Sears Wishbook, 1946, pg 137. Make Lead Soldiers.

I remember very little of childing but I do recall being stymied by various “kits” that were above my mental pay grade. Chemical, electrical. But this, it’s just lead. Just pour the lead in. What a delight.

saddlebag ripped, dropped below tire axle

two tomatoes tried to make a break for it but are still scheduled to be salad

i had intended to sew up the saddlebag with leather needle/thread but i have a lot of intentions

i did take a photo of some street art though

[FX: STARTS TO DO AN ELECTRONIC WIZARD THING]

[FX: SPILLS COFFEE ON IMPORTANT DOCUMENT, SIPS IT OFF WITH WARM, LOVING MOUTHPARTS]

this is black heart or blackheart, i believe

i saw just one of these hearts on two blank yellow road signs during construction and my poor, undernourished brain thought for a second that it was some new official icon

also someone forgot to tell the road construction crew about “bikes” oh well maybe by 2097

someone dig me up, put my skeleton on a bike, push it into traffic

Safecracker was this strange little 1996 pinball machine by Midway. It’s like they took the Addam’s Family pinball table and squeezed the hell out of it, made the flippers a tad shorter, etc. The machine also barfs out a token that rolls down the playing field glass if you Do A Thing which I never figured out what the thing was back in the day. Today, at the Pacific Pinball Museum, I also did not figure out the thing.

now that i no longer drive a car around ... it’s time to build my bart bag.

1) white sunglasses. these are sunglasses that are spray-painted white. entirely.

2) headphones w/cable that leads to backpack, which is not plugged into anything. this is to keep people from talking to me which never happens, and to insulate my ears against shitty bart engineer disease noise. “we can RE-INVENT TRAIN TRACKS!” [SFX: insane screeching noise for 50 years]

3) lozenges.

4) trick can of peanuts which releases multiple springy snakes. “would you like some peanuts? it’s not a trick.”

went to apple ring hq visitor center

they had these neat stair railings perfect for Hot Wheels®

didn’t have advance warning so didn’t have any on me

alert the childrens

the apple ring hq visitor center is three sections:

1) cafe

2) store w/a few “exclusive” items like logo’d t-shirts

3) large model of ring because you really can’t see the ring, even from the roof. you can see into one room in the ring, but that’s probably the room that has a door with a sign: “The Randos At The Visitor Center Can See Into This Room Conference Room”

and everything is precisely engineered/laid out (except the parking lot, which was way too tight for USA America’s Big Ass Cars and Truck Walls but then maybe that was a flex, who can say, really)

i got the impression someone kept shouting MORE GLASS over and over during the build phase

but the funny thing is that words/print are/is kept to strict minimum

and as my friend pointed out, there was a giant phrase painstakingly laid out in large letters both on the inside/outside of the building, lookin’ sort of permanent

so it (a) gave off this weird vibe that it was the MOST IMPORTANT THING and (b) it was such a dunk

[FX: goes absolutely BUG NUTS on design] “this could be better”

there also was this air of trying too hard

the flush button for the toilet was a 1.5" metal disc placed to the right of the toilet

just sitting on the wall like it was hiding a screw

“i guess it’s this” [FX: PRESS] [FX: WAITS] [SFX: flushing noise] “It was that”

the “dispense water” mechanic for a faucet was a ~4" vertical handle that you pulled toward you

me: “see that guy getting a cup of water ... guess what i did first”

friend: “you pushed it straight down”

me: “yep”

but at least i figured out the hot wheels railing immediately

[SFX: makes car noises with mouth]

THE NEXT DAY: i have slept on my visit to apple ring hq

and even w/o coffee i figured it out, i solved the apple puzzle

it now occurs to me that the giant panel that said “pardon our horribleness” was there because -that entire panel was originally glass but was cracked/smashed-

maybe by a visitor, maybe because buildings that are 99% glass are just gonna do that

so have a giant blank panel in storage, jic

don’t trust glass

never use glass horizontally, for example as a desk/coffee table/breathtaking your-weight-supporting view box high above the city

glass will let you down

it’s just glass don’t make it pretend it’s stronger

some days, glass doesn’t have enough spoons

Introvertedmadness: Surviving the Bay Area.

