A brief open letter to my fellow Columbusites.

To my brother and sister Buckeyes who are pedestrians: What part of “Don’t Walk” is so fucking difficult to grasp?

To my brother and sister Buckeyes who are driving cars: What part of ‘red traffic light’ and “No Turn on Red” and the general concept of ‘right of way’ is so fucking difficult to grasp?

Signed,
–A bicyclist who’s damned tired of idiots who don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves

Where’s my resignation from the human species form?

So some bigoted fuckwad decided to “commemorate” yesterday by breaking into a local Arab market and spray-painting “9-11″ on what windows he didn’t bother to smash, just when I thought we’d dodged a bullet from that lunatic in Gainesville and his Koran-burning plans — or not, since there were dozens of equally lunatic cretins nationwide doing their copycat acts of mental masturbation.

Is this what 9/11 is going to be from now on, an excuse for an annual anti-Arab Kristallnacht?

If it is, then congratulations, America. The terrorists won, they reduced you to their level.

By the way, and relative to both this and another “news” item getting play this last month, it’s not a “mosque on Ground Zero”. It’s two blocks away and not even visible from the Ground Zero site. It’s also not a mosque. It’s a community center, with a prayer room, just like many Christian community centers have. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Park51 (the real name of the place).

Even if it were a mosque and actually at the site, what is wrong with that? All Muslims are terrorists? Are all Catholics child molesters? Are all Evangelicals clinic bombers and doctor killers? Hey, then let’s make sure no one ever opens a Christian church near a school or a medical center. You know how they all really are…

Oh, wait, suddenly that doesn’t sound reasonable?

Good. It shouldn’t. It’s not reasonable.

All Catholics are not child molesters, only a vanishingly small number. All Evangelicals are not bombers and snipers, only a vanishingly small number. And all Muslims are not terrorists, only a vanishingly small number.

If you found yourself nodding at the first two and shaking your head at the last, congratulations. You are both a hypocrite and a bigot.

Why I think of myself as an accompanist and not really a filker

So I have two solid ideas for songs, and they won’t bloody come. And one idea was given to me by a less musical friend, so it’s not technically my idea.

Now, I can write for pages on just a starting point.

I have held conversations speaking only in limericks, so I can put rhymes together and come up with a good line at the end of the verse.

Whence, I think you see, my frustration as a creator.

Now, I’m happy with what I do. I don’t think it’s hubristic to suggest that a bass brings to the filkroom something that one more guitar can’t.

But I really want to bring something else to the table. Aurgh!

For anyone going to San Diego Comic Con…

I hate you forever.

And while we’re on the subject, Make: zine is having a Build A Cylon contest, and it attracted this entry.

It’s worse.

Just about totalled my car driving to work today, rear-ending someone on the freeway — no, no one was hurt, but I was cited. I can’t afford to have it repaired any time this century, at this rate. It actually runs, to my complete surprise, but the radiator, hood, front quarterpanels, and grille/lights are just *completely* hosed. I’m going to have my mechanic make a determination as to whether it’s worth even bothering.

I’d say ‘fuck me’, but the universe already has.

Update

Car is working now.

Furnace is not. Don’t worry, it’s not like forty or anything ridiculous like that in here. Just a wee bit below normal, generally around 62°-64°. Since it’s a small apartment, I can run the oven in timed bursts to heat up the living space when it goes below that—living room and kitchen being basically one big room. Cats and electric blankets take care of the rest until repairs can be made which should be today or tomorrow. And I tend to keep the place on the cool side anyway, so by no stretch of the imagination is it a crisis or even uncomfortable… but damn. Can’t I have one week that’s not fucked up?

At least this one won’t cost me money.

Annoying, and ANNOYING.

Had to have my car towed home again.

What I should be annoyed about is the fact that my car is broken again, for the second time in as many months, and I flat can’t afford to have it fixed any time soon.

What I am annoyed about is the premonition I had walking up to it in the parking lot that something was grotesquely wrong with it. I mean, I knew there was something wrong with my car, even though I had just driven it back from the store not an hour beforehand (without incident or symptoms), even though what is wrong with it is utterly and completely not visible externally.

Because I can’t think of a good reason how it is I should’ve known something was about to go awry. It doesn’t fit with my world view. I don’t want to accept premonitions as a real part of the universe, not without a good scientific explanation, and I can’t think of even a passable one at the moment.

The universe can go fuck itself for a while and leave me the hell alone.

The Car Destruction Field still works.

I have this serious negative mojo with matters automotive.

I mean, serious. My friends refer to it as the CDF: Car Destruction Field. I’m like plutonium to cars.

So I get the starter replaced last Wednesday, just in time to be able to go up to Toledo yesterday for Mom and Dad’s 45th anniversary party (wotta blast that was!).

I have gotten to within five miles of Mom and Dad’s house, just passing the mosque where I-75 meets I-475 south of Toledo, when my muffler detaches itself. Not completely; it just drags. I get it to the house, Dad and I wire it up so I can drive it home (noisily, but home). I get the Evil Eye from a state trooper who ultimately decides that he won’t pull me over for a noise violation, but he sure followed me a while.

Yeesh.

Just for the record here.

If one more person asks me if I’ve gone to see Transformers yet, they’re going to see a transformation more appropriate to Bruce Banner than any giant robot.

Yes, I’m an animation fan.

Yes, I like some anime.

However…

I hate giant mecha anime, with the partial exception of “Big O”.

It’s a Michael Bay movie. The only reason Michael Bay isn’t the worst director in the world is because Uwe Boll is still breathing.

I’m not going to see it, I don’t care about it, I don’t even want to hear about it anymore.

Now, in other movie news, I’m going to try to see OotP when it opens today. But if it doesn’t have “It unscrews the other way”, it loses.

The pure clarity of the Dilbert Zone

I care only and exactly as much as it takes to not be fired.