fast bus found

As part of the ceremony honoring the time I spent in Houston, Texas, I went for a nice long bike ride through her bowels last night. The city she rewarded me, and honored my honoring, by revealing a shortcut to Hobby. And so, this morning, instead of taking the light rail to one bus and then switching to another, I simply walked from the 6th Ward to the Downtown Transportation Center (following the route I had pioneered the night before) and mounted #88 ltd., a direct bus to the airport. This is a hot and foul but beautiful and corrupt city, and I shall miss her eternal flatness and unpredictable weather, her friendly pedestrians and shimmering heat, her grinding grit and broken sidewalks, her lounging transients and steaming-hot phở. Fare thee well, fine city of Houston, until we mingle again.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on freedom's price

Ask most any motorcyclist sporting a leather vest, jacket, or chaps, and he'll say that “The freedom of it” is one of the primary reasons that he rides. Ah yes, seductive and elusive Liberty, she who beckons from near and far, always around us but forever just out of reach, always tantalizingly close yet frustratingly far away, how we love her! We think about freedom, yearn for it, love it, enjoy it, abuse it, and harp on it, speaking of it in hushed tones and genuflecting before that giant copper-clad statue of goddess Liberty standing in New York's harbor to welcome the poor and the huddled masses to these our bountiful shores. Some people among us – the aforementioned bikers first and foremost – seem to be trying to actively execute their right to freedom by riding around on big, motorized machines that pollute the air we all breathe and shatter the quiet we all enjoy.

Everything comes at a price, even Liberty, and the price we citizens pay for the bikers' freedom is higher than most: we arm our young men and women and fly them to sovereign nations in the Middle East and Central Asia where they kill and maim and bomb in order to secure a steady supply of gasoline for all of those in-line flathead v-twin noisemakers; we give Arabian oil sheiks American dollars to pay for gasoline to run all those hogs, perfectly content in the knowledge that some of our money will be used to fund terrorist organizations such as Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Hamas; we maintain diplomatic missions, puzzle over foreign trade policy, and arrange trade treaties so that bikers might wear t-shirts and vests made by foreign manufacturers emblazoned with the symbols of these United States, Old Glory printed on Bangladeshi cotton, the Stars and Stripes stitched into Vietnamese cowhide; we inhale the fumes of their idling engines and wince with every revving of their obnoxiously-loud tailpipes while wishing they would just all go home, read a book, and think about how downright lame their little scooters are.

Motorcyclists actively decrease their own amount of personal Liberty by relying on complicated machines to move them around; to maintain their little slices of freedom they are beholden to mechanics, parts manufacturers, tassel twisters, carburetors, regulators, and tow truck drivers. If motorcyclists would take a moment to examine the roots of the craze for two-wheelers, they would find the lowly wire donkey, the velocipede, the muscle-powered bicycle. Oh, if only these fools would throw off the chains of slavery to oil-pumping Arabs and wrench-chucking mechanics and return en mass to the device that grants its user nearly unbridled freedom, the crank-powered bicycle. Just think how quiet our world would be, how greatly motorcyclists could improved their health and fitness, and how much less gasoline we would have to kill and maim and bomb for if we could but free Liberty from the demands of endless warfare and disassociate her from mundane pettiness and wasteful sloth. When someone wears a vest upon which is printed a picture of a bald eagle wrapped in the American flag floating above a chopper-style motorbike while riding on a chopper-style motorbike, that person proves only his disrespect for the stars and stripes and his love for redundancy; when he relies on a combustion engine to move him across the face of the earth rather than letting his thigh and calf muscles drag him across that selfsame phaltscape, he puts nothing on display but his laziness and lack of vigor. Please, dear reader, if you love Liberty, value human health, and respect the lungs and eardrums of other people, sell your hog, buy a velocipede, and be free. Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

on replacement parts

I've just replaced all 4 brake pads on my bicycle. Fortunately, my locally-owned neighborhood bicycle shop had parts that fit the outdated hardware on my nearly 2-decade-old velocipede, which was my father's until he'd gotten too old to ride it. With the pull of a cable and the twist of a wrench, the new pieces were in place, and now my whip no longer squeaks when it stops. This simple procedure came none too soon: upon closer inspection I discovered that the old pads had worn down to the metal in places, digging into the rims, reducing the power and speed of braking, and weakening the smog-sled's crucial elements.

