I’ve been pretty religious about biking to work every day this past four or five weeks; I only missed a couple days when my bike was in the shop.  Not bad, all in all.

And I got some positive reinforcement; a third party with no attachment to me whatsoever commented “Looks like you’ve lost some weight” over the weekend.  So – so far, so good.  I feel much better after the ride every morning; biking to work is a natural lift to the day.  Part of it is just the blast of exercise.  Part of it is the adrenaline from the existential threat from some of the drivers out there.  Either way, it focuses the mind.

But I have to wonder about something.

I’ve noticed that there seem to be four types of bikers on the road in the morning.

1. The serious bikers; the ones in the yellow jerseys and biker shorts and streamlined helmets, with legs like tree trunks – kinda like mine were, when I was a serious biker, between about 1980 and 1990.  Most of them are visibly serious about their biking (kinda like I was); focuses, concentrated, and very, very fast.  Some of them boggle the mind; one guy sailed past me a few weeks back on an oval bike – a single speed bike with no coaster gear on it, meaning you have to pedal all the freaking time when you’re on it, and you can’t change gears on hills.  I’m in awe.
2. Guys you can pretty much tell are there because they got their third DWI.  They’re usually dressed like they dress at work – work boots, jeans, coveralls, whatever.
3. Bikers like me; guys and gals in workout duds grinding out the commute to work, or grabbing a morning jaunt before heading into the office.  I wear pretty much what I wear to the gym; whatever T-shirt I was wearing the day before, my gym shorts, my sneakers.  I put my work clothes in a backpack (my christmas present to myself will probably be a rear rack of some kind), and take a shower in my office’s locker room before going to work because I figure even my little six mile commute is gonna make me sweaty.  And who needs that?
4. Bikers like the guy I drafted for a while this morning.  Let me explain.

The guy was fiftysomething, with a neatly-trimmed gray beard, he wore a helmet, a dress shirt, khaki Dockers, black socks and loafers – in other words, dressed for work at an office job.  He carried a shoulder bag that looked like it was full of notebooks, not clothes.

Now, it was pleasant this morning, but kinda muggy.  I was sweating; I’ll chalk a lot of that up to the fact that I’m still a ways away from being in shape, but I also have a pretty solid rhythm (one of the keys to distance biking is just getting your legs in a rhythm and keeping it, not stopping for anything, even coasting as little as possible; the cooling down of your muscles actually causes more fatigue than keeping your legs moving.  And yes, I realize the absurdity of calling my six-mile commute “distance biking”, but then you try it when you’re 44 and haven’t biked seriously since 1990.  But I digress), so I don’t waste a lot of energy, either.  This guy was working up a bit of a lather, too; decent rhythm, but he was standing on his pedals up hills and out of stoplights, which tends to exert one.

I have to wonder – how do these people get through the workday without smelling like a bear that’s just come out of hibernation?

I noticed that the guy this morning – like many of the guys I see who bike to work in their work duds – pulled into a government building at the end of his ride.  Government employees, please spill the beans – do your offices reek, or what?

…but I gotta say two things:

1. The Pearson Salted Nut Roll is the best candy ever made (and made here in Saint Paul, no less!  Indeed, one of St. Paul’s great treats is biking down West Seventh and smelling that luscious nougatty aroma wafting up from the Pearson plant…)
2. Brad Carlson is the luckiest man alive!

Any Word Press geeks available to help me out a bit?

Drop me a line.  Those of you have my address, know it. Otherwise – my address at yahoo.com is “feedbackinthedark”.

Maria Cantwell thinks the American people “deserve better” when it comes to energy:

“America deserves more fuel efficient cars,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington. But she added “the only way consumers are going to get more out of a tank of gas is if the president and his party help deliver votes in a narrowly divided Congress.”

It’s widely expected the Senate will approve some sort of increase in auto fuel economy as part of an energy bill it hopes to finish in the coming weeks.

Senator Cantwell; leaving aside that the market will inevitably provide that mileage vastly faster and more efficiently than any government regulation, I’m glad to see that you’re on the side of freeing this nation from oil imports. 

So how about doing something that’ll matter; pushing nuclear power?

