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.Blog Archives..................................................... |
. 2006 |
December 31, 2024 My last good deed of 06: I relay to you the important information I just saw on a commercial for Cialis. It told me that Cialis works for up to 36 hours so YOU can choose when the moment is right. So if you pop one, get that tingle, and then your honey falls down a well and isn't rescued until 12 hours later, your pharmaceutically annealed sword will remain at the ready for another 24 hours. This is enough time for her to get the broken bones set, file any necessary police reports, and then shower off the stink of old well water. Try that with Viagra and its silly little four-hour woody window. Ok, we're running out of time here. I ate my last supper of 06 (yes, with pink wine!). Mr. Michigan is still in his home state so it's just Lucky and me to shoot the guns off at midnight. I hope his dewclaw doesn't accidentally hook the trigger while the gun's pointed at me, but it's a risk you take when you celebrate the New Year with an old dog and firearms. Friends, let's make 07 an acceptably pleasant one. It's the Chinese Year of the Pig, which I'm not sure if that means we should eat more less bacon. I'll find out for you. Do come back in 07. December 30, 2024 Ok, still haven't done anything heroic. John Mark and Britt went for a ride and his Guzzi broke down so I offered to pick them up, which was as heroic as it got. They didn't need my assistance, but I'm hoping I still get PMC points for it. Wait, I'm the Chief Executive Primate so I can give myself those points. That's 500 for me. I also get a bonus 100 because I waited to ride with Chris, who needed to test ride an Aprilia he's rebuilding (I offered to be the two-up return bike if his broke down on the road). He didn't get it done so I didn't get to ride so come to think of it, make that a bonus 200 because I got blue balls from the aborted ride. December 29, 2024 Two days before the year's up and what have I done with 06 except continue to use pain relief medications beyond their expiration dates? I've got 48 hours left to do something memorable. Maybe I'll set myself on fire and then put myself out. I'll be heralded as a hero and pitied as a victim. And, I'll have good stories for the start of 07 as I document how long it takes for my eyebrows to grow back. December 28, 2024 I drove 101 instead of the 5 just to see if much had changed along the way. It hadn't so remind me never to take that fukcing slow-ass freeway again. Before leaving, my mom cooked me three fried egg-and-ham sandwiches because although she knows there are dining facilities along the 101, she must think that my luck is so bad they'll all be closed when I try to visit them. Or maybe she thinks I'll run off the road and not be found for a few days and they'll keep me from having to eat Lucky. She doesn't know I've been watching Man vs. Wild and I'm totally prepared to consume my loyal companion if it came to that. (You may start your "wok the dog" jokes now.) Update: Ok, I should apologize to the 101 because unlike the 5, it didn't shut down yesterday due to snow and 80 mph winds. But, had I taken the 5, I might've had the chance to get blown off the road. I was listening to the audio book "Deep Survival" on my drive home and I would've been mentally prepared for a few nights upside-down in the truck buried in a snow drift, as long as I could've reached those fried egg-and-ham sandwiches. And regarding Reader Tad's question about what the other blob was in the ice chest, that's cold pizza. The survival food order would have been: fried egg-and-ham sandwiches, cold pizza, breath mints, lip gloss, the dog. December 27, 2024 Making the long drive home. I'll answer emails when I get back. December 26, 2024 Reader Mike is an example of why rental car companies will one day ask on their forms "Are you a motojournalist?" They'll eventually make the connection that guys with large gear bags and camera equipment always seem to return cars mysteriously bent from the inside-out (read the entire story). You know, just remind me never to loan any of my motorcycle friends my truck, unless I want to see it on the Internet up on two wheels. Update: I'm sure some of you thought I was exaggerating about the cable car jigsaw puzzle pic living above the crapper, but I wasn't. I find it quite tasteful compared to Elvis. The lady + panda bear also looks like a Raphael compared to Elvis. And hey, it's not like I'm trying to be cruel about my mom's taste in art, it's just that I feel especially entitled to act out since she said she wanted to move in with me some day so I could take care of her. If she's going to stress me out like that, I deserve to get some mileage out of her existence. Everybody, laugh with me, because one day there will only be tears... December 25, 2024 Lucky sends his best to everyone. He hopes your gatherings or solo-celebrations are as non-dysfunctional as possible. If it does involve family + dysfunction, lay off the alcohol (aka "Delicious Truth Serum") so as to avoid awkard moments that will never be forgotten, no matter how many times you beg, "Can we just let it rest?!" (see December 20 entry about "airing of the grievances"). December 24, 2024 Another 600 miles logged in the truck. It did its job by transporting my mom's xmas gift to her: a 6-foot aluminum ladder. What says "I'm thinking of you!" more than a safe, new ladder? Another mother-daughter bond cemented, thanks to Home Depot. It's about time somebody cared enough about her to get her a lighter ladder so the next time she repaints the entire house and detached garage by herself (no joke), it'll be that much easier! Her gift to me? She moved that framed Elvis jigsaw puzzle picture into the garage. She still has the framed jigsaw puzzle of cable cars in the bathroom, but that one is classy compared to the Elvis montage. May Elvis never, ever find its way back into the house. December 23, 2024 It's the day of Festivus and Reader Mike officially aired a grievance about how I need to open external links in new windows because he clicks on everything he sees and then ends up really far from where he started, lost and alone. Ok, I'll open links in a new window but you must promise never to use Comic Sans again. It's the font of the devil masquerading as a clown. We have a deal, compadre? December 22, 2024 Friday before xmas and most folks probably have the day off so why should I even bother writing when no one is around to visit this page to avoid work? But here I am so for the few of you listening, let's talk about the greatest gift you could get someone: Season Shot. It's fukcing awesome and makes me want to take up hunting to see how a bird that's seasoned precisely at the moment of death tastes like. And, of course, don't forget to wash down your spicy-kill with a sweet potato soda. December 21, 2024 Only Jim Rome watchers will care about today's entry: Is that the first time he's worn glasses on his show? He's a bit nearsighted, no? The glasses look good, though. He looks mature and distinguished, which is only disturbing because I remember the good old days of faxing into his local radio show on XTRA, when he was young and probably 20/20. What's more tragic, Romie going blind or me faxing into a radio show? December 20, 2024 Troy B wishes all motorcycles out there a Happy Festivus. And in the spirit of the occasion, he told me to go ahead and do the "Airing of Grievances" a few days early, so here it goes: I had to download AOL so I could use their dial-up service while in Petaluma during xmas. On broadband it took over 15 minutes to download their software. That disturbs me. Do I smell features excess? Like parental controls so granular I can bar Zina Jr. from seeing the letter Y, which sometimes cross-dresses its amoral self as a vowel? Or maybe different outfits for the running man logo in case I don't want to see it naked? What a porker. Ok, yes, I'm actually supposed to be airing a grievance to a person and not to a corporation, but what could be dumber than to tell your brother-in-law he's a self-serving cheesedick or your best friend that she's a bad driver and even worse human being? That's just asking for a heaping pile of interpersonal trouble. December 19, 2024 Let's all agree on one thing: It would suck to die in a plane crash. Let's all agree on another thing: It would suck harder to crash into a pond of raw sewage and then die. I suppose the same would apply to motorcycles if it were the fatal delivery device into a dirty soup made up of the local's excreted meals from the day before. December 18, 2024 If you really hate your job I've got a great way for you to waste time: go to Google and search on images using "motorcycle" and some other random word. You'll find funny stuff like this balloon bike. I made the mistake of searching on motorcycle + monkey and there went a couple of hours of my life. December 17, 2024 I bought a 40-pound bag of dog food today. This wouldn't be worth reporting except for the fact that Mr. Michigan was with me, and because of his shoulder I wouldn't let him carry it. We had to walk a block to the truck so there I was, bear-hugging a bag of dog food as big as my torso and waddling down Coronado's busy main street while this seemingly-healthy large man walked next to me holding a tiny plastic bag containing one greeting card. I suppose I could've spared Mr. Michigan the "Walk of Shame," but there was literally one cup of dog food left at home, so the need was immediate. Ok, sure, maybe I didn't have to ham it up at the street corner by shifting my load around like it was breaking my back, but why waste an opportunity to perform Kabuki theater when the stage is so beautifully set? December 16, 2024 I was in my Flickr account looking at my uploaded images and I thought they looked really colorful all laid out as thumbnails so I did a screen capture and now use it as my desktop wallpaper. Maybe it only appeals to the ADD; why look at one photo when you can be instantly distracted by 116 others? December 15, 2024 The first one to email with an answer that this was a desk and chair was Chris. Since I had to give him a ride to the airport this morning, he's not also getting a hand drawn xmas card. You can get one or the other out of me, but not both. The company xmas party is tonight. I suck at dressing up, which is any occasion in which jeans � even clean black ones! � are not appropriate. Pffft. Never grew up. December 14, 2024 Mr. Michigan's Crown Vic is dead; it'll cost as much to repair as he paid for it. He's going to donate it to charity so he's on the hunt for another car. Owners who are tired of their Buick LeSabres, contact me! I've got a predisposed buyer. December 13, 2025 What is this? Be the first to guess correctly and I'll send you a hand-drawn xmas card that says "Your brain sees things good." People working in an industry that predisposes them to knowing what this is can't play. December 12, 2025 I'm definitely filing this in the "Overexcited Marketing Department" category: "Ride like a trooper on [t]he Ducati of Ebikes!" December 11, 2025 Mr. Michigan is seeing an ortho tomorrow so he went to the hospital to pick up his xrays. I took a pic of the xrays showing the before and after. Now that I've seen the xrays, I don't think anyone should try the trick Mel Gibson's character did in Lethal Weapon II where he slammed his shoulder into the side of a car to put it back into place. Had Mr. Michigan tried that, he would've ended up paying the hospital extra to have his humerus pulled out from between his ribs before they could re-set it. December 10, 2025 If you don't have ADD, permit me to help you understand the sealed burlap sack full of fighting cats that passes as our thought processes via this video. December 9, 2025 Mr. Michigan's (MM) has had a tough two days. Yesterday his radiator blew and now his mighty whitey Crown Vic sits in a parking lot waiting for repair. Today we went dirtbiking and he dislocated his shoulder in a crash. He sucked it up and rode the bike back to the truck, which must not have been easy since we had to go back over a bit of whooped-out stuff. While he waited in the truck I tried to get the bikes loaded. I started up the ramp with it powered because there was no way I'd be able to push it, but once it got to a certain point it was just too high for me and I was barely holding onto the bike. It was a disaster in the making so I flagged down someone to help me. This guy was on his way to dirtbike so he was cool about getting stopped. He noticed MM's plates and said that he too was from Michigan. Straight out of the "What are the odds?" category, his parents live in Garden City, the small town that MM had left only months ago. What degree of geographical separation is that? Like .5? That's wild. Back to our injured subject: He was slumped sideways in the passenger seat for the hour-long ride back to San Diego. He was in excrutiating pain most of the way, which I could tell because his groaning would only be replaced by Lamaze-style breathing. I would've felt super bad for him if it weren't for the fact that I was so relieved it wasn't a compound fracture. I am just clueless over what I would've done had I been faced with the jagged ends of a bone. From hereon out, I'm resolved to learn some first aid as well as have contingency plans on accidents. Crashing is bad enough. Crashing with no one around to help you is extra disturbing. The emergency room doctor put MM under sedation and then worked the arm back into the spot it belonged. After a final xray, we were ready to go so I handed MM my oversized jacket (I had put his shirt back in the truck after they gave him a gown to wear). He went to put his arm into the jacket sleeve and (dramatic pause here) proceeded to re-dislocate the shoulder! He crumpled onto the bed in round 2 of pain, a pain undoubtedly seasoned with equal parts of despair and defeat. I stood there, totally beyond incredulous at what had just happened. The nurse fetched the doctor (but not until after standing there slack-jawed and equally incredulous) and the doc decided that rather than sedating MM again, he'd try to work the shoulder back into place immediately. MM did a fair amount of wincing, but the doc did manage to get it back into place fairly quickly. As a precaution, MM had to go through one more round of xrays before he could leave the hospital. Four hours after arriving, we were finally headed home. It wasn't a totally wasted day, as the characters that inhabit an emergency room are walking mini-dramas. My favorite was the guy who was so drunk that he crashed his bicycle and had a big cut on his head. We first saw him when we arrived and he was meandering all over in his gown and socks. As we were leaving, we heard someone say that he had just blown .22 � still over twice the legal limit! Does he have a spleen made out of gin that recirculates martini-tainted blood back into his system? Another guy was hit by an inattentive truck driver after he had pulled his disabled motorcycle off to the shoulder and had removed his helmet to call his family for assistance. One young shackled lad was led out to a cop car when he was done � perhaps someone needed a taser barb removed? So many half-told ER stories in search of an ending, happy or no. December 8, 2025 Chris is having a larger tank created for the Monster. I think it'll add about two gallons of capacity. December 7, 2025 We're planning a dirt ride at McCain Valley this weekend so I decided to brush up on my self-reliance skills since you never know where you'll get lost and how long you'll get to stay lost. I knew I had some survival skill book on my bookshelf so I took a look at it. Turns out it's the Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, which doesn't quite have the tips I need unless I have to wrestle an alligator. It did have this awesome tip, which Lucky likes me to read to him over and over because it reminds him of his days as a reckless youth. I'm not sure who would like to leave a perfectly good motorcycle for a car, but I suppose if someone was shooting at me I'd like sheet metal's superior characteristics as a barrier, at least compared to air. Oh, what prompted me to think a little more about proper planning was this story. If I'm not blogging again by Monday, someone call BORSTAR! December 6, 2025 Christmas came early for me. I went back to the web site I bought these from and I don't see any more listed. Ruh-roh, getting nervous again. This will last me half a year, and then where will I be? December 5, 2025 The DMV sent me my registration for Mo a while back, but no plate was included. I waited and waited, figuring it would eventually show up. It didn't. I went into AAA today to see what was up. The woman took my existing DMV registration and handed me a new plate and new registration, simple as that. That's service. Mo now has his plate and he's ready to get pulled over and written up in an efficient manner like all my speeding brethren out there. Reader John sent me this pic. Girlfriend, all you need are PMC stickers to top off your excellent style statement. BTW, how does someone get a KTM that low? Does half the chassis need to get sawed off? December 4, 2025 Even an old dog can get annoyed enough to find a little vertical leap in him. Watch Luckyzilla vs. The Helicopter. December 3, 2025 Condolences to all Pirate Monkeys in the Midwest with no power. I have serious problems figuring out what to do when I'm without power for a couple of hours; not sure what you do when it's a few days and the temps are in the teens. Alternate between tidying up the house and passing out from the cold? December 2, 2025 Where are my 4,320 sticks of Trident cinammon gum that I ordered online last week? I wonder if Penjahat Kelamin has them hoarded in the crawlspace and is doing unspeakable crimes to them. December 1, 2025 I recently started getting junk mail at my house for someone named Penjahat Kelamin. Upon Googling that name, it appears to be Thai for something having to do with sex. This story translates the word into "sexual criminal." I wonder if I need to send Mr. Michigan into the crawlspace with a meat cleaver to see if Mr. Kelamin has built a nest out of my old stretched-out underoonies in the farthest corner of the crawlspace. November 30, 2025 Me falling behind, still. Hate colds, still. O December, bring me a new day. This cognitive quagmire ruled by DayQuil and NyQuil disturbs me. November 29, 2025 Me falling behind. Hate colds. November 28, 2025 I hung Xmas lights around my front door. First in the neighborhood. I win. And my two trees (bitchin 1 and bitchin 2) are also out. I like Xmas lights. They cancel out all the bad Feng Shui I probably have from a house that sits dead smack at the end of a street. November 27, 2025 I think I got my first cold of the season. It's more like a half-cold so I'm not down-and-out. It's allowing me to be just mobile enough so I can go into retail establishments and share my grief. The guy who handled my check at Costco should have a sore throat right about now. November 26, 2025 Reader Tim figured out why the Hypermotard disturbs him. It looks too much like a Venetian carnivale mask and we know the beaky ones are extra creepy. November 25, 2025 This explains why I haven't been able to buy my big boxes of Trident cinnamon at Costco. I've been chewing this gum my whole adult life and now it will be no more. Imagine you've been smoking Pall Mall regulars for the past two decades and they quit making them. You can't just go over to Pall Mall non-filters because it's not the same thing. Likewise, the Trident White chiclet-style cinnamon gum is not the same. And don't tell me to try Orbit or Dentyne or Big Red because I have and they're not the same. I just ordered 20 wholesale-sized boxes of the gum online. I'm frightened about my gum-chewing future. Hold me while I cry. November 24, 2025 I can't figure this out: If garbage collection is delayed a day because of a holiday, does that mean the guys driving the trucks don't actually get a day off because they still have to do the job, only one day later? Confused. November 23, 2025 Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Here