A clean track-stand is not done for an audience; Rather it is a holdover from a by-gone era of chrome toe-clips with leather straps which when pulled tightly wrapped the whole foot against a slot in the sole such that getting one's foot free required reaching down to pop the buckle whilst raising the foot to step out.  Just as it has taken 30 years for the Snow board to begin to engineer a real clipless option, the legs remain attached for most of one's sport.  A clean track-stand is not wandering about an intersection edging into traffic, because one drank too much the evening prior, and now is justifiably off kilter.  Doing a track-stand involves no more or less than 1/4 bike length to maintain uprightness.  A sense of pride of ownership, comes with staying put, but should not be attempted glibly as one may attempt an Ollie Kick-Flip.  Because a skate trick is a 'trick,' and a Track-stand is just part of growing up.  

Late this fall, I was hit whilst riding home from the typical 50 mile loop, to some shitty coffee shop with mandatory tipping, bad staff, and overpriced drinks served by smug shade-grown children.  I was only 3'ish minutes from my garage coming upon an emerging green light when a bike shot through his stop-sign and there was no room to stop. I veered, and he veered, but I hit him just the same broad-side at about 21 miles per hour.  He flew from his Hybrid, spilling into the street, before a busy intersection, backpack landing somewhere near his bike, while he slid the other direction.  No Helmet.
The typical potent chemistry flashed through my brain, Bike OK?, Wheel OK? Bars Straight?, Tire Sealed?  Holy Fucking Shit! Everything seems fine. What was particularly unusual was not the fact that No rage welled up in me as would have certainly frothed were this a "car's fault".  What was uncanny, was that I was still standing on my pedals, in a track-stand, more or less lording over the lesser lucky rider, before casually unclipping and reaching down to help gather the unlucky person I'd struck.

“Man…, I’m never going to talk to those guys again.
I’m the one who got Arnold and Dave their  jobs in the first place”.  -Brad

Today I’m a “grown-up” and I’ve long forgotten when I discarded my faux comfort animal, but she taught me that make-believe works only up to the point when it no longer fits the confines of one’s cliché, and someone beats your ass for having imaginary friends.
Through the end I’m sure that I held tightly to my bunny and resolve that my aim was true, and my faith was sound and well reasoned. And when its not convenient I developed a “fuck them if they can’t understand” monologue which I'd repeated to my self (perhaps to this day), to guard against having ever been mistaken in my convictions. Of course I’m right about my politics, my faith, and my opinion., I’m always right… And Fuck Dennis Taylor
My first bike was as a Schwinn Pixie, the top tube was removable, attached at the seat collar and Headset, for quick conversion to a “Girls Model”.
My gender ambivalent two wheeler — the equal of a non-conforming Bathroom, was dark green, with scars of rust, and a rattly paint-matched chain guard.  The solvent applied white decals (complete with pin-stripe star), were near illegible.  The stripped seat-bolt was one turn away from the dark path of the vice-grip. When I outgrew the Metal Flake Green pixie, the top tube was withdrawn for my Sister’s to ride.  She would be the fifth kid to inherit my gender non-conforming bike.  I suppose you could say that resting mid-way between the Feminine pronoun, and a “Boy’s Bike” made this a Hybrid.  Someplace in the netherworld — Neither XX nor XY.  “But Serious Cyclists don’t see the term ‘Hybrid’, that way”  -Dumbass
Your Stuffed Rabbit is exactly that; A stuffed rabbit.  If you later see it zip-tied to the grille of the garbage truck, dangling from a trailer hitch, or upon your lap at the dinner table, It's a stuffed rabbit... Should you expect differing reactions, whether hanging like filthy balls from a snowy trailer-hitch?, or from the bar on your first two-wheeler -- Certainly!
..but it’s a stuffed rabbit.  Nothing will change the Rabbit's Gender into a Flat Bar Gravel Bike. No magic spell will make Grimace less creepy, and that Kid from school cannot be a TeleTubby.
Scientifically speaking, If I’d prematurely removed the top-tube from my Schwinn Pixie, then it’s gender would not have conformed to my chromosomal skew, and I may be teased, or even beaten.  And YOU should also be teased for defending what is clearly a “Hybrid”   — This stuffed rabbit you are rolling upon  is most certainly NOT a “Flat Bar Gravel Bike”.  Yeeesh!