Plentiful nuclear power, delivered at a fraction of the cost of coal, gas or oil power, will free up fossil fuels, provide ample power to generate “alternative” fuels (the energy cost of refining ethanol is its biggest drawback), and lower the cost of energy across the board:

Cheap, plentiful, safe energy will ensure our economy keeps humming along, and best of all will slash our dependence on the House of Saud and the House of Chavez – altering the geopolitical landscape in a way that’ll benefit the entire western world. 

We want that, right?

Have your people call my people.

I was reading the new and improved website for Keegans’ Pub yesterday, and I saw this interesting note:

The design is Edwardian, a style that came at the end of the Victorian era in the 1890s.

Dum di dum… 

It is authentic to Ireland and fits with the historic preservation district in which we are located.

…di dum…   

Keegan’s is the first and only Irish Pub Concept (IPC) pub in Minnesota.

 scraaaatch

Huh?  What does that mean?

Because “Irish Pubs” are to the 2000s what “Sports Bars” were in the ’80s.  Back then, everyone with a refrigerator and two TV sets was opening a “Sports Bar”.  Today, now that fads have changed, those “sports bars” bought some used church pews and stained their bars brown, put in a Guinness tap and replaced the “Motley Crue” CD with a “Pogues” CD, and celtified their name to “O’Tostengaard’s Irish Pub”, and badda bing, they’re up to date!

But I needn’t have fretted:

IPC was developed by Guinness Brewing Company as a format for authentic Irish pubs.

Aaaah!  It’s a marketing thing! 

 Although no two Irish pubs are alike, the IPC format calls for four elements to be present: Irish design and build, Irish food, Irish music and Irish staff.

Irish staff?

So this is really a make-work program for Celts?

Terry?

Via Schmaltz Und Grieben,  the story of a man in Poland who went into a coma under communism, and awoke a free man:

A 65-year-old railwayman who fell into a coma following an accident in communist Poland regained consciousness 19 years later to find democracy and a market economy, Polish media reported on Saturday.

Wheelchair-bound Jan Grzebski, whom doctors had given only two or three years to live following his 1988 accident, credited his caring wife Gertruda with his revival.

“It was Gertruda that saved me, and I’ll never forget it,” Grzebski told news channel TVN24.

“Not forgetting” seems to be a smart tack to take…

…but I digress.  The verdict?  Freedom rocks:

“When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol lines were everywhere,” Grzebski told TVN24, describing his recollections of the communist system’s economic collapse.

“Now I see people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin.”

Grzebski awoke to find his four children had all married and produced 11 grandchildren during his years in hospital.

Mr. Grzebski gives us Red Minnesotans hope; we will too wake up from the coma that started November 8.

Sheila is on another of her “commonplace” rampages.

I love this one:

I have a higher and greater standard of principle [than George Washington]. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won’t.

— Mark Twain, 1871

Oh, and this one:

He had the finest ear, perhaps, of any English poet; he was also undoubtedly the stupidest; there was little about melancholia he didn’t know; there was little else that he did.

— Auden on Tennyson

Just go and read ’em.  There’ll be thousands by the time she’s done.

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Next Two Seasons

Joel,

About this time last year, I started a binge of watching the first four seasons of 24 in, essentially, a six-week bender. I just couldn’t stop watching. I got reeled in. So while I missed most of Day 5, I made this past season of 24 my first “appointment TV” in nearly 20 years.

And like most of the rest of the Bauersphere, I was – I’ll exercise my gift for understatement – bored silly with this past season.

I got to thinking about this, since the A’nE network is replaying Day One at 6AM every day.  The morning after Day Six sputtered to a scarcely-lamented end, I caught an episode from Day One; Jack was searching the first round of people trying to assassinate David Palmer; Teri Bauer was searching for Kim, along with the infamous Mr. York, ostensibly the father of Kim’s friend but really an agent of Serbian assassins out to kidnap the Bauer family for what Bauer had done to Viktor Drezen’s brother, and so on, and so forth.  Bauer was arguing with CTU, in a life-or-death battle, and arguing with his estranged wife while simultaneously defending his nation and his family.

