Rhinocrisy

It snowed over the weekend here in Boston. Three inches. I am not at all displeased at missing the season’s first snowfall. In fact, cold is my nemesis and I do not relish the upcoming months.

Today, however, was quite balmy and pleasant. T-shirt weather. Just right for enjoying my newly-resurrected bicycle.

I took it apart in midsummer to deal with my busted pedals and bottom bracket, and also to re-paint the thing. My previous paint-job (yellow frame with black bubbles emanating outward from the joints) was wearing down and the frame was starting to rust. So I stripped it clean and repainted it with epoxy enamel. Supposedly you should get it blasted in a bead cabinet and painted in an autobody shop, but I doubt they would be willing to accomodate my masking requests, so I did it myself. Now it’s a sleek, monochrome frame, black with white dragons. I also completely replaced the guts of it - cranks, bottom bracket, chain, chain ring, freewheel. It’s a completely reborn bicycle. In hindsight perhaps I should have painted a tai on it rather than a lung.

I think I am one of those people who has always felt limited by the constraints of my physical body. This is a natural human tendency. The spirit wants absolute freedom of motion; this, the reason the Ford Mustang has been selling well for so many years. I feel this urge acutely. If I found a djinn in a bottle and it granted me one wish, I’d have to struggle to answer what that would be. But if it were three wishes, then the first, no question, would be for flight.

On a bicycle, sometimes you can fly, a little bit.

Is all that LiveJournaling and e-mailing and text-messaging turning us back into a society of epistolic wits? I dunno, but that’s what these undersourced news stories claim. Hey, it’s working for me — look at my scintillating prose!

Via techdirt to personaltech to times online to — well, nobody points to the original study. So much for fact-checking.

All told, I think I spent something like $60 trying to look like a monkey. This is probably one of the most appealing costumes I’ve had in a while. First, Sun Wukong is a trickster, and I have a passion for trickster figures. He is also a clear derivative of Hanuman, who is one of a handful of trickster-like figures that appear in Hindu mythology, and also happens to be the closest thing I have an isht-deva. His weapon of choice is the staff, which I’ve been learning for maybe a year and can actually fight somewhat effectively with. He’s a magician. And, of course, he’s a monkey.

Unfortunately, the buildup to Halloween coincided with this damned ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of Dna Elements) meeting. The meeting went rather well. Seattle seems to be a nice city, and I’m somewhat alarmed by the fact that the West Coast is about ten-fold more progressive than the “liberal north-east”, just at first glance. I made a lot of valuable contacts, greatly improved my education in a single night (as well as my confidence in my own powers). I did not, however, get to work on my rather elaborate costume. I never was good with deadlines.

Next year, I am going to do this thing in San Francisco, where Hedgehog says it’s something like a week-long festival. And I will be a damn fine monkey. (Unless someone knows another holiday where you get to dress up.)