GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

Thanks to Rich Lopez for sending me this interesting anecdote from a writing school... +++ Remember the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Here's a prime example offered by an English professor from the University of Phoenix: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in th...

You non-cyclists won't get this. Skip it. I just had to vent. The hilarious video by MC Spandex aka Robin Moore, "Performance" displays a very good use for flakey floor pumps.  I can't believe it. I get home last night late after trying to fix the flats on both my Crusoe and the showroom Pro Petite. What should have taken me just a few minutes (even if I was not using the Jim Langley leverless tire removal technique) took over an hour, and I still left with deflated tires. Why? Frigging floor pumps. And as if by divine cosmic resonance, the first YAK! item of the day is all about ... floor pumps! I don't know who is responsible for designing floorpumps, but if I get a hold of him (it's gotta be a him, women would not put up with a gadget that poops out just by looking at it) I shall insert the long tube somewhere narrow and I will not even remove the valve first. And I'll continue inserting it until the entire pump has disappeared into ...

The monster truck. One of the first things I encountered in America. Apart from cinnamon buns. "Don't leave your head back here. Just go up there and live your dreams." Douglas pushed me forward into the queue. "Go orn, git." A few years ago I would have taken these words, uttered by a lover, as proof that any seeds of a relationship we might have been sewing had now reached their use-by date. But as I stood beside my companion of the past five months, studying his averted eyes, matted hair and stroking his heavy, sun-beaten hands, I took his words as they came. He was, after all, a veteren of more than four years living in survival mode on a remote strip of beach on a Panamanian island, fighting off the indians, living his dream. He pushed me towards the shuffling migration line. I hung onto him like he was a dead man walking toward the electric chair, and all the while his eyes looking behind us self-consciously. "Y' just go do your thin...