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, that all the ludicrous pandering to pussies for non-conformity — All of our erasure of curbs, and leveling of the hills, will create that Vanilla Pudding Khaki Dockers, banner waving prejudice who’s weight becomes unbearable, who’s trajectory un-sustainable, and who’s damage to mores irreparable.  We have curbs in place so the sewerage stays in the street, and the cars off the sidewalk, and we build bridges to connect both sides of the tracks, so commerce, and continuity will persist.  Siloing every precious thought-bubble in a padded mauve comforter, will yield one singular failure… The failure to engage.

“What does little ‘XXY’ want for lunch today?” This question alone will eventually cost us trillions in mental health, confusion, suicide, listlessness, productivity, and a flat GDP.   Bygone is the day when you ate what was served, and you wore what came in a box from your wealthier cousins, and you experimented with gender rules when you hit HighSchool.
Today, without an inkling of what you may aspire to.., Everyone wants to be a fucking Teletubby.
A mountain Bike has a flat bar and knobby tires for patently obvious reasons.
A road bike has a gorgeous curved bar blending near perfect form, and function, with lithe tires.
A gravel bike is a road cyclist’s opportunity to continue where the sidewalk ends. (see also Cyclocross).
A Schwinn Pixie, works to keep you from getting your ass beat for non-conformity (when that mattered).
A Hybrid Bike is neither a Mountain Bike, nor a Road Bike, nor a Pixie. It is neither good for hills, nor for trails.  A Hybrid bike resides in the margins with your incompetent SUV, and a purple non-conformist diabetic monster.  A Hybrid generally rests in the garage 11.875 months out of the year with flat tires.
A hybrid bike is the Beige Cotton Dockers, and UnderArmour Polo shirt of the discontented comfort-class.
As a child I asked my parents, and siblings about the only un-identifiable character in the play-lot — A giant purple non-conformist called  Grimace.  Grimace was introduced in 1971, as a thieving pair of purple monster arms who drank Shakes, and stole Cheese-burgers.  Like all "Quazi-Bad-guys”, Grimace needed no gender, even when they/them moved from monster status to cheerful dolt.  Grimace became the Hybrid Bike, the Schwinn Pixie of the Play-lot. Grimace was welcoming, non-judgmental, and flat out fat, and Grimace made it OK to not give a fuck about what you looked like, or which side of the gender question you landed.  Grimace was my fucking filthy rabbit. A scape-goat.  The brunt of every joke. Fodder for fun-poking.
Grimace is your fucking hybrid bike.  Neither monster, nor angel -- Neither patron protector, nor nemesis.
Grimace rides poorly up-hill, descends like a fridge, and cannot hold a line in single-track.  Grimace laughs at all the wrong jokes, and can neither make up its mind on where to go, nor how to send it, because Grimace’s parents have been doing that for they/them for forever.
Grimace is your fucking Hybrid “Flat Bar Gravel Bike”, and Grimace will eat you one day.


​

Same as it ever was, same as it EVER was…
The thing about death, is that you cannot entirely die from it -- If people are still talking about you.
The Bold, may mistakenly become rock stars, perhaps unwitting (when they die), that the world was actually ending.
People used to bring flowers to the graves of long passed loved ones, grand-parents, Elvis and such, buried long in graveyards. cut splays droop in the heat, as a custodian tosses hundreds of rancid bouquets into the trash.  Today we bring flowers, pictures, protest banners and candles to makeshift vigils for those shot in schools, grocery stores, and concert venues.
Today, we remember the fallen, taken too soon by racists, maniacs, and broken teens weened on porn, processed food, Red-Bulls, Rock-Stars and first person shooter games.

Today we recognize political protest movements as nothing more than a gathering of untapped potential -- Like a street fair,  a concert event -- lolla-fucking-palooza.  We wave a banner, don a charged up T-shirt, shot-gun a half dozen piss warm beers, and march around taking awkward queues from two or three people who've read the news, and then we go home and sleep it off.

