I really want to talk about The Faint concert last night, and put up pics of the after party where we talked to Todd and Jacob, and Nick and Pete of Shy Child. And I really want to talk about the wonderful designers’ forum we had today with the Rob and Georgia Buchert, aka the phenominal Tryst Press.

But seriously, I cannot stop thinking about this story: Bus passenger beheaded seat mate. It’s such a weird thing to dwell on; it’s not like I knew anyone on the bus or whatever, but it really has me troubled. My mind keeps wandering back to it. It’s sick and horrible and awful and horrifying and I just can’t get it out of my head.

I mean, I am just speechless.

Lately I have been riding the same stretch of road everyday, the same 13.14 miles over and over and over again. It’s become a sort of meditation. It’s the longest stretch of uncrowded road, and it begins two blocks from my house and ends two cities over.

This week I have started taking it at speed, and have worked up to keeping an average pace of 22mph at about 80-90 rpm. However, when asked what I was listening to, I surprised a friend (who was expecting, I guess, some sort of fast paced music, Now 88,000 or what have you) by responding “Pete Mayle’s French Lessons: Adventures with Fork, Knife, and Corkscrew.”

I’ve already been through this book a couple of times, but it never, never gets old. This is one of those instances where the concept and the content completely override the style and shortcomings of the work — a fifth grader could write about his adventures at the French country table for his “What I did this Summer” and I would still be rapt with attention. Don’t get me wrong, Mayle puts it down sharply, excelling at the art of the well turned phrase and showing exceptional candor as usual. I’m just saying I would listen to it even were it to be written and read alound by Stephen Hawkings.

The problem I am having however, is that I find myself desperately longing for a turn off on my riding route, an off-ramp of sorts, to the Provençal country side. Everything, dinner especially, seems to lose its luster after listening to Peter describe his.

OK, look. JUST. I mean… I cannot, seriously, form a coherent thought — so blind is my absolute hatred of the se— flames, flames on the side of my face. Burning, heaving…

Why is the Segway even a real thing!?

The blahgs have been all a buzz lately after Dean Kamen’s announcement that, in response to high gas prices, Americans are (almost too predictably) responding by spending $5000 a pop on Segways.

STOP IT. What is going on, America. Are walking hard? In what soft, liquified portion of anyone’s brain is this object registering as a viable transportation option?

The only solution that the Segway has provided, is that to the riddle that has been needling the world since 1952, after Hohberger filed his patent, which riddle is most commonly stated thusly: “I really like my pogo stick, but my heart cannot help but pine, surely there must be some way, some other locomotive solution that will propel me with an even greater degree of jack-assery and make me look like even more aggressively lazy and stupid. Where shall our delicate knees look to for deliverance?” We had high hopes for the propeller beanie, but that was a bust. We considered returning to the velocipede, but who would manufacture? We thought we had it with the Razor Scooter, but it seemed so common. Fortunately, Kamen stepped up, er, drifted up — creepily, noislessly — to the plate.

Good thing that plate was not at the top of a short flight of stairs, or like, difficult to access, by which I mean over a curb, or on the other side of a deep gutter.

The cops here on campus have begun using them, and this was almost the tipping point for me. Because — think about it. First of all, there is not a consecutive 100 yards on our campus (save for the main level) that isn’t separated by stairs at UVU. The police office itself is on the 3rd floor.

And perhaps more importantly, the Segway invokes no sense of respect, no acknowledgment of authority, not even any recognition that is in many cases crucial to a police officer’s position. When I see a police officer booking it at a sprint down a hall, I get out of the way. I realize he has to Get Somewhere. When I see a police officer gliding at a top speed of 12 mph on a Segway, I think “What a total jackass.” My instinct is not to get out of the way, in fact, it’s the opposite. When I see people on Segways my immediate, inborn reaction is “Impede at all costs!” Occasionally, I get an urge similar to what I imagine Polynesians and Icelanders must have been feeling when they left deformed or crippled babies at the ocean’s edge to be swept to sea, or on large open rocks to die of exposure: “Protect the colony! Cull! Cleanse the herd!” I want them gone. GONE. They must not pass on their genetic material! This must not infest the next generation.

I mean, seriously. SEGWAYS. $200 dollars will get you a bicycle that rolls. Rollerblades (Lord love you) will only set you back $150. And I mean, in a real pinch, there are always, you know, your legs. For FREE.

Not even free really. Less than free! They will pay you to use them! They will give you endorphins! They will thank you! Thank you for letting them get out and stretch! Even you, my imagined typical Segway user! Your legs, your own legs, those pendulous little fleshy bits you rest your KFC buckets on! Those wiggly sacs of cellulite straining your purple Wal-Mart sweatpants, so dutifully holding back that hideous tide! Those legs will thank you! They will begin the process of ferrying off the gobs of shite blocking your arteries, slowly siphoning the sugar away from your steaming, wheezing, clanking pancreata! They will sing your praises, even as they crush the very last bits of cartilage sandwiched between your elephantine femora and tibiae.

Why, America. Wherefore the Segway?

