Next Thursday is Thanksgiving. If you're unfamiliar with Thanksgiving, it's the day when Americans gorge themselves and give thanks for the bountiful fruit of centuries of cultural rape and environmental plunder. Sure, many of us will be enjoying our Thanksgiving feasts in mobile homes parked outside of Walmart, but I think few of us would argue that there's never been a better time to be American, especially since we'll be so convenient to the turkeys we've purchased on layaway.
Given this, I'll be not posting all of next week, but will return to the helm of the SS Wildcat on Monday, December 2nd, at which point I will resume regular updates.
Hey, that tofurkey's not going to hunt down and kill itself, nor is it going to stuff itself into a pig, because that's what we eat in my house on Thanksgiving, turduckens be damned.
Meanwhile, yesterday I made some wisecracks about both "God" and dogs. Well, while the Lard seems largely unconcerned with matters of child molestation, He or She would appear to move quite swiftly when a bike blogger is flippant on the subject of religion, for here's what happened:
Shortly after publishing yesterday's post, I took it into my mind to sneak in a little lunchtime bicycle cycling ride. So I pulled on stretchy clothes, ratcheted on those shoes that click into your pedals, and headed to my bicycle with the curved handlebars like they use in the Tour de France.
Lo and behold, the rear tire of this bicycle was flaccid and devoid of air. (This was not, it should be noted, the same bicycle that incurred a flatular tire earlier in the week.) Therefore, I extracted the inner tube with designs to patch it, and the puncture was so tiny I actually had to find the hole with my lips. (If you can't find a hole in a tube, inflate it to comical size, lick your lips, and run them around the tube. Laugh if you will, but the Lard gave us sensory organs for a reason, and that reason is to repair inner tubes. If all of this sounds incredibly phallic, that's only because it is.)
Once I'd found the puncture, I patched it, replaced the tube, inflated it, and was on my way.
Unfortunately either the patch was faulty or I was, because after a mile or so it became apparent the tube was losing air again. At first I was in denial, but eventually rim started hitting pavement and it became clear I'd have to stop and replace the tube, which I did. Then I scuttled up a hill and onto my favorite little unpaved trail, at which point I heard a sound like rushing air from my rear wheel. "Curses!," I muttered under my breath, but it turned out to be just an autumn leaf trapped between brake bridge and tire, so I went to pull it out, only to find the leaf had been cemented in there with what appeared to be dog feces.
"Fie!," I exclaimed, but by wriggling the stem of the leaf I was able to convince the dog feces to fall out in a single clump.
So I continued on, and a few moments later encountered an actual dog. It was small, black, and fuzzy, and it was attached to one of those retractable leashes. Naturally, it was about 400 miles out in front of its owner, and it was jumping and yapping and zig-zagging like a fish at the end of a line struggling to remain in the briny deep.
I always slow down and give dogs a wide berth for obvious reasons, which was what I did here, and indeed this time I came to nearly a complete stop since the dog was so excitable, but given the narrowness of the trail and the extreme length of the retractable leash and the dog's addled state there was no way to give it a wide enough berth, nor was the owner making any attempt to control this animal whatsoever, so the next thing I knew the little piece of shit fucker had leaped at my leg and bitten me.
"Your dog just bit me, you fucking asshole!," I ejaculated, somehow refraining from punting the little shitbag canine into the Hudson, and the gray-haired man simply kept ambling along as though I were little more than the wind whispering in the trees. Like, he didn't even turn around to look at me.
Figuring it was just a nip, I continued on, but after five or ten minutes I actually stopped to look at my leg, at which point I discovered holes in my leg warmers and actual bloody holes in my skin. I'd never been bitten by a strange dog before and I had no idea what to do, so like any helpless individual I called my wife, and she said, "Go find the guy and see if the dog has been vaccinated." So I back-tracked in search of them, but of course they'd vanished, and then I went to the doctor who gave me a tetanus shot and put me on antibiotics--because, as he explained it, "dogs lick their asses."
And that's why my lunch ride sucked, and yes, I encourage you to laugh at me and not with me.
Oh, I should also mention that all of this happened right by the spot a reader informed me was where David Berkowitz and pals used to sacrifice dogs:
So that's pretty fucking creepy.
