You're not the chosen one. I'm not the chosen one. We don't need anyone. Let's not choose anyone.

So, before I headed up to Boston, I cracked open SoulSeek for the first time in a few months, and trolled around looking for a couple records. Shockingly, I came across more than a few users holding the new Cursive album, Happy Hollow. And yeah, I totally downloaded it, even though it's got a street date of August 22nd.

And I gotta say, I was a fan of the band before, but HOLY FUCKING SHIT this record is good. As I noted to a few friends, someone kept Mike Mogis sober for the production of this record, cause he seems to have actually figured out how to make a band sound tight, for once. Much of what he's touched as a producer is the sort of thing you hear and think, "This probably sounds incredible....live.", but this sounds fucking flawless, and is helped along considerably by the band finding their way out of attempting to continously mine bad judgment and emotional paralysis for the sake of "art"; instead going straight for the jugular with classical American small-town fundamentalism. Meanwhile, there's a sarcasm and lightheartedness to it that even go so far as to produce (dare I say) dancey moments.

I rarely get excited about music anymore, unless someone I know personally is involved. But this record made me want to listen to music more often, and made me want to give a shit about what's being produced these days. Let's see if it lasts.

In other news... after flipping my KHS frame and bouncing it off the side of a van (both requiring ER visits, both within six weeks of each other), I opted to hang it up and rebuild the Kogswell frame, until ol' trusty can be confirmed as true, blasted, and re-painted. And by the looks of the Kogswell site, I might have in my posession a now quite limited frame; looks as though they've discontinued their single-speed/reverse-dropout model. Hm.

Anyhoo, I built it up with most of the components I'd built onto the KHS, plus a fucking fierce Connex BMX chain. Actually, it's two chains (for which I dropped a grand total of $120), due to BMX chains being sized for the shorter chaindrive of an actual BMX bike. As you can see below, this thing is freakin' apocalypse-proof.



This weekend, I'll be trading out the Bianchi Pista drops for a set of Nitto time trial bars, and shortly thereafter upgrading my rear tire to match the front. Ultimately, I'd like to build up a different wheelset for this bike, with a front brake for a lever I got years ago that mounts into the end of proper time trial bars. When they were still making this frame, Kogswell (for some reason entirely in conflict with commonsense aesthetics and weight considerations) brazed every conceiveable mount onto it. Front and rear rack mounts, two water bottle mounts, lugs, mounts for running a rear brake cable through the top-tube, etc. It's a lot of dead weight that makes for a less-than-ideal commuter. But it'd make for a perfect hauling bike -- getting gear to demos, getting a dish to a potluck intact, possibly even getting one of the cats to the vet.

For now, the idea is to have a sturdy, powerful, and reliable ride for my forthcoming two month working "vacay" in Montpelier, VT. I've secured a room in a 3BR "luxury condo" with several other anarchists, on the outer edge of the town, allegedly at the top of quite a hill. So, with less than three weeks to go, it seemed time to start getting shit together, rather than have my ride falling apart or blowing a chain while crawling down into town one morning.

Speaking of bike dorkdom, I've spent part of my weekend reading Travis Hugh Culley's The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power. Initially, I found it a bit silly and pretensious, but after the first chapter or so, I fell in love with it. I highly recommend it, even to folks who aren't particularly privy to courier culture, or even bike culture. It's a quite accessible and catchy read, and has a roundabout way of touching on some fairly serious subjects (both political and existential). I generally don't pick up stuff like this, but I'm glad I did. I'd frankly like to shake the guy's hand, and thank him.

In closing, there's a demo outside the White House tomorrow afternoon, regarding Israel's recent insistence on bombing half its neighbors into the Stone Age, over an explicitly military action, for which they've now sacrificed probably 150 civillian lives. Any of you local yokels are cordially invited to join us. We'll be meeting afterward, to begin strategizing further action around this, and it's fair to say that the DC Palestine-Solidarity community has stirred from its slumber over all this - a community I would argue has a great deal to offer folks interested in engaging, community-based, direct action, organizing with diverse folks who boast (gasp!) reasonable social skills and a healthy sense of humor. It's perhaps sad that it took this insanity to stir us all out of a dormant year or two, but it's not like you were doing anything exciting with your summer anyway [wink].

Nighty-night.