Not at all Like Riding a Bicycle

There's an obnoxious little phrase: "It's like riding a bicycle ..."
Usually the bit about "... you never forget how" remains an exercise for the listener.

So after some years of listening to it without thought I realized that in fact the open end of the aphorism made for some interesting rejoinders:

"... you can get your trouser leg all greasy?"
"... you can ring a little bell and people will get out of your way?"
"... it's easiest when you're going downhill?"

It is this obnoxious phrase, O Avid Fan, upon which I wish you to reflect today, as I share with you:

Metro's First Bike Ride


So technically it wasn't my first. I don't recall how old I was when I first rode a "two-wheeler." I know there was a kid in our apartment block in Hamilton who owned a small one--It was painted sparkly gold, as most things were at the time so it seemed. It may or may not have had training wheels.

I remember vaguely, in that dreamlike haze all childhood memories have (For me--Yours may be perfectly clear, in which case you may freely assume your memory is lying to you) riding this bike about. I could frickin' fly on that thing. It was too small for me, even at five-ish. It had no gears. And I had to stand on the pedals because the seat was set so low my knees would have been pistoning into my forehead. Ah, how flexible we are as kids!--But I digress.

When we moved east, a schoolmate of mine took me home one day. She wished to go for a bike ride. I'm guessing I was about six, maybe just turned seven. The trouble was that while she had a bike, it wasn't suited for "doubling" (Young people ask your parents--Doubling was an astoundingly dangerous practice in which boys and girls risked life, limb, and testicle in an attempt to prove that all bicycles were in fact built for two).

There were two bikes, her mum's and her dad's. But as I recall with my lying memory, we knew the ones with dropped crossbars were for girls. And it would be wrong for a boy to ride a girl's bike. It made perfect sense at the time.

So we decided I should try her father's bike. On the surface, to any observer over the age of about ten, this would seem absurd. Her dad (whom I cannot recall now--Hell, I don't think either of her parents were around, but then what was she doing home alone?) obviously had an inseam about the same as my height.

Still, we pushed his big blue bike to the back steps of her house. It was a typical, probably CCM, sit-up-and-beg bike, painted sparkle blue, as most things were at the time, so it seemed. It definitely did not have training wheels. And with serious trepidation, I mounted. I balanced wobbly-ly atop the seat. My toes could touch the pedals until a little way short of their lowest point. After some discussion possibly involving the questioning of the wisdom of our actions (but I doubt it), I pushed off with a toe, and set off down the back alley behind the rows of tiny fenced yards.

The bike spun readily away, picking up speed from the slight downhill, and from my full weight against the pedals. I was probably going about fifteen kilometres per hour, approaching the point where the alley I was in T-ed to a stop at an intersecting alley, a garage door across the alley providing an emphatic full stop. I would need to slow down to make the curve, so my instincts told me.

At what I figure was about eighteen kilometres per hour I stepped backwards to slow the bike--the common practice on the coaster-brake-equipped units I was used to. The pedals rotated freely. I tried again, harder. The pedals flew counterclockwise, the left one turning upward and striking my shin while my right foot lost contact and flailed at empty air. At the same time, because I had been standing up to pedal, I slipped down, with the result all young men have experienced. Young ladies, I cannot explain, but if you hold a pair of baseball bats with the end of the handle against the point of your abdomen containing your ovaries and run at a brick wall you may get a similar sensation. The discombobulation led me to look down, attempting to untangle myself and regain control whilst trying not to retch too loudly and relieve the hideous pressure of my probably-about-fifty-pounds from my crotch.

At this point the die was cast. I looked up and saw the phone pole, swerved late, ang glanced off of it, then careened, brakeless, across the end of the alley and fetched up with a "CRUMP" and a rattle of ironmongery, in a heap against the garage door, curled around my private pain and experiencing a series of novel sensations, including my first real case of road rash, as well as some old ones--the scraped knees and elbows, the sensation that I wanted to "$#!7 myself and blow lunch simultaneously" as Stephen King put it so gracefully in "Christine" ...

