sidewalk derby

It ain't my week. At 7:30 a.m. Sunday one would think there would be few people on the street......at least that's what I thought. I got on my bicycle to go to the bakery all of four blocks away when one block from my house I turned onto the sidewalk and was met head-on full force by a Mexican guy on a costco 50 lb. full suspension mountain bike. He was pedaling head-down madly as he must have been late for work. He didn't even look up until we had collided and I yelled in pain as my hand got smashed between two handlbars meeting at 25 m.p.h. . My hand was bleeding badly and felt like it might have been broken. The other guy just got on his bike and was getting ready to leave when I told him in Spanish:" Next time, use your eyes" . I realized that he figured that we were both still alive and our bikes still rolled so what was the point on hanging around-after all,it wasn't an auto accident. I figured that this guy rode this route every morning and I strayed into his path.....this was his sidewalk and I was the intruder. I was really in pain and kind of pissed but the other guy must have hurt himself as well but made no mention of it......he had no time for that. He probably had a whole family to feed at $ 8.50 an hour where I was just concerned if I would be able to ride the next day. Neddless to say, I'll be taking a different route next time and leave this guy a wide open sidewalk to blast to work on.

as I live and breathe

Hooray, the rice stayed down. swiggblog is still in effect. that's right!

ok ok

I stand corrected....I must really be thinking that I have answers that other people don't have-this is of course a misconception on my part except in rare,very specific cases-moslty dealing with my work....and I could stll be full of shit there. Anyway, I did get a glimpse of mortality today in my own kitchen. I had come home from work and was pretty hungry and in a huge hurry as I had a jazz show to go to. A friend of mine has a nephew in a jazz guitar quartet so I was trying to choke down any food I could before leaving the house. I looked into the refrigerator and saw some carrots. I picked out a carrot, peeled it and started eating it while preparing a salad. Within ten minutes something was feeling very wrong. It felt like I was choking but I was still able to breathe. I am normally a healthy person so this was an entirely new experience. I tried drinking some water but it felt like a baloon was blowing up in my chest. I had visions of dying right there and wondering what my wife would think when she returned from work the next day ( she is a flight attendant and gone for 2-3 days at a time). I realized that the carrot must have been the problem and started trying to force it out. I was surprised at how east it came up and that I didn't feel sick, I was just uncomfortable. I tried drinking more water but I had to purge that as well......as of 4 hours later I have yet to eat or drink anything. I have some rice on the stove.....maybe that will stay down. I know what food poisoning feels like and this isn't it at all. Anyway, if swiggblog suddenly ceases to have new entries you have my apologies but where I might be I doubt there are internet connections. I'll really try to stay alive if I can....I don't want to leave a big mess for my wife to have to deal with.

who cut my cheese?

somebody gave me a book awhile back....it was some sort of silicon-valley philosophy guide on how to live your life properly, most likely in a cubicle for 16 hours a day. Actually, I have gotten several books like this from people such as financial planners,accountants,the like. I think they must get some sort of kickback as the books are always free . From all who I have asked so far I have yet to meet a person who has read any of these books, although all had admitted to having been given a copy. Maybe nobody gives a rat's ass if their cheese was moved, or nobody cares who the richest man in babylon is-or was. It doesn't matter if both you and I are o.k. because that is most likely only partially true anyway....all of us are messed up in one way or another so that makes us all not o.k........but that in itself is o.k. , I guess.All of these supposed "life change" or self-help guides are written by people who are just as fucked up as we are , so reading them is an excersize in futility. If you want to improve your life, take some time off........put a box of self-help books out on the curb.....somebody will take them-but they won't read them.

world in harmony

as I drove my underpowered 4 cylinder japanese truck from the painter to work yesterday I noticed some of the largest s.u.v's in front of me . They were all in the left lane desparately trying to cross three busy lanes of traffic to get to the far right. I wondered to myself for a second:" what do these idiots all want with the right lane? It only goes to...........COSTCO !!. It was like a bolt of lightening......yes-all the world is in harmony. The massive single-occupant 8 mpg. black mariahs were just going about their appointed rounds: Lill the 50 gallon tank with $3.00 a gallon of the middle east's finest, then go to the place with the biggest shopping carts on the planet. It's all about consumption.......not just fuel but anything-anything that will wind up in the landfill,anything that can be reaped from third-world workers getting paltry wages doing jobs that were formerly the backbone of our own economy.,.....anything that can make our lives a little easier while putting people out of good paying jobs and fattening the wallets of people who already have an oversupply of funds. These drivers of the giant black s.u.v.'s were almost like the animals on a nature show, going about their buisiness without knowing the essential part they are playing in the grand scheme outlined by the narrator...in this case, swiggblog. We are all cogs in a great machine -we find our various roles depending on the extent of our realative blindness. The most blind are the most valued as they will burn the most fuel,buy much more than they need and vote for the criminal element that is at the helm of this great machine.It dawned upon me that in my little truck that I try to drive as little as possible, in my 1 bedroom house that uses as little energy as possible to save money.......a person such as I has a very minor role in the big machine, although unwittingly I make my contribution-mostly out of weakness or lack of imagination. one has to be unbelieveably strong to not feed the machine. I have known such people....they are not at the wheels of those big black s.u.v.'s,or even a small 4 cylinder truck. They are on foot or on a bike.