1. I have not written here in a while, in my little moleskine or in the ventricle, because the week has just been so hard. Between the anniversary of my best friend's death (which by the way, if covered by the local paper, would have borne the headline "Local Teens Celebrate Memory of Fallen Friend with Lame Dinner and Forgetting About Him Completely"), and my family moving a billion miles away to Boise, I just been an emotional wrecking ball. I will demolish your home and office buildings with my torrential, crushing, mood swings. I am unstoppable.
2. I have never ridden the bust after dark. Never ever, maybe once? I feel like I am rolling around in a gigantic museum exhibit, and the me and the bus driver, we are on display: look at us! The world is dark, but here in the bus it is a well-lit extravaganza, it is a party. Except, just me and the bus driver were invited, and I'm pretty sure I'm only here to confrim and notarize the existance of the very tangible Back of the Bus, just by sitting in it, bouncing along.
3. I cannot tell where I am at the moment, here on the bus. I mean, I know I am somwhere between Provo and Orem, but the exact location is a mystery. I have not been paying attention, see, I have been reading instead, and seeing as I am the only person here on the bus, the driver has given up on announcing the stops. So yes, it is too dark outside to see where I am and I kind of feel panicky. Because what if I have missed my stop? What if I end up in like San Diego, or Guam? Where are we?
   
   All I can see out my window, out the windows around me, are the disembodied glows of lit windows in the night -- and they aren't really helping. You can only tell so much about a house's location by its window blinds, by the stolen glimpses you catch of the inside. What type of house are you, TV in the Window? Arts n' Craft? Duplex? Rambling Victorian? Where are we? Who are these lights? There's got to be like, five whole people behind each one. People who, as it would seem, do not care for streetlamps.
   
   Ah, finally a street I know; the gigantic gaping maw of a dead theater, of an unlit marquee, a relic of Movie Nights and Family Outings. We are on University Ave. in Provo. There is the bridge, and the fireplace store underneath. Here is all of Provo below me, shimmering and stuttering -- a billion, tiny, copper lights.
4. I am clenching my teeth as I write all this, on the back of the bus, with my feet kicked up. Its just something I do when I write: clench then flex then clench and, other! side! repeat! But I've been doing it this whole time, this whole 40 minutes of pure busological adventure, and now, my gums are a little bit swollen. Not a lot, just a little, but enough to make my stitches brush up against the inside of my cheek. If I really grope with my tongue, I can feel them, nestled like a tiny spiny caterpillar between my gums and cheek.
   
   And, I think, if you were kissing me right now, passionately, violently; I think you would probably feel them, too.
5. This is my stop. I call out thanks to my bus driver, but my gratitude is blotted out by the hydraulic hiss of the doors, ushering me out into the night.
   August 25, 2003 // Comments (4)
   
   Keep Me
   Shelved under [920: Biography, genealogy, insignia]

   1. Had a dream about Steve last night. He wasn't dead, he'd just been unconsious for 11 months, and then hiding out with Lorina in San Diego while he recuperated.

      When we agreed to meet up in the back of a Chinese food restaurant he came up to me wearing no shirt and a sash of neon-yellow shoelaces. I realized how tan he was and pulled the shoelaces down towards his waist; his tan-line was severe.

      Steve was one of those red-heads who managed to get a tan and not just freckle.

      I gave him an enormous hug and he whispered something to me; I woke up crying with tears collecting in my collar bone.

   2. On the seat in front of me on the bus (the 830 line, 10:45am), is a boy with a shaved head. He has handsome bisceps and yellow striped shirt. His face is badly pock-marked with acne scars. His brow is knit tightly, and he is writing poetry in a red notebook. A stolen glance; and the poem he is writing is called "Keep Me."

      He isn't very happy with the way the poem is turning out; he keeps crossing whole lines out with angry pen-scratching, and furioulsy scribbling notes in the margins.

      I want to ask him who the poem is for; if it is for himself, or for someone else, and if they are the type of person who will understand how much he is putting in -- if they are the type who will hold the poem to their chest afterwards and close their eyes while the words swim inside them, or if they will put it in a shoebox with ticket stubs and trinkets and dance-photos and dead flowers.

   3. Ryan makes excellent yakisoba, and even better chicken-breasts with tempura. Ryan knows a school teacher from Idaho who saw "Shakespear in Love" one-hundred-and-twenty-seven times in the theater. On Ryan's bedroom wall there is a Japanese poster from Osaka that has directions to a whore-house; it is magenta with midnight-blue and white writing.

   4. I really want to get Aco's new CD ("Irony"), as I listen to 'Machi' all the time. Actually, 'Machi' is on a playlist I made in iTunes called "Quietly Softly," which has a bunch of songs by The Album Leaf, Matmos, Múm, Radiohead, Zero7, Lamb, and Sigur Rós. I listen to this playlist non-stop.

      Did I tell you I got all my Sigur Rós CDs stolen at the bus stop? Because, I did. Even my autographed copy of Ágætis Byrjun.

   August 10, 2003 // Comments (3)
   
   And Gravity
   Shelved under [388: Transportation]

   Sometimes, when the bus pulls into the station, people think it is going to stop on one side of the platform, when really it is going to stop on the other. And so, we (the people riding the bus) are hurtled around the concrete median; while they (the people on the platform) remain stationary -- pivoting like silent lighthouses, watching the bus round the bend.

   And from within the confines of the bus, it looks as though we, and the bus itself, are tethered to them and their distant shore; fastened by some invisible umbilical cord, as we swing wide the arc around them.

   And we are temporary satellites, and they are momentary planets, and we are all rocketing across the galaxy at speeds unprecedented. We are heavenly bodies -- we are temporal spheres, hanging in this shimmering firmament like giant toy balloons.

   But then, the bus stops; and people get on, and people get off, and the spell is broken, and we are all peoples and busses again.

   June 20, 2003 // Comments (0)