What Rips, Bangs, and Burns?

Sometimes I feel like money dwindling in my bank account is like some sort of a cancer, some abnormality draining cell counts, sucking, withering. Life force is bolstered by the cash stuff. 

Money feels like this burning acid that eats through my wallet and I’d like to think of it more like a soothing balm, something sticky, minty fresh that accumulates as a pungent whiff. I wonder if there's a simple approach to how one views money, eh? If it does feel like an acid, yes, it will eat away, but if one looks upon it as some sort of nice ointment, well there you go, it releases a sort of green endorphin that triggers the brain to make actions that result in sudden pulses of cash stuff. There are so many programs out there that teach you how to get rich, but the thought of sitting down and turning off thought in a sort of sickly gleeful worship of cash flow makes money all the more feel like a heap of dried, chunky vomit in one's pocket. There seems to be something skewed in these programs, because the practitioners are getting rich teaching people to be rich. What is the real cultural value? Maybe that's what turns me off, culture and substance have been flattened with cliches and over charged motivation. What goes up must come down, there's a cliche for you I know, but that's gravity. And that's what I've experienced from any Zig Ziglar dabble I've had in the past. You're pumped in the morning, by the end of the afternoon, a bitterness starts to rain down on your head.

I've begun reading this book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman and it examines the self help industry, and the often times reverse effects. For instance, statistically people who buy a self help book buy another one within 7 months. Did that first one even work? But the thing that resonates with me is the idea of embracing uncertainty, bathing in insecurity as a way to uncover actual growth as a human being. Stare your flaws and shortcomings in the face as a way to find a way around those obstacles. Learn from them. Sap power from anxiety by letting it rip through as obscene jitters. There's a tyranny in the self help world of THINK POSITIVE THINK POSITIVE THINK POSITIVE and if you don't do that constantly then you're a grump destining yourself for failure. But the world has harsh fluctuations, and I wonder how we can solve problems if we don't study them, dive into the darkest shit and to come back with scars and a thicker skin.

I'm excited by articles like this - Why Iceland Should be in the News but Is Not - where despite declaring bankruptcy are finding solid progress by shunning international banking and reforming their constitution through an all inclusive participatory democracy, making use of that there internet to engage input. Fascinating! That 1) the internet can be used for constructive discussion in politics instead of just pumping pundit badgering and goading. 2) Since money is made up to begin with, money doesn't stem as an actual resource from the Earth, we have a lot of freedom in terms of reconstructing economies. So perhaps this can save me time in considering whether I should think of cash as an acid or a soothing balm and focus on creating systems of thought. The exchange. That's what it boils down to. A fair and active system of exchange. Like positive thinking putting up a blinder to actual solutions to problems, thinking about money tapes gauze to your eyes and slices paper cuts and takes your time away from actually doing interesting things that might result in a fee for your service.

My blood work came back recently from my first doctors visit in years. I have high cholesterol and high triglycerides. I've started to eat oatmeal for breakfast and dessert almost every day until it’s all good. I remember my triglycerides riding “sky high” back when I was 16 and was on Accutane for bad acne. They had to take me off the medicine pretty soon into treatment due to how it was affecting my triglycerides. I didn't really care what triglycerides were back then, but now I surf articles and animations about their function. I've seen a variety of infomercials for class action lawsuits for other afflictions in Accutane users, things like inflammatory bowel disease. Not yet. 

But, I am well, for I am not the gentleman I saw right after his bike t-boned a car. The remainder of my ride was cautious. Like a granny spinning wheels enough to stay upright. Eyes open. Don’t touch me. I’ll break. Survival of the fittest machine.

There were two girls who stopped with me at the site of the crash. One had an accent. Her boyfriend, she says, doesn't wear a helmet. As we looked on the puddle of blood left by the fallen biker. A helmet-less force. Two other gentlemen stopped. We all talked while the fallen was loaded onto an ambulance, which to his luck, happened to be cruising by. The hitter looked distraught but stoic. He paced. Waiting for the police. The other bikers and I continued to chat. It was the most social I've felt in a long time. At the scene of accidental vehicular brutality.

