which is pretty cool
watching the tour de france i had this insatiable
urge
to figure out what those climbs were like

and to see if i could do it
[on a 95-degree day 'cause i'm an idiot]

now i know what it's like
and i just need to do it twice as fast
and in the middle of a 100-mile day

oh and my bike fits in my smart

about putting my personal life
in stasis
to try and coax life into
some misbegotten creation
that consumes my
time
sweat
and blood

when i do it voluntarily

over and over again

not really

but i'll do it anyway

i'd like to think that someday
i'll have a life that causes me to reprioritize
and certainly there are plenty of friday nights where i have

they just seem so few
and so far between
and so long ago

so fucking tired

if there's one thing that a tax and spend liberal like myself can't stand
it's people just summarily declaring that we should stop taxing people
not as a means but as an end unto itself
no thought of what to do with all those things that still need to be paid for
social services
roads
schools
fire departments
police
oh wait
there's a reason
she says that this is a way to get the budget back to that of 1995
ah 1995
the year that gave us ace ventura when nature calls
halcyon days they
there are lots of things different now than 1995
but let's just take it as read that there are a lot of things that cost more

so to put it simply
in deference to ms howell
she's a fucking idiot

just because there's a measure of corruption in every large organization
doesn't mean that those organizations are to be abolished
it just means that like all human endeavors there must always be a drive
for improvement
look at it using a mathematical model like sid meier's civilization
organizational corruption takes away a certain percentage of your income
sure
but it's astonishingly foolish to forget about the benefits of
having gotten organized in the first place

so in order to ensure that she doesn't get any love from google on my account
let me be clear
abolishing the income tax in massachusetts is fucking stupid

oh and one other thing
their po box is in fucking wayland
real populists they must be

of course part of that is a function of stuff not working
or in this case not working well enough
not knowing what's wrong exactly
or having the ability to fix it
eats at you

so even when you leave work
because you don't know what to do
you spend the rest of the time trying to figure it out anyway
not actively mind you
but it's in the back of your mind

so monday brings more work
more banging my head against the wall

but at least i'm not rested for it

i'm an idiot

enjoy the twisted 'reasoning'
the fine citizens of sudbury
employ in opposing a new bicycle trail
here's a hint
jackasses
your property values will go down anyway
because nobody will be able to afford to commute from
friggin' sudbury

as i'm sure a lot of baseball fans are claiming these days
i've expected good things from the tampa bay devil rays
for a couple years now
they've always played the sox tough
and moreover tended to be a fun team to watch
at least when they weren't pitching
that said
while the cowbells do amplify the noise from a crowd that is still
paltry
they are just a little bit bush-league

watched the revs-galaxy game late last night
as the fireworks of a dozen towns rumbled in the dark
say what you will about him
but david beckham is really a joy to watch
countless perfectly placed
ideally weighted balls
thrown into dangerous places
directly onto the head of a player
who has no idea what to do with it
okay maybe that's harsh
it just seemed that way last night
or maybe it was because the revs had the dangerous players marked
the difference last night was that when nyassi or castro crossed the ball
la's defenders were caught flat-footed
it's got to eat at becks a little to see that there are plenty of
quality sides in the league
he's just not on one of them

my old car ate a small animal when i started him up yesterday
the animal seems to have destroyed the alternator belt
as a final act of protest
conveniently
i had a potential buyer coming to look at him tomorrow

a lot of things that were going well last week
aren't going so well now

some stuff that seemed promising seems not
to have panned out

and i've got probably another week or more of
long days and weekends in the lab
still trying to make the best of what is at the core
a dumb idea

oh well
i suppose one can look at all of it
and call it some sort of progress

happened upon an amusing little exercise today
make a list of your favorite albums from each year you were alive

