I don't own a bike.  I forgot there was a reason for that.

It's because I'm an uncoordinated spastic nerfbag.

I used to have a blue Schwinn lowrider with ape-hanger handlebars.  One time I was crossing Vine Street, riding in a pair of 4" platform black velour mules, and when I rode off the curb my heels hit the street and sparks flew as the metal heel plates scraped the pavement.  I crashed and burned after fishhooking an unintentional turn when I saw what I thought were flames shooting out of my shoes.

After I healed up, I figured a second chance on the lowrider was worth it, and rode into Chinatown.  Instead of navigating the very not real bike lanes around 10th and Cherry, I foolishly scooted up on the sidewalk for a few feet before planning to jump the curb back into the road.  I lost a round of chicken against a 93-year old Chinese woman and instead got up close and personal with a mailbox, ripping a decent-sized hole in my head.

A couple years later I borrowed my old housemate, Karen's sweet mountain bike, while she was in Europe, to go to the Reading Terminal.  The front tire got caught in a trolley track and I went over the handlebars, effectively mashing the eggs, produce and beef jerky I scored from the Amish, and decimating the welcome home cake I'd gotten for Karen.  I had to make an emergency call to my bike-expert friend Tim to come to the house and put K's bike back together, complete with bending the frame's metal tubing back into place and painting in the raw gashes.

Last summer, JW decided to load up his bike and one of the garage spares into the wagon and bring them to the city so we could tool around.  He got clipped by a car on Delaware Avenue, and ever since, his bike has been upside-down and tireless in my living room.  Since we've only recently gotten out of the 40s around here, the mountain has been keeping the other company, and for lack of space we play Scrabble in the kitchen.

When the temperatures hit the 70s, I figured this was my big chance to flip off public trans and get to work on my own power, without whiplash from overzealous brakers or having to watch every mother of two smack her kids in the face and call them stupid.  A win-win, I thought.  So I busted out some cargo shorts and rode off into the morning mist, backpack over my shoulders.  If you are familiar with my standard wardrobe, you would immediately recognize that me on a bike and me in shorts are the second and third horseman of the apocalypse and that this story won't be ending well.

I rode that sweet Cannondale with the springy forks and treaded pedals to work two days without incident.  My ego was practically aflame, as I'd clearly beaten back a bloody history of years of defeat at cyclery's hands.

Yesterday, I was riding home about 6 o'clock, in the bike lane, down a major thoroughfare with no traffic.  Just as I was getting up alongside a giant maple tree mid-block, there was a gust of wind.  Next thing I know, I'm in a cyclone of swirling maple seedlings -- green and brown autorotating helicopters -- and they're whipping me in the face and eyes.  I jackknifed the handlebars and fell in slow motion for ten minutes.  When I stopped rolling, I was at the corner, and the woman stopped at the perpendicular traffic light was screaming at the top of her lungs because she thought I was dead.  And her son and daughter in the back seat joined in with a chorus of, OH MY GOD!  OH MY GOD!

Miraculously, the bike was unharmed.  Mostly because I broke its fall, with both knees, my right foot, right ankle, back of right thigh, right shoulder, backpack and skull.  Roadrash is roadrash, but the injuries sustained from the bike parts are a suprisingly accurate story of which part got stuck in which flesh at which time.  But the crowning glory is definitely the giant green egg above my right temple.  I'm the coolest girl in kindergarten.

I won't lie.  When the pointless massacre at Columbine happened, I was transfixed.  I didn't leave the couch for days, dedicated to the repeated footage of horrific scenes of bloody kids jumping out second-story windows.  I couldn't look away. 

I wasn't enjoying it, in a traditional sense.  But my heart was racing.  I'd never seen such violence up close, it blew my mind.  I don't want people to get hurt, but I imagine watching it firsthand gives the same rush as any Class A narcotic.  I was as disgusted as I was absolutely captivated.

As more and more fruitbats go off their meds or buy into conspiracy paranoia or whatever drives people to flip out and kill innocents, my taste for following up on the news story diminishes a thousandfold.  Maybe with Columbine, it was the novelty.  But by the time of the massacre of little Amish girls and subsequently, Virginia Tech and Ohio, I no longer had the stomach for it.  Throw in the psychotic rambling recordings of the VT killer artfully run all over the nightly news, and the whole phenomenon had outlived itself by too much, too long and far too frequent.

So why the resurgence of near-hysterical interest in the Florida 6-on-1 scandal?

