kafo

[kafo]

DubC; a#M

tattered necktie on a rusted fence

sidewalk bricks, laid in a sequence

decrepit stone and lifeless glass

no reflection, facing sunday mass

the sixties dodge, four seats, infest

a skull tattooed on the passenger's headrest

walk the streets, past all the homes

past the graveyard, all alone

the wind in your eyes

cause the tears on your face

blowing the curtains

of the coffee shop lace

a wind eluding every gaze

nowhere to be found,

in the twisted city maze

close your eyes, let it race past

a smile on your face

you've found it at last

[kafo]

David Bowie - Everyone Says "Hi"

There’s something to be said for being able to write a deeply heartfelt song about an emotion that you haven’t felt in years. It really is a gift to remember so clearly what it was like to be a certain age and feel the things that that person felt then. For a grown man, for instance, to remember what is felt like to be a boy full of unrequited love. It’s one of those things that can make a song truly great, and it’s what I like about David Bowie’s song “Everyone Says Hi”. 

 It's off of Bowie’s album Heathen (2002), meaning that Bowie was in his early fifties at the time of writing and had been married for ten years or so. Yet the song conveys what I take to be the sentiments of a heartbroken lad who has just realized that a girl he didn’t really know that well, but still was inexplicably in love with, has left him for a life of adventure. It starts out poignantly:

Said you'd took a big trip They said you moved away Happened oh so quietly, They say

She’s gone and she never told him she was leaving! He had to find out from someone else! Judging by the later lyric (“Said you sailed a big ship/Said you sailed away/Didn't know the right thing to say”) I’m guessing that she sailed across the channel to France in search of a bigger world, leaving behind a boy from the neighborhood whom she didn’t think merited even a proper good-bye. Self-centered remorse is the first reaction for the boy, just like it is for so many other teenagers who suffer imaginary heartbreak Bowie expresses it here through longing for a memento of some kind.

Should've took a picture Something I could keep Buy a little frame, something cheap For you

Lest he get swept away in his own river of emotions, however, he quickly gets to the main refrain of his letter - “Everyone says ‘Hi’”. A admirable gesture of corporate well-wishing, perhaps, but really only a Trojan horse for expressing his own feelings of abandonment as his “concern” for her well-being continues through listing various fears and disgruntlements common to anyone adjusting to a new environment (“Hope the weather's good and it's not too hot/For you” “If the money is lousy/You can always come home” “If the food gets too eerie/You can always phone home” “Don't stay in a bad place/Where they don't care how you are”). 

 By the second chorus he is all out of excuses to proffer and instead appeals to her emotional attachment to loved ones she’s left behind. They say, “Hi”, he says.

And the girl next door (Everyone says hi) And the guy upstairs (Everyone says hi) And your mum and dad (Everyone says hi) And your big fat dog (Everyone says hi)

But notice how he repeats that “Everyone says hi”. This is where Bowie’s expressive voice takes over the song and communicates the true intent behind  what would otherwise be an innocent lyric. With every repetition of communal concern, behind Bowie’s rich tenor the timid teenage voice is screaming “I say hi! Me! I care! Look, I’m writing you a letter! I miss you! I want to be with you...” But everyone says “Hi”, because that’s who you really care about. The amount of resigned angst in Bowie’s voice is almost palpable, and it’s this kind of performance that makes him, even past age 50, a remarkably accessible artist. 

The whole song, start to finish, communicates an emotion that resonates with fans thirty-five-years younger, in a generation that’s realizing that no matter how digitally connected you are, physical separation and loss is still a painful, wrenching feeling. Maybe she’ll come back. Maybe she won’t. Maybe they’ll live happily ever after. Maybe she’ll fall head over heels for a Frenchman and move to Sicily and live on the coast. Maybe he will rent out an airplane to fly over the Mediterranean trailing a banner, reminding her that

“Everyone says ‘Hi.’”

_DZ

[kafo]

Black Swan: A Lesson in Broken Feminism

(Picture from MoviePosters.com)

ALERT: This movie features scenes that the main character hallucinates, which I reference; therefore, movie spoilers are present.

Time and time again Darren Aronofsky succeeds in producing films that I can’t watch twice. Try as I might, I just cannot rustle up the will to re-watch any of his movies. Pi bored me almost to tears, Hugh “wolverine forever” Jackman ruined The Fountain, and Requiem for a Dream, despite all of its brilliance, left me with such psychological scars that I cringe just passing it on the shelf at the movie store. Aronofsky’s latest film, Black Swan, continues the trend, though this time its ideological bias is what ultimately renders it best left as a one-time experience.

