I have to put the root system I've developed on the couch during the past two weeks into the car and make a mighty journey today, so posting will be sparse. Hopefully, I will survive the burning yellow fireball and return to regale you with tales of the outside world!

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Terry Gross interviewed Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson as I drove home this afternoon [streaming audio here]. They're political science professors - one from Yale, one from Berkeley - and the authors of Off Center, a new book that analyzes the Republicans' defiance of "the normal laws of political gravity:"

They have ruled with the slimmest of majorities, yet transformed the nation’s governing priorities. They have strayed dramatically from the moderate middle of public opinion, yet faced little public backlash. Again and again, they have sided with the affluent and the ultra-conservative, while paying little heed to the broad majority of Americans. And more often than not, they have come out on top. [...] Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson provide a groundbreaking explanation of the Right’s new might—and make clear why this troubling state of affairs can and must be changed.

One explanation for this puzzling success, they explained to Ms. Gross, is that the Republican majority has changed the way legislation is handled in Congressional conference committees. Prior to the Republican ascendancy, if the House and Senate passed different versions of the same bill, the legislation went in to conference so that the differences could be ironed out. The bills were then resubmitted for a straight up or down vote, with no amendments.

What the Republicans do, apparently, is exclude all but the most conservative Democrats from the conference committee process, and make substantive changes to the bills that were not part of the original legislation when it left the chambers, and which often tilt that legislation towards the fulfillment of a more conservative agenda. During the interview, one of the authors characterized this as:

...a really powerful form of agenda control, because in many cases you'll get a bill that has a popular label on it, like a tax cut, or a bill for a prescription drug benefit, that politicians are very reluctant to vote against, even if they know that the details of the legislation have been rewritten in ways that are quite objectionable.

So, let's be clear:

1. Legislation is passing one or both chambers of Congress.
2. It's then being rewritten in Republican-controlled committees in ways that Democratic Congress-persons find objectionable.
3. Said Democratic Congress-persons are voting "Yea" anyway...because it would look bad if they didn't.

According to its own publicity blurb, Off Center asks (and presumably offers answers to) the questions:

Even though most Americans are politically moderate, American politics is careening to the right. Why? What can be done?

It seems to me that the opposition party ought to, you know, oppose stuff, based on things like integrity, and perhaps - if they're feeling feisty, and it's not too much trouble - a general refusal to inflict bad policy on the citizenry of the United States. It doesn't matter if the bill's going to pass anyway: just take a stand. And then - I know this is a little extreme, but stay with me - articulate the reasons for taking that stand!

So, part of the answer to "Why?" is that too many Democratic members of Congress have apparently placed fearful political expediency above principled service to their constituents.

As for what can be done about the situation...it would probably help if the Democrats grew a backbone or two.

I suspect, however, that the professors don't agree:

Hacker and Pierson call for new reforms to increase the political resources of the middle and to make elections more competitive and politicians more accountable. With some important reforms, they believe the center can hold.

In other words: re-regulate the process! That always works, especially when your side is losing.

The fact is : the Democratic party is flaccid, weak, and rudderless. And that's not good for the country.

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Everthing tastes better with a dollop of Daisy.

Everything.

That's right.

There is nothing that cannot be improved with a dollop.

A dollop of Daisy.

Yeah.

In fact, I'm heading to the kitchen right now. I'm gonna get me a spoon - a big spoon - open the fridge, sit down in front of it, open up a tub of Daisy, and just dollop the hell out of myself.

So that I will be improved.

How Many Heads in the Commentarium? (2)

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The gentle patter of Mexican feet on my roof can only mean one thing: they're here to rip it off!

No, really. We're having the old roof removed and a new roof put on, because we are so absolutely flush with cash that I'm typing this from a bath filled to the brim with shiny silver dollars. As is typical for most of the smaller construction-related enterprises in these parts, the labor is from South of the Border. They typically make $11 an hour or less, and I know this because a different roofer once offered to set me up with his "squad" to help me pull the shingles off the house. You can pretty much guarantee that such "squads" are not entirely, shall we say, documented.

I figure that means that my dinky roof is costing me about $1500 less than it would otherwise (a number I've pulled from my imagination). If that guesstimate is reasonable, it would follow that the neigbor's roof up the street - with its multiple gables, peaks, and valleys - probably cost $9000 less. Likewise the landscaping, house painting, and tree removal services in the area.

Let's learn some ancient Greek: the men...de clause. It's the equivalent of "one the one hand...on the other hand," only much more economical. Once you see a men, you look for the de, which sometimes comes after a solid blocky pargraph of seemingly endless Greekiness. But it will be there, you can count on it. Let's try it out!

Men, I'd appreciate it if our borders were less porous, and that folks would quit proposing legislation that bestows the benefits of citizenry to those who don't actually have it. That's an ideological stance in the pure sense of the word; it's an idea that meshes nicely with notions of national security, respect for the laws of the country, and that sort of thing.

De, I do enjoy my cheap roof.

When ideas come out of the aether and into the muck with the monkeys, practicalities get smeared all over the upholstery.

Last week, President Bush said

The third aspect of our comprehensive strategy to do our duty and enforce the border is to have a worksite enforcement program. I mean, our employers in America have an obligation not to hire illegal immigrants.

...and then immediately followed it up with

The third aspect of our policy is this: We need to have a rational, temporary worker plan that is not amnesty. Amnesty would be a mistake. Granting amnesty to the people who have come to our country illegally would invite others to come to our country illegally. On the other hand, a temporary worker program would take pressure off our border. When you match willing worker with willing employer on a job Americans won't do, with a tamper-proof card that says, I'm here legally for a temporary basis, it means our border patrol agents won't have to chase people coming here illegally to work, they'll be able to chase criminals and drug traffickers and crooks.

Even ignoring the two "third"s, that's closer kin to a David Copperfield act than a policy statement. Basically, Bush's plan is to make sure that people like my roofer don't hire illegal workers by giving the illegal workers a nifty card that transforms them into legal workers.

When it comes down to it, I don't quite have the courage of my convictions on this issue, although I'm sure I would feel differently if I was an out-of-work roofer, and I'd probably feel a lot differently if I lived in the Southwest instead of the Northeast.

I respect that the President is confronted with a thorny problem: how do we maintain secure borders without compromising the economic support offered by cheaper, undocumented labor?

I also understand why his critics remain unimpressed.

At a gut level...I just plain don't like the idea of a poorly-secured border, in much the same way that my cats don't like the thuds, squeaks and bashes going on over their furry heads: there's a threat there, distant and booming for now, that could burst into immanence with the speed of an airliner streaking out of a clear autumn sky.

