Comedy Humane

Ben Sinclair, co-creater with Katja Blichfeld of television sitcom High Maintenance, appears in every episode as The Guy, a bicycle messenger who distributes marijuana throughout Brooklyn. Show’s name is a double entendre that describes both his business to maintain buzz and personalities fraught with ordinary dramas. Its message to decriminalize and normalize pot use naturally ignores border violence and turf wars that harvesting and smuggling entail.

Thousands die every year because users want to drown sorrows and dull pain. Yet another transference, typical of, “Better nameless foreigners die than we suffer,” how is that any different than Big Oil killing activists and lummoxes obliviously driving wasteful SUVs? Or sex trafficking and teens indulging in porn instead of being productive and earning for college? The net loss of tobacco after all profits is $200 billion each year, but smoking a related alkaloid-laden weed not so well documented likely costs more than users want to admit. Anyway, can you trust their suspect math?

Lapses seem innocuous until you calculate resulting losses. With cheap electronic access but no shot at being employed, you’ll spend months trolling websites and watching television, in either case, zoning into 15 minute clips between commercials, just enough time to get aroused and swell guilt. Childhood oppositional defiance leads to adult conduct disorders that emerge as casino gambling, road rage, substance abuse, and unread blogs. Who can call odd lifestyles meaningless? Everyone impacts everyone, what they do, or not do. Aggravation releases aggression into community, contorted faces of motorists trying to cut you off so they don’t have to share road with a struggling cyclist. Disgust turned inward might urge good deeds and grand activism.

Alaffia Soap fairly trades and focuses charitable attention on the plight of women is West Africa. It has collected and shipped over 6,300 bicycles to them. Turns out, odds are against them even surviving if they don’t complete school. Cycling enables them to make the long commutes from and to remote villages where most live in poverty. Hopes include democratic reforms in each dictator dominated country, economic justice, and gender equality. Things could be a whole lot worse. Be thankful and count your blessings. Just don’t expect gratitude when you impose aid upon others.

If comedy is the best medicine, why isn’t it prescribed by doctors? AMA and Big Pharma promote profitable dependencies. People seek conflict, not cures, as recent GOP debate argues. Analogies using “is” usually make no sense. They falsely assume parity between A and B, only a comparison, not an equivalency. Hard to be happy when others suffer much, or to suffer those stuck upon agreeable fluff, cheery clichés, and inoffensive pap.

Saroyan wrote in The Human Comedy, “...there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall despair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes.” Saroyan, an avid cyclist, knew that physical challenges involve pain, but repeatedly taking them on builds body’s stamina and raises pain threshold. Settling for convenience mostly transfers pain onto someone else in ways intentionally unexamined. Better to laugh off tragedies than prevent them? Does comedy acquit inhumanity?

All or No Thane

There’s an ancient Babylonian proverb, “God doesn’t deduct from man’s allotted time the hours spent fishing.” Wrong! Hate these homilies that persuade others to produce despite risks. Considered among world’s most dangerous jobs, commercial fishermen frequently drown and occasionally get mangled or murdered. Even recreational anglers accidentally die; there’s also a lot of sitting around and swilling beer, both of which shorten life. But substitute bicycling, and the saying might approach accuracy. Fatalities are few provided you successfully navigate traffic hazards. You get back the years you spent cycling by extending life expectancy (~3 more years, 26,280 hours, for only 6,000 hours of exercise). Consequently, you get to do physical activities and remain vital well into your 70’s. They also say, “In heaven all cycling routes are flat and smooth,” not that you're in any hurry to get there. Rolling landscapes, however, keep you humble by reminding you you’re only human. God is a cypher whose intentions lie far beyond any cleric’s ability to fathom. Why would God allow intolerance, slavery and war? Free will exercised irresponsibly could wipe out life on earth. Where's your towel?

Someone must oppose media’s relentless propaganda. On a “professional” forum originator posted a meme, “Like if you think Democrats are idiots. Share if you KNOW Democrats are idiots,” over a lewdly provocative image. Not a Democrat, was nevertheless offended and said so. This incited a round of name calling spawned upon sheer stupidity. “Libtard”, a portmanteau of liberal and retard, isn’t merely politically incorrect, it insults all intelligence, and maligns the developmentally challenged. "Con-holes" (John Birchers, Klanners, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists) persist using this label for anyone with whom they disagree, despite the fact that most people are moderate, sometimes conservative or liberal on certain issues but not others. Extremism causes criminal and mob behaviors. Exposing these terrorists invites death threats.