here goes
1976 meh
1977 kraftwerk - trans europe express
1978 genesis - and then there were three
1979 pink floyd - the wall
1980 joy division - closer
1981 depeche mode - speak and spell
1982 the cure - pornography
1983 genesis - genesis
1984 duran duran - rio
1985 depeche mode - some great reward
1986 depeche mode - black celebration
1987 r.e.m. - document
1988 depeche mode - music for the masses
1989 the cure - disintegration
1990 sonic youth - goo
1991 depeche mode - violator
1992 orbital - orbital 2
1993 toad the wet sprocket - fear
1994 toad the wet sprocket - dulcinea
1995 bjork - post
1996 underworld - second toughest in the infants
1997 the prodigy - the fat of the land
1998 massive attack - mezzanine
1999 underworld - beaucoup fish
2000 radiohead - kid a
2001 royksopp - melody a.m.
2002 underworld - a hundred days off
2003 kraftwerk - tour de france ep
2004 efterklang - tripper
2005 depeche mode - playing the angel
2006 the knife - silent shout
2007 nine inch nails - year zero
2008 portishead - third

further evidence for this

yesterday we had a rather premature
almost surprise
show and tell
for something that you could tell wasn't quite ready to be shown
two serious
really showstopping issues were evident

today we spent around four hours discussing
what went wrong and how we might fix it

in what was left of the day
we fixed one problem
and halfway fixed the other

but you know
the meetings were helpful
really

but if this is to be believed
it also pretty clearly points out the main reason
we all more or less get along

70% of religious americans believe that many religions can lead to
'eternal life'

setting aside the likelihood of that promise
that's an awfully nice thing to think
that even 16% of crazy jehovah's witnesses
deep in the dark cobwebby recesses of their no-doubt
steam-powered clockwork brains
they're perfectly alright thinking that others unlike them are entitled
to their own concept of a happy ending

it shows that deep down
even though many of these are the same idiots who will vote their fears
and demonize homosexuals or abortion-rights activists
they don't really believe that even their
for lack of a better term
enemies
are so wrong-headed that they don't deserve
this promise of eating kentucky fried chicken on a cloud

the only dark side to this is that
out of the groups on that chart
on the lower left

we keep trying to elect presidents
from the back of the class

sure it's a historical documentary
stuff that is in fact in the past
but what worries me is that in glorifying
our old successes
similar to the glut of world war ii documentaries
[even if it truly is impossible to overstate their greatness]
we pay short shrift to what is happening now

it's great to watch 'band of brothers' reruns
because what's happening now features plenty of the same noble effort
toward a futile cause

and it's great to watch this show or 'from the earth to the moon'
because our efforts now are workaday
of importance that is impossible to communicate now
because it's research
you inherently don't know what it's going to be
that's the point

what's the more galling about it though
is that we can be doing more
and nothing pisses off an engineer more than to have
the ability to do something
to make something happen
and be denied the opportunity

i mean
and i've written about this before
does anyone really think that if we stood up and said
let's friggin' go to mars
we wouldn't be there within ten years
the idea of us spending a trillion dollars to make basically
everyone unhappy in iraq, here, and in the rest of the world
when we could make human civilization proud again
is just plain sad

and i know that senator obama is unlikely to be a friend to the space program
but i once had a certainty that humans would walk on mars in my lifetime
and as i get older
that certainty fades

interestingly
i ran a 5k this morning
and apparently michael collins
the apollo 11 astronaut was also running
i think he probably beat me

but i won't read too much into that

so it vexes me when i see human error's
inescapable effect on sporting events
which is to say the temerity of officials
to make calls i disagree with

but it's somewhat more significant than that
in all seriousness

this comes to mind in the wake of the boston area's
resurgent love of basketball
and the equally significant accusations of
referee bias
as an element that shapes a game to a particular
design

and i find that last notion to be most significant
as i'll explain

first of all i should state
that i was once a huge celtics fan
bird parish mchale dj ainge and of course greg kite
but over the years i grew disillusioned with the sport as a whole
the forty-odd minutes of preamble to a thoroughly unexciting
yet decisive final few
and moreover
the inability for a game designed for no contact
to be meaningfully arbitrated
in an age where that contact is fierce
constant
and necessary

in short i think that the balance of a basketball game
rests so heavily on the shoulders of officials that it
teeters between a tightly regulated yet unwatchable slog
or a free for all
and since so many calls manifest themselves directly
on the scoreboard
basically you are in fact paying to
watch the referees