Which is too bad, because as a movie, it’s really well done. I’m a sucker for films featuring mental illness and this one not only capture that angle well, but soared as high as I think Aronofsky’s vision for it would allow. The layers of psychological depth explored in the mind of the main character, Nina (Natalie Portman) are intriguing without being overblowingly psychotic. On the surface, the storyline is an obvious tragedy: a young woman goes insane while trying to prepare herself for (and ultimately achieving) the so-called “perfect” performance of her career. A gifted ballerina, she is given a role where she must embody two characters: the technically perfect and reserved White Swan, and the mysterious, dark, sensual, passionate Black Swan; a literal Jekyll and Hyde of the ballet world.

All this time, her understudy, a girl named Lily, is a “free spirit” who, while lacking technical discipline, embodies the black swan almost perfectly. Nina, our heroine, must then fight not only her own lack of confidence in forgetting all that she has trained for up until this moment (in order to “capture the spirit” of the black swan), but also fight the lingering fear that she may soon be replaced. The key that allows her to finally harmonize that black/white dichotomy in her final performance is an endorphin high brought about by a self-inflicted stab wound to the abdomen - a true Phyrric victory if there ever was one.

Underneath this tragedy, the feminist themes run strong. The movie draws out scenes that emphasize the degrees to which Nina must go to be perfect: grapefruit-and-egg-white diets (followed by bingeing), weight-watching, a mother who constantly fusses, daily stretching and exercises, early nights filled with restless sleep, and long make-up application sessions. She is a doll in a dollhouse, marched from room to room, from home to rehearsal to stage to back home. "This is not freedom," the film seems to scream, "This is not normal!" 

The message is conveyed primarily in the scenes in which Nina hallucinates: a hang-nail removal having drastic consequences, a toenail cracking to uselessness, webbed feet, legs bending at odd angles. Her body is falling apart right before her eyes despite all of her attempts at control. Again the message here is clear: This is not worth it and everything will probably not be ok.

If Nina’s control won’t get her to the top, then what will? The answer seeps into nearly every scene - her sexuality. Black Swan is rife with nods to the third wave of feminism, the lie that full knowledge and experience of feminine sexuality is not only the swiss-army knife of the modern woman, but is actually that it is the key to ultimate self-realization. While the viewer is told that Nina has has some sexual experiences in the past, for the most part she comes off rather priggish, naive, and sexually self-repressed. Her creepy ballet troupe director believes that breaking that repression will ultimately allow her to embody the sensual black swan, and takes it upon himself to facilitate the transition. He forces himself on her twice, once with a kiss to find out if she is good for the part (she bites him, somehow proving that she is), and another time gropes her and calls it “seduction.” (“See how easy it was for me to seduce you? Now I need you to be able to do that on queue!,” is the so-called “life lesson” there.) I was at once horrified and impressed with the brazen misuse of such a loaded feminine term.

Perhaps most controversial about the movie is that he assigns Nina the “homework” of going home and touching herself, as if “self-discovery” and orgasm apart from relationship is a integral component of well-rounded femininity. To turn some feminist lingo on itself for a moment, it’s as if the goal is for Nina, as an “animus”, to be a sort of “celibate priest incarnating God as she plays the role of a creator” of the rest of her self. Yet as she writhes on her bed in private, on the screen she remains no more than an object of scopic consumption. There is no power there - only weakness. 

This preoccupation with her myopic sexual release culminates in a lesbian sex hallucination completely devoid of intimacy. Not only is the act itself over far to soon for any meaningful climax to have been achieved (contributing to the pornographic and therefore exploitive nature of the scene), but its ultimate result is that Nina, thanks to vendrous mental delusions, stole her sense of sexual liberation from her understudy (her fantastical partner) instead of searching it out on her own. But hey, whatever helps fulfill her dream role, right? Don’t let ideological (or even narratival) consistency get in the way.

Despite criticisms some leniency may be required - this is, after all, a story about mental illness brought upon by eating disorders and a high-stress lifestyle in a fragile girl. But wait, no. The options that those in authority give Nina as ways to achieve her ultimate goal are ludicrous. Barbie-doll physique? Manipulative authority figures? Selfish sexual empowerment? This kind of ideology is ultimately what makes Black Swan difficult, if not impossible, to watch twice. 

