ur on teh dorkforumz, postin' for ur gurlfrend

how lame of you. or maybe how lame of your girlfriend.

Bike Forums is a sausage fest of extreme proportions. Often times, dudes will post a question for their girlfriends. These posts say things like "My girlfriend's bike [instert bike problem]. What should I do?" or "My girlfriend is thinking about getting a new bike, I told her to get the [insert entry level bike] but now I'm wondering if she would be more comfortable on a [insert other entry level bike], or if I should build something for her with [insert bike parts]."
OMFG!11!!!one!1!!1!!! Why cannot the girlfriends post these questions themselves?!

I ranted about this on BF, and got a reply from one of the female moderators saying that:

"Given the way certain males reply to females on certain forums, I think their boyfriends are being very kind to help them out ... I think most of the women who do post and participate are tougher than average; that is, we can give as good as we get. But you know, even I just leave threads sometimes after it becomes clear that I'm not welcome because I don't have a sausage."

Apparently some females won't even register or post because they feel so threatened by the guys on the forums and "operate on the idea that they are just not wanted." To make these pathetic girls feel more welcome, Bike Forums has a Women's Forum, which I checked out after I got that message from the mod. Holy crap is it the lamest thing ever. First of all, most* of the people posting have names like "FlowerPetal" or "LollyBlossom."** More importantly, they don't even talk about bikes! The most popular thread on the forum is the "Internet Dating" one. Last week I had a date with a dude from teh interwebz, so I decided to post on it. One comment later and this is what shows up: "My boyfriend is visiting for the weekend, so I doubt you'll see any posts from me. Gotta test out my new tubal and make sure the doc did what he was supposed to. ;-)" WTF?!?! That is not even about internet dating, let alone bikes!
GRRRR. And then when I post an actual gender-specific bike question only two people reply.

Conclusion: girls are lame.

*ok, not most, but those are the ones that stand out
**names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved

Now I don't mind / A dirty girl

American Doll Posse doesn't either. Nor do a handful of men...

I didn't listen to any pre-released songs off Tori Amos's most recent album, nor did I read any reviews or attempt to understand her concept when I first got it. The idea of yet another concept album bothered me - after Strange Little Girls and Scarlet's Walk, not to mention that most of her other albums hinge on such strong themes that they come dangerously within earshot of the conceptual, did we really need more ethereal feminism shoved down our throats?*

I thought not, and I listened to the album with ignorance of the concept. Until now. A few weeks with the album, and the sudden realization that this is perhaps Tori's most sexual release to date, sparked my interest in album reviews and concept knowledge.
The attention-getting tracks "Teenage Hustling" and "Body and Soul" hit my carnal brain hard, and I couldn't help but look up which Tori alter-ego was behind these songs (not to mention thinking that, along with "Fat Slut" and Pip's other songs, they should be submitted to Fetish Exchange's list of good scene music). Who was behind the other songs I was drawn to (most notably "You Can Bring Your Dog," "Secret Spell," and "Bouncing Off Clouds")? Was I identifying more with one Doll than the others? Apparently: Pip and Santa with a dash of Clyde.
Who are these girls?, I wondered.

Turns out they're not girls. And turns out Tori's concept works beautifully. The American Doll Posse consists of "five very different women, each representing various aspects of modern woman as a whole." Therefore, I am not just Pip, or Santa, or Clyde. I'm a combination of all five personas - in fact, every woman is. No surprise that I'm more Pip than the others though.
This is where the concept works - Tori has broken down women's place in contemporary society into the "strange little boxes" women find themselves in today. According to her, they often end up "muzzled" in these roles, and "they don’t quite know how they got there." A press release issued for the album called ADP "the dismembered feminine re–membered." And oh how accurate that description is. Tori disperses women's roles throughout five characters, then puts them back together as an album that feels just cohesive enough to form one being, yet disjointed enough to prove that women will never truly be able to reconcile all these positions. (Quotes from Attitude magazine interview).

Uncut called ADP "a return to more conventional songwriting form."
Blender called it " maddeningly self–important, [and] wigged out."
MOJO noted that Tori's drive to create concept albums makes her worthy of "[t]op marks for willful eccentricity," but that, as with her other recent releases, only a few tracks stand out, and "less is more."
Right, correct, and precise. But I wonder how Uncut decided ADP is more accessible than "the difficult concepts of Scarlet’s Walk and The Beekeeper," or how Blender figured it's "[t]exturally, ... a middle ground between her searing early album Under the Pink and the sun–dappled 2005 The Beekeeper." SW and Beekeeper are surely more understandable than ADP, and texturally, the album is certainly darker than both UtP and Beekeeper. In my opinion, it's sonically most similar to Choirgirl, and infinitely gutsier theme-wise than her other recent releases.

