miles later there evilscheme and I remarked wondering where that last big hill was. Then we turned a corner and saw 8 or 9 people walking their bikes up a hill. It's remarkably steeper than the one by my house that kicks my ass. I decided that couldn't stop me, went to my lowest gear and decided to chop my way up it. I made it most of the way in the saddle, but at the end I had to stand on my pedals and push my way up. I got to the top, I was wiped, but felt awesome. 44.5 Miles: I like that you can see my wheel's shadow, and the pavement whizzing by. Note the cruising speed of 24.5mph when the photo was taken.  At mile 46... what I had been dreading finally happened. I started feeling the sharp stings in my knee, but it just didn't matter. I was so close that I wouldn't be stopped by it. Short of my leg falling clean off, I'd be there before too long. Then we came out of the trees and right into the coastal winds. We still managed to keep a faster pace than the rest of the day, passing other riders. Haystack Rock poked in and out of view looming over the hills on the horizon. I had trouble keeping my composure at this point. I was certain to make it. I was assured. The farthest I've traveled under my own power, and I was only going to go farther. Our pace quickened. We stopped talking. My partner was fighting his own battles with discomfort. My leg was aching off and on. Every so often the reality would catch me, and I'd weep a little bit. Turning a corner, and fighting traffic into Pacific City, I caught a sign that extracted more tears. "Welcome bikers. You have reached the beach." Another left turn and I was across the finish line. I almost lost it. In the hum of life I tend to miss the significance of moments. Sometimes I'm just too busy for the reality, but I had a lot of time to think and worry about this one. With crystal clarity I was facing the fact that I'd done it. Almost twice my longest distance. It was undeniably clear. At this moment, I am better than I have ever been in my life... and I know I can do more. Today my knee is sore, but I'm pretty fresh feeling and rested. I need to adjust my rear derailleur. Other than that I feel awesome. 55 miles: The last 10 miles were our quickest, at 40 minutes. We stopped hanging back with the B*ds and just went for it. Our top speed on the course was around 33mph, not the 144mph that my GPS decided.  |
| Saturday, May 16th, 2009 | |
| 9:28 pm | RTB Summary Today I did the best I've ever done before. |
