BSNYC Friday I Can't Even Pretend To Care Anymore.

Hey.

You know how I used to kinda care enuf to spell rite and use OK grammer and put those dot things at the end of sentences and also use commas?  Well sorry, those days'r over cuz I dont give a fuck anymore about anything.  I'm ofically becoming a nihilist--and an illitarate one at that!  Here's why:

I saw this on Twitter and I was like, "What the fuck?!?  So I went to school and I watch my credit and I pay my taxes and do all the other crap you're supposed to do and all this shit is a simulation?  What a fucking ripoff!"  I don't know about you, but I was operating under the assumption that there was a point to all of this, and that if I did my best over many lifetimes I'd eventually get upcycled into an enlightened Buddha-like being with a shitload of money and an awesome house and a sports car where the doors open up instead of sideways.

Apparently not.

Not only that, but you know who's looking into this theory now?  Some people at Cornell University, which is like the MicroSHIFT of Ivy League schools:


In 2003, University of Oxford philosophy professor Nick Bostrom published a paper, "The Simulation Argument," which argued that, "we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation." Now, a team at Cornell University says it has come up with a viable method for testing whether we're all just a series of numbers in some ancient civilization's computer game.

Researchers at the University of Washington agree with the testing method, saying it can be done. A similar proposal was put forth by German physicists in November.


Glad the University of Washington concurs, and I'm sure it couldn't have anything to do with the easy access to legal marijuana they have out there.  No doubt this brain trust of slackers and stoners will quickly get to the bottom of this universal conundrum.

And if you're wondering how they're going to do it, here's your answer:

"Using the historical development of lattice gauge theory technology as a guide, we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable consequences."

Yeah, no duh.

Then, once they confirm this is all a great big computer model, they're going to try to talk to the people who made it:

Interestingly, one of Savage's students takes the hypothesis further: If we stumble upon the nature of our existence, would we then look for ways to communicate with the civilization who created us?

I'm pretty sure that line of communication exists already, and it's called "LSD."  A huge stoner like Savage should know this.  Also, what's this nonsense about "communicating" with them?  This is America!  Let's find out who these bastards are and NUKE THEM for fuck's sake!

So how do you feel knowing that you're probably just a useless part of a fake universe created by some kid who was dicking around on a free computer in an intergalactic Apple store while waiting for some free porn to download?  (Actually, maybe we are the porn.)  And how do you feel knowing that that kid's universe is probably also a simulation, and that existence is merely an infinite circle-jerk of simulations within simulations within simulations within simulations and so forth?  Are you just going to shrug it off and keep "foffing off" to your Strava?  Or are you going to find out which highly evolved consciousness is ultimately responsible for this and make them pay dearly for wasting your time?

I mean, whoever's behind this must be pretty loaded.  Maybe we can sue.

Anyway, speaking of collossal wastes of time, the Tour de France is going to Yorkshire:

You may know Yorkshire because of the eponymous pudding:

Although I only eat the kind of pudding that comes in pop form:

You may also know Yorkshire because of the stupid little dogs:

Which I mean, come on.  What's the point of a stupider cat you have to take for walks?

But did you also know this?

"Yorkshire is a region of outstanding beauty, with breathtaking landscapes whose terrains offer both sprinters and attackers the opportunity to express themselves. We have encountered a phenomenal desire from the Yorkshire team to welcome the Tour de France and have no doubt that passion and support will be particularly evident for the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2014.”

Yes, I love when sprinters express themselves:

(Sprinter Mark Cavendish expresses his nipple.)

As for the "outstanding beauty" claim, I conducted an image search using a popular search engine, and it's not too bad:

But who really cares, because it's all just a simulation anyway.

And now, I'm pleased to present you with a quiz.  As always, study the item, think, and click on your answer.  If you're right you'll know, and if you're not you'll see a short documentary about bicycles.

Thanks very much for reading, ride safe, and give up on life like I have and spend the weekend drinking and crying.

--Wildcat WhateverwhocaresIcan'tbebothered....

(Doing what they do best.)

1) Nobody beats triathletes when it comes to:

--Swimming
--Biking
--Running
--Falling Downing

(Mavic's Mektronic derailleur doubled as an analog cellphone so you could call for help when it failed mid-ride.)

2) 12 speed?  Electronic???  A remote control?!?  Yes, thanks to:

--Shimano
--Campagnolo
--SRAM
--Tiso

(In the heyday of the fixie craze if you didn't have friends you could buy them.)

3) The bicycle was invented in Korea.

--True
--False

("This is going to be so cool in like 95 years.")

4) SRAM recently merged cyclocross with which tired pop culture phenomenon?

--"Gangnam Style"
--Autotune vocals
--"2 Girls, 1 Cup"
--That "race music" which captivates reefer addicts, suffragettes, and other undesirables with its throbbing jungle rhythms

(Bad Will Driving: Just one of the many ne'er-do-wells to be apprehended by Portland's finest over the years.)

5) Portland police have finally apprehended the:

--"Hipster bandit"
--"Tall bike buccanneer"
--"Rhinestone cowboy"
--Guy who made that SRAM video

6) What is this?

