Thursday, May 15, 2014

How Awesome I Am Part II: The Search for Humility

Yesterday I talked about how inventive I am, and as it turns out my inventiveness is so profound and far-reaching that my coverage of it must now enter a second day, for a Twitterer just alerted me to this:
As we already established, I singlehandedly invented the term "salmon" in the context of cycling.  Sure, some of you doubted the veracity of this claim, but I forgive you, since I know how the mind of the cyclist works.  Allow me to explain:

See, inherently, we all have a little bit of the retrogrouch in us, and therefore we refuse to acknowledge innovation.  This is why when a company starts touting its 650b mountain bike, some grizzled guy in jean shorts and sandals has to pipe up with: "New?!?  Ha!  We were riding singletrack on Dutch city bikes back in the early '60s!"  Similarly, when I assert my claim to the term "salmon," invariably someone's going to question the term's provenance and start up with the old "Bah!  You think you invented 'salmon?'  That's what we used to yell at those idiots riding Dutch city bikes on the hiking trails in the early '60s!" routine.

But yeah, the point is I invented "salmon."  I also invented "shoal:"


Got anything so say about that?  Of course you do, and I can already see the comments:

"You invented 'shoal?'  Humbug!  Back when I was riding with the Bumshtuppers Cycle Club out of Texassippi City, East Dakota, we used to say 'shoal' all the time.  We also used two-speed thread-on freewheels that you had to shift with a broomstick, and we used to have to stop and repack them every three miles or else they'd seize up and turn into fixed gears."

Be that as it may, it's abundantly clear to me that I have singlehandedly invented what no less an organization than NPR calls "the lingo of safe cycling," and it's both a blessing and a curse--and the "curse" part has nothing to do with the fact that they don't credit me anywhere in the article:


I don't mind this for three reasons:

1) True geniuses are seldom appreciated in their own time;

2) I am nothing if not benevolent, and these terms are my donation to our culture.  If you like, think of me as a literary philanthropist.  (Or, if you don't like, think of me as a giant douchebag.);

3) It makes me proud that my inventions are so popular it doesn't even occur to people to wonder about their source.  We take them for granted, as well we should.  Similarly, back in the 1500s, someone started using the latin word "scrotum" to mean "purse-like tegumentary investment of the testes and part of the spermatic cord; the cod," but we don't worry about who this person was before we say it ourselves, do we?  No we don't.  We just use the word freely, marveling in its utility, and occasionally modifying it ourselves to form new words such as "scranus," "scrote-face," and "scrotalitarian" (a superlative roughly equivalent to "epic" or "awesome," which I just now invented).  Then, as these words are used more and more frequently they too enter the lexicon, and this ever-evolving adaptability is what makes the English language so scrotalitarian.

No, the "curse" part is that I invented these words so that bike dorks like us could simultaneously chuckle over and vent about the behavior of our fellow cyclists.  I did not mean for "The Man" to use it to keep us down and excoriate us for our "bad behavior," nor am I proud to have inspired an entire genre of tight-ass journalism.  This isn't to say I find the NPR article objectionable, because it's mostly pretty good advice, though the writer clearly does not grasp the etymology of "shoal:"

Shoaling: A shoal is a school of fish. Or a collection of cyclists at a red light. That's where shoaling happens. A cyclist comes up to the light, eyeballs a cyclist already there, thinks, "I'm faster than that person," and moves ahead.

But who can truly judge a cyclist's speed potential? Maybe the person you've shoaled is faster than you and will want to pass you once the light changes. To avoid triggering such unnecessary passes (not to mention road rage), "it's safer for people to wait at the light with everybody else and make the pass in the lane," says Billing. Or if you're really in a rush, just ask the other cyclist: "Hey, I'm late, is it okay to get in front of you?"

A shoal is not a school of fish.  The correct term for a school of fish is "a school of fish."  A shoal is basically a sandbar, and it's a gradual accumulation of sand and sediment carried and dumped by a body of water.  Having basically grown up on a great big sandbar myself, I observed that cyclists deposit themselves at intersections in a similar fashion, ultimately forming long shoals that extend into the crosswalk and beyond.  I understand cyclist behavior because I'm more than just a bike blogger.  I'm a naturalist.

Actually, now that I think about it, my childhood on a giant sandbar also allowed me to watch horseshoe crabs humping, so next time you see a bunch of cyclists standing around without first getting off their bikes, go ahead and feel free to call it a "horseshoe clusterfuck:



They're particularly common at non-competitive group ride rest stops:



Though you'll also see groups of four or five fixie riders forming them outside of bars.

[Fun Fact: Horseshoe clustefucks are a leading cause of "chainring tattoos."]

