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Are Scooters Cool?
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9/27/2005
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There is an old saying about riding a motorcycle- It is a lot like sleeping with your neighbor's wife; just when you think you are getting good at it, you get killed. There is an even older saying about riding a scooter- It is a lot like sleeping with a fat chick; kind of fun until your friends find out.
About once a year I think seriously about buying a motorized velocipede, but one of those two proverbs always keeps me from doing it. Luckily I can live vicariously through my friends who are richer/more secure in their masculinity/less afraid of death than I.
Since I live in the city, I find more and more people are buying scooters. Little ipods on wheels- all trendy and efficient, customizable to reflect your scootery personality, zipping about with your solar powered bottled water and your recycled ear buds, looking ridiculous and hip at the same time...you sassy monkeys, you.
Last weekend every scooterphile in town got together and buzzed around the city like a miniaturized vegan outlaw biker gang. I also saw my first case of scooter rage, which sent my day tumbling into a new realm of radditude. I remember thinking "Road rage on a scooter? That's like...holy crap...'road rage on a scooter' can only be used as a metaphor for something else because nothing more absurd exists."
This guy got cut off in an intersection and completely went banana sandwich on the other driver. I don't mean to belittle the fact that he could have gotten hurt, but even if the scooter was painted flat black with pinstripe flames and a custom exhaust kit, the guy might as well have been wearing a big bunny suit and a tutu. He straddled his bike, screaming obscenities, flipping the other guy off with a fingerless begloved hand, his tiny Kaiser-style spiked helmet shaking with rage, and everyone in the intersection looked amukward. That's awkward and amused for those of you who are just starting out.
One of my friends has a couple of old scooters he keeps around and works on. He and I started talking about the whole scooter subculture one day and the conversation turned to customizing his ride.
"You're a creative artsy type- what kind of paintjob do you think would look cool on the red Vespa?"
"I don't know. I'm a fan of contradictions, though, so I'll think about it."
"Shut up. You know what I mean."
"Yeah. I think you should dress it up in a capacity that a scooter would never be used in. Like a NASCAR theme with sponsor stickers all over it."
"Or a military armored vehicle"
"Ooh. Make it an ambulance. A Vespa would NEVER make a good ambulance, and I know how to make a siren out of sewer pipe and a housecat."
"I should paint it like a school bus. Haha- like I'm going to pick up thirty kids and drive them to school. Doot-dee-doo." *mimes a crazy Vespa busdriver by steering an invisible steering wheel*
"Stop being stupid."
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
"Butthole. You know, I really want it to look cool, though. Kind of edgy and badass...how do you think I could do that?"
Now here is a similar question using different words-
"Hey Dusty, which pair of pink mittens makes me look tougher?"
 Dusty
RELATED LINK:
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posted by Dusty at 7:16 AM |
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Home of the Panic Attack
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9/13/2005
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Last Wednesday afternoon was yet another testament to the fact that as much as I like to pretend I don't, I do, in fact, live in a city of between 3 and 5 million legally retarded crybabies, and we are collectively governed by a douchebag of staggering proportions.
Fortunately I am only reminded of this when there is an ice storm, power outage, hurricane, or in this case, rumors of a gas shortage that the citizens caused themselves. I got to watch a self-fulfilling prophecy play out before my eyes.
I guess I just thought that more people would have the capacity to think logically enough to realize that even if everything was operating 100% smoothly and every gas station in Atlanta was filled to capacity, THERE STILL WOULDN'T BE ENOUGH FUEL FOR EVERY MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD IN THE CITY TO FILL UP EVERY VEHICLE AND CONTAINER THEY OWN.
Which is the main reason I loved seeing artificially inflated $5 a gallon gas prices, and I hope the gas station owners and oil companies got rich off of the ignorance of the masses. I would have loved it if the governor had kept his mouth shut and let the market dictate how many people really needed to top off all four of the family cars, the lawnmower, and the leaf blower.
Instead, he declared a state of emergency, forcing store owners to freeze prices. When you aren't talking about a shortage of something like baby formula, this is a horrible thing to do (and even in the case of baby formula, higher prices ensure more people get what they need)- not only for the painfully obvious supply/demand/scarce commodity/distribution of wealth reasons upon which a free market depends, but because people who are so reactionary as to fly into a state of panic and start crowding gas stations and blocking roads NEED to feel as stupid as possible the next morning when they realize they bought $1000 worth of fuel last night that is now worth $600.
Yes, there were many accounts of people who went to Home Depot and bought dozens of gas cans so they'd have their fuel supply for Armageddon, and I saw with my own eyes people bringing their boats and RV's in to gas them up. Do you think maybe there would have been gas for other people if the prices were $10 a gallon instead of $4?
The correct answer is yes.
It is actually scary to think that a mere rumor of the outside possibility of a fuel shortage could cause adult human beings to react en masse in such a way. Fuel is neato and we all like to drive our cars, but let's assume we had to cut down on how much we drive for a few weeks. People would have to use public transportation, carpool, telecommute, or *gasp* get off their dead asses and actually walk somewhere.
