Why you shouldn't bike in the rain.

I was saddened this friday by the news that, due to rain, the Critical Mass bike ride (which would've been my first) was going to be bumped to next week. Dejectedly, and without purpose, I set off to bike home, in the cold, indifferent rain.

I had done this many times before, even at night, without significant problem. Although on those dark+rainy='doubleplus scary' nights I would ride home, without a headlight, terrified, repeating the mantra, "...I'm gonna make it, they're just puddles, they're just puddles, no potholes, no potholes..." but the point is, until friday I've always made it home without major incident.

Not that I'm calling what happened a major incident, mind you.

But I fell, in a semi-spectacular way.

I was rounding a corner, in the parking lot of my apartment complex, when I began to slide. Slide in the sense of the Vin Diesel sliding a motorcycle on its side under a semi, sliding. It was exactly as the movies depicted it, except for the fact that I slid the whole of two feet, mostly on my ankle and handlebar, and somehow when it was done the first two toes of my left foot were jammed into the spokes of my front wheel and I was left with a bleeding (not too badly) ankle and a bruised knee. They never show Vin Diesel's toes stuck in a wheel. Bah.

For being shod in only flip-flops, the injury was surprisingly minor.

So, I walked Lucy, unharmed save for a misaligned front wheel and a badly misshapen right pedal, back to the apartment, where I had a good laugh about the whole situation over a glass of water and a handfull of Ibu and Aspirin.

[For posterity's sake, I reenacted the toe portion of the accident, the photo of which can be found below.]

Don't ask me how it happened, but that's how I found my foot.

An Atheist Goes to Church - II

and the story of how I was once again decieved by the religious establishment.

It started last week, when flyers were posted around campus which shouted something along the lines of, "Tired of the 'New Atheism?!' Learn how to best protect and defend your faith againsts the swarms of hell-spawn heathens!" (Embellishment added)

But basically, it was a talk on how to defend against people like myself. Now, being the sly nonbelievers that we are, about six or seven of us from OSSO decided to give this thing a visit. Like soviet spies making their way into a pentagon war briefing, we set out for the Baptist Campus Ministry (which henceforth will be referred to as the BCM). And what we found there, ladies and gentlemen, was disturbing.

It seems that it was a trap. Not a trap in the conventional sense of the word, but more like the situation in which a hunter has no intention of even laying a trap, but a rabbit gets caught anyway. It seems that the atheist talk had been canceled.

Not that we knew about it. It took us probably a half hour of repetitive "God, you're so awesome!" praise songs played by a band of wholesome-yet-(christian)-hip college kids with conservative and well groomed facial hair configurations and a sermon which read from the book of Corinthians and concluded with the messages of "God doesn't need you" and "This is a war we can't win." (verbatim) before we realized that the topic of our own evil was not going to be discussed.

Although two of our group walked out at that point, the rest of us stayed through more crappy repetitive praise songs (Listen, god knows how great he is, alright? he doesn't need you to repeat it eight thousand times, much less while swaying with your eyes closes and hands in the air like you're listening to run DMC. Enough already.) and a ten minute spiel about signing up for their "Face 2 Face" bible study groups.

"Which one are you going to sign up for?" I excitedly asked Derrick, sitting beside me.
"Oh, golly! All of them! I don't want to miss a thing!" he replied. We giggled.

After the debaucle was over, we congregated in the parking lot, eager to vent our frustrations and incredulity over the event just witnessed. That night was a long one, discussing their logical fallacies and inconsistencies at the nearby House of Godlessness, in which two of the group of heathens lived. We laughed at the silly people that night, until the night drew thin and cold, and went went separately to bed, having collected further proof of the absurdity of it all.

Question: When is a wheel+tube not a wheel+tube?

Answer: When it's a freakin' piece of crap. Like Lucy's rear wheel.

It's gone flat [read: blown out] twice in as many days, forcing me to walk her home each time. There's a problem with the spoke wells along the inside of the rim, the tube tends to blow out at these weak points. This is not good.

So far, duct tape has not solved the problem, which means that the situation is truly dire.

Updates to follow.

Update:Fixed for now. I fixed it the same way I fix every other problem in my life. More duct tape. Lots of it. Bring it on, world.

Vegan Recipe of the Day!

Ingredients:
anything but meat, eggs, or dairy.

Instructions:
1. Prepare food as is customary.
2. Dig in.

mmm...tastes like freedom.

Barack Obama's VP - Holy Crap!

So I woke up this morning, checked the ol' facebook, and what do I see in my updates folder? A message from the Obama campaign declaring his pick for VP - Joe Biden.

Holy crap. Were I eating cereal while reading that sentence, my computer screen would almost certainly have been showered by an incredulous blast of soy milk and coco-roos. Joe Biden?! This decision is either going to be the very best or the very worst thing that could happen to the Obama campain.

Let me start off first with a little talk about why I love Joe Biden. He was best described on reddit.com as a "motherf***ing badass", and rightly so, in my opinion. The one thing that I've liked about him from the very beginning, this is back when there were still eighteen people running for the democratic nomination, mind you, is that he's not afraid to speak his mind. If you were curious enough to click on the above youtube link, you'll know that his vitriolic speech is pretty indicative of Joe Biden when he gets passionate about something. I like that. We don't need another Pelosi in the democratic leadership.

But this is also what makes me a bit wary of Joe. He has, many times, gotten himself in some trouble for so candidly letting opinions fly, even for his comments on Obama. The media monkeys and their junket junkies are just going to love picking Biden apart. They know that, especially when provoked, Biden's going to give some good, controversial sound bites for Faux News to drool over. And when the average voter cares more about Reverend Wright or Obama's secret Islamic leanings than, say, the faltering economy or the faltering war, sound bites will make a difference. Never count out the ingnorance vote, it will make a difference.

So, in conclusion, I'm still unbelievably happy about this decision, because from what I've seen, Joe Biden does not mess around when it comes to politics. In the era of our floundering democratic congress, and Pelosi all but giving sanctuary to a criminal, it's going to be nice to get a president and vice-pres who can whip (hidden pun, hehe) congress into shape.

Yes, I'm already assuming that they've won...but look at who they're running against.

Late night posting gone awry!

Restarting the blog (for the second time, technically) sounds like a great idea (at 4am). We'll see how I feel in the morning.