What's particularly vexing about the immense popularity of my terminology is that there's not a similar taxonomy for drivers.  All bike month long it's salmon this and shoal that, but I have yet to see the mainstream media come out with an article imploring drivers not to be scrote-faces.

Then again, I suppose we don't really need to discuss drivers in terms of subtle gradation, since we can paint pretty much all of them with the same roller:

"Assholes."

In fact, I had something of a revelation this morning, when it occurred to me that, when you look at the vast transportation landscape, the one common denominator is this:

Drivers are assholes.*

*[In this case I'm defining "asshole" as a profoundly selfish and/or unaware person who thinks nothing of engaging in behavior that is highly likely to kill somebody else.]

I know this because I'm a naturalist and an observer, and I use various means of conveyance in my native environment, during which I carefully study the behavior of other road users.  Basically, across all transit modes, the only road users who are consistently assholes are drivers.  Here's how it breaks down:

Cycling

Who I encounter while cycling:

Pedestrians
Other Cyclists
Drivers

How they behave:

Pedestrians: Sometimes do stuff like walk out in front of you while drooling on their cellphones.

Other Cyclists: Sometimes salmon and shoal and form horseshoe clusterfucks outside of porta-pottys.

Drivers: They use their metal shitboxes like a coked-up porn star uses his dick, they fling their doors open into you, they harass you, they yell obscenities and slurs at you, and sometimes they run into you, lie about what happened, and don't get in trouble for it, and if you're lucky you don't die.

How this behavior affects me:

Pedestrians: Sometimes I have to slow down or change direction.

Other Cyclists: Sometimes I have to slow down, change direction, or yell out, "Heads up, scrote-face!"

Drivers: If I survive, it makes me feel like a coked-up porn star tried to rape me.

What this makes them:

Pedestrians: Annoying
Other Cyclists: Annoying
Drivers: Assholes

Walking

Who I encounter while walking:

Other Pedestrians
Cyclists
Drivers

How they behave:

Other Pedestrians: Stop short, walk slowly, fan out three or more abreast, blow smoke in my face, spit, jiggle with each footfall, stand there drooling on their cellphones, ask me for directions when the thing they're looking for is right in front of their goddamn faces!

Cyclists: Whiz by you when you're crossing the street, and occasionally when you're on the sidewalk.

Drivers: Run red lights while you're crossing, bear down on you when you're in the intersection with the right of way crossing with the light, roll stop signs while you're in the crosswalk, "salmon" (damn right drivers salmon!), reverse down the entire street at 40mph for a parking space (a form of salmoning), park wherever the hell they want, hit you and leave you to die, and if they're caught they lie about it, which absolves them completely.

How this behavior affects me: 

Other Pedestrians: Not that much.  Sometimes I have to walk around the jiggly people and the three-abreasters (usually the same people actually).  The worst is the the asking-for-directions thing, in which case they're robbing me of my valuable time, which is why instead of giving directions I usually hand over a dollar and ask them to fuck off.

Cyclists: It makes me want to take pictures of them and ridicule them on the Internet.

Drivers: It makes me feel like I'm getting face-fucked by a horseshoe crab.

What this makes them:

Other Pedestrians: Annoying
Cyclists: Annoying
Drivers: Complete Assholes

Driving

Who I encounter while driving:

Pedestrians
Cyclists
Other Drivers

How they behave:

Pedestrians: Sometimes do stuff like walk out in front of you while drooling on their cellphones.

Cyclists: Sometimes salmon or run red lights.  (You don't really notice the other stuff when you're driving.)  They can also be kinda hard to see at night if they don't have lights.

Other Drivers: Don't stop at stop signs, drive drunk, run red lights, cut you off on the Deegan at 95mph, don't go when the light turns green because they're drooling on their phones, make U-turns in the middle of intersections, honk at you the second the light turns green, honk in traffic even if the reason for the traffic is that someone's lying in a pool of their own blood, honk at everything, take forever to park, double-park wherever and bring traffic to a halt...

How this behavior affects me:

Pedestrians: Very little.  Sometimes I have to slow down or change direction slightly, which is effortless in a motor vehicle.

Cyclists: Very little, because if anything bike salmon are only annoying if you're also on a bike, and as often as cyclists run red lights I really don't notice it while I'm driving.  (Probably, you know, because they run the red lights when there are no cars coming.)  They should use lights though.

Other Drivers: I pull over in front of a church or house of worship (ironically one of the few places you're not allowed to park), drop to my knees, and pray for them all to die.

What this makes them:

Pedestrians: Mildly annoying at times.
Cyclists: Mildly annoying at times.
Other Drivers: Fucking assholes.

