"His cry went on through the final image: the spots of raw bright blood on the earth. Blood on excrement. The supreme moment, high above the desert, when the two elements, blood and excrement, long kept apart, merge. A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose."
Any ass with access to the interweb can use google, or similar to find where this passage comes from, but harder is to give context and meaning. As a quick test, as I know some of you will have read this novel, who can tell me what this passage is actually about, and what happened next.First correct answer will get a pleasant and interesting surprise. Use the email link and do your worst.
Enough of education, onto this cycling caper. This week has been surprising as to who bore witness to our grubby escapades last week. The week before I'd slipped through unnoticed and unidentified, second time around not so. Based on the enthusiastic response I will be running another roll in new territory in the near future and will extend the invitation a little wider. That particular route ridden on Sunday is a great introduction to the pleasures of riding metal roads on road bikes, with no traffic, no hazardous descents and several kilometres of flat fun. I need to get my thinking cap on.
I am planning on tackling my Northern Hell sometime soon, and I'm facing up to that with a fair degree of trepidation. I'm not sure whether it's the fact that there are 40 kilometres of metal roads in the loop, or that there are some very steep and nasty hills, or that there are a couple of sections I haven't ridden, or that it's perverse, but either way there will be a sense of satisfaction in getting around it.
One thing will be to try and get slightly better weather, although there is something of a perverse pleasure in getting filthy.
People are strange. I'm living proof of that, but frequently I get affirmation of this immutable fact when I look at the search engine data for this august Blog.
Terms that have led people here include the following:- Naked Boys Riding Bikes (Okay, there must be a site devoted to that, but I haven't gone looking) Naked Women Wearing Rubber Gloves (That was interesting to follow, although how they got here after some of the better places to go is beyond me) Fizik Antares Deepest Point (Complete mystery to me, but if it's anything like Jorge it will involve the inappropriate use of not just the saddle, but the seatpost as well) Pumpkin Hill Artefact ( At first I thought this might have been a commentary on my K2 performance, but no, they seemed to be looking for something really crusty) Naturist (Maybe I can capitalise on this one...) Miss Junior Naturist (A trifle weird) Flowery Rubber Gloves (There's a market segment I'm missing) My Doctor Rubber Glove (This rubber glove thing is starting to weird me out a little, but maybe it's a new blog I could start. Only rubber gloves, and naked women, and fixie hipsters getting beaten by women in rubber gloves) Defy by Doris (There's a fashion designer in Hong Hong who has that label. Well, I never! I wonder what the real Doris here will think about that when she finds out).
This week I have suffered from a little temporal dislocation, my weekday morning rides are confusing me. I had gotten used to the long darkness of the early morning rides. Now that K2 has been, gone and broken me, I've eased the pre-work mileage back a little, but still getting out early. I just find it strange to be riding in glorious sunlight before the commuting traffic starts to build. In a week or two I'll get used to it, but this week, it's been a strangely pleasurable discomfort.
Bands cover songs, some well, some better than the original, and some so badly that you wonder just what they were thinking. Here are a few covers that I'd recommend pursuing vigorously. Ministry - Under my thumb (taking that staid Rolling Stones drone and making it something nasty. Opens with synth that wouldn't be astray in a gay nightclub, then just builds and gets hard and heavy with it. Pure angry pleasure) Ryan Adams - Wonderwall (Inspired cover of the Oasis anthem, takes something truly banal and turns it into a heartwrenching piece of humility) The Revolting Cocks - Do you think I'm sexy? (This is how Rod should have done it, funny with plenty of bump and grind) Johnny Cash -Hurt (Trent Rezner of Nine Inch Nails has openly stated that the Man in Black's version of his song is just brilliant) Wilco - One Hundred Years from Now (just a riot of The Byrds song from Sweetheart of the Rodeo) The Byrds - Hey Joe (Pure nerves and edginess, a creditible counterpoint to Jimi Hendrix and his definitive version. Jack White has built an entire career copying the style of this song) 1000 Homo Djs - Supernaut (Industrial stomping on the Black Sabbath classic)
And in that little line up there's something for everyone, even my Chief of Staff.