A second bike accident occurred three days later. Well, Vespa accident. I rounded the corner from George St., about to pull onto Elston but I saw this Vespa guy coming so I stopped. Then as he was passing through the intersection a white beater of a car made a left turn and the Vespa guy t-boned the front, and he flipped up and over the hood somersault style and smacked his forehead on the pavement. There must have a delay of pain, nerve needles of the sharper kind, because he stood, then his legs buckled and he bowed to the ground, pressing his head down into his hands. He asked “am I bleeding?” I said no. He wasn't. A bunch of people were already to his aide. A woman who was walking her daughter to school helped him down the ground. A guy got out of his car to help call 9-1-1 but the operator of a storefront drape shop I think it was, was already on it. On it before I could even pull my leg off my bike and approach the fallen. Another biker in a fluorescent yellow spandex shirt caught up to the scene and mentioned to me that the Vespa guy was driving like an asshole, weaving in and out of cars. Vespa guy also didn’t wear a helmet. I later did some testing of physics with my own helmet, simulating impact points and noticed both riders, had they been wearing a helmet, would have protected their heads from immediate concrete smackery.

I stuck around for a few minutes but the guy was well tended to, one was asking him questions to test his alertness. “What’s your name?” Simon. “How old are you?” 33. “Where do you work?” Verizon. (I changed some details as not to call out clues to his identity). He was conversing, but out of it. A concussion most likely. The lady with the daughter kept snapping her fingers to keep him from nodding off because he wanted to close his eyes.

Helmets. I will sing their praises. I will champion their cause. Protect the damn noggin my fellow bikers.

So cycling back (pun intended) to how I started this post, in talking money worries, and working my way up to bike accidents, I'm thinking heavy on what really, actually rips, bangs and burns us people. And money just seems to be a pathetic weapon yet we fear it more than any object. 

Biker, the Blood Spiker

I like to think of my legs as part machine. When they're pushing against the spin cycle that gets me around.

My Uncle John found an old bicycle in his garage, asked if I wanted it, I said yes, he fixed it up. I've had two fairly nice bicycles in the city that have been thieved from me. The more recent one, two years ago, I believe I spouted off about it here. So I've been avoiding. Yet wanting. Then avoiding, wondering if I should invest in such a vehicle, and if were to, I'd imagine the ways I can make it into a beater with duct tape and spray paint so it looks less desirable to the pro bike burglar to pawn off on the market for cheap bikes. I had often thought about going about buying a cheap bike, then wondering if I'd be inadvertently buying someone else's stolen bike, so it put the whole thing on hold.

But this opportunity, this garage bike, this ancient machine from my Uncle's college days, having spun him around Houghton, Michigan up there in the upper peninsula, yes back in the day, this is the beater. 

I've also been itching to ditch CTA for awhile. Sometimes you need a break from public transit.

I've been biking to work for a few weeks and though I look like a bike messenger these days with my pants rolled up and bike gloves wrapping my hands, there's a ton of positives about this. 

I feel more energized in the morning, more focused, ready to get down to work.

I feel less anxious in the morning. There's always this anxiety I seem to absorb when riding the subway, like everybody's stress and worries about the day are wafting up and I'm inhaling this and it makes for an odd and inexplicable nerve wracking first hour of the day. I don't have that with my bicycling. 

It's 4.2 miles to work. So each day, I'm getting 8.4 miles of spin cycle cardio.

My commute has gone from 45 minutes to 22 minutes. 

It's a lot of damn fun.

Doing errands after work is kind of easier, as you can propel yourself in and out of different neighborhoods more fluidly than with transferring buses and waiting and transferring. 

It's a healthy thing, because in running some recent blood pressure checks, my blood pressure is on the high side. Biking is an integrated way to make sure I'm getting some exercise in the day. And as mentioned, feeling more energized in the morning, is putting me in a position where I can feasibly ween myself off coffee. Cutting back the 5 or more cup a day habit is, I think, a big step in getting this beast of a blood pressure score down. I'm 30 now, so this is the kind of thing I'm supposed to worry about. It is time.

Let's spin things morbid for a second. I've been thinking a bit about my own mortality, especially while riding my bike. For all of it's pluses, taking a spill could very well end it all. Yet, I don't feel frightened by it. I'm putting myself out there, getting where I need to go in an efficient, enjoyable way, that's life, yes? In fact, part of my lessened anxiety may be due to the notion that in comparison to the dangers of the road, whatever professional challenges I come across in the day are puny. 