But I must be honest: remember all that "half-assed, wage- war- in- comfort- with- a- Frappuccino™- in- one- hand- and- the- TV- remote- in- the- other nonsense" I bitched about last year?

I'm a part of that. Lock those borders down, but by God my roof better not cost me a dime more! Keep me safe, but don't inconvenience me.

I suck.

So what happens to a society when it can wage war in comfort? When its mettle is tested primarily in the abstract realm of ideas, rather than the practicalities of daily life?

I'm not quite sure...but I'll bet we'll find out, sooner rather than later.

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He Who Needs No Links points us to "17th Street Canal levee was doomed", which states that the forensic levee investigators in New Orleans

..."could not fathom" how the design team of engineers from the corps, local firm Eustis Engineering and the national firm Modjeski and Masters could have missed what is being termed the costliest engineering mistake in American history.

[...]

Investigators have been puzzled by the corps' design since it was made public in news reports. They said it was obvious the weak soils in the former swampland upon which the canal and levee were built clearly called for sheet piles driven much deeper than the canal bottom. It was not a challenging engineering problem, investigators said.

The design for the $20 million levee specified 17.5-foot sheet pilings which, according to the investigators' calculations, was inadequate. And ground sonar has proven that the pilings were actually only 10 feet deep, which, obviously, was even less adequate.

Given the nature of the Louisiana political machine, it would probably be wise to examine what was specified for the project, how much it cost to build what was specified...and then compare it to what was actually built, and how much that should have cost.

To locate the difference between those two amounts, examine the linings of certain pockets.

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Many interesting Shockwave-based toys from Switzerland. "Worms" is fun, in a creepy kind of way.

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Well. That was certainly expensive. But now we have nice new green shingles on our small house.

I've spent too much money to be giving out free words today.

However, you can fill up your word-craw at Virtual Occoquan.

It's new and tasty!

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Organic oatmel stout, no less.

An iPod arrived for me today, a big black one. Not a white one. Because I think so different that having a white one is just too fascist for me.

I set this in motion first with some financial finagling, and then by directing the actions of several Chinese persons in Shanghai with a click of my mouse (later that same day, I made them get drunk and go tapir-tipping, using SMS messages sent from my cellphone). I spent the next few days doing the iPod Stairmaster: every five minutes or so, another CD would go bing! in my Mac mini, so I'd run upstairs and feed it another one. I had all but a handful of CDs imported when the small box arrived this morning, crawling with bird flu and delivered by a FedEx guy who looked like Stephen King.

I must say this now, to get it out of my head: for years, I have been hearing that Apples are superior to PCs in terms of crashes, intuitive interface, etc.

And, perhaps, that was once true.

I have owned a laptop running Windows XP since May. I have had to forcibly restart it maybe two or three times, and I am on that thing eight hours a day.

Over the past three days, while importing CDs using the latest version of Apple's flagship software product, one of its newer computers, and it's newest OS, I have had to force quit software or forcibly restart hardware a dozen times or more.

Why? Because iTunes doesn't know what to do if it encounters a bad track on a CD.

And before anyone gets all up in my grill with how I must've not had this or that set up right, I'll say it again: flagship software. You know, the product that basically saved Apple's well-designed ass. And before anyone keeps getting all up my grill: I troubleshot it, and it's a) a bug and b) ridiculous so c) shut up. And even if it wasn't a bug, the fact that there is no global search and replace function in the iTunes library is absurd, so shut up some more.

Finally: Steve Jobs? A most impractical man. The iPod isn't a goddamned Star Trek prop, it's a hands-on device. So why not use the nice-looking satin silver finish that's on my Mini, instead of shows-what-a-greasy-primate-you-are mirror-polished silver? Oh, Mr. Design God? Black headphones and a black sync cable with my black iPod, please. And would it kill you to include a wall charger with my $400 purchase, like you did with the 3rd generation iPods, instead of forcing me to charge via a USB port? What is it with you, anway? It's like the 3.5" disk drive thing: "Oh, nobody will use 3.5" disks. Because I don't want them to, and what I say fucking goes. I'll cut you, man!"

I won't go into how my $18 Radio Shack earbuds outperform the stock iPod headphones, because it's just too sad.

Now that the griping's out of the way: yeah, pretty damn cool, this little gizmo. I've used about 1/6th of its capacity, and because of Handbrake I'm not even more annoyed with Apple for making it far more difficult than it needs to be to get video I already own onto its bitty drive. I may in fact rip one of the Lord of the Rings movies onto it, just to be silly: the fabulous vistas of New Zealand, widescreen, 2.5 inches across. Take that, you landscape-proud Kiwis!

It's already proving its worth. I biked with the iPod to pick up the stout, and on the way back, the music made me take the long way around, up a hill, instead taking the usual shortcut.

The calorie-burning benefits of which may have been offset by said stout.

Speaking of which, I believe I'll have another one of those.

Organic, and all.

So you know it's good for you.

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By the way - I saw the new Astonished Head layout on Firefox for the Mac and Safari today, and it looks like crap. But that's my own HTML negligence, and not vengeance.

Not that I wouldn't be within my rights.

Seriously.

No jury would convict me.

Cocky bastards.

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And a bit foggy from the Benadryl I took last night to prevent my hives from destroying Pittsburgh.

More later.

Or not.

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.
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That's it. Really.
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[Except this: buy the book here.]

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Flapjacks, baseballs, and elbows!

Pigs and dolphins, living together in the snow, while a mayonnaise-obsessed Spainiard circles, looking for the opportunity to strike.

I'm telling you, Rove is behind this. But I'm onto him.

And what am I on about?

Wouldn't you like to know.

So would I, actually.

Anyway, I'm at a bit of a gig in Jersey City today, so there will be a decided lack of even remotely rational content until the trainride home.

And probably not even then.

'Cause I'm full of coffee and absinthe today, boy-howdy! And we all know how that usually turns out, don't we?

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I'm working on a big fatty of a post, but I'm also about to work on my fourth Ommegang Abbey Ale. Not quite as stupid-decadent as Raison D'Etre, with its beet sugar and green raisins. In terms of brewing method, it's a closer kin to the ales of the Belgian Trappist monks than the Raison, and while it's good for inspiring posts about cultural media failure in the realm of ideas, it's not so good for polishing said posts.

So, I'll have that for you tomorrow.

In the meantime, go watch some sheep or something.

----

And, because I am sick of my Google Ads always being about r**fs because I mentioned our new r**f (which is holding up very nicely, thank you; we're looking forward to tonight's snowfall), I will take this opportunity to say: mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma.

Thank you.