Even if Nina hadn’t been mentally ill, the pathways that lead to her success are ultimately vapid and devoid of any true character development. That doesn’t make for a rewarding viewing experience. I don’t want to be entertained by being lied to. It’s sad, because the movie was so well done, but this is yet another Aronofsky film that will become but a memory of my twenties.

_DZ

[kafo]

Computers In A Time Continuum and Also My Awkward Middle School Years

I’ll start this out with this picture that doesn’t serve any purpose but to remind me of days gone past.

Madden + Doritos. 

The last time I cared about Madden was 2001, when Eddie George, the guy in that picture, was on the cover of the game. I was in 8th grade at the time, and when you’re that age video games are the greatest thing around. Actually, electronics were pretty much the greatest thing around, too. Throughout seventh and eighth grade I was obsessed with computers. I got my first computer, a laptop running Windows 3.1, in 1999 and we were pretty much inseparable. My life goal at the time was to have a printer in my room (sadly this never happened). 

Yeah, I was that guy.

I played Madden on the family computer, and my parents were pretty strict about computer usage, limiting my access to an hour a day. This was before  we had the Internet at home, so pretty much the only thing to do on the computer was play games. I spent countless hours in front of the screen playing Madden, making sure that I had all the top players in order to have a guaranteed win at the virtual Super Bowl. (Obviously this is even less of a deal then it seems because if I lost I would just not save, and restart until I won.)

Madden (and my laptop) started a trend of sorts - one in which I valued gaming and technology more than learning and studying. I was never a big fan of schoolwork in high school, which is something I attribute to my middle school habits. School wasn’t cool or attractive, and technology was. If a school assignment couldn’t be done on a computer, it was by definition less important. I went out of my way to use computers to complete projects even if it was easier to do it without one. This is probably the main reason why I have terrible handwriting now as an adult.

But back to school itself. It wasn’t that I didn’t like learning - in fact, I don’t think anyone dislikes learning - only that I didn’t like or wasn’t good at school. The cool subjects to study in school were “binary” subjects like math and science. It was easy to compete with classmates there - you either got the answer right or you didn’t. I liked competing, but I wasn’t very good at math and science. In other subjects, particularly English, I was better but didn’t enjoy the work. I could write and spell and identify parts of speech and prepositional phrases, but where did that get you in school? Also, literary criticism? Boooooriiinng. So I went through school not good at the stuff I wanted to like and ignoring the stuff that I was good at.

My psychological work-around for this was to choose style over substance, and use a computer for everything. This was how I got through my eighth grade science fair project. I chose to study magic squares - a topic I and no one I knew had any clue about. My entire project was research and presentation - I made no hypotheses, did no experiments, and produced zero original material. But it did use computers! 

When the fair date came around I dutifully set up my presentation about a part of recreational mathematics that had no real-world applications. The guy kitty-corner from me had built his own wind tunnel. I stood there in my sweater and tried to forget that middle school was not a great time in my life.

Come high school, I tried to do as little work as possible in class and usually pulled Bs. The science and math homework was done at the minimum; sometimes copied. The English work was done at the last minute because I could easily hammer out a paper or two. All of my papers were typed, all of my images harvested from the web (AltaVista image search, baby!), and all of my tables and graphs done in Excel. When I got to senior year I dropped math and science all together. I got D in pre-calc the year before and wanted nothing more to do with math. 

I remember sitting down to my first class of physics my senior year and getting a homework assignment of all the odd problems on a worksheet. I looked at the paper on my desk and thought, “I hate lists of problems. And I am not spending my senior year doing work that I hate.” That was that, and I dropped physics. All that stuff about wave dynamics and planetary gears and the square root of the length of a pendulum being proportional to its period and what not, who needs it? I decided to take Yearbook, because then I could sit in my corner in front of a screen and work on layouts.

Computers, on the whole, probably made me a worse student. I don’t regret the skills I learned from all the time spent with a computer (after all, I do spend a few hours every day using one), but I do regret thinking that computers would solve all of my problems. They don’t, and they never will. I used them as a substitute for effort, and that was wrong. In this age where “efficient use of technology and information are going to be of paramount importance as we move forward to cure the ills in our present world,” the microchip is hailed as the universal band-aid; the zenith of human achievement. 

But let’s not fool ourselves; cavemen probably said the same thing about hammers and axes. Agrarian man hailed the plow and the windmill. Then came electricity and vaccines. The car. Nuclear power. Computers are part of a grand continuum of human self-delusion. I was obsessed with Madden for a short time, years ago. We as a culture have been obsessed with our own grand progress for much longer than that.