Strangely enough, while I was deciding whether to pair up the 2 still-serviceable pads or just buy a new set, I came across a snippet of text – whether it was in a magazine or on one of the news website I read, I cannot remember – that reminded me of the body's own replacement schedule. The text said that the human body completely replaces the skin every 3 years, the liver every 5 (or vice-versa). Having studied biology extensively while preparing for the Abitur, I was able to picture my body slowly but continuously swapping out cell after cell, cluster after cluster, until these two important organs had been fully reformed. I find it fascinating that our bodies do this without outside input and using only the foodstuffs we shove into our gaping suck-holes; I am always amazed anew at just how good this meat-sack is at keeping me healthy and my systems up and running. While sitting here in the cold and writing this, I just remembered that the body replaces the entire skeleton roughly once every 30 years, which means that few if any of the cells that make up my current body are those with which I was born. How strange it is to think that I am an altogether different person than who I was during childhood – let alone at birth – and that these differences go beyond my train-wrecked emotional state or the cruelly-stunted development of my pitiable moral tableau; as a totally different person, I find that the neuroses and hangups that seem to so strongly define many important parts of my psyche continue to exist, regardless of the fact that most of me is new – probably because some part of me wants or needs them to exist in order for it to exist.

Compared to the body's automatic replacement process, the mind tends to remain subject to the destructive and short-sighted will of the ego far longer than is normally necessary, which compels us to defend our honor, to cling to material possessions, and to do most anything in our power to win arguments so that we can pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves that we were Right All Along. How nice it would be if we could all learn to wrangle our egos and subject them to the will of nothingness, to the doctrine of non-existence (Wu), something that rarely happens in our modern capitalist society, an artificial construct that thrives only when our egos rule our every move, always tipping the scales in their favor, forever keeping us in self-imposed slavery to petty external needs. The person seeking to shed the ego for something greater, for something worthwhile, might well find relief in the ancient books and teachings; that person is advised to steer clear of organized religion, however, which will prey ferociously upon his ego and try to kindle within his bosom the fires of fearful discontentment so as to bind him forever to the notion of Salvation From Without. As we have seen, however, and as science continues to show us, salvation from death and renewal to life begins and ends within us, and few external forces beyond a bit of food and drink can speed them up or slow them down. (Consuming drugs, including alcohol, by the way, and mistreating the body by smoking cigarettes and denying it exercise will dramatically infringe upon its ability to heal itself.) Be safe, be well, and mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

on the slave's chariot

Oh, how much we Americans suffer for our petty conveniences, and how terribly we abuse the Earth to maintain them. It is not entirely our fault, perhaps, that we lock ourselves in shiny metal boxes whose insides are constantly exploding – in part, our opinions have been shaped by a century of false intelligence that touts the benefits of the automobile and its socialist highway network while obfuscating the true cost of motor-vehicle ownership. Imagine someone today describing the car's negative effects – suburban sprawl, pollution, high maintenance costs, the alienation of the individual from society – and imagine your reaction. Would you jump for joy? Would you sign up at your local dealership in order to spend a year's salary on a combustion-driven steel battering-ram that is lined with miles of tiny wires and sensitive rubber hoses? Would you say, “Of course, Mr. Ford, Toyota-San, Herr Benz, of course I shall take on that second job so that I can drive to work, to school, to the store, to the post office, back to the store, to school a second time, perhaps to a publick-house, and then to my home?” If you are an clear-thinking and self-respecting American living today, your answer may not be the resounding Yes issued by previous generations.

