I have finally succumbed to considering buying cycling clothing besides socks. I'm attempting to look for a cheaper pair of Sugoi shorts because even though they are silly, when I tried them on they were HELLA comfortable. (Also useful if you need an extra layer under your pants.

I thought about a jersey, but I was torn between puke green and fugly green. There was a red jersey that matched my hair (I currently have red and purple hair), but it made me look pudgy. Not that I have a beer belly, mind you, but most cyclists I've met have a protruding ... except David, but he is a stick with legs. And Bike-steve, who is skinny because he is hardly ever off his bike.

It was suggested that I try eating goo to fend off bonking, which happens more often then not because of my goofy metabolism and my need to eat to fend off The Diabetes. I had one Clif Shot yesterday after my sad shopping trip (I bought one pair of socks... I think I need a Capitalism Ambassador). It tasted like chocolate-coffee sludge and made me very perky as I was riding home in the rain. I had one Hammer Shot (it's hammer time!) and while it tasted more like food, I discovered that goo != breakfast and was crashing a little bit during my pathetically short ride in the rain this morning. (On my list of things I need: rain pants.) Then after 30 minutes at the office, I had a headache and was instantly like "WHOA OMG WHEE CAFFEINE". I have decided that the third pack of goo in my bag is for emergencies only, just like the tire patch kit and the multitool.

I realize that part of this is a bit hypocritical considering my last post, but I'm tired of the chafing and wet thights that accompanies every trip. I wonder how many of these companies pays a decent wage..

Brownfemipower just wrote a post about the situation in LA regarding Forever 21. (Comments are closed on the post, so I'll discuss it here.) I had seen a documentary about the clothing producer that disturbed me, as I had just bought a jacket from there. Knowing what happened so that I could have a jacket - on the backs of Latina women - it reminds me how messed up the fashion and clothing industry is... exploiting women at each turn. Of course, the prince of LA, Antonio Villaigrosa, is going to sell out fellow brown people just to make a buck. I realize that people need employment, but no one deserves to be mistreated just to earn a wage. Apparently brown people (and brown women in particular) only exist to make money off of, and don't get to exist as human beings, enjoying time tending to a garden and having community gatherings in the garden. No, they must toil in labor because they only exist in instrumental value, according to Forever 21.

And what can I, the consumer, the human being with a heart and a head, do? I dislike most clothing because of the fact that clothing is so gendered and so trite. The interesting clothing I would want to have doesn't exist because vintage is in vogue. I think maybe I should just get a sewing machine and alter old clothing or make my own. I've already tried to opt out of the system so many times. AND I could start knitting again. (Knitting during the summer is not very enjoyable.) Too bad yarn is so freaking expensive... or that I don't have a pet sheep.

After much mulling and pondering, including mental comments like "I was already vegetarian for a while from being broke!", I decided to stop eating meat. It's actually somewhat untriumphant because I had meat at home three times before this, and I freaking live in Portland, land o' vegans, so being vegetarian is not a big deal. I'm in a small dilemma right now, as I retardedly bought two tins of sardines at the store and I already ate half of one and the other is sitting in the fridge. I'm probably going to end up eating it because I don't want to throw away any more food than I have to.

Sigh... I'm trying.

I wonder if my neighbors want any sardines...?

In case you've never met me, I am a big fan of Tilly and the Wall. I've seen them in 3 different states, in fact - once in Washington, DC, once(?) in Denton, TX, and twice in Portland, OR. I'm still on the fence about the new album "o", because some of the tracks are awesome and very political, but others seem like stuff that would have been on "Bottoms of Barrels". Of all the bands I like, they're very dear to me. (Kianna recognizes me now. I try to say hi at every show.) It comes as some surprise when I actually sit down to listen to the lyrics of the new album and realized that they had a song about something very familiar to me - raspas.

Una raspa is essentially a snow-cone / shaved ice. They're very popular in South Texas since it's always 100° outside and come in 30 or 40 flavors. My grandma likes them with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, which I thought was weird but now I like it. They're also cheaper than ice cream, which brings me to the next point: raspas are poor man's ice cream.

The entire song is basically about poor Latin@ immigrants and their rights in the US. The second line, "A lonely bell singing for passing feet", refers to the carts that go around the neighborhood selling raspas, corn, and other snacks. Part of it seems to make references to exclusionary tactics by Americans, but I'm not sure if they are talking about more recent events like English-only campaigns and votes to limit things only to citizens. I would guess that they are in the context of the song. It's very simple in that it's highlighting the idea that immigrants come to the US but it doesn't get much better. At the same time, it's nice to know that Tilly is singing about things that I think about. I just hope their tween audience can understand the song.