Again, I won't lie.  I don't give a flying shit whether or not some vile white trash kids beat each other bloody or not.  The fewer female teenagers on the planet linking "Smell Yo Dick" on myspace, the better.  But oh my sweet christ, what a clusterfuck.  There is just so much wrong with a kid to be able to participate in something like that, it both astounds and boggles the mind.

Looks like the Dr.Phil -- King of All White Trash Housewives and Out of Work Deadbeat Husbands and Fathers -- Show, despite laying out mad cash to get the fattest, ugliest and guiltiest of the perps out of jail, is bound by a gag order and cannot run his program as planned.  I especially liked his producer's statement to the news about how someone on the staff overstepped his bounds -- despite the obvious certitude that no way in fucking hell did the show get permission to lay out $3 grand + for bail and $30 grand + for collateral without express permission from the higher ups.

[Why do people treat us like such fools?  Does a person even exist who would buy that malarkey?  What next, the war in Iraq's not about oil?]

I guess my attraction to media horror is the distance between it and my life.  So much of that whole scene is inconceivable to me, like 6 kids fighting 1 kid.

Who does that?  Are you serious?  How much of a giant flapping clitoris do you have to be to not fight someone 1 on 1?  My parents would have killed me.  Not for fighting, for unfair fighting.  The disgrace wouldn't be for raising a hand in aggression [but it damn well better be in self-defense], but for putting my hands into a fight that already had four fists.  Cowardly and pathetic.

Anyway, a discussion about whether or not the White Trash Victim should've fought back got really heated on another venue.  Essentially, a ton of people thought I was insane to have suggested that at some point over the course of the half-hour attack, WTV should've picked up something blunt, brained the girl at the door, and run for her fucking life.

Reasonable?  Or unreasonable?

I'm not one to revel in another's failures.  I much prefer doling out big ups to those who succeed and wish them luck in future endeavors.

But I'd be lying if I said sometimes it isn't immensely satisfying to uncontrollably blurt a 3-second laugh over someone else's misfortune.

This genius is courtesy of thesuperficial.com which if you don't read consistently, you're missing out on some pretty sharp and hilarious Hollywood commentary.

Seems the perennial idiot Paris Hilton held auditions in NYC for her new reality tv show about finding her a new best friend.

Fewer than 40 people showed up.

Ass clown.

Maybe people are fucking ignorant.

Last time I swung through my hometown, I was car-sharing in proximity to a black Escalade with a tinted back windshield driven by a minuscule highlighted blonde in ungodly expensive sunglasses. 

First of all, if you live in my hometown and drive an SUV, you're late 30s/early 40s, white and a mom who doesn't work.  What need you could possibly be filling driving around in the official flygirl mobile for the postmortem Biggie Smalls World Tour, I cannot fathom.

I guess those ten feet of 1700s cobblestones under an inch of slush can really tax the suspensions and anti-lock braking systems of vehicles in the $70,000 range.  Nonetheless, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Talbot-clad little speck behind the mammoth steering wheel picked that one off the lot 'cause it was pretty and her husband said yes.

On the back of the Escalade, there were three stickers:

1. A "My Honor Student..." bumper sticker.
2. A soccer ball with the name "Brittany" in cursive in the top right, with the number "5" under it.
3. A bastardized country code sticker marked "MV".

It took about 4 minutes.

Googled:

• name of the school on the Honor Student bumper sticker
• youth, traveling and club soccer leagues in the same ZIP
• practice schedules and locations of soccer practice fields in the same ZIP

Then I had the following:

• make and model of Mom's car
• driver's side window visual of Mom
• Vineyard family vacation destination
• daughter's first name
• daughter's school, and academic record assessment
• daughter's sport league, team number, practice time and place

And if I had a criminal nature, I could've kidnapped the shit out of some little girl because her clueless, fuckhead parents think it's a brilliant and adorable idea to personalize the fuck out of all their shit.

I'm paranoid, I admit it.  But I'm also a complete idiot, and I just masterminded a totally legitimate way for someone who can think on his or her feet to convince a kid to go along.  That is how much ammunition is glued to the back of that car.  That kind of shit drives me crazy.  Seriously, it's so fucking flowers and bunnies ignorant, I want to wail that whole family in the head with a cricket bat.

The joke would be on the would-be kidnapper, though.  No one under 65 in my hometown actually has any money.  They're all leased and mortgaged out their asses, and suddenly the bank wants money on the loan for the $750,000 shore house you had to have.  Oh, no, not a payment -- the principal, lovey, and quick about it.