Although David Byrne would later refer to “Wartime” as a loose memoir about living in alphabet city,  — “Life During Wartime” commemorates what many listeners consider context for a middle-class apocalypse. A clear analog for humanity’s ritual homicide -- “Wartime” captures the context of a changed urban landscape, where surreality shifts from comfortable consumerism to simple survival. A napkin sketch of human-kind's ongoing fascination with destruction — Cautiously, distrustingly on the vanguard of an insurgency.
As kids, we’d practice cowering under desks well before “active shooter” became a thing — A  child's macabre preparation for that ultimate shit-storm of nuclear winter. Every cold war kid was trained to imagine themselves humming nervously, crossed-legged beneath one’s desk — followed by a brief flashing X-ray of small bones, before our bodies vaporized snugly below chrome, melamine, and melted chewing-gum.
I could count my age on two hands, when "Life During Wartime" began to play on the radio. I recall it playing from the Zenith Kitchen radio as I dissolved a packet of Kool-Aid into a cancerous plastic pitcher, pouring tepid July tap-water into Tupperware.  "Where does that Highway Lead to?" ...Melting granulated sugar with red dye number 5,  watching pale powder, turn deep crimson. Kool-Aid coated the corners before bubbling bright red staining upward into a froth.

Just like Wartime.

"Got some groceries, some peanut butter, but I -- Ain't got no records to play".
Well before MTV, We watched Cartoons, and Cronkite, as blood spilled only occasionally on TV, (always someplace else), while a soundtrack by cultural heroes named David kept time.  David Byrne, David Bowie, David Gilmour… filled in all the gaps glazed-over by TV news. With 'the Davids', we’d soon become more watchful, mindful, mournful, maudlin.
When I first heard Life During Wartime, I understood that things would change with age.  I knew right away that becoming an adult meant I’d need to pay attention to such things, (even the news), and then I stopped stirring Kool-Aid twisted the ice-cube tray, and hummed, before the song changed to something aloof by Eddie Rabbit. 
We dwell in a snow-globe, a sealed bubble where tiny figures with weighted lungs, struggle in silent scuba flitting about through downy ash in slow motion, unable to escape heavy gravity.
When we bother to tune into the drama, an oppressive atmosphere cloaks us, connects us, and prevents our free movement. Within this liquid biome, we consider our weight as war stories slow our timeline to a stand-still.  Shooters now punctuate our weeks with Silence and outrage, of what we've come to accept as normal.  With nothing more to consider than the name of some small town nobody's ever heard of  -- Before gunshots rang out. Then there is the piercing ringing, of explosions.
An atom bomb to a soundtrack of Rage, and Punk Rock. In my youth the end game was nearly never a shooting.  
Our lungs contract before we capture our first charred breath of the new air, and the smell of burnt hair.  We are all complicit in allowing this new wartime to unfold, because we teach it every day. We no longer aspire to anything more than stuff, screen-time, and virtual notoriety.  Momentary mute anguish betrays the strange context of our bullshit hindsight.  We've enabled this plague of hatred as a generation of Love gave way to callous conceit. It's noteworthy that we were always well behind the enlightened child who saw it all coming. The meek kid who communed with trees, rocks and butterflies, and who knew that so and so, was up to something shitty. It is precisely our confinement to our homes, ourselves, and our planet that's capped our ability to imagine anything more important than the self. Our shared experience which makes us human, has also hit a technical ceiling. We've run out of cloud storage -- Run out of space to express oneself in any way other than Online.
Nobody eats a meal without snapping a photo first.
No one enjoys a moment without comparing it to another's.
No human who is loved shoots people.

But do we really need to share the same world with psychopaths?