in the U.S., the traditional Thanksgiving feast started back in 1621 when the Pilgrims had a big harvest. It was important because the previous winter's harvest wasn't so good and about half the people stiffed out. Without the help of the Wampanoag tribe, the Pilgrims might not have made it the following year so they stuffed their faces with their Native American friends. There must not have been a Magic 8 Ball at the dinner table because any one of the Wampanoag could've picked it up and gotten "Outlook not so good" and ran for the hills with a warning to all other brothers to do the same. While things went downhill for Native Americans for a good long time, it's now on the upswing again because they have lots of casinos outside of Nevada and B-level acts like Kenny Loggins and Gladys Knight (without the Pips) playing. Life always has a way of sorting itself out. November 22, 2025 Lucky, being old as he is, has started exhibiting signs of self-liberation from social mores. To wit, he took a dump in my mom's kitchen. This, after having just recently dumped in our kitchen back in SD. She told him it was ok because he didn't dump on her carpet. Well, the day's not over yet, is it? Everyone stay tuned for the next installment of The Bad Dog Diaries. November 21, 2025 Made the 10-hour drive up to Petaluma. You know you're doing holiday driving along with a hundred thousand of your closest friends when you stop at a Taco Bell along I-5 in b.f. nowhere and there's a long line and all the tables are filthy, the floor is extra sticky, and the trash cans are stuffed so full they can barely accommodate yet another wadded chalupa wrapper. November 20, 2025 View my virtual chumby that shows Ducati news from Google, Cute Overload pics, and ESPN NFL headlines. Each widget runs for 30 seconds. I need to work on some Pirate Monkey Cult Flash widgets as recruitment devices. Maybe if I can overlay a dancing candy bar on the PMC logo, people will become unable to disassociate one from the other and the PMC will become simply irresistible. People won't know whether to join the cult or to try to eat it. November 19, 2025 Nothing breaks my balls like those dreams that test me as a biker. I dreamt I was supposed to visit a friend in Seattle and I had to make the trip from San Diego on a not-quite-running-right ST2 during the darkness of night...in the rain. I did have a bail-out option of driving a car if I chose. I found myself leaning towards the car and a part of my excuse was so that I could bring my dog. In the dream I was quite hard on myself for not following the One True Path as a biker. Hmmm...safe, warm and dry in a car vs. unsafe, cold and wet on a bike doomed to break down. My realistic conscious would like to send my idealistic unconscious a message: You're an idiot. November 18, 2025 After today's dirt ride it dawned on me why I can hardly walk after my rides. Because I have so little foam on my seat I avoid sitting on it; I keep my ass hovered over it like I'm sustaining a deep knee bend. On smooth trails the lack of foam isn't a problem, but on the local moon-rock terrain my spine takes a beating so I try not to sit down. I need to think about which I dislike more: getting my coccyx brutalized or not being able to touch the ground, the latter being a huge deal when I'm awkwardly trapped in a dead-end trail and have to back myself out. Who doesn't like choices, especially when they both really suck? November 17, 2025 Went up to the mountains to try to see some of the Leonid meteor showers. There were a few shooting stars, but nothing out of the ordinary. To whom do I write to complain? NASA? The nearest observatory? A Leonid story: Several years back there was a major Leonid meteor shower. It was on a Saturday night on the eve of a race at Willow Springs. Chris and I were at a motel, asleep, when at around 1:00 a.m. we hear this squeak-squeak-CLONK, squeak-squeak-CLONK (repeat) along with the usual groaning noises. Ok, fine, someone's doing the Big Nasty; it'll eventually end, and so it did. But after that, there's stomping around in the room and the front door keeps opening and slamming shut. Chris can't take it any more so he goes upstairs to ask the people to knock it off. The report back to me was that the guy said in a mildly sheepish voice, "I just wanted to see the Leonids." To return the grief, the following morning when we were checking out at around 6:45 a.m. we called the guy's room and hung up on him. A couple of times. Yes, very juvenile, but hell hath no fury like an underslept racer. November 16, 2025 Reader Phil sent this link. Yes, it's a very stable centerstand, but a bit much, no? November 15, 2025 If you recall, I just starting working for a company called Chumby. We're still deciding which material is ideal for the unit's housing. One of the guys had a prototype made of leather so I was sniffing at it pretty hard. It smelled great; so great, in fact, that I literally drooled mid-sniff. I tactfully hid my mouth behind the prototype as the saliva stretched down. I couldn't figure out why I was so worked up over it until I realized it smelled like motorcycle gear...the chumby smelled like a ride waiting to happen. November 14, 2025 Finally, the squat has been scientifically proven as the most comfortable position. The web site refers to the video as a "mockumentary," but that's just to placate the ultra-pc Asians who condemn the use of "Oriental" and "China Doll"; they would certainly not sanction the idea that there is a genetic marker for squatting. Reader Jeff gets the PMC position of Propaganda Specialist E5 for this find. I watch the video and I feel like squatting. November 13, 2025 Anybody see the hit that T.J. Houshmandzadeh took in the head in the Bengals v Chargers game? He had the most awesomely vacuous look as he laid on the ground and pawed weakly at the air; I think that's how we concussed motorcyclists look after a mild braining. If concussions weren't bad for the brain they'd be fun; it's like being drunk without paying for the booze. November 12, 2025 Reader Patrick sent a pic of a high-heeled squatter from Vietnam a while back but I forgot to post it. (Do you like restaurants to cook your goat testicles on the ground? Have I got a country for you!) Just to verify that squatting in heels is easier, I broke out the tallest pair I had (two massive inches) and tested with and without. No question: easier with. What training wheels are to bikes, high-heeled shoes are to squatting. November 11, 2025 I put a deposit on the Hypermotard today. I don't have to deal with paying for it until 2008. That's plenty of time to raise money by selling PMC stickers. November 10, 2025 I wonder if Sasha Cohen the ice skater gets much mail about Kazakhstani life, particularly where it overlaps with flat frozen water or sequined leotards. November 9, 2025 I'm going to have to confer upon Reader Michael the role of Squat Lieutenant for the PMC, as he seems to put a fair amount of thought into this matter. He sent some more pics from the trenches and had this to say: "This picture was taken at the of the Sepang Moto GP...[My wife] contends that I'm not doing the Asian squat because even though my feet are flat on the ground, I'm on an incline which puts my heels above my toes. Is it or ain't it? Which leads me to the locals. After the race we stopped at a corner noodle bar and I noticed one of the girls working there was squatting and picking some stuff up off the floor. I noticed that while she was squatting flat footed, she was wearing shoes with slightly raised heels. I called foul! My wife disagrees. What do you think? Is it or ain't it?" First, I would like to congratulate you on coming to the one true authority on squatting: Me. And to answer your question, you are both short of a true full squat. You're doing effectively what we call the "Booster-chair lite" version of squatting. Points for being flat-footed and having your ass down there, but a deduction for letting Mother Earth come up to meet you. Now do what you're doing pointing the other way on that hill and I'll hand carve you a squatting figurine in 14k gold for your trophy case. The woman is in "Fashion-assist" mode in which her heels are cheating her achilles tendon out of an honest stretching. So she, too, is short of realizing her full potential. Since you're wearing the Capirex shirt, now might be a good time to share with everyone something truly transcendent. Here is one of the Great Masters of our generation. He is doing the Diagonal Dog Squat, an advanced technique that puts a significant twisting force on the knees — except to those who have perfected it. See the serene look on his face? It means he is so perfectly balanced that he can no longer feel where his body ends and where the air starts. Yes, it's that magical. Tomorrow, I want everyone to eat some rice and start working on their squatting. If you don't feel better after a week, I will give you your money back. November 8, 2025 I installed a full Remus exhaust system on Mo. Read about it on his page. Don't care about bikes? Too bad, because I don't have any more mutant lemons or shaved Australian women to show off right now. November 7, 2025 The new Ducati 1098 was leaked on the Internet so I took those leaked pics and hereby present them to you. There is no honor among thieves. Don't ask me what's going on with that swingarm. Maybe it's added protection for people who insist on riding with bell bottoms. Silly fashionistas. Breaking news: We never, ever saw this coming. November 6, 2025 Some friends are getting married in Puerto Vallarta next year so I checked airline prices from San Diego to PV. Costs is around $350. Then I checked on Mexican domestic flights from Tijuana to PV and the price is around $550. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Air travel and its pricing system is a mystery to me. Or should I just say that Mexico is a mystery to me? November 5, 2025 Because you can't get enough of my mutant lemons. I find today's more aesthetically pleasing than the previous one, which had the gnarled seahorse-looking thingy in the middle. November 4, 2025 Thanks to those of you who sent me the link to the full ad campaign mentioned November 1 (warning: noodity). These two were particularly gutsy to do the full frontal. It's great to know that Australian women are keeping professional waxers and/or razor blade companies in business. If you believe the Butterfly Effect can apply to economics, unshaven cooters in Australia could very well result in a collapse of the U.S. economy. Thank you Australian women for shaving so that my dollar is worth something! November 3, 2025 I was doing work this morning and got a call from a friend. He asked if I wanted to go dirtbiking. I said I had too much work to do and told him to have fun. Fifteen minutes go by. I'm agitated. It's sunny. A chance to dirtbike. I keep working. An hour later I break down and call him back up and say, "Let's go!" To my friends who are always trying to get me to go to the track, I'm sorry to say that I've reacquainted myself today with something twice as fun and almost free. And to my full-time employer (as of Nov 1) that I now have to answer to, I'll slave Saturday and Sunday for having run off today. I am a woman of honor. Well, 80% motorcycling and 20% honor, which is good for anything up against motorcycling. Misc: Reader Rebecca sent me this link. I was a fan of the original version by the Rod Stewart-channeling, big-haired-having Bonnie Tyler, but these sweatsuit-wearing oddballs may have outdone the original. I'm not sure about the gratuitous butt crack display, but I didn't let that distract me from the musicality. November 2, 2025 Mr. Michigan left for a four-day bender in Vegas to meet up with his Michigan buddies. Will he come back with: a) a tattoo of a butterfly on his lower back and a heart on his ankle? b) a nagging feeling that he left a zygote behind? c) a debt so large he should keep on driving into Mexico? d) his own eight-minute segment on COPS? I'm hoping for d. It'll be like living with a rock star. November 1, 2025 Reader Phil sent this article from down under. I know some of you biker boys are desperate to find that girl on the Honda. Good luck! October 31, 2025 We ate at Chili's tonight. We decided we had to try the Southwestern Eggroll � would it taste like the metaphysical junction of Sante Fe and Beijing? The question burned unanswered for so long; time to put it to rest. So being Halloween, our server was wearing a costume. She was a perky girl and so devoid of malice (on the surface at least) that only someone like her could pull off this uniform at work: Border Patrol. Some people at the next table commented on it and she said, "Yeah, I thought it was fun, but my friends working in back didn't think so." ("Working in back" usually means cooking and dishwashing, roles that tend to be heavily Hispanic here near the border.) My take? She really wanted an outfit that involved a uniform but was a pair of brown socks short of a UPS driver outfit; hence, plan B: La Migra. Nobody knows what color socks they wear so accuracy would not come into question. Oh, the Southwestern Eggrolls were fine. I wouldn't drive to Sante Fe or Beijing for them, but if it's just a mile from my house I'll stop in and have some. October 30, 2025 Here's a great wallpaper from yesterday's race at Valencia (this and other shots are available on Ducati.com). The people in the stands are distorted from the heat and it looks like an oil-on-canvas painting. Super titanium-toe-slider-boy Bayliss is in the lead and Nicky is chasing him. Want to hear my Nicky Hayden story? Sure you do: Several years back I was at an SBK race at Laguna Seca on pit row waiting for the race to start. Behind me a porta-potty door swings open and I look back. Out pops Nicky. He had crashed the day before so I asked him, "Hey Nicky, how you feeling?" Most people getting accosted upon exiting a large plastic crapper would probably be annoyed, but with a sincere smile he said something like, "A'm fay-yelling preeetty good. Not baaayd at awwll," to which I answered "Great!" He oozes nice, which was why his super-red, extra slanty-eyed, "That's bullshit!" kill-a-Spaniard persona that came out after the crash at Estoril was such an awesome transformation. So glad Shakespearean Tragedy Nicky and Going Fetal Nicky weren't the final, lasting images of his 2006 season. October 29, 2025 MotoGP spoiler: The birthday gifts just keep coming. October 28, 2025 Oh, what an awesome day today will be. I call birthdays The Day of Unreasonable Demands. I can ask for whatever I want and everyone is REQUIRED to give in, or by law I am allowed to back over them in my car. So much has changed since Arnie became our governator — the best piece of legislation he signed was the right for birthday people to back over non-festive-compliant people. No kidding, go look it up: California Assemby Bill Oct28Z!na. Wrigley Update: Reader David answered the Wrigley's question. "Come to your senses"? Yawn. They should've worked with "Bite it" instead. Please note the great picture of Gregorio Lavilla choking himself (click here for pic in case they're ever smart enough to change the photo). He was doing great during the season and pretty much unraveled at the end. So apropos. More news to come...it's my birthday and you're forced to celebrate every minute with me. DO NOT STOP THINKING ABOUT ME. Wrap-up of The Day of Unreasonable Demands: We drove out to the desert to see the stars and ending up eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant which housed a piece of art so classy I grew covetous in my soul, and I am rarely covetous. It would've been worth buying if it weren't for the fact that my non-truck vehicle is too small to transport it and that the price was larger than necessary. Anybody want to guess how much this sweet leopard relief cost? Whoever makes the closest guess gets a free PMC die cut sticker in black or white. Guess the exact price and I'll give you two stickers. The contest ends whenever I decide it ends so send your guess now! (If 3D leopards aren't your style, you may just fall in love with this classic.) October 27, 2025 British Superbike racer Leon Haslam won the MCN Man of the Year Award so I was publishing the press release from his team, Airwaves Ducati. For the first time I took a good look at the banner on their pr and let the fact sink in that they're sponsored by Wrigley's, the chewing gum company (Airwaves is their product line over in the UK). I saw on the packaging something that said, "Come to your...." Being curious about the word "come" combined with a product that one sticks in one's mouth, I wanted to see if those clever Brits pulled off a great double entendre. I went to the Wrigley's Airwaves site, but didn't find an answer. (I did, however, find the catchy line "Bite it. Breathe easy.") Just to show that chewing menthol gum makes you edgy, they link to some interesting propaganda in German (a high-end commercial?). So much 'tood for our little chicle friend! So is the gum itself moody? Or does being German and chewing it with German teeth set the dark tone? I wish I could speak German. I feel like I'm missing out on something because when I chew gum, I still find myself sitting at my desk looking at my computer. Why does my gum not transport me to urban alleys under a gorgeous full moon? Maybe it's because I chew Trident, gum of pussies. I think I'll get some Wrigley's Doublemint today and see if I can take my life up a notch. It's no Airwaves, but I'll have to make do with our domestic offerings. Stay tuned for the next installment after I sample a Wrigley product with an open mind: You just might read about me BASE jumping off the Coronado bridge and tragically choking on a huge wad of gum during the descent. Final birthday gift-buying warning: One more day! Unopened packages of gum are an acceptable gift! October 26, 2025 The bad news is that I'm past the halfway point of my life expectancy. The good news is that disconnecting the 02 sensor on Mo worked. I don't know what the meaning of life is if there's nothing to measure the air/fuel ratio to give the ECU feedback; so far it seems to be running better at all speeds and has no problem starting up. I guess I'll monitor the situation. Anybody looking for a 5-year-old longhair Chihuahua? My friend is moving into an apartment and can't keep two dogs. I think "Bootsie" is pretty cool, but I don't think it's fair to Lucky to make him deal with another animal in the house during his waning, sensory-stunted days. October 25, 2025 My S2R1000 has the dreaded surging problem. Matt also recently bought a surging S2R1000 so he told me to pull the battery cable and disconnect the 02 sensor to see if that works. I think it helped on the short ride I did, but I'm not entirely positive. From what I've read, it'll take multiple rides for the ECU to correct itself. The surging is subtle but super annoying; it's like I'm always riding on a poorly surfaced street. Sort of bumpy and jerky. Stay tuned for updates. October 24, 2025 Four days until my birthday. Suitable gifts: money, stuffed monkeys, motorcycle tires (a pair, not just one), gift certificate to get the big termite holes in my floor fixed, anything awesome. Not suitable gifts: nail clippers that barely cut, motor oil not in its original packaging, jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, your property tax statement. October 23, 2025 Every now and then Palomar gets a po-po bitchslap. The comments are more interesting than the story. People are not designed to get along; I think it's one of nature's tricks for population control. More hate = less boinking. October 22, 2025 Why dogs bite, abridged version. Why dogs bite, unabridged version. October 21, 2025 We've got friends visiting from Michigan so we took them to the beach in La Jolla. While there, I bought a flying disc that I named Wilson and he wanted his picture taken so I did. He's photogenic. If you're thinking, "Fukc the frisbee" or "Wilson is unoriginal" or "Where's the motorcycle sh!t?", allow me to answer. Firstly, it's not a true Wham-O Frisbee so let's not call it that; secondly, the only other Wilson I know is a stupid volleyball; and thirdly, here's your