So while riding to work on Friday, I was thinking about spooky stuff since it was the 13th. I thought about what if I wiped out and became a ghost. I thought about a prank I'd love to pull if I had the chance. I'd hang out in the kitchen when someone was baking something in the oven. Then I'd turn it off while they walked away to do whatever they do in between. When they come back and wonder why it's still cold, they'll notice the oven isn't even on. Then they'll think they're losing their minds! When they turn it back on, I'll turn it off again. Until they catch on. This may sound mean, and I do have a bit of a latent mean streak, but it's also harmless, and I think, hilarious.

Point is, we're all just messing around. Bikes. Blood. Ghosts. People. Getting around and getting ahead.

Kick.Stand.

I am kicking myself because of my stolen bike in early September. I had pulled up my old receipt which I was ill informed had the serial number on it, but it didn't, so Johnny Sprockets had to go digging in their archives from 2009 of receipt tickets and it took them several weeks to find. Phil, a Johnny Sprockets company man, was very helpful in this project and got me the serial number. He left a voice mail. I feel bad because I haven't called him back yet to thank him. I've been meaning to do this. I should do it soon. I am going to put it on tomorrow's to do list. I never filled out a police report after I found the bike missing  because I wanted to make sure I had the serial, I felt a report would be ridiculous without it and that the cops would laugh at me. But it took so long to get the serial number that by then, it would look ridiculous with there being such a huge gap in between filing and the date of theft. I also thought I had some pictures of it but I guess I don't. That bike is as good as a belch dissipating in gale force winds. I miss it. I wish I was on the ball. It was a nice bike. I wish I had made it look shitty, with duct tape and yarn and spray paint and newspapers wrapped around its frame. Next bike I get I will put paper machete around it and paint fake vomit on it, maybe glue fake plastic vomit on it. Maybe some neon pom poms in the handles. Some beer cans in the tires. Pink duct tape on the frame. Doll heads hanging from the frame. It will look unique and stupid. No one will want to steal it. That's kind of what you have to do. I really want to go for a bike ride. I want it to snow something crazy and still go for a bike ride.


Today Eliaz Rodriguez and I helped out our friend Joe Avella shoot a scene for his feature length Master of Inventions movie. We shot it in the Mother's bar. I was an extra in a shot. I played drunk and even felt a little drunk. Mind over matter. I would save some money if I did that instead of buying booze. It was dark down there. Our eyes hurt when we left and the Division street farmer's market, an expansive thing was suddenly all packed up and not speck left behind. Eliaz and I went to my corner bar, the Orbit Room after and ran into my landlord who was having a beer after cleaning the shit left behind by my old downstairs neighbors. We found out a glass window had been blown out on our sun porch. My landlord let me know he noticed it. I thought maybe the wind fucked it up because we heard some rattling this week in the gusty howl, but in looking at it when I got home it looks like it was shattered, remains collected on the roof of the building next door, from the inside. Like a dick through something at it. I'm wondering if our ol' foes from downstairs gave us one final fuck you before they moved out. And I'm not surprised. I've kinda been bracing myself for a brick through the window from all of this. 

28 Years Kicking out My Feet

It has been a bit since I've last posted. August was a wild month featuring a trip to Minnesota, a summer cold, a handful of live sketch shows with Wood Sugars, packing up the old apartment, moving into a new one, and celebrating yet another year alive and healthy. I haven't written a damn thing in a month, and I've gotten antsy. The novel is back in revision stages, some short stories are set in motion. My energy is back up to par for daily demands after rough little kick in the calves. All through August I felt a sense of gleeful complacency knowing that my girlfriend had some extra money and had booked some movers. My first time with that, have always bribed friends with pizza and beer to help us move shit in and out of a rented U-Haul. Which had always worked well despite having lots of shit, but we figured maybe we're getting too old to expect that sort of favor. So psyched for the movers we were, everything ready in boxes, cat locked in one of the now empty bedrooms with his litter box, food, water. Everything cleaned so it would be an easy empty and returning of the keys on August 31st, the last day of our lease. 


