SideBar Quotes from The Early Blog Days.

 Wasn't sure if I had saved these.  Looks like I had!  

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We don't need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much.

Robert Walser

One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words.

Goethe

We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department is fucked. It's the biggest cock-up ever. We're all completely fucked.

Sir Richard Motteram,British Civil Servant

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Mark Twain

To write is to attempt to know what we would write were we to write.

Marguerite Duras

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Thomas Mann

a) Don't lie if you don't have to.

b)Assume infinite intelligence and zero prior knowledge.

Leo Szilard

...if I can be allowed a mediocre generalization, don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it'd lose even its imperfection.

Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

The truth is scandalous. But without it, nothing has any worth. An honest and naive vision of the world is already a masterpiece... As you approach the truth, your solitude will increase.

Michel Houellebecq

And if a man lived in obscurity making his friends in that obscurity, obscurity is not uninteresting.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

My only job is to be talented.

Anton Chekhov

Boredom, of course, like any mighty force, you must respect.

Saul Bellow

He often made great mistakes and arrived at false conclusions, still he had so much genius and knowledge that a great part of his work will always remain true.

Arabella Buckley, (speaking of French naturalist George-Louis LeClerc, Comte de Buffon, Intendant (Administrator) of Les Jardins des Plants, anticipator of Darwin and Lyell)

It is only kings, and the nobility, and those fortunates who dwell in the tropics, where bread grows on trees and clothing is unnecessary, who have reserved seats in this world.

Charles Dudley Warner, (from an address to the Alumni of Hamilton College, NY, 1872)

I may not agree with what you say but to your (?my, someone's) death I will defend your right to say it.

Voltaire

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"Reserved Seats" was going to be the title of something. Something by

E@L

Seating Options

Many of you may understand that E@L's arse has been through the wringer over the past few years. Lots of surgeries and complications, nothing too lethal or all that life-threatening, but certainly annoying. 

Don't worry, E@L is not going to post the photos of his many surgical wounds... Especially not the one where you can look into his perineal incision where his anus used to be, and, with a bright enough torch, see the back of his teeth... 

Whatever you do, don't try to picture this in your head, it'll drive you insane with the horror, the horror.

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One of the issues with lying in bed for any stretch of time, and then not being allowed to exercise too hard, is muscle wasting. E@L's waist to hip ratio has gone exponential over the last 5 years as his old man butt has shrunk and succumbed to gravity. Pants that once were tight are now falling down, and not necessarily due to weight loss and/or shrinkage of his belly despite much less intestine living in there, but thanks to the minimisation of his gluteus maximus. 

And for this reason, plus he lives on a hill, he hadn't been riding his bike for most of that recovery time...  

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This double-bunger seat was purchased when he started doing a little riding in Singapore, 2010 or so. With some buddies, E@L would pedal along East Coast pathway, as far as a burger and beer bar past the airport, at Changi Beach. The Sea-Grill E@L thinks it was/is.

 

Double-bunger ischial seat.

One of the issue he had with his road bike is the weight that has to placed on your hands. As you are leaning forward all the time, eventually (soonish) you get pins and needles in your fingers, and it just plain hurts your arms after a while. (Unless you are fit and light of body, or wear gel-filled gloves.)

His funny looking seat takes the weight of your back half, but not onto the perineum as a traditional seat with a "nose" does. Instead it goes onto the ischial tuberosities, the bones under your buttocks, and it leaves your perineum and wedding tackle free, with no risk to your prostate or coccyx bones.

The green bits.

E@L has moved this ischial seat this onto his current e-bike (see posts both past and future) and, unlike his old road bike, E@L sits up much straighter. There is much less pressure on his hands (even less with gel-filled gloves) and shoulders but a lot more of his substantial avoirdupois is relying on the bones under those much leaner buttocks, placing more responsibility on those rings of rubber to maintain his stability and comfort.  

After nearly 3Mms (3,000kms), riding 5 times a week, those bones are starting to register their annoyance at this. Maybe it's the ischia, or maybe it's the emaciated glutes, but something isn't happy back there. The discomfort kicks in after 20km or so.  

So he purchased a seat that came up on his FB feed, one from RockBros that promised the world... It was as wide as the double ring, at 25cm, and had a nose (and a slot to slide your goolies into), but it was much thicker, and therefore, hopefully, more cushioning. The main part of its support was for the ischial regions too, and after one test-ride, at 20kms his bum started to complain, just like it does with the ischial seat. Sigh.

Seat for serious rides (L) -- Allegedly comfy seat (R)

[ignore the red paint, E@L was spraying some furniture on the table  last week]

He looked in several of the stores in town, but couldn't see anything more plush and promising of relief than the RockBros one, as all that were in stock were the skinny coccyx bruisers and prostate crushers, width at 17cm or less, targeted at the taints of serious racers!  

So E@L has gone to Amazon and purchased an even wider seat, 33cm, hoping it will distribute his weight more evenly across what is left of his butt. 

It arrives tomorrow.  Report to come.

Meanwhile, have a seat

E@L 

So It Goes

Dept Of Homeland Security keeps redefining the rules for ICE:

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It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles and obstructs when ICE are on the streets detaining people who are immigrants here illegally and are criminals guilty of violent crimes or members of gangs or are terrorists.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles and obstructs when ICE are on the streets detaining people who are immigrants here illegally and are criminals guilty of violent crimes or members of gangs.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles and obstructs when ICE are on the streets detaining people who are immigrants here illegally and are criminals guilty of violent crimes.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles and obstructs when ICE are on the streets detaining people who are immigrants here illegally and are criminals.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles and obstructs when ICE are on the streets detaining people who are immigrants here illegally.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles and obstructs when ICE are on the streets detaining people who are immigrants.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles and obstructs when ICE are on the streets detaining people.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles and obstructs when ICE are on the streets.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles and obstructs ICE.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films or blows whistles at ICE.

It is a crime to be a citizen who films ICE.

It is a crime to be a citizen.

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E@L