My friend seemed to feel responsible for my injuries. That's probably why she waited until I had gotten up and brushed myself off and more-or-less stopped crying before she checked to make sure her dad's bike was okay. Then she led me off to her mother, who did whatever magic other people's mothers do when a boy's knees, elbows, and testicles are bruised. I don't really recall much beyond that. The girl and I stayed friends awhile. She may or may not have attended my next school.

Oh ... And the reason the brakes didn't work was that I hadn't noticed the odd little levers protruding from the handlebars. I'd never ridden a bike with hand brakes.

And that's really all I recall. But it's the incident that springs to mind when someone says "Hey, it's like riding a bicycle ..."

And I finish for him or her: "... if you fall off it's really going to hurt."

O Avid Fan, You Are Not Forgotten!

That goes for both of you.

I promised Sr. Strutts that I would revisit the comment he left me on my post about the all-too-predictable failure of the Copenhagen Conference, and that's part of what I'm doing today.

But I just cleared a major project and have some other stuff to do. So I'll content myself with posting this:



This seems to be a pirate video, so I'll refer you to the site where the original may be found: Weebls Stuff.

Abominable Things From the Depths of the Net, #341

Once in a while we who haunt the interwebs run into something so vile, so wrong, so against the laws of gods and nature that we wish we could un-see it. Here, then, from the "cultural blog," "dog's breakfast," and unholy lair of the Forgotten Ones that is Nag on the Lake, is one of those things.

I urge you to hide children, lock doors, douse your monitor in holy water, and ideally blindfold yourself prior to watching. At least put on some goggles: They'll keep you from clawing your eyes out.



You can't unsee that, can you?

This Is News? #94

Caribou Barbie has blackened her running mate's name.

Uh, didn't she do that pretty much as soon she joined the campaign? Not that he wasn't making a fine job of it on his own, but he needed someone to ensure that there was something in his platform for crazy, gun-loving, Bible-thumping, white people who weren't male, too.

Gift For That Hard-to-Buy-For Raincoaster On Your List

I personally won't be buying this. I mean, the Raincoaster I know isn't exactly hard to buy for. A bottle of gin, or cheap wine left over from last night's party with the ciggie butts seived out, or indeed the mouthwash you thought was such a bargain in the five-litre bottle, that's the sort of thing the type of Raincoaster we get around here usually appreciates.

But if you know a fussier one, you could get them their very own copy of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters it's from those respectable people who brought you the disturbing and apparently soon-to-be-miniseries Pride and Prejudice and Zombies :

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters expands the original text of the beloved Jane Austen novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities.

"Biological monstrosities? Perhaps Raincoaster has even been written in?

As with all the best book marketing efforts these days, this one comes with a video:


I suspect that I will like the book better. I almost always do.

A Few Tweaks

I've been away a lot lately. Scrabbling for work, mostly.

Let's see, what's been happening. Well I've been spending a lot of time reading about the so-called "Climate-gate" scandal, and I've concluded that a handful of emails, even if they contained a plot that would make Dan Brown wet his shorts, don't in fact change thirty or fifty years of science, backed by the actual data.

There's a lot more. But for some good reading on the subjects, I'd try Deltoid and DeSmogBlog. This is a debate where style has heretofore trumped science, and those two are trying hard to counter that.

What else ... Oh yes, I've been sort of outed. I left a rude comment over at Canadian Cynic and one of the subjects took the two minutes it took to Google me. He says my name is Ted, and I'm willing to take his word on that. But I knew, and was warned by no less an intertubes big gun than Raincoaster, that no-one's really anonymous on the 'net. So it isn't as though I hadn't expected this to happen at some point.

It'll be interesting to see whether the idea of having a name linked to this blog is likely to change the way I express myself. I hope not. Metro's the little bit of me that I keep locked away when someone's saying something that makes me want to grab their lapels, haul them up to my nose and scream "Are you ₤µ©λing NUTS!?"