motorcycle sh!t, so Happy Halloween. October 20, 2025 I always try to blog earlier on Friday because you're ready for the weekend and the last thing you want to do is work and you know I'm all about destroying productivity around the world. Sometimes, like today, I fail. I don't have much to write about today. I even went out to the lemon tree to see if I could find another anomaly you could marvel at, but about the best I could find was a heart. Good mutations take time. How about this story: The other day I was sitting at my desk and Lucky came in and sat by my chair. I looked around thinking, "What the hell is that smell?" Sometimes my dog does a poor job of defecating and a lot of it ends up as dingleberries on his rear. So I lifted his tail and checked. Nothing. Then I looked at his paws and saw that one was smeared with poo. So if you ever get mad about stepping in dog sh!t, you can take some consolation in the fact that they do it too (although there's not much consolation in it since they don't mind the smell). I'm sorry this entry degraded into an excrement story. Okay, no I'm not. Oh, good on Troy for getting the MotoGP replacement ride in the last race of the season. I think he's willing to step in because I'm staying on the job for now and he wants me not to forget him. He'll do anything to get his name in front of me. Just for being so proactive about it, I'm going to return the favor and say that he won the race, even if he DNFs. Friends do things for friends, no need to ask. October 19, 2025 Ok, once again I have extended my Ducati tour of duty. At the moment I won't be leaving after this month. Perhaps with some automation on their end I can manage two jobs. The sad thing is that no matter how hard I work at the Ducati job, it's doubtful I will be invited over to Italy for the express purpose of licking Troy like an ice cream cone. I know there's a Greek Tragedy in this whole story somewhere. October 18, 2025 Got a call from the Ducati.com boss today in Italy to talk about me staying with the company. Just when I thought I had made my decision, I'm all uncertain again. I realize that excessive employment is a high-class problem, but it still sucks. I think about all this work and I just get more sleepy and then I'm further behind than ever. Lame. October 17, 2025 California Speedway at Fontana, aka "Fontucky" (due to its NASCAR reason for existing), was fine. It didn't flow enough for my taste, but that doesn't mean it's bad because plenty of other people seem to like it. I can bet you no AMA racers will choose it as their favorite track because the passing opportunities are limited. And what's up with turn 3? I felt like I was trying to turn into someone's driveway way too fast every time. If the high price (around $260) doesn't dissuade you from becoming a Fontucky regular, perhaps the odor of a nearby landfill will. It's an unusual smell of organic rot and industrial chemicals that only a starving seagull could love. I'm cool with riding the track if I only had to pay around $100, but for their plus-size price I'll take my dollars to the Big Track at Willow and buy my guaranteed raging woody from that long sweeping turn 2. Floyd got checked out by the Race Tech guy. He said my settings were way off so he made all sorts of adjustments. Although Floyd wasn't perfect, he was a far cry better than Romeo on a track with regards to stability; after the adjustments Floyd was on rails. I know suspension is crucial, but you never really appreciate it until someone works their magic on your ride. October 15, 2025 Angriest human being on the planet today: Nicky Hayden. This was probably the most tragic event to have taken place in a MotoGP that didn't involve frantic medics. Nicky, if you don't get Dani a gift for Christmas this year, I'm sure he'll understand. October 14, 2025 Remember the mutant lemon I showed you a while back? I found another freak on the tree. I speak the language of deformed lemons and this one, in a very weak voice, told me, "Don't drink the tap water in San Diego." October 13, 2025 I signed up for the Ducati track day at Fontana this upcoming Monday. Never ridden there before. There were only openings left in the advanced group. I hope that if I must suck, my slurping noises of underperformance will be masked by all those Termignonis. To continue the dead people topic, I want this calendar. If Mr. Michigan and I part ways some day because a "professional dancer" with no front teeth has caught his fancy, I'm going to date a mortician so I can finally hear interesting stories like how he ran out of formaldehyde but learned that sugar water works just as well — except for the pesky ants. October 12, 2025 The Cory Lidle plane crash got me thinking about dead people as I read the comments on the sport news site Deadspin.com. Here's my take on death: It's very sad if I cared about you (whether I've met you or not). If I didn't care about you, then it's categorized as an unfortunate event for those who did care about you. If you think that's callous, I ask you: Do you get sad over every dead person in the news that you knew nothing about? If not, then we're not so far apart, are we? Ok, enough delay: you know I'm just preparing you for the jokes... So I guess Thurmon Munson will be remembered as the 2nd worst pilot in Yankee history. The plane should have been carrying A-Rod...That way it wouldn't have hit anything. The Yankees will do anything to keep the Mets out of the papers. Too soon? Of course if this was TO, everyone would assume it was a publicity stunt. Yes, when I'm dead, go ahead and toss out the squatting jokes. You will honor me by caring enough to be that clever! October 11, 2025 Since North Korea allegedly had their first-ever nuclear weapons test, I thought this old Flash animation would be a good one to dig back up. October 10, 2025 To professional athletes, especially those in play-off games: There will be cameras all over. All. Over. You know what that means? At any time one will be pointed at you so do all your nose picking before or after the game. I know, you're running around and maybe it's cold so your nose is disturbing you, but resist the temptation to stick your finger up it. I haven't seen A's pitcher Barry Zito all year. Tonight I have and I will only remember him for one thing: nose picking. Being in the dugout in the shadows is no excuse. It's not that hard to make out the shape of a finger and a nose when there's ambient lighting from roughly one thousand 1500 watt metal halide stadium bulbs. I...see...you... October 9, 2025 Reader Tad asked if I have the Angry Little Asian Girl on the back of my leathers. The answer is "sort of." I didn't find the original ALAG to be enough of a stereotype so I put slanty eyes and a pug nose on my version. I also didn't put the double-barrel flip-off on my leathers; such permanence seemed a little rude and I'm just too nice. I think all the scuffing on the face came from the same incident that resulted in the grinding down of the tail piece in the background. Will I ever race again? If someone out there will keep an Aprilia RS250 maintained for me, I'll race that bike again. How's that for a deal? October 8, 2025 AMA, BSB and SBK are all done for the year. MotoGP has two races remaining: Portugal and Spain. Once they're done that's unofficially the start of the cold, dark winter for race fans. Even less fortunate are Internet racing portals. Which '06 interviews are interesting enough to reprint while waiting for '07 to show up? I can answer that question with at least one article. My advice to race sites is to keep readers coming back during the off season by making stuff up: Rumor is that Max Biaggi will wed his long-time companion at Valentino Rossi's Tuscany villa on Christmas Eve... Sources report that Troy Bayliss will quit racing and return to his former trade of auto painting. Said the Taree native, "Paint smells like candy, mate."... Marco Melandri reportedly has been undergoing intense physical therapy after a necklace from his own line of "MM Bling-Yo" caused a disc to slip in his neck... In other contests: The most anticipated NFL game of the week had to have been Eagles v Cowboys. With a game this hyped you just want to see a decent battle, and both teams did a reasonable job of not unraveling. Do I think T.O.'s drug overdose was a suicide attempt? No way, not before he had the chance to give his old team a metaphorical Dirty Sanchez. Or maybe even a real one. But now that T.O. was shut down, the next call to 911 just might be truly necessary. Stay tuned to one of the best lycra-based soap operas around. October 7, 2025 The last SBK race of the season is this weekend at Magny-Cours. For those of you who don't follow racing, Troy Bayliss won the title last week and is King Sh!t for the year. Here he is sending me a special thumbs-up signal from Imola after winning race 2. October 6, 2025 I like to wear full-face helmets to deliberately make face-kicking harder. I found two comparable shots at Thunderhill: One on Jason's bike and one alone on Romeo. Our lean angles were about the same in this particular turn, but Jason was going a billiony mph faster. I was told by one instructor to hang off less. He doesn't understand that monkeys like to hang off of things even when it's entirely unnecessary. I'm not sure it's a habit I can change, even if it's wasting a lot of energy. It's always been my mental crutch: The closer I am to the ground, the less far I have to fall. And isn't the technique you adopt all about inspiring confidence? October 5, 2025 We're home. Weather held out, no crashing, easy drive home through the night, fine time overall. Two enthusiastic thumbs-up for Jason Pridmore, who is a great guy. He's the guy you'd want for a brother or dad or husband or neighbor or pit buddy or whatever; just a great person. My first track class ever was almost a decade ago through his dad's school. On that day I took a ride on the back of Reg Pridmore's bike and was blown away with how much a bike could lean. Fast forward to ten years later when I'm all excited about hopping onto the back of his son's bike for another two-up ride. Half way into the first of two laps I'm thinking "Oooo, scary." I'm on the back of a GSXR 1000 trying to brace myself against serious G-forces and I feel like my ass and feet keep leaving the bike. So the first lap goes by and he checks if everything is ok and I give him the thumbs up, and I guess he's thinking that's the "Turn it up a notch, you slow retiree" challenge. Well, second time around I'm thinking, "SHEER TERROR. I FEEL. PANIC. WE DIE. CRYING INSIDE." I was doing my best to stay off of Jason so he could shift in his seat, but by not hugging hard against him I felt like I was constantly on the verge of falling off and becoming the first two-up passenger to be written about on Roadracing World along with the words "unfortunate tragedy." At one point we hit lap traffic and I'm thinking "HOORAY, WE SLOW DOWN! MUST! NO CHOICE!" But Jason drives around the outside of everyone even though it appears there is only one bike width's of track to thread through — all this just before we had to dive into turn 9. While completely leaned over to the point where I don't understand why we're not sledding down the track on bodywork, Jason takes his left hand off and kinda gives that racer's "Close pass, but it's all good" signal. Now I completely understand why the people who get a ride on the Desmosedici two-seater are required to have a physical exam beforehand. I don't think I'm the heart attack type, but were I just a tad weaker in constitution they certainly would've been doing CPR on me in the pit lane. That is, if they were willing to get past the vomit I was choking on. October 3, 2025 Jason Pridmore's class is pretty good. There's a high teacher-to-student ratio. I started out on the 749 but I think I'm just born to be a Monster rider. I swapped with Mr. Michigan after the first session and I just felt much more in tune with Romeo. I guess years of street riding in a fairly upright position has made me a retard on a superbike. I won't sell Floyd, but I suppose he's going to become the "communal bike" for my friends. We've got one more class day tomorrow and then we'll make the 9 hour drive home through the night. This trailer was in our motel parking lot last night. Work of automotive art. I wish I had a chance to get a shot of it after the sun had come up, but we had to get to the track. Still didn't catch up on email. Bad monkey. October 2, 2025 Been stupid busy with three races this weekend. Haven't replied to a lot of you who have sent email; I promise to catch up. We leave for a 9-hour drive to Thunderhill for a two-day track school so maybe I can do some catching up during the drive. September 29, 2025 Reader Mike wrote: "If I had a nickel for every time I said 'I have monkeys in my pants'..." Ironically, one of the primates was a pygmy slow loris monkey. If it weren't for the fact that "slow" is in its description, he could've had this Loris down his pants. That's fine as long as our Loris is returned to Portugal for the Estoril race on October 15. Speaking about the Estoril race, I extended my tour of duty with Ducati through the end of the race season. They have expressed a desire for me to stay on and are willing to work with me on my role, so I have a lot to think about. I bet you all secretly thought I was fired after saying that Loris "resigned" and I was just making up a story about voluntarily leaving. I wish that were the case, as I would not have to struggle with which job I want to keep. September 28, 2025 Please write on your calendars: "One month until Zina's birthday. Must buy gift with plenty of time for shipping." I started a page on Mo, the S2R1000. I rode him yesterday and I'm liking my new skunk buddy. I would've ridden him again today but I had to take Floyd to the shop today for a tire change in preparation for two days at Thunderhill next week. He's still there as I'm having trouble getting the rear tire off due to the @#$! Gilles chain adjuster/lift kit. The stock chain adjuster is going back on tomorrow. September 27, 2025 I lied yesterday. We women sportbikers do in fact get together and titter about cute racers. We especially like to focus on whose leathers are baggiest in the ass � so adorable! And change "flower decals" to "Hello Kitty decals" and there you have the truth. You riders have probably seen Belstaff gear around, right? I didn't realize they have been a Hollywood fashion darling for some time now. I thought they just made cordura gear that the tourers favored, but was I ever wrong. Finally, someone has made an outfit that can go from canyon carving straight to clubbing! I better go get my Brazilian bikini wax if I don't want to look like I'm packing Albert Einstein. September 26, 2025 I went to Beverly Hills Ducati and got the black and white S2R1000. Christine co-owns the place with her husband and it's always nice working with women in the business. I know you men think we sportbiking women are rare, but we sportbiking women likewise think we sportbiking women are rare. We don't gather together in a secret place out of your view to titter about cute racers or swap flower decals for our bikes. September 25, 2025 If you watched the Patriots v Broncos game last night you probably saw Patrick Chukwurah puking up on the field. If I were a player in that game, I'd rather run the wrong way and score for the opposing team than go anywhere near some guy's puke. What do you do for vomit on grass anyways? Shop-Vac with a Febreze chaser? Hate football and don't give a crap? You can't hate this. Okay, you actually hate dogs with hats? Fine, then feel sorry for me because I just had to run that stupid mouse out of the house again. It's so cheeky that while I was in one room watching TV, it made enough of a racket in another room for me to investigate. It's clear now that it's taunting me and was moving furniture around so that I'd fall on my ass when I went to sit down where my chair used to be. If the mouse wants war, it will get war. September 24, 2025 We rode up to Palomar yesterday. No lack of action: downed bikes, rescue vehicles, breakdowns, po-po on the hunt. We contributed to the breakdown category as Matt's bike had an electrical problem not too far from the top of the hill. The bike had to make a couple of other unscheduled stops after that, but it eventually got home. (There was a fatality on Palomar last week; unfortunate for the dead guy and bummer for the woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. Might be time to go back to the quieter Mt. Laguna.) September 23, 2025 Little mouse bastard left two turds on my desk. I'll accept this episode as an accident. The next one is a taunt. September 22, 2025 One evening Lucky was staring intently at the kegerator. Did he want a beer? Maybe a tutorial on how the compressed gas worked with the stout? Last night I found out why as I chased a mouse around the house. Those little black things by the kegerator? They weren't pieces of burnt rice as I had deluded myself into believing. I chased the healthy-sized mouse around, secure in the fact that I was wearing shorts and that it would not be able to run up my pant leg to spite my advances (as one had once done to a relative). It eventually ran to the open back door and stood in the threshold. Did it not want to leave this well-stocked home? Or was it momentarily stunned because freedom had been a sweet dream for so long? Or was it actually thinking, " "? Whatever: It finally made the correct decision and exited, much to Lucky's disappointment. His age-dulled senses hasn't had this much excitement since he last went on a truck ride, about two hours prior. September 21, 2025 Get to know your neighbors through their choice of wireless network names. I bet everyone in the 'hood thinks it's me, but it's not and while I think highly of myself, I don't think that highly of myself. I better rename my network to Super Squatter before someone claims it; I do think highly of myself in regards to that. September 20, 2025 Here's another chumby mod. I call that piece, "TechHead Teddy gives Junior disturbing nightmares." September 19, 2025 Congratulations to me for entering the next level of "mechanic schooling." The first level is any wrenching that results in lots of swearing and sweating. The second level results in bleeding and bruising. The third level introduces chemical burning, and that's where I'm at. Yesterday I was trying to remove a fuel line from the 749 and it wouldn't budge. I had to lean back and pull at it like a tug-of-war rope and when it popped off, the hose sprayed up into my face. At first I thought it only hit the lower half of my face but then my eyes started to burn. I did a full sprint down the hall (I was at Chris's shop) for the bathroom and my eyes held out just long enough for me to find the sink. I had my face under the running water for about five minutes, waiting for the burn to go away. There was no reason to panic because if gasoline caused blindness, I knew that by now there would have been a Discovery Channel show about mechanics who overcame such tragedies to repair cars only by touch. What a story of triumph it would make: "I can gap a spark plug by touch!" I hope I don't reach level 4 in mechanic schooling: that honor is awarded when you go to the emergency room. Update! Avast ye, pri-matey, how could arrrr ferrget it's Talk Like a Pirate Day? Yerrr jobbie is trrr thrrrow in some pri-matey screams 'tween yrrrr "Arrrrrggggs!" Joke from Reader Maurice: A pirate walks into a bar. He scans the room and shouts, "Arrr! Where're me buccaneers?" Bartender replies, "They're on the side of yer buckin' head!" September 18, 2025 I found a motorcycle-friendly backpack at Road Runner Sports. Can you tell why it's bike friendly? No zippers down the side to forget to zip up. My last backpack was starting to have zipper problems and I often reached back while riding on the freeway to see if I could feel half of it flapping in the wind; or worse yet, feel an empty space where my laptop was. The best part about this backpack is that it was in the clearance bin for $9. Even if you don't need a backpack, the Road Runner Sports clearance warehouse is a train