Huh.  I wonder if the two are connected.  Foreclosure and making it painfully easy to steal your kid.  Surely a 9-year old is worth an ocean view.

First, I spent all yesterday afternoon in front of Red Sox v. Athletics in Tokyo, with Daisuke pitching in front of a home crowd.

I love baseball.  And beisbal.  And besoburo.

Secondly, Richard Widmark died.  Bummer, he was 93.  But infinitely more awesome is that he and his first wife [married until her death] had Sandy Koufax as a son-in-law.

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/03/apocalyptic_christian_video_ga.php

I AM the greatest eugooglizer of all time.

My Grandmother died Friday morning.  I was relieved.  I don't like the thought of Nana's tiny frame tripping around without Nana's personality in there.  But that's the cruelty that is Alzheimer's.  Undignified, unpleasant disease.

And it was no picnic to watch my Mom toddle over to visit Nana in a home, wondering if that's what she has to look forward to in another 15 or 20 years.

So I can't say I cried or felt any sadness when I heard the news.  My immediate reaction was relief for me and my Mom.

It takes a funeral to loosen the tears.  A roomful of cousins who all played together as kids, with Nan in the kitchen cooking for us and the army of Rome.  That's the kind of shit that'll make you weep.

But I am the family eugooglizer.

And the last eulogy set the bar impossibly high.  The same Grandmother's husband, Leo -- my Mother's father.  I brought down the mother fuckin house with that.  Hell, I worked in Ty Cobb's batting averages.  It was hilarious, it was very, very sweet, and most importantly, it was totally genuine.  That dude was one of my faves, truly.

And Nan, for all her goodness and kindness, did live in Leo's very long shadow a lot of the time.  I found it difficult to find memories that just included me and her.  There was always such a package deal with the whole extended family when everybody was younger.  But I did come up with some material that was special to us, in the same way she took each of us to work with her in turn, and spoiled each of us when we spent days home sick from school under her attentive eye.

But my strength is generally the parting shot.  When I sat down to write the eulogy in the first place, it's corny but I kind of asked myself what I was trying to do exactly.  Nan didn't need to be exalted, she wasn't that kind of person.  She was quiet and nice and laughing and wouldn't like a real fuss being made over her.  So it seemed like a good call to tuck her in.

This is what she used to sing to us when all the grandchildren in the family were kids and she put us to bed:

I love you a bushel and a peck.

A bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.

A hug around the neck, and a barrel and a heap.

A barrel and a heap, and I'm talkin' in my sleep about you.

Good night, Nanny.

In these fractious, terrorism-laden times, remember this, it may save your life one day if you ever need 70 people of all ages to spontaneously combust into sobs.

BEST.

EUGOOGLIZER.

EVER.

Cell and land lines go public to telemarketers.  Whoopee.

Gotta hit the National Do Not Call Registry:  https://donotcall.gov 

You can register numbers on the site, as well as file complaints against any ass clowns that get through anyway.
Or call 888-382-1222.  You have to call from the number you want registered.

How fucking sad is it that we have to do this.  I miss the days of door-to-door solicitors, when you could just soak them down with a garden hose from behind the driveway retaining wall.

First, I woke up and it was snowing.  YAY!  Then I noticed there was a solid coating on the ground.  YAY-er!

THEN Credence was all over Sirius radio this morning.  Excellent.

I kinda figured today was going to blow, on principle, because of this totally silly freelance job I did Tuesday.  A client wanted me to read their website.  Instead of printing out the site and sending me the pages, they sent me what has to have been the first generation copy on letterhead.  I wasted half of the time I billed clicking around and around in circles, trying to find copy blocks that no longer existed, and links that were never actually coded.

I wound up hand-writing in black ink, copy from the site that was not on the manuscript, and then editing that in red ink.

Essentially, they handed me three saltines and told me to make a souffle.  Retarded, but it's work, so I did it.

Wednesday morning, I got up early and headed downtown to turn in the job before heading uptown to workwork.  I sat down with my contact and explained to her which copy was new, which was changed, and how checks versus Xs signified the status of links.

An hour later, I got a call from her:

Did you read the site, or the manuscript.

The site, why?

The people overseeing this project think you read the manuscript.

Uh, no.  The copy I hand wrote on the manuscript pages?  That's copy from the site that isn't included in the manuscript.  You gave me old copy, which is why I had to update it as I went, then edit the additions.