hip hop....no longer just for rabbits

yo,check it out G.... lifestyle-straight up skills.....like d.j.'ing,skateboarding,breakdancing and up here in northern california,carmelizing onions. How come the hip hip lifestyle hasn't embraced haute cuisine....they put Couvasier , hennesey or remy in most of the songs....what about the rest of the meal? how about some truffle reduction or macadamia nut encrusted seared ahi? cooking is straight up skills, G and if you are going to live, you gotta eat, bitch. yo, might as well have the dope grits along with the rolex. like all things hip hop, fancy food costs bank

full metal jackass

yes,it's that time again...time for the words that nobody will see-swiggblog! perpetual anonimity. This weeks chapter is about donald rumsfeld...the man who is sending off the children ( and some of the parents) of the working class to defend america in iraq...........it's funny that people like rummy who say:"bring it on!" aren't there where it is being' brought on.' Their children aren't there ,either......the children are in a private academy behind a big ivy-coated stone wall in some place people like us aren't allowed or wanted. The parents are on the golf course or they are working hard to get every penny of your pension while you work your life away thinking that it will still be there at retirement time. What I don't understand is why war criminals and corporate criminals have any support in this democracy where one can vote for somebody else. This administration is so bad that I think the american people should file suit against the government for financially taking us down the toilet, killing us and starting usless wars killing innumerable innocent people while terrorists run free and attack us at will. what ever happenend to common sense ? why do people not think that this is viet nam all over again, complete with soldiers coming home mentally shattered and abandoned by their government. all because people who knew better couldn't find time to vote, or worse yet got hipnotized by the complete crap spewing out of clearchannel communications. any questions? I have many more...

infinity

Today I was riding up the coast on a short ride with a friend. We were about 5 miles out of town riding side by side with me about 3 inches out of the bike lane. A big club-cab american full-sized v-8 equipped truck honked angrily as it passed....I had made a major transgression...I had ventured too far into his road. I guess it is his road and the war in Iraq is his war. I figured that instead of a yellw-ribbon saying:"support our troops" a mobius strip decal with the words : "I keep driving my gashog ...... soldiers will never come back" should be on this guy's truck. Like I am making the road more dangerous for his 5,000 lbs. of detroit steel by straying onto the road 3". It is because of guys like this that we as a country are exporting war to the middle east. It is sickening and people ought to do something about it......I know this country is al about freedom and people equate mobility with freedom, mobility at 8 miles per gallon is not freedom, it is dependancy-a habit like a heroine habit. Do we really need it that bad that we are willing to throw away human decency and become a new facist state as a result? Are we going to be led into the downfall of our society because of the need to burn fuel faster than any other country? If this is the case than we can not expect the rest of the world to respect us or even consider us as friends. Keep driving and find out.

aergh

every year one gets older...and every year the summer gets shorter. This is the shortest damn summer I can ever remember......If I can remember any of them now. Life is the thing that you miss while doing things that make you miss it...or something like that. Better yet, life is that thing you swear you missed when you are taking your last breath. I guess since it is that way for everybody, then we all missed it so it isn't all that big a deal after all. Life is that summer that you don't remember. Life is that trip you never took or that project you never started or that friend you never kept in touch with. Life is that drawer full of stuff you haven't looked at since you put it there. Life is that missing sock. Life is the one that got away, the lotto ticket that you didn't get......that piece of chocolate that didn't get left on your pillow.....sob sob.......this stuff will make you vomit. I am making the world vomit, ask me how. That's life.

schizle

Once I wandered lonely as a blog. The pope doesn't shit in the forest, he shits in the vatican...they have marble toiletries there and a very fine collection of pillaged artwork representing the true value of religeous conversion....the value of material collections. What ever happened to the Fransiscans ? They didn't buy into that crusades shit or the whole "collection plate" thing. Your tithings at work....just walk the vatican's halls and look at all that glitters. It is more impressive than any museum and they don't lend their collection of priceless works out to other places for the sake of art lovers around the world-you have to go to Rome to see this stuff. I went in 1995. I had no idea of the opulence that was contained in the vatican compound........it was really unbelieveable.