Travel Man: Richard Ayoade & Joe Lycett being AMAZING in Amsterdam (including a quick bit at FEBO).

Not Just Bikes: How American Fire Departments are Getting People Killed.

just doing a quick fly-by of the shooting events for the 2024 olympics

not familiar with this sport at all, have cheerfully ignored it for decades

they’re all lined up at the range taking turns pew pew

and the crowd is ... clapping?

wtf is this

all of the specific equipment they use to weigh themselves down and dial in super concentration just to get that 0.000001% boost and you let fucking yahoos sit behind them and cheer/clap/hoot?

don’t know why i’m surprised, given the ghastly uninformed/dangerous relaxed attitude toward preventing covid during the games

it’s just entertainment, fuck the contestants, we need money

jes’ doin’ a little brain surgery: LIVE!

who’s lighting up randomly every other month now

who’s re-installing/un-installing the mouse control software with the insanely horrific ui every other month just to turn off the god damned light

no one, that’s who

(yes i pressed all the buttons repeatedly, thanks though)

logitech: never again

Bike ride #24-31. Total 307mi. / The Kryptonite lock I found in the dirt a year ago has given up the ghost. It locks, but it also happily unlocks with any combination. I’d like to use it as a “pseudolock” to create the appearance of a slightly-more secure bicycle, but I don’t trust it. It could flip the other way and decide to stay fully locked no matter what. In my mind, at least, I don’t know that technically that’s possible. Not worth the tiny bit of security theatre. This is bad timing for Reasons but then there’s never a good time to buy anything, really. Not into it. “Nothing? I’ll take as much as you got.”

I mentioned wanting to create some sort of half-cart device to carry 2x4s. “Well,” I thought with what purports to be a brain, “I could just slap ’em on the side instead.” Which ... could have worked for say, one board.

Let’s do some math. 10lbs per board, plus a 40lb Dutch bicycle. ~80lbs. Pretend I only had to wheel it a few feet, not like pfffft miles or something.

goddamn ai is in everything

2girls1bottl3: #intellectuals

the store that had the self-service machines what had problems digesting cash came up with a new, tried-and-tested solution to put a permanent end to coin bugs

no cash allowed

so that’s five self-service kiosks, all that don’t take cash. there are no signs anywhere indicating this. you can put coins in, they just drop back out.

the funny thing is that i only buy crap coffee there. i tried to make the local coffee shop -my- local coffee shop, but ...

they don’t take cash.

here is a message to everyone who doesn’t take cash. message begins now:

fuck you.

Vox: The surprising reason behind Chinatown’s aesthetic.

Bike ride lucky #23. Total 236.6mi. I noticed that the back was losing a small bit of air. First time using new pump on new-to-me tires. SCHWALBE! Get down low, squint at valve. “Mmmm.” EVERYONE knows there are two valves, Schrader (like on cars), and Presta (like on fancy-schmancy touring bikes that weigh three ounces and bicyclists routinely eat). Not a Schrader, so it’s gotta be a Presta. Yeah? [FX: furious image search] Uh. What? Whut? Surprise, there’s a third type of valve, the “Dunlop” valve, which also has an adapter to magically turn it into a Schrader valve. It’s a cheap little thing, a bit of metal, a smaller bit of rubber. SCHWALBE! So we’ve all learned something today, except for bike shops. Let’s visit some! First though, let’s break one of our locks, and get a slow flat on the spare bike. Check ... check.