Oh.

What's the problem.

In the legal section, paragraph 2, you wrote that "sight" needs to be changed to "site".  Does the website really say "sight"?

*****

INTERMISSION:  Is there a reason these geniuses didn't go to the website, click the legal section link and scroll down to paragraph 2 their damn selves?  No.

*****

I don't have it front of me, but I'd have to say "yes".

OK.  [sounding very unsatisfied, hung up]

So then I was all paranoid that I fd the job up, and in typical style, second-guessed myself and assumed the error is mine.  I went to my computer, and found the line in question.  And FUCK YEAH, it said "sight".  So I called her right back and explained what was what.

She laughed and apologized for bothering me.  I said, No troub, call me if anything else looks problematic.  Words I would come to regret.

Yesterday I get a call from my contact saying she handed over the marked-up manuscript to a designer who pretty much said he's not sorting through all that bullshit to figure out what copy goes where.  Pretty much what I should have said from the get-go, but didn't.  So while I slogged through this garbage, Art Guy gets the primadonna treatment, as Contact has overnighted the manuscript back PLUS the website printouts, and I'm supposed to match up the pages.

Wow.  Wonder why shit's so expensive?  Because people are morons.  That job should've taken me 4 hours, straight up.  Instead, it took me 10 -- and natch, I billed for 8.  And now it's going to take another 2 for me to resort, and probably cut and paste each paragraph into place on the web printouts.  And this whole shit has so far been spread out over the course of 4 days.

A 4-hour job, tops. 

So I got up early this morning to catch FedEx.  Overnight packages are supposed to arrive before 10am.  Shock and surprise!  It didn't.  But while I was getting coffee, a UPS guy came in.  The counter girl pointed to me and said, That's her, right there.  UPS guy handed me the electro-signature thinger and traded it for a ginormous package.  I was totally confused.  Did they send me their server?  What the fuck.  I didn't even look at the return address, I just started cutting.

A giant box, a zillion balls of bubble wrap, and still, all I could make out was something flat and blue.  A dozen pieces of packing tape and another dozen layers of bubble wrap, and holy fucking christ.

A tiny post-it.  Happy belated birthday, Love B.

B is my best friend from high school.  She UPS'ed a birthday gift that she made herself.  An oil painting of six vibrant, punch-you-in-the-face-with-summer color blocks, each containing a tanned surfer in various stances, poses and positions on swells.

I'm so happy, and I don't even care that my bus skidded out on Mascher and almost side-swiped a bunch of parked cars, and that we got put back on track by a crew of Puerto Rican detailers in matching Dickies jumpsuits.  The sun shines directly on me.

Hi.

I would like to talk about something that has upset me quite a bit.  It has to do with the recent school shooting in Illinois.

First, let me lay some groundwork, as it were --  I consider myself a fairly liberal democrat. 

That said, I will not, ever, under any circumstances give up, give away, turn in, register or destroy my firearms.  As a former NRA mocker, I am almost embarrassed to admit that Heston's words have begun to ring with a real truth to me lately -- from my cold, dead hands.

I didn't buy a gun to be cool.  I certainly didn't buy it to be tough.  I bought a gun because I felt it was irresponsible of me not to be able to defend myself, hence the carry permit and marksmanship classes. 

I have no problem with the police, and I certainly trust them to come and fingerprint and file a report if my house is broken into.  But after a sketchy run-in with some ass clown hellbent on caving my skull in a few years ago, I saw that is was foolish and naive to rely on a few hundred cops to save my ass when a few hundred thousand other civilians do the same thing, AND actually need their help.  Sometimes you just have to take a few shots to the face, get up, and call it in yourself.

And I was willing to do that.  I don't think it's asking too much of someone to take a tighter grip on the reins.

But that's not what I'm doing, here.  I'm not petitioning that you guys run down to the local gun purveyor and pick up a nice shiny nickel-plated SIG P220 for kicks.  And if you think that's what I'm doing, then you should probably go watch Survivor Short Hills -- I hear the guy with the goatee is going to challenge the girl with the goatee.  Don't hurt your head with thinking, ingest the pablum...

No, all I want to do here is say a few words in support of legal gun ownership, and try to counteract the tide of reactionary blame attributed TO gun ownership in light of that shameful slaying at NIU.

Yes, those poor students are dead and wounded from bullets and buckshot.

Yes, the shooter legally bought the guns.

And yes, I do believe in both gun control and revamping current standards of gun laws.