wreck and worth visiting if you need running shoes or gear. September 17, 2025 A nearby faux castle (complete with drawbridge) is for sale at $888k. For that price you better get a 1,000-piece set of Ral Partha figurines and a huge bag of polyhedral dice thrown in for all those D&D games you'll be forced to host. Better yet, maybe the house comes with a dragon to guard the drawbridge (if it doesn't, here's a poor man's substitute, which is what you're going to be after spending almost a million on a house described as having "extreme character and charm"). Bird news: These Mitred Conures were hanging around the house today and I only noticed them because they made a lot of noise. How do birds benefit from being loud when it's not in response to a predator? This untrained human ear kept hearing: "I dare you to blast me out of this tree with your garden house!" And who doesn't love a good dare? September 16, 2025 Reader Stu was at Willow Springs today and sent me some pics of a couple of crashes he saw. Much to my surprise, there was Britt in a series of shots lowsiding. I happen to be taking care of her and John Mark's dogs while they're at the track. I just broke the news to Dinky who was extremely alarmed and asked that a message be relayed. (Britt, by the way, is a great rider with nuts the size of bowling balls. By comparison, mine are the size of walnuts.) September 15, 2025 The web site for the start-up I've been working for is www.chumby.com. The servers are no longer at the beach bungalow so it can handle more than a dozen people trying to access it at a time. I modified my chumby so it went from this prototype to this sportman's delight. I can't wait till we do sports feeds. The product has a lot of potential but like any other new electronic device, who knows if it will draw enough interest or not. What I do know is that I'm addicted to the Panda Cam. The movie "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" was right; this city is stupid over pandas and I'm one of those stupid people in that stupid city. And if you were wondering what "San Diego" means, again, I turn to Ron Burgundy for the answer: "Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale's vagina." Speaking of which, the Shamu Cam offers the opportunity to see a "San Diego." P.S. Don't rag on me about the web site. It's the first version and I'm working on a lot of fixes for it. It had to be up for Foo Camp so there was a lot of slash-and-burn activity just to get it done. September 14, 2025 Reader Mal asked for another pic of the exhaust Chris is developing. On a barely related note, I got word that there are no 2007 S2R1000 bikes around. Not sure what to do since the best riding of the year is happening; maybe I'll just go in a corner and kick myself that I sold Pogo. September 13, 2025 Someone set something on fire in the canyon below my house. I wouldn't have a problem with it traveling up to my house as long as it burned down the eucalyptus trees that block my view. Of course, if it took out my entire "mid-century ranch" then I'll really have a great view without any walls blocking my line of sight. Update: Planning to be a spree killer? Why not be original and skip the trenchcoat? It's badly overplayed. If you really need that trenchcoat to conceal your AK-47, could you at least go with a fresh color? Not asking you to step outside your comfort zone with siren red or kelly green; a subdued beige or mauve would be a refreshing break from the sullen killer's predictable super-goth black — I yawn in your face, you troubled person with no original sense of fashion! September 12, 2025 If you're curious about my job and wondering why you haven't seen it posted on the Ducati North America site, it's because I work for Ducati S.p.A. back in Italy and have no dealings with DNA. I'm not sure how quickly they'll fill my spot since they have yet to replace my boss who moved to another department in July. My guess is that they need to find a manager first, and then that manager will decide who to hire to perform my role. Or, they may seriously revamp how the site is done (i.e., cut out content) so they only need a manager. I have no idea what will happen. My hope is that after I've had some success with this start-up, I can one day return to Ducati in a new role. If it doesn't work out that way, I've got an idea about opening up an all-you-can-eat soft-serve ice cream parlor. Free ice cream to anyone who downs a pint of my "test blends" like motor oil, blanched horse liver, and blister juice. If I can't make you puke, you win! September 11, 2025 The goal of yesterday's moto ride was to see if these new exhausts that Chris is getting manufactured would melt the tail section of Matt's Supersport. The exhausts are completely stealth and gives the bike a real clean look. I'm on the verge of buying an S2R1000 (probably the silver one) and I wouldn't mind having something like that for it. (Mr. Michigan will get Romeo at a deep discount; it's been a little cruel forcing a street newbie to use Floyd as the main ride.) A couple of things about this story: 1. If you're a driver, always tell your passenger to hold on. 2. If you're the passenger, always hold on. 3. If you lose a passenger, it's probably best not to run back onto the freeway to fetch her. September 10, 2025 I got my annual bee sting on the neck today while riding. It hurt. As I tell you this story, I bet some half-eviscerated bee is telling a story right now in the bee hive emergency room about how horribly painful it is to get slammed by a human. But wait, there's more: After the bee stung me I felt something bite my jaw. Whatever it was left a larger welt than the bee sting. About bee stings: In case you don't know, the proper way to remove a stinger is to flick it off with something like a credit card. You don't want to grab it to pull it out because you'll squeeze more venom out of the stinger. Or, you can let 70 mph's worth of windblast eventually rip it out. September 9, 2025 Ideally, I should be getting up at 2:00 am to wait for the MotoGP press release from Sepang. The key word is "ideally." September 8, 2025 It's Friday! Let's get busy avoiding work because the weekend is officially here! Ready, set, go... If you've read enough of this blog, you know that I've documented the Asian predisposition for squatting with the keen eye of a degreed anthropologist. The other trait I haven't talked about is how Asian frugalness manifests itself. Case study 1: I have this box next to my desk in which I keep snack foods because I never know when I'll want to eat something and can't walk 50 feet to the kitchen. I looked in that box today and much to my shock, I observed that I've been hoarding used paper towels (and that's the stuff on top; not sure how much more is underneath). It appears that if I don't feel that I've gotten my 1 cent's worth out of it, I'll hang onto it for a future, more thorough, soiling. That's so Asian. I can't wait until I start rinsing out Ziploc bags. I guess deep in my psyche I never know when the Mongol hoards will invade and I must have as much resources stockpiled as possible to stay self-sufficient for an indefinite amount of time. Those paper towels could combine with duct tape to become bandages, or get soaked and formed into hard balls for artillery, or even eaten to fill the painful void of an acid-ridden stomach. MotoGP at Sepang: Your moment of zen from Dani Pedrosa's onboard camera. Can you hear the silence as he's slingshotted into space? Reader Phil sent me this satire on Steve Irwin. I think I'm going to burn in hell because I laughed. More than once. Scott Adams still has the best blog ever. September 7, 2025 Columnist Mike Morford must be reading my blog. In my August 7 entry I make a case for athletes taking all the drugs they want. Yesterday he wrote the article All Jocks Must Get Stoned. Thieving bastard. Did you know the Ducati factory is on strike? The company needs to lay off some people and I guess the workers were picketing. An email was sent out by Minoli about the situation. Here's what I got out of it using one of those fantastic language translators: It puts into effect them trade-union tension, for how much disagreeable one for all it was attended and me the provision of taken ordinary unemployment compensation seems totally comprehensible in the light of in the comparisons of approximately 100 dependent. We are convinced, with the good will of all to succeed to resolve the problem, in short times. They are viceversa faziose, destabilizing and in totally false the voices that I then feel circular in Company on second and a third list for a total of others 250 persons who would have to be placed in unemployment compensation in near future. Not there will be other lists why they are not necessary and they would prevent us to work correctly. In the impossible eventuality that, against my will this comes proposed I guarantee you hour end that I will discharge myself for being able to be totally loyal with the hit persons. "Hit persons"? Strikers, look out for a red dot on your forehead coming from the rooftop across the street. Not sure why these strikers would care about getting laid off anyways. If they feel there's nothing unusual about taking off the entire month of August, why not just enjoy the rest of the year off? September 6, 2025 You want your shocking news of the day? I just resigned from Ducati. Yes, "resign" without a hyphen. The new contracting project is going well and after five years of working for Ducati I've decided that it's a good time to move on. During race season I'm tied to my computer on the weekends and I've lost out on more than a few opportunities to do fun things with friends who have normal work schedules. Or, if I do duck out for a few hours in a window of opportunity, I stress out about when a press release will show up and how I need to get home to publish it. Except for not paying me for half a year, the company has been good to me and it was a hard decision to make. But you know the deal with life: Make decisions based on what you might gain, not on what you might lose. Fear is, and always will be, man's greatest enemy. Update: I forgot to mention that I gave them one month's notice. For those of you keeping track, I've got plenty of time left to do some bonehead stuff. Maybe you didn't catch how I published a Spanish race report to the Italian site? Words with accent marks all look the same to me. September 5, 2025 If you liked the stingray story, maybe you'll like this animal story from my Mexico trip diary: SATURDAY MAY 22, DAY 23. Drove from Guayabitos to Puerto Vallarta. Had to go to the office of tourism in order to locate a trailer park. We found a nice one off the beach. After we parked the van, I walked through the courtyard, curious about a high, smooth cement wall that looked great for hitting tennis balls against. This was a rare sight (there are few high, smooth walls in Mexico) so I walked nearer to the wall to get a better look at the area. I moved near a couple of boats being stored in the courtyard, coming upon a stuffed animal with its head torn off. I followed the trail of white stuffing, which lead to the pet beneath the boat. I looked at it and it looked at me. I knew something was wrong but I couldn't figure out what. All I could register was that this cat-dog thing was watching me. I slowly turned, and walked past the iron gates of the courtyard. I looked back and finally realized what I had been standing next to�a baby lion. In exchange for not mauling me, for not making me the tourist flavor of the month, I decided not to play tennis in its backyard. As for why the lion was on a ten-foot nylon tether tied to a beached boat, we could not find out, not even after asking the maid. On a completely unrelated note, is anybody reading this a great Flash animator? September 4, 2025 Steve Irwin is dead by stingray. I am curious to learn more about the details because a while back I got cut by a stingray not by stepping on it, but by swimming over it in shallow water and probably spooking it with my shadow. Normally the barb stabs straight in, but because I was moving the barb slashed across the top of my foot. I was swimming with a co-worker in La Jolla Cove so he had to swim a half mile back to where we started so he could get his truck and take me to the hospital. I limped onto the nearest beach and headed to the lifeguard tower. There, they had me put my foot in as hot of water as I could tolerate to draw the venom out, standard procedure for all stingray attacks. My friend showed up and loaded me into his truck and off we went to the nearest hospital. Stingray venom is extremely painful; I had a vice grip on my foot and I rocked in the passenger seat all the way to the hospital. In the emergency room they put me on a bed and resumed soaking my foot. I stared at the exposed tissue and the thing I remember most were the open ends of veins, turned white from lack of blood. At that point I understood the need for vascular redundancy. I had great doubt that those little tubes were going to find each other and reconnect. I also looked at my stubbly legs and swore that I would never again forgo shaving on my workout days, should I end up in the hospital again with people gathered around me and my naked leg. Shaving became my version of wearing clean underwear in case of an accident. Several stitches and a few gawking interns later, I finally got out of the hospital. I went swimming in the ocean a couple of times after the attack, but because I already had a tenuous relationship with open water from a near-drowning as a kid, I've opted never to swim in the ocean again. A stingray has every right to attack me as a defensive response, and likewise if one ever showed up in my driveway I have the right to do a burnout on top of it as my defensive response. September 3, 2025 SBK Assen. Race 1. Rain. Bad day at the office. Have you had your daily allowance of gravel? September 2, 2025 A by-product of hurricanes off of Baja Mexico is that we can get some nice sunsets. I took two photos tonight and made them 1280x800, which is wallpaper sized for some displays: blue sky, pink sky. Don't give a fukc about sunsets and want me to rag about something because that's my specialty? How about every lifestyle subgroup requiring self-affirming events? It's fine if you're gay and love chubby and/or hairy men, but must streets be closed because of it? Is it any less absurd than tall type-A Asian women with really big butts getting together and having a street fair because they have to make a statement that not all Asians girls are petite, demure and flat-assed? The answer is No, so someone stop handing out all those street fair permits before celibate rodeo clowns with transient facial tics want a square city block shut down for their publicity needs. September 1, 2025 Reader Mike sent me this link and said, "My suggestion is you buy this dress and wear it as the omnipotent ruler of all things primate." I don't like wearing dresses, but I might make a special exception for that one or this one. The first one, with its brilliant bow and delicate spaghetti straps, is definitely for formal parties while the second one, with its conservative lines and built-in henchmen, would command respect in the boardroom. August 31, 2025 Ducati announced that Troy re-signed with the team today. The PR person made sure to ask me not to resign Troy, and said that Minoli wrote about it in his blog... On a closing note: I nearly fainted when I read yesterday's headline in ducati.com's English version. In the convoluted journey from Italian to English, "Capirossi Signs Again" somehow became "Capirossi Resigns"! Let's just hope that now Loris has "re-signed" that he will also "re-win"! I made it on Minoli's radar! w00t! August 30, 2025 Lucky would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to Reader Jeff for sending him a box of Milkbones. If you notice in the Milkbone photo, Lucky is no longer wearing his favorite Wild Irish Rose t-shirt. I took it off not because he was healed, but because he took two dumps inside the house. You have to understand, since the first time he crapped indoors over a decade ago and I beat him vigorously about the head as a punishment, he never did it again...until this t-shirt came into his life. Here's my theory: Since he's wearing a shirt, he thinks he's human, and people do their business indoors so why can't he? As lame as that sounds, since the shirt came off two days ago, he hasn't dumped inside again. Well, not that I've found. Hope there are no surprises waiting for me in my sock drawer or toothbrush holder. August 29, 2025 I put up the Capirossi story yesterday in which he re-signed with Ducati. I did a pretty good boner, though, and put on the home page the title CAPIROSSI RESIGNS. A PR person told me it got changed when I came online this morning. I'll guess that Loris didn't see it because I'd probably be fired after he regained consciousness from fainting and phoned someone up the corporate food chain. Silly missing hyphens. August 28, 2025 I was going to link to the site of the project I've been working on but we've been having server problems so I'm holding off until the co-location is taken care of. Here's the prototype of the always-on, Internet-connected device. It's meant to be blob-like and fun. Keep in mind I'm just a contractor on this project so I don't want to hear about how it looks like a baked potato or ET's head or a suede porcupine with no quills or legs, as if I can do a damn thing about it. August 27, 2025 Am I a bat or can anybody else hear a high frequency noise when you move your wireless mouse? I think I'm going to go fly around in the dark tonight and pick insects out of mid-air. If I find them delectable then I know I've got bigger problems than just trying to avoid work. August 26, 2025 Finally, I found a reason why it pays to have long hair: I was doing a high-speed transition from one thoroughfare to another. Just as I was merging onto the other road I came upon a slow-moving car so I do a nanosecond glance over my shoulder, see I have some space in front of another car, and jump into the next lane. I glance back in the mirror to see that it's a cop car I squirted right in front of at about 20 over with no blinker. I throw up my hand to wave, like I've temporarily lost my mind so please please PLEASE excuse me, dear officer � and have I told you lately how beautiful and shiny your black cruiser is??? I wait for him to light me up but nothing happens. He follows me for a while and then lets me go. It had to have been the ponytail. It waves around and hypnotizes law enforcement officials into seeing nothing but delicate pink flowers stirring in the breeze. So harmless! So feminine! So uncriminalish! The day I cut my hair off is the day I will get a ticket. Mark. My. Words. August 25, 2025 I just got done watching "Kung Fu Hustle" and I highly recommend it. It has kung fu, a good storyline, great creative direction, and a sense of humor. I was telling Mr. Michigan that it was in Cantonese and not Mandarin, to which he commented, "If you put two stray cats in a small box with holes in it, it becomes an instant Cantonese translator device." That's clever, but it only works in one direction. Do I add a stray dog to try to get some English out of those cats? And regarding the noise that is Cantonese, allow me to relink to an article about why Mandarin is edging out Cantonese as China's preferred language. I used to always think my relatives were yelling at me. Now I realize they were probably just trying to tell me my fly was unzipped, or maybe to lose a few pounds. August 24, 2025 Bummer days for Pluto. It got demoted to "dwarf planet" category. The upside is that we still have Uranus, fodder for many a juvenile joke. As for the hope that Xena gets to become a full-fledged planet, forget it. Same fate as Pluto: Minor planet. Galactical also-ran. Celestial bench warmer. August 23, 2025 No Milkbone baskets for Lucky? Do you all hate my dog or something? This handsome fella deserves more than your cold shoulder. He's had the shirt on since Monday and only once have I come home to find his leg caught inside the sleeve, leaving him effectively an amputee. Maybe the other