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I'll
scrape the mold I
Still Get Stoned If
it makes you happy
The Minnesota Multiple Physic Personality Index (MMPI) is often used in abbreviated form to screen job applicants, one of many reasons the Self spent what has passed for a work life self employed. That aside an MMPI correctly interpreted can identify two personality traits to a margin of error approaching infinity: those who will do physical harm and those who will be attracted to fundamentalist religion. It is corollary that such trenchant disorders are not ameliorated by psychotherapy, chemicals and certainly not facts. Resignation is best against such overwhelming odds and thus the Self runs around corners to avoid both the beaters and the bleaters. However, the following tales demonstrate that avoidance is not always possible. 1. Chris Walker, aka, the Vampire and Living Dead joined Labor this year. The price was steep; however, in the end he could not turn down the offer of a silk lined copper coffin and a fresh supply of stoopid riders to suck dry in the furnace of mountain races. Now, anyone who has seen Chris knows that he is not the first person you would choose for a game of tug rope. No, certainly not he who is easily mistaken as the advance man for a famine. No, hardly he who would make the four horsemen feel pity. No, clearly not he to whom even Laura Flynn Boyle looks bloated. In
2003 Chris rode for Team RPM, who for reasons that become obvious
is heretofore known as Team R-PMS. The owner was so upset with the
defection that he determined Chris's Team Bike had to be confiscated
PDQ, as in right now. It happens that Labor's own Genghis Hahn resides in Never Land. He was graduated number one in his Law School Class at Berkeley, which while paling against his National Champion Jersey, is itself no mean feat. As it happens he also knows something about reading contracts and remarkably has been able to overcome that handicap -a trait most often fatal to lawyers who actually try cases and win. It turns out that Vampire had a contract that provided the bike would be his provided he stayed on RPMS until the end of the season, and yes he did. The matter is now in Court. The Self expects that California law does protect Vampires. Any day now the case will probably be the subject of a Court TV exclusive. Now, while encountering a PMSer in need of Xanax is scary enough, the prospect of coming up against a Holy Roller beset with the urge to hurt is an entirely other and much uglier conflict.
Como Street Worlds takes place most every Sunday in the hills and valleys east of Tustin Farm right off the I-5, in Sunny Southern California. A few weeks ago a group of fifty was powering through the valley. The peloton was occupying the bike lane and a foot or so of the roadway. A gentleman in a brand new blue mini van-this one apparently did not have the standard testosterone draining driver's seat- approached and being concerned for the safety of the cyclists chose not to pass but instead to urge the cyclists to get off the road. The riders misinterpreted the driver's kind intent and quite inappropriately acted in a distinctly but typically selfish manner by refusing to ride into the ditch. Instead a few miscreants threw water bottles at the kind Gentlemen's vehicle. Encountering incoming fire the driver quite rightly retaliated by trying to push a Laborite off the verdant edge, a move that resulted in the car door being kicked. At this point the kind soul approached MKA who had yet to play a role in this farce. For a time MKA tried to explain that the law permitted cyclists to share the road to which the glassy eyed fulminator explained "I only answer to God's Law" at which time our intrepid MKA came to know fear, smelly underarm fear, real time fear. By now our much belabored in the work of enforcing divine law lunatic was blocking traffic and a support vehicle driven by a coach called a lowly secular CHIP who will no doubt come to regret putting God's Officer on the ground as he would your normal foaming with rage criminal. Now, this should be the end of the story but of course nut cases don't go down easy. There is instead a peculiar but quite predictable course followed by criminals, cultists and parenthetically obsessive compulsives, i.e. they can fit all facts into a scenario that puts them in the right. Yes, this is so. It is also extant that efforts to reason and even worse commiserate with psychopaths and fanatics only result in giving credence to their accommodations with reality. And so the tale expands. It seems that our lunatic driver tells the police that he was calmly on his way to Church when a pack of craven cyclists, not obeying the Sabbath, scared his wife and children and, depraved as they are, attacked his car. The attackers had surrounded his brand new family van and despite all his efforts prevented him from extricating his family from the encirclement. After all everyone knows that a family van is no match for arm propelled water bottles and shoes with cleats. Fortunately, there are impartial witnesses and thus the riders are spared arrest. Nevertheless, this is all precedent to the unraveling propitiated by the rider who came to reason. Lawyers who consistently lose have the numbing habit of always anticipating defenses and thus give great help to defense counsel who merely have to point out that even their opponents admit their cases