It was twenty years ago today that I most likely noticed that it’d been five years since I’d decided to move to the Twin Cities.

Did I remember that booze-fueled night in September of 1985?  My drunken promise to a table of college friends at a homecoming party that I was leaving North Dakota in two weeks?  The madcap seventeen days that followed?

To tell you the truth, I don’t remember. I had other things on my mind at the time.  I was still working – still  – at the sleazy DJ service.  Still spinning records in crappy bars six nights a week.  Still looking for work in talk radio.  Or news.  Or sports.  Or as a DJ, for that matter.  And getting absolutely nowhere.  To the point that the search had more or less tailed off to nothing.

Oh, yeah – and I was getting married in about two weeks.

———-

I started writing this series five years ago.

I took a drive the other day through South Minneapolis – past the house I used to share with the five women, around Lake Harriett where I used to run every evening, past my first apartment down on 37th and Minnehaha.  It’s kind of amazing how changes sneak up on you; the row of dumpy little stores, the Snyder Drug and the greasy old gas station on 46th and Nicollet have been replaced by a gleaming new strip mall.  The old firehouse is now a Bruegger’s.  The dumpy little grocery store is now some sort of “art space”.   The neighborhood bar on 44th and Nicollet is…something else.

The striking part, to me, is how very, very much longer those five years seemed to take, the first time around.

I thought I’d respond to some of the email I get most often here at Shot In The Dark.

Q: You come in for a lot of fairly scabrous attacks from a lot of leftybloggers.  How do you deal with that?

A: My basic assumption has always been that the opinion of anyone who doesn’t revere me isn’t worthy of contempt.

Q: Hah, Merg!  You are teh unethikel.  You poast derring the wurk day!?!

A: Nope.  In the past five years, I can think of two times I’ve blogged from the office, and both were for really big news flashes – Heller, and one other.  And they were both during breaks in the action at work, to boot.

I write, usually, from 5:30AM until about 7AM.  Sometimes, rarely, in the evening, although that is rare indeed.  Which isn’t to say I’m not thinking about what I”m going to post; when I actually do start writing, I usually have a posting pretty thoroughly mapped out in my mind, and can pretty much do data entry.  And I’m a very fast typist.

I am that good.

It helps that Wordpress – my blog editing tool – allows me to schedule posts for anytime I want them, so they can publish immediately, or at any time in the future that I want.  So I can run a bunch of posts in the early morning, and spot a few more to run at noon, and occasionally schedule something for much further out.

In fact, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, this blog would continue posting content for (checks schedule) right around two years.   Although a lot of it wouldn’t make sense; in October of 2012, I have a piece about the North Dakota National Guard landing on Guadalcanal that, so far, says “NDNG Guad; Bloody Nose, M1, Jungle, town”.   I could see it becoming a literary genre in its own right, really – but all in all, I’m hoping to be alive to flesh the notes out.

Still – those pieces I do on music of the eighties, and my World War II pieces, and most of my “Twenty Years Ago Today” stuff is written months – sometimes years  – in advance.  The current record?   I have a piece about the thirtieth anniversary of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “Shoot Out The Lights” scheduled for April of 2012; it’s been completely written for probably 18 months.

I’m a little manic that way.

Q: Whatever happened to “Twenty Years Ago Today”  Did you have much  of a life twenty years ago?

A: No, I really didn’t.

Well, that and some of the people who were in my life twenty years ago have said they don’t want to appear in my blog.

But I can announce this; the series will be making a return in coming months.  Actually, it did return, sort of; I posted my first epi in 15 months a few weeks ago.  But if you like the series, I have episodes spotted out for the next year or so.

The crazy part?  I started the series five years ago this month.  Those five years didn’t go nearly as fast the first time.

Q: Why so much writing about the gubernatorial race?  Do you work for the Emmer campaign?

A: This campaign has given me lots of opportunity to do some of the things I haven’t had much time to do with this blog – actual reporting.  Digging into stories and analyzing them.  In this case, the “story” is the boundless, slimy perfidy of the DFL and Mark Dayton’s campaign.  Let’s just say it’s a target-rich environment.

But no, I do not work for the Emmer campaign.  I keep my “Disclosures” section pretty rigorously up to date.  Unlike the Minnesota Independent, I am rigorously honest about this blog’s backstory.

Q: Oh, bull.  You have so much inside info from the Emmer camp, you gotta be working for them.