Such as when a pleasant, white-haired old lady tells me that Barack Obama is the devil, and means it ... So instead I smile and nod, and when I get home I write it down and try to dissect it.

Anyway ... As you can see, I've updated the blogroll a bit to more accurately reflect where I've been spending my time. If the links look a little left-ish, well I'm hoping to find some reasonable writing from the other side of the spectrum. But it's often a matter of luck. For example, there's today's smart, sensible piece:

At Dr. Dawg's Blawg, I stumbled across a link to this. I linked to Little Green Footballs once, and only once, way back in the prehistory of the ol' Metroblog. I didn't hang about because teh crazy seemed infectious. I forget how I got there, but the Nazi site Stormfront was involved. And no I'm not linking there.

But now I find this post "Why I Parted Ways With the Right, and it so well traces my own retreat from Conservatism that I had to clip a few choice bits off and post them here:

...
4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)
...

There's more. I reccomend reading that piece.

Partly as a result of hanging around at places that define the extremes of the argument, I'd been very dispirited and bitter lately about the quality of ideas out there. So it's nice to see that sometimes reason does, in fact, prevail.

Meantime, I'm pleased to meet you.
Now you know my name.

Play me off, Mick and Keith!

It's a Great, Great Day

I don't do Twitter. Seriously, d'you think I ever had anything to say in 140 characters or fewer?

However, I might just join now. Gene Ray, self-billed as "Wisest Human" and originator of TIMECUBE is on Twitter. So I noticed on Pharyngula.

To frame this properly, one needs to consider that Ray's been around pretty much as long as the internet has had the capacity for pixellated graphics and eye-searing, effect-smeared fonts, and has developed a following of people bemused and amazed by the foaming bat$#17 lunacy he spews.

In some of the places I hang out on the 'net, teh crazy is measured on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 Timecubes.

A selection of his tweets:

To worship a religious/academic defied Queer(God) as your progenitor, equates to spitting puke in your Mom and Dad's face - a beastly act.

Actually, infants and children do this all the time, dude.

You would be wiser if unschooled then be taught ONEness stupidity to worship Evil of ONEism, contradicted by Opposite Creation.

To quote Opus from the Bloom County strips: "And would I have monkeys pick my nose for me?"

THIS APPEARS TO CONTAIN ORANGE SHERBET WHICH IS NOT PART OF THE TIME CUBE

Sure, 'cos the TIME CUBE is all about Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey.

But unfortunately it's not all fun and games. Here's why I'm not linking to him:

Academic retards teaches worship of queer jew god, equates to adults eating their children.

SUN power will not allow any Black Skin power to rule over its Light Domain.

Queers killed my lil Brother. A Queer God induces AIDS.

WARNING TO EDUCATED STUPID, Black Skin equates imprisonment, white race had nothing to do making negros black.

It's a good lesson in why we can't afford to laugh at teh crazy, but also can't afford not to. And yes, perhaps it's mean to laugh at someone so clearly exhibiting the symptoms of mental illness.

My consolation is that a) he probably won't notice and b) he probably won't care if he does. I'm utterly certain he's used to it by now.

Now THAT'S In-flight Service!

A baby born on an airliner will receive free flights for life, along with his mother.

That's amazingly cool.

Date: Future
Metro and heavily-pregnant Mme Metro arrive at the flight counter.

Attendant: May I help you?
Metro: Yeah ... Which of these flights to Australia is the most turbulent?

LOL of th' Day

xkcd is teh ossum.

Matt Taibbi: Now Known as "Dances With Nuts"

From an article entitled "Jesus Made Me Puke":

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this — once you've gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

Let's Hear It #346

For headline honesty.

Hahahahaha! QOTMFD!

Overheard around town:

Teen girl:
"Well if God wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings."

Teen boy:
"So wait ... God wants me to masturbate?"

TG Look of incredulous disgust spreading over her face:
"What?"

TB:
"Well otherwise why'd he make my arms long enough to reach my dick?"

Obesity Epidemic Hitting Close to Home (Renos)

From my Canadian Tire flier, which arrived as usual with the Friday paper:

Toilet seats 20% off: Wide selection.