This epitomizes conservative aggression: Limit your choices, narrow your focus, twist your arm to get what they want. All or nothing is a logical fallacy; unlike objects, people and phenomena defy classification, live on continuums, range within limits, switch allegiances, and transcend conformity. Schoolyard bullies never grow up unless community unites against them. They badger and bait as sport, then sidle away when their victims commit suicide or die from mistreatment. Later, they become the domestic abusers and drug users that account for most police calls.

Fishing for dupes and peddling hate, the further you impugn, the further you push cretins to choose dirty, quick fixes. Predation pays so well, they have an entire news network with nonstop programming designed solely to manipulate those who don’t or won’t think for themselves. Conservatism will always be a vicious downward spiral into oblivion, although its core philosophy - grab whatever you can - is easy for dim-witted knuckle-draggers to grasp. Those in power know that lies repeated often enough become policy. Whatever government allows funnels revenue their way. Unfavorable laws may be overturned by executive orders, new legislation, popular opinion, or simply not enforced, like the Sherman Antitrust Act against their monopolies. They use advertising techniques to force people to believe in their self serving mantra, how Hitler got an entire nation to go along with his insane ambitions. Emperors still exist, but seldom emerge from shadows.

You don’t get to be nobility unless born to royalty. Once the next best thing was being decreed a thane, usually some warlord granted land and riches by a grateful king. No thanes are needed anymore. These days billionaires sidestep divine rule, use wealth to wrest power. Wanting to control the masses is a mental disorder. The few rich subjugating too many poor results in destruction, revolution and suffering. Stable societies have a predominant middle class. Oligarchies quickly collapse. People do and think whatever they want until convinced otherwise or incarcerated for breaking laws they never knew existed. Free thinkers figure laws deny freedoms from anyone despots see as threats.

How healthy is America and why should you care? Before Obama, joblessness hovered at 28%. Most Bush-era policies have been reversed, so economy improved among modest income families. Workers paying taxes fight tyranny overseas, foster innovation, keep aid flowing, maintain defense, and secure social programs. Bloomberg predicts another recession in 2018, usually recurring in 9 year cycles, if next administration doesn’t effectively act to maintain growth begun in 2009. Diversity of beliefs, cultures, and professions avoids downturns and promotes commerce. Cycling is surely another facet of a diversified culture, and, unlike motoring, frees your mind to reject what's wrong and see through inhumanity.

Labor Deign

You won't remember what you said when you’ve filled and published 100,000 pages, particularly when you’ve repeated ideas you’re not passionate about or uncertainties studied too many different ways. Output becomes a blur. Had to do what one must to pay debts and roll on. Apt and beautiful phrases are, after all, almost as forgettable as what you dreamed before breakfast. Nobody, including you, gets what was written. Chiselers and schemers can’t wait to ambush fools and geniuses through what they next commit to text. Lawyers exist because so many would rather grab, swindle and wriggle out of work, which proves too demanding to do daily for decades among dolts. Childbirth is real labor. The sweat of physical effort smells sweet compared to the stench of crooks who cheat.

Life goes through emotional stages resembling tastes: sweet, salty, sour and bitter, usually in that order. Mom's milk is sweet, and most never mature beyond sugary gratification. Adolescents awkwardly flirt with salty adult pleasures. Umami? Just those earthy, meaty encounters when spouses infrequently get lucky. Achieving and having leave such sourness that only amassing more distracts enough to ignore disappointments. Accumulating anything makes one a target. By the time race has been run, majority has grown bitterly resentful of bad choices they made without really knowing what they could have done given own limitations. Bitter, by the way, is an acquired, but not undesired, taste. Bitter is better than abject despair.

You can get lost in anhedonia, let tasks and tastes grind you down, or prefer simple pleasures, Rosebud, times when you were content. Saltines floating on steaming tomato soup from a can were once as lovely as life could be. Proust had his madeleines. A beignet with cup of french roast after a night of passion can achieve complacency and combine all tastes simultaneously. To share love might be humanity’s main goal, though most clamor for someone else to take up their cause. Lovers often forget that travel is supposed to be fun.

Watched an accident occur on a one-way street in a tourist trap. Parking allowed on left alone, a cyclist hugging parked cars was riding astride an SUV whose driver suddenly decided to turn left without signaling, thus hooking cyclist, who planted bike and face sideways onto its maiden white exterior. Having collected self and ridden off a lighter shade of pale into a throng, left a nice set of scratches that oblivious driver or probably husband won’t notice until inspecting vehicle later. Both were at fault: Cyclist should have been following cars on right in travel lane, not hanging on left; motorist could have stopped before turning. However, not only were neither injured much, this incident will never otherwise be reported, which proves official stats lack factual integrity.

If 4 out of 5 accidents supposedly occur on country roads, probably 4 of 5 fatalities would, too. While traffic analysts like to cite intersection hazards, always suspected from actual experiences and anecdotes heard that being overtaken by motorists is a cyclist’s bane. Accidents downtown occur at slower speeds, so can be avoided, or result less often in fatalities. In countryside, motorists usually exceed de facto 25 mph or maximum 65 mph limits. Physics teaches that, in collisions, speed increases damage. Haste makes waste. That’s why Labann likes to roll so slowly and work deliberately.

Public Domain

With schools soon reopening, must expect the many torments of traffic to multiply. Advocates speak of a locale’s “bikeability”, a term coined over 20 years ago. Everywhere on land where you can walk presents some degree of bikeability, even deserts, mountains, prairies and unpaved trails. What they imply is relative ease of getting around by bike according to factors upon which not everyone agrees.

Compiled this intense list of preferences from B&C's Chapter 16, internet searches, league questionnaires, pamphlet excerpts, and surveys personally conducted among avid cyclists, and ordered by importance to those who’d rather pedal than pollute:
1. Streets with no faster bus/car/truck traffic (hard to find but still exist by place or time)
2. With some overtaking traffic, road shoulders without debris, gaps, grates, holes or sand
3. With heavy traffic, crossable intersections, designated bike lanes, no-motor over/under passes, permeable curbs, rollover islands
4. Unbroken pavement: no crevices, potholes, speed bumps, sunken pipes
5. Cyclists can ride flattest/straightest streets, shun hilly/twisty routes, as desired
6. Minimal detours and impediments (caused by airports, banned/narrow bridges, bays, coves, highways, hills, RR, rivers, turning lanes)
7. Continuous bikenet (all compass points from border to border) without any unfriendly segments; aligns with adjacent cities; flows from state to state
8. Alternatives to on-road (bikeways, bike-ped bridges, shared sidewalks); must be lit, maintained, patrolled, shoveled, and swept
9. Demonstrated city, state and town support (federal compliance, installed facilities, law enforcement, public service announcements, and unwavering policies)
10. Infrastructure favoring bicycling, restricting motoring (Only for motoring: boulevard stops, no parking, no passage, one-way, parking lot fly-out deterrents, 25 mph limit on bike routes); bridges with bike decks or cable cars
11. Bikenet passes parks, places of refuge (fire/police stations, libraries), schools and stores for safe child routes
12. Car-free approaches to air terminals, bus stations, malls, schools, train stations, transit hubs
13. Bike route signage (esp. around detours), compass point reminders, and traffic controls
14. Easy access to bikenet (barrier breaks, curb relief, entrances and exits, fence openings, stanchions to keep cars out)
15. Racks at municipal buildings, public libraries, retail outlets, schools, terminals
16. Erosion deterrents (logs, rocks, straw bales), railings at steep runoffs, root barriers, sensible sight lines (not limited to set backs, trimmed hedges at intersections)
17. Availability of bike parts and services
18. Bus rack-n-ride service; subways/trains/trolleys that take bicycles
19. Accessible controls and wide shoulders where bikenet meets roadnet
20. Advocacy, clubs, community events, group rides

One could award a descending number of points for each factor and tally them for any area, region or state, or perhaps just move to Portland, Oregon once comparisons are made, but wouldn’t this be rather compulsive? The goal is not to rate for awareness’ sake, but to react with real improvements that decrease fear and inconvenience, the 2 prevailing barriers, and increase ridership. City planners need to consider everything in the public domain; compliance typically involves less than 5% of roadnet and usually only after segments are repaved when repainting stripes, which must be done anyway. Costs almost nothing.

Your sense of safety will never compel official decisions; distance, hazards, hills and ice persist for which you must prepare. Advocacy groups capitalize from your feeling exposed to criminal behaviors and crushing vehicles, yet you’ll always be safer cycling than driving. Crowds don’t necessarily present risk, sometimes shelter self propellers. But when states make situations difficult or impossible to ride a bike or walk, they illegally limit, according to federal laws 23 CFR 652.5 and 23 CFR 652.7, those who’d choose these alternatives. Every road 24’ or wider must either directly facilitate cycling and walking or factor in a nearby parallel bikeway or bikeable road, preferably indicated by signs. They can’t just construct bridges and highways that ban bicycling. This also implies zoning code that denies malls and stores permission to locate on busy roads if they neglect bike access from adjacent neighborhoods.

Cyclists are supposed to ride in travel lanes, not stick to gutters. Shoulders are what permit them to ease over and let cars pass. Despite their slow pace they do not otherwise have to give up lane. Motoring is a privilege, not a right; a driver license is a contract never to endanger the vulnerable: animals, bicyclists, children, walkers, wheelchair users. All self-propelled uses of public thoroughfares fall under an inalienable right to be motile for living and thriving. Impatience is the main reason air-conditioned, comfortably seated motorists can’t wait and must deprive others of their rights. Direct your anger at city planners, not creeping cyclists, who just happen to be present.

Nose Retrain

Late in summer a cyclist expects smells of asphalt, compost and creosote, maybe mixed with sour must of laundry and sewer drainage, possibly acid tang of old mills and toxic remains. Yet, a week after a gale, instead got an Autumn note of cut wood and dried leaves, reminiscent of tea you brew. Never much cultivated sense of smell, though dogs delight in exploratory, olfactory outings that exercise their glomerulus bulbs, mitral cells, and receptor neurons.

With fruits and vegetables finally ripening, farmer markets pop up around cities. You arrive by bike, drop by valet, follow your nose, and taste samples from stall to tent to umbrella, where an emperor of ice cream on a trike hawks treats as a finale of seem then packs up and pedals home. You assume freshness but question comparative quality, high prices, and lack of refrigeration or sanitation. Patrons buy to support local agriculture lest open expanses become housing developments. But prices reduce by half if you visit actual farms with their inherent odors and intimidating remoteness.

Mingling in crowds presents an opportunity to assess area residents. Big talk of collaborating universally will be choked irreversibly when you witness in person who you have to work with. Because banks made debtors of everyone, most are too worried about paying mortgages or rents to ponder anything else. When you can’t earn and don’t contribute to Social Security anymore, insurance houses, nursing homes, tax collectors, and utilities providers revel in draining your savings. Threats of becoming homeless forever loom, worse when your too old to shove what’s left into a van and simply take off.

An exodus undermines power, which is why conservative tyrants consider as a political ploy keeping dissidents moving. You don't have to submit, but should feel entitled to retaliate by running for office yourself or supporting candidates that promise more. Too bad you’re forced to hold your nose when you choose. But voting isn't the end of involvement, since you must monitor performance and recall elected officials if they don't serve your interests, though it's hard to do. The age of career politicians will be over when citizens demand more from elected officials.

Heard a celebrity host and local “philanthropist” discussing the good deeds done by dead business leaders and them. Who can bend their arms so far as to pat themselves on their own backs? When community treated them so well as to amass assets, it became their obligation to return some. Seems the bar gets set at crass greed, and however little you selflessly do merits applause. Charity does more for giver than receiver. Politicians, for example, squeeze constituents so thoroughly they create the need for welfare, then take credit for their presumed largess distributing among the needy while voting themselves enormous pay raises and tax cuts. Another way to dominate the poor is put them on the dole, paid for by middle class and small businesses, and reward privilege so rest believe they too can similarly rise.

More communicate now than ever in history. Both demand and supply are growing for written content. What's not growing is paid expectation. Writers, like most people, are slipping from poverty into slavery. When only 400 families own 95% of all wealth, your chances of selling human smudges on immaculate pages has declined to a modern nadir. Not enough readers can afford small cost of another volume after paying monthly fees for cell phone and internet access, where famous books and media comments can already be perused without additional cost. Ever smaller living quarters in crowded tenements means no room for home libraries, which is why book sellers have been closing or consolidating and ebooks taking over. Newspapers, too, have declined with preference for radio and television reports, often paid for by cable fees. People do go to movies, but try to sell an original story upon which all films are based. Delivery paradigm has irrevocably shifted, but that doesn’t stink so much if you think about it.