placido belts it out
Once again displaying all the qualities that made him exhilarating to watch on the Parliamentary floor (including a remarkable lack of tact), Paul Keating drops the motherfucking BOMB on the deceased…
the yawning chasm of instant death
As with all new obsessions, it’s important for me to rationalise the new-found crazy biker instinct I have. The Yawning Chasm of Instant Death is a significant part of this. Riding a singlespeed is the most amazing feeling – like being invincible. Leaping on the bike you feel immediately like an arsehole courier – bouncing off kerbs, belting through pedestrians, helmetless and unstoppable. It’s like being on your BMX when your about 12 or 14: you and your bike can go anywhere, do anything, and you’re no longer worried by that continual nagging worry that I think most cyclists have – that everyone else is doing it better.
The Yawning Chasm of Instant Death is the only bike I’ve ever ridden that causes people to stop and stare, to lean out of cars or skid to a halt at the lights beside me and say “Dude, that’s a fucking awesome bike!” It’s crazy, a lunatic opportunity to boast or to evangelize the singlespeed creed. My mountain bike – which, I’ll say now, is a great bike – is covered in dangly bits. Bidon, bell, lights, pump holster, bar-ends, lock-mount, weighty suspension forks, derailleur, the whole awkward shifter-and-brake-lever nonsense, not to mention fancy disc brakes and superfluous cogs that I just plain don’t use. There’s too much! The Yawning Chasm of Instant Death, on the other hand, is sleek and uncluttered – the bare essentials. I’m in the amazing position of deciding what I need on the bike after riding it, not before. Hence, lights, toolbag (puncture kit, multi-tool), bidon. I’m umming and ahhing about a bell.
Singlespeed welds you to your bike like you can’t live without it. You feel the direct transfer of power to the wheel – your body is inescapably part of this machine. It’s not a vehicle, it’s you. That’s why I liken it to the bikes I had as a kid – if you had a BMX, you had the means to just go. You could leave everything behind, the parents who didn’t understand, the humdrum responsibilities of chores or homework, and just fling yourself around for a while. You could fall off, do stupid things, try out secret tricks in a lonely schoolyard, or just bounce around the street with a couple of planks and a milk-crate for a ramp.
I’m no superman, not a bike messenger, and i never intend to become one of the lycra-clad road-beasts. I’m jst a guy who’s fallen in love with a bike!
howto
Today I realised my bike has Presta valves. Never dealt with those before! Argh!
But help was at hand:
why must football make me grieve?
5-1. To the fucking Spuds. That’s a Pro Evo scoreline, you wankers. Christ, I hate football.
quotes from ‘hot fuzz’ and ‘shaun of the dead’ that have inexplicably entered my vocabulary
“Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!”
“I’m sorry, [X]. No. I’m really sorry.”
“You’ve got red on you.”
“Er… Win..chest..er?”
“Want anything from the shop?” “Cornetto…”
“… Have a nice cold pint, and wait for all this to blow over!”
“What you thinkin’?” “Pub?”
“PUNCH! THAT! SHIT!”
monday psychobabble
is it wrong that the final line of today’s Scary-Go-Round actually appeals? Living on Special Brew in some kind of burrow. Awesome.
Today was a shit health day. As nigh-on-thirty blokes with the fitness profile of a 49-year-old beaver have. Fucking beavers. I’d like to pretend I have a heart condition, but I don’t. What I have is Fat Cunt Syndrome, which is different. In that it’s my fault. In any case, Friday night I ran out of blood pressure tablets, and I didn’t have a repeat script. I went to the doctor this morning to sort out a new one. You know the kind of thing. In, “Hi Doc, new script please” “Hi Hi, there you go” “Tra then” “Tra”, out.
Did I fuck.
“Alright, we’ll just check your BP and weight, and when did you last have a blood test?”
Fat (102.5kg. Mother. Fucker.) BP up (130/85 or summink)
Let’s check the blood test results from last time. Oh, look. Your liver’s all fucked up, Mr P7. I know this, sez I, I have turns yellow and looks like a condom disease.
No, sez he. These would indicate motherfucking alphabet death syndrome. Let’s do some more tests.
Fuck. Sez. Me.
I’d like to pretend I’m doing everything right, but I’m not. I drink. I take drugs. I smoke socially. Sorry, mum. But I do have a plan for this year. Watch me have a fucking plan. This is quoted from my Google Notebook
Reasonsfor exercise:
Get fucking unfat.Lose at least 15 kg. More, you fat bastard.
Get fucking well. Bring down BP to the levels normally associated with a stressed human, not a nuclear-assisted heart-bomb.
Look fucking good, you scrotum-faced knobwad.
Which I think is excellent motivation.
Also, I am now riding The Yawning Chasm of Instant Death to work, and ultimately to uni.
What with all the pain and the danger, it’s pretty fucken good for me.
I just want to be fucking healthy. Health and fucking wellness. Hear?
complete failure
i am without a doubt totally incapable of being ‘into it’ today. what ‘it’ is, and how to be ‘into’ are areas in which i fail.
mindbender
Something happened to me last night that I just had to write and tell you about:
I was sitting on the tram, reading my book, when suddenly I was surrounded by a group of young women, all talking in a foreign ‘hurdy-gurdy’ type language. There were piles of them. Piles. About 12. I continued to read my book as they chattered away, laughing and passing around a water-bottle full of wine (cunningly disguised) There were three on the seats around me, several more on the seats nearby, and one kneeling on the seat behind me. All chatting and so forth. I ignored them.
Then I felt a soft brushing against my cheek – I turned my head and caught a glimpse of a camera wrist-strap – before FLASH! Which gave me a bit of a surprise. And the girl behind me was terribly apologetic….
“Och, sorry, hen! I dinnae min tae frit ye. Lemme tak yer picksher – we’re frae Norwae, reet?”
In the broadest Glasgow Scots I have ever heard.
:big p7: 