delivery address didn't work. Try: Lucky, c/o Street With the Casino Card Club at the End of It That the Vietnamese Guys Love to Go To, San Diego, CA. August 22, 2025 As I mentioned previously, I picked up another job. We're soft launching a product on Friday and if you've ever had to launch a product along with a web site, you know it's a very painful process. Last night I was at work until midnight "stuffing units." When you have everyone from the CEO on down doing piece-work assemby, you know you're at a start-up. I'll put a link to the product on Friday. August 21, 2025 Lucky got his teeth cleaned and his monoboob removed. He's already started licking at the stitches so he's being forced to wear a t-shirt. This one sports a Wild Irish Rose decal which is very apropos since the anesthesia is making him walk like a drunk. Here he is passed out. (Don't tell me about cones; he's sooner rip his head off than put up with a cone.) Oh, get-well Milkbone baskets can be sent to: Lucky, c/o Street With Great Bushes To Piss On, San Diego, CA. August 20, 2025 Can you see who Loris is thanking for his great performance at Brno? Yep, the most powerful wish-granting eye-patched primate in the universe. Join us and you will be a winner, too. Or if not at least a winner, we'll try to give you the strength to jump this high in full leathers. August 19, 2025 I think the neighbors are trying to tell us they don't support mixed couples — one from California and one from Michigan — and want us out. I found this in my front yard today. Never mind the fact that a house with my exact street number is located a few hundred yards down the block and the realtor explained that the sign should've been speared into their juniper bushes. I believe people haven't learned to accept "interstatial" relationships. We may not have checkpoints between states, but many of us have them in our minds. I plead with my fellow countrymen: Let Oregonadians fraternize with Arkansasers, Minnesotites with Texasassins, the "Show Me" state with the "Land of Enchantment" state, blue states with red states, dry states with humid states, etc., etc. August 18, 2025 I was eating at a restaurant out on good ol' El Cajon Boulevard tonight. Behind me were two women talking and I caught a story that went something like this: "I was robbing and stealing, you know. I would just take stuff from people. I'd get stuff like jewelry and stuff and then I'd bring it home to my mom and I'd give it to her and she'd ask me 'Where did you get this stuff from?' and I'd get so angry because I was giving it to her...from my heart." She has a point, doesn't she? Anybody can go out and buy a gift for Mom, but to take the chance of spending time in jail by stealing it — that's hairy balls and filial love all rolled into one. You can't buy motivation like that. Unfortunately, this woman did not appear to be a real success story as part of the conversation included "solitary," I think as in "confinement," I think as in "prison." And another tip-off on the inability for her to make good life choices was a big mess of a tattoo across her chest. If someone told me to imagine what fingerpainting with chopped spinach would look like, the dark green smear across her sternum was exactly it. August 17, 2025 So someone admitted to killing JonBenet Ramsey. He was living in Thailand. I'd like to suggest something: Any male – particularly a single one – who chooses to live in Thailand for reasons other than being relocated by a company is probably there to enjoy the very lax laws on having no-no relations with kids. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but if you're an expatriate in Thailand who is not aroused by the smell of baby powder or bubblegum, write to me and I'll post your name as the exception to my rule. If you tell me you're a schoolteacher, though, I'm really going to have a hard time believing you and I'll have to flag your name with an asterisk for further review. Six Degrees of Geographical Separation: The suspect was a substitute teacher in Petaluma elementary schools and managed to get himself arrested for possession of kiddie porn in Sonoma County. Way to go, Perv Boy. August 16, 2025 I've joined the Apple masses. No, I didn't buy an Apple computer, but I've joined that large group of owners with some type of iPod Nano screen problem. I went to the Apple store where I purchased it and instead of having an area called "Tech Support" or "Customer Service," they labeled it "Genius." Like I'm supposed to know that's where I go for equipment problems? It reminded me of the early days of the internet when "mystery meat" navigation was all the rage. Graphic designers were in love with cute icons that had no meaning so you had to click on them to guess where they went. "Genius" is Apple's retail version of mystery meat navigation. I found this photo of an Apple store in the UK..."Genius, make me a martini!" August 15, 2025 Here's something that might interest people who know nothing about San Francisco. You know the classic picture of the "Painted Ladies" across from Alamo Square park? Those houses are in the Western Addition, a pretty crappy part of SF. Not as bad as Bayview Hunters Point, but still a "homocide friendly" neighborhood. During the day it's not egregiously bad, but I'll bet a few tourists that make the mistake of wandering around there at night get mugged. I used to live a block away and my roommate had a girlfriend who left one evening and was waiting at a nearby bus stop. A cop pulled up and asked why she was there. She explained her dependence on mass transit. The cop told her it was not safe to be there at night and drove her out of the neighborhood, presumably before she was raped or otherwise inappropriately handled. I think around that time a taxi driver was shot dead at Alamo Square. Granted, I haven't lived there in over a decade, but I've read it's still violence-plagued and they're talking about bringing back SFPD foot patrols. So go ahead and visit the Painted Ladies; just don't do it at midnight or sporting ostentatious jewelry, as modeled by this cool cat. August 14, 2025 I still cringe at seeing back-to-school ads. As a kid I hated school and having summer end sucked beyond words. Speaking about school, I cheated on tests when I could. Looking back on it, it just meant I was "thinking outside the box." The Man was trying to keep me down with standardized procedures of measuring intelligence and I was just breaking free of those shackles by writing in really tiny letters on my arm. Don't call me a cheater, call me a renaissance thinker. August 13, 2025 I've failed my dog. I live in San Diego and I never taught him how to surf. The televisiony news is showing me that it's possible, despite the fact that the dog looks gripped with fear. Dogs just have no idea what fun really is and it's our job as their superiors to make them understand that surfing, bungy jumping, fire juggling, running with scissors, and eating fugu prepared by a random guy on the street is the icing on this cake of life. August 12, 2025 Zoologists didn't think it existed, but I actually found a sheeponkey today: Hard evidence that at least one sheep laid down with one monkey, probably after the barn dance ended and the pickins got slim. I rescued this one from a Ralphs. None of the other stuffed animals wanted to be near it. Single-specied polyester beings can so smug and cruel. August 11, 2025 These mon-keys are cute, but I'm pretty sure they'd sell a lot more of an eyepatched version. August 10, 2025 Hot off the press for you people sitting around at Heathrow and Gatwick: terrorists + explosives + airplanes = terror threat level Elmo!! August 9, 2025 I got an invite to my high school reunion. The only reason it would be tempting to go (I've never gone to any of them) is because of the sartorial lattitude they're offering this time around. A ball gown I sure don't have, but jeans and cowboy boots? My sweet filly, that I have. And the Elks Lodge? I've never gone where a Benevolent and Protective Order hangs out. Aren't you curious about how Benevolent and Protective places are decorated? I am. August 8, 2025 If my realtor would've put out a flyer with so many errors in it, I would've fired him. The best one is: "Great curb appeal from the dessert feel..." What, key lime pies hanging off a saguaro cactus? To the realtor's credit, if I had bodies in my crawlspace, this person might be the one to explain it away with that gift for blah blah blah: "Exsellent under-house space with dehidrator-quality airflow � perfect odor minnimizatoin for flesh-drying hobbyests!" August 7, 2025 Floyd Landis' B sample came back positive for synthetic testosterone. You know what the best way to deal with doping is? Let it be legal. Let athletes take whatever they want whenever they want. The ones who can handle massive quantities of performance-enhancing drugs without dropping dead of a heart attack or going totally crazy is in fact proving a certain level of physical superiority. Isn't that what sports is all about anyways? P.S. Anthony Gobert should've gotten a medal for being able to ride as well as he did stoned. August 6, 2025 There are three houses near me on the market identically priced at $749k. It just so happens I own a 749. It's a sign from above that I need to buy all three of these houses. Or at least convince one of them to accept my 749 as a straight-across trade. August 5, 2025 There's always room for jello. August 4, 2025 I am no fan of poetry. Words Scribed random Emote. Meaning fleeting, Explain to none. Closeness held, unyielding shell No sense divulged Words, no order. Yes, I just made that up and guess what? It's a poem. And it happens to be about poems. Might not follow any rules of meter, but maybe I'm just so avant garde in the art form that the world isn't ready for my XtrEEm frEEstyle poitchtrEE. But wait, today's philistine rant isn't limited to the written word. What actually got me going on all of this was when I saw the headline "Artworks shatter in Paris museum." The image in my head was of a vase or a glass statue or something like that. I followed the link and it was this. That looks like "joke" art, like something that the characters in the movie "Zoolander" would've had a bidding war over. I actually like abstract art, but you cannot convince me that a 52x78 Plexiglas banana-strawberry throat lozenge is something that should've been hung in a gallery, let alone needed to be insured. Maybe only really sensitive people really understand poetry and art and the rest of us should stick to limericks and landscapes and reruns of Cops? August 3, 2025 More on C-Diddy, aka Obi-Wan. Did you know Asian Americans kick ass in air guitaring? Here's his explanation: "We're trained to kill in this sport. It's our genetic birthright: We come to the stage prepared to bring the Asian fury." Jun hai yuh?* You mean I've got this DNA instruction manual in me to be a guitar virtuoso, except without the music and talent part? I'm going to go practice my air-guitaring as soon as I finish eating 50 hotdogs in 12 minutes, which is the other genetic talent we Asians were blessed with. *Phonetic Chinese meaning "For reals?" Hot-off-the-Press Feel-Good Story: I just got back from the vet's with Lucky. While waiting I overheard a conversation at the counter. Someone came in and said she took her dog to Tijuana to get it shots because it's cheaper there and now the dog can't see. The receptionist asked if she knew what the shots were and the owner said No. The receptionist said the doctor was totally booked up until Monday and that she might want to get the dog to a hospital sooner than later. Why is this a feel-good story? Because I know you're not stupid enough to take your dog to TJ for cheap mystery shots, so I want you to feel good about being a not-stupid dog owner. Oh, and you ask about Lucky, the dog who falls through ceilings? He's great for being 15 but will need surgery to remove a big fat nodule from his chest. It's like a mono-boob and now's the time to take it out while it's still unattached to muscle. He will accept biscuit-floral arrangements after surgery. I will let you know where to send them. August 2, 2025 Reader Phil sent a photo with the comment, "Some things are just plain wrong." Actually, think about how just plain right it would have been had Lord Vader toned down his bad moods with pastel. The Death Star would've been renamed to Happykan Globe and no one would've had the snot choked out of him during staff meetings. And Phil, if you think that's wrong, this air-guitaring Obi-Wan is going to force us to make a new category called Just Plain Wrongerer. August 1, 2025 I stumbled across Scott Adam's blog and it's pretty entertaining stuff. If you don't bother reading it, let me share with you this pearl of Dilbert-esque wisdom: "Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt." July 31, 2025 Anybody have a Nintendo Power Glove? I need a picture of one that's not copyright protected. In exchange for it I'll give you a PMC sticker and tips on how to populate this planet with oodles of your kids you won't have to pay a cent to raise. Ok, I'll tell you the latter anyways: the UK needs your spunk. Men aren't coming forward and you can single-handedly (pun wasn't intended, but there it is) repopulate England. Don't let some other self-satisfactorer overrun the island with his subpar stuff; get over there and show them what real, high viscosity Man Sauce is. July 30, 2025 Congratulations to Mr. Michigan for doing his first California triathlon today. And an even bigger congrats to him for having the pluck to wear his Elvis sunglasses during the race. Next time I hope he does the total Vegas package. July 29, 2025 Update on Kegerator project: It's completed and although only one tap is currently pouring beer, the other is ready for the coconut-flavored PMC stout. I hope soft-serve ice cream floats well on it. July 28, 2025 Have you checked on your favorite Californian lately? We're getting roasted dead, but just to show we're selfless to the end, we still have the strength left to save bats (user and password: "pmccult" if you're asked). "Many are being cared for by certified bat rehabilitators." Certified? If you're not certified can you only handle the plastic ones until you learn to do CPR on something so small that 23% of the time they end up getting accidentally inhaled by the rescuer during mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? July 27, 2025 Today, I was officially mortified with respect to being 42. I saw this guy on the news and I was floored. He was talking about the doping accusations against Floyd Landis. Now you know who he is? Holy crap, the guy is only two years older than me but he looks 50-something. Is there an accelerated decrepitude time bomb ticking in me like there was for him? Am I going to wake up in 2008 looking like this, only squatting next to a motorcycle? Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Update: Ok, I might be off the hook. If you recall your cycling history, Greg was accidentally shot by his brother-in-law during a turkey hunting accident and to this day still has lead shot in him. He suffers from mitochondrial myopathy possibly as a result of it. I am sorry to hear he has this condition, but I'm glad that unless I go turkey hunting with a clumsy person in the next two years, I might not have to age at such an advanced rate. Society is just a whole lot tougher on us aging broads. July 26, 2025 Dare to slack. July 25, 2025 Kegerator. (Thanks Reader Chad for that link.) July 24, 2025 The source of pride this guy's parents feels when he comes home to visit must be huge. DDD huge. July 23, 2025 This week I had a company give me a quote to have a/c installed and it would cost around four grand. The irony is that when I'd need it the most, like during this painfully sweltering weekend, the state is begging us not to use a/c because the power grid is overloaded and blackouts are occurring. Maybe I should use that money for an above-ground pool, although the backyard is pool unfriendly. Don't engineers have workarounds for these issues? July 22, 2025 In the summer I want it to be winter. In winter I want it to be summer. Why must I live with such a short memory? July 21, 2025 I think most of my readers are at Laguna Seca so I shouldn't even bother with an entry. However, for the handful of you who aren't, I do feel the crushing responsibility to make sure you're properly sent off for the weekend, even though you should be reading this blog every single day of the week, not just to avoid work on Mondays through Fridays. Because you can't be at Laguna, go ahead and vote in my poll about it. July 20, 2025 Friends, comrades, fellow primates: There have been some inquiries regarding my attendance at Laguna Seca this year. I will not be attending because, ironically, I must work on race news. SBK and BSB also have races this weekend so I need to be on my own home computer where the Internet flows freely and reliably and without time constraints. I also like having food nearby in my fridge and a bathroom that isn't across the paddock. For those of you there, have great fun and walk up to as many Chinese girls as you can and ask, "Are you Zina?" It's a great pick-up line. July 19, 2025 I received an email from Reader Matt the other day in which he had this to say about about the July 14 "Squat Alert": I won't bother paraphrasing a dictionary definition of the word 'squat'. The pic from 7-14 of the Chinese woman squatting in front of the ottoman is a type of squat that most any person can do as her heels are not on the ground. For the sake of clarification we will refer to this as the 'toe squat'. The squat that many people have difficulty performing is when the toes and heels are flat on the ground. We'll call this the 'rice paddy squat'. I honestly have no idea how rice is planted or harvested in unindustrialised Asian countries but I'm under the impression that the following equipment is minimal in order to accomplish the task: 1. A powerful, easy to control domesticated animal. 2. A crude cultivating device made mostly of wood with a harness attached to be pulled by #1. 