You know – the kind of stuff we can all identify with.  Because what made Jack Bauer (and the show built around him) compelling was that for the first four Days, he dealt – on a big, life-or-death, hyper-dramatic, caffeine-stoked level – with things that matter to all of us;  loyalty to friends, to family, to something bigger; the shortcomings we all have in exercising that loyalty; the twists and turns that life (or huge shadowy terrorist conspiracies) throw in the way of that ideal.

On the other hand, after the first four hours (which were as good as anything in the first five Days), Day Six felt like West Wing with the occasional shootout – except West Wing wrote about the canoodling and cavorting about the corridors of the innermost inner circles well.  24 has never been about “watching the machinery work”; the only way the show ever made the inner circle of the White House remotely compelling was to wrap it up in a character, David Palmer, who was having the same crises Bauer was; right and wrong, good and evil, and the many very gray shades he – everyone – navigates between them.

The big problem?  Day Six had no big moral crises; no choices between family and duty; no “to execute Ryan Chappelle or not to execute Ryan Chappelle”; no hotels full of plague victims to isolate, with the moral consequences beating everyone involved over the heads.  Day Six was just…too easy.

Oh, a lot more popped up, too – a lot of comparisons where Day Six came up wanting:

Plausible Suspension of Disbelief: That six successive terrorist conspiracies erupt within a 20 minute drive from CTU Los Angeles.
Implausible Suspension of Disbelief:  That Russia would go to war over a McGuffin shaped like a sound card.

Characters I Can Care About: Teri Bauer, Diane Huxley, Tony and Michelle.  There was a sense of conflict, loyalty, gain and loss.
Characters I Can Not Care About:  Audrey Raines. Jack seems to be obsessed over a  plot device dressed as a barbie doll.

Disbelief I Can Suspend:  Jack Bauer has the president’s cell and secure office numbers on speed-dial.
Disbelief I Can Not Suspend:  The Russians can move troops from barracks into a position flanking a US base in the ‘stans in a matter of hours.
Disbelief that Beggars My Imagination:  The Powers Boothe administration faces this potential instant attack with panicky resignation (unless they’re Democrats, in which case it’s sorta plausible).

Reality I Can Watch Being Bent And Shrug, Because It’s No Big Deal:  A US submarine named the “Vickery”.  US subs are either fish, cities, states or, rarely, congresspeople who fed lotsa pork to the Navy.  And Jimmy Carter. 
Reality I Can Watch Being Bent And Shrug, Because It’s Only My Intelligence Being Insulted:  The President arranges the firing of a dummy cruise missile from a submarine on a few moments’ notice and manages to keep his entire staff and cabinet in the dark about it.

Maybe…: Kim Bauer goes from being a bratty teen to a seasoned CTU systems wonk.
No:  Wayne Palmer goes from being a bratty presidential advisor to an elected president.

Villains That Could Scare Me: Dennis Hopper as Victor Drazen (and Zeljko Ivanek as his son; I have wondered since Homicide: Life On The Street  if Ivanek maybe hadn’t done some of that in his past); Mandy and Candy the naked lesbian assassins; shadowy Balkan killbots; Fayed.
Villains That Do Not Scare Me:  James Cromwell as Evil Grampa Bauer.  “That’ll do, Jack.  That’ll do”.

Plausible Suspension of Disbelief: CTU/LA has moles, gets hacked, suffers a bombing/nerve gas attack/direct assault.
Implausible Suspension of Disbelief: CTU/LA suffers a different attack every season, and never seems to learn.

Plausible Suspension of Disbelief: The Navy keeps a vic of F-18s fully loaded with air-to-surface weapons on American soil, ready to scramble on a moment’s notice at the command of CTU.
Implausible Suspension of Disbelief:  CTU has satellites recording activities on off-shore oil rigs even before it occurs to anyone to want to surveil them.

Joel:  have your people call my people.

Cheers,

Mitch Berg

I missed this (because I wasn’t blogging yesterday!) – it was John Wayne’s 100th birthday.

 And as with all things movie, Red has the post of record.

From the Pauline Kael files:  Alphageek Steve Jobs demonstrates that his command of politics is equal to his savvy about marketing:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has stated that Al Gore, an Apple board member and former US vice-president, would win the presidency if he ran for election.”If he ran, there’s no question in my mind that he would be elected,” Jobs told Time magazine.

