Completed '72 Paramount

Derailleurs: Campagnolo NR
Crankset: 52/42 Campagnolo NR
Freewheel: Sachs-Maillard 13-26 (7 speed)
Brake levers and calipers: Campagnolo SR
Downtube shifter: Simplex Retrofriction
Handlebars and stem: Cinelli
Rims: Mavic
Hubs: Campagnolo Record
Pedals: Campagnolo NR
Saddle: Brooks Professional
Bottlecage: TA

A Car You Don't Drive, A House You Don't Live In, A Girlfriend You've Never Kissed

Joe said he had a black Monte Carlo Super Sport. None of us had seen it and his parents drove him to work. Joe said he had a home that he bought out of foreclosure, but the home was still being worked on 5 years later and Joe lived with his parents. Joe said he was going to marry Elise, who worked the paint aisle, and he was going to take her to Italy. Italy was his homeland and he had family there who would welcome them. But Elise had reported him to management for harassment and asked to be moved to the other end of the store.

Joe said he had been strangled by the boss at his last job, by a Mexican named Augie, and that very soon he was to receive a large settlement. Despite the litigation he was calling daily to get his old job back in the meat department. Any day now he would have it. Augie and he could work things out. “But what we need ‘round this place is a union,” Joe said. “So that management will give us some respect.” Respect was worth paying a union, he argued. And Hoffa was a great man.

Joe was short and round and his bald head was smooth and polished. Joe’s hands were soft and very white and stayed that way because he did not like to work. Through the night you heard Joe cackling in the paint aisle and doing broken English impersonations of the Mexican Augie. Steve liked to get on Joe in the break room. Joe would be telling Victor about how this or that was going to happen for him and Steve, not even looking up while reading the paper, would grunt, “No, it’s not. No. Joe. It’s not.” Joe had these sties growing on his eyelids and they seemed to get larger and redder every day. He had them for months. Joe was always talking about what the doctor was proscribing and Steve says, “Hey Joe, maybe if you washed your hands after you go to the bathroom you wouldn’t have that shit growing on your eyes.”

They finally fired him for getting into it with Phil from the flooring department. Joe tried to get his job back, calling the store manager every few days. This went on for a few months until Joe realized it wasn’t going to happen. He called the police and tried to have assault charges brought on Phil for flicking a paperclip at him. Joe also filed a lawsuit against Phil for assault with a paperclip. That put Phil out of work too, which was too bad. Phil was a good guy.

French Girls

13 - 26

The Castle

Captivity can really take the fun out of everything.

So Clean

Je me fais jeunes, elle a dit.

Frank

The first day I met him Frank told me about his prostate infection. Coffee, which he loved, made it worse. Then he told me about his wife leaving him. “There weren’t enough steaks in the fridge” he said simply. She thinned down, spent all his money, and ran off with the fitness trainer. The trainer was a big, big guy but Frank said he’d take him. He wouldn’t kill him though. He’d bite off his nose or part of his cheek, so that every time the trainer looked in the mirror he would think of Frank. Frank wasn’t even sure they were fucking, but Frank didn’t like the trainer. He had snubbed Frank once when Frank had tried to be helpful regarding a problem with the trainer’s car.

Frank also said he would murder his wife. This was certain. He would kill her. We would read about it in the papers. He remembered finding all the sexy lingerie and asking her where it came from and she had lied to him. Imagine that, the woman he had been married to since 19. She wouldn’t even wear the lingerie for him. Imagine that. He would kill her slowly and it didn’t matter if he went to prison for it and it didn’t matter if their two daughters had no parents. “There is no greater feeling than killing someone who deserves to die,” he said. Frank was bankrupted now and living with his parents. He picked up pennies and accepted clothing from the other night workers. He said he was planning a great comeback, he had a five year plan. Frank said he’d be living in a 4000 square foot house in the suburbs by then. He was sure of it.