3. A hominid wearing a bamboo hat in the shape of a parasol. It is mandatory this person is able to perform the rice paddy squat as opposed to the toe squat as the latter type of squat will cause the user to sink into the mud and become fertilizer. This is good for growing rice but useless for harvesting. Matt has a valid point in that the Toe Squat takes half the skill level as the Rice Paddy Squat. However, the key element of the photo is that the Asian woman is squatting at all when a beautiful, plush, ass-cupping piece of furniture receives nothing more than a few knobs of her spine. I'll also leap to the conclusion that she can do the full squat anytime, anywhere, in any emotional state. I'll even bet she's so good at it that you can try to shove her over and she'll completely resist the Weeble Wobble. If you love stability, if you love firm-footedness, you need look no further than your nearest Asian. Look, I don't make the rules – that's just the way it is. By the way, squatting is the official position of the PMC. More PMC news down the road; I actually own the domain www.piratemonkeycult.org. The Israel-Lebanon missile-lobbing of late has made me realize that I must make the PMC a fully functioning cult that everyone on this planet will want to join, so that the world can finally unite on one thing: that the PMC is the best religion, ever, and that maybe we should get along. Why, even these apes are listening intently to one of my missionaries spreading the gospel. July 18, 2025 Anal application, day 2: I put the stuff on and she just runs away to lick it off. What did they do, make the medication meat-flavored? Update: I can't leave a rhetorical question left untouched. I sampled the medication (yes, straight from the tube, not from...oh, let's drop that thought right now). It's quite bitter and I'm thinking that the bitter taste receptors on dogs must register as beef, chicken or pork. Maybe chocolate mousse. It certainly can't be sending the same signals my brain interpreted. Update 2: Reader Mike sent me this image which now help me understands why dogs have evolved so they can fold back on themselves. If I dispensed faux butter I might evolve myself to do that, too. July 17, 2025 Cracker has had a bad case of diarrhea so she got carted off to the vet's today. The result was a host of medication for her to take, my favorite one being the ointment with the instructions: APPLY SMALL AMOUNT TO INFECTED SKIN ON ANUS TWICE DAILY. Mr. Michigan said, "I assume that's like Chapstick for the bunghole?" No, it's actually nystatin-neomycin sulfate-thiostrepton-triamcinolone acetonide ointment, which pleases me because if I have to touch her stinky donut, at least I seem to be putting something way more serious on it than petroleum jelly or beeswax. Cracker is actually Chris's dog since the divorce, but because I have 24/7 unimpeded access to a backyard, she is staying with me until her pooper works somewhat normally again. Oh please, Patron Saint of Doggies with Dysentery, let it be soon... July 16, 2025 These people are moaning about a floating latrine destroying their lake view. Boo hoo. I bet these same people send complaint letters to the homeowner's association when a neighbor's bougainvillea drops too many leaves. What a bunch of losers. July 15, 2025 Mr. Michigan is brewing beer. You either like the smell of cooking hops and barley, or you don't. Although the homemade version wasn't as bad as the stink that eminates from the Miller Brewing Company in Irwindale, there's a reason why no one has made a hops-and-barley scented car freshener or laundry soap or body spray. July 14, 2025 Whenever you're feeling lost, whenever you don't know what to do, whenever life just gets to be too much, simply ask yourself this and the answer will float to you on the heavenly wings of the late disco-loving Leather Man. Everything he learned from the Village People he is ready to share with you from the beyond � all you need do is ask! But you must be sincere. If he feels you don't truly respect his opinion, he will not answer you. Bonus! Let the Leather Man be your special emoticon in IM messages with this properly sized gif that says, "Love me, love my 'stache." Squat Alert! Reader Michael wrote in with this important contribution to Asian Anthropology: I thought you'd like this picture of my wife. 100% Chinese, born and raised in Malaysia and went to college & worked for 10 years in Singapore. You can take the Asian girl out of Asia but you can't take the squatting out of the Asian. The best part of this picture is the REALLY nice chair RIGHT there behind her. July 13, 2025 Zina's Budget Tip #104: Tight on money? I heard an internal Walmart memo was leaked in which they will no longer prosecute shoplifters for items under $25. They want to focus on professional thieves and those shiftless employees. So if you need a new coffee maker and don't have the money, go to Walmart and just make sure it's the budget Mr. Coffee machine getting tucked under your shirt and not the $200 Krups espresso unit. July 12, 2025 "French Hard Man" might sound like an oxymoron, but look at this guy. That's David Muscat in the French national series piledriving himself into the ground and "unexpectedly modifying" his 999R. He went on to win two races the following day, clinching the Superproduction title. He said his chest hurt. I bet it did. July 11, 2025 Mr. Michigan found 10-year-old jpgs of a Chia Professor on which he had a webcam trained. The fact that he had a webcam ten years ago means he was an early adopter of that technology. You know who used web cams way back then? Nerds, live porn sites, and technically savvy landlords who spied on renters. He was in good company. July 10, 2025 Some non-Asian males wrote in with wild claims about being able to squat comfortably. You sweet silly dreamers! July 9, 2025 Remember my blog entry a long time ago about squatting? Last night I had to replace the clutch plates and rather than sitting on the ground or kneeling, I was in my Very Asian position. I've never seen you white guys in full squat mode...is it physically possible for any of you to do it? Or is there some hamstring limitation for XY models not made of stretchy yellow meat? And I don't mean bouncing your ass off your heels and calling it a squat; I mean sitting there all tucked down because it's genuinely comfortable. Let me know. I'm curious. Note: Racers of any ethnicity do not count. It's a part of their job description to a) squat and b) be hairless. July 8, 2025 We took the DRZs out to Proctor Valley, which is a good local place to ride except for all the signs that say No Trespassing. We put in an hour-long goof-off session* and as we were leaving, Mr. Michigan got a pinch flat. There wasn't much of a choice but to leave his DRZ there and ride the 15 miles home two-up on my bike (he could've waited while I got the truck but there was only a small patch of shade downwind from a garbage pile that smelled like Lucky's coprophagous mouth after a fresh feast). Keep in mind my bike is set up for a 125 lb rider. With a couple hundred foreign pounds compressing the squishy soft suspension, and with my full weight perched over the rear wheel, it felt like we were on something that looked like this. *Somehow we managed not to see all those No Trespassing signs until after we were done riding. Selective eyesight is an amazing phenomenon. July 7, 2025 I can't find butter-flavored pretzels, one of the official snackfoods of the PMC. Is it some California-esque conspiracy where we're only allowed to eat organic foods or soy-based items? I found an online site where I can buy them but it costs $9 for shipping and the six bags of pretzels are only worth $8. As a part-time shipping clerk I know full well that UPS keeps increasing their fuel surcharge, but it still galls me to have to pay more for shipping than for the items I want. I need to take my protest to Arnold's office in Sacramento and demand that this California prejudice against butter pretzels be addressed. July 6, 2025 I parked my bike parallel to the sidewalk to drop off some mail in a mailbox. When a street has been repaved a few times the asphalt part is a few inches higher than the concrete gutter. This was the case and my bike was barely leaning towards the sidestand. I dismounted carefully and figured it would be ok since I'd only take five seconds. At the end of those five seconds, just as I had turned back towards Romeo, he started to fall over onto my leg. Normally I wouldn't have the strength to hoist that much weight back up, but one finds herculean powers to do things when one is in need, be it driven by survival or by standard-issue embarrassment. I wanted to remove myself from the scene before someone pointed and gave me a derisive Nelson Muntz laugh. July 5, 2025 I had some guests over recently and I was asked to regale them with a story from my year in Mexico. I told my favorite one, and today out of curiosity I decided to reread the story from my travel diary to see how much my memory had failed me. Turns out it was a better story than I had remembered so I decided to put the pictures with the Los Picachos story on my site. July 4, 2025 Happy Explosives Day. Anyone who personally sees an emergency room doctor today gets a free PMC sticker from me. Speaking of which, where are the photos you various PMC sticker owners promised? Are you intentionally trying to make me sad? July 3, 2025 I started a page of stuff I'm selling. July 2, 2025 There needs to be a Cesar Millan for kids. You know the type of kid I'm talking about: The ones that show up at a restaurant and proceed to wail, kick the booth, do laps around the dining area, and make the other patrons glance at each other for comfort. With only the use of a snug collar and a sibilant TSSSSSSST!, "Cesar for Kids" would turn the Li'l Original Gansta into a better citizen. Actually, that "Cesar for Kids" could be me. If you have a LOG on your hands, drop it off at my house for one week of intensive training. Just save a little extra money for the therapy that will be needed to stop the compulsive self-rocking caused by "Auntie Zina's Club Gitmo." July 1, 2025 Yuppy Slurpee. I've got an idea: Go to 7-11 and spend a fraction of the price. And as a bonus you won't have to stand behind a Stepford wife taking five minutes to order a venti nonfat sugar-free vanilla hazelnut extra-foam latte. June 30, 2025 According to a recent study, if you don't have a confidant, you're living a lonelier life. The study is flawed because it doesn't take into account that blogging is a form of confiding. Didn't I confide with you all when I was getting a divorce? And every time I've ever bruised my ass? And, more recently, how spilled peanuts traumatize me? I think making these admissions to dozens of faceless people allows me to feel much less lonely than if I had told it to one human over a cup of hot rooibos tea and finger cookies. One person is much more likely to forget all about my hysteria before the tea even gets cold, but with many of you to broadcast to, one of you is sure to care and take time to craft a thoughtful email that says, "Happened to me, too." You might even follow up with an email a week later that says, "Get over it." That would really mean you were thinking about me. *hugz!* June 29, 2025 The company I started working with has these chairs in which the arms look like a bike part. Maybe if I need a swingarm replacement or a brake lever on the 749 I can cannibalize it. June 28, 2025 My Quest to Start Using Capital Letters is going Well. While I Find Myself often Having to Go Back and Insert the Caps, at Least I'm Doing It. The Germans Would be Proud of Me; Why Stop at Nouns when You Can Have It All? June 27, 2025 Colin and Nicky duked it out at Assen. Here's a new poll where we try to get into Colin's head. Note: I pulled the short-lived RSS button. I think it'll make things more complicated for me. I need to convert this entire site so it uses cascading style sheets which means I need to choose my time-consuming battles more wisely. June 26, 2025 I don't know what to say about this maximum dorkiness (the person on the right actually skipped dorky and went straight to creepy). My life is too much about motorcycles. Tonight's setting sun made me think of the Repsol logo. June 25, 2025 Whenever I get a credit card offer, I send back their postage-paid envelope with some random piece of junk stuck in it. By wasting their time, I punish them for wasting my time. They also get to pay to have that junk mail delivered back to them. Capital One is the worst offender. I hope they like getting Ikea coupons for discounts on the swedish meatballs. June 24, 2025 Petaluma and 1,000 rats in the news: "As for why the seven cats that Dier also owned did not eat the rats, Tavares said, 'maybe it was like working in a deli. After a while, you get tired of deli food.'" Funny, that...I've never worked at a deli, but I did work at a pizza restaurant. I noticed that after a year of eating a whole lot of pizza, I was tired of it and wanted to try rat. Had Mr. Dier been in my life at that time I could've helped alleviate some of his population problem. June 23, 2025 Talk about "when it's you're time to go." Getting struck by lightning is not unusual, but getting hit while traveling amongst a bunch of other cars is a bummer of the highest order. Couldn't that bolt of lightning have gone for a taller semi? Or maybe an antenna ball? Back on April 11 I wrote about a guy who stiffed me on payments for a motorcycle. I think it's time to take him to small claims court. I'm researching how to do this. Once I have all my questions about how certain things are done, I'm going to put up a web page with details about the guy and the bike and maybe some of you can help me. Anyone over 18 and not a party in the case can serve the defendant his papers (he lives in Campbell and teaches for Keigwin). June 22, 2025 now that i work with another company, i think i'm going to try to break myself of the habit of writing email with no caps. it's going to be hard. i bet ee cummings didn't know he was an email/instant messenger visionary, or a champion of carpal tunnel sufferers. June 21, 2025 Anybody who has cancelled an AOL account will have flashbacks with this story. I used to work for them so I was given an account. After our satellite unit was shut down by them, I wanted to cancel my account because I no longer needed it. I knew full well the hard sell they used to try to keep members from cancelling, but I figured they wouldn't draw it out for an ex-employee who would probably be disgruntled as ex-employees often are. Wrong. The customer service pit bull on the other end just kept chatting away, asking me what department I had worked for and trying to convince me it would be ideal to hold onto the account. I think it took about 15 minutes to get my way, which is a pittance compared to what they drag civilians through. June 20, 2025 Reader/LEO Ken said Oklahoma Highway Patrol had some Hayabusas. Sure enough, look at this black cat. Reader Timothy reminded me of something I forgot to mention about Sete's aborted race day: The ambulance he was riding in crashed on the way to the Barcelona hospital. You know what "sete" means in Italian? The main translation is "thirsty," but it also means "desiccated luck." Ducati's next hire needs to be a guy named Moltissimo Buona Fortuna. June 19, 2025 I just signed on as a contractor with a start-up, so now I have three jobs. Two jobs have already cut out my daily naps. A third one should leave me with permanent sleep deficit forever and ever. So grateful for coffee. June 18, 2025 Sete Gibernau: Most cursed man on the planet. Loris Capirossi: In grave danger of being irreversibly swept up in the curse. June 17, 2025 The Unemployed Douche Bag� and I went kayaking. The beard and the do-rag are rather incongruous with the yellow life vest. He looks like an East County meth distributor who went the wrong way on I-8 and ended up stealing a kayak from a tourist to flee from the DEA. The bitches love that biker look; it says "potentially successful in non-traditional business endeavors." June 16, 2025 I found a perfect disorder for you lotharios who need frequent new conquests: Face Blindness. Imagine the fun of thinking you have a new partner other every time you turn to look at him or her. In my case, I could glance down at my watch and Mr. Michigan could transmute into Mr. North Carolina in the two-second interim. It's relationship freshness and neurological disorder all rolled into one! New recipe added: FunyunLoaf. June 15, 2025 I went to Petco Park for the first time today. I was impressed by how intimate it is. After seeing this and Comerica Park, I can understand why baseball teams don't want to be forced to share those behemoth stadiums with football teams. Petco Park's big drawback is its downtown location. Getting to it would've been an exercise in hating life had I not been able to split lanes on the bike. People living and working downtown must dread every home game. News update: They found the runner in the June 12 story. June 14, 2025 Far East bureau foreign correspondent Ingemar sent this photo from Beijing. "Use and invite doubly for 20 minutes of interval"? This is clearly China's covert plan for population reduction. You encourage men to shower together, the homoerotic drive kicks in, and you pull a few more guys out of the gene pool. Admirably brilliant, and sneaky in ways only the Chinese can be. June 13, 2025 I'm a part-time shipping clerk for California Cycleworks. Want to see some shipping clerk trauma? My ham-hands did this the other day. You're thinking, "No big deal, just sweep it up." Sure, you can sweep it up if you want dirt, dog hair, and cardboard bits thrown in with people's orders. But being The World's Best Shipping Clerk�, I scooped up what was on top and then picked up the remaining peanuts individually. At the time I was not clever enough to at least fantasize that I was picking up peanuts off of Troy's prostrate body. I'm an idiot. Yesterday we got a message from UPS about a shipment delay: Exception Reason: THE PACKAGE IS DELAYED DUE TO A TRAIN DERAILMENT Sometimes you just have to use ALL CAPS, don't you? "The package is delayed due to a train derailment" is too casual; they may as well be quietly saying, "Fedex would've lost it by now anyways." I'd love to go on about the intricacies of shipping packages, particularly to foreign countries and APO military addresses, but I think most of you got white collar jobs to avoid ever having to experience the seamy underbelly parcel handling. June 12, 2025 Some moto news: 1. Ben Roethlisberger crashed his Hayabusa and messed himself up. 2. If you're riding a Kawasaki ZX6R 636 silver with black trim, did you check to see if there's a bullet lodged in you? June 11, 2025 The subject of one of the most well-known war photos to come out of Iraq got a second wedding. His is an interesting story, but unfortunately, not an uncommon one: "This is the dark side of the reality of war. ... People don't want to know the Marlboro Man has PTSD." June 10, 2025 Zina thinks Zina needs to start talking about herself in the third person. Even better, Zina needs to start referring to herself as Barry Bonds referring to himself in the third person. Barry wants everyone to know that s/he is not taking steroids to be able to maintain this incredible blogging performance; Barry credits tabasco sauce and wasabi peas. June 9, 2025 Back on March 2 I talked about this recipe. One of the May recipes in that same Chinese calendar featured this guy who was too slow to run off before the crock pot attacked him. This is particularly poignant for me because when I was a kid, my dad brought home some turtles. They were cute. And then they got uncute when they were floating in their own broth. Asians are pretty comfortable with trekking way outside the baked chicken and grilled steak territory. June 8, 2025 The PGA Memorial golf tournament took place in Dublin, Ohio, this weekend. Ya'll probably don't care about golf, but I'm sure you at least like a good poop story. In my opinion, any story involving poop with golf is a sure winner... "Mickelson returned to the sixth hole to find the cup had moved in the middle of the second round. Turns out someone defecated in the hole, and the only solution was to move it a few feet, along with the ball markers on the green." I think none of these people must own a dog. How hard is it to take a plastic bag and pick up poop? They could've even double-bagged if they were really scared of diseases. Clean the cup up with some bleach and you're good to go. If I had a penny for every turd I've picked up, I'd be a milliopennyaire. June 7, 2025 Overall, the roadtrip was dandy for what it was: Driving a cumbersome vehicle for a real long time. My only regret was not visiting this location, as I would've liked to have seen how one blends the seemingly contrasting worlds of hillbillies and figurines. (Reader Jim sent me a link: check out the arts and crafts gone bad.) Final figures: $828 for 282 gallons of gas to go 2,423 miles in three days. When I drove my truck last year it was $354 for 151 gallons of gas to go 2,501 miles in three days. Update: Reader Jim sent me the Flying C Ranch web site link. Here's the answer to the hillbilly + figurine = ?? question. June 6, 2025 Seeing "San Diego" for the first time at the I-8/I-10 junction was as good as being home. Doesn't matter if we're still 355 miles away. June 5, 2025 Road trip day 3. We're averaging 7 mpg in this non-diesel Pig Rig. At a little over half way in our journey, we've purchased $499/170 gallon of gas. Current location, border of Texas/New Mexico. --- Just pulled into Truth or Consequences, New Mexico for a break and if you refer to the blog entry of May 30, you will see that I ponder if I will need to conduct any spork-tenacity experiments upon the chest of my trip partner. The answer is no. It turns out we travel well together because the driver is usually listening to an mp3 player while the passenger is on a laptop. The opportunity to irritate someone is low when you don't exchange words, those things that are so often misconstrued, particularly between genders. New Mexico had one of the most interesting rest stops I've ever seen. They were a network of elevated wooden structures that