Have a good weekend.

Oh, the Wildlife-ity!

Raincoaster has been following the threads of the Great Meerkat Conspiracy, which has explained so much in terms of the rarity of fairies, the reduction of fish stocks, and the shortage of four-leafed clovers (they got the leprechauns first, don'cha know).

However, now ominous news reaches our peepers of the newest soldiers in the Meerkat War With Fish and People.

It is truly the saddest of news, for once-respectable raptors have now been recruited into the ravaging ranks of the Meerkat Army.

Read it and weep:

Eagle smashes car windshield with fish

Two targets with one bird, eh?

This, as Rick Mercer used to say on "Made In Canada", is not good.

We urgently await a statement from G Eagle on whether this indicates a change of eagle allegiance in the Total War Against Terror, Intrigue, And Meerkats (TWATIAM).

Stay calm, be brave, watch for the signs.

A Thought Occurs

A friend posted a link wishing that "track pants were sexy, Mondays were fun, and guys were simple."

And I thought "Pardon?"

How many guys do you know who'll spend an hour getting ready for a night out, then collapse in tears because "I'm a mess!"?

How many guys do you know who own twelve pairs of shoes, and not one "walking" pair?

How many guys ever looked into the eyes of a woman they're in bed with and said "Honey--Are you sure this is a good idea?"

As a metaphor for trying to understand the nature of women, one should first acquire five jigsaw puzzles. Now remove ten percent of the pieces from each and throw the remainder through the laundry. Place all pices in a basket with large holes, shake it up. Now put on a blindfold and oven mitts and try to assemble a picture.

Guys are simple. It's dealing with the other half of humanity that makes us prime candidates for therapy.

The Best Statement I've Yet Heard on Climate Change

"And the very same people who told you that weapons of mass destruction were real are telling you that climate change is not."

Indeed.

One should consider one's sources. They were wrong about the economy, about the Iraq misadventure, and about so many other things ... Why would anyone trust them on anything at all?

From this video, found on Pharyngula.

Like Shooting Gefilte Fish

From one of those rags I don't normally read comes this gem:

Three city mayors, two state politicians and five rabbis were among 44 people arrested across New Jersey today when federal agents cracked an alleged Sopranos-style crime ring accused of bribery, money laundering and trafficking body parts and counterfeit handbags.

I just knew I shouldn't have bought that handbag made of human skin, but it was so smooth and silky ... And oy such a deal!

From the CBC:

Much stricter controls are needed over the use of Taser stun guns by police in B.C., former judge Thomas Braidwood says in the first phase of findings from his inquiry into stun guns.

I would just like to say to Justice Braidwood: Bravo. And also WELL DUH

On CTV we learn that Canadian versions of internationally branded foods tend to be higher, sometimes much higher, in salt:

A serving of Burger King onion rings has 1,500 milligrams of sodium per serving -- more than 100 per cent of the daily recommended intake. A serving of BK onion rings in the UK has just 500 mg -- even though the serving size in the UK is about 30 per cent larger.
[...]
Canada, meanwhile, has some of the highest levels of sodium in our packaged and chain restaurant foods, which might explain why the country has such high rates of high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart attack, heart failure, stroke, and kidney disease.

We're just trying to convince the cannibals to leave us alone. They hate salty food too.

There's a massive, beautiful thunder-and-lightning storm outside my window right now. The noise rumbles through the ground like an earthquake. My lights are flickering as the lightning flashes. I hope the rain does the firefighters some good. The big fire in Fintry got worse yesterday.

While Squandering a Perfectly Good Hour

I was taking a break from my usual hectic schedule (Up at 6:30, make coffee for Mme Metro, retire to computer for rousing game of poker, crack first beer of day ... Just kidding--Honest!).

But I did take a break from some writing work I'm doing to go play a quick game of Desktop Tower Defence. And this is what I saw:


And my first thought, I must confess, was:
"If I looked like that to start with, why the hell would I want a cartoon made of me?"