In conclusion, while we're all annoying at various times, it's only the drivers who are full-on assholes no matter how you're getting around--even if you too are driving.  In fact, they're even annoying if you're on the subway, where you think you'd be safe from their molestation, but you'd be wrong.  (And yes, I left out other road users such as motorcyclists, longboarders, Rollerbladers, Segway riders, ElliptiGO users, equestrians, and so forth, but I don't have all day, so here's a dollar and you know what you can do.)

Lastly, this Wall Street Journal report made me want to cry:


It's official, we have reached Peak Fred.

135 comments:

recumbent conspiracy theorist said...

Thursday.

Yeah Cleveland! said...

Bout damn time.

Vernal Magina said...

wut.

recumbent conspiracy theorist said...

I wear jean shorts and sandles.

Alias Bob said...

aloha

babble on said...

Woooot! Hello Peeps! :D

Yeah Cleveland! said...

http://gizmodo.com/20-crazy-rides-from-the-dawn-of-the-bicycle-1575579680

Anonymous said...

Single Digits !! Yeah BayBay !!

vsk

Alec Baldwin said...

I have not been arrested so far today
Top 10!
DAMM IT!!!

dancesonpedals said...

prime dicks

Anonymous said...

The guy who did the tech test ride works at my LBS, where I bought my trusty steel steed.

Buffalo Bill said...

Blazing. Thanks for the fin.

Spokey said...

time to get up I guess

babble on said...

OMG that was EPIC!!

Scrotalitarian. Love love love it!! And hey, I'm a naturalist, too! Does that mean we get to compare nekkid photos at the end of summer?

Don't cry. Peak Fred means the unFred is on it's way back in...

Comment deleted said...

The important exception to the "all drivers are assholes" rule is that the driver saying it is exempted.

All *other* drivers are assholes.

Of course, I'm an excellent driver.

samh said...

Tell us how you really feel, Snob.

Name said...

There was just one comment, but I decided to read it first.

So I win...something.

crosspalms said...

I'd have been here sooner but I was busy leveraging my existing technology.

Anonymous said...

I've been examining my body to see if I have any RetroGrouch on me.
I think I'd remember if he's been in me.

wishiwasmerckx said...

I'm an excellent driver:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vMCTgGjTRA

That scene was shot in front of my high school - I kid you not.

Anonymous said...

Kenny!
LobDammit! You're killing us. What did you get?

Spokey said...

hey was that leroy's dog getting chased by pussy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6GQR3Ym5M8

Spokey said...

did kenny cut the red wire?

Anonymous said...

funny one today wild bill jorts musheen

Anonymous said...

peak Fred...never

there is more "real estate" on that bike for ten more tech items

Anonymous said...

Anyone find snob's missing mojo?

cycle

Orestes Munn said...

Thus saith the Snorb!

It must toast one golden brown to invent two useful and evocative terms and see them diffuse off like ungrateful children who get famous later in life (as porn stars), then emphatically deny their patrimony, and send home nary a cent.

samuel said...

Mid twenties, and I just got out of bed. Feels more epic than it looks.

Dr. Donald Trump said...

Peak Fred is bullshit, we still have another 120 years before we hit peak Fred.

CommieCanuck said...

Dr. Donald is right, we have yet to see Google Glass for cycling, that's pretty much peak Fred.

McFly said...

I am kind of partial to the footfall jiggling.

Anonymous said...

Oh, that was good Fred of the Sea.

You don't live near Carlsbad, do you?

balls™ said...

"The amount of an asshole a person is is directly proportional to the distance they are away from you at the time you discover this flaw."

-George Carlin

Anonymous said...

Snob,
Today's post is awesome!

Anonymous said...

KENNY, KENNY, KENNY!

Not to disrespect the main order of business, which is attending to the pontifications of the Snobby, but we just won't settle down until we receive the crucial Kenny-dispatch.

C'mon, Kenny.

Meantime; did you know Shakespeare invented the word "excellent"? The first time he used it was when he wrote the script for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Clancy Anderson said...

Looks like someone else Salmoned you first. http://bikenazi.blogspot.com/2009/03/idaho-stop-coming-to-oregon.html

Anonymous said...

Scrotalitarian post, Snob!

Orestes Munn said...

Thanks and no, DB, other coast. The inner suburbs of Our Nations's Capital, to be exact. Do you?

I gotta say, however, that this group produces more funny, edgy, stuff in under 50 words than I think I've seen elsewhere for love or money. I am here to study.

Paul Bowen said...

Scrotalitarian is my new term for MRAs

David Pearce said...

Thank you, Snob, for inventing new bike idioms, as well as thoroughly flushing and repacking the bicycling culture.

I think you are correct about everything.