SHOP A. “Do you have a Dunlop adapter.” “Dunlop?” [FX: goes to back] “Dunlop” “No we don’t have that.” [FX: begins leaving] “No one has that ... that’s for European bikes.” [SFX: record scratch] Back in February, I asked someone at SHOP A for a suitable inner tube for Miss Lucy Legs, my beach bike. It has a weird rim, such that the valves need to be extra-extra long. It’s annoying, I want stuff to be standard. But this bike was a hand-me-down. Anyway, the guy says to me, he says, “yeah, this will work” even though it’s 10+mm shorter. I put it in, and can -barely- pump it up. It’s on the edge of not locking to the valve (this is not the tube that has the slow leak). Also annoying. Thanks guy. Two strikes for SHOP A.

SHOP B. “Do you have a Dunlop adapter.” “Dunlop? No ... only Presta and Schrader. But we -might- be able to order it.” “I can’t wait, thank you.”

SHOP C. “Do you have a Dunlop adapter.” “Dunlop? Dunlop? We have a Presta adapter ... " He showed me the adapter, and (a) it looked exactly like the Dunlop adapter and (b) it was $1.50. So I bought it. It worked, the tire held air and the village was saved. I wrote them a thank-you note so they also know that the next time someone comes in asking about a Dunlop adapter (2027), they can be all “we have you SET UP, my good consumerer.” I’ll go buy two more spares later, they’re tiny little nuts.

Phil Edwards: The real reason suburbs were built for cars.

Bike ride #16-22. Truck man doesn’t notice me in the Xing, so I air brush him. Do I have to explain this. I refuse. He wasn’t paying attention and there was a car coming the other way which obscured the lower 40% of my body/bike. He stopped 50 feet later in the middle of the street. I’m not sure what was going to happen, maybe he was hoping i’d turn around and he could back over me indignantly?

I got a pair of padded bicycle shorts. A net positive, these will do until I get a deluxe padded seat. The helmet has its pros and cons. Can’t hear as well as I’d like with all the padding smooshed up against my ears. The visor fogs up. The weight doesn’t bother, that was a concern.

People continue to “gun” their cars after they have to endure the excruciating business of stopping for a bicyclist in a crosswalk. It’s usually trucks that are really just slamming that gas pedal after I pass.

I have accidentally come up against a difficult “use case” wrt bicycle freight, so soon into my bicycling “phase.” 2x4s. I need about four of them. I can either walk to the nearby shit national hardware chain or ride the bike to my preferred 2x4 vendor. I have a nice wheel for one end of the grouping, but for the end that is next to the bike, I need some sort of pivot/joint, like a tow rope that attaches to all four boards etc. Something. I’ll figure it out.

Clown ass on bike with cheap bullhorn pointed backward, blaring some sort of continually-looped screed that was so distorted by the volume I couldn’t understand a word of it. He also had a flyer taped to the side of his bike that had been weathered to illegibility. The yelling sounded militaristic, blah blah blah BLAH, blah blah blah BLAH. Normally, you hear something like that, the person passes, you pass, whatever, water off your back. We were stopped waiting for a freight train, so it really got on my nerves. I reluctantly pulled my phone out to take a photo, knowing that something would happen such that I’d just miss it, and yeah, he decided to leave. Just as he was out of sight, photo app was ready. “I’ll run into him again.” Like a half-hour later. He saw me and started saying something like “I have a message” as he was approaching me and I could barely understand that; I was going to yell something back at him, like “no one understands your dumb-ass manifesto, jagoff” but then realized he wouldn’t understand me either. Then I ran into him another half-hour later. I concentrated really hard on the important information and pulled out the phrase “innoculate society” so it must be a pro-vax message. Clearly. Given the way he was riding “around” and not “to” a thing, I think this is his mission, to be a blaring dickhead in the east bay to turn people off of his pet cause, The People’s Campaign to Blah Blah BLAH. I’ll trade him for the old people putting up the giant RFK banner on the ped bridge every weekend. Just to be clear, “trading” here means that he would be sent to Moon Jail, a construct I have created solely within my mind for the world’s assholes. It’s getting pretty full. Also, again, for clarity, “Moon Jail” is a jail; on the moon.

B. A. Stevens Billiard & Bar Supplies ‒ Refrigerators and Ice Boxes for Every Purpose. Spring 1894 (pg 99). Toast water.