I was actually writing a much longer post than this to talk about white privilege and cycling, but here's something more interesting. While reading a post from somewhere (The Mex Files? I forgot), I found a blog about an undocumented college student, iamshadow and that he, along with other undocumented kids, want to get a driver's license.

So have I eschewed privilege to get a bike? On one hand, no, because I have an expensive bike that occasionally feels like a liability. On the other hand, I think I might have. In the US, the car is the ultimate status symbol - it means that you have made it. It's also a necessity in some towns due to urban sprawl and ungainly public transportation. You have to be able to afford the gas, insurance, license fees, and maintenance. At the same time, it means that you have a kind of freedom from many things - your current location, weather and nature, other people. You are completely independent. At the same time, you become dependent on the car to feed and entertain yourself, while feeding the car with gasoline.

I'm not sure about the American dream.

Instead of working on an interesting blog post, I'm tearing out my hair because PDF::Writer requires color-tools 1.4.0 and above... which doesn't exist. I think if I were to seriously learn an OOP scripting language, I'd learn Python, or at least force Zed Shaw to rewrite Ruby and make it rocktastic. How would I do this? Um... baked goods! Everyone likes baked goods!

Unrelated: when I was walking back from the cafe, I noticed one of the rooms that doesn't allow cameras has an interesting red button that says "EMO" above it. Does this mean that if you sort the chips wrong, you press the EMO button and get weepy about it?

I spent my weekend biking back and forth from my apartment to PDX Pop Now!, since it was ridiculously close to my abode. The first evening I saw Panther and Nick Jaina. During Panther, I got an overwhelming sense of not getting it. Everyone was getting excited and cheering and dancing, and I stood there attempting to be open-minded to him (Panther is one guy who had a drummer for the show). But as I've probably told at least six people now, he sounds like he was attempting to imitate Prince a bit too late with absolutely no talent. I mentioned this to a random girl later and her friend replied that they're not "familiar" with Prince, then discovered that they were born in 1995 and that I am an old goat with even older tastes.

Nick Jaina was much better, though I told him Sunday that the sound people obviously didn't understand how to work the mixers because many of the amazing things he and his backing band were doing couldn't be heard for more than half of the show. I heard from David that he was interesting, though neither of them had heard him. He's in the singer-songwriter vein, as you can tell that he carefully constructed each song/arrangement. The set was overly mic'ed, which resulted in temporary hearing loss of the audience when a gnarly bit of feedback came out during the sound check. For all the mics onstage, one of the songs had an inaudible banjo. The violinist, who spent most of the set running around like crazy, got the audience to give the thumbs-up to the sound guy to get him to turn up the violin, at which point it started to sound like crap but at least you could hear it. The last song in the set was particularly good, and I used my imagination to figure out what it would sound like properly mixed, and it was beautiful.

Saturday I tried to go earlier in the afternoon with my neighbors, but it didn't quite work out because I ran into an aquaintence who was barbequeing outside of a coffeeshop with his friends, so I spent time chatting with them about the Portland music scene (them: "It's kind of lame"), and about the noise scene in particular (them: "There's noise that's good, and there's indie noise which is made for the amusement of the artist"). I ate a half-burned vegetable and left for Rotture. I stood around outside attempting to meet up with people I knew but didn't see any familiar faces, so I people-watched while Living Proof was setting up. As Living Proof started to talk, I realized that I might have seen them before at the Bastille Day show where I was incredibly irritated with their white-boy rap. It wasn't interesting or engaging, so I hid in the back basement and talked to young girls before realizing how young they were. That is part of the problem with all-age shows - I can't tell how old anyone is because they all dress like hipsters, so unless they are balding, greying, or not a hipster, I assume they are the same age ±4 years.

After making a fool out of myself and then hearing a terrible story about how some guy busted his eardrum on a plane, Portland Cello Project started playing. The group of girls who told me this story continued to blather on, so I tried to move away from them and listen to the music, which was no easy feat since the volume on the cellos was turned down low and might have been audible if everyone were quiet, but the crowd obviously hadn't been going to many chamber music ensembles. I don't know how to say that they were awesome other than... they were awesome. The only bad part was the guy who was speaking for them. I would have rather had someone hand the first chair a mic and have him say something briefly instead of Dude yammering incessantly and then spoiling the awesomeness of their cellos with his vocals / guitar work. They did a nice cover of Poison, that Britney Spears song with the catchy hook that I simultaniously hate and love, and did some other stuff that was even better. After that, I felt that my evening was finished.

