Author: Aaron Weber

“The Wire”

Via BuzzSugar and of course MeeVee, I suggest that everyone read this incredible profile of David Simon in The New Yorker, which explains the motivation behind his shows, and mentions that his next project might take him from Baltimore to New Orleans.

Great anecdote: “Once, a man pressed a package of heroin into the hands of Andre Royo, the actor who plays the sympathetic junkie and police informant Bubbles, saying, “Man, you need a fix more than I do.” Royo refers to that moment as his “street Oscar.””

I Am Not A Crook

Phil Nugent:

By now, it’s clear that “We don’t torture” is going to be George Bush’s equivalent to “I am not a crook” or “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”–an embarrassingly transparent, obviously untrue statement that the speaker never would have even made in the first place if he hadn’t been obligated to deny something that everybody had already figured out was the case….
At some point, every politician is put in the position of having to flatly deny that he’s doing what he’s doing, but few of us have made that the automatic life choice that Bush has.

People Really Do Form Emotional Attachments With All The Wrong Things

If you haven’t already heard of it, “Meerkat Manor” is a nature show about a family of meerkats, narrated as though it were a prime-time soap opera. It’s hilarious and touching, a half-hour long, and suitable for families. However, it also involves a lot of casual, unmarried sex (I guess meerkats don’t have religions or souls). Anyway, the matriarch of the clan died protecting her cubs from a cobra, and people are really sad about it.

The NY Times has an obituary, of sorts: “What the outpouring of sentiment that has followed says about the present character of American emotional life is disillusioning. Thousands have outlined the particularities of their sadness on Internet message boards, some claiming they haven’t cried so much since they lost a parent.”

Let me remind you: this is a wild animal living its natural life in its natural habitat which has been eaten by a natural predator.

Does God Love Racist Mascots?

Friday, the ALCS begins with the Indians/Sox matchup. I hope the Sox win, and not just because they’re my team: The Indians have a racist mascot.

On the other hand, the Indians are more favored by God, because God sent a plague of flies to bother the Yankees and it broke their concentration and let the Indians win Game 2 of that series.

Does that mean that God loves racist mascots?

The Tales That Ads Tell

Someone just bought a $10,000 motorcycle, barely rode it at all, and now wants to sell it. What went wrong? Abortive midlife crisis? Illness? Divorce? An ultimatum of divorce related to the motorcycle? Or did they win it in a raffle and decide not to keep it? Is it a shop trying to unload excess inventory without having to announce a sale?

Then there’s this guy who bought an $8000 bike, spent $10,000 on chrome, and needs to sell because he has a baby. Location? Lynn, Lynn, city of sin. It’s almost surprising the ad doesn’t begin with “Accidentally had a baby, now have to get married and sell bike.” I love that he says “Over $10,000 INVESTED!” Sorry, I think you should be using a different word. One like like “WASTED!”

None of you care about this, but… MOTO LUST

BMW F800S: Drool.

The graceful upper fairing. The cafe-racer posture. The sheer arrogance of making a sportbike engine in a weird size (800cc, 2cyl, 83 hp — for reference I’m riding a 650 2cyl that puts out about 70) that defies apples-to-apples comparison. The out-of-reach list price, made even worse by the exchange rate. The totally insane stunting. (See also the 2008 Triumph Street Triple, which is a comparatively tiny 675 cc but a 3-cylinder, 97 hp hooligan beast).

Oh god. It comes in yellow.

Why did I not notice this bike before? This is what I want mine to look like. Only, the BMW is pretty angular. I’d rather have something more rounded.

OK, OK, I can resist this.

Obviously the solution for my bike lust is going to be expensive.

The first thing to do is a full tune-up on my SV650, possibly before putting it away for the winter. It’s been jerky when I hold the throttle steady and I don’t know if that’s due to a loose cable or a clogged line or a dirty carb or what. It’s not the “surging” other people describe because it’s totally steady at idle and is fine when accelerating or decelerating. I only notice this behavior when trying to hold to a steady, relatively slow pace. It’s as though it’s racing forward, then engine-braking back to the intended speed.

Then, I’d like to get the front suspension to be a little stiffer. Apparently you can switch out the fork oil relatively cheaply. Or of course replace the front forks, but that gets expensive, and you don’t get that back when you resell it.

I’d like to switch from the noisy boy-racer exhaust back to a stock exhaust. If I’m doing any expensive work on the carbs, that would be done at the same time (since exhaust changes usually require carb changes; no point in fixing the carbs, then replacing the exhaust and having to redo the carbs again too).

Appearance-wise, I wonder what can be done about the tail. Could it be flattened out to look more old-fashioned? Probably, but probably not easy, and not good for the resale value.

Should I switch the comfortable handlebars out for racier clip-ons? Probably not. Less comfortable: people with the racy SV650S often switch the clip-ons for my version’s handlebars.

Obviously I’m going to need some of those flash bar-end mirrors. That’s the cheapest, quickest, step.

(Does anyone out there have any good ideas?)