bleckblog: musings of a community college english teacher

According to Moveon.org, " insurance companies and special interests have intensified their campaign to destroy health care reform. They're now spending more than $1.4 million dollars a day to water down reform and kill President Obama's public health insurance option."

The public option is lame enough as it is, but the frickin' insurance companies are worried about the lame competition because they know they can't compete. I hope we get insurance reform that drives the private insurers out of business unless they truly can compete. If they do a great job, maybe they can put the government option that I hope for out of business.

Lilac Century skipping Reardan and Loop Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

I took a cut-off without finishing the 14-mile climb to Reardan and skipped a 10-mile loop to cut the 100 miles down to 82. That was plenty, thanks to more than 4000 feet of climbing along the way. The equal amount of descending made it more doable. I hit nearly 50, 49.7 mph on the big descent from the West Plains to the Spokane River.

I should probably back up a bit. I mean, how can you start telling a story with hitting a kid for some silly little thing? That might make me look like I don't love, him, though I probably don't, not really, or my wife, at least the woman who was my wife then, and his mother as well. It's not like I ever wanted to have him, or any kid. I wanted the sex, sure. Who doesn't? But the kid? A kid? No, that I didn't want.

Tonight I felt like writing something that has to do with nothing other than my wanting to write a story, so this is what I came up with. Not a story per se, but perhaps the start of something. We'll see.

The first time I hit him was right after he bit me, right on the thigh. That’s where he bit me, not where I hit him. I hit him smack on the bottom, and it was a smack. The smack rang out in the bathroom, seeming to either echo or reverberate. I’m not sure which since it was a small bathroom and something of an echo chamber. So maybe it was echo, though not the sort of echo one hears when in the mountains.

This says it all, thanks to Kairos, a Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

Today I had my first spill on my bike in a long time, almost longer than I can remember. The last spill I do remember happened in exactly the same way. This morning I was biking to work and all was well for the most part. I got to an intersection where I leave the main arterial for something of a short cut. I've taken the corner a number of times, in conditions much slicker than those I found this morning. But the recent freeze/thaw cycle left a patch of thick and slick ice right at the apex of the turn and my front tire slid out.

That's what an old guy told me just after I rode onto campus yesterday, as I was pedaling past the stadium. Actually, he said "Looking good." As usual, I was wearing my bright yellow rain jacket and black tights and shoe covers. It was a not too cold commute, with a trace of snow on the ground. He looked like the sort of old-timer you'd see in some sports movie, maybe the crusty old trainer for a boxer, something like that. He had a Pearl Izumi skull cap on, so he's definitely hooked up to sports somehow. PI stuff is probably in the clothing repertoire of every cyclist; at least they would know of it. Beats being called a faggot for riding my bike in the cold and snow. There are still kind and considerate people out there. It's just that they don't stick in our mind so well as do the morons.

Or so I was told this afternoon while cycling home from campus. Someone, a student of ours I suspect, hung out of the window of a passing pickup truck and screamed at the top of his lungs: "Heeaw! Heeaw! Heeaw! You're a faggot!" I wish I could come up with the onomatopeic spelling of the yell that preceeded the slur, but I'm not going to dwell on that as it isn't all that important.

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff is running his third contest to take a student to Africa to see just what it's like there and report first hand what is experienced. Here are the rules of the contest: http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/winatrip/contestrules.html

The other day, I wrote in a different forum, about why I like to commute by bike. I'm not sure if I was being tested by the bike gods, or I just needed to be reminded about the role of irony in life, but Friday's bike commute was anything but what is a typically enjoyable and worthwhile experience. Though weather is not usually much of a factor in my rides to work, because I have all sorts of gear for just about any weather sort, including waterproof socks and insulated shoe covers (plus silk socks to go inside the waterproof socks, balaclavas, skull caps, gloves of varying wind and cold blocking capability, and glasses or goggles, plus jackets for wind and rain. In short, weather is generally nothing more than something to anticipate and deal with.