God Hates School Kids

It's the comments that get to me. Under this article on a bus rollover that trapped 33 kids inside the bus and injured four people including the driver we find the following rich, albeit gramatically painful, vein of pure asinine:

A higher power, was watching over these kids and the bus driver. Those who say that He does not exist, have just been proven wrong.

Where to begin.

Well first off, how about asking why that lousy higher power didn't miraculously lift the bus back onto its wheels? Why didn't said higher power prevent ALL the injuries? Why didn't this higher power decide to avoid the trauma and suffering of all involved and simply let the bus have an uneventful journey home, for the loving, living, lugubrious liver of Lucifer?

Remember: With great power comes great responsibility. With a "higher power" must come higher responsibility. What do you think comes with ultimate power?

Spider-man had it right. And I'd sooner count on Spider-man to save a bunch of kids trapped in a public transportation crisis. At least we've got HIM on video:



If there were a god, and he was the Ultimate Power, then only he can take responsibility for all that's stupid, wrong, ugly and just generally bad. So the commentor seems to be arguing that his or her "higher power" allowed a preventible accident to happen just for kicks.

Nice one, God and commentor both. Are there any more like you at home?

Does that Budget Report Come With Assless Chaps?

Conservatives are well known for a sort of voyeuristic prurience when it comes to sex. Now it turns out that this is their economic policy too:

For example, it's well known that while decrying sex and all things sexually positive, the "family values" types tend to enjoy their lesiure time at adultery, borderline pederasty, prostitution, anonymous gay encounters, and similar purportedly lib'rul pursuits. While especially true in the US, there is much such in Canada as well. Then they like to pretend it just ain't so.

In Canada, with regard to the economy, the Conservative Government is behaving exactly like a 17-year-old boy with a purity ring* trying to talk his likewise be-ringed girlfriend into a little back-door action.

Canada to Young Stephen Harper:
"I don't know ... I mean, it looks like it might be uncomfortable."

Young Stephen Harper to Canada:
"Oh come on, honey ... It's really not that big. In fact it doesn't even exist."

Canda:
"You're wrong--I can see it, and it looks scary."

SH: "What ... This ol' thing? Naw, it's just a little bump. You'll even enjoy it."

C: "But I'm afraid it's going to hurt!"

SH: "Well it might hurt, just a little, going in. But you'll enjoy it--it's a wonderful opportunity. Hell, in 2012 it'll be nothing but fantastic."

C: "Look, we need a little lubrication at least."

SH: "No we don't!"

C: "Are you nuts? Look at the size of that thing. It's big enough to wreck General Motors!"

SH: "Oh, okay, if you insist. Crybaby."

C: "OW! Sweet Jesus! It's big, really big, and it hurts! You never told me it'd be this bad."

SH: "Well, uh ... I didn't know. Yeah, that's it ..."

Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer: "Um, Master Harper ... You knew. You clearly knew. But you've been lying about it for at least a year. Sorry, sir, it's my job to call bullshit on you."

SH: Uh, okay. I lied then, but I wasn't really lying ... and if I was it was Ignatieff's fault, or the Previous Liberal Government's ...

Und so weiter.



Note:
*A purity ring is a ring, often inscribed with the name "Jesus" which is supposed to indicate a comittment to chastity until marriage. In fact, at least fifty percent of such "pledged" virgins fall by the wayside, possibly not including the ones who get married out of desperation and divorce later, and particularly not including the ones who eat/blow each other and have anal sex to "preserve" their virginity. As Dan Savage says: "I've been prserving the $#17 out of my boyfriend's virginity for 14 years now!"

In fact, as I see it, purity rings should be a reliable indicator of a teenage girl who's into Saddlebacking. Which is why Christian Conservatives love them, I guess.

Update: I tried to find the video, but it's "Restricted for people in your region". One comedian commented on the topic of a 16-year-old who wanted to wear her virginity bling in school:
"I say if she wants to wear a ring that signifies that she's not having sex--Let her get married like everyone else!"