YOUTH

Dating Profile

You must be good looking and in good shape. That means no fatties. I know the trend is for large soft women to apply descriptions like ‘full figured’ or ‘curvy’ as a way to convince themselves and others they are otherwise good looking. I do not go for this. Fatties. Uglies. So be slender, athletic, and toned (the old definitions of all these three). If you are young and knockout gorgeous, a beauty by no effort of your own, and have no talents, please do not hesitate to contact me. Physical beauty means a lot. I would rather look at you than talk to you anyway. No problem. If you’re merely attractive but very, very good at something please contact me also. I very much like physically attractive women with ability, who are rigorous and work hard. It doesn’t matter what it is that you do or are passionate about. But if you make the claim of having some ability but are in fact a dilettante and I discover upon meeting you that I know more about your subject than you do, I will be very disappointed. It will be grounds for my abandoning the date immediately and sticking you with the check. So either be gorgeous, or be pretty and have put a lot of work in on making yourself good at something. And no fatties.

Leggerissimo

Aphorisms: Language

62. Whereas they were formerly allowed to die, the weak and sickly are the protected. Without language they would die. Only the combination of reason and its corollary, morality, keeps them alive.

65. Only in language is there a 'right to exist'.

96. Talk is for those without the character or strength for action.

100. Action has obvious and direct consequences. The link between cause and effect is clearer, and with it a heightened sense of responsibility. With language the link is weaker. It is a difference of degree. It is the difference between physics and comparative literature. It is the difference between experimentation that confirms a 'natural law', and an endless talking-about that confirms a 'multiplicity of interpretations'.

101. To put language ahead of action is to shirk responsibility.

107. Rhetoric as the greatest of the feminine powers--the power to make things happen without action, without the use of force, to change the world while lying down.

110. Language emerged when she told him what to do, what to bring back from the hunt, how to fix the cave...and he did it.

Things Go Bad

It began as a small creak. It seemed to go away. Then some rides later it grew into a horrible shrieking sound. I almost walked the bike home it was so horrible. It is the hardest thing listening to the screaming of steel on a bicycle that you love. Today I pulled the fork and I saw what I expected to find.

Then, thinking I'd at least clean up and repack the bottom bracket while I looked for a new fork, I busted the cotter pin. A bent cotter can be worked out, but a ruined Raleigh Twenty fork is not worked out so easily.

Generosity & Recklessness

A game to be played out for no reason at all.

Ted

They made Ted an assistant store manager. I don’t know why. Ted refused to write tags for the pallets he put up in the overheads, claiming dyslexia. Anyone who wanted to know what was up there in the hardware aisle had to take the pallets down and sort through the boxes. It made for quite a lot of work for everyone else. Ted made other claims, the most interesting being his ability to heal from wounds within hours. He claimed even the deepest gashes, requiring stitches, he could recover from in hours without any sign of injury. This Ted attributed to having an extra chromosome. The extra chromosome was discovered, he said, by doctors at the Chicago Zoo. He had gone to the zoo for a very special form of testing. This excess of chromosomes also may have effected his diet. Ted said his stomach could only digest raw meat--he was unable to eat anything else. Ted was short and round yet said his body fat was at exactly 0%. He said he had been in a major high school football championship game and was headed directly for the NFL, bypassing college, had it not been for a serious injury. I assumed in those years he did not yet have the extra chromosome that allowed for quick healing.

Cul

Bather

Work In Progress: Schwinn Paramount

9/16 x 20 is not the same as 9/16 x 20 F.

"F", importantly, stands for "filetto", which in Italian means "thread". This, of course, refers to the slightly different thread pitch between Italian 9/16 x 20 and British 9/16 x 20. Though the two sizes are roughly compatible, I still need a pair of pedals.

Careful

You should file a police report immediately. Have the police come to the apartment and talk to her, which they will if you tell them she loaded a gun and put it under the pillow. Police may question why you didn't call them last night, but you could say you were in shock or something. Police always come when guns are involved. Make sure your paperwork is in order on them.