are bad. And what follows is example A of how to run yourself off the road. It turns out that a calm, centered, and most pointedly not Labor rider came by to tell the officer his story. He told what had happened but just could not leave it alone. Instead he had to give hugs, suggest the criminal consider somber thought and offer that perhaps some of the riders-but not his Simply calm team members-had exacerbated the situation. Just as expected the lunatic took this as an admission of guilt and right the very next day contacted the ameliorator's sponsor to protest the indignity. Now, a reporter from the Orange County Register is working on a story about hoards of cyclists that hold up traffic in the valley. Just to be fair and in the fantastical event that our driver is charged with battery the Self can suggest an alternate defense to the "I was attacked by water bottle grenades" line. The suggestion also has the benefit of appealing to your normal corrupted soul. It is the Self's experience that men are often put off from doing what they want because they "have to go to Church." The Self expects there are some ladies forced into the same situation but admittedly Self has had limited as in zero entanglements with women who would even contemplate such horror. It follows then that there might be at least much mitigation to be gained with subtle suggestion that picking a fight with cyclists was a perfectly sane act what with the alternative being sitting through migraine inducing incantations. This does pretty much depend upon having a jury of men who live free from such tyranny and probably would also not be very fungible if the lunatic insists on spouting homilies. Self righteous clients rarely fail to assist mightily in getting themselves convicted. Get paid up front, and a lot. 3. (The student who writes Bella Veloce, Road to the 2004 Little 500, gets high compliment from Self for having the courage to write what she feels. What follows truly is in jest.) An email from a particularly disturbed and loathsome rider suggested that great insight and inspiration could be found in some sun-dialer journal posted at Truesport. It is about a quest to win some women's race at Indiana University. The last time the Self took out on the Very Diminutive 500 he received a jumble from the Foundation suggesting a lack of understanding. Prophetically the theme of our Bella Sol Donna di Ciclista e' che loro non capiscono mi (1). In the journal Bella is explaining to parent type figure the spin off benefits of totally focused race preparation. It then yet another theme on the "If I am successful at this I will be able to do anything or at least great things." The number of Dreamers now serving coffee and selling cell phone cards puts paid to this nonsense. Much
as it is romantic to indulge the idea that our Bella's inner flame
burns with an astonishing brilliance that few can begin to appreciate
the grim reality is that hers is too well known to all who have
touched up against the 12K Dream. And unfortunately, no matter how
much she may want it to be not so the brilliance will dim just as
the electricity of what passes for other first loves. Elegance however
is distinctly not the Self's forte; so, let us move to a view more
in keeping with a mind long ravaged. Anomie is for some a very unpleasant condition and that our Bella finds her needed purpose in lifting weights at unspeakably early hours and going on frostbite rides is fine with the Self, forever a great advocate of dismissing other's expectations. It probably needs to be pointed out here that people who smile before noon and ride below seventy are- in the opinion of par excellence rider Nita- persons who should be shot, and quickly. This evident proof of madness would seem adequate explanation and a good place to stop; but that would be too easy. The most excellent racer Druber always refers to bike racing as getting to play, and no matter how much you might want it to be otherwise it is not noble, spiritual, empowering and for American based racers most certainly not a profession. Likewise four sundialers desiring to win a race is hardly a demimonde (2). Riding bikes does not a renegade band make. It is just fun and that should be enough, really it should. CODA The Self went to So Cal for the Boulevard Road Race in the High Desert east of San Diego and the Saint Valentine's Massacre. The BORED: Boulevard: MKA:
Labor Mark Scott, Labor: Easy Hippstar:
Labor: Makes trip from NoCal. Bored with it all. Bill Stone (1)
The English in the article puts proof to Bella's inquisitor's apparent
concern that not much was being learned at College. For example
in the first paragraph Bella writes "that person didn't know
who "I was" when she clearly means "who I am"
as she is writing about herself today and not what she "was"
before she found cycling. Then, in the next sentence the singular
"person" who was questioning Bella becomes the plural
"they", leaving the question of whether one person or
two or more were concerned about her balance. However, it is admittedly
petty to suggest that being understood requires at least a passing
acquaintance with the grammar features of Bella's computer. If Indiana
University does not recognize English as a predicate to attending
then neither does the Chronicles. Besides, someday someone besides
an idiot cyclist is going to read this and point out that the Self's
writing is not quite right, indeed. |