--A bike sauna
--A steampunk recumbent
--A human-powered meat smoker you can invest in via Kickstarter
--A trike that runs on flatulence

7) This is a steampunk sex doll vagina.

--True
--False

***Special Holiday-Themed Bonus Video Because Dogs!***

Titles Are The Pie Plate Of Literature

(Good deal on some crabon, via a reader.)

If you need me at any point today, you'll be able to find me on the sofa watching this recently-Tweeted-at-me video, over and over and over again:



Is there a more satisfying sight than wave after wave of triathletes falling down like an invading army trying unsuccessfully to storm the walls of Castle Fredliness?  I would argue that there is not.  I'll also acknowledge that I probably couldn't make it up the hill either, but that's why I'm sitting here laughing at them instead of wearing armwarmers with a sleeveless vest and trying to ascend a 31% grade on a bike with aerobars.

Yes, life is good here on the sofa.  Shuck it all, life is good in general, I'm not going to lie.  Every morning I take a stroll down to the seaside where I greet the local fishmongers and the merchants returning from the East with exotic trinkets and fragrances.  Then I walk back home through the winding cobblestoned streets, put on my trinkets and douse myself in myrrh, and eat thirty-seven oysters for breakfast.  After that I plant myself on the couch and watch videos of triathletes falling down, until those bivalves start working their aperient magic and I adjourn to the restroom where I read and reread copies of my own books until I am voided.  (My books make a great holiday gift, by the way, though not the copies I keep in the restroom.)

Speaking of exotic trinkets from the East, it's hard to imagine I'll ever get tired of the falling-down triathletes, but if the unthinkable happens and I actually do I'll then turn to this equally beguiling promotional video for Tiso electronic shifting that was forwarded to me by Klaus of Cycling Inquisition:



I was sold on this stuff as soon as I heard that first smokin' guitar lick, but if that's not enough for you consider it has twelve speeds:

Those tridorks totally would have scaled that hill with an extra cog.

Not only that, but you can also shift remotely:

It's not hard to imagine the many uses for such a feature.  For example, most aspiring Freds hire coaches now because they can't figure out how to ride their bicycles on their own, so for an extra fee they can pay their coaches to select their gears for them too.  Also, when you're riding the home trainer you can have your butler or manservant shift for you while you read the Wall Street Journal.

Most impressive of all though is that the Tiso wireless shifting system has been battle-tested by this guy:

If it's so cold he needs a balaclava then I'm not sure why he isn't wearing gloves, but maybe it's to showcase the heated brake levers.

In any case, while Tiso may not have invented electronic shifting then they've certainly perfected it.  As for the bicycle itself, it's difficult to verify who first came up with the concept, but according to one man with a great deal of Italian pride and a YouTube account it certainly wasn't those sneaky Koreans:

This guy's not letting those Koreans get away with anything.  By the way, here's the article he's talking about, which appears to be a primitive attempt at humor:

Sure, it's a little dry now, but I can assure you that shit was fucking hilarious in 1904.

By the way, while wading through the New York Times archives I also discovered that the first-ever New York City bicycle crackdown took place in 1893:

Only then the excuses were a lot more creative:

Miss Douar is the first woman arrested under the ordinance governing bicycle riding in the streets, recently passed by the Board of Aldermen.  When arrested she claimed that her lamp was burning when she left home, and that it must have been extinguished by a gust of wind.  She was taken to the Thirtieth Street Station and given in charge of the matron.

I too blame the mighty god Zephyrus when I get pulled over for riding without a lantern on my steampunk recumbent:

By the way, when you're riding a steampunk recumbent you should always wear a pith helment:

And obviously an astonishing steampunk monocle:

But while recumbents may be timelessly dorky, if you had asked me whether cyclocross was still the bikey sport all the cool people were doing, I'd have said yes--until this morning, which is when I saw this cringeworthy display which I'd strongly suggest you don't watch:


This should cause all those new cyclocross converts to defect in droves--and when I say "defect" I mean they're going to stop saying the're totally going to do a 'cross race one day once their custom bikes are finished.

SRAM really could learn a thing or two from the marketing department over at Tiso.

Wednesday Is As Wednesday Does

Given the awful news coming out of Portland I'm doing my best to remain positive, so instead of contemplating what it is about America that turns people into gun-wielding maniacs (and don't say it's the guns, because everybody knows if we were all armed to the teeth like the Second Amendment wants us to be that this sort of thing would never happen) I'll instead celebrate the capture of the "hipster bandit," as forwarded by a reader:

So what makes him a hipster bandit instead of just a regular bandit?  Here's what:


Oglesby earned the nickname the "Hipster Bandit" after a witness in the August robbery told police that he "looked like a hipster."

Thanks to that witness, police were able to narrow the list of suspects down to only the entire population of Portland.  And if you're wondering what forces a hipster to turn to a life of crime, the answer is something called "heroin:"

Once arrested, Oglesby repeated to authorities, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry,'' the complaint says. He told police he was addicted to heroin.


I think the lesson here is obvious: Stay off the heroin, because it can turn you into a total hipster.  Also, buy yourself a gun, so you don't have to rob banks with cowardly notes like some kind of hipster.