One of the main reasons that we mere three hundred millions of Americans use more gasoline than billions of other people combined is that we have transformed our society into one that is wholly dependent on the automobile – we wantonly waste petroleum and wage war over oil because we choose to perpetuate self-enslavement to the notion that one's body can be moved around through space-time without expending much physical effort rather than to accommodate and promote the frugal and simple life of the bicyclist.

Compared to the slave-charioteer, the smog-rider knows how hard it is to move her body around, and that certain things take time, and that certain things take effort, and because she knows these things, she plans ahead and maintains time discipline while seeing to her own physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. By liberating herself from the artificial demands of a lumbering blunderbox filled with volatile chemicals, she keeps her soul free of sadness, discontent, and desire. By fixing her bicycle and keeping it road-worthy for an entire year for less cost than a single oil change, she spends her resources wisely. Her mouth, not a twisted metal pipe, is her exhaust port; her beating heart, not a cast-iron maze of tubes, is the motor that drags her across the phaltscape; her legs, not a row of oil-drenched, whirling plugs, are the pistons that turn the crank that sees her on her way.

The velocipedist, her heart buoyant and her soul aroused, lives the life of honest and healthy labor, while the car driver, that poor wretch sitting in his glass prison of perpetual payment, lives the life of one enslaved to the demands of a hardwood-accented beast. His mount of choice requires specialized and costly repairs, whereas the cyclist can pinpoint and fix problems easily and while on the go; his conveyance is the nation's problem, the bicycle, it's solution. Therefore, dear reader, please consider switching from a high-cost slave's chariot to a low-cost wire horse, and rejoice as your spirits, and your savings, rise.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on phaltscape-withdrawal and dating | encyclopediamericanifesto

  Modern sociologists look with pity upon the smogrider who attempts after years of absence to re-enter the dating scene while she is suffering from withdrawal from the phaltscape, but you and I shall examine her more favorably. For reasons mechanical, spiritual, or otherwise mysterious, she is not riding smog regularly; thus, she is distressed. With her smog-sled sitting dormant, her hands are less calloused, her cheeks have lost their rosy hue, and cheer has fled her moods. This is not an isolated phenomenon: from the urban cyclist orphaned within the last few years to the gear masher with layers of parents, any person who is kept away from something she loves (such as smogriding the phaltscape) will approach potentially romantic meetings gingerly, and with hesitation.

  The physiological reasons for the smogrider's hesitation are clear – since they no longer bathe regularly in endorphin blasts triggered by rigorous exercise, his brains are cloudy and sluggish; lacking their hard and churning labor, his muscles atrophy, and his limbs twitch and jump about at random. Additionally, his speaking is as difficult to understand as his morals are to justify (which we speculate is caused by changes to the physical make-up of the cerebral cortex triggered by conscious epigenetic manipulation). Compared to the physiological reasons, however, the psychological reasons for the smogrider's romantic inability are less well known. Rumors tell that in the hours leading up to his rendezvous he descends into a period of existential crisis that lessens only long enough for him to scream self-loathing obscenities. Other unconfirmed data show that upon meeting his date, the smogrider panics and bears his soul without compunction (from which point onward no modern girl will give him the sex), and that by the end of the date he is on the brink of total personal despair, his failure all but assured, his time and his money surely wasted.

  Denying someone what they love is a crime both cruel and heartless, but keeping whorphan from him phaltscape reek downright of madness.

  場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on phaltweariness - the automobile

  Today's city streets are pitted and rough as if mauled by large and powerful beasts, and the souls of the people who drive upon are similarly abused. Aggression and impatience descend without fail upon the poor buggers who drive upon today's maligned avenues.

  We the Smog Riders of the America Phaltscape (the asphalt landscape) look often with pity upon our neighbors of the road, they who spend long hours strapped tightly to chairs which are in turn bolted to the floors of a tiny metal boxes. After spending years in such torturous environments, they will have forgotten the satisfaction of moving their own bodies through space/time using nothing other than living muscle and some metal tubes bolted to a pair of pneumatic tires. Rather than the good sweat that stands upon the skin of the bicyclist after a healthy cross-town slog, the sweat of the car driver will be distressed and foul, an oozing sheen that tends to creep through his furrowed brow as he worries about the skyrocketing price of petroleum.