_DZ

[kafo]

Remembering Eminem

If you lived through 2001, I think that a time should come in your life when you realize and can recount the effect that Eminem, that white rapper dude (whose name is really easy to type), had on your life. I’ve decided that now is that time for me, so here is an unabashedly personal essay about Eminem’s influence on me, at the time in the eighth grade.

I was thirteen - a short, skinny white kid with a buzz cut and crooked front teeth. It was second hour algebra and a girl named Ashley, possibly the most popular girl in my grade, bounded up to me and asked, “Hey, do you like M&M?”

Now, I had no idea who M&M was, nor did I have the slightest clue as to why she wanted my opinion on him, but I did know two things: Ashley was very excited about him, and Ashley was very cute.

“Of course! He’s pretty cool.”

“I know, right!”

Thus ended our conversation - a conversation, I might add, that pretty much embodied the format and duration of every other junior high co-ed conversation. I actually continued to be pretty clueless as to who Eminem actually was, but I soon gathered that he was a white rapper whose name could be pronounced as “M&M” without one’s classmates being the wiser.

Because the near-universal consensus among the adults that I knew was that Eminem was not appropriate listening for a Christian of any age, I listened to him at every chance I got. I didn’t have the guts to sneak the whole Marshall Mathers LP into my house, so I taped the radio edit of his single, “The Real Slim Shady,” off of Armed Forces Radio and memorized it to make up for my cowardice. 

Not having the album, though, didn’t stop me from contributing my opinion, solicited or not, about how awesome it was whenever the opportunity to do so presented itself.

If I had been a sly, conniving middle-schooler, I would have gone to great lengths to find a copy of Eminem’s first release, the Slim Shady LP, and listen to that for hours on end. That way, whenever the topic of Eminem surfaced, I could always play the universal trump card of, “Yeah, Marshall Mathers LP is ok I guess, but have you heard his older stuff? I actually think it’s way better than any of the stuff that they play on the radio these days.”

It’s funny how the object of music critique is to be elitist about “better” music than “they” play.

Anyway, this whole tale of eighth grade music appreciation would be moot if Eminem hadn’t been controversial. The Christian press hated him, denouncing this “vile” white rapper and his musical style on every blog corner. It’s pretty easy to boil the distaste down to a racial issue. The Christian media, largely white, had always cast a critical eye on rap music, but I think had largely brushed it off as music for black people - for the youth who didn’t browse their websites or read their magazines. Rap was a problem, yes, but for the most part it was not a problem that endangered “our” kids, they said. And then Eminem showed up.

You can attribute his success to quite a few factors (he’s a white fish in a black pond, he’s obscene, he had friends in high places, he made fun of celebrities, etc.), but I side with rock critic Chuck Klosterman and his reasoning. 

From page 175 of his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: “To me the biggest reason [for his success] is obvious: He enunciates better than any rapper who ever lived. He’s literally good at talking.”

Here was a rapper whose lyrics conservative Christian white people could understand at first listen, and they weren’t used to that. All of a sudden they heard a white person being immature, obscene, and misogynistic and making bank because of it, and they didn’t like that.

Because our parents hated him, we kids loved him. We called his style “fresh”, his lyrics “funny” and “socially relevant” and his image “relatable”. We embraced him because he looked like us, talked like us, and, most importantly to an eighth grade boy, because he was really, really good at making fun of people.

But these days it seems unlikely that Eminem will come out with any new material that will come close to topping his records that were released in the early aughts (though “Rap God” is really good). He no longer makes media headlines or angers Christian media watchdog groups. And while the Marshall Mathers LP didn’t drastically alter my musical preferences or listening habits, it was an album that had a great influence on how I saw music in relation to the social values and norms of society. 

Eminem, at least in my book, joins the ranks of other musicians like U2, Bruce Springsteen, or Billy Joel, who have the unique ability to relate to a person on an individual level as well as to society as a whole. It doesn’t matter that a song of theirs goes multi-platinum - it can still be a story about specific events on your life. Eminem did that for me, and I am a different person because of it.

_DZ

[kafo]

Having a CD Collection is Minimalist?

I enjoy buying music CDs over digital downloads because I like the whole package. I like to see what the artist has put into the whole package - the liner notes, the album art, the CD art, etc. In an age where music is more of a commodity than an experience, I believe that the extra effort that an artist puts into the whole package is what sets some apart from others. Amidst the flood of music on the Internet, the personal, human touches can be the difference between a sale and no sale.

In response to this, a while back my brother asked me, “How does your wanting to own the whole CD package mesh with minimalism?” This was a good question. 