This will show her you mean business and you can't be fucked with. The law will have a record on her and if the cop is a good one, he'll give her a very strong rebuke and lesson about firearms and where you end up if you threaten someone with one or discharge it. This could scare her into some sensibility for awhile, or until she begins to think she can kill you and herself and jail then won't even be a possibility. Regardless, having 2 or more police officers in your home poking around can have a chilling effect on future violent action for some time.

Clearly, the emotional, irrational elements of her constitution have taken over. Understand that she is a 30 year old childless woman. Hormonally and instinctually she fears losing her male protector as well as a chance at reproducing near the tail end of her most fertile period. Basically her life is collapsing all about her. It may mean nothing for her to kill herself. Death may be preferrable to the lonely, childless, insecure, impoverished alternative. This may be an exciting thing to be a witness to--I, myself, have always been a keen admirer of the suicidal event and how it precipitates. Only you know the chances on whether she would want to take you with her or not.

Now she knows where your new apartment is, which will be helpful when she starts to stalk you. Very good you told her that. I am looking forward to the phone call where you detail how she attacked some girl you were bringing home. Ah, I am imagining the ugly, ugly scenes now.

I see this ending in a restraining order, an ugly divorce if she lawyers up, with violence interspersed along the way. That you live in the same city is going to make this a lasting, terrific bit of fun for everyone involved.

Good luck.

Click, Click

You must decide whether she is rational or not. That is an important thing to know. I think you are assuming rationality even as she loads glocks--maybe not a good assumption. Rational people will respond to punishment by stopping to do whatever it is you have warned them to stop doing. So you must punish her. You might be violent with her, but there are other ways. But she must be made to know that picking up loaded weapons has severe consequences. Women, in a manner similar to that of small children, respond well to rewards and punishments. Yelling can be effective too. Might try that first, but escalate it when that fails. Speaking reasonably to her, explaining the rational way to think and act, is not a punishment.

Now, as keeper of the money, you might begin to deny her money to live. That could be one form of punishment. You might do it this way. Tell her there are 2 ways this breakup is going to go:

1. While you go and live on your own, she has a specific time period to go and get a job or put together some sort of plan to start her life on her own. You might tell her she has 6 months to a 1 year to do this. In the meantime you tell her you will pay for her home and utilities. You will pay for her daily living expenses with a per diem, but this will terminate after (let's say) 2 months. She should at least have a job at McDonalds or Home Depot by then to pay for her food. You must keep to this plan and never waiver. Divorce proceedings must also get started with this--keep lawyers away from her. Handle the divorce yourself. She must not be made to know of divorce laws.

2. Or she can just leave immediately for her country. You will purchase her ticket and give her X amount to start her life there. You must get some agreement about divorce at this point though. She may return and get all lawyered up looking to take half of everything.

In the case of any more trouble (hopefully not gunplay) you should punish her severely. Tell her she loses her per diem. Shaking her very hard is also effective--be careful not to bruise her though. If that's not enough tell her you're going to take steps to have her divorced immediately and removed from the house. You might also use her possible lack of knowledge about US laws against her, telling her things like she can be taken away by the police, deported, etc etc. Given her emotional state she may very well believe these things. However, threats are only good if you are willing and able to carry them out. What needs to be established is punishment that she knows she is going to receive when she acts out.

In the case that punishment fails to have its desired effect, you must conclude she is unmanageable, possibly crazy. Though she may very well alternate between what appear to be sane, rational periods and periods of craziness.

One more thing regarding the shaking. If you do leave a bruise be sure to disappear for at least 1 day. Police are able to arrest you on domestic violence charges if they see a bruise AND are able to locate the accused abuser within 1 day that the woman calls the police. They stop looking after a day and arrest warrants are never filed. Might also be good to put a bruise on yourself as well if she's called the cops. You can claim she did that to you if the cops were to find you, and she'd have to go to jail on domestic battery as well. Even the slightest mark will result in jail time and charges for either of you on the person's allegation alone.

Medicine for a Nightmare

Paper wrapper to a 1975 Mouton Rothschild.

Immortal

One very, very good reason to never die.

Observe

And I am the dawn
To send away all nights.