But then the movers did not show up. They were due between 5-6pm. At 6:05pm we called to see an ETA, assuming they were just running late. Traffic can sometimes throw curve balls. No one answered. We tried again. No answer. No call from them. The patterned ensued until about 7:40pm when we lost faith that they would show. Desperation flared, here we had all of this stuff, some big furniture pieces, and the lease soon to expire. U-Haul had no availability until  10am the following morning as August 31st is one of the biggest moving days of the year. Using my BlackBerry we found a moving company on Craigslist that was hoping to put our anxieties at ease. The guy manning the phone called out to a crew finishing a job to see if they didn't mind an extra gig. They were game. But there was some mis-communication between the amount of stuff we had and a fairly small truck was sent, along with three guys. We had asked for three. Half of our stuff was loaded up before the main guy realized they wouldn't have enough room, then he started to panic about time. Even though we asked for three hours he now wanted to be done in 1.5hrs. So ultimately they only helped us move our big furniture, and milked us out of a lot of money. My girlfriend and I made trips in her four door sedan, filling up all available space to transport everything else, back and forth. We wrapped this about 5:45am. I got 30 min of sleep, she got 10 min before the next work day. My body barely held itself through the next day after what was essentially an all nighter, with physical exertion on a muggy summer day. One of those experiences that reminds you to work out more prior to such an activity. But we had expected the moving company we had hired to show up! Even after confirmation the prior day! We were quite aghast at the gall of them not even calling, we certainly understand shit comes up, but communication is what separates the professional from the piss poor mother fuckers. Allstate Movers dropped the ball. When we got a hold of them the next day (we had left several messages and didn't even receive a return call the next morning) they acted surprised that we didn't receive our service. The receptionist then said one of their drivers had a seizure, which is terrible and I feel for him, but still, could they not have called to alert their clients? She was going to speak to her manager. We still have not heard from them. I wrote them a 1 star Yelp Review. So had 3 other people on the 1st of Sept, to vent them same thing happening to them on August 31st with a No Call/No Show from Allstate Movers. But Yelp has filtered all of reviews. Perhaps because there were so many on one day and it flagged it as perhaps one person really trying to ruin a company. In this harsh economic climate I wish all small businesses success, but Allstate Movers needs to close business because they have proved unable to deliver the service they advertise and have no problem leaving you hanging. 


I will end my rant with mention of one of the repercussions. Since we didn't have the 22 ft truck we required, we didn't have room to bring my bicycle. So I had to lock it up across the street on a bike rack, outside of a well lit condo building. Both a U-Lock secured the frame and front tire to the rack, and a chain wrapped through securing frame and both sets of tires. When I went to retrieve it a few days later to ride it home, it was gone. Someone had apparently picked the U-Lock. If you see someone riding a black Jamis Commuter 1, feel free to tackle and question. 


So the week covering my 28th birthday had a rough patch, a test of patience and stamina towards bullshit. But the good news is I am moved into a new apartment and I love it. The building has been around since 1907 and has all of the original woodwork, although refinished in 1999 to keep it all nice looking. No ghosts yet, you would think perhaps an old building in Chicago might have a few spectres but it's a peaceful parlour. I also got to see Pearl Jam at the PJ20 event at Alpine Valley Wisconsin. Despite rain on that Saturday I enjoyed the rock and roll, Eddie Vedder's wine infused melodic grunting and Chris Cornell's special appearance. I have come to love the music of Liam Finn. And I still found burrs on my shoes the next morning after stepping up to be my brother's friends designated driver, hopping fences and ditches to find his car parked in some remote lot, a marshy field in Wisconsin. I was crabby during the field romp as I was still sleep deprived from the moving fiasco, but the next day I appreciated the opportunity of running around under a faint cloud covered moon in rural lands. We all need the fresh air and dark night to boot sometimes. 


So 28 has given me a kick to the teeth in ways, but I'm hoping I've met my bullshit quota for the year, getting all of that out of the way, and onward we go to glorious year, kicking ass in good ways. 

Hysteria on the Hill

I had this one dream image stick with me this morning. A big kid stood clutching a bicycle screaming at the top of his lungs on the top of a hill. He proclaimed he wanted to be like his daddy. A crowd gathered around. A little kid poked his head through some people and realized it was his bike! The big kid up there had stolen his bike. But the big kid was wailing and screeching, a fine hysteria. No one attempted to correct the injustice. No one was quite sure what would happen next, the hysteria continued. Would the kid ride the bike down the hill and off and away? He continued to proclaim his need to be like his dad. A rumor, or a fact circulated through the crowd that the big kid's father was currently serving time for Grand Theft Auto.

The hysteria continued. People got bored. I snuck up around the back of the hill to try to talk some sense into him. He rode off when I gently touched his shoulder.