Dealing with dysfunction and people I love, and the Feed

Want a train wreck? Try combining a depressed Trans* person, and Mrs. the Poet’s denying of the existence of depression, forgetting the fact that I have been dealing with varying degrees of depression ever since the wreck that temporarily killed me. The seismic shocks have been rocking the house all afternoon. And I mean seismic, Mrs. the Poet can be very … passionate about things. I love her (obviously) but she has blind spots in her worldview. I probably do too. I think everyone has to one degree or another. It’s just that this particular blind spot makes it hard to explain about the situation. This is similar to trying to talk to a person about climate change when they don’t believe there is any such thing. The outcome is seldom pretty.

Up first, more anti-cyclist H8 on display in the media. Double standards on bicycle safety? Two hit-and-run wrecks, one a pedestrian with lots of publicity and information about the wreck, the other an un-named cyclist with no information other than he was killed on a particular highway and was about the same age as the pedestrian.

Hey, a city is taking responsibility for creating infrastructure that gets people killed or injured, and for a driver that t-boned a car with a dumptruck. Denver City Council OKs settling 2 crash cases involving cyclist, motorist for $235K The cyclist was caught in a road seam that flipped him over the handlebars, the driver was hit by a truck and “severely injured”.

In the UK, a cyclist can take a cycling course instead of getting a ticket. Cambridge cyclists to face course or fine if they break law Note that of the three infractions listed 2 are reactions to crappy infrastructure, not things that are in themselves dangerous to others. The other one is riding without lights.

From Oz comes a report of a highly biased and inflammatory slur against cyclists on a popular game show. Family Feud question about ‘something annoying a cyclist might do’ causes backlash The comments are priceless worthless.

A bit of US infrastructure news. Motivated to ride a bike? Bike-share company changes name Another sign that Portland has lost its mojo, as Alta Bike Share leaves Portland and fires all the bikey people that were running the company.

And quiet day, those are all the links I could find today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

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The annual Yule fight has begun, on Wreck-Free Sunday

One of the byproducts of the over-commercialization of Christmas has been the pushback of the acceptable decoration dates for both the first and last “acceptable” decorations going up. And as the “last” date moves closer to September the intensity of the annual fight over putting up the Yule decorations in Casa de El Poeta also increases, because my date hasn’t changed from what it has always been (12/20). I have been accused of many things because of this with “Grinch” being one of the kinder things. I’m sorry, but I’m firmly of the opinion that the “specialness” of a holiday gets less so as the dates of the holiday get moved further apart, and for me “Yule” starts 12/21 and ends 1/1 the next year. So, the decorations go up 12/20 and come down 1/2 AFAIAC. If that makes me a Grinch, then I’m a Grinch. Grinch, grinch, grinch, I’m being all grinchy. I still haven’t gotten the hang of being green and covered with fur like Oscar the Grouch, but I am embracing my grinchyness. When does Festivus begin?…

I really should be promoting my new hat some more. Not just because I really like it but because I have come to the realization that the magicks I placed on the first hat need to be stopped. I publicly declared the first hat as a double bird flipped at the guy that hit me and a “return to sender” of his intentions, and within a few months of making this public, the guy was dead by his own hand. Thing is I didn’t know that, so I subconsciously kept the spell going until the hat wore out completely, then bought another one that was almost identical and kept it until it wore out declaring it as “the replacement” for the first hat, which literally transferred the spell to it. So I have this spell working like mad with no target left alive, which is not good. So, very soon I will do a public ceremony where I burn the old hats and declare that spell at an end, and declare a new spell for the public good. The new spell will target the powers-that-be to generate some real (Dutch CROW manual) bicycle infrastructure for the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell.

New hat.

Old hat.

There is a debate (of sorts) on the use of HiViz by cyclists. What do you think? Encouraging high-vis gear I think this is one step removed from victim blaming, but what do you think?

Today is one of those days that I have a concept running around in my head, but no words to attach to that concept. This is one of the facets of aphasia, the worst of them. Most of the time I just have a word or two that I have to track down inside my head and eventually I do that and finish the sentence and then the rest of the blog post. This time I lost the whole shooting match, a whole paragraph or more. And if you don’t think that’s frustrating, then you have never written for a living…

So, to save what is left of my dignity and sanity, I will cut it off right here rather than continue to beat my head against the biggest writer’s block in the world.

PSA, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

I like myself better doing things this way, and the Feed

That headline takes some explaining, and I’m just the guy to do that. I mean it’s my blog, I’m the only one with the password, and I’m the guy that typed in the headline. I’m literally the only one that can explain that headline…

OK comedy aside, since I quit reading the wreck reports every day I feel better about myself, a little more every day. I mean it hasn’t helped much against my PTSD, but it has helped with my depression to not read about people getting killed or injured several times a day. I still get a wreck sometimes in the infrastructure links, but this is not anywhere near as bad as it was just a few weeks ago when I quit doing the wrecks.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: The Times says every driver should ride a bike, and cops throw the book at a Hawthorne rider Not to be confused with our other Daily Tedd.

From the same area, some people can’t tell the difference between a sidewalk and bicycle infrastructure. San Jose enacts partial ban on sidewalk bicycle riding downtown Just FYI “sidewalks are not bicycle infrastructure” is a tag that has been in use a long time in this blog.

And a little closer to home we get another case of inadequate infrastructure. One year after cyclist’s death, safety of Houston streets remains unclear ahem Unless something is done to tame the multi-ton killing machines, Houston’s streets will remain killing fields. Or deadly streams, the simile kinda breaks down there. But the problem is entirely that of the motor vehicle, unless severely restrained, kills indiscriminately.

A NJ town mourns a principal architect of their bike plan as he is killed riding a bicycle. Death of a bicyclist in a bike-friendly town

Difficult as it may seem now, motor vehicles only exist because bicycles did first. We are the architects of our own destruction. The Secret History of Cars Begins With Bicycles I find it fascinating that Hitler hisself tried to eliminate the bicycle from the history of the motor vehicle, leading to a new way to invoke Godwin’s law with bicycle-haters: “You know who else hated bicycles? HITLER!”

A little Lifestyle from the most deadliest state in the US to walk or rode a bike. Teen killed in bicycle crash remembered as brilliant student RIP

As much as I hate to admit it this might be the best cycling accessory to become available this century. PEZ Test: Fly6 Camera Review Get one, with bike camera video becoming accepted as evidence in wreck prosecution they may be the key to getting the idiot driver that hits you off the roads. The idiot driver that hit me took himself off the roads with a drunk driving wreck.

And I finally ran out of links and reasons to avoid reading them and posting them. I’m done today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the unkillable badass Poet