(Or, if hugs are not available, as is the case in most of America's broken homes, simply substitute hugs with guns--and plenty of prescription anti-depressants, which don't count as drugs.)

Speaking of Portland, another reader tells me there's actually a show called "American Hipster," and they made an episode all about the "freak bikes" there:


And it opens with somebody who would be an adult anywhere else in the country playing ring toss on someone's tombstone:

"We're in the cemetery and it's stupid dark out.  There are three tires and a bike I might not be familiar with riding, and I've gotta try to get as many tires as I can over the obelisk of a tombstone that may or may not be lit up with a bike light."

I always thought people moved to cities to escape the suburbs and find themselves, but I guess they do it so they can continue acting like bored teenagers well into their 30s--behavior which is often mistaken for being "inventive:"

Until recently the term "hipster" was considered a hopelessly dated cliché used only by the bitter and uncool (that's why I used it), but now it would seem that the idea is to claim it and thereby "own" it, just as other minorities have done with their own slurs.  My theory for this is that there's now a resurgence in hipster pride happening in America's trendier cities, since most formerly hipster neighborhoods (Williamsburg, for example) have since been taken over by real estate developers and garden variety rich douchebags.  Whereas once the hipsters displaced people, now they themselves have been displaced, and so they're acquiring a new veneer of sincerity and humility--unless they manage to make more money, in which case they themselves become garden variety rich douchebags.  By the way, did you know that hipsters are also bikes?  Because they are:

They're also "dangerous:"

This is evidenced by their willingness to rob banks with notes, and to eat donuts shaped like penises:

(He's got two fingers right on that donut's scranus.)

Anyway, after defining "hipster" in various ways the show goes on to explore Portland's freak bike scene:

And to talk to Jake Ryder, a freak bike fabricator:

"I started a new project, it's a drift trike?  Something I can take down the west hills over here in Portland, so it's kind of like an adult Big Wheel tricycle?"

I object very strongly to his use of the word "adult."  Just because it's bigger and he's 30 doesn't mean the word applies.

And here are some American hipsters owning the hopelessly dated cliché that is themselves:

And here's a freak bike that I suspect has toe overlap:

And here's Dabe:

(Right now a bunch of people are going, "Hey, it's Dabe!")

The show never explains who Dabe is, the implication being that if you don't already know then you're a total loser.

Anyway, my first instinct was to laugh off the whole freak bike thing as a childish waste of time.  Actually, that's still the way I feel about it, but then I realized that there's almost no difference between freak bikes and Fredliness--which is also a childish waste of time, something I'm acutely aware of being a latent Fred myself.  (Really, I'm sort of a Fred in remission since I think I've finally managed to quit bike racing and leg shaving, but there's always the possibility of a relapse.)  Consider the "Dead Babies:"

Here are two (physical) adults who actually call themselves "Arizona Dave" and "B-Lez" explaining the club's "philosophy:"

"We find these things?  Like?  Old bikes?  They used to be somebody's baby?  Like, we Frankenstein them back together? "*

*[Please note that this is not a verbatim quote, I tried to transcribe it but it hurt my brain far too much.]

Sure, they're gigantic nerds in biker vests, and sure it's embarrassing that they actually have a philosophy.  (I would have respected them a lot more if they'd simply explained themselves by saying, "Dead babies are awesome.")  At the same time, is wearing a leather vest that says "Dead Babies" any sillier than wearing a Lycra kit with the name of some local business on it that you pay to wear?  I'd argue no, and in fact I'd go so far as to say it's less silly.  Same thing goes for the goofy nicknames.  Is calling yourself "Arizona Dave" any goofier than calling yourself the "club champion" or crafting a bio for yourself on your team's website in which you actually refer to yourself as a "rouleur?"  (In amateur bike racing "rouleur" just means you suck even worse than the "climbers" and the "sprinters.")  Also no, since Arizona Dave is probably from Arizona, but the "club champion" is only the champion of the handful of people who are stupid enough to wake up that early on a weekend and ride their bikes fast before they've even had a decent bowel movement.

And what about this group ride in which the freak bikers all set out after reciting some line from a Roger Corman movie?

Yes, that too seems ridiculous--until you consider the people waking up at 4:30am, putting on Lycra outfits with local business names on them, and riding around at top speed with full colons.

At least the freak bikers probably went to the bathroom.

It's even true of the bikes themselves.  When you think about it, is this:

Any more idiotic than this?

Really, the only reason I might not pick the top bike(s) over the bottom bike is that I don't have any friends with whom to ride it.

Anyway, if nothing else, this video should serve as a wake-up call.  Let he who is without Fredliness cast the first u-lock, and so forth.  Also, cyclocross racers are not exempted from any of this, since this year cyclocross has officially gone Full Fred and is becoming increasingly indistinguishable from road racing.

That's why you should skip all of it and just get a bike sauna, forwarded by another reader:

(Two shirtless men enjoy a playful frond fight in the back of their bike sauna.)

If this bike sauna's a rockin'...

Safety Last: Honk If You're Pantsless!

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