gideon

passion, nesting, marking and remarking, balance, responsibility, lifting as you climb (see, e.g., Angela Davis), service, patience, Adam Curry-era Headbanger's Ball, creative, intentional and loving partnerships (see, e.g., Maria Lugones), sustainability, MMORPGS, magical techno-unicorn, trying not to freak out over small shit, pretending everything is small shit, baking bread, making things which serve no useful purpose out of broken things i want to throw away, recycling things to make space for the storage of such things, environmental impact statements, staying alive for a reasonably long period of time, snakes, dreams but not nightmares, monsters as metaphors (esp. werewolves), cooking soup, surrendering to full-time do-gooder adulthood, enormous coffee table books with pictures of birds, reading in the park, giving gifts to people who deserve to smile, thinking about the possibility of riding my bike, doing it before it is too late, karner blue butterflies, recording and deleting songs, writing freedom of information law requests, scheming ways to spend time around children, not ever being tickled, doing things i mean all the time, spider-man, exegesis, and whatever comes next.

"On one episode of Press Your Luck in 1984, a self-described unemployed ice cream man named Michael Larson made it onto the show. Watching the show at home, and with the use of a VCR, Larson discovered that the presumed random patterns of the game board were not random; instead, they lit up in one of 5 preset patterns. Larson identified two spaces on the gameboard where the Whammy would never appear and which always contained money plus a free spin, which would allow him to increase his score and also retain control. Larson was able to memorize the sequences to help him stop the board where and when he wanted. On the episode in which he appeared, Larson spun 35 times without hitting a Whammy and took away $110,237 in cash and prizes, most of which was earned via "cash plus a spin" spaces (thus allowing him to take many consecutive spins). His total was a record for a single appearance on a game show up to that time. The Press Your Luck board's five patterns were changed on June 20 and then a brand new set of 32 patterns debuted on September 17. This was successful in foiling future attempts at replicating Larson's feat, as such a run was never repeated on the show."

"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenly disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying."

R.M.R. -First Elegy

"And Frith called after him, 'El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.'"

- Watership Down
Richard Adams

The defense of Critical Mass bicycle rides in New York City, see Still We Ride: The Movie , and the people arrested at them, see FreeWheels .

I am currently among the team of attorneys representing Time's Up! , an environmental advocacy group, and 4 individuals allegedly associated with Time's Up!, in New York City's bid for preliminary injunctions that would prevent future Critical Mass rides, the gatherings that typically precede them in New York City Parks, and “the promotion” thereof absent formal, written permission from the Police Commissioner.

Please consider donating here to

FreeWheels Bicycle Defense Fund



"The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another. -Gustav Landauer"

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

– Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

liberatory coalition politics; companerismo.

One time, I wrote Gene Ray an email asking if he was ok. He wrote back and said that he was. I also wrote Oolong's owner a condolence email when Oolong died last year. That was pretty fucking sad. He responded and was very nice. I sent him some cash once for some Oolong postcards, but I never heard back. I figure he is grieving on it. Anyway, you probably already know Timecube , but, if you don't, you should.

For the longest time, I have been trying to get someone to make me a Greatest American Hero costume. I'll pay. I'm serious. Please help.

"I am lying in my bed, five flights up, and my day, which nothing interrupts, is like a dial without hands. As a thing long lost lies one morning in its old place, safe and well, fresher almost than at the time of its loss, quite as though someone had cared for it -- : so here and there on my coverlet lie lost things out of my childhood and are as new. All forgotten fears are there again.

The fear that a small, woolen thread that sticks out of the hem of my blanket may be hard, hard and sharp like a steel needle; the fear that this little button on my night-shirt may be bigger than my head, big and heavy; the fear that this crumb of bread now falling from my bed may arrive glassy and shattered on the floor, and the burdensome worry lest at that really everything will be broken, everything for ever; the fear that the torn border of an opened letter may be something forbidden that no one ought to see something indescribably precious for which no place in the room is secure enough; the fear that if I fell asleep I might swallow the piece of coal lying in front of the stove; the fear that some number may begin to grow in my brain until there is no more room for it inside me; the fear that it may be granite I am lying on, grey granite; the fear that I may shout, and that people may come running to my door andf inally break it open; the fear that I may betray myself and tell all that I dread; and the fear that I might not be able to say anything, because everything is beyond utterance, -- and the other fears . . . the fears.

I asked for my childhood and it has come back, and I feel that it is just as difficult as it was before, and that it has been useless to grow older."

- The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Gravy

No other word will do. For that's what it was. Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. "Don't weep for me,"
he said to his friends, "I'm a lucky man.
I've had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don't forget it."