I’m sitting here drinking Apricot Wheat Ale trying to figure out the Deadly Snakes double LP I bought a year ago. Cause everything has something right? Not just a groove?
It’s pretty straight forward, but I know there is meaning very close by. It’s tangible.

All’s well that ends well, folks.

Oh, oh, and love shall conquer all, regardless of what I say drunk.

Oh fuck, and I love you all.

This week we’re off to a farmland spot off the western coast. No internet, no cell, no work. There is a landline, and yes, if pressured I presume dialup will work, but we’re essentially off the grid for 5 days. That’s right, T, fat dog, skinny dog, and this mondo geek just relaxin all cool.

So what to drink? (Of course, I HAVE to drink a lil bit… being a Canuck and what-not)

Lately it’s been just about 100% Guiness. What can I say? The stout is nearly ubiquitous, and I have been doing a fair amount of drinking out - being the socialite that I am. Yeah…

The choices?

• St Ambroise Stout - A stout. Not Guinness.
• Unibroue Blanche De Chambly - One of my all time faves. Biere de lyes.

To top them off, two “celebration” pints, both from Unibroue: Ephemere and Don de Dieu. Roughly translated: A short-lived art, and The gift of God.

Nuff said.

Back, in full attack gear, possibly with a new job (I quit the last one) and maybe a new fridge? Shortly.

Since I’m such a fucking chicken, I’ll say here what I wanted to say at his funeral, but had not the balls to do so.

My finest memory with Terry was learning to play the harmonica in the suffocating heat of our office.

The calls weren’t coming, and things were pretty lax. Terry had picked up a couple of cheap harmonicas at Tom Lee’s - one in G, the other in A. We played and played in the office. I’m sure it annoyed everyone, but no one ever complained. We just moaned about the heat and how “the man” made us work and continued to play.

In the end, all we ever seemed to get down pat was “When the saints go marching in.”

The song has played in my head since I heard the news.

Terry you crazy dude, you’d be proud to hear Pink Floyd at your service as I chuckled (then cried a whole bunch).

2. The best way to get direct answers, is to ask direct questions.

3. Articles 1 and 2 are highly complimentary.

Let’s take religion, that’s always a hopelessly subjective heap:

Q. So you’ve been half assedly identifying as a buddhist for about a decade now. Are you? I mean, do you really believe in that hooey?

A. No, of course not, not hook-line-and-sinker anyway. I’m a secular buddhist.

Q. And what, pray tell, is that?

A. Well, the mythos and ritualized bits are nice, many people like that sort of thing, but they’re not generally my focus. Too much pomp in it, too many ranks, and far too much authority. Plus reincarnation has serious mathematical problems. But the underlying philosophies in zen provide, for me, a superstructure that’s malleable enough for me to work with in terms of the body politic. In other words, shit I can actually internalize and/or incorporate.

Q. Why not just construct your own structure then? Why move into an existing one and then tear away at parts, and build new ones elsewhere, like some horrible renovation project?

A. Because I’m not going to be alive for two thousand years. The elements in zen that appeal to me are highly pragmatic and non-dogmatic, so almost all of it is borne of some two millennia of directly communicated experience. I can’t match that. No one or any five hundred of us can.

Q. Isn’t this just the worst sort of blogging: solipsist, navel-gazing garbage?

A. Probably, but only String and Wildsisters ever see this site, so it’s basically narrowcasted navel-gazing garbage. Just do me a favour and feel free to use the term secular as a common prefix okay? Now get to work doing the taxes brain.

マーく

So it goes.

Yet, I see the Spandies, and they’re using as much cash as they can spare to shave a few grams. It’s like a bad coke habit, a lot more money to get just the tiniest bit higher. They worry so about what the heaviest part of their bike is…

Me? I know damn well what the heaviest part of my bike is. The rider. I in fact account for around 85% of the rolling mass.

Do you know what those carbon-fibre track bikes weigh? Less than nothing, they in fact have to be magnetically treated so as not to float off into space. Yet the guy I saw sitting on a Pista Concept earlier today hoed into a McHelltolifewich as if an orphan would be skinned and rolled in salt if he didn’t get it all in three bites.

Listen: I like skinny everything as much as the next guy. Maybe I’ve counted my skid patches. Maybe I’ve even ordered a Campy brake. But this weight weenie shit has to stop.

I set a Bleriot on the scale the other day, and guess what? Thirty goddamned pounds! But I could throw it as well as my own ride, which weighs just over half that. I even skip-stopped it, and nailed a lovely pedalhop. Furthermore, anyone ever weigh NJS shit? Guess what, it’s all very tubby. That’s why Keirin bikes don’t fucking spontaneously disintegrate like TT bikes do.

So let’s all get together, and stop the madness.

Next set of bars I buy, will be cro-mo. Suck that.

-m (マーく）

Either stand up for your assaults, believe in them, and commit –or don’t bother.

~in other words~

Stop barking. Either bite now, or shut up forever. Because either way, direct another ounce towards me, and I’ll fucking destroy you outright.

Goddamned children.

マーく

I drink more tea than anything. Maybe ten cups a day.

After tea, it’s beer. Then coffee.

I don’t drink water. Ever. It’s not that I hate water, I just don’t like it.

“But Marko, you’re 70% water, how can you not like that much of yourself?”

My response: “That’s a fine figure. Most people dislike over 85% of themselves.”

Nonetheless, I must have high standards. From now on, if anyone asks me about my self worth, I’m going to say

“Marko? Fuck that guy, he’s like, 70% tapwater.”

マーく

You’re ultimately only as good as the song that’s stuck in your head when they finally catch you off guard and kill you.

-m