I know, it would be like Mad Max up in here with people being forced to interact with one another and get exercise and stuff. Oh the horror.
It worries me to think what people would do if we thought we were going to run out of something that was actually necessary, like food or clean water. Think about that one the next time you go buy four more generators and 10,000 gallons of bottled water because you heard it might snow this winter. You aren't reacting to a problem, you are causing it.
Dusty
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posted by Dusty at 10:00 PM |
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Kanye West=Douchebag
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9/6/2005
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In an act of unprecedented stupidity at a benefit concert and telethon for the victims of hurricane Katrina, some guy named Kanye West used one of the worst disasters in U.S. history to espouse his completely thoughtless and baseless political sputum.
In the video, in which Kanye and Mike Myers were supposed to read from a script, Kanye was so nervous he was out of breath when Myers threw to him. That was because he was about to do something he had never done before- tried to sound like he knew the first thing about his own political opinions. He abandoned the script in favor of what I hope is a long and painful career suicide.
I looked the guy up on Google because I was curious to see if he was actually a professional fucktard. Sure enough, I was right-
I'm the last to say that a person isn't entitled to say what they want about another political party, but you'd think that even a democrat would have better taste than to try and politicize something like this. Yes, the irony there was intentional. Stop crying.
After a scripted few sentences from Mike Myers, West opens his festering face hole and says the following-
I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, "They're looting." You see a white family, it says, "They're looking for food."
I think I actually saw the footage he's talking about, and I remember thinking "this is going to cause a shit storm" when I realized which group was being called what. So through the magic of TiVo, I watched it again. The family with food was looking for food, and the family with a television and a cart full of stereo equipment was looting. For anyone too goddamn stupid to understand this- food and water are necessary to survive. A home theater is not. Unless African Americans switched to a diet of transistors and didn't tell anyone, skin color is irrelevant.
And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch.
Or maybe you're a hypocrite for living in your eleven bedroom mansion and not offering ten of those bedrooms to displaced victims. Maybe you're a hypocrite for wearing a suit that is worth more than most of these oppressed people made in the past two years. Maybe you're a hypocrite for wearing that suit while flying in a private jet to a benefit concert where you try to tell the rest of society that the black man's oppression is insurmountable. Maybe not- I personally don't think so. You earned your status, and you are entitled to use it however you want. I think maybe you're a guy who was blessed with enough talent to have all of that stuff and you want to do what you can to help- just like all of the rest of us. White or black, rich or poor, liberal or conservative. The worst thing you can do with your position is use it to turn the focus away from helping these people by trying to assign blame. Nice job.
I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help -- with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible.
I'm about to say something that will piss a lot of people off, so read carefully- America's federal disaster relief system is set up to help everyone -especially the poor- as quickly as possible, but they can't do a damn thing until a state or local authority asks for it. The reason (especially during natural disasters) that it looks like the poor are the worst off is because they are. That's why it's called poor and not awesome.
In almost every city in the nation, the low lying land is the cheapest land because it is prone to things like this. Therefore it is usually populated by the poorest demographic, whatever that may be. The exception to this is government subsidized disaster insurance for people can afford to live in places like California and Florida, which I think is a crime. Rebuilding a 3 million dollar house every two years because it was built on a fault line should be the owner's responsibility, not yours and mine. In any case, most of the wealthy in the area had a means (money, car, whatever) to get out before everything went down- but not all. Some of them waited too long and are now living with everyone else. It's life in the real world.
I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way -- and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us!
Bull. Shit. You. Ignorant. Douchebag.
No one has given anyone permission to shoot "you". If someone breaks into someone else's house or place of business in this situation, they should know there is a risk of being killed. Nothing necessary for survival will be found in a house that has been underwater for a week or a store that has long since been stripped of food and water. If Barbara Bush's insensitive comments (which implied that the homeless are better off in the astrodome) got plastered all over the internet in a matter of seconds, I'm reasonably sure that a D-list rapper would not be the only one privileged to an executive order to freely murder people because they were black.
Then a confused Mike Myers tries to salvage the situation and does a crappy job of not just knocking this guy out to make him shut up-
Myers: And subtle, but in many ways even more profoundly devastating, is the lasting damage to the survivors' will to rebuild and remain in the area. The destruction of the spirit of the people of southern Louisiana and Mississippi may end up being the most tragic loss of all.
During all of this, the only mildly amusing part is that Mike Myers, who is an excellent improvisational comedian, was dumbstruck. Yet for some reason, he hands the mike back to captain jackass, who utters this astoundingly uninspired parting shot-
George Bush doesn't care about black people!
That must be why his cabinet is chock full of them. Maybe you don't identify with educated black people, but they are still black.
Try shutting the hell up and observing reality if you want the truth. If you don't like the truth, quit bitching and do whatever you can to change it. If mistakes were made in the process of delivering aid (and I believe they were), now is not the time to point fingers. Now is the part where we are supposed to help each other out. So now I'm going to follow my own advice and quit bitching...
Dusty
RELATED LINK: https://give.redcross.org/?homepagespotlight
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posted by Dusty at 7:37 AM |
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