How Many Heads in the Commentarium? (2)

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In response to a post on December 2nd ["Comfy Warmonger"], Andrea Harris at least loved bedtime stories writes:

Cue speech about how this Proves How Great A Country We Have? Not from me. In a sense I understand the “chickenhawk!” screamers, though of course they don’t have the courage of their convictions either; they aren’t really even convictions, just chances to posture on the internet. (And yes, I realize it’s an inaccurate — to put it mildly — accusation, because many war-supporters have indeed served in the military, in this war or others, etc.) But back to the subject: we’re supposed to be comforted by the fact that we can wage war while not having the effects interrupt our Christmas shopping, but I’m not.

I find this interesting, because a section of the first Comfy Warmonger post dealt with this, but I snipped it out and saved it for possible reworking. I wasn't in the mood for national psychoanalysis at the time, but Ms. Harris makes me think that maybe I ought to bust out my pen and pad of paper and put the country on the couch. Because I'm so very qualified, you see, with a wall full of sheepskin and a really good Sympathetic Nod. So, here are some of those reworked snipped-out bits.

Read the rest...

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Reader Rick (he of the edible pigments) has started up a new blog. So drop by verb-ops and say hi! Don't let the fact that he did not, in fact, don a Santa suit and drop trou at the mall deter you.

How Many Heads in the Commentarium? (1)

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Not entered at Sundance or Tribeca, Andy Bobrow's shocking-but-false story of America's blackstronauts deserves to be seen nonetheless.

So go and see it.

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This toon by The Petrie Lounge is wonderfully surreal, in an art-history sort of way.

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Michele D'Auria has created a weirdly affecting animated short - I can't really call it a Flash cartoon - that uses a live performance by 70s Italian prog-rockers Premiata Forneria Marconi as the soundtrack. I'll never look at a cigarette the same way again.

See it here [direct link to film; takes about 1:45 to load @ DSL speeds]

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My name is Ian, derived from Iain, which is the Scottish form of John, which in turn is the

English form of Johannes, which was the Latin form of the Greek name Ιωαννης (Ioannes), itself derived from the Hebrew name Yochanan meaning "YAHWEH is gracious". This name owes its consistent popularity to two New Testament characters, both highly revered as saints. The first was John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus Christ and a victim of beheading by Herod Antipas. The second was the apostle John, also supposedly the author of the fourth Gospel and Revelation. The name has been borne by 23 popes, as well as kings of England, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and France. It was also borne by the poet John Milton and the philosopher John Locke.

This, in turn, explains my propensity to foretell the arrival of the Son of God, have my head cut off, and hang about on islands eating mushrooms and writing about the end of the world.

[from Behind The Name]

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1. When all the silverware is in the dishwasher and I reach into its utensil basket for a spoon, I will pull out a fork.
2. When all the silverware is in the dishwasher and I reach into its utensil basket for a fork, I will pull out a spoon.
3. When I am conducting a Google Image search for a picture to use in a cartoon and locate an image that can be Photoshopped so that it perfectly encapsulates my comic genius, clicking on the thumbnail will reveal a 404 error.
4. When all the silverware is in the dishwasher and I reach into its utensil basket for a butter knife, I will pull out an iguana.



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It was absolutely my intention to produce some Funny today. Truly. I know how much effort you all put into clicking your browser buttons. Some of you even type out the URL, and you truly are giants among men (and reasonably tall personages among women, wombats among hedgehogs, et cetera). Even those of you who rely on auto-complete have my utmost respect and eternal gratitude.

It was in fact my intention to get a number of things done today. A towering mountain of tasks there was, each to be accomplished, completed, nay, done, by me. Done, I say! Done like a choirboy!

But no. No, it was not to be. I was foiled by my my own treacherous mental state. Thwarted! I doubt if I got two neurons to fire sequentially all day.

Disturbing, yes. And dark have been my dreams of late. I'm fresh out of pepperoni, and that means that the legions of the damnable deli meats are battering at the gates of my sputtering cranium.

And what of you, dear reader! You who have exercised your fingers into sand-jointed perplexity, you who have spent long milliseconds traversing fiber optic pathways through countless nodes, arriving here to find naught but this steaming expanse of worthless, ill-conceived miscellany, this vast, tepid bowl of meaningless offal. A fathomless void of wasted pixels that threatens to suck the eyes out of the very faces of all who view it, so empty is it of content.

This is time you will never recoup. It could have been your mind that was due to receive the bolt of inspiration that would have cured cancer, brought peace to the Holy Land, or created a new and interesting way to prepare bacon. That moment is lost in time...like yak butter off the tits of a Mongolian dwarf.

I...wretched, foolish creature that I am...I have wasted that moment. I've probably killed us all.

Go! Go, and gaze no more upon this wasteland!

Leave me to my contemptible babblings in the dark.

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And just what, you may ask, does the admittedly awesome power of cheese have to do with Iraq?

Nothing, really. That's just the kind of mood I'm in.

But I've been thinking, a habit that has proven dangerous on a number of occasions and of which I remain uncured, despite the best efforts of society, modern medicine, and beer.

After the Ottomans took up with the Germans in WWI, the region known today as Kuwait came under the direct control of Great Britain. This was actually nothing new - the region had been a British protectorate since 1899, when Sheikh Mubarak agreed not to allow Russian or German influence to enter the territory controlled by his clan, the Sabah. Once the consequences of losing the war had done away with the tottering Ottoman empire, British High Commissioner Sir Percy Cox drew up the boundaries we see today, rewarding the loyalty of the Sabahs with his cartographer's pencil.

This left Iraq with just 16 miles of coastline, and took away a region that is jammed with oilfields (today, tiny Kuwait accounts for nine precent of proven world oil reserves, while all of Iraq accounts for just a percent or two more). The British allowed Iraq to retain the Kurdish regions to the north as "compensation," which has worked out just smashingly for everybody.

Kuwait claimed formal independence from Britain in 1961. As I wrote in March of last year,

The first military consequence of this was the dispatch of British troops to Kuwait in 1961 to avert [Iraqi dictator] Abdul-Karim Qasim's threatened reclamation of the tiny nation. In 1973 Iraqi dictator Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr actually attacked Kuwait, but other Arab states came to its aid. Kuwait paid money to Iraq, and the troops withdrew. Finally, in August of 1990, Saddam Hussein attempted once more to assert Iraq's claim on Kuwait.

Now then. Last year at his indictment, when Saddam Hussein shouted at the judge, "You know Kuwait is part of Iraq!" he wasn't just being his usual megalomaniacal self. A lot of other Iraqis believe that as well, and frankly they have something of a case. Kuwait is not a nation by dint of its own defense of its borders, the development of its own culture, or any identity beyond that of a tribal clan. Long regarded as Iraq's "19th province" by a not-inconsiderable portion of Iraq's population, its very existence as a state is a testament to European colonial influence throughout the Gulf region, the messy results of which we are currently spending about $177 million a day to clean up.