And obviously I'd be remiss if I didn't include this:
This song was exactly the first thing to pop into my head after it happened.
Speaking of dogs, apparently it's a "thing" to take yours rat hunting:
“We don’t make a huge difference in the rat population, but the dogs have a lot of fun,” said Richard Reynolds, a main organizer of the group, which, in an effort to form the acronym RATS, he semiseriously calls the Ryders Alley Trencher-fed Society (Ryders Alley was once a rat-infested lane downtown, and trencher-fed refers to the keeping of hounds to hunt). The group, which includes some members who travel from the suburbs, has been meeting for 15 years, mostly in downtown Manhattan in areas where trash is abundant.
I don't have any problem with dogs killing rats (better a rat than my leg), but how are they not "violating any laws?"
In fact, it would appear that the rat hunters are not violating any laws or health codes, and the plight of rats, at least those living on and below New York’s streets, does not generate the same level of passion as the plight of, say, the city’s carriage horses.
Uh, what about leash laws?
I mean, I don't really care, but it seems worth mentioning. If they were hunting rats with bikes they'd sure as hell find a way to lock somebody up.
I mean, I don't really care, but it seems worth mentioning. If they were hunting rats with bikes they'd sure as hell find a way to lock somebody up.
Of course, the important question here is, "So, do the owners dress like they're out in the English countryside when they go rat hunting?," and the answer is, "Of course they do:"
“The city loves us,” claimed Mr. Reynolds, casting his group as a free extermination force. He was wearing a tweed cap and gripping a spike-tipped walking stick, for poking garbage bags and for protection from the rodents.
If your next tweed ride doesn't end in a full-on rat hunt then you're doing it wrong, though they'd never go for that in Portland, since I'm sure it would make too many vegans cry.
Here in New York City though the flattened rat pancake in the middle of the street is a staple on garbage pick-up day so we're made of stronger stuff.
There is the small matter of dogs chomping on poisonous rats, though:
Still, not everyone supports the rat hunts. Brian Shapiro, the New York State director for the Humane Society of the United States, said there were numerous cases of dogs biting rats and ingesting poison consumed by the rat.
This type of activity exposes dogs to the “likelihood of eventual toxic exposure,” he said, adding, “The more times the owners send them out, they are repeatedly exposing them to that risk — it’s not good guardianship for a dog.”
Actually, it's a bigger problem for the local hawk population, which is depressing. In any case, this is why you should limit your rat hunts to the vicinity of the Park Slope Food Co-Op, where the rats mostly just consume locally-grown organic produce and quinoa.
If your next tweed ride doesn't end in a full-on rat hunt then you're doing it wrong, though they'd never go for that in Portland, since I'm sure it would make too many vegans cry.
Here in New York City though the flattened rat pancake in the middle of the street is a staple on garbage pick-up day so we're made of stronger stuff.
There is the small matter of dogs chomping on poisonous rats, though:
Still, not everyone supports the rat hunts. Brian Shapiro, the New York State director for the Humane Society of the United States, said there were numerous cases of dogs biting rats and ingesting poison consumed by the rat.
This type of activity exposes dogs to the “likelihood of eventual toxic exposure,” he said, adding, “The more times the owners send them out, they are repeatedly exposing them to that risk — it’s not good guardianship for a dog.”
Actually, it's a bigger problem for the local hawk population, which is depressing. In any case, this is why you should limit your rat hunts to the vicinity of the Park Slope Food Co-Op, where the rats mostly just consume locally-grown organic produce and quinoa.
Lastly, as I tend to my dog bite I can at least console myself with the fact that I've made the Restoration Hardware Stocking Stuffers collection, "Tools for the Athlete" category, to which I was alerted by a Tweeterer:
Wow, right above the "golf ball personalizer:"
Oh Lard, let the rabies take me, because I can die happy now.
Wow, right above the "golf ball personalizer:"
Oh Lard, let the rabies take me, because I can die happy now.
And with that, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving, unless you don't celebrate it, in which case I hope you feel very happy next Thursday for no apparent reason, and I look forward to seeing you again on Monday, December 2nd.
Longingly,
--Wildcat Rock Machine