A: Nope.  I have plenty of contacts in conservative and GOP circles – one of the benefits of doing, I dunno, a successful conservative blog and talk show for all these years – and those contacts translate into “sources”, when it comes time to report on things.  But no; I have no connection to the Emmer campaign that every other “journalist” in town doesn’t have on whatever “beat” they cover.  Absolutely none.

Q: You are such a shill.  You are an idiot.  You are stupid. No intelligent person can believe what you do.

A: Mom?

Q: Why don’t you write more about music?  It’s what you do best.

A: Why thanks.  But throughout the history of this blog, I’ve written about whatever crossed my mind, when it’s crossed it.

That said, I have a solid two more years of “This Was The Year That Was” posts, about eighties music, coming up.  The pace is dilatory, but I’m kinda jazzed about the actual articles.

Q: You are wasting my time.  You have no expert knowledge of Minnesota politics.

A: You came to me, jagoff.  Not the other way around.

Q: What was that Gubernatorial  prediction again?

A: Emmer 47, Dayton 44, Horner 8.

Q: How about the CD6 race?

A: Bachmann 52, Clark 42, Anderson 6.

Q: OK, smart guy; CD2?

A: Kline 62, Madore 38.

Q: You think you’re sooooooo smart.

A: No.  I don’t.  Honestly, I feel like a moron most of the time.

Part of it is that kids on the Great Plains generally grow up with the sense that they really aren’t anything special; you’re not bad, but don’t go expecting to change the world, because you’re just not that big a deal.  There’s even a Norwegian word for it.  I forget the word – Fjøreløren, for all I know – “Janteloven“, or “Jante’s Law”, which is a constant dynamic in small-town Scandinavian life – but it translates to “knowing your place in the scheme of things”.  Not getting “uppity”, to translate it to American.

Anyway – long story short, I usually feel like the dumbest person in any room I’m in.

Unless I’m at “Drinking Liberally”.  Then I’m in the 99th percentile.

Q: You are teh heppocreet and you lie!

A:  “Hypocrisy” is one of those concepts that sloppy usage has perverted out of all semblance of reality in recent years.  So please focus on this; on what issue do I demand that someone else make a moral decision from which I exempt myself?  That would be hypocrisy.

“Lying”, again, is another one.  It’s entirely possible – albeit unlikely – that I’ve made a mistake on some issue or another; bobbled a number, mis-read a quote, whatever.  An error made in good faith, like “Paul Wellstone was elected in 1988”,  is not a “lie”; “I bagged Marisa Tomei last night”, alas, is – or would be, were I not using it as a f’rinstance.

Which brings up an interesting question; is a statement like  “9/11 is an inside job” or “the Holocaust never happned”  or “Mark Dayton will be a fantastic governor” or “the moon landings were faked” a “lie”?  All are absurd – but people can say either one and honestly believe ’em.

Q: Why are you so arrogant?

A: Please.  Like you’d understand my motivations.  Sheesh.

Q: Where are Roosh and Bogus Doug?

A: Not writing at the moment.  They both have other things going on – and my deal with them from the very beginning was always “write as much as you want; once a day, once ayear, I don’t care”.  They took me seriously on it!

Q: I like your World War II stuff.  Why don’t you write more?

A: Were there other major wars going on 70 years ago today?

No, I’d love to write more of the non-political stuff.  After the election, I likely will focus a lot more on some of my ancillary interests.

But this election is a hoot!

Q: Why do you bag on leftybloggers?

A: Because so many of them are just sloppy thinkers and crummy writers.

Don’t get me wrong – most of them are good human beings (there are notable exceptions); some of them are capable of a rational argument, and a few are even fairly bright.  But for whatever reason, the gene pool among the great mass of lefty bloggers is just really really shallow.  Like their reasoning.

In fact, I’m pondering starting a big series after the election; “Logic for Leftybloggers”.  I’m thinking of going through the list of classic logical fallacies and applying them to the sorts of “template” premises you see leftybloggers falling back on all the time.

Because I’m all about the education.

We’ll see.

Q: When are you going to update your blog’s design?

A: Good question.  It crosses my mind from time to time.   But I’ve got seven and a half years invested in this look, and I kinda like it.

Q: Couldn’t you go with a snazzier color scheme?

A: I don’t care about snazz.  I’m a usability guy. Black text on white background is the most readable combination; Verdana is a nice, readable font.  Lots of blue is relaxing and agreeable-looking.  “Friendly”, and also just plain easy to read in a hurry.

Q: Why don’t you go with a three-column layout? Everyone’s doing it!