at the same time i'm remiss if i don't point out
a similar issue with soccer
another highly-evolved sport
where the participants are well-schooled in
extracting every inch of advantage
a referee's control of a match is a frequent topic of conversation
and indeed they can fuck up and fuck up big
with a rash sending-off or award of a
penalty

but it's there that the difference is most crucial
those big
awful
decisions are there for everyone to see
and there is no hiding from them
you fuck up and entire nations may hold a grudge

whereas in basketball
it's more like the get-rich-quick scheme from office space
where the ref just keeps stealing from jerry's kids
and by the time they're done
they've affected the outcome of the game for whatever reason
for their own biases
for the mob
or for the mouse
and gotten away with it clean

maybe the solution is to not write rules
you can't enforce
nfl i'm looking at you

considering the obsession with statistics and the
archival video used by teams in practicing and training
why can't leagues of all kind use their vast riches to
hire an army of tivo jockeys
[creating jobs for slovenly americans to boot]
to re-watch every game and grade every call
baseball already does it with balls and strikes

and if we're lucky maybe someday robots will do it for us
and we'll argue with them too
and then they'll rip our arms off

kirk cameron and his repressed friend
[no i don't mean boner]
love bananas

mayor menino was hit by a car while riding his bike
yet was totally unfazed by it
not sure i'd be so calm
myself

once upon a time i used to sit down with the week's poly
and vomit up a dyspeptic rant
on a certain website of ill repute

and after reading the back-page article
by one john kolb
[himself a frequent target of the party
for his benighted policies on campus computing]
i found myself tempted to do the same

it's not on the web yet
but let's just consider the title

Education for Innovational Leadership

for fuck's sake
innovational isn't even a word

it goes downhill from there

mainly it's a justification for the multi-zillion-dollar
performing arts center on the hill as being good for
scientists and engineers too

far be it from me
given my own experience to argue that point

but that happens because of people
not because of a building
and this article is full of such specious argument
to justify the institute's giant impulse buy
that i can tell that though i've been gone from troy for a good long while

nothing has really changed

kicked booty on the harpoon five-miler yesterday even
recovering from a cold
or allergies or something
lovely morning to sit outside and drink
lots of beer afterwards

spent the rest of the day eating

friday night was entertaining
i own a grill now
purchased in preparation to tailgate at gillette
of course we pulled in five minutes before kickoff
and i did not get to cook anything
but i will be better prepared for the next
world's smallest tailgate [tm]
great first half from the revs
second half was frightful
brazil was a huge disappointment
their fans
while boisterous
seemed as attentive than the worst pink-clad
bleacher citizens at fenway
and the team's play
while very occasionally transcendent
was disjointed and uninspired
i think the revs could have taken 'em
[in the first half at least] [maybe] [okay maybe not]

work is complicated these days
i'm juggling four projects
yet what i lose sleep over is
wholly non-technical

it's so wonderful to play full-field soccer again
not that indoor isn't great in its way
particularly when you play without boards
but the real thing is so much better
i didn't even play in my wing-back happy place
yet still had a good game

slept on the couch last night
it's too goddamned hot

i got my new smart this week
and he has done nothing but make friends
wherever we go
be it a thumbs up or
a rolled-down window conversation
at a red light
or a lengthy walkaround and q & a
in the parking lot

today i had a guy trying out the drivers' seat
in the stop & shop parking lot
having stopped and blinky parked his jeep in the aisle
his wife came out and said
'oh no he finally found one'

in a practical sense too
he's a fun car to hang around with
once you get used to driving
almost like a standard
[not that i know how to do that]
you can merge onto route 9
lickety split
he turns almost as if pivoting in place
can fit a ton of stuff
and has plenty of room for me
and a nice loud stereo

now i'm looking for an excuse for a road trip

and to find an old friend a good new home

it hasn't really been a good week for a lot of people
crashes and fires and things like that

i don't even watch the local news
but it nevertheless has an effect when you see something that
was some part of your life
large or small
in the newspaper
destroyed