In 1990, we needed to keep Saddam out of Kuwait in order to prevent him from doubling his oil revenues and then using that revenue to accelerate his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs in support of his Saladin-style designs on the entire Arabian peninsula. It made sense then, and it makes sense now.

My questions, though, are these: assuming that Iraq makes a successful transition to something resembling democracy, what are we going to do when they decide that they'd really like to have their coastline, their ports, and their oilfields back? How relevant is a 19th-century alliance between a desert tribe and Her Majesty's Government to the security of 21st-century America?

I don't have the answers; I'm just asking. It seems to me, though, that much of our rhetoric about Iraqi self-determination, freedom, and democracy will become tinged with more than a hint of hypocrisy if we continue to enforce Sir Cox's map as though it was Iraq's own creation.

It wasn't, and some day we're going to have to confront that fact...again.

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Degrees, that is.

So, I did what any sensible person would do: I went for a bike ride. In the dark.

On Monday, I swapped out the regular tires on the Street Machine for big honkin' metal-studded fatties, and they let me to ride without fear through the berms of dirty snow and ice that accumulate on the road shoulders.

Tonight was the iPod's first trip outside, and I quickly discovered that despite wearing two layers top and bottom plus an Illuminite shell, I had not a single pocket to put it in. Because this is a recumbent, the ideal solution would be a case that hangs the iPod upside-down from a lanyard around my neck, so that it rests on my chest and I can read the screen without having to flip it around. I'll see if They make such a thing.

As it was, I just kind of wedged it into my tights inside the "case" it came with, and it hung out there securely enough. I listened to Peter Gabriel's Passion as I rode along back roads that wound through glowing blue snow-covered fields, tried not to get too upset that I am so dreadfully out of shape, and generally froze my ass off.

I had ice in my mustache, and couldn't drink any water because the tube on my Camelback was frozen solid by the time I tried to take my first sip. I've been back for an hour and a half, and the skin on my legs is still cool to the touch.

So, tomorrow, I'm going to add another layer or two and go out again.

I'm kind of stupid that way.

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This is our proposal: if you committed the crime, then give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them so that the Jews can establish their country.

--Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,

in today's New York Times

Set the wayback machine for March, 2002. I wrote:

Let's look at what Judah Leib (Leon) Pinsker, a Russian proto-Zionist, [wrote in his 1882 tract] "Auto-Emancipation, An Appeal to His People by a Russian Jew:"

If we would have a secure home, give up our endless life of wandering and rise to the dignity of a nation in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world, we must, above all, not dream of restoring ancient Judaea. We must not attach ourselves to the place where our political life was once violently interrupted and destroyed. The goal of our present endeavors must be not the "Holy Land," but a land of our own. We need nothing but a large tract of land for our poor brothers, which shall remain our property and from which no foreign power can expel us.

Isn't Mr. Pinsker sensible? He knew that, however symbolically important Jerusalem and the ancient lands of Israel were to his people, the area was crowded with incompatible histories, rife with turmoil, and soaked in blood.

Only after forming a Jewish directorate and carefully weighing all of their options should the Jewish people

...acquire a tract of land sufficient for the settlement, in the course of time, of several million Jews. This tract might form a small territory in North America, or a sovereign Pashalik in Asiatic Turkey recognized by the Porte and the other Powers as neutral.

He continues in this vein:

If the experts find in favor of Palestine or Syria, the decision would not be based on the assumption that the country could be transformed in time by labor and industry into a quite productive one. In this event the price of land would rise in proportion. But should they prefer North America, however, we must hasten. If one considers that in the last thirty-eight years the population of the United States of America has risen from seventeen millions to fifty millions, and that the increase in population for the next forty years will probably continue in the same proportion, it is evident that immediate action is necessary, if we do not desire to eliminate for all time the possibility of establishing in the New World a secure refuge for our unhappy brethren.

Every one who has the slightest judgment can see at first glance that the purchase of lands in America would, because of the swift rise of that country, not be a risky, but a lucrative enterprise.

Imagine! If Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Arthur Ruppin, and the rest of the early Zionist leadership had just listened to Pinsker, the Jewish homeland might be somewhere out in the Midwest, or even in Canada. They would not be beset on all sides by the hordes of Arabs who are struggling to emerge from their medieval shells. They would not be forced to make the choice between humane behavior and self-defense against an inhumane enemy. They might have developed their society in the midst of ours, enjoying if not our love then at least our humanism and universalist aspirations.

And, I might add to myself: an Iranian politician with nuclear aspirations would not be able to manipulate the anti-Semitic predispositions of his people in what is, to all appearances, the rhetorical prelude to war.

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...and I know you do, then this is the video for you. [.MOV] It's full of all that stuff I just mentioned. That you like.

Freak.

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"...a bullet to the chest of the terrorists.” [via Mr. Goldstein]
"...a thumb in the eye of Moqtada al-Sadr."
"...a punch in the head and a boot to the left buttock of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
"...a really styling flying kick to the face of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, followed by a stoning and an after-party. With beer. And lapdances."
"...an unlubed MOAB up the rectum of Osama bin Laden."
"...a nice box of chocolates for Tony Blair."
"...a grudging mention of President Bush."

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Not so much, today, no.

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UPDATE:

Nope.

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UPDATE II:

It seems that in Washington...uh...Cheney and...NSA...robot...buffalo wings?

No, still not caring.

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UPDATE III:

No, really. Today I have all the motivation of a half-dried slug on a summer sidewalk. But there's been lots of stuff here over the past seven or eight days, so go click on links or ads or something.

Yeah...that's it...ads! Clicky clicky.

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UPDATE IV

OK, OK. Go here and paint something with a robot arm. It's in Rhode Island.

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In passing, about a month ago? No?

Oh.

Anway, here are the procedural elements of said Crazy Stunt:

1. Sell house.
2. Put worldly possessions in storage.
3. Stash Bob the Cat in friend's apartment.
4. Pedal tricycle across America.

No, really. I'm serious. I put a down payment on the trike on Saturday

Here...maybe a diagram will help get the drift of my gist across to you, the reader:

OK? No?

All right then. You and your damnable word-style explanations.

My girlfriend and I are selling Peapod, and, alas, parting ways. This means that I will be without mortgage or rent, and will have a small wad of cash.

I am going to take part of that small wad of cash and use it to purchase a Greenspeed GTO and a Windwrap fairing to go with it. The GTO is a recumbent touring trike designed for long-distance trips, and it will tow my Burley Nomad trailer containing (hopefully) all of the gear I will need.

