- from “Cheap and Cheerful” by The Kills.

“Everyone tells me they’re crazy, Well crazy people are so fucking boring
Wake me when your through being cool, cause I’m snoring”

- from “Untitled” by Jawbreaker

In about 10 minutes I’d sliced up the entire tube and now have a jar full of I have no idea how many cool as hell black rubber bands that I can use for any number of things. I already replaced the binder clip I was using to hold a stack of credit cards together in my pocket with one and love it. This was super simple, endlessly useful, and will keep this stuff out of the landfill for a little while longer anyway. Works for me!

For more info on the above photo check out this post on LA Metblogs, and for a well thought out contrasting opinion check out Will Campbell’s thoughts about it here. I consider Will a very good friend of mine and like him I’m not going to judge anyone for their opinions of this, for or against, though as you might suspect I had slightly different take on it than he does and I want ramble on about some of those points. Will says that rides like these are

“stunts that have the potential to do more harm than good, not only to the bodies involved, but also the efforts that strive to legitimately bring bikes out of the gutter pan and into traffic lanes.”

And he’s not alone in that thought. A commenter on the LA Metblogs posts says:

“And you wonder why so few motorists respect bicycles”

However I just don’t buy it. I don’t buy the respect issue because, well I know how a calendar works and you can’t say you didn’t respect someone last week for something they did today. Motorists haven’t respected bicycles for a very very long time and it’s absurd to suggest that is valid because of something that happened yesterday. Motorists don’t respect other motorists which is evdent by how many accidents and fender benders happen every single day in cities all over the world. When you are in a car you are in a bubble and the fact of the matter is most people are happy with the isolation and don’t realize what they are doing until they plow into someone else. Or someone plows into them. When they hit a car it gets a dent, when they hit a cyclist the cyclist tends to get the worst of it so there’s a reason cyclists tend to be alittle more vocal about motorists not respecting them then other motorists. Not because motorists have any less respect for bikes than cars, but because the stakes are higher.

Without spending too much time on this point in particular I understand Will’s concern that these kinds of things can reflect poorly on a larger group of but I just don’t beleive that hold a lot of water. It’s a traditional arguement and it sounds good, but I think it kind of ends there. Also I know that there is no changing how people act, and how people perceive those acts so what you are left with is the realization that things are going to happen no matter how you personally feel about them, so your option is to ignore them, speak out against them, or join in. All vaid routes, just a matter of what you want for yourself at the end of the day. From what I’ve seen in person and what I’ve seen online, the people who were not there have much stronger, much more negative reactions than the people who were. In comments on Metblogs I’ve seen people called names and insulted, and these actions used to justify years of negative back and forth. In person I’ve seen motorists cheering on the bike riders, chidren standing up out of sun roof windows applauding while their parents smiled and took photos, and I’ve seen law enforcement amazed and amused and decline to give out citations. My point is the assumed gut reaction isn’t aways realistic.

Sure this is an extreme approach, but sometimes it takes an extreme approach to get noticed. People who nicely follow the rules are rarely involved with changing them.

But protest and rule changing aside, it’s fun. Everyone involved enjoyed themselves and has a great story to tell. Sure it’s risky, but so is everything else. We all have to decide what risks are worth while in our lives to make us smile. Some risks we can avoid, some we can’t. Some we can embrace.

Depending when I click “publish” on this post it’ll either be my last day officially married, or my first day in about 9 and a half years of not being married. May 8th is the official end, even though it was really over early on last year. I keep wondering how I feel about such a milestone and really can’t come up with any kind of solid qualifier for it, though maybe I don’t need to. The truth is it’s more depressing than I expected it to be, but it’s also more exciting. In some ways I feel like I’m about to take the final step away from a massive part of my life, a part that honestly I do look back fondly on for the most part. While at the same time I feel like a kid about ready to embark on a funhouse ride for the first time, a bit scared but super excited to see what’s behind those doors. I mean in reality tomorrow is no different than today. It’s different than last year for sure, but not so different than most of the last 6 months so why does crossing an official date even make a difference? I dunno, but it does for some reason so I guess I just have to roll with it.

That said, I think I’ve learned a hell of a lot over the last year and while I’m not stupid enough to say “always” or “never,” here’s two general concepts I’m going to try and keep in mind in the future.

1. Stop worrying / thinking about what happened yesterday. There’s no way to change it, and it’s not worth obsessing over. Learn the lessons and move on, try to make new mistakes rather than repeat the ones you already made. There’s no shortage of new mistakes you can make, why waste time on ones you’ve already checked off the list.
2. Stop making any assumptions about what tomorrow will bring. It hasn’t happened yet and there is no guarantee it ever will. If you spend too much time thinking about tomorrow you miss today and that’s something you can’t get back. Don’t pass up things you can do today, in most cases missing out on doing something is much worse than doing it and wishing you hadn’t.

Basically there’s no changing what has happened and it’s pointless to think about how things might be if something had happened differently. And the way to do that is own the choices you make and keep moving on to the next one. What is important for me at this point is to not put myself in any situations where I end up wishing I’d [ done something / said something / met someone / kissed someone / at least tried ]. Things are too unpredictable and potentially short lived to take the safe and easy route. Of course I’m saying all this now and being all lofty about it but might change my mind and love the safe easy route tomorrow. Who knows. Anyway, here’s two quotes by folks much wiser than me to end this thing right.

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring. ” - Chuck Palahniuk
“Do or do not, there is no try.” - Yoda

I’ll save you the trouble of typing in that URL, it’s a racist site about white power and blah blah blah. More importantly it’s an index card with ink pen stuck to a wall with bubble gum. Guess the marketing budget just isn’t very flush right now. Anyway it looked like it was going to fall off the wall at any second and I felt bad that all their efforts would be wasted when it feel down and people started trampling on it so I decided to help them out with a sticker I just happened to have on hand:

See, much better. That will stick for a few extra hours for sure.

Last night was the Wolfpack Hustle Midnight Drag Race and it was super fun. Here’s a post I wrote about it as well as all the photos I took.

I almost squeezed X-Men into that but I’m still not sure if I liked that movie so much because I was such a big fan of the comic initially and was just amped to see Wolverine so bad ass on the screen. I also came close to throwing Mallrats in there because comics are such a central point in that flick, and it’s amazing.