Our collective life during wartime, may seem a stale rerun. Being baptized by fire, pandemic, or a hateful shooting does not  bring out the best in people.  The adage "whatever doesn't kill you..." is an absurd nursery-rhyme scripted by those still sporting 1950's nostalgic machismo.
The Greatest Generation (the one which convinced every American male to resolve disputes with a bullet) has been long buried, along with their infantile fantasies of Bomber-Jacket Super-hero's. Their legacy however, left in its wake, the Bronson-esque bravado of a billion guns.  What fantasy fiction remains of your granddad's rusty rifle, wears a catheter bag  in a Hogan's Hero re-run sponsored by Geritol.  Today, we can be proud of the past thirty years only because we managed not to blow ourselves up yet.  The joke is that the cold war was also led with the same exuberant blunt instrument. The leading strategy for conflict resolution -- "bullet or bomb", became 80's religion to keep the masses in line.  When our fright finally shifted from fear-mongering about Bombs and Bullets to Pandemic, neither bullet nor bomb became back-seated.  We simply swallowed a full mouth-full of madness, and stocked up on N95's, Bullets, and Sniper Rifles.
It is our  unshakable connectedness in misery at times of crisis which makes us less well equipped to make good judgements.  Whatever doesn't kill you makes you more likely to give up and suffer an existential mind-fuck.  In the Eighties, when fear, loathing, and recession took a good person with it -- at least it was a quiet suicide.  Write a note, and pick your poison.
​ In Highschool, playing 8 bit video games,  Eight of my friend's Dads took their own life. Quiet and ashamed... None of them tried to take anyone with them. 
Today, the latest first person shooter Game is writ live by broken humans in small towns, as cowards spend their "final life" in a rageful suicide by cop. This is our new life during wartime.
As for my ten-year-old brain's inability to imagine what life during wartime feels like, I knew for certain that fear and the sense of being wholly changed would never leave anyone baptized by bullets and bombs.
In my cold war youth, (living under oppressive recession, failed middle-class aspirations, widespread layoffs, factory closures, and rampant suicide) -- I came to know that every day may be my final moment.  The unknowing of which made me a piss-poor planner, a worse saver, and anything but a morning person. 
It wasn’t until ’84 when  watching "Wartime"  performed in "Stop Making Sense",  would resolve two better perspectives: 1. A far better sense of what it meant to share our snow-globe with some truly talented and some truly evil fuckers. 2. Preparations for the apocalypse would be punctuated with Punk Rock to get a handle upon the color shift of a globe evolving from black-and-white, to technicolor, and then to gray.

"...And you may ask yourself.. How do I work this? 
Sewn into the seams of my messed up youth, will always be this awkward art school geek standing, shaking, wiggling, trying like a four year-old in a horror film to wake his dumb-ass parents.  They “just don’t fucking understand!” There is a Hush, of complacent comfort, of smug solace, and then the globe shatters, liquid spills from mute ears, and we hear loudly the shots, or the screaming in-bound missile.

So..., what’s about to land? — because it’s quiet now, and it's calm — As the spring breeze blows, a dog whimpers, and then… BAM! the bomb kisses the earth, and a millennial wartime struggle ensues.

There will always be War, as well as the peaceful geek who is “tapped-in” -- And this one kid knows what you are clearly missing, Overlooking, Are too stupid to notice. Being marginalized is part of the human experience, and your digital world is not full of human beings, but robots.
LOOK, MOM, DAD… the thing is… we kids have an actual idea how this goes down, and it doesn’t end well for the unadaptable. Oh, and by the way, you may want to duck right-the-fuck-now;  As stray shrapnel and mid-caliber metal riddles the stillness, all with a laugh-track, whilst you watch YouTube.

As “End of Days” soundtracks lent meaningful context to my fucked up youth, I emerged in the world wholly unprepared for digital hijack. I feel it is OK to tap one point.  Your digital meta-verse, has one glaring red flaw, which Andy Warhol may have also promoted.  Wherever he heard it first..., "Fifteen Minutes of Fame" became (a)merican entitlement -- But this surely is not your fucking birthright.
Ever since the 80's, the digital world has taught humans to claw their way up the belt of some moving walkway, promoting the promise of (P)opularity for EVERYONE.  Even if your mom didn't groom you for beauty pageants, and even if you were never popular in school; your meta-verse seemed to promise you a shot.  Quick math reveals that most of you  poor fuckers will need to sit on your hands, because there are not enough minutes in the day for every bench-warmer to feel special.  We are not only out of cloud storage, and I.P. addresses, ...but we are also out of time.

You are simply not entitled to becoming famous.  Not by your Instagram, Your Reddit post -- Not by your food photo, not by the pen, nor the sword, nor the bullet or bomb.

It is precisely when we feel entitled that we behave badly.  It seems some internal clock ticks away, while others appear ahead of us on the meta-beltway, and so (when time seems to run out), we act badly. Whether it is for a  lack of feeling special, or by false exceptionalism --This dead-end is what kills.
Punk rock, like D&D and other analog games, taught generations of disenfranchised kids to make believe for a bit.  Whether slamming into each-other in the mosh pit, or re-inventing themselves as a fictional bad-ass, the fact that we the ordinary are mired in mediocrity, can be ameliorated with a touch of fiction.  One can slam into a few hundred angry youth without bloodshed, without a single bullet, and without the fictional promise of punching above your pay-grade.  It's OK to be ordinary, to feel un-entitled, and to rest a while offline.