made me think of waterfront bungalows. The only reason I could think for them to be elevated is possible flash flooding. These were along Hwy 25. --- Breaking News: Mr. Michigan just got a speeding ticket in Hatch, NM. We saw the cop at the last second in the darkness; I was hoping it was Border Patrol since they usually don't deal with speeders. A sign said the speed limit was 50, but the cop said it was 35 where we got pulled over. He gave Mr. Michigan a warning for "careless" driving, but cited him for 48 in a 35. (I guess a certain level of excess speed gets the "careless" tagged on?) I think Mr. Michigan might've gotten a break if he had been clean shaven. Instead, he has disassociated himself from his razor for the past ten days and has cultivated the look of an Unemployed Douche Bag�. June 4, 2025 Road trip day 2. The drive is going by fairly quickly thanks to cellular wireless. I worked on the MotoGP news in the morning while Mr. Michigan drove. In the evening during my shift as Master of the U-Haul, I pulled into a truck stop for a break so I could get the AMA news up. Did last night's [motorcycle manufacturer name here] news look like it came out of the cab of a hot rented truck parked alongside 18-wheelers at a rest stop on an Oklahoma turnpike? I summoned all my professionalism to publish the news in such a way that visitors would not notice that my ass was damp from lack of cruise control, a luxury that allows one to remove the foot from the gas pedal and shift around to aerate the underside. I think it worked, as the web site looked seamless as always. No road trip is ever complete without someone screwing the pooch. June 3, 2025 Road trip day 1. The U-Haul is loaded and the mighty Crown Vic is strapped on. Not sure if you've ever trailered a car, but it turns out you can't open and close the doors because the trailer fenders are in the way. You can unlatch the driver-side fender, but a chain only lets it drop so far so the car door still hits it. If you're a big person you have to rub butt 'n' nut to get out. June 2, 2025 I went to my first full-blown Catholic wedding today. While I was listening to many things I did not understand, I kept thinking that I may as well have been listening to someone talk about Linux. Compare text about the wedding at Cana: And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. To text about something having to do with Linux: We use a query database benchmark, and the hardware is an 8-way SMP system with a large disk configuration. IBM DB2 for Linux is the database software used, and the SCSI controllers are IBM ServeRAID 4H. The database is targeted for 8-way SMP. Hard for a heathen to tell the difference. June 1, 2025 I just packed up a bunch of Mr. Michigan's clothes. I have not yet been embarrassed by anything he's worn in public, but I think I found the one thing that will cause me to pretend I'm not with him. I just thought of a great tourist slogan for Michigan, which I would like to personally extend to that shirt: "What happens in Michigan, stays in Michigan." May 31, 2025 My imagination is not nearly flexible enough to imagine how awesome the dog in this story must've looked so I did a little sleuthing and found this photo of another ungroomed shih tzu (see its normal frou-frou state). If that dog hasn't been groomed in a year, what must a dog ignored for two years and covered in hardened poop look like? My guess is like a tortoise with frayed carpet remnants glued onto it. May 30, 2025 Mr. Michigan and I are making mediocre progress packing up his house. Our plan is to have the U-Haul loaded up by Friday so we can leave on Saturday. Our route takes us across the lower part of the US. Who wants to take bets that a) we're barely talking by Oklahoma City and b) one of us goes to the emergency room with a fork sticking out of our chest by Truth or Consequences, New Mexico? Actually, my preferred weapon is the spork because it adds a much greater challenge to making the utensil stay embedded. May 29, 2025 Anybody using Pandora.com? It's a good way to find new music. I learned of a band called First to Last with a fabulously named song "I Liked You Better Before You Were Naked On The Internet" from the album "Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has A Body Count." Excellent. If I were a musician, my band would be called Primāte Paniċdĕmic ("PP") and my debut album would be, "Please Don't Put Me In A Dutch Zoo." If only I could find some musicians, these songs would be realized: Paternity Suits Of Polyester Saturday Night At County Lock-Up Just Between You And Me And This Web Cam L4ugh1₪g @ U Never Sad When You're Gone, Except When You Come Back Opposable Thumb Blues Two-Ton Hyberbole Shakespeare Was A Hack I Dreamt About Coffee And Soft Ice Cream And Woke Up In A Wet Spot May 28, 2025 What's the point of security measures at ballparks? They look in your bag and if they don't see a weapon sitting on top they let you in. It just seemed silly to have some guy peer into my bag when I could've easily had a gun buried underneath my lipstick, gum, camera, phone, etc. If a woman really wants to divert a security guard's attention, all she needs to do is throw a few tampons on top. What garlic and holy water are to vampires, tampons are to men. One weapon they always seem to miss at the Comerica Park gates is the inflatable penis. Apparently someone always brings one to the games; it replaces the standard and unimaginative beach ball. A security guard pounced on the penis pretty quickly so I was only able to take one blurry picture not worth posting (makes yesterday's blurry picture look sharp). I was curious about the inflatable penis phenomenon at Tigers games and found this pic that was taken during another game. Who would've ever imagined that the words "tradition" and "penis" would become publicly linked? May 27, 2025 Mr. Michigan's friends had a going-away party for him. I'm sorry this picture is blurry, but I wanted to confirm that midwest guys really do like to mix beer drinking with explosives. In this case, we have a homemade triple-engine bottle rocket bound for celestial glory. An old joke: "What were the redneck's last words? Hey y'all! Watch this!" Make no mistake, I was one of them, as I drank my Arbor Mist Sangria (equivalent to a warm Lucky Lager beer for a guy) and waited patiently for the launch. May 26, 2025 I'm glad I'm not a typographer or I'd spend every waking hour trying to eradicate Comic Sans from the planet. As it stands, I'm just a Pirate Monkey and we don't get involved in the politics of fonts, as it has nothing to do with our access to coffee or soft ice cream. Still, I can choose to dislike that typeface because since its creation in 1995 it has been badly overused. The turning point for me was receiving the thousandth email formatted in Comic Sans from a former co-worker (high-level manager); it was as professional as ending each email with x's and o's. Anyways, I'm on this topic because I was just on SBK's live timing site and their use of Comic Sans�in more than one color, no less�should appeal greatly to all their pre-pubescent race fans (at least those who can tear themselves away from myspace.com). Imagine, if you will, the horror of Ducati and Comic Sans joining forces. May 25, 2025 Pogo the gorilla died at the SF zoo. I didn't know they had named a gorilla after my last Monster; that's touching. And how fitting is this: "Born in Cameroon and orphaned after her parents were killed, probably for bushmeat, Pogo was initially raised as a pet by American missionaries and a nurse. 'She was riding on motorcycles and being dressed up in clothes and going to tea parties,' Kerr said." Pogo, we hardly knew ye. May 24, 2025 I love thrill rides and Cedar Point was every bit the blast I had hoped it would be. We got there when it opened and rode everything we could for the next seven hours, which was a lot since no one was there. By the time we left, I thought I would puke on the drive home, but once the a/c brought the interior temp of the car down, I was ok, although my neck was disagreeing. I did lose feeling in my fingertips from all the head snapping, but I feel them today so I think all is well. Cedar Point is home to some very exotic monkeys, ones raised exclusively on a diet of Skittles and Kool Aid. I would've tried liberating them, but they didn't appear to be too unhappy, as they were smiling despite being strung up by their wrists like political prisoners. May 23, 2025 Sorry if I've confused any of you when I said Mr. Michigan would be a "dependent." I basically meant he would have to depend on me for beer money until he got a job, not that we would start filing joint tax returns together. We get along great�we don't want to ruin it by getting married. :p May 22, 2025 I'm on my way to Michigan this morning. When I return to California two weeks hence I will have a dependent. I'm hoping the fact that he's from Michigan qualifies as some sort of disability and maybe we can get him into an economic assistance program. Tuesday I'll be at Cedar Point trying to rearrange my C6-C7 disc on some rollercoaster rides, so here's an article for you to study and discuss while I'm gone. I use "discuss" loosely because apparently we Pirate Monkeys only really know the words "pyow" and "hack." Recently I was rummaging through some of my belongings and I found an old personalized license plate that proves I've long had another important Pirate Monkey word in my vocabulary. May 21, 2025 Saturday Night Live also covered the tasty macaque story. Said Amy Pohler: At a zoo in the Netherlands, three bears killed and devoured a monkey sharing their enclosure. And I tell ya, that really shut up the rest of those damn monkeys. May 20, 2025 Stephen Colbert covered the Dutch monkey incident on his program. Here's the transcript: Folks, before we go you know I'm always looking out for my viewers' safety. And that includes the safety of my monkey viewers. Evidently, a Barbary macaque innocently stumbled into the sloth bear cage at an Amersterdam zoo—probably high—and was cornered, mauled, and eaten to the horror of onlooking zoo patrons. Now I'm sure some people are going to say, "Hey, just a monkey�bears pose no threat to us." Wrong. Now while I do not believe in evolution, I'm sure bears do. They're godless killing machines. And by eating this monkey they are simply eating their way up the evolutionary chain until they get to man. I gotta say, I'm kinda mad at this monkey for whetting their appetite for primate flesh. Monkeys, stick to your adorable scampering and tire-swinging and stop loitering in bear zones. Because if bears start going after us, there will be no one to clean your cages or refill your monkey chow. I guarantee no bears are ever going to do it. And Dutch monkeys, lay off the doobage. May 19, 2025 Been watching the NBA playoffs? Doesn't matter. What does matter is that you know The Power of The Hoff. Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki summons the soothing powers of singing sensation David Hasselhoff when he's under pressure. Which Hasselhoff does he see when he's singing? Lt. Mitch Buchannon? Michael Knight? Pup Humperer? Or does Dirk go straight to the video? (Latest NBA playoff standings.) May 18, 2025 Why I hate people, part I. Why I hate people, part II. Matt made a comment a while back that I meant to share, and what better time than now since it involves crime and punishment. He thinks that to get people clamoring for jury duty, they should offer jurors the option of meting out the punishment. If someone gave me the chance to cane these three assholes, I'd clone myself a dozen times in hopes of improving my odds of getting on that jury. The problem is that you'd have jurors convicting people just so they could be sadistic, but I'll let the ACLU sort that out after "we the people" take care of these attempted dirtbike killers. May 17, 2025 Are PMC members delicious? Apparently, we are. Word on the street is that the ones wearing eye patches are the most coveted, as their meat is a perfect moist blend of white and dark throughout, and barbecues perfectly. The perfect wine to go with us? A sweet Gewurztraminer, ideally with a hint of honey and pumpkin spice. Breaking news: Additional proof that we are delicious. Anybody who follows Stephen Colbert's "Threat Down" knows that bears are poised to bring down our great nation. May 16, 2025 Chris had a new tank developed for the MH900e. It seems to be holding up well for the tester who has it on his MH (i.e., no leaking). May 15, 2025 There have been a couple of gator deaths in Florida so trappers are trying to capture the offending alligator. Now just how do they know which one that would be? Can someone say "I saw a gator with a red ballcap and a LeBron James #23 jersey drag her into the water"? I'm no herpetologist, but I'm pretty sure I sound authoritative when I say alligators are gray, knobby, and copious of teeth; overall, quite humorless in appearance. Little distinguishes them except for size. Certainly there is more than one 8-to-10 footer skulking about the murky waters mistaking people's feet for delicious carp? They did just trap a gator whose stomach contents yielded only tennis balls and a football. You know what I'm thinking? Trappers like to catch gators for the "Pi�ata Effect"...you just don't know what's in that belly till you crack it open! Garden gnomes, water skis, whiffle bats, boat props, aerosol cans, adult torsos...it's like Christmas every single time! May 14, 2025 Reader Ingemar is at the Shanghai MotoGP race and he sent this photo of Colin Edwards. As always, I know the secret thoughts of men. May 13, 2025 You know what day today is? It's the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive Day, aka Annoy Your Postal Worker Day. As if delivering a billiony pounds of junk mail isn't exhilirating enough, they also get to lug around a billiony pounds of canned foods on top of that. If I were a postal worker, today would be I'm Calling in Sick Day. May 12, 2025 Susanna brought the PMC to Tanzania. She's there doing volunteer work and seeing very cool things like future PMC members running amok. Speaking about Tanzania, they found the secret breed of PMC minions I was developing. I was hoping to create monkeys whose specialty was building and maintaining soft-serve ice cream machines. Now that they've been outed, they have to act like regular dumb monkeys lest they be all dragged off and tested in labs to unravel the secrets of their engineering skills. Serves me right for doing this project in Tanzania and not in my basement. May 11, 2025 Upon digging around the Z Zegna (i.e., "Eau de Ducati") web site I found out that it smells like this: Joyous Sicilian bergamot is completed with rosemary and the enigmatic fruit of the CASOAR (a blue berry from New Guinea), chosen for its green note, with hints of mirabelle plum and redcurrant. At the heart, a delicate floral scent of sweet, powdery IRIS before a plunge into spices: a hint of nutmeg and a seasoning of hot white pepper (diluted with alkaline water). Growing languid, the base features sweet CASHMERE WOOD, tart patchouli and the warm earthy notes of delightful oak moss. Sounds like they just took Old Spice and removed the "scent of salty sailor." Enjoy more of Z Zegna's passionately overwrought Itanglish. May 10, 2025 I'm pretty confused about this bike. I'm drawn to it and repulsed by it at the same time. And more uncertainty: I'm not sure if I think this car (turn sound down) is cute or dorky. Finally, I'd like to know what this cologne smells like...espresso, exhaust, and the hint of a Borgo Panigale hooker? It's allegedly "For an unique, virile, conqueror, avid of high emotions man." Doesn't say anything about guys who wreck LeSabres so I guess Mr. Michigan doesn't get a bottle. May 9, 2025 Answer: Greg Brady. Was it his stamina, courage or luck that enabled his streak? I say it was the power of the virus-repelling scouring-pad 70s hair. The track day went quite well. I'll be doing a write-up about Romeo on the track, as it was the first time I had taken him to Willow Springs. He was a blast and would be a suitable track bike were it not for the mysterious wobble in turn 8 that capped his speed at 110 in the curve. Thoughts of returning to racing are easily quelled with gas station pay-outs like this (not even a full tank). May 7, 2025 Leaving for Willow Springs today for a track day tomorrow. Since I won't be around to start your Monday, here's something to keep you busy: Who was the only Brady Bunch cast member to appear in all 117 episodes? No fair googling the answer. Your prize is me making you feel either too old or too young. May 6, 2025 We had a Cycleworks tech event on bike prep for the track. See the secret thoughts of men, part I and part II. May 5, 2025 With the increased stability of the latest XP OS, do you miss the blue screen of death like I do? I was never more alive than when the BSoD appeared and my blood pressure spiked to invigorating levels. I have learned to save my work every two minutes, an excellent discipline that continues with me today, as I save my blog right now lest I lose the last sentence I typed. Can someone have this marker arranged for me when I die so that the BSoD and I can be one for all of eternity? May 4, 2025 Need something for Mother's Day? The Pirate Monkey Cult store is open 24/7. Is your wife a new mom? Let her know she cranked out a special one by choosing something from the Baby department. Here I am just a few hours old modeling the infant creeper (what back muscles I had!). The hair is incontrovertible evidence of my primate stature. May 3, 2025 One of my favorite Engrish pages ever happens to be about motorcycles. The translation is so perfectly off, it's poetry: " What the machine should be ? " We are in a vortex of the complicated contemporary society. Things are changing very fast. Fraught days go us by. Mostly you managed to survive against all odds but sometimes you won't. When you catch your breath, there is something beside you. Ethereal Beauty, Accomplished mechanism or Dynamic energy whatever you feel, it might be one of the answers what the machine should be. You will find a hint from our study what we think. "Mostly you managed to survive against all odds but sometimes you won't"...This is the only line I have a quibble with. "Sometimes" needs to be changed to "one time" because from what I understand about the finality of nature, the one time you do not survive is the last time. There are no repeats, no do-overs; hence, no "sometimes." Maybe there's something about the Japanese I don't know? Do they get to die more than once? Come back as an anime? Ain't that way for us Chinamen; none of my dead relatives got a mulligan. May 2, 2025 Let me set this story straight. Yes, Mr. Michigan is 33, but I'm not 104. Yes, I'm "childless, old and alone," but I've only had two ex-husbands, not 20. Whatever happened to reporters cross-checking their facts? On a related note, the Today Show is having a segment on "Finding Love After 40." Here's my tip: Troll the internet and set your expectations really low; with this approach, there's no reason why every single bipedal sentient unit with a computer and a phone line can't find love. (A few pictures from 10 years and 20 pounds ago also won't hurt; save that harsh thing called reality for the first – and maybe last � meeting.) In Ducati news: They just tested the 800cc GP7 for the first time today at Mugello. Said test rider Vittoriano Guareschi, "Today we made another important step forward in the MotoGP project: it is as if our family has given birth to a second 'baby' and the first noises it has made are not bad at all!" Yes, when I hear ear-destroying noises from an exotic bike, I also think of crying babies. Breaking news: I couldn't wait until tomorrow to share this. Not sure I've laughed this hard since Saturday, when the Houstan Texans made Mario Williams the #1 draft pick. May 1, 2025 Tell me I'm not the only one who got this spam. "Rabbit hole?" I've heard it called a lot of things but not that. April 30, 2025 The Bridge is being shown at the SF Film Festival and I wouldn't mind seeing it; it has a very compelling trailer. One really cold and foggy afternoon while I was doing my mountain