I Have Transcended Both Pain and Fashion

I haven't been much of a Freak Magnet lately--more like a worker ant. Two jobs, ten to twelve shifts a week, 50-60 hours, plus trying to sell/fix bikes out of the house. Trying to put on my big boy pants and be a grown-up, I guess.

This is basically where I work for one of the jobs, so it can't be all bad:

And the delicate strains of the world's tiniest violin waft gently through the firmament.

The key is, to not let it get to you. I've never been in Guantanamo Bay, but I imagine if I were stuck there like those other hapless assholes, I'd ultimately have to come to an understanding: "How can I not make this suck so much? How can I be happy in this moment, as fucked as it is?"

In addition to hanging themselves, the luckless few wasting away at Guantanamo because they once lit OBL's cigarette (he's dead, BTW) or threw a rock at an Lynndie England or something, well...in addition to hanging themselves these nowhere men, humble creatures of Limbo such as they are, like to pray. Five times a day, ass to the west and head to Mecca. This is meant to show fanaticism to Americans. Who actually fucking prays? On their knees, even? On their very faces? Good lord, how gauche. Jesus, that shit went out with macrame tube tops and brown nail polish.

Well, what the fuck would you do? In the words of Black Flag in "No More": "No, I won't believe that this is all/ I'm not happy, I'm not free." If you're sitting in a tropical chicken coop, marinating in your own juices, you'd better get your mind on that next level, if you can't step up with the corporeal self. Even if you're convinced it's a delusion. Especially if you're convinced it's a delusion.

Fox News loves to show Muslims praying: it highlights their unimaginable piety next to our weekend football game Bud Light Catholic guilt Sunday rituals. It makes them other, it stamps them FANATIC.

"What kind of a lunatic would pray five times a fuckin' day?"

We ask, indignant, an army of armchair quarterbacks, a battalion in La-Z-Boys, where we sit and feast, wearing the colors of our Sunday blood tribes, screaming at grown men in tights as they play war games in some faraway land.

I'm no apologist. I'd have killed the motherfucker myself--with my thumbs--if I could have. But really, what an afterthought. A let down. Parade him through New York in stocks or let me yawn already. It's the same game we've played since the fucking Crusades. Do you know what those bastards are doing? They're desecrating everything we hold dear: They're shitting on the Chevrolet, the apple pie, and your mom. We gonna let 'em get away with that, boys? Put on your jocks, team, it's time to saddle up and sodomize.

Help me: I'm fuckin' bored.

So yeah. Don't get wound up, man. Hate to sound like a flaccid old hippie, but sometimes it helps to sit on a bench, look at the waves, and smoke a bowl or two. Meditate. Take a step laterally instead of marching down the grid iron. Put your mind in a different jar, if only for a second. I'm not against traveling the world, seeing what version of meat and bread is popular in the Outermost Cusp of Eternal Bumfuck Nowhere, but it really is true: wherever you go, there you are. Stuck, motherfucker. So you can be a bitch and suffer, or you can smile and say, "well, at least I got the other leg." In the words of Ram Dass: "Be here now."

This is known. This is science: a motherfucker can take shit too seriously.

It might be time to laaaaaay back. Have a couple beers with the guys before you go home. Smoke a bowl sittin' on the dock of the Bay, ride up that monster hill without stopping while listening to Closing Time. With your mind off your money and your money off your mind.

Don't have a meltdown here, Mr. Man. Stand tall as the world turns to a lump of mushy shit with Glenn Beck planting a flag atop it. Just know when to blow off a little steam:

Or maybe blow a little smoke, if that's your get down:

Do what you've gotta do to get loose, just be loose:

Real loose. Walk to the edge and let the wind blow through you. But know when to step back:

Rise above. Hit it on that next level. Transcend, if you will:

Take yourself from a 10 to a 25 within seconds.

Ask yourself: What Would Lemmy Do?
Props to Michael Madfes for the above image, which is available for a nominal fee by clicking on the last link, along with some other randomly awesome and awesomely random goodies.

As for me, I've had so time to stop and smell the flowers, provided they smell like bad breath and reruns of the Streets of San Francisco. You can't deny Maulden any more than you can deny the steamroller of wah-wah driven funk of a good Quinn Martin intro:

8 screws, 1 plate, and 22 staples later:
So I broke my ankle working at the bar. Tried to take a guy down, and ended up taking myself out. Ten minutes before last call. The night before I was supposed to head off to Boggs Mountain to go camping and mountain biking with my lady, followed by a couple days fishing in Clearlake. To celebrate my birthday. My 40th birthday.

I think I'm hearing that violin again.

This is right after I broke it, in the ambulance:
And here's my friend Brett, who just happened to be at work that night, just in time to hook me up with a swell dose of morphine.
He seems to be saying, "Just slide on off to La La land...gonna be a smooth landing."

Here's what my ankle looked like 10 days later, when the splint came off:
These are called "fracture blisters." They appear opposite the break, which is the side of the most soft tissue damage. In the words of Dr. Deng: "Imagine a knife sitting on piece of meat." It's the same thing with a broken bone on soft tissue, and if you don't get something stabilized soon enough, a non-compound break can become an open wound. The blisters are caused by swelling: the fluid has to find somewhere to go, so ultimately it seeps through the skin. The top blister was popped before my new cast went on.

That'll put you right off your fuckin' lunch, looking at that thing.

I've done some other things besides break myself off, but I think I'm going to try to filter that through a few posts. No use trying to slam it all in one mega-post. Who's got the time?

Here are a few random pics, starting with the view from the Saratoga Gap trail:
We took Shanti riding. He was a fuckin' trooper, though he did eat shit in the first 75 feet of the trail. Here he is looking like he's going faster than he really is:
Ocean Beach graffiti. My friend Tomek shot this:
Last weekend there was an old school show at Lake Cunningham skate park. There were some beautiful bikes--I'll post pictures within the next 6 months. Maybe.

Remember though, the '80s weren't entirely a golden age for BMX:
Fuck, who am I kidding? BMX robots were raping bitches all over the wasteland.

New blogs forthwith at a more reasonable pace.

Stay gold, Pony Girls and Pony Boys.