Feaverish

Man it is wet like Tibet out there today. When I got to work my shoes were bubbling forth is how saturated with water they were. Also, I got a flat tire for the third time in as many weeks. The upside is I’m a flat fixer extraordinaire now. Here’s me soaked to the bone holding tire levers in my teeth while patching and pumping furiously, crazed glint in my eye. I pump super suggestively, too; it cannot be helped.

In other news, the other day before work I was flossing and I must’ve cut my gums or something because I got a bunch of blood on my hands. I didn’t wash it off, though. I stared at it for awhile, ruminating on the fragility of life and how there’s really just a thin, stabbable bag of skin holding all those gallons (is that right? That can’t be right.) of blood in. After a few minutes I wiped the blood on the leg of my bike pants, because it made me look kind of tough.

Q: What do you call a deer with no eyes?
A: No eye-deer [pronounced eye-di-er, as in "I have no i-d-er", i.e. no idea]

Q: What do you call a fish with no eyes?
A: Fsh [pronounced fsssssshhhhhh]

I am losing track of the date and/or day of the week, and increasingly reliant on calendars and the homeless to provide this information.

Today’s greatest heartbreak*: upon trying to staple two sheets of paper together, discovered stapler was, heartbreakingly, empty.

• to quote Curly Washburn: “Day ain’t over yet.”

This New York Times article has caused me no small amount of stress over the last couple of weeks. Basically, it reports on a recent study that links cycling to impotence, as, evidently, your bike seat can put pressure on places where you don’t want any pressure. There’s the cutting off of certain important flows and a lot of other scientific terminology, but I think the diagram on the right explains things pretty well (note: sunglasses not to scale).

Anyway, I talked it over (uncomfortably, euphemistically) with my local bike shop guy, who said that as long as I’m not experiencing any numbness while riding, I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Fabulous!

Unfortunately numbness is one of those things it’s difficult to actively “experience.” Experiments must be performed! Tests run! Data quantified! In the same way white isn’t so much a color as the absence of color, so numbness is a feeling you don’t feel.

And so, the testing. It isn’t easy. I’m riding around an active, densely populated city. How can a would-be scientist perform serious medical experiments on his, well, his business, without making it everyone’s business? I’ve pretty much exhausted all the tricks I know: reaching in through one’s pockets, innocently twidling one’s thumbs before one’s crotch whilst one’s pinky fingers perform the delicate “can you feel me now?” poking and prodding, bending over and pretending to tie one’s shoes whilst repeatedly elbowing oneself in the crotch, etc.

Once the sun goes down I have no problem just shoving my hand down my pantsââ�¬â��though the horizontal scan of turning headlights is a constant threatââ�¬â��but during the day I’m overcome by self-consciousness. Maybe if I affixed some electrodes to strategic areas or wore a lab coat and safety goggles people would take my frequent crotchular inspections for the necessary scientific research that they are.

Still, if I have to choose between being impotent and looking to all the world like I’ve got crabs, I think I’m gonna have to go with the crabs.

In line at the grocery checkout last night the male cashier was shamelessly flirting with the guy in front of me. “Are you a gardener? You look like you work outdoors. All tan and rugged.” And so forth. Also, when he said “rugged” he shivered a little, like rugged evokes snuggling up in a fur coat or putting on pants that just came out of the dryer.

Meanwhile I’ve just gotten off my bike, I’m all sweaty and tan (do I even have to mention the golden tendrils of my silken, sun-bleached hair?) and gearing up for the inevitable flirting I’m about to receive, but no! The guy just bags my groceries like he’s being timed and gives me one of those resigned half-frowns like it must be tough appearing in public with a face like mine.

What the heck? I had half a mind to protest the store’s clearly prejudiced cashier flirting policy, but that likely would have resulted in my third forced eviction from that particular natural foods grocery. Once for “violently” (their words) returning a “cake” (my words ââ�¬â�� sesame is not a valid sugar substitute) and once for having a disagreement with a different cashier regarding their fatuous carding policy (which ended with me pumping my fist in the air and chanting “Attica!” over and over).

Sorry for the extended absence, it won’t happen again, etc.

BUT! I do have something to show for it: my latest project, Lisa DeJohn dot com, is live as of yesterday, so go check it out.

For as simple a site as this one is, it sure gave me a few sleepless nights (L reports that on more than one occasion I woke up in a sweat screaming about three pixel text jogs). It was worth it, though, as supposedly Lisa’s site looks exactly the same in every modern browser. (The same can not be said of Feaverish, which is given a bit of a roughing up by Internet Explorer for Windows and beaten unrecognizable by Explorer for Mac.)

It’s all XHTML Strict (served as text/html) and valid CSS, of course, even the SlideShowPro-powered Flash on the homepage (thanks Bobby van der Sluis!).

I’ll be plugging WordPress into the text pages in the next couple of days, so Lisa will be able to easily update the site on her own. In that same vein, I opted to make each piece of art its own web page. This way, Lisa only has to change a few lines of text and an image link to rearrange things, and adding a new page is a simple copy-and-paste job. Simplicity was the name of the game here (look at the source code; it’s just a couple of divs and a list, and those divs are only there to keep IE in line), and hopefully Lisa will find it easy enough to update.

Okay, enough technical talk. Go have a look, buy some art, and wait by your computer for me to update again (soon! I promise).