A: Never.  Never never never.  I hate three-column layouts (unless you need a left column for navigation, and I do not).  Hate hate hate.  I mean, if you like ’em, put ’em an your own blog, and God bless ya, but I hate hate hate hate hate three column layouts.  The content is king on a blog, especially a blog like mine that’s not part of any larger enterprise.

The western Human eye starts reading on the left, and so I don’t want my audience to have to pick their way over a bunch of links and ads and unneeded navigation and crap to get to the actual content.  Furthermore, I want the left margin to the usable to provide “scanning cues” to users who are scrolling down the page looking for something interesting; clogging up that left margin with ads and lists and twitter feed widgets to try to find what they want.

The left side of the page is the most valuable real estate on the page.  Putting a bunch of links and lists and crap on the left side is like putting the restrooms and service corridors at the front of your mall.

Yuk.

Q: How long are you going to do this blog?

A: Until it stops being fun.  We’re nowhere close yet.

So much stuff in the hopper; so little time to finish it all.

But there are a few things in the works here that I thought I’d mention – partly to “tease” it, partly because posting it makes me feel committed to getting it all done.

How The Hell Does Emmer Win This Thing?: Not really a question – Emmer’s going to win, probably by 3-4, which isn’t to say Republicans and conservatives don’t have a huge order ahead of us.  But how’s he going to win it?  I have some ideas.

Making The Cut: How Minnesota can fix the budget problem without destroying the state economy.

Requiem For An Old Radio Station: Too hard to explain.

The Return Of “Things I’m Supposed To Love, But Can’t Stand” / Things I’m Supposed To Hate But Like Anyway”: One of my favorite features from last year, I have a fresh wave of incongruity coming up shortly.

World War II: Fact And Myth: I won’t give out any spoilers, though.

What The Hell Do We Do About The National GOP?: Pretty self-explanatory.  Might take longer to finish than the WWII series…

Stay tuned!

It was Friday, August 24, 1990.

Payday.

I was still working for the sleazy DJ service.

You heard that right.  In the fifteen months since my last update to this series, nothing much had changed.  I was still spinning records in bars.

And my ritual every other Friday was always the same; drive from my place in Northeast Minneapolis to Sleazy DJ Company’s headquarters in Eden Prairie.  Aim to get there around 2PM, when the checks might occasionally arrive.  Wait around with the rest of the guys – usually five or six of us would be gathered in the office, waiting.

This we did because the spiky haired boss never put the checks in the mail on time.  They’d ride around in his car for days, eventually getting popped in the mail over the weekend sometime, sometimes arriving at our places by mail a week after payday, postmarked the Monday or Tuesday following payday.

So those of us who didn’t have day jobs would trek out to Eden Prairie and wait.

And wait.

And when the waiting got oppressive, we’d grab bags of rubber bands and have epic rubber band fights around the office.  I had the “sniper” thing figured out, scoring solid hits all the way down the office’s smudgy hallway.

There were some payday regulars:  Scott, the former radio guy and assistant manager; Robbie, a pudgy white guy who looked a little like David Johannson but tried to sound like Flavor Flav,  and was mortified when we found out that his mother ran a temp  service in Edina for which he eventually wound up working as office manager; Ryan, a nerdy guy who resembled Alan Ruck from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and who was planning on going to aviation school in North Dakota; Jeff, a movie-star handsome guy with a wrenchingly cute blond girlfriend who was seen without him only at these Friday paycheck stakeouts, whose stated goal was to become an Army helicopter pilot;  Kevin, a tall, skinny guy whose claims to fame were being an incredibly talented beatmixer and having a knack and preference for picking up the biggest, most obese women in any bar he worked.

And Spiky-Haired Boss usually came dragging in between 4:30 and 5 with the checks.  Just like every payday.

But I kept showing up at 2.

I had Fridays off; being the #1 jock in the place, I had the pull to get a prime weekend night off.  Fridays, I usually went to “Little Tin Soldier” to play, depending on the weekend, either “Clear for Action” (or some other naval wargame) or “Twilight 2000”.

And this night was going to be no exception.

It was a Friday pretty much like any other over the previous three years.

Not much to recommend it, really.

(more…)

James Lileks gave me a shout-out on the podcast (around :45 or so) the other day.   He was kind enough to say my blog was the place to go for info on the Minnesota Gubernatorial race and the exceedingly slimy campaign the DFL and the Daytons have run against Tom Emmer and, of course, Target.

Info here on Target’s donations to charities and its commitment to charity and “social progress“.

Tracing the funding behind the group driving all the anti-Emmer, anti-business, anti-Target astroturf.

James’ reference to the “stage managed video” of the “nonpolitical” woman cutting up her Target card; the woman happened to be a long-time liberal activist.  Here’s a list of other Minnesota companies donating to “MNForward“, a pro-business group.

James’ reference to the specious connection to the “extremist” group explained here.

The local media is straining to show that Target’s stock price is falling due to the crisis (if it is, then so is every single mid-level retailer), and how capital investment firms are urging Target to quit donating to conservatives (unmentioned: the firms have negligible holdings in Target, and the “firms” are all politically motivated).

All my friends in the Red River Valley – I’ll be on AM1100 The Flag with Rob Port at 6:35 or so tomorrow morning talk about the Minnesota governor’s race, among others.  Expect that we’ll wrap up talk about the primary, and the road to November.

You can listen in here:
Live video by Ustream
UPDATE: I got bumped to tomorrow morning.

…I’ll be on AM1100 The Flag with Rob Port at 6:35 or so to talk about the Governor’s race.

You can listen in here:
Live video by Ustream

I’ll be on AM1100 The Flag with Rob Port at 6:35 to talk about the Governor’s race.

You can listen in here:
Streaming live video by Ustream

All my Fargo friends – I’ll be on AM1100 the Flag at 6:35,  talking Minnesota politics with Rob Port.  Tune in!

UStream feed:
Free TV : Ustream

UStream Chat:

Over the years, this blog has had great fun bagging on conspiracy theorists. 

In almost eight and a half years of writing Shot In The Dark, I’ve mixed it up with 9/11 Truthers, Triggers (people who believe Bristol is really Trig Palin’s mother), Ronulans who think that there’s a conspiracy to build a trans-American highway, even people who believe (I’m not making this up) that Karl Rove sent a sniper team to shoot down Paul Wellstone’s plane.

But the most irritating conspiracy theory is one that I’ve encountered almost exclusively on the right – the theory that riding a bicycle unwittingly ties you into a shadowy international network of Fabian socialist Bilderberg cap-and-traders.  All sorts of conservatives and “conservatives” believe this – from Jason Lewis, who is, bless his heart, the father of modern Minnesota conservatism, but is half-wrong at best on the “bikes and taxes” issue, all the way down to some of our “less-gifted” brethren.

So I want to establish two points before we move on:

1. I ride bike.  Lots. From March into December, I do most of my commuting by bike.  I love it.  It’s fun, it keeps me within shooting distance of “in shape”,  and I just plain enjoy it.  It’s also financially more efficient, which is an utterly conservative point as well.
2. I am at least as conservative as you are, and probably more so.  Whoever you are.

Which brings us to this piece, by one D. Dowd Muska.  I’ll let you figure out which category D. fits into.

There is something profoundly wrong with a nation where more adults ride bicycles than children.

America might now be such a nation.

Along with every single nation in the world, really.  Even in countries where biking isn’t the most affordable means of transportation for the regular schmuck, bikes are more common among adults everywhere.

While kids sit at home texting their friends and slaying computer-generated monsters, a growing number of their parexnts and grandparents are clogging the roads atop a contraption that was once considered a child’s toy.

Well, no. 

The bike became a mass-market commodity item long before the automobile became affordable to most Americans.  In many places, the bike was the first ticket the working stiff had to get off mass transit or quit walking, in those days before cars (and manufacturing jobs) became ubiquitous.  In some parts of the country, the move to build paved roads was driven initially by the number of bicycles on the roads. 

For the working stiff who couldn’t afford (and didn’t want to deal with the upkeep of) a horse, the bike was the original muscle car.

Two odious ideologies fuel the popularity of bicycling: anti-obesity extremism and eco-lunacy. Pedal power, we are told, will not only make you thinner, it will reduce your “carbon footprint.” (It’s a Nanny State twofer.)

Already slim, or pursuing other means to lose weight? Like your SUV, and don’t swallow the discredited theory that man is baking the planet? Then obviously you’re an idiot.

Well, then, by the opposite token – if I”m not already “slim”, prefer biking as a matter of personal choice (something most of us conservatives uphold!) to “other means of losing weight” (which are usually both less healthy for you and also bore me stiff), and don’t believe in global warming, does that make D. Dowd Muska an idiot?

In 2003, BusinessWeek asked Andy Clarke, director of state and local advocacy for the League of American Bicyclists, to respond to the fact that 500,000 Americans commute by bicycle. The figure was “pathetic,” he snorted, “for a nation that should be smarter and wiser.”

While this bit is utterly disconnected from the rest of Mr. Muska’s piece (it’s a non-sequitur, really), honestly, so freaking what?

A “community organizer” said something stupid yet arrogant and self-serving.  This reflects on the individual biker exactly how?

Exactly the same way as some stupid quote from Pat Buchanan or David Vitter reflects on conservatives and conservatism at large; not a bit.

Feeling themselves superior to their countrymen [Objection:  Assertion based on facts not in evidence – Ed.] in both health and environmental consciousness, many bicyclists flout road rules.

As opposed to “many”  automobile drivers who…flout road rules.  I mean, I”ve watched Cops; how many high-speed chases of bikers do you see?

Writing in the Rocky Mountain News, Arvada, Colorado resident J.M. Schell admitted that there was “a very, very good reason so many view those of us who are cyclists as rude, arrogant jerks. Most of us are.”

Which reflects perhaps on one J.M. Schell – for whom I don’t believe I ever voted as my spokesman, by your leave, Mr. Muska.

I personally find that rudeness and being the smallest vehicle on the road don’t go well together.  There are ample reasons to amend motor vehicle laws so that bikes and cars can share the road better – but that’s the subject of a different post.

Recklessness and lawbreaking notwithstanding [Indeed, utterly logically unconnected – Ed.], Big Bicycle has attained the status of a lobby that cannot be ignored. “Bikes Belong,” an agitprop shop “sponsored by the U.S. bicycle industry with the goal of putting more people on bicycles more often,” boasts of “12 professional staff, 18 volunteer directors, and a $2 million annual operating budget.”

As a conservative, I personally am fine letting companies (and groups of companies) spend their own money their own way.

“Maximizing Federal Support for Bicycling,” a page on the organization’s website, explains that it spent $1 million on lobbying between 2002 and 2005, which ultimately produced “$4.5 billion for bicycling and walking in SAFETEA-LU, the … transportation law passed in August 2005.” Where did that money come from? You guessed it: the federal gas tax. (Four out of every ten dollars raised by the levy are diverted to non-highway expenses.)

OK, I’m confused here.  Is Mr. Muska’s piece a slam on bikers as people, or a riff on transportation spending policy?

Because if it’s the latter, Mr. Muska is on to something.  It’s the same “something” almost all conservatives have been on all along (gas tax funds should go to roads, not light rail or wind-powered pedestrian walkways or whatever.  That is an actual policy discussion – as opposed to mindless and contrived name-calling.

Is bicycle-commuting a credible traffic-fighting tool? No, says Cato Institute scholar — and avid cyclist — Randal O’Toole. “I don’t think encouraging cycling is going to reduce congestion or significantly change the transportation makeup of our cities,” he said. “There really is very little evidence that any of [these efforts] are reducing the amount of driving. They’re just making it more annoying to drivers.” (O’Toole observes that telecommuting is far more common, and growing faster, than getting to work on a bike.)

And now we’re getting somewhere!  Telecommuting is a response of the free market to the uptick in energy prices, to road congestion, and a slew of other motivations. 

So, for that matter, is biking, for many of us. 

Bicycles are wonderful, of course. For children. Only misanthropes complain about stopping or yielding to safely accommodate a couple of twelve-year-olds pedaling their way to the fishin’ hole.

For adults, bicycling has become a finger-wagging, revenue-pilfering, and increasingly obnoxious crusade.

If you buy into the conspiracy theory – that we bikers become tools of the vast two-wheeled conspiracy the moment we saddle up?  Perhaps.

But as that noted conservative tool the Utne Reader noted, conservatives (including me – I’m quoted) ride, too – for impeccably free-marketeering, libertarian, conservative reasons.

John “Policy Guy” LaPlante focuses, unsurprisingly, on the policy side of things, for the most part, in his response to “D”.

Just a side note for any Jamestown College alumni, especially from the early-mid eighties, who might be reading the blog.

Drop me a line – either in the comment section or at the Yahoo dot com email address “Feedbackinthedark”. 

There’s a little Twin Cities get-together planned next week.  Nothing fancy, and it’s not associated with JC, so it’s not a fund-raiser. 

Drop me a line if you get half an urge!

Just saying.

I’m replacing a 15 foot length of chain link fence in my backyard, which got demolished when the builders put in the slab for my new garage.  The original, built in the early 1900s, was edged right at the property line; the new code says they have to be set back two feet from the line, which put the slab a good foot over the old fence line.

Anyway – I’m recycling a lot of the chain link fabric – but I’m going to need to dredge up 10-15 feet of fabric.  Now, Menards and Home Depot and the like only sell it in 50-foot rolls, which means I’ll be sitting on 35 feet of spare fabric if I go that route.  Which I’ll do if I need to…

…but I’m wondering if anyone out there happens to have a few feet (say, less than 15 of ’em) of chain link fabric lying around that they’re willing to rummage-sell?

(Ironically, I did.  For years.  It sat in my garage, waiting for  a fencing project that never came, left-over from when I built my garden pen in 1995.  I tossed it – when I cleaned out my old garage.  To “lessen the fire hazard”.  Blah).

I hate hot weather, especially hot and humid weather like yesterday – unless I can be biking constantly and intensely.

Oddly enough, being up and on the road inverts things completely; that same overheated/drenched with sweat feeling that’s so miserable when you’re cooking dinner, for example, is just wonderful when you’re out on the bike, working up a good productive lather.

I took a well-deserved and much-needed mental health day yesterday.  I did some puttering around the house, and then got on the road a little after lunchtime for a long hard ride.  I rode down the U of M Busway trail to the University, then across the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi into downtown Minneapolis.

You know how they say having a life-threatening illness makes you appreciate life more?  Riding through downtown Minneapolis does about the same thing; the threats to your life – car doors opening, idiots texting, truckers misjudging their clearances – give one that keen focus on staying alive that cancer survivors and combat veterans talk about.  It also made me very happy to find the entrance to the Kenilworth Trail, close by Target Field.

The Kenilworth took me down to Lake Calhoun; a brisk lap around Calhoun and Harriett, and then back up the east side of Calhoun and back to Lake of the Isles, led me to the Midtown Greenway, a long bicycle superhighway across South Minneapolis built in a long-abandoned railbed.  The riding got very easy; the path is sunk well below ground level, which shields you from wind that’s coming from the north and south, but channels it if it’s from the east or west; I was getting blasted eastbound like a dart from a blowgun.  That felt good, after a hard ride out.

Running low on water, I stopped at Freewheel Bike Shop, a repair/coffee shop attached to the Midtown Commons development, down on the trail level.  I had an iced coffee and a lemon cookie and topped up my water.  And drained it (1.5 liters), and topped it up again for the road; I’d forgotten how much hot air and a howling wind will dry you out.

I rode down the Greenway back to the river, for the worst part of the trip – the punishing climb from the Marshall-Lake bridge up to Fairview Avenue.  It’s not an absurdly steep hill, but it’s just loooooooong.  Actually, it’s not even so much that it’s long – it just taxes my patience; “get done, already”, I practically mutter to myself, as if anger can re-mold geography.

But once I got to the top of the hill, it was a nice two mile coast home (not that I coasted; bad idea for the legs).  And I sat on my porch steps and polished off my water, drenched in sweat, and I felt…

…good.  Cleaner – on the inside, anyway; a shower was pretty much mandatory for the outside – and just plain happy.

Gotta do that again someday.

“My other car is Dadaism”

A North Dakota bike tour M bars a Minnesotan for objecting to a community prayer…

…over, and over, and over, and over…

Morgan Christian, 54, of St. Paul, rode the 500-mile CANDISC [“Cycling around North Dakota in Sakakawea Country”] tour three consecutive years. He objected last summer to a prayer said before a meal at a public high school gym in Turtle Lake, one of several host communities along the route.

Christian expressed his objections to the minister and ride director and in subsequent e-mails to the State Parks and Recreation Department. He said he expected an apology but instead received a letter from the bike tour committee telling him he wasn’t welcome back.

I’ll just bet he “expressed” his objections…

“If I don’t say something, who am I?” Christian said. “I’m going to be the guy who stands up and says there are people who don’t think this is wonderful. It is an imposition. There could be a moment of silence, or at least a warning that prayer is going to be said.”

But instead you chose to be the self-glorifying narcissist who has to make your worldview the focus of attention.  You chose to whiz in your host’s wheaties.

North Dakota Parks and Recreation Director Mark Zimmerman said Christian’s attitude was the issue, not his religious beliefs. Ride director Hillary Nelson said Christian disrespected the ride and the town.

“This was Turtle Lake’s way of representing their community,” she said. “If he didn’t like what was going on, he could have left.”

What?  Quietly?  What are you,crazy?

Christian said he was just standing up for himself.

“I don’t think I raised my voice all that much. Whether I appeared agitated, I don’t know,”

Read:  He was a howling, screaming little prick.

he said, adding that he has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom from Religion Foundation about the issue.

And that’ll be the end of the CANDISK ride.

Thanks, Morgan. It’s all about you.

For a variety of reasons, I was not able to bike to work the other day.  I took the bus.

Now, my bus route, which basically gives me door to door service, isn’t by any means the dodgiest route in town.  But every once in a while, let’s just say I wish parking were cheaper.

I was sitting on the bus.  One other person was on the bus, sitting probably six rows behind me.  The bus has a capacity of about 40, if every seat is full.  I was sitting across the seat – because at 6’5, sitting fore-and-aft leaves my knees jammed against the seat in front of me.

A woman – sixtysomething, gray hair, with that frantic manner and the thousand-yard glare of the emotionally-challenged, got on the bus and clumped down the aisle.

And sat down next to me, as I scrambled to pull my knees out of the way.

“Some people are so rude”, she said, loudly enough for the whole bus to hear, not that they cared, as I wedged my knees into place.   She bustled herself into place, muttering, again, about how rude I was.

I turned toward the window, and coughed a long, dry, hacking cough that sounded like it threatened to bring up breakfast.  And then another.  And then another.

She stopped muttering.

I dialed a number on my cell phone (my home number), and started conversing with the voicemail; “Hey.  Yeah, I’m on the bus.  Oh, I think my fever might get down to 101, but I gotta work.  Yeah, I’m short already this week.”

The lady was listening.

”  Oh, I was up puking all night.  Coulda swore I saw blood…”

She moved.

I shoot because shooting is fun; it’s the best stress relief one can get alone; it’s the best way there is to ensure ones’ safety from violent crime.

But why am I a Second Amendment activist?  The honest truth – it’s exactly, precisely because of displays like this (safe for work, albeit crude and deeply stupid); it’s Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who was asked whether his city, ravaged by gang gun violence, is benefitting from having the strictest gun controls in the US:

Is Chicago’s idiotic (and possibly soon-to-be-unconstitutional) gun ban effective?

“Oh!” Daley said. “It’s been very effective!”

He grabbed a rifle, held it up, and looked right at me. He was chuckling but there was no smile.

“If I put this up your—ha!—your butt—ha ha!—you’ll find out how effective this is!”

For a moment the room was very, very quiet. I took a good look at the weapon. It had a long bayonet. (Was it seized during the Civil War?)

“If I put a round up your—ha ha!”

I am a second amendment activist because it’s a thumb in the eye of authoritarian scumbags like Richard Daley.

(Via Ed)

I was enjoying an all-too-rare hour of listening to Jason Lewis the other day.

I was driving through the teller line at the bank, when he chimed in with an oldie but goodie:  “Bikers don’t pay taxes”. 

And the teller looked at me, perplexed, when I shouted “you are wrong for two reasons!”.

First:  I do pay taxes.  City and county taxes.  Some of which go to paying for bike lanes – the odd strip of asphalt around the lakes, and a stripe lane on the occasional street.  Not every street mind you; one street about every mile or so, generally, usually not the high-traffic ones.  (And by the way – Minneapolis’ re-work of Hennepin and First Avenue North, putting the bike lane between the parking lane and the curb?  Reekingly stupid.  It smacks of equal parts revenue generation plan and green-über-alles arrogance).   While there may or may not be state transportation dollars mixed in there, I most certainly do pay taxes for them. 

Now – in their infinite wisdom, the powers that be decided not to make bike paths a user-fee-based system, paid for by tolls or bike licenses or whatever.  Got any ideas?   I’m down with ’em – although we all know it’ll just mean more property tax revenues for government to spend.  But that’s a larger problem on which we all agree.

Second (ironically, inasmuch as I was in a car when I thought this):  Like 99% or more of bikers, I pay gas taxes.  I drive.  Six months or so a year, though, I commute by bike (as well as all sorts of recreational riding).    For longer trips, or trips where I have to haul groceries, I drive. 

And you can ask any engineer, but five five-mile trips cause more road damage than one 25-mile trip; the longer trip is likely to be on the highways (which my gas taxes pay for), with fewer starts and stops and turns, the kind of thing that wears down roads.  So since a higher percentage of my gas-tax-generating car travel is longer, more efficient, less-damaging trips, while for half the year most of my short-hop trips cause no damage to roads at all (because I”m on a bike!), the state taxpayer is actually getting less damage per gas tax dollar out of me, the driver who bikes a lot, than out of someone who drives all of the equivalent mileage.

By the way –  while I drive, I buy less gas – which means less demand pressure on the market, which lowers the price for the rest of you. 

On all counts, you’re welcome.

(more…)

…that I started teaching myself how to play guitar.

I’ve written about it before; when I was a little kid – the day of the first moon landing, in fact – my dad had brought home a guitar someone had left in his locker years earlier.  It’d been sitting around the house for eight years, serving as a fort or battleship for toy army men, as a rifle in games of Soldier…as pretty much everything but a guitar.

But seized with the urge to play, I repaired it – replaced three tuning machines, hammered a fret back into place, and restrung it – and started teaching myself.

You  may recall the classic Mitch Hedberg bit; “I’ve been teaching myself guitar.  It’s not going so well.  I have a crappy teacher”.  That’s probably the norm.  I lucked out – but not because I was a good teacher.  I had some good source materials.  It helped that I’d been playing cello for four years, of course; I knew theory, rhythm, key, the scale, all of that sort of thing.

And I had John Denver.  Say what you will about the guy and his music, but he wrote stuff that was eeeeeasssssy to follow on the guitar.

But most of all?  I had a copy of the Gene Leis “Nexus” Guitar Chord book, a cardback folio that was the perfect book on the subject; it started slow (how to hold the guitar, how not to), how to form the simple chords, how to hold a pick and strum…

…and, interspersed throughout, the little written bits of advice and encouragement a live teacher might give you.  (He warned the newbie about the first-position “F” chord – a plateau of hand-cramping agony that kills off a lot of new guitarists; “this one’s going to be tough.  Hang in there”).

I got the book at the local music store; it was actually a reissue of a 1961 publication.  It’s long out of print, of course.

Which is a shame.  I’ve been teaching my son to play, and it’d be handy.  I’m tempted to try to write my own sometime, here – but that’s another article.

But I did end up googling Gene Leis – and wow, what a story.

So I saw my eldest, Bun, off at the airport today.  She’s going on a school trip to Europe.  Her first real trip anywhere without a parent.

I thought “I hope those nineteen f***ing hijackers are burning in the most dismal pit in hell” for making it impossible to walk to the gate to see people off anymore – to watch them get on the plane, see ’em taxi out to the runway and lift off and will them safely to their destination through the sheer strength of your own prayers and wishes until they disappeared into the distance, and miles beyond.

Not that she’d want that; she got on the plane with all of her friends – 13 of ’em – so having Dad around would have probably been a buzzkill. 

So be it.  But my libertarian side came under sustained, determined attack by my Dad side when I saw her disappear through the TSA line.  “Bring on the sniffing dogs, the intrusive searches, all the scanning and sniffing that a competent security apparatus can do.  Hell, let them be competent.  Profile everyone getting on back through five generations of anscestry; slap anyone who squawks about it in cuffs; hell, I’ll cover your back and groin-kick any ACLU weenies who show up to bitch at us”.

“Stuff Bun’s plane with vacationing SAS troopers on their way back from Vegas, and rugby-playing flight attendants and a squad of Air Marshals and a bunch of El Al security guys on the way back to Israel from the International Security-Guys-who-can-smell-gelginite-like-bloodhounds-and-can-rip-arms-out-of-their-sockets Convention – and toss in a few Dutch documentary film-makers for good measure.” 

“Give them a Sully Sullenberger for a pilot, someone who could make an F-16 sit on a telephone wire and sing Aida back in the day and hasn’t lost a friggin’ thing since then.”

No, I wasn’t asking too much, and no, it wasn’t easy.

Having lots of “guy time” with Zam will help, of course. 

But it’s going to be a long twelve days.

Riding to work was a huge rush yesterday morning – especially racing down Cathedral Hill with a brisk tailwind!

Riding home from work, on the other hand, was a character-building ordeal, plodding up Cathedral Hill into a howling headwind.

Note to self:  Figure out how to get the wind to shift during the day.

Mission clock is at T minus 60.

Bike out:  Check.

Tires topped up:  Check.

Bag/Backpack for hauling my crap to work:  D’oh.

Last minute trip to WalMart?  Check.

Mission clock is at T minus thirty minutes.