*Her concept albums shove it down our throats. Her other albums leave it gracefully floating through our ears.

You better know / I'm at your door
(but you knocked first...)

David Brooks makes me...

horny. No wait, it's PMS that does that. David Brooks makes me...not hate conservatives?
Whatever he makes me do, I think I like it.
It's not that I agree with him. Most of the time I don't. It's his writing. He writes with conviction, in a conversational style that would make any liberal want to actually finish one of his columns. His casual style is a rarity in the New York Times, which, even though rivaled by Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, comes across as more credible thanks to his ability to convince readers that he actually believes what he's writing (unlike Dowd, who, under the guise of feminism, writes to satisfy a gender-specific agenda that probably only exists in her head, or Rich, who sacrificed his socio-political commentaries formerly published in the Arts section to snub the current administration on a weekly basis in the Opinion section*).

*Of course, I'm all for snubbing the Bush administration, but Rich's insistence on doing so in the same way every week got old a long time ago. He harked back to his previous ways a last month with "Everybody Hates Don Imus" (April 15, 2007), in which he artfully combined his liberal stance with his own experience and the current state of the mass media in a way he hasn't done since leaving the Arts section. I liked.

Over the next few weeks [David Brooks will] detail some policies that might go into [the] human capital agenda [he outlined in today's column, "A Human Capital Agenda"].
I can't wait!

Cookiez

because spelling things with Z's is awesome-o.

Meanwhile, I had to go track down a professor a bit ago to ask for yet another incomplete this semester. Woohoo, more summer work! More importantly, I noticed while in his office that there was a half-eaten double chocolate chip cookie on his desk. I don't understand this. If there's a cookie on my desk I eat the whole thing in about 2 seconds flat. How doth one leave half a cookie uneaten?

Bags

I heart them. I'm not big into accessories, but if I had unlimited funds I'd buy a lot of bags and shoes. And bikes. By the end of the summer I'd like to build up a new bike; hopefully summer job funds will allow this. Meanwhile, I used the acquisition of Stealth to justify the purchase of a custom Reload bag. Enjoy.

People watching

...at 2nd and Chestnut. The heart of Old City. Because what else are you gonna go after a 2 hour Critical Mass ride, food and awesome beer at Eulogy, and shitty beer at the Khyber?

I don't spend a lot of time there. There are cool bars, but they are overrun with yuppies and overdressed women in heels and dudes in button-downs.

Meanwhile, Critical Mass was overrun with hipsters on bikes with color-coordinated Deep-Vs. I think I know what kind of rims I won't be getting when I build a new bike...

Tuesday Afternoons

are lame. Like MySpace and your mom.

For some reason the monotonous time I spend in front of my computer on Tuesday afternoons leads me to post many replies on the Philly Bike Forums thread, some of which get misconstrued as bitchy. (The keyword being misconstrued, but I gotta admit bitchy is an improvement to the assholeness on there. There is no femalez around that place at all). Anyway, I just thought I'd move on over here and make a post, since, unlike BF, no one actually comments on this thing.

Enjoy.

Tools

not the kind you fix things will, though those are cool too. I used some the other night at Bike Church to fix my bike.

I'm talking about the kind Leath and I are well on our way to becoming, him via a consulting job, and me in the opposite direction, via things like body modification and fixed gear bikes. According to Leath, "Tooldom is probably a giant circle. If we both go really far we'll probably meet up again. Granted, it may be in hell."

I'll end with a line from the classic film SLC Punk, in which Stevo's dad reminds him: "I didn't sell out, son. I bought in. Keep that in mind."

I'll be doing track stands in a very long while

because I can't balance for shit.
on the other hand, I learned how to skid tonight!
(much thanks to Tyler from Bike Church/Bike Forums* for teaching me)

*the internet is creepy. I walk into Bike Church the other night to fix a flat and see this guy from the internets (i.e., Bike Forums), which led to a completely awkward encounter since I felt the need to reveal my identity to him, then I get a BF message from Tyler who picked up on who I was thanks to the Bike Church/BF connection. Awkward, but at least he taught me shit so it's all good.

Some Art

more about these later