I will be cycling the TransAmerica trail, a 4,247-mile route mapped out by the good folks at Adventure Cycling. I'll be leaving from Yorktown, Virginia, and with luck and unexploded knees I'll dip my front wheels in the Pacific when I reach Astoria, Oregon. Then, I will head south from Oregon to Santa Barbara, California, traveling along part of the Pacific Coast Route. The total journey will be a bit over five thousand miles, and I'm going to give myself about five months to do it.

The plan is to find shelter where I can, "diving in" to set up camp in unfenced, unposted areas, using the occasional bona-fide campground for when I can't manage that and, when I need a shower and a night indoors, staying at hostels or motels. You can read more about this sort of thing at the late Ken Kifer's site.

What will happen to this site? I'm glad you asked.

I will be carrying two folding 32-watt solar panels, designed and built by Connecticut Solar. When in use, these panels will deploy across the top of the Burley trailer, and will provide power and charging capacity for the following devices:

• Dell Inspiron 700m laptop
• iRiver iFP-799 MP3 player/recorder
• Apple 60GB iPod
• Samsung SPH-i700 cellphone/PDA
• A yet-to-be-purchased digital camera
• A similarly unpurchased GPS unit

While I am crossing the country, I will be updating this site on a regular basis. My laptop is equipped with a Kyocera KPC650 cellular EVDO modem that will provide at least a 14.4 kbps connection across large swatches of the United States, and when I can't get a cell signal, the laptop has an ordinary 56K modem.

I will be creating and uploading podcasts using the iRiver recorder and Giant Squid Audio Lab's omnidirectional stereo microphone. I'll edit and produce the podcasts on the laptop using Audacity.

Visitors will be able to find out where I am by clicking a link on the site and opening a Google Map populated with my latest GPS data.

So...that's the what and the how, with a generous dollop of the old techy-geeky.

And here's the why, or as much of it as I can figure out at the moment.

To begin with: I've been thinking about doing something like this for five years. I'm at a point in my life where I'm more than a little fed up with my own neuroses, my own continual sense of "not fitting in," square peg, round hole, so on and so forth blah blah that's our fifty minutes. Despite Buckaroo Banzai's sage observation, it is my opinion that becoming a technological pedal-powered vagrant will yield the kind of self-knowledge that will allow me to relate to the world with a bit more grace and a lot less nonsense.

Second: for the past several years, I've been listening to various pundits, loudmouths, and idiots both domestic and foreign expound at great lengths and with enormous conviction about what America is, who Americans are, and what we all think about everything. I'm tired of listening to these people. So, I'm going to find out for myself. I'll be crossing eleven of these United States, and I'll be listening, watching, and learning as I go. Hopefully, you will, too.

When I'm done with all of this, there will be a book.

And I will look fabulous.

The plan is to leave sometime around May of 2006. Until then, I've got a house to sell, physical training to do, and a life to "unplug" from all of the things that come with having a fixed address. I'll be posting about these activities occasionally, because getting ready for the journey is as much a part of the process as pedaling.

There you have it: Astonished Head Does America.

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Via He Who Needs No Links, this WSJ article concerning the lack of respect afforded to those of us in the home office:

Many people seem to think that jobs that can be done at home aren't real jobs. Never mind that home-office dwellers are their own cafeteria staff, shipping-and-receiving clerks and janitors. They never get credit for cutting an employer's costs, or saving commuting time to do more work. Instead, managers believe that if they aren't there to witness someone working, it can't be happening. They envision homebound workers getting away with something, like lounging in their bathrobes and watching "General Hospital."

It's as if they believe that the people working under their noses don't waste a tremendous amount of time talking about last night's college basketball game, making bids on eBay, or reading only like-minded blogs while on company time. The misconceptions are yet another indication that vacuous symbols of productivity, rather than productivity itself, are all that really count.

I have also found that the willingness of an employer to let me do my contract work offsite is directly proportional to their tech-savviness. I write for a living, and there is almost nothing I do onsite that can't be done offsite via e-mail and telephone. I do recognize the need for face-to-face contact at the beginning of and periodically during the project, and that's fine with me. But these days a computer is a computer, and I can be as much a part of company's network sitting in my office as I can sitting in a cubicle with distracting thumbtacks.

Working remotely also avoids snafus like this: "Millions Are Left to Make It to Work Any Way They Can". Because I work at home, there is no need for me to tackle a stray circus dwarf, saddle him up and whip him across the George Washington Bridge as I make my escape from Manhattan. Unless I just feel like riding a dwarf. Is that wrong?

I'm seriously considering putting the remote office idea to its ultimate test as I pedal across the country. My contacts are willing to send me jobs that I can do off-site - way off-site - if they come across them. I'm no Steve Roberts, with his trailer-borne satellite terminal and his ham radio, but I'll be almost as connected as he was, at a fraction of the weight and cost.

That's progress for you - fifteen years ago, he had a 68K Macintosh, two 286-based DOS PCs, 80MB of hard drive storage, a 9600-baud modem, and a slew of other equipment and batteries. His rig weighed 580 pounds. I'll have a 2.4 GHz PC, 80 GB of storage, cellular data connectivity at up to 400+ kbps, and my rig will probably weigh in at 100 pounds or so. Granted, he toted a lot more equipment, but he was doing R&D for the whole "Technomad" lifestyle concept. I'm just making a journey.

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Kate illustrates the the parent-gap and the dangers of a public blog with one handy conversation:

I was talking with my mother earlier today, and she told me she was disturbed by my recent bloggage, which she characterized as ‘weird.’

Mom: You were talking about... I don’t know... ‘floating’ or something...It made me think you were going off the deep end!
Me: Umm, I’m reading the blog right now, and I don’t see anything particularly weird, mom.
Mom: Well, of course *you* don’t think so!
Me: What’s weird?
Mom: It makes it sound like you’re on drugs or something. I read it and thought, “Is she on drugs? Is she going off the deep end?”
Me: [Hee hee hee hee hee.]
Mom: Do you *want* people to think you’re on drugs, is that it??
Me: No, mom, I don’t want people to think I’m on drugs.
Mom: Well, then you shouldn’t write things that are so weird.

As for me, I think my mom grokked my weirdness when I was two. Hence the dexedrine. And, as a certain journalist once wrote before he shot himself in the head and got blasted out of a cannon, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

This here is a $10 trillion economy, by god! I plan to find my weird niche in it and make a living.

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...have you ever had a song stuck in your head?