The problem? Algore is just too damn sensitive:

“But I think there’s a question in his mind, perhaps because the pain of the last election runs a lot deeper than he lets most of us see.”

I, for one, feel it; the fact that Algore is still in the news and still has his minions argling and bargling about the 2000 election is, indeed, painful.

“We have dug ourselves into a 20-foot hole, and we need somebody who knows how to build a ladder. Al’s the guy,” Jobs also told Newsweek. “Like many others, I have tried my best to convince him. So far, no luck.”

Speaking as the guy whose mercurial nature and neofundie commitment to his own knee-jerk feelings destroyed NeXT (my favorite computers ever) and nearly took Apple down the toilet, Jobs would be the expert.

The Simpsons is running episode 400 tonight. 

Let the trivia geeks have their day in the sun!

 The part I think is the coolest:  the show has literally been around for a generation:

“We’ve got writers now who are so young that they grew up watching the show,” [creator Matt] Groening said. “They’re always reminding those of us who have been around longer that we’ve already done a joke that somebody is pitching.”

However…:

His sitcom, “The Simpsons,” presents its 400th episode tonight, capping 18 seasons with no finish line in sight.

And the characters may just be hitting their stride.

By “hitting their stride”, does the writer mean “the show doesn’t suck anymore”?

Because I think it’s been a couple of years since the show was actually funny.

Please advise.

I love the new Guthrie.  Oh, it’s disconcerting, and when you react to it – inside or out – you feel like you’re playing a part that’s been pretty well scripted out for you by some dweeby little metrosexual architect somewhere, as if you’re part of his artistic vision…

…but at the end of the day, it’s a great place to go to watch not just a play, but to see the world go by.

Inside the building. 

Outside?  A very different story.

The area around the New Guthrie is a dreary, arid place; cold and cement-y in the winter, dry and hot in the summer.  It’s long been one of the most depressing parts of Minneapolis.

The Strib’s architecture beat reporter (for now), Linda Mack, points the finger:

Stand in front of Spoonriver, the streetwise new restaurant facing the Guthrie Theater, and you’ll feel the problem. The cafe’s outdoor tables with their orange umbrellas are inviting, but what lines the street? Parking meters.

No trees are allowed on this part of S. 2nd Street because most of the buildings are historic ones. Trees weren’t part of the original industrial landscape that the St. Anthony Falls Historic District protects, preservationists argue, so trees aren’t allowed today.

That’s absurd. There weren’t sidewalks either when this area between the mills on 2nd Street and Washington Avenue was a giant rail yard. But there are sidewalks now, and people living in the mills and walking the streets. The city should foster neighborhoods that are as livable as possible, and there’s nothing that works better than trees.

But…:

In Minneapolis, the city’s Public Works Department holds more sway than the Planning Department. And despite Mayor Rybak’s push to turn Washington Avenue into a tree-lined boulevard, the nearby streets are wanting.

In Minneapolis, bureaucracy trumps the market. 

Which is a shame, because it’d be nice to walk out of just about the coolest theater in the business onto a street that looks like something other than a Bloomington car lot sans cars. 

Especially since,  y’know, that’s what the market is trying to do, without any tax money needed in the process.

I’m starting to find my power, here.   A few years ago, I demanded that “bloggy” and all derivatives thereunto appertaining be excised from the language.  I haven’t seen it much lately.  It is a sweet victory indeed, and I claim all credit. 

I’ve never been a huge sci-fi fan.  I’ve read very little, in fact – I was a history geek, not a sci-fi fan.

One of the very few sci-fi authors I ever really cared about was Jerry Pournelle; he infused his writing with a streak of millenarian libertarianism that grabbed me back when I read that kind of thing.

So I’m just a tad psyched to see that not only does he have a blog, but that he’s linked me.

A family near Waseca wants – get this! – to use its own land the way it wants to, legally, to make some money and have some fun!

 How un-Minnesotan of them!

Tony Borglum has a thing for tanks. So much so that last fall, after he and his father traveled to England to buy one, they bought four more with the idea of opening a tank-riding business and obstacle course in their back yard.