It may be less important to tap the artist’s recollection of a song’s origin, and far more helpful to use great sound tracks for reflection as we would any classic poem, or painting — When pen hits paper it is generally the initial impact which becomes the full measure of meaning — And not the talk-show interview. Given a long enough time-scale, a great song will outlive whatever the artist told the press it meant in 1978.
Successful people don't share every nuance of their private lives in hopes that someone will pay them attention. Great artists don’t spoil their story recounting every detail -- But by sketching broad strokes styling a background often without an eraser, or edits. New applicants discover seemingly by mistake,  that the rule book for human behavior is rife with rewrites and plagiarism. I've argued that there are far too many people on earth and far too few human beings.  But I know for certain that becoming a human requires being present for yourself, and for others.
If "Life During Wartime", became an 'adultish' anthem for war-orientation, Then "Once in a Life-time" defines the malaise of three decades of America's blahs.  "And you may ask yourself -- Where is that large automobile?" 
As witness to four decades of American un-exceptionalism, we can confirm our pretense of world leadership, is at best trial and error.
​
David Byrne explained his lyrics for "Once in a Lifetime": denying that they address yuppie greed... He said this song was about the unconscious: (as adults) "We operate half-awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we haven't really stopped to ask ourselves, 'How did I get here?"

During your wartime life, you can actually die, and have no fucking idea how you got there, nor what the fuck just hit you, and then… it's silent -- So it's probably best to make an effort to become well remembered.

Today our favorite Dr. Evil, Vlad. (The-Impaler) Putin, said that E.U. Nations who now consider fast-tracking NATO membership "will be sorry". This strong threat coming from Russia's Dr. Crazy-kins... who previously said that he was invading Ukraine "until they pinky-promised they'd not join that damn Euro-club", seems to be a tad bit un-trustworthy.
...And yet they did..., Ukraine actually capitulated to Dr. Evil, saying they'd consider neutrality, if he'd only stop killing women and kids, but ______SIGH!_________ he went ahead and destroyed their schools and hospitals anyway. In light of such a dastardly dickhead's penchant for double-cross, I think it helps to remember that some jagoffs actually don't do what they promise, and they should not be taken at their word. In spite of all the bravado, and cold hearted stares, Putin is just like that other petulant childish dictator, Mr. Trumpistan. They are both their own sarcastic caricature.
As with any make-shift pact from my sordid youth, where a group of us kids formed an alliance, in-spite of a few hold-outs -- We'd later offer even the less willing, (the less desirable kids) membership, because -- Well... what good is it to go it alone?
Should The Norse Gods join Belarusian Lukashenko and Kazakhstan in the CSTO and band together with Russia against the evil aggressor USA?, or should they perhaps consider Joining a knitting circle? Ask yourselves, “What have the CSTO done for us lately?”
So Mr. Vlad. (The Impaler) Putin, what do you say...?, Don't you want to just lay down your fidgety arms and sign up with the NATO club? We have, um like this really great group, where we promise to look after each-other, even those with different fashion and alphabets -- And we all share cool gadgets, secrets, code-words, and handshakes & such. We even have meetings in cool castles, where we talk about the other un-cool kids, and sip bitter espresso.

Nah!... you Mr. Putin actually may not be cool enough.

You are creating the future whether you participate deliberately, or not.
Should we fear the apathy of our youth coming up in current gray-water morality? Tens of millions of America’s youthful passengers wholly unaware that their world is moving forward by bus, driven by senile grandparents. Pajama clad children in faux-fur slippers don’t  pay the fare as they board the bus — they simply tapped their parents chip card, and yawned... Put out, for having to get off the couch... Meanwhile --
Mother Earth, spins alone like a ball on the fingertip of an elderly athlete.
Our ‘Has-Been’ Atlas in baggy khakis (it turns out) dribbling more in his pants than on the court remains devoted to a tribal fan-club, working only to ‘Maintain the shine on his loafers and hanger's-on. Isn't it always the old guy reminiscing past conquest, who is wholly un-relatable to our youth.  Please do not look up!, because this guy’s blue ball is about to drop. (Your earth could of course be a disc, if you'd prefer a flat earth image).
This drivel will read as a callous attack upon America's youth, which is precisely what it is... It comes upon the heels of several interviews wherein 9 out of 10 'kids' (an affectionate term) plainly admitted to choosing not to vote in 2020. The same youth stated simply that they didn't think much of The "Environment", nor of "Mother Earth" as a concept. These -- Your kids will inherit the earth, and most appear  ill-equipped,  ill-informed, or both.  Thank you Social Media.
My friend Nate used to say, "Come the revolution,  they will be the first ones up against the wall"... I suppose, that too will not be televised. While It's unlikely that they will improve their social skills in the meantime, they may need to harden the fuck up.  In fact, we may all be a bit too squishy to begin abruptly at "roughing it".
Two young people told me that Global Warming was part of the normal ebb and flow of things. And all of them said that they didn't like "either candidate". As though they were picking from a menu at a fancy restaurant knowing their Parents will stop at Chipotle on their way home.

"BY NOW, it is just a question of which heart-rending image you choose. There is the hawksbill turtle struggling to free itself from a plastic bag. The sea of polystyrene trash floating over a Caribbean nature reserve. Or the sperm whale washed ashore in Spain, its stomach filled with plastic waste." Aisling Irwin The New Scientist 2018
Earth?, What earth?.. Nobody looks out the window anymore, as we motor along, Screens aglow upon doughy faces. Each 'Kid' posing upon a vinyl seat, ignoring each-other with headphones on. A.I. illuminates everything required to sustain them, providing: fashion, music, junk-food, pills and liquor. Hip-hop hums like bees through tiny diaphragms in each and every eardrum.  Vibrations echo through their hive, scented with adolescent feet, and axe effect. Pseudo geniuses geofenced by pre-ordained music, force-fed the same stream into  each lolling head in a wholly uncritical teen spirit musical agenda.
Yea, sure ‘the Kids are alright’, but they cannot know where we are heading next because nobody actually knows the name of the old guy who’s driving this bus. This is unsurprising because they didn’t vote.  Emotionally fragile, our celibate children punctuate celebrities, using emoticons on snack smeared screens, as if picking teammates for kickball. As the circus bus chugs forward in a blue diesel smog, dialog suppressed to The thumb direction of a dictator, our babies are stroking themselves to posts of pop pornography. Beautifully adorned baby-zombies sporting well-preserved Jordan’s, and snarky t-shirts, charging into their future. Fully formed toddlers learn to Swim in baggy sweatsuits, munching Gluten-Free single serving snacks. The Meek shall inherit the earth, (why not?)  -- And this thought should shake you until you shit yourself. What's left of the virgin earth could fit upon the teleprompter of Greta TinTin Thunberg. One of few with moxie, and initiative.
​
They say one should never wake a sleep-walker — whispering "Just let them wander back to the sofa". A trillion stoner sofas soiling the oceans, plugging its rivers, and ablaze in our forests.  All positioned to view the altar of our new online religion in landscape mode.
Happy Earth Day! everyone.

We knew all about this shit in 2016, and yet we all looked away, as swaths of land was stolen from a peaceful country (somewhere) across the globe.  We picked our teeth and gave thanks and praise to our isolatory hemisphere, where no such event would occur. We watched it on TV, and then flicked back to a mini-drama remake of something we'd already seen on PBS. Americans only learn about geography, and diversity when brushing up on the latest war.  Another single serving primer which makes everyone an expert.
Now, the hottest show on TV is a live stream from the most human of human beings:  Volodymyr Zelenski. 
American Military personnel remain profoundly stunned that Zelensky, (comedian cum commander in chief), would actually risk his own skin—let alone brashly announce, (When the United States offered him safety), -- That he needs “ammunition, not a ride.” Who the fuck is this person?  Perhaps the only leader on the planet with the balls to be human, and the grace to give a fuck. Zelensky, in the midst of fighting like hell to survive, has already forgiven the Russian Soldiers who are coming for him, saying, 'Enemy soldiers deserve sympathy'.  “These are not warriors of a superpower,"  Zelensky says, "These are confused children who have been used. Take them home.”  We can all quote some great film scripts at this point, and even some great lyrics, but as lyric poetry goes, our beloved Ukrainian President is becoming Eastern Europe's Bob-Fucking-Dylan. Zelensky is equal parts mensch & antihero, and i'll light a candle daily with him.
​"Jagger sings in first person narrative as the Devil, who boasts his role in each of several historical atrocities and repeatedly asks the listener to "guess my name." The singer then ironically demands the listener's courtesy towards him, implicitly chastising the listeners for their collective culpability in the listed killings and crimes."   -Sympathy For The Devil Wikipedia
 Zelensky said at a press conference, “Even simple farmers are capturing Russian soldiers every day, and all of them say the same thing: They don’t know why they are here,” 
So we can agree that it's a bit less profound to decide between Ramen or Sushi, than to choose to shoot or be shot..., and while no decision comes easily, nor without risk -- The "West" sitting on their hands while watching a bully kick the shit out of the sensitive kid on the playground, is total fucking bullshit! 
History, is hard to fudge, when everything, and everyone is recording it.  Our complacent world is some mega-cellular neuro-collective of data, we each leverage trillions of packets of fact and fiction, storing & sorting myths and facts in our phones and in our brains -- pushing data back and forth in one giant organism. These facts will however outlive our excuses and betray our lack of shame, for not getting involved sooner. 
Putin's list of demands are not finite. There is no capitulation where troops retract, and peace & serenity return, in exchange for "only these things". Leverage has already been lost, and amidst a maelstrom of war crimes & destruction... -- Captives, and capital become the bounty of the bully who took the first swing.
History will show the irreparable damage to our fictional peace & tilted equality. Immense time has been squandered, since 2016, and we are behind on the preparations for house-guests.  We agree that this is about as sticky a geopolitical mess as the Cuban Missile Crisis... and "History" will show that in early 2022, the world went to hell in a hand-basket, while we watched TV.  Somewhere in the split second between the first shove, and the first swing... an enormous fight broke out, but nobody tried to break it up.
Fuck yes I'd follow Zelensky, even watch his six, in lieu of sitting through yet another fucking Netflix mini-series. To believe in something real again is about all the reason I'd need to lace up my boots and shoot or be shot for authenticity.  We should be so lucky as to find 'Zelensky two-point-O' running for US office in 2024.  What the world needs now, are less people, and more human beings.
One rank-and-file Marine followed in a USMC subreddit ,“Volodymyr Zelensky is about as motivating of a leader as I’ve seen in our lifetime,”  followed with, "Yep, I'd follow that guy into hell".
Before The U.S. can take a bow for corralled sanctions, can we please  review what is about to happen?  There is no outcome here, involving the male ego of a classic Bond Super Villain which will end peacefully.  The game is not a play of, "right time" politics, where pressure builds and a hot genie pops the fuck out of the kettle to whisk this away with wishes.  Rather, historically, the game reads back as a transcript, showing both kids shoving, until a swing in taken.  TRUMP (the moron) said we should paint Chinese on our planes and bomb them, and they'll never know it was us, right after diluting our stake in NATO, and Kissing Putin's ass at each opportunity.  When we compare notes, our history will gloss over the part where we allowed the fight to start in the first place -- (without interfering), perhaps just to have something new to watch on TV.
Look, I get it -- Nobody wants a war, and no good stories ever come from the bully pulpit.  But barely reading into this shallow human conquest reveals what we all know to be true today, and nobody wants to speak of, The shit has yet to hit the fan, and as in all Fist-Fights, the one who swings first, generally wins.

"I stuck around St. Petersburg, when I saw it was a time for a change, I killed the tzar and his ministers, and the nation screamed in vain"
"Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name."

-Mick Jaggar

 Oh How I miss the good old days when we all scattered like roaches under a Table, Desk, or deep below the house practicing our quiet complacency whilst the missiles fall  to earth and crater the entire city in a cloud of glowing ash. Peaceful as Hindu cows we all go down to cower and hide, while "The Numbers" go up.  Remember when Pink Floyd's "The Wall" showed spooky gas mask clad school teachers and children without faces falling in line like soldier zombies, as they went peacefully into the meat grinder.  Yep, It's like that.
Traumatized?  Yes, Have some...  PPE, may be the single most traumatic takeaway so called "Normal People" see in their nightmares.  Legions of people sweating, fogging, and writhing behind PPE. Is it a good Idea to use it?  -- Yep Sure. Should you live in fear? Well, that depends upon what outcome you were hoping for.
A year ago a friend asked me, (how) "...the children will be changed by such a monumental shift in their social lives".  My first answer was rather flippant, insensitive, even crass... "They wont be affected much", ..."they don't interact as it is..., so they will just get better at socializing online". 
He said, "...but thinking about the masks, and the fear, and the distancing... I worry about how generations will change fundamentally because of COVID, what can we do to get them back to normal".
"Act Normally" I said. And it was at that moment, that I envisioned Slim Pickens as Major T. J. "King" Kong riding a Nuke down from his bomber in Soviet Airspace to MADden up the place.  Mutually Assured Destruction, can only happen, if you let it... (right?)
I became a student of the Cold War and began studies in an era of Mutually Assured Destruction, (M.A.D.) and One's desire to play a proper role in this circus reinforces many life lessons which we gave a big shit about back when, but  we now know to be blase', self-evident, trite. As we say, "the concept of ignorance being bliss follows, with a collective sea-change, or in the least, everyone playing along needs to happen first, ...and we will get there.
1. The other kid can't get under your skin, if you ignore them. Check!
2. Ignoring your work will only lead to more work later. Check!
3. Homework (like all rules) suck, and so if we all just ignore it, they can't fail all of us, right?
Check!
​COVID, like the clever participants who manage to ride this bomb down to mutually assured destruction, soon come to discover that they could leave their basements, travel, explore, exercise, and even fuck like humans used to.  Not like Porn Stars, and not like Actors on T.V., but like humans did before they shopped for face masks, rubber gloves, sanitizers, test kits, PPE, and vibrators.

Look!, you're never gonna sleep with that trainer from your Peloton Bike, so you might as well assume the siren is clanging outside and venture out to find someone outside to do. 

It turns out that when I truly consider the concept of COVID19, I keep returning to the "19" Thing -- (NINETEEN) Bloody Hell! 2019 was a fucking lifetime ago.  As we peek out from under the covers of 2022, let's straighten our backs from the 2020 YOGA position called: "Cowering Under the Desk", and do some shit... Today, I realize that my life has really not changed significantly since 2019, except for all the B.S. after-burn ingested, and politics we've became accustomed to in our new Cold War / Post-911-land. Here, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge sounded the Orange Alert Sirens for another Terrorist Attack every fucking day and every fucking night for a decade -- Early in the decade we all learned to remove belts, and shoes, and laptops... and then tune this shit the fuck out.  A clever Brother of mine reminded me of the genius (The) Onion  Article Dated February 26th, 2003, illustrating just how important our government and media are in a time of crisis:

Orange Alert Sirens To Blow 24 Hours A Day In Major Cities
"These 130-decibel sirens, which, beginning Friday, will scream all day and night in the nation's 50 largest metro areas, will serve as a helpful reminder to citizens to stay on the lookout for suspicious activity and be ready for emergency action," Ridge said. "Please note, though, that this is merely a precautionary measure, so go about your lives as normal." "Go about your usual business," Ridge said. "Of course, while you do so, keep in mind that we are just barely this side of Red Alert, the highest level of danger possible." ( -The Onion c. 2003)

It may come as no surprise that the genius dark comedy  "Dr. Strangelove" never won an Oscar, but won loads of parallel awards abroad.  Shit gets lost on the lay public, because they are watching the ball drop, instead of the Hottie next to you. It's no surprise either that "Dr. Strangelove" never made it to your dumb-shit Netflix hit-list, For twenty-four tedious COVID months whilst you scarfed takeout, and scoured for more Czech Cop Procedurals, The Good Stuff eluded your occluded path toward agoraphobic redemption.  Later, in awe of it's social relevance and posthumus brilliance, in 1989 "Strangelove" was selected, by the United States Library of Congress  as one of the first twenty-five films for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". They had to wait until the sting of hiding under our desks had worn off, I suppose.

The thing is... with the latest 2019 mechanism thingy called "Omicron" set to destroy you and everyone you know and love, wouldn't it be good to actually feel something first? I mean, right before you go on life support, what would you rather be wearing...?

Today you can roll those sleeves up, peel off the latex, and learn to love Someone, Something, or  some more PPE -- But you cannot shake that creepy  prophylactic feeling that you've been "playing-along" with gloves on far too long. In your second anniversary sedentary social experiment bound by latex, and isopropyl, set to the soundtrack of re-run laugh-tracks -- Your New Year's Resolution should actually be to quit your sterile rubber-glove love-dramas altogether -- Touch someone with your bare hand, grab a hug as the bombs are falling, ride that cool breeze down to earth, and  learn to love the fucking bomb. 

Cough!... #COVID22

P.S. You know Putin is going to get real Bond Villian Soon, and we'll be back in the shit-show watching the war again, so enjoy your so called freedom whilst it lasts, and I'll meet you under the desk in March.