Indeed, how DOES my desire for the physical package mesh with my minimalist ideology?

This took me a while to think out because, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure. Minimalism, as I see it, revolves around two basic ideas. (A) Spending less money is good. (B) Owning less stuff is good. My minimalism is the practice of trying to harmonize these ideas with the human desire to own stuff. Buying a CD that is more expensive and takes up more physical space than a digital download seems to be in direct contention with minimalism, but my justification for it is as follows.

1. Buying CDs is more expensive than digital downloads, resulting, hopefully, in less overall purchases. If you spend a little more per purchase, you might buy less often. Buying a $7.99 digital album in comparison to a $11 CD results in the same quantity of music, but you will be more likely to spread your music purchases farther apart because you spend more at each purchase.

3. Spending more money on a CD will result in feeling guilty if one neglects to listen to it. Therefore, if you buy music in CD format, you might be more likely to listen to it. Feeling guilty over not listening to what ones buys will result in diminished “impulse buys”, and in turn result in less money spent on music.

4. Having the physical product sitting on a shelf or a CD rack where one can see it will remind one that they have music to listen to. This triggers guilt if one feels that they have not been getting their money’s worth out of their music.

As a bonus, if you notice that you aren’t enjoying a CD that sits on your shelf, you will be more likely to get rid of it to free up shelf space. This results in owning less stuff! Also, CDs have resale value. If I spend $11 on a CD and resell it for $3 or $4, my net loss is only seven or eight dollars - equal to a digital download.

So, condensed, the basic reasoning is that buying a music format that is a bit more expensive results in (a) less purchases over time (b) a higher percentage of music being listened to and (c) a well-pruned CD collection that takes up less space. More time is spent listening, less time is spent buying, and the resulting collection is more intimate and thus valued more highly.

I hope I explained that well. If it doesn’t make sense, write a rebuttal explaining your logic and tell me about it. But if it does make sense, I highly recommend that you try the process out for yourself!

_DZ

[kafo]

On putting Childish things behind

I’ve been meditating (and I don’t mean meditating in the “cross-legged in the dark” way, but rather the “meditate on my words day and night” kind of Biblical way) on the apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13:11 where he says,

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” (NIV)

What kind of childish ways is Paul talking about here? And what is the benefit of putting them behind us?

I think it's fair to say that Paul is not talking about childish things out of which we naturally mature. He’s not talking about riding bikes with training wheels or playing marbles or collecting Pokémon cards. He means our speech, thinking, and reasoning. He’s talking about thought processes and behaviors that stem from personal growth and development over time - things that we have to nurture and cultivate.

I don’t think that “thinking” here refers to superficial things like what Johnny thinks of you, or whether you should start thinking about what to eat for dinner, or what you think about the Dodgers this year. I think Paul is talking about deep things that kids don’t think about. Things like “Why am I here?” “What does my life mean?” “Is there eternity?”, and “If God exists, of what consequence is that to me?” These are questions worth thinking about and worth finding answers for. If we don’t think about them or choose to ignore them, it means we have not matured.

Talking, I think, refers to what James says about taming the tongue in chapter 3 of his epistle. It means thinking before you say things. How do kids talk? Kids gossip on the playground. Kids lash out when insulted. They wail and complain when they don’t get their way. Kids are vocal about the fairness of life. Kids swear because it provokes a reaction. Kids boast about their possessions or parents, things over which they have relatively little or no control. These are the things that we should put behind us. Growing up means gaining wisdom, discretion, and holding your tongue until after you analyze the many colors that touch a situation.

A child’s world is fairly black-and-white, and it is easy to reason in such a world. If you fall off your bike, you get scrapes. If Billy hits you, you hit him back. If you eat a slushie too fast, your head hurts. If little Susie down the street likes you, that’s gross. It’s all too easy to extend this logic to the grown-up world as well. If they are poor, they deserved it. If he drives a nicer car, he is more successful then you. If they have more money, God likes them better. This kind of logic leads to envy, contempt, malice, and depression. It shows a shallow understanding of the people around us and the world in which we live. Rather, adults should eschew judgment for insight and anger for patience.

Giving up childish ways is a step towards perfection in Jesus Christ. As He is perfect, so we must strive to be like Him. Through striving to be like Him, we mirror, though poorly, His character to the world. By growing up in speech, though, and reason we let Christ’s light shine through us. As the Bible is the Word of God, through reading it can we know God’s character and hence the goals and essential qualities that we should aim to attain. These are grown-up qualities, and require investing some real time and effort to acheive.