“We were there a day and a half, and I got to thinking: ‘There’s nothing like this in the U.S.,’ ” said Borglum, 20, talking about the obstacle course in England where he bought the tanks and an armored personnel carrier. “I said, ‘I think people would be interested. So let’s bring some back and see what happens.’ ”

What happened has turned Waseca County into a battleground, pitting the Borglums and their plan against dozens of residents who are less than thrilled by the idea of seeing and hearing tanks and an armored personnel carrier rumbling across the land.

The great Minnesota plague – dozens of neighbors, terrified over…

…well, febrile emotions and untrammelled myths, really:

“There’s a lot of emotion in guns and tanks,” said Charlie Mathern, a hardware store owner and a member of the Planning Commission. “And it brings out a lot of fear in everybody.”

And like much fear – especially when it comes to guns – it’s wrong:

Safety is among the foremost concerns of critics, some of whom say they fear damage from stray bullets from the outdoor ranges.

Oh, for the love of…

…can anyone find any actual records of serious damage ever being done nearby outdoor ranges?

Still others are concerned about noise, vibration and pollution from the tanks, most of which were built in the 1950s and 1960s and used by the British government.

“Who is going to monitor all this?” asked Sue Stangler, who lives about a half-mile west of the proposed course.

Vickie Hill, who lives down the highway from the Borglums, worries that tank and gun noise could spook her horses.

“It just scares me to death,” Hill said. “We don’t know if we even dare pasture them if this gets approved.”

I can’t say which’d be worse; the occasional tank and gun noises, or the fumes and flies from all of Vickie Hill’s horses’ droppings.

“I guess you can say it’s controversial, but we don’t think it is,” Marie Borglum said. “We just wanted to have some fun.”

Others, however, don’t see the fun. “I don’t have anything against guns or tanks or anything like that,” Stinehart said. “I just don’t want it in my back yard.”

Or, as Stangler put it: “They’re good people. It’s just a bad idea.”

Mark my words; if this gets approved, I will be there.

Learned Foot eulogizes a teacher and Minnesota notable who seemed to excoriate a younger, less learned Foot for a wrong answer in a Civil Procedure class – who then could not find the right answer…:

…I asked a friend who did attend what the damn answer was.

It was the exact same answer I had provided in class, and that the prof declared to be wrong. Apparently, because of his advanced age or whatever, he didn’t hear me correctly. I couldn’t find the right answer because I had already given it, and was looking elsewhere for it.

Amid which he discovered a vital life lesson:

And he taught me that in order to be right, you need to speak loudly.

Granted, with some of us it’s manifested more metaphorically than with Foot, but lessons is lessons.

(Scott Johnson also eulogizes the teacher, former Minnesota judge Donald Lay)

I have a black thumb; if plants talked, they’d call me “The Terminator”. 

But I try.  I’m going to the Friends’ School Plant Sale this weekend and loading up on annuals for the front flowerbed and the flower boxes along the front walkway, as well as jalapenos, tomatoes, habaneros, cilantro and onions for salsa.  I’m going to try my hand at canning the salsa in such a way as to make it not intensely poisonous. 

So it’s good to see that not only is my neighbor MidwayPete blogging about gardening stuff, but that my old college friend Jackie (who is married to my high school acquaintance Brian, formerly “Mr. Cheer Or Die” of Vikings fame) is done some writing again for her garden/lifestyle/diaryblog “Through The Garden Gate“.  Jackie has solid potential to be the next Martha Stewart – and I mean that in a good way.

One of my favorite parts of having little kids, back when I had little kids, was the whole Madeline series of books, by Ludwig Bemelmans.  I’d read the stories (or occasionally watch the first-run series of cartoons on the subject, narrated by Christopher Plummer, which didn’t mangle the stories or art too badly), and they’d both be reeled in.  The stories were my favorite kids books; low-key, but magical. 

Sheila notes that today is Bemelmans’ birthday:

I always loved the Madeline books, and still do. Madeline: the red-haired feisty rebellious girl in the convent school, the one who always gets in trouble (even if it’s just getting her appendix taken out) – but the one who is also most loved.

I loved how Miss Clavel woke up in the middle of the night, in her cavernous bedroom, sitting up in her cavernous bed with the draperies hanging above it … and she said to herself: “Something is not right!”

