Ah, fame at last. Never imagined it could feel so edifying.
Wait, that's not the word; so, uh...so...
pedestrian. Yeah, that's it.
Seems one chap who rode in the recent
Single Speed Punk Bike Enduro appreciated the years of sweat equity (and strict asceticism normally reserved for trappist monks) that it took to raise my drawing talents to their material apogee, as represented in my latest artistic reification seen at right (with a dash of pink) and
here.
So he approached me to ask for the rights, which I shamelessly granted. The result is shown in the pic above, artfully cropped to preserve his anonymity. Immortalized through the magic of the old school iron-on transfer—a DIY one-off job that seems to have turned out quite well—the image now adorns a canvas
à trois dimensions in
this world, having narrowly escaped the simulated, absolute zero confines of cyberspace. Nice work!
Did I say immortalized? I meant briefly rescued from shameful obscurity (damn 13¢ words!). The bane of iron-ons, of course, is their tendency to eventually peel away from the fabric like an old scab—hence their near annihilation beneath the bootheel of more technologically advanced processes such as dye sublimation and screenprinting.
But the iron-on's strength lies in its immediacy (as Hakim Bey uses the word), in the fact that it
can be created at home with only a modest investment of time and equipment—the same intangible quality that makes all DIY projects ennobling. And its ephemeral nature offers another advantage, at least in this case: if it does self-destruct, it will probably happen before the tell-tale year included in the design renders it passé. Heaven—and all Hell's minions—forbid!
(The iron-on is sort of the fixed gear of the fashion world...long live the iron-on!)
Again, nice job, my friend.
Speaking of the Enduro, here's the GPS data for the ride, flagrantly stolen from Big John of Empathy Test fame. (Hmm, I recall a couple of miles that didn't seem to make the graph—then again, the lines I usually pick can't exactly be called straight.)
"...you have to know how to disappear."
Hope this was more prescience than jinx.
Hey you, the guy (or girl) languidly dreaming about changing the world simply by riding his bicycle every now and then, how about putting down the remote, getting off your fat, lazy, winter-swollen ass and using your finger (any one, your choice) to turn off the glass teat*, and (understanding that it's asking way too fucking much to suggest that you actually BUY THE BOOK) heading over to nothingness.org (brilliant name, that) to read (that's right, expose your mind to something alien: theta brain waves) Raoul Vaneigem's excellent take on creating a meaningful existence that recognizes the imperative gravity of space-time lived experience, The Revolution of Everday Life".
Oh, got there, did you? And now your back, in a proverbial and utterly urbane flash. What's that? Topic too profound? Decided it wasn't for you? You want—no, need—to just turn off your mind and relax after a tough day at work designing rockets, to not think (oh, the agony!)? To simply be "entertained" by watching some bullshit Tarantino flick—where "creative" acts of violence substitute for plot and represent high art, the target of innumerable theses in an ever increasingly absurd world where the quantifiable reigns supreme over the qualitative—that came to your door in a little red envelope—bingo!—like magic (but not the magic, the one that was all but eradicated by the Age of Enlightenment, with its monomaniacal pursuit of rationalism and objectivity and its intransigent persecution of all things mysterious—in effect, its efforts to nail to the floor once and for all the very feet of God)? Or maybe a tribute to cop culture that makes you feel tough and proud and devoid of the need to do violence yourself, like the popular, pustular television drama "24"?
Okay, shameless self-promotion without the profit. Art for art's sake. Whatever. 
Ah, fame at last. Never imagined it could feel so edifying. 
...born this very day in 1922. Died right on time. A fellow Pisces (and that's where the similarities end), poet, drinker (okay, I lied before), and literary icon. 
...and a rather nubile riding partner. 