_DZ

[kafo]

Remembering 9/11

September 11, 2001, was just another school day for me. I was in Japan, 14 hours ahead of the US, so the WTC attacks happened close to 10 at night my time, and I, a high school freshman, was already in bed. I started Wednesday morning like any other day - by rolling over on my futon and turning on the Armed Forces Radio Network morning show. I was still pretty groggy, so it took me a bit to realize that I wasn’t hearing the usual banter between the airmen-first-class and the chief-petty-officer morning DJs. In fact, the announcer dude sounded pretty serious. Something about a high state of alert and possible terrorist attacks. Probably some dude in a foreign country blew himself up again, I thought, and hence the military was all paranoid. Then I heard the magic words - “Due to safety concerns, all Department of Defense and international schools are closed until further notice.” Yessssssss. 

I clicked off the radio.

That’s when my mom walked in. I failed to notice the grave look on her face. “School’s closed, Mom. Sweet.”

“No, it’s not good. Come watch the TV.”

Man, there’s nothing worse then getting a day off of school only to have your parents plan it out for you. 

Most of the rest of the day was spent watching planes hit buildings and fields, and dust clouds envelop lower Manhattan. All of that made for compelling television programming, though nobody knew anything about what was happening. All I knew was that I didn’t have to go to school.

“Further notice” for my school turned out to be a day, so the next day was spent talking excitedly to classmates about what had happened, and asking if they knew anybody in NYC, and complaining that it wasn’t fair that we had to be back in school while the higher-profile schools, like the American School in Japan (ASIJ) and the base highschools, were closed until further notice. After all, we were in Japan, and nothing exciting or dangerous happens to foreigners in Japan. We all thought it was rather silly that ASIJ decided to paint over their school name on the sides of their entire school bus fleet for safety reasons. Was a bus full of diplomats’ kids (from a range of countries) really going to be a target in Japan? Better safe then sorry I guess, but we were still going to make fun of them for it.

The emotional element of the attacks was something rather removed for me. I didn’t have the sense that my “homeland” was under attack or that my freedoms were being encroached upon. I didn’t know anyone who lived or worked in Manhattan, the Pentagon, or the field in Pennsylvania. The only Arabs I knew were the illegal immigrants whom my dad befriended - Iranians, Pakistanis, Persians. They were nice people, even if they did hold a baseball bat like they were protecting a cricket wicket.

I wasn’t a patriot. I didn’t own an American flag or have a t-shirt emblazoned with an eagle. I had no gun rack. What did I have to be mad about? What had been taken from me? 

Sure, 3,000 people dying in an act of unmitigated aggression was 3,000 people too many, but how many was that in contrast to the hundreds of thousands dying in other countries from preventable causes? I rationalized because I didn’t know what to think. I should feel bad, right? I mean, I was American, right? 

Maybe, but not enough that the events had a remotely serious impact on me.

I don’t mean to sound cynical - what happened was terrible. I guess I want to voice that not everyone thinks that 9/11 was the worst thing to happen to the US in the last twenty years. Not every American used it as an excuse to become more patriotic. 

For me it was much like any other day. 

Except I got to watch more TV.

_DZ

[kafo]

“To call yourself non-binary or genderfluid while demanding that others call themselves cisgender is to insist that the vast majority of humans must stay in their boxes, because you identify as boxless.”

[kafo]

This is really elegant!

Soma Wolverine Alfine by American Cyclery Official

[kafo]

Emerson Fittipaldi - Lotus - Italy 1973

[kafo]

Well, this is pretty useful

Peugeot Head Badge Dates by azorch Via Flickr: Dating Peugeots tends to involve a whole lot of guess work sometimes. I retrieved this information from the Peugeot website.

[kafo]

The seatstay/fork symmetry on this one is stunning!

[kafo]

@giantbicycles #fullbouncer #mtb Osaka, Japan. #cycle #cycling #cycleporn #bike #bicycle #bikeporn #mtb #mtblife #mtbporn #mtbstreet #giantbikes #26inch #26aintdead #rideshimano #maxxistyres #street #streetbike #Custom #custombike #osakastyle #Osaka #Japan #Japanese #cool #city #nightriding #urban #marzocchi (Osaka, Japan)

[kafo]

(2005-2015 Peloton fashions | Sicycleから)

[kafo]

SO GOOD YOU GUYS

certain kinds of death can be temporarily postponed with our cereal, and we are willing to sell some of it

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[kafo]

“If Obergefell is accepted as binding law, the consequences will be grave.”