Pedestrian Casualty Reduction Signal Timings Experiment

These days, whenever I smell piss or garbage baking on the sidewalk, I think fondly of New York City.

For three seconds yesterday morning, I considered not putting on my bicycle helmet. My hair looked cute. Besides, much of Portland's young and hip and sexy cycling class goes bareheaded, and I wanted to be one of them, didn't I? But I am a square, and I didn't succumb to my own peer pressure, and I put it on.

I thought on my way to class about how much more confident I've gotten on my bike lately, how sort of brazen I am about riding on certain streets. I noticed how lucky I was that all the traffic lights were changing for me.

So downtown Portland has these signs next to the streetcar tracks:



I have always found them hilarious.

( Cut for situational irony. )

I really, really, really, really, really want a treehouse.

I know I was raised in the Northwest, and I claim some sort of pride in that, and I'm therefore supposed to thrive in cold and damp environments like I'm some kind of giant barnacle. But honestly. It is June. I am fucking sick of this weather.

I've had "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield stuck in my head for the past 24 hours. Not even the whole song — just that one riff in the middle. From 2:01 to 2:14. You know, this part:



There's so much promise in those bars. The guitar chords, the syncopated handclaps*. This song is about to get so much greater, they say. It doesn't really deliver; it goes back to feeling a little hollow and oversynthesized, I think. But for 13 seconds I am completely sold. Thank you, Rick Springfield. Everything else in my life is confusing right now, but not you, Rick, and the one kind of good song you ever wrote.

*Are those even handclaps? Are they even syncopated? Most of my music theory is made up.

VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION:

Does using the word "labyrinthine" to desribe an impossible bureaucratic system make me an artist or an asshole? I can't quite decide. Note: I've already forbid myself to include the word "Kafkaesque," even though one of my sources said it, even though it means exactly what I'm trying to describe.

[Did you know you have a membranous labyrinth in your ear? Bet you didn't.]

Rising oil prices and demand for biofuels are causing a global food crisis.

Meanwhile, I came across these at the grocery store the other day:



Some mornings it's hard to know how to feel about the world.

My mom bought me a subscription to the New Yorker, and I'll admit that I rarely do more than flip through and read the cartoons. The articles are just so long. I have zero attention span these days. Such is MODERN LIFE, right?

This piece, however, had me start to finish. It's about elevators. It is fantastic.

Things keeping me sane right now:

1) Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major.

2) The promise of hot chocolate with a few drops of kahlua.

3) This picture of a sea anemone I drew in math class:



It might not be the best sea anemone — like probably there should be more tentacles in the middle and less of a gaping hole — but it'll do in a pinch, y'know?