Once upon a time I was one of those skinny black clad cyclist types who rolled uphill like a goddamn freight train. I was broke and angry and had an immeasurable supply of energy and everything was my bicycle. Now I’m much meatier and angry a lot less of the time and I’m not working retail and until a few years ago, I’d kind of given up on riding because I’m cake insulated and that hill…
But two years back I bought an electric bike and while it doesn’t make the hills completely disappear, it does eliminate the possibility of my hurling after making the 800 foot climb to my house. If I don’t have to carry a lot of stuff and/or it’s not pouring rain, I ride and I love it. And in the, oh, five year window in which I’d not been riding regularly, you know what’s changed on the roads? Not enough, dammit, not nearly enough. That’s why I love this screed on the tension between cyclists and cars.
PS: I don’t hate cars. I just want bikes to have the same rights and respect that cars get. Don’t want me in your lane? Give me my own.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] am a cyclist. I am here to fuck you up.
Here’s how I’m doing it: I am squeezing between your passenger side door and the curb. I am riding a hill slower than you would like me to. I am taking a second to gain momentum at the stop sign. I am doing all of this on purpose, to make you hit me, so you will be late again and it will be my fault. That is my goal, dream, purpose, the thing for which I was thrust from the womb and into this blinding sunlit world. I will only be happy when my bones are ground to dust in the road and my flesh has adhered to the asphalt and you are late for your 9:00 Meeting with the Board.
I will smile as I die literally and you die figuratively and miss your chance at that Promotion from the Board.
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Writers do like to rabbit on about, you know, writing. Specifically, getting stuff published and then, getting paid for that stuff. This piece on The Awl really goes at it, and I find it one of the more honest and practical things I’ve read about making a living. I’m not doing much sexy work of late, and also, my accounts payable column looks a lot better than it has for a while. This piece doesn’t sugar coat the nature of writing markets, including how gutted editorial staff has become.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n addition to creating a lack of outlets for writers, the hollowing out of the editor pool at most publications alters the details. Huge amounts of institutional knowledge and experience has been laid off or moved into new professions. The result is a world where what matters is that something exists, not that it’s good. How much can you learn by writing slideshows for ten dollars a slide? Or from a thousand-word think piece that is accepted and published without any pushback on the thoughts it contains? How much will you learn putting together a three-thousand-word feature that only gets a light edit and doesn’t pay enough to justify spending the days or weeks you’d need to really report and write it right?
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Internet jobs. Man. (Heads up, annoying animated image in the header.)
[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou will not edit BuzzFeed (apparently someone does that already) but instead will edit a new vertical totally dedicated to repeatedly explaining how BuzzFeed, despite simply being a very large and well-funded blog, represents the future of the media. Articles we’d like to see include: “Is this the future of media?” “Is the future of media this?” and “Media’s future?” The ideal candidate can work the words “platform” and “ecosystem” into anything.
–It Is Impossible to Believe How Mindblowing These Amazing New Jobs Are
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T
his cornflake-marshmallow-chocolate-chip cookie is ridiculous. It takes a while to make, but it’s insanely delicious. There’s a recipe for it here or you can get the Momofuku Milk Bar
Oh, apparently the key to this thing is to pay close attention to the mixing times and to make your batter by weight, not by volume.
God damn, that was a good cookie, and yeah, there’s cookie dough in my freezer so you’d best be nice to me.
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Well, hell. It’s 9/11. Every year I reread my eulogy for our freedom to travel as though it’s not a crime and I remember that hugging my friends at the gate before I board a flight or packing a yogurt in my carry on wasn’t always forbidden. When I was in the airport three weeks ago I saw a sign with a picture of the Twin Towers Memorial on it, it said, “Never Forget: (9/11).”
And you know what I thought? I thought, “Fuck you, TSA. Fuck you for your constant need to remind me to be afraid. For your making an act of war an excuse to degrade my rights. For your racism and profiling and …”
I’m still furious every time I go through security, just furious, over a decade later. I hope to never stop being angry about it because that means I will have forgotten that we punished our own people (and many others, much more unjustly) for crimes we did not commit.
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Ahem. Here is last night’s sunset from Lincoln Park, on the edge of Puget Sound. It’s about a mile from my house and when you visit, I will take you there, maybe for a picnic with some of those cookies. Oh, lord, that cookie. It was amazing.