Not the whole thing, just a bit of it - the hook, say - and that bit just keeps repeating over and over, so that it's the last thing you hear as your head hits the pillow and it's the first thing you hear when the sun peeks through the blinds, and all day it's in there, it just goes 'round and 'round in true cephalic echo-chamber style, over and over, and you can't identify it, oh no, you can't remember where it came from, you think it might've been from a movie but you're not sure, see, that's the thing, you can't be certain, and then after days and days you can feel the pressure behind your eyeballs, building and building, and then you know what needs to be done, oh yes, you've got to do it, got to let that scrap of music out, baby, set that sucker free, and you grab your cordless Makita and slap a quarter-inch bit in there, and you're ready to go, man, got it against your forehead, and you pull the trigger and it pffft does nothing because it's been sitting in your freezing basement for months and the battery's dead, so you slap the other battery in there, the second battery that made it such a deal when you bought it, and you're ready to go and pffft it's dead too, so you stick it in the charger that was also part of the deal and the light goes red and you make yourself some coffee while you wait, and all the while that little musical demon is swirling in your head, circling, a little needle-clawed bastard, and then after half an hour you realize that the battery doesn't really need to be fully charged, does it, so you finish your coffee and yank the battery out of the charger and you slide it into the drill and you put the bit on your third eye, right on there, and you squeeze the trigger and skrrrrrr you left the drill in reverse the last time you used it so it skitters across your face drawing blood but! But! But! You quickly realize your error and you flip that switch and then you go go go, and the drill bores into your face with a smell like burning hair and there's a little pop! as it breaks through the bone and then it slices through the dura mater, the arachnoid, the pia mater and then schlooop it's in your brain! It's in your brain! And you're like "AAAAGGH! BLUAAAGGGG!!!! IT WAS THAT STUPID SONG FROM 'SHREK'!!!!"

That happens to me a lot, and it's kind of a drag, you know?

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I'm in the process of bulding up my legs while babying my knees, in preparation for my cross-country trip. In March, I somehow tore the medial meniscus of my left knee - I say "somehow" because it wasn't an acute injury from falling down the steps or Tangoing off a balcony; it presented as a deep, deep ache in the knee whenever it was flexed at 90 degrees for more than five minutes or so. A few months later, my right knee started to feel somewhat similar, so the recumbent bike became a prime suspect.

The injury was probably the result of riding my recumbent with the front boom too far in (the boom extends out in front, and it's where the pedals are). This is the equivalent of having your seat too low on an upright bike. But doing this is even worse on a recumbent, because it creates much greater pressure on the knees than a standard bike. This, combined with my legs' tendency to "flop outwards" at the hips because of the laid-back recumbent position and the fact that I was mashing gears instead of spinning at higher RPMs, added up to a mess o' bad mojo for my cartilage.

It's much improved, now, but it means that I have to be extra careful with both knees, and train up gently.

That injury, paradoxically, is one of the motivators for making this journey. I'm only 34, but my body is letting me know that it might not always be able to pedal 5,000 miles, so if I'm going to do such a thing, now is the time. It also adds a certain frisson to the whole endeavor: will he make it? Will his knees burst somewhere in the Rocky Mountains? Tune in and find out!

On Monday, I extended the boom out two inches. Normally, you're "supposed" to do these adjustments in increments, a quarter or half inch at a time. But: when I rode the 2.48 miles to physical therapy, my knees didn't hurt. It was the first time I've been on the bike that I didn't immediately wonder how the hell I thought I was going to get all the way to the West coast under my own aching power.

All because of a simple readjustment. The boom had been in that same position for at least 800 of the 1,300 miles I've ridden that bike, and during all that time it was causing me unnecessary pain. It was, in fact, injuring me. And in a moment of "What the hell"-ness, I lengthened the boom, which in turn improved my leg extension and, it seems, solved a biomechanical problem that's been plaguing me for almost a year.

There are a number of routes that we ride around here: a little loop that's about eight miles, a medium loop that's twelve, a big loop that's about twenty-two. After awhile, they get kind of dull...here's this hill, shift for it, here's this downhill, you can coast now, here's this spot where the fields look nice when the sun sets.

So today, instead of just pedaling the 2.48 miles back from the PT office to the house, I decided to do the little loop. But I did it backwards, turning onto the street that normally marks the end of the loop, and heading around in the other direction.

It was a revelation. The hills were new and interesting. The views of the snow-covered fields were familiar, but different enough to prompt me to stop and snap a photo with my cellphone/PDA/camera/pneumatic jack while Leadbelly sang the Relax Your Mind blues on my iPod (a blues which is, incidentally, about how to drive and pay attention so that you don't run over chickens or, say, cyclists).

Now I'm feeling fine. Invigorated, even! All because I did a couple of small things differently.

I can't help but wonder about the obvious: how will I feel when I'm doing everything differently? When I'm completely disconnected from my fixed address, my schedule, and my couch?

My guess is pretty damn good.

I'm getting the Big Adventure on, friends, and I can't wait. This will rock the House of Me, no mistake!

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Sigh.

After swapping out the motherboard on my old PC and firing it up for the first time in months - I've been working solely on my laptop - I see that the site looks like crap on it, just like in does on my Mac Mini.

Which means that I am probably the only one who's been seeing the site as it is intended to be seen, and that's not good code.

Why didn't you people tell me? Jeez.

So, I'm going to futz around with it a bit today.

You have been warned and so forth.

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To continue the ongoing implementation of Management's fantabulous plan for transforming Astonished Head into the world's foremost purveyor of high-class not-at-all-for-cheap-tarts entertainment, we came up with even more head-bashingly unique concepts which are so incredibly wonderful that we should kill you right now to save you from the crushing disapointment that the rest of your life will inevitably become after you've been exposed to them.

Such as: equipping Company Secretary Reginald Bastard with a microphone, a camera, a handful of crêpe batter, a shoestring, and a packet of ketchup, and sending him out to talk to the Viewing Public.

This month's Man On The Street question: What's the true meaning of Christmas?

-----

Alistaire Fructose, Bricklayer
"To have as many elves as possible. In my pants."

Harry "Tiger" Watkins, Rodeo Clown
"To further the materialistic pressures of a social structure deliberately designed to keep the masses in thrall to shiny things."

Lester Bodkin, Crab Fisherman
"Last I heard, it was to keep those goddamn wetbacks on the South side of the border, where they belong. But I could be wrong, or drunk."

Lousie Pebble, Exotic Dancer
"Peace and good will towards the men with the biggest huevos. "

William Juniper, Musician
"Something about cookies. And, uh, crack. Yessir, it's not Christmas without a fat rock in the pipe!"