And that is, in large part, my point.  Legal, responsible gun owners are not idiots.  We're not redneck morons drawling about how no city folk ain't gonna come ina MY house and done take ma guns.  We don't support crime, killing, murder, robbery at gunpoint, carjacking, etc. ad nauseum, and it is MIND-BOGGLING how many people truly believe that we do.

That if you own a gun, you are by default a fucking nutcase.  A ticking time bomb.  An accident waiting to happen.

I've been firing rifles and shotguns since I was 6 years old.  The closest I ever came to a gun-related injury was getting a scald on my arm when a hot shell was ejected and got caught in the sleeve of my tshirt.  And if you want to count one in the sheer stupidity column, I stripped a patch of stain and varnish off my ex-boyfriend's coffee table by accidentally putting down my copper solvent-soaked cleaning rag on it for a second.

Other than that, my record is immaculate.  My gun is immaculate.  My ammunition is properly stored and rotated, and holsters well maintained.  And I am hardly alone.  This is how we do it, because we're living, breathing gun owners who understand what needs to be done to eradicate all hints of danger inherent in owning a piece of equipment that can deliver a 6 grain payload over a thousand feet per second.

And I do not want firearms in the hands of dangerous people.  Of course I don't.  What good does that do the legal gun ownership platform?  None!  Every time some fucking shitbag in South Central whacks a school kid in a drive-by, the nay-sayers unload about how guns must be taken away.  From everyone.  Again, people want to cater to the lowest common denominator over one tragic incident.

And I'm not saying Illinois is one tragic incident.  In fact, the Virginia Tech massacre wasn't even a year ago.

But to blame these events on guns?  Really?  That's the only factor?  Get rid of guns and suddenly no one else is going to go off his meds and flip his shit?

And there it is, point the second.  I sure as fuck don't want MEDICATED people with firearms.  No offense to people on pharmaceuticals, but under no circumstances should anyone under prescription care ever be anywhere near a gun.  Let alone be allowed to purchase.  But how did that little loophole come about?  Well, in the interest of maintaining peoples' privacy, their rights to buy and own guns are unaffected because legal gun dealers aren't allowed to know whether or not a potential buyer is on a cocktail of Zoloft or Lithium or whatever the pill du jour is in the wheeled travel cases of the next hot pharma rep to mince into your local doc's office.

That's a whole other chestnut.  Personal liberties.  And I have no answer.  But I mention it so that you will factor it in to the issues at hand.

That kid didn't buy a gun and suddenly decide to kill.  He was mentally unstable and went off his meds.  If he was so "revered by other students" like the papers say, then I don't know why a single one of them didn't open his medicine cabinet and count his pills when he started acting "erratically".  But again, I have no answer.

Just understand, gun control affects the law-abiding.  Not criminals.  They don't give a shit, that's why they're criminals.  Because they scoff at the law and do as they please.  Legislating the fuck out of gun ownership does nothing to change backdoor sales, illegal imports and street crime.  The guy who bonks you over the head for your Prada bag doesn't tremble at the thought of the next initiative that goes before Congress.

But we do.  Mostly because when something horrible like Illinois happens, people want to duct-tape foam to every corner of every table and counter top in the world so that no child will ever bump his head again.  And that is not the answer.

Taking guns away is not the answer.  People are oh so fond of calling America a bunch of cowboys because the perception is that we ride around on our Mustangs waving our six-shooters in the air.  Everyone loves to jump on the bandwagon and say how "their" country doesn't have the violence problems that we do.  Hey, they may be right.  But what exactly does that mean?  Switzerland is in the top five highest per capita gun ownership in the world and one of the lowest gun-related crime statistics.  So, spare me the guns = crime nonsense.  And not to put too fine a point on it, but go find a map and trace the detour the Nazis took rather than try and fuck with the Swiss.  Why?  Because they have a fully functional militia with required weapons training.  Ignorance is not the way to keep people safe, and kudos to them, they figured it out years ago.

I don't know if I did what I set out to.  I just want people to understand that owning a gun does not make you violent, it does not make you a criminal, and it does not make you suddenly hear chants of "kill kill kill" coming from the lock box.  There are a lot of mitigating factors in events such as Columbine -- shitty, inattentive parenting of antisocial teenagers; VT -- holy shit, that kid was FUCKED UP and bitter and out for revenge; and now Illinois.  And voting to strip away gun owners' rights will do nothing to stop a problem way bigger than one single issue.