She got a candle, and ran down the hallway (the illustrations are so dramatic, so wonderful) and burst into the dormitory, to see Madeline moaning in her bed, all the other little girls sitting up, awake, worried … Madeline is rushed to the hospital to have her appendix taken out. Things might have gone very wrong that night if it weren’t for Miss Clavel’s powers of prophetic thinking. How many problems could be solved if we woke up in the middle of the night, alarmed, and said to ourselves: “Something is not right!”

Sigh.

It’ll be fun having grandkids.

Someday.  No hurry on that.

“Be careful what you wish for.  You may get it”.

That old adage has been proven truer than ever today, as Nih[i]list in Golf Pants not only loses in its nakedly transparent bid for a repeat win in the coveted (by leftybloggers and Nihilist) City Pages “Best Blogger (Right Wing)” award.

The extent to which so-called “conservative” bloggers Nihililst, Sisyphus and JB were willing to whore and befoul themselves for this piece of filthy, patchouli-reeking lucre is obvious in their despair (emphasis added):

We’ve come up with hilarious top 11 list after hilarious top 11 list, some even anti-Republican. We’ve taken shots at right-wing bloggers that City Pages hates like Power Line and Mitch Berg. We even turned down the $20 cash Swiftee offered us to remove our Best of the Cities 2006 link thingee. We’ve done everything it takes to repeat, except one thing: draw cartoons.

Turning on the Republican bloggers who nurtured them.  Stabbing (in an ineffectual way) those who supported them.  Sniffing Paul Demko’s farts. 

You almost feel sorry for them. 

Almost. 

Sorry for the “loss”, NIGP crew.  But it’s good that you’ve shown your true, “blue” colors.

I bet those lattes at Lurcat talking about The Current, those evenings at Chino debating the labor theory of value, and those nights at the Bryant Lake Bowl watching nude lesbian poetry slams seem pretty hollow now, don’t they?

I have been wanting to dash off a post for the past couple of days about one of the funniest Onion pieces ever – “This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence” – but Chad beat me to it.

So read ’em both!

It was fun finding this vid of Elvis Costello doing a song from back before he tried to turn into Burt Bacharach.

Cool vid, cool performance, one of the great songs in pop history.

And yet during the last verse/chorus or two…

…intrusive cowbell!

There was just…no need for that.

Go over Ed’s and wish him good luck on his career change.

On Monday, I start my new full-time position with Blog Talk Radio as Political Director and will provide full-time commentary through my blog and my new daily BTR show. The phrase “dream come true” is hackneyed, but in this case the cliché applies.

BTR is making a good investment!

Changing careers can feel like stepping off the end of a dock with a blindfold on.  I’ve changed careers twice (like Ed, now); I was lucky the first time, in that going from radio to technical writing was a huge step up in pay and stability.  Changing from that into what I do now – Human Experience Design – was much more a leap of faith, since it was a market that hadn’t really taken off in the Twin Cities when I made the jump (although, gratifyingly, it has in the nine years since).

Jumping from service management to Blog Talk Radio, of course, is a huge leap of faith, but Ed’s the kind of guy who’ll make it work.

But everyone wish him good luck anyway!

So what’s the best way to get a great deal on air fares for a flight that’s within the next week?

No, it’s not for me.

But it’s pretty cool anyway.

While Scots in America don’t have a national holiday that enshrines mass public drunkenness and projectile vomiting, we do have – for the last nine years, anyway – Tartan Day.

According to Wikipedia…:

…took root in the United States and since 1998, the date of April 6 has been officially recognised by the United States Senate as a celebration of the contribution made by generations of Scots-Americans to the foundation and prosperity of modern America.

The date is significant as it commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, the first known formal Declaration of independence. Not only was the United States Declaration of Independence modelled on that document, but almost half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Scottish descent and the Governors in 9 of the original 13 States were of Scottish ancestry.

So tack a “Mac-” onto the front of your name, quaff a couple shots of Laphroaig, paint your face blue and moon your boss today – he can take your job, be he canna take your freedom!

Play bagpipe music, or at least Big Country, Simple Minds and the Proclaimers, in your cube.

Talk like Sean Connery. Eat a burrito, but call it haggis just to see the reactions you get.

Save a nickel, rather than spending it.

It’s Tartan Day. You deserve it.