Reuben Tishkoff, Impresario
"You gonna steal from Santa Claus, you better goddamn know. This sorta thing used to be civilized. You'd hit a guy, he'd whack you, done! But Claus...at the end of this he better not know you're involved, not know your names, or think you're dead. Because he'll kill you, and then he'll go to work on you."

-----

And there you have it. Hairy Follidays, every bloody!

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Expressing an envy that conflicts with her desire to avoid falling into ditches, Andrea Harris comments on my Big Adventure-Style Doings:

...actually, there-and-back-again vacation-type travel isn’t really my cup of tea. I consider it a torment: go to some place different from your dull, dreary life and have a wonderful time, then leave to go back to your dull, dreary life — what was the point, other than to make you realize how dull and dreary your life is and how tired you are of waking up to the same four walls, the same streets, etc.? Also, the logistics of getting to the vacation destination — the frantic need to hurry, the planning, the timetable, the rush-hour aspect of everything makes a vacation seem more like work than work. To me the actual journey itself is as important, if not more so, than the destination (the destination being often somewhat of a let-down — “well, we’re finally here”).

I've never been a good vacationer myself (as Pea will attest), which is why this here cycling madness is perfect for me. I've got maps, sure, and I've got a starting point and an ending point, but the middle bits are wide open and ill-defined. If I feel like detouring somewhere in Kansas to go commune with the World's Largest Ball of Twine then I'll do so.

Part of what makes this journey appealing to me is that won't be an escape from my "dull, dreary life," it will be my life. I caught a glimpse of this reality last Saturday when I was in the shop with Johannes, spec'ing out my new trike's options while sitting on the showroom GTO. "This is like ordering my next apartment," I told him.

The danger in speculating ahead of time about a journey like this is that too much emphasis on its Mighty Transformative Power can result in vast disappointment when encountering the mundanity of, for example, having to change a flat tire for the third time in a day because you're in goathead country and discovering that you quite recently rolled through a dog pile.

However, I can't avoid at least some speculation. My life's usual pattern, when moving from one dwelling to another, is to engage in a search for a new dwelling. But I'm not doing that now. I am selling my house, and moving to...a tricycle, with a trailer. No new bank accounts, no calling the telephone and cable company for new hookups, no first-last-deposit payments. No discovering where the closest grocery store is, no unpacking, no arranging of rooms, no hanging of curtains. No laughing at Bob the Cat as she cowers under the bed for three days. In fact: no bed.

Andrea says she has "recurrent urges to drop everything and just run until I get to, I don’t know, Idaho, but fortunately (?) [I] am too lazy and broke for this to be a realistic impulse." But "realistic" isn't really a word I've been paying much attention to, lately. It's actually on my list of Avoided Concepts, along with "career," "fiscally sound," and "knee cartilage." I've already had one person make the "must be nice to be independently wealthy" comment, and yes, it certainly would be, but I'm not. I don't need to be to do this...but that doesn't stop me from wondering what, exactly, I will do when this is over. I'll have some money from the house sale, but not a mountain of it. I'll be on the West Coast with no home or job waiting for me back East, no life - dull, dreary, or otherwise - to plug back into.

I'm trusting that Something Will Happen. I'm hoping.

I feel like the little kid on a tricycle in The Incredibles who keeps showing up at the end of Bob Parr's driveway after he sees Bob lift his car up over his head at the end of a particularly bad day at work.

"Well?" Bob demands. "What are you waiting for?"

"I don't know," the kid says. "Something amazing, I guess."

Me too, kid.

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Oh, the weather outside is unseasonably warm
But the fire inside is...non-existent, really
And since I've got no place to go
I'm drinking a growler of Southern Tier IPA

Now that didn't rhyme at all, did it? Nor was it melodic. And, when you get right down to it, Christmas is not particularly embodied in a glass of India Pale Ale.

We had smooth white snow last week, but now that it's all warm and whatnot we've quickly entered the sludgy-snow-mixed-with-rotting-leaves phase that is just so attractive. I suppose it's better than the sludgy-snow-mixed-with-auto-exhaust-and-street-crap phase that made winters in New York ery special.

This will be the last Christmas at Peapod, and after a few glasses...hell, even before a few glasses, which might account for the purchase of said glasses-full in the first place...I am of course a bit sentimental.

We came here exactly 361 days after the September 11 attacks, 361 days that I spent mostly out of my mind. I never liked living in the city...I knew it was a target even before the '93 bombing. When the strike came, I went a little nuts. Just a bit. Pea's apartment was a few blocks from the U.N., and I wouldn't let her go back to it. We walked across the Queensboro Bridge together on that day, along with thousands of others, and I think she went back to her apartment twice afterwards...once when we had a fight, and once to pack her things into boxes and move them to my apartment in Queens. Together, we fled the city, and bought this house.

There's an adage...something about making important life-decisions during periods of extreme stress, I can't quite remember.

It's been three years since then, and I don't regret anything. I wonder, sometimes, what would have happened if 9/11 didn't happen. I think I can honestly say that I'd be worse off, personally, strange as that sounds. Cohabitation with someone is an intimacy that has a way of making you face yourself, and it forces you to sort out your habits. Alcohol? I used it too much, for the wrong reasons, and with an intensity that I wasn't comfortable with (my current IPA indulgence notwithstanding). I doubt I'd've figured that out holed up in an apartment in Queens by myself. There are other things too, which aren't your business. But on balance, it was good to come here, it was good to buy this house, it was good to live with Pea, and it's sad that this will be our last Christmas here, and our last Christmas together.

Over the next two or three weeks, we will complete some home improvement projects that were supposed to be for us, but are now for potential buyers: remodeling the dining room, painting the grotty textured ceiling in the living room. We've already replaced the roof and re-painted the exterior trim...again, not for us, but for whoever occupies this small house after us. There will be packing to do, as we remove what is unique to us from this space, so that prospective buyers can better visualize themselves in it.

I expect it will be the final details that will bring down the emotional hammer: what do we do with the lawnmower and the weed-whacker? Should we do something about the brush pile in the far corner of the yard, with the dry skeletons of (by then) four Christmas trees in it?

Right now, the fourth tree stands at the base of the stairs, next to the groovy armchair we bought when we first moved here. It's our smallest tree, measuring just four feet, to insure that we get the decorations off it and packed away sometime before April. It's full of lights, and there's a pile of presents under it.

As it should be, no matter what comes afterwards.

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Christmas Day: a pagan tree festooned with shiny things in the living room; a Menorah with two burning candles in the kitchen, where a dinner consisting entirely of American Thanksgiving foodstuffs is being prepared; and Qawwali music blasting on the stereo.

It's all good.

