Say, is Houston the nickname you gave for your apartment, and Austin the nickname you gave for your next door neighbor’s apartment? No, silly. The real cities in Texas. Why bike between them? Well, it’s simple, I hate myself.

Tomorrow begins the class I am taking to train for this (since I never really bike). I am afraid for my future self. Today I bought bike shorts and I am afraid for anyone who will be near/have to see my future self. Those things hug in all the wrong ways. The padding makes it feel like you are being constantly lightly groped in the weirdest spot.

Here’s the thing though … No matter how confident I am that I will look like an idiot in those things, I give it four weeks at most before I will consider taking a picture of myself in them, and then sending it to a random number. I’m kidding about that part. But how frightening would that be? Maybe attach the phrase, “that’s what I thought” or “don’t disappoint Jerry.” That person would change their number pronto.

When I tell people that I am doing a 2-day bike ride to Austin they ask, “how are you getting back?” That’s when I respond, “with finesse.” And that’s when they stop talking to me. But, sincerely, I really ought to look up how we get back.

Hopefully I’ll encounter pretty things when I ride outside, and hopefully pretty people in class (though I’m pretty sure the class has 9 people and we’re all guys).

Wish me luck!

Back (apologies for my handwriting!)

The text of the postcard is

Dear Ellen,

You ever have one of those weeks where you’re happily dancing on a could and then babies riding giant swords attack you?

Sincerely weird,
DumbFunnery.com

Stretching before my jog, and wearing sunglasses with hot pink in them (I got them for free from SMU) a little girl walked by me. She was walking with her bike. “Just stand there, don’t ask questions,” she said, I’m pretty sure to me. I was confused, so I ended up doing exactly what she’d instructed me to do. Weird. She walked about 15 more feet when she turned and yelled, “I like your sunglasses!” I yelled a happy and amused thank you. Then a few more feet and she turned again, “It takes a real man to wear those!”

Rainbow Speak is from Minnesota. But Juicebox and I like to round up and say he’s from Canada. In our terrible jokes this means he only eats maple syrup, has super nice manners, hangs out with penguins (facts aren’t necessary for dumb jokes), wrestles bears, etc, etc. The latest joke was in the form of a terrible prank call that I tried. I tried calling his work phone, which does not display the caller’s number.

“Rainbow Speak this is corporate America.” (Substitute his real name and the company name.)
“Hi, I noticed a vehicle in the parking lot leaking maple syrup, sir.”
“Oh golly well I’ll send my penguins out right away to take care of that!”
What was impressive was that he came up with that without missing a beat. Touché Rainbow Speak.

Back (apologies for my handwriting!)

The text of the postcard is

Dear Ellen,

Seen here is “Little Butch.” The world’s first and only transgendered airplane.

Seriously – who names a plane, or anything, “Little Butch”?

On the other hand, who can resist those masculine curves?

Confused, & Weird, & Sincerely,
DumbFunnery.com

An Object of Beauty – Steve Martin

• I’m a big fan of The Pleasure of My Company. This one, eh. The most interesting and neat thing with this book, to me, was that it includes color pictures of some of the paintings the book talks about. This is nice because I’m lazy and don’t look up things (except in rare cases) that books talk about. A lot of the art talk was probably lost on me, so if you’re into that this book may appeal more to you.
• Here’s a NY Times review of the book. (The author doesn’t directly say but I get the impression she wasn’t a big fan either.)

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

• I finished this earlier today so I’m still not sure how much I like it. BUT, I can tell you that I really enjoyed his writing style.
• Come back tomorrow for some quotes from the book that I liked.
• Here’s the catch with the book, in case you pick it up without knowing the plot like I did – it’s a love story between an upper 30′s man and a 12-14 year old girl. From the perspective of the pretty-vocabularied man. Huh. It’s fiction but an odd pill to swallow.
• Check out some quotes from the book that I liked … here.

Next up will be A Clockwork Orange. (After that I promised myself a lovely, feel good book.)

Above published Jan 5, 2012

I thought about it some more and I decided … yes, I like Lolita. If for no other reason than the language. But it’s also interesting because it has a lot of unexpected parts (at least I was surprised) and it’s just plain odd.

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

• Yikes!
• I read on wikipedia (linked above, and because it’s wikipedia take it as you will) that the author was not a fan of the book or the movie. The book, because he wrote it quickly and why is everyone in to this thing I wrote just off-hand! Gah! The movie, because it didn’t accurately convey the meaning of the book. I have not seen the movie, but the book’s message was interesting.
• I haven’t seen the movie, but I thought the book did present an interesting question. And I have heard the movie is violent and crazy, but with books you can distance yourself (in my opinion) more easily from that. It’s less ‘real.’
• Also, possibly the coolest part, is that wha-la, you know about forty words of slang without having tried. There are more than forty in the book, but you walk away without knowing ALL of them. Well, maybe YOU do. But I didn’t.

Check out the master to do list here!

I thought of this the other day and it is so painfully dumb I couldn’t help but share it.

The pirates were sat in the boat’s kitchen arguing over what the proper protocol was for dealing with a drunken pirate. After the debate about whether sea anemones made better pretend mustaches or better pretend eyebrows when you stuck them to your face, this was easily the pirates’ favorite topic of conversation.

They deliberately parked across two disabled spaces, because that kind of behavior was pretty much the whole point of being a pirate.

‘I’m fluent, thank you. Almost like a native,’ said the Captain, with a scowl. The Pirate Captain knew the French for ‘This is a pretty donkey’ and also ‘This is not a pretty donkey’, and he couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t either a pretty donkey or not a pretty donkey, so that was just about every eventuality covered.

‘You know when the Pirate Captain says something like, “I may lead a secret double life as a spy? Or maybe I don’t. Who’s to say?’ and then he arches an eyebrow? That’s enigmatic.’
‘Ah. I always thought that was just annoying.’