Sunday I saw two songs by World's Greatest Ghosts after spending the morning homesick and bawling over reading bell hooks for the first time. Needless to say I wasn't too excited about the third day, but I wanted to chat with the bass player. (I think I scared her, btw.) I went home and fixed lunch, then went to Red and Black and had a beer that was 60% head, and went to see Experimental Dental School. Their set was much of the same that I saw, but they threw in a new song. Like last time when I saw them at Valentine's, the set was disappointingly short, but the acoustics were better than any of the sets I saw all weekend. Originally I had planned to stay up to see New Bloods, but when I got home the second time to take a nap, I was enjoying the sleeping part. At least I feel rested today, but I missed a great opportunity to rock out with my favorite local band.

My verdict of PDX Pop Now: a few gems, if you can tolerate the crowd and the terrible bands.

Yesterday I got off at Goose Hollow but took my time walking off the train platform. I noticed one of the ticket machines was down, but upon further inspection, it was on a boot screen. It was stuck after checking RAM, so I pushed a random button and it continued to boot - into Windows NT for Workstations. (I tried to take a picture but by the time I got my phone out, I missed my chance.) Why would the Tri-Met ticket machine boot into WinNT? It seems like a lot of wasted computer power in order to get a ticket.

In my theoretical ticket machine, it would be much smaller and possibly powered by an ARM board with an OLED, small speaker, printer for paper tickets, and sensor for proximity (contactless) cards. The machine itself would be small and narrow, with only a few solid buttons in a sturdy housing. I also think an auto-reset feature might be useful, but it also seems like an inconvenience for users. It would have to be tested.

My morning Slashdot browsing lead me to an article in the New York Times that rehashes the old "omg women science whaa?!" debacle. Apparently there is talk of having Title IX extended to science programs in universities akin to the way sports are handled (not very well, mind you). Most of the article reminds me of all the Language Log articles where Arnold Zwicky explains in great detail that people don't know how to interpret statistical evidence from studies. The more I read this article, the more I felt that maybe Mr Tierney (the writer) wasn't entirely clear himself about what he was reporting on.

Interestingly, it did touch on something I wanted to discuss, namely the fact that encouraging women to pursue science careers is more influential when women are younger. I don't have anything to back up that statement sadly, but one could correlate the fact that girls are discouraged by their peers, mass media / pop culture, and by their class/race/ethnicity (lack of privilege) to the lack of women in physical science and engineering. By reversing the trend of encouraging young girls to be self-absorbed and unintelligent, I think we could at least get a greater appreciation for and understanding of physical science. While it is perfectly fine for young girls to express femininity, science should not be presented as a boy's domain with the qualifiers of "dirty" or "clean". Instead, we should continue to present science as interesting and fun. I hate the idea of having everything sugarcoated as fun, but I remember being excited about lab days in grade school - getting to burn things, making gooey things, growing plants from seeds, and creating circuits. On a side note, I appreciate the fact that the article gives a distinction between physical science and social science and points out that women do excel in social science, but I would preface that with a note that it is still difficult if the woman is a minority of some sort.

I also feel that the institution of Science is partially to blame. It is patriarchal in nature and still hasn't shed its view of placing the onus on women to sacrifice themselves in the name of Science instead of male scientists changing their world view and the way they practice science. I find it strange that the article talks about Fermilab and the Mars rover at the end, as if doing a study on women is going to detract bajillions of dollars from these expensive projects. Here's my take on this - why don't you find some lobbyists and petition Congress to stop spending so much on the Department of Defense? After all, that's what happened to some of the money the Smithsonian used to get (the rest went to the executive management). We could be funneling money back into research of more interesting things other than how to blow up entire countries, and no one would lose. One could argue that if it weren't for the defense department, we wouldn't have The Intarwobz, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Update: So I read an article by Philip Greenspun about this same topic, and he makes an interesting point about salary, that is, you make very little money in science. This is encouraging to me, because it can't be any worse than washing dishes for $5.55 an hour, my contract ends in October, and I'm an open source fan in the closed-source-loving Silicon Forest. If I have to take another job where Windows is the de facto workstation, I'd rather bus tables because at least my frustration would be directly due to incompetence.