bike commute between SF and Sausalito, I remember this guy leaning against the railing, looking down. He stood out because there were so few people on the bridge and he was staring into nothing. When I got down to Fort Baker below the bridge, the loud radio at the Coast Guard station said something about a jumper going in at the south tower. Poof, like that, some guy made his last decision. The SF Chronicle ran a good series about the bridge and its allure to the suicidal. The best one was the realities of the jump. Instead of building suicide barriers they should laminate that story and post it at several points along the bridge; I'm sure some people don't realize they may get to survive the impact and die unpleasantly. April 29, 2025 The Ducati Owner's Club of San Diego had a get-together last night at Dave & Busters. It's a really nice, ego-free group. If you belong to any motorcycle club, you know there's usually a couple of tedious blowhards with endless stories of prowess, but so far I haven't met anyone like that in the club. Group photo by Efraim; find my small head. April 28, 2025 San Diegans: Hide all your car keys. Mr. Michigan is coming to town. He just sold his house and unless the deal falls through in inspection, he's packing up his life and moving west. Some of you may be cynical and say, "He doesn't really care about you. He just wants a better title in the PMC." While that may be true, I'm sure I'll find some way to use him equally. Mutual exploitation is the strongest relationship bedrock there is. April 27, 2025 Were any of the PMC members involved in this? I sure don't remember giving anyone named Bruno a position of authority. The PMC does not condone killing unless it's over coffee or soft ice cream; I didn't read about either in the story. These chimps, however, could have been members since the birthday cake might've set them off – frosting can easily be mistaken for soft ice cream. PMC members: Train, but hope to never use. That is the true PMC way to enlightenment. On another note: I want the Scrambler, not this, so please don't anybody get confused and buy me the latter. April 26, 2025 I am all for gender reassignment. If it weren't for the fact that I like lip gloss and cute stuffed monkeys so much, I would've signed up for the surgery, but those two things alone are enough to bar my entry into the Men's Club. However, this entry is not about my gender misfortune; it's about this guy who got "facial feminization" surgery. My opinion? It was money poorly spent because I'm still seeing the same male face, except one is trying to distract us with a 70s housewife wig. April 25, 2025 Some things you just don't put out in front of your house for all to see. I'm not trained in forensics, but that mattress with two huge divets and a big stain at ass level tell me too much about the owners. I'll never quite look at that neighbor the same way again. Regarding this photo from April 15, see a snippet of the Mighty LeSabre in battle. April 24, 2025 There's a house six down from mine that just sold for $1.2 million. WTF? Granted the owners knocked down the old house and built a pretty fancy one in its place, but this isn't La Jolla. We're a few blocks off the main thoroughfare of El Cajon Blvd., on which the city is considering putting surveillance cameras due to a density of colorful, law-testing characters. Do you live in a place where you can buy a house that might be paid off before you're 96? And isn't near the high school where a kid stabbed his teacher at the El Pollo Loco during lunch break? And isn't by the hotel where the owner is being threatened with a stint in jail because he rents by the hour to hookers? Sure, the trade-off is year-round sunshine, but I hear that shit gives you skin cancer anyways. Take the $200k house with reduced chances of melanoma and run. April 23, 2025 For those of you wondering about that Chinese writing, it was from a sign hung on a woman about to be executed in China. I was told that it says something along the lines of "Murderer" and her name. A few words about communist China and how it relates to Iran: Imagine, if you will, Muslims who dislike Saddam Hussein way more than any indignant-about-Muslims American could. That's what it's like for the Chinese who fled the Mao regime. It's easy to think of Chinese as those robotic commie folks, but there's a huge group of them who suffered extensively at the hands of their own people. You can hate the commies if you want, but don't hate all the people who happen to look like commies. Some of us have a bigger historical ax to grind with our own people. April 22, 2025 "FDA says no to medical marijuana." Good. We don't need sick people hogging all the weed and causing shortages for recreational users. It's bad enough paying $4 for gas; don't need skyrocketing pot prices stressing us out, too. April 21, 2025 Ok, no Scrambler is in my driveway but I got some offers to help with the wood bike, so I guess that's enough to give me faith that the Scrambler will eventually show up. After I had crashed the Aprilia I was racing, I had to buy a new "catch can" to stick the open ends of various hoses into. Turned out that a baby bottle was the perfect size. The problem was that I couldn't buy just one and had to get a four-pack of them. For years I've had these useless baby bottles. One day I was pissed off at a bottle that kept dribbling balsamic vinegar down the side no matter how carefully I poured it so I looked around for a different bottle to transfer it to. I took the baby bottle, cut off the top of the nipple, and it turns out be the cleanest-pouring bottle I've ever used. Why should you care? C'mon, dopey man, think. If you're a guy and go buy baby bottles, women will swoon over you; it's like having EXCELLENT PROVIDER tattooed on your forehead. You will pull down the ovulating-aged babes like it's nobody's business. Ok, maybe you're not interested in sex. Maybe you love your Xbox and your TV and that's enough for you. How about this: You can use those bottles to smuggle alcohol into any event. If security says, "Where's the baby?" You answer that you were just with your wife and adorable six-month-old and they had gone home but you forgot to give them the bag. End of harassment and start of a fun-filled evening that involves you waking up later in an alley with your pants smelling of sweet-and-sour mix and lipstick on your belt buckle...in two shades, no less! All this just for buying baby bottles! Non sequitor: Anybody read Chinese? What does this sign say? (Sorry, best quality I had.) April 20, 2025 I'm holding you all hostage. Buy me this bike or I'll pull my site; everything has a price and that is mine. Yes, the Triumph Scrambler is heavy and lacking in hp, but it's spunky and if it had cheeks I'd pinch them. Think I'm not worth it just because I've never won any writing awards? I'll settle for this. I'm just thinking it's been a long time since anybody's purchased me something really expensive for no good reason. I've learned from Mary J. Blige* that I need to hone my sense of entitlement and this is a good start. *"My God is a God who wants me to have things," the singer tells May's Blender magazine. "He wants me to bling. He wants me to be the hottest thing on the block. I don't know what kind of God the rest of y'all are serving, but the God I serve says, 'Mary, you need to be the hottest thing this year, and I'm gonna make sure you're doing that'." April 19, 2025 Are you a sports fan but have problems being near annoying drunk people? I've found the perfect seats for you. They're at Qualcomm Stadium under the trolley line; I think they're the end zone seats used during the football season. Admittedly, the view is not so good out in the parking lot, but being isolated at a sporting event is a luxury that has its price. Of interest only to San Diegans: You can jog along the I-15 by the massive gasoline storage tanks; bring a friend, though, because it's isolated out there. And with the price of gas at $3, bring a cordless drill and big bucket so you can tap into some of that liquid gold. April 18, 2025 I have a Ducati manual with this text. What language is it? If you know for sure, write me; I've already done plenty enough guessing against this site. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. Update: Thank you readers for informing me that the text is Greek, which I didn't know thanks to the fact that I wasn't in a sorority and I was a liberal arts major who avoided physics. It's the first time Ducati has ever started putting Greek translations in their user manuals, or at least for the ones we're putting online. As a bonus for your quick responses, here's a pic of my neighbor's house which got toilet papered over the weekend. Best part? It rained and the stuff papier-m�ch�d all over the place. The even better of the best part? You didn't end up them. April 17, 2025 Mr. Michigan's birthday is today. I think I'll go over to Arby's to pick up some roast beef sandwich gift certificates for him. Not sure what happens if they don't have Arby's back there; maybe he can try slipping them past a particularly dumb-looking cashier at a White Castle. They'll arrive late so I'll need to include some excuse like how I accidentally put superglue in my eyes instead of eyedrops and haven't been able to see for the past week; hence, I could not make my way to Arby's sooner, so very sorry, hope you understand, etc. etc. What he could really use is another Buick, but he has yet to demonstrate he can properly care for one. April 16, 2025 We went for a ride today. Matt has a way of bringing out the "quirks" in bikes (see Apr 8 and Feb 4), and the all-red Monster that he just finished rebuilding (see Oct 23, 05 for the reason why) decided to drop its license plate holder and tail light. I took two of the bolts off my bike so he could remount his dangling parts, which got him home without further problems. After we finished the ride I wanted to get a shot of Matt's bike and my bike nose-to-nose because they're both Monsters but they look so different. If they were teenagers, his would be the popular, radiant homecoming queen and mine would be the sullen goth. April 15, 2025 Mr. Michigan was at a bachelor party today and on the entertainment agenda was a race on a private dirt track involving five or six old cars. (I don't know if it actually happened, but pole position was supposed to be determined by skeet shooting with shotguns.) So Mr. Michigan brings his aging Buick LeSabre to the party and this evening I get this Portrait of Midwest Pride sent to me. Update: Check out the Buick before its reconfiguration. Mr. Michigan's car was numbered "One Million," with "1,000,000.00" on the other side. Looks like he failed to remove the Jack in the Box antenna ball I got him before destroying the car: -1 point. April 14, 2025 There's a pretty good race course in my house that I like to do on my scooter. It's a good thing I haven't paid big money to have the floors redone because there's a long skidmark in the living room from the sharpest corner. I think the unfinished wood probably provides better traction, too. I feel sorry for whomever is buying this house after me. April 13, 2025 The other day I saw Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley on a sports talk show and I mentally commented to him that the seventies called and they wanted their hair and moustache back. That got me thinking about what we're supposed to call this decade. The zeroties? The oughties? The pre-teenies? Certainly there must be a catchy way to refer to this decade, especially since it started off with the very impressive and intimidating "Y2K." April 12, 2025 Chris needed to get three bikes and a motor* up to an exhaust fabrication shop in LA. So that he wouldn't have to hitch up the trailer, he asked me if I'd ride one of the bikes while he transported the other two in the van. Sure, I'm a whore for riding. And while riding on the freeway is not as fun as in the canyons, there is still a perverse pleasure in duking it out with cars for real estate that's very limited and highly transient. What can be more fun than giving someone who refuses to look before changing lanes a big, fat earful of horn? *The 1000DS motor will be powering a Stater Bros. shopping cart, as shown in this pic. It will be the fastest shopping cart ever assembled and its shotgun exhausts will be sought after by Vons, Albertsons, Ralphs, and all the other major grocery chains. April 11, 2025 You know the story: No good deed goes unpunished. A couple of years ago I sold this guy a bike and allowed him to make payments on it. He was laid off from his job a few months into making payments and then they started getting erratic. I never complained; I figured he'd make good on it. The last payment I got was in September 2005 and my recent emails have gone unanswered. He still owes $2k, but at least I'm still holding the title on the bike. I have no idea where he's living now so I'm not sure what to do, other than to divulge his name on every bike forum I can find in an attempt to track him down. It would suck to be out the money, but it sucks more to be blown off by someone you trusted. Like I need more help being disappointed in my fellow man. April 10, 2025 It's Monday morning and you don't want to work so let's waste your boss's time! Check out zillow.com and find out what your house or rental is worth. The prices do seem a bit screwy, but it's entertaining enough. They think my mom's house is worth $681k so I'm going to have her declared mentally unfit so my brothers and I can sell the house and split the money. I don't see why she can't live out of an old Volvo; her needs are few. It even has four doors so she can pretend she's going into four different rooms. April 9, 2025 I was a lizard's guardian angel today. I went to the back of my property, which I very rarely do, and found this guy waiting to meet his maker. When I cut him free he rocketed out of there so either he wasn't trapped for too long, or he used his last bit of strength to rush off and die alone. And while we're doing Wild Kingdom, what does a baby tarantula look like? I unearthed two of these today during a disagreeable weeding project. And one more thing: Spinal flaccidity occurs after a person eats too much and spends excessive emotionaly energy watching a MotoGP race. April 8, 2025 Matt was riding Pongo (Chris's bike) yesterday when it caught on fire and became disabled. Chris went to get him so I tagged along to make sure there was photodocumentation. Linda was on her way to work so she swung by too. Matt said he couldn't exactly swat the fire out inside the frame so he had no choice but to get his face down into the Zone of Action and blow on it. There was some burnt stuff around the carb, but amazingly it didn't damage much anything else. Matt must have a high saliva disperal technique when he blows; I'll have to remember that if he blows out candles on a cake I plan to eat. Or plan to not eat. April 7, 2025 My brother went to an Oscar party and sent me this picture. Is that big guy promoting the film, "Memoirs of a Cross-Dressing, Sumo-Wrestling Geisha"? (BTW, my brother and his friend got "smiley faced" because I'm not sure they're ready to be seen publicly with Geisha the Goliath.) April 6, 2025 I will drink coffee prepared at Starbucks if I need a fix, but it's not my favorite because it usually has a strong taste of wood pulp. They must use paper filters that are not only unbleached, but also unbarked. Someone drove through the front of the Starbucks on Mission Gorge this morning, and I think he did it because he got yet another cup of coffee that tasted like Sumatra Sawdust. You just never know what will make a person snap. Sometimes it's catching the spouse with the neighbor in flagrante delicto. Sometimes it's paying $1.80 for a cup of coffee that tastes like ass. [Update from Reader Tad.] April 5, 2025 Wondering what your neighbor has been up to? Maybe 7 to 10 for being a perv. Nothing like the Department of Homeland Security deputy press secretary helping to set the example. April 4, 2025 I was winding down last night and thinking about hitting the sack when I got this call from Chris. "You gotta go see this wreck." I declined. I had already brushed my teeth, and something about brushing and flossing makes me want to put on PJs, not rush out of the house into the darkness. But then I checked the CHP site and they used two key words: "shut down" and "rescue." In a minute I'm geared up and flogging Romeo over to Mission Valley, where a couple of cars were flipped on the 8 near 805. I made my way over to a parking lot that afforded front row seating and watched the process of unfukcing a freeway. One cop was shoveling debris and dumping it into the car; I never really thought about that, but I guess they have to put the junk somewhere, and it's not like a dumpster will automagically appear. You know why car wrecks are intriguing? Because I don't have the balls to tape salmon all over myself and walk into bear country and bring the excitement to me. I have to live vicariously through others, even if it's colored with misfortune. April 3, 2025 SF Cops on DRZ400s is one of the best law enforcement ideas I've ever seen. These guys were expeditiously patrolling the sidewalks and easily interacting with "people of interest." The cop in the background kept staring at me while I took pictures; he didn't understand I was a dualsport fan and not trying to capture the next Rodney King moment. April 2, 2025 It's been a long time since I've visited Palomar so I rode up there today. Something I've noticed since the last snow storm is the unfortunate proliferation of graffiti. Flatlanders piled into their cars and caused insane traffic jams up to the mountains just so they could sled on a piece of cardboard for all of ten feet; a by-product of their inundation was trash and vandalism (during the second major snow storm, mountain residents begged flatlanders to stay home). The backside of the road signs along Sunrise Highway are now tagged and it's a permanent reminder for me of people's capacity to suck. April 1, 2025 If I understand my Bill of Rights correctly, I think the Sixth Amendment is the one where we have the right to trial by jury, and also the right to disregard summons for jury duty if received on April Fool's Day, which is my situation. They want me to show up on Friday May 5; I have a track day on Monday May 8 and this is a problem if I'm selected for a trial. Since there's no "Must attend track day" option in the Request for Excuse section, I will have to check off the "This person is deceased" box. I can't very well lie and claim to be active duty military. March 31, 2025 Cops episode: This guy wearing a traditional motorcycle jacket was ignoring the po-po. They're tired of his lack of compliance and let loose the dog, who proceeds to jump up on the guy and clamp onto his arm. The dog flails around but the guy is acting like he's a maitre d' with nothing more than a towel draped over his forearm. He actually walks away with the dog dangling from his arm. The cops finally take him to the ground. So what I have learned from today's Cops episode is that if I ever go into a life of crime, I'm going to do it in full leathers. And maybe while high on meth. March 30, 2025 Here's a group photo from the weekend's Pizza Tech event. Chris is holding up the Ducati Monster List toaster. I previously explained that this toaster travels the country from Monster owner to Monster owner for no real reason. You handle it, you sign its guestbook, you pass it on. While this seems impressively stupid, the existentialist in me loves it. It means nothing, it has no tradition, it's pointless...and that's the beauty of it. We need less structure in our paint-by-number lives, not more. The Separated at Birth page got a couple of additions. March 29, 2025 My next-door neighbor had his car stolen Monday night from his driveway. Here are some 2004 stats regarding auto thefts:
The neighbor's car happened
to be a Nissan Sentra. Maybe in 2005 or 2006 San Diego will crack the
exclusive top 5 for most thefts. It's always nice to be super good at
something. |
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Years of dedicated service: |
