Safety Last: Honk If You're Pantsless!

On the yesterday I mentioned a cyclist who claims he was hit by an FBI agent.  Well, since then, another FBI agent up in Buffalo has been charged with driving pantless:

(DWOP: Driving Without Pants)

Here's what happened:

Troopers said they received the report at about 9 p.m. Friday from the truck driver, who was headed east on the Thruway in Eden. He said the driver of a passenger vehicle “pulled up next to his truck, turned on the dome light and displayed that he was not wearing pants, while making lewd gestures,” according to state police.

It should be a cinch for the agent's lawyer to defend this one.  All he has to do is explain that his client was eating a meatball hero from Sbarro at a Thruway rest stop when he got red sauce all over his pants, which he figured he'd soak in seltzer water in the back seat when he got back in the car.  Then, as he enjoyed a post-hero cigar (every American's right, as long as the cigar is not Cuban), he accidentally dropped it in his lap, and the druck driver just happened to drive by as he was fanning his crotch.

Expect singed pubic hair to be entered into evidence, so caveat juror.

By the way, this is probably the exact same defense the agent who hit the cyclist will use, assuming she's ever caught, which she won't be, and also assuming she's ever charged, which is laughable, and assuming she wasn't wearing pants, which is likely.

Speaking of pants, do you wet yours out of fear when you ride in your city?  If so, you'll want to invest in this bicycle horn, which I mentioned briefly last Friday:



Loud Bicycle is the long-awaited answer to the burning question:

Horns?  You mean...like THE JEWS?!?

(Yes, Jews do have horns, but not the way you think.)

Actually, Craig Calfee answered that question years ago:

Nevertheless, as the inventor says, "Cycling on roads can be frightening:"

Though not as frightening as cycling on high wires or lava flows, or high wires suspended above lava flows.  Now that's scary.

Another problem is that "Drivers often feel like bikes come flying out of nowhere:"

Dude, I can so relate.  This one time I was driving my Scion to buy a new flat brim cap when I got hit by a guy on a bike who was talking to a camera and ran a stop sign.  He totally ruined my fake stick-on air vent.

Then the inventor goes on to tell the story of his friend who got hit by a car, which he illustrates with an image of a white bike, at which point I started feeling really guilty for laughing at his video.  You know, 'cause his friend is dead and all:

Except it turns out that his friend was pretty much fine, at which point I went from feeling guilty to feeling incredibly angry at him.

Then he goes and claims that "Drivers react really well to car horns:"

No, they don't, because here's how people use their car horns:

--To honk at drivers who actually wait for pedestrians in the crosswalk (I have often been honked at while driving for not running over a baby);
--To honk incessantly and uselessly when a street is blocked by a garbage truck, school bus, or fatal "accident;"
--In the case of car service drivers, to let that 5:00am pickup know they've arrived, and to wake up the whole building in the process (which is fucking ridiculous since everybody in the entire world has a cellphone now, unless you're Amish, in which case you don't travel by car service anyway).

Though I admit that people do react really well to all this honking, if by that you mean they shout stuff like "Shut the fuck up, you cocksucker!"  (That's what I do with the car service drivers, since the whole building's already up anyway.)

Still, for some reason he's determined to add bikes to the cacophony, and in the process makes an even more ridiculous claim:

"Why can't I just get a car horn for my bike?  Well I searched everywhere to buy one, but a car horn fit for bicycles simply didn't exist as a product."

Yes, horns for bicycles simply don't exist.  Except for this:

And this:

And my personal favorite, this:

   

Fine.  I realize he specifically means there are no horns that sound just like car horns on the market, which may or may not be true (I'm too poorly paid to check, and even if I was highly paid to check I'd only pretend to check and lie) but I refuse to give him that thanks to his little stunt with the white bike.

Oh, the Loud Bicycle also looks great when you photoshop it onto your Firefly super-hybrid Cat 6 dreamcycle:

(Male Fireflies have downtube testicles.)

But not so great in real life:

(This bike has a downtube goiter.)

Anyway, throw $43,000 his way and you too can enjoy being called a cocksucker thanks to your incessant honking:

Then again, the Loud Bicycle is about a million times more practical than this:

What drinker's insatiable thirst for spirits could possibly be slaked by 5ml of liquor?  (Or 10ml if you buy two, in which case you'll be fully one-fifth of the way to airplane size.)  The only way to make this viable is to adapt it as a dropper, fill it with saline solution, and market it to people who wear contact lenses.  Either that, or I suppose you could use it for your diabolical plot to release anthrax spores in your local food co-op because they're selling Israeli cous-cous.

Still, I can't decide if it's better or worse than a guy who wants money so he can ride around and eat shit:



Either way, anytime you encounter a visitor to your town filming himself making a big fucking deal about everything, you can be sure he came there from Brooklyn:

Anyway, it looks like the eating guy has actually met his funding goal, and I hope he spends at least some of that money on this in case he gets into trouble:

This way he'll be able to use his iPhone to snug up that motel outlet plate:

(What could possibly go wrong?)

Adjust that headset:

(You're supposed to loosen the steer tube bolts first.)

Or cut that tender, juicy steak:

(What could possibly go wrong?)

The only thing missing is a tiny vial, but maybe he can team up with the Handlebar Minibar bike for the 2.0 release.

Lastly, on Urban Velo I saw this heartwarming holiday message from someone who couldn't possibly have a job:

Of course, I don't have a job either, so I figured I'd get on my bike, head downtown (or uptown, or crosstown, or overseas, depending on where I actually live now), and send out a holiday message of my own:

Let's not lose sight of what this time of year is really about.