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Some days, I wake up and I'm already a mess. Sometime in late morning I had a dream that I had won some kind of Shopping Spree prize, so I was wheeling a shopping cart around in a store that sold all kinds of interesting objects...including Kuzweil keyboards (which is how you know it's a dream; I grabbed a 72-key and an 88-key), camping equipment, and consumer electronics. However, I was thwarted in my attempt to score a Humongo flat-screen plasma TV because, as the TV Guy pointed out by showing me the newspaper ad, Humongo flat-screen plasma TVs were not part of the Shopping Spree prize. Which, I thought, was just as well, because I would have to put the big TV in storage when I left on my trip anyway.

Apparently, I was living in some sort of housemate-style situation, and some of said mates had also won the Shopping Spree prize, so I was trying to direct them to the back of the store where giant foosball tables and weird arcade-style videogames could be had...things for the "common area," I guess.

Then, I woke up, in dire need of caffeine or some other stimulant. I am much more nervous and jumpy and full of dread before I have my coffee than I am afterwards, which is a sure sign that my supplies of naturally-produced amphetamine are on the wane.

It's now the inter-holiday period, that week when I can rationalize doing nothing work-related because nothing really gets done this week anyway, now does it? But it's an ineffective rationalization, so I will sit here and stew in nervous neurochemical juices because of my peculiar psychology. I used to drink to squelch such moods, but that was writing checks against my Mood account which would eventually bounce, leaving me a twitching mass of guilty neuroses on the floor, moaning for Jello. I'm on more of a cash-only basis now, in direct contrast to my actual finances.

Now, it's time for more coffee, and maybe if I can swing it a bit of animation work for a dinky contract that really ought to be paying more, but it's sort of a favor, which was dumb on my part.

Yes...yes, more coffee, from my Titanium French Press Of The Gods!

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What you are looking at here is the solar heart of my as-yet-unnamed "tricycle plus trailer" rig. I purchased the first panel earlier this year, but as the list of devices I'll be taking with me grew I decided that I would need more power. The second panel and the converter arrived from Connecticut Solar yesterday.

There are two 32-watt folding solar panels, for a total potential output of 4.6 amps at 13.8 volts. The small black box in between the two panels is the DC-DC converter, which converts the panels' output to a steady 13.8 volts at varying levels of amperage. For those of you new to the whole volt/amp thing: in terms of wattage, 10 volts at 1 amp is equivalent to 1 volt at 10 amps (Watts=Volts x Amps). The converter ensures that I always have a smoothly regulated 13.8 volts, even if it's an overcast day and the panels can only crank out a couple of amps. 13.8 volts is what a car battery produces, and all of my voltage-sensitive electronics (laptop, cell phone, iPod, GPS, etc.) have adapters that are designed to plug into a car's cigarette lighter and run off of DC power.

Instead of a car battery, I've got the sun. The sun is much better than a battery, because it is in outer space and I don't have to carry it in my trailer. Also, I can bet people that my trike is nuclear-powered and win drinks in bars.

When folded, the solar panels will hang along either side of the trike's rear luggage rack. When deployed, they will fold out on swing arms I'm building from PVC pipe, and extend behind me across the luggage rack on top of the Nomad trailer (there will be pictures when I've built all this, of course). This will allow me to charge or run my electronics as I pedal along.

I've received a number of supportive e-mails since I started posting about this, for which I thank the senders. I think I should mention, though, that my proposed journey is not really unique. The route that I am taking was first cycled and mapped out by the Adventure Cycling organization back in 1976, when it was known as "Bikecentennial." Since then, thousands of cyclists have used Adventure Cycling maps to cross the United States, from west to east and vice-versa. Without their nearly-30 years' worth of work maintaining and updating these maps, I might not be going on this journey at all. The organization's development of national cycling routes - including the Pacific Coast route that will be the last leg of my trip - helps make it possible for me to do what I'm doing.

I also owe a significant debt of inspiration to Steve Roberts. 22 years ago, he asked himself:

Where had all my passions gone? One afternoon I listed them: writing, adventure, computer design, ham radio, bicycling, romance, learning, networking, publishing... each of these things had at one time or another kept me up all night in a delicious frenzy of fun and giddy intellectual growth. Yet my reality had become one of performing decreasingly interesting tasks for the sole purpose of paying bills, supporting a lifestyle I didn't like in a house I didn't like in a city I didn't like. I had forgotten how to play. Could it still be possible to construct a lifestyle entirely of passions, or was losing the spark a sadly inevitable part of growing up?

Combining the passions in my list and abandoning all "rational thought," the obvious solution was to simply equip a recumbent bicycle with ham radio and computer gear, establish a virtual home in the nascent online networks, and travel full-time while writing and consulting for a living.

The results of this were Winnebiko I, Winnebiko II, and the 580-pound BEHEMOTH (Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine... Only Too Heavy), shown here. Among other equipment, this massive recumbent and trailer rig sported three computers, two ham radio transceivers, a bubble-jet printer, a satellite terminal, a motion-activated burglar alarm, and hydraulically-deployed training wheels to balance its weight. It took "3.5 years of development with about 160 corporate sponsors and 45 volunteers" to build.

If I didn't know that some crazy person had already done something similar, I can't honestly say that I would've thought to do it myself. Technology has advanced so far in the past fifteen years that I can buy, off-the-shelf, many of the capabilities that Roberts had to design and build from scratch. I encourage you to browse through his Nomad Research Labs site, to see what a true pioneer looks like.

Why is he a pioneer? He unplugged himself from land-based information streams and fixed geographic locations in 1983, the same year that Motorola's 1.75-pound DynaTAC 8000X became the first cellphone licensed for commercial use, and a year before William Gibson published Neuromancer. He sent and received e-mail from acoustically-coupled modems at payphones before most people had e-mail addresses. He had mobile, wireless Internet access before most people even knew what the Internet was, let alone got text messages and porn on their cell phones. He lived his life and ran his business off the grid, traveling over 16,000 miles under his own power in the process.

I can't remember where or when I first read about Steve Roberts and his tech-nomadness. But he clearly made an impression.

As for me...I'm just drafting him.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the Couchbike.

(Although, in a strict nomenclatural sense, this is a couchtrike, and the fact that I am aware of this and must remark upon it edges me, once again, back into some semblance of coolness.

Or maybe it plunges me down into a deeper level of Nerdhell. I'm not quite sure.)

[via Treehugger]

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If the solar power plant is the heart of my rig, these items right here form its voice. The tall skinny thing is a Wilson Dual Band Trucker Antenna, and the bright flashy thing is a Lightman Visibility Systems Amber Xenon Strobe. Both arrived today, from Alternative Wireless and Southwest Public Safety