  The smog riding street-art vagabond knows as well to avoid paying for petrol as she does to remain always vigilant of the withering and debilitating affects of phaltweariness – it is her duty to preserve the chaotic super-abundance of Street Art, and to record for Posterity as much of it as she can. To fulfill this task, and to keep her feet on the pedals, she has learned the limits of her body's tolerance for dehydration, pain, and exhaustion, and she knows how to make herself well again.

  Given the phaltweariness, the stressed out drivers, and the miles spend cycling through the phaltscape, how does the vagabond capture every unique work of street art that is at risk of being torn down as soon as it goes up? She does not. But she does what she can do, photographing what pictures might cross her path with the road grit foulding her mouth and a song filling her heart.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on simplicity in cycling

  Increasing numbers of urban bicyclists are abandoning multi-gear propulsion systems in favor of less complex mechanisms with fewer moving parts. In theory, a mechanical system with few moving parts is less prone to failure than a system with many moving parts, as the more complex system contains more elements that could fail (think of the many levers, wires, and gear-wheels on a ten-speed bicycle compared to the single gear-wheel on a child's bike). Among the individuals rediscovering the fixed-gear or single-gear propulsion system are urban bicycle messengers.

  The rugged and far-ranging operator known as the bicycle messenger traverses dozens of miles of urban landscape in varying weather conditions carrying heavy and unwieldy packages on her back. In her effort to maximize her workable hours by reducing repair- and maintenance-related down time, the bike messenger put to use one of the most simple bicycle-specific propulsion systems she could find – the fixed-gear.

  While the simplicity and reliability of the fixed-gear propulsion system has gained wide popularity in recent years, I have re-discovered an even more simple system for propelling myself forward by bicycle – by pushing off with the foot from vertical surfaces or from the ground. While perusing randomly a tome-like dictionary at Central Library, I stumbled across a picture of the early bicycle, upon which the rider moves forward by pushing off from poles, hydrants, curbstones, etc.

  In this picture we can see that the device is missing standing-fins upon which the operator might rest his feet and balance (which would be included on a modern design). There is no mechanical propulsion system, and the wheels roll freely in any direction. On the one hand, this device is merely a large, steerable scooter upon which the operator can sit; the omission of a propulsion system other than the kicking leg may be too much for the velocipedist who faces hills or whose routes lack vertical surfaces. On the other hand, urban environments are filled with vertical surfaces the operator might kick from (electrical poles, parking meters, and street signs, to name a few), and most of Earth's cities are flat and covered with layers of asphalt (which makes for a smoother ride).

  People with whom I have spoken have voiced their disdain for the fixed-gear bicyclist – they claim he has retreated too far into the bicycle's past. They deride him for seeming to have abandoned needlessly the improvements made to Baron von Drais' original design. Perhaps, however, the smog-riding bike messenger he has not retreated far enough.

  Long live the vondrais!

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

encylopediamericanifesto entry - phaltweary II

   Persons suffering from phaltweariness tend to make calls, whoops, war-whoops, cat-calls, hoots, whistles, hollers, brays, and shouts loudly and often. Making loud noises with the speaking organ saves lives – absent a car's horn, uttering a piercing blast of blood-curdling gibberish is a proper way for a cyclist to signal to a nearby motor-vehicle operator that he is about to be cut off mercilessly. As to the general appearance of a peedubser (phaltweariness sufferer):

  His sun-dazzled eyes will dance with a light of their own, especially at night; his phaltburnt lips will be cracked and fissured; his dry tongue will grate across the roof of his mouth; and from his throat will issue forth a cry so foul, so loathsome, as to make the even the most wicked human among us tremble with abject loathing.

  The peedubzer will sound a signature call regardless of audience, circumstance, or location – although she war-whoops to signal lane changes and close calls alike, by yelling she loosens briefly the fetters upon her soul, her vitality radiant and pure, with every joyous breath celebrating life's fleeting tumble.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est – 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp