January 2011
10 posts
2010 Was a Great Year!
I now live in fear of 2011.
Have I peaked?
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Annual News Years Eve Traditions
So it begins, the annual scramble to find the best place to cheer in the new year and inevitably be disappointed because that’s how New Year’s Eve has always and will always be. We have come to expect so much from our New Year celebrations that they are bound to fail.
Looks like I’ll be burning up the rest of my text messages in the next few hours. Or I could just wind up at the...
December 2010
32 posts
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2010 New Year's Resolution Status
Don’t end up dead in 2010. Check!
Clean a pig pen in 2010. Failed!
Remember John Glenn in 2010. Failed!
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I'm unemployed.
I am surprised at how emotionally motorists feel they must defend their right to the road. It’s just moving around guys, it’s not like someone might get killed… See the thing is that cyclists aren’t riding around just to get in your way and make you late. There’s not a secret cabal of cyclists that get together and plan out how we can ruin your morning commute and...
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I just watched almost 30 seconds of SPORTSCENTER!
I turned it off because I didn’t know what would happen first: epileptic seizure from the graphics or nervous breakdown from all the yelling.
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At present America is abounding with demagogues professing an answer to the current economic difficulties and a restoration of the jobs and prosperity that is the American birth right.
Restoring “prosperity” in the conventional sense of acquiring more and fancier things and ever increasing real incomes will, of course, be impossible as liquid fuels become more and more...
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LBPD, cyclists are at odds →
LONG BEACH - Relations between the Long Beach Police Department and a group of bicyclists hit another speed bump Thursday night.
A number of riders and supporters connected with the October Critical Mass ride in Long Beach said police broke up a planned fundraising ride to help cyclists fined and cited in the earlier ride.
Long Beach Police needs to learn not to mess with us. They keep...
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Police Shut Down Christmas Fundraiser Bike Ride
LONG BEACH - Long Beach’s rocky road to becoming the “most bicycle friendly city in America” hit another pothole Thursday when police broke up a bike fundraiser sending cyclists running through the streets to avoid further confrontation. The fundraiser was organized to help cyclists ticketed at the October Critical Mass ride where Long Beach Police cited over 70 cyclists and seized 30...
Alabama Town’s Failed Pension Is a Warning →
PRICHARD, Ala. — This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry. Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its...
Rainmageddon Update
1. The Rain broke the Blue Line on Monday. Now they’re having to run a single track which means at least half an hour delays. The Gold Line lost power on Saturday and Amtrak got flooded out of San Diego. Even the trains in L.A are wusses about rain.
2. It finally stopped raining which means that the L.A. internetosphere is full of double rainbow references and praise for the gods of the...
Ok Guys, it can stop raining.
Everything I have is wet so there’s no reason to keep on raining. There’s no point anymore. I’m not mentally prepared for a straight week’s worth of rain.
Gathering rainwater is one of my more eccentric...
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Get Ready for Carmageddon
Yet another reason not to go into Orange County. If you use the freeway to get into Long Beach from Orange County get ready to have the 7th Street bridge closed for one year (according to OCTA’s schedule). Oh you hadn’t heard? Well…
Motorists entering one of the busiest gateways between Los Angeles and Orange counties will be hit hard over the next three years by a ...
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Text of Prepared Remarks Given Before Long Beach...
Vice Mayor Lowenthal and Members of Council, I’m with Pedal Movement a Long Beach bicycle advocacy group. Just over one month ago we came before you in the wake of the now infamous October Critical Mass ride. We laid out three proposals, optional bicycle registration, a Bicycle Advocacy Commission and a Cyclist Bill of Rights, all intended to help Long Beach get back on track to becoming the Most...
The new revolutionaries →
And the cities of Europe have burned before And they may yet burn again And if they do I hope you understand That Washington will burn with them Omaha will burn with them Los Alamos will burn with them
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Banana Fun Fact
Banana Trees are not trees at all. Despite being 25ft tall, they are a psudostem, a rolled cluster of the bases of leaves. The plant can produce only one bunch of bananas. The tree sends out new shoots which then grow to produce only one bunch of bananas.
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A peace plan for LB bicyclists →
LONG BEACH - In a city that touts itself as the “the most bicycle friendly city in America,” tensions between cyclists, police, City Hall and drivers have been in high gear lately.
Bicycle advocates hope that a proposal by City Councilman Robert Garcia to make bike licensing voluntary, rather than mandatory, will be the first step toward mending wounds still fresh from an Oct....
Dr. Peter Whybrow - "Dangerously Addictive
It is the paradox of modernity that as choice and material prosperity increase, health and personal satisfaction decline. This is now an accepted truth. And yet it is the rare American who manages to step back from the hedonic treadmill long enough to savor his or her good fortune. Indeed, for most of us, regardless of what we have, we want more and we want it now. The roots of this...
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Thought of the Night
How would a USA chant go over in another country? They go over pretty well here but would I have to change it to suit the country I’m in? Like “New Zea-Land, New Zea-Land, New Zea-Land”?
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City of Long Beach plans official response to...
**Our latest release documenting our ongoing efforts. Come by City Council next Tuesday for all the exciting procedural action!**
LONG BEACH - The City of Long Beach is set to consider an extensive reform of the its bicycle registration program Tuesday. The City Council is expected to pass a request that the City Manager study eliminating current mandatory bicycle registration laws. Most ...
Those who believe that ten years from now we will be able to get along with much reduced government have little appreciation of how modern civilization works or how bad things are going to get as fossil fuel energy fades from our lives. The notion is absurd that we are in the midst of a routine downturn in the business cycle which can be cured by Keynesian stimulus favored by the Democrats...
On The Bro'd: 1 - Epic Beginnings →
onthebrod:
I first met Dean not long after Tryscha and I hooked up. I had just gotten over a wicked fucking hangover that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with a six-foot-five douchebag and a beer bong. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call…
Every sentence of “On the Road” rewritten for Bros. Most awesome...
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Draft of Proposed Long Beach Cyclist's Bill of...
WHEREAS the City of Long Beach has committed itself to being the most bicycle friendly city in America; WHEREAS cycling is a environmentally friendly and healthy mode of transportation; WHEREAS cycling is know to be an effective way to improve the livability of a community; WHEREAS cyclists are expected to be knowledgeable and respectful of the rules of the road. WHEREAS cyclists are among the...