Except about having reached PF, Peak Fred....

semi serious cyclist said...

Cultural iconography, damn right you should be proud of it! wait till it gets into Webster's then you'll really give you something to write home about. Seriously, good job.

To counter your spring riding bliss, today it is effin snowing outside, the rides still full merino.

BikeSnobNYC said...

Clancy Anderson,

Oh yeah?

2007 baby! And cited by the NYTimes!

--Wildcat Rock Machine

Anonymous said...

I prefer to think of "scrotalitarian" as: "ball-breaking to the level of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, or Pol Pot."

Anonymous said...

I have that WSJ endorsed Quad Lock think, and it works pretty well even though made by Aussies. "I am not a Fred" "I am not a Fred."

Greenbelt said...

This points nailed it.

BTW, I invented that expression, in 1985, in my parent's basement after work I think.

Greenbelt said...

Dang autocorrect

"post"

McFly said...

I think you meant to say tugumentry investment of the testes.

WHAT THE F--K KENNY HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CLEAN CAT HAIR OFF FREE SWAG?

balls™ said...

Oh, yeah? I invented that expression in 1983 with a girl from Canada. You don't know her.

recumbent conspiracy theorist said...

Horseshoe crabs are kind of like the retrogrouches of the arthropod world. They are considered living fossils as they have changed little over 450 million years.

Anonymous said...

Careful, Snobby;

Proverb

--pride comes before a fall--

A person who is extremely proud of his or her abilities will often suffer a setback or failure, because he or she tends to be overconfident and to make errors of judgment.

=========================================

Etymology;
Probably from:

1611, Wildcat Rock Machine Version of the Bible, Book of Proverbs, 16:18,
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

BikeSnobNYC said...

Anonymous 2:15pm,

That does not apply to a person who, a couple catchy terms notwithstanding, has experienced mostly setbacks and failures.

--Wildcat Rock Machine

Anonymous said...

@recumbent conspiracy theorist 2:14 PM:

NAILED IT!

dancesonpedals said...

Hezekiah 5:9

to him that taketh the fence, give him the gate also

Comment deleted said...

If you have had a plethora of falls, pride can goeth wherever the fuckth it wants to. -- Billy Shakespeare

CommieCanuck said...

"that's PRIDE messin' witcha head, ...fuck PRIDE"

--Marsallis Wallace.

Anonymous said...

Anon, 2:27

Does that mean we'll hear from Kenny in 120 minutes?

Anonymous said...

Way to make a mockery of Anon 2:31 making a mockery of the deleted spammer!

chiggins said...

1: purdy sure "scrotalitarian" was coined by Tyrone Balzac (ie: "Le Scrotalitarian c'est MOI, chiennes.")

2: you devil you.

dancesonpedals said...

i'm waiting to hear from the oed about 'snarkasm'

(not snark + orgasm)

Juliet said...

O Kenny, Kenny! wherefore art thou Kenny?

Spokey said...

maybe snobby included some wanking devices. Kenny could be gone for days

Anonymous said...

along with anyone's appreciation of artisanal tube tops - (stitched together from donated mnt bike tubes (not valve specific)) - one should, by fucking now, fully understand the origin of the '"salmon".

stanley & chyle said...

what could have happened to kenny?

Salvador Plascencia said...

I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds– but I think of Kenny always in those intervals.”

ce said...

William Cat Rock Machspeare, while I do really enjoy the concept of the "Horseshoe Clusterfuck" I find it a little too syllablistical to readily incorporate into a discourse. I'm wondering if it would have a better chance of sticking in the lexicon if it were pared down to simply: "Crabfuck".

As an added bonus Crabfuck is fully knuck tat complaint.

Yours humbly in corrupting words,

Constantine Eruditus

W.W. Corrigan said...

So where were you when the thought of calling a wrong way cyclist a salmon, and was I riding at you?

Stephanie Laurens said...

My heart only ever had one thought, one want. One need. Despite all, in spite of all...All my heart has ever wanted is Kenny.

Brian Andreas said...

Wanting Kenny to come back before anyone notices part of the world has not moved since he left.

Khalil Gibran said...

There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by Kenny.

Homer said...

…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, Kenny's whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.

Peak_cloy said...

Reed Albergotti is peak something.

Cloying around "important" people and a complete douche around "not important" people. This is going way back to pre-dotcom bubble days.

What. A. Tool.

I guess that's what it takes.

Olle Nilsson said...

Snob, would you still harbour such feelings of benevolance if your terminology was misattributed to:

a) David "I don't own a car" Byrne

b) Anthony "look at my" Weiner

c) Dorothy "threw up a little in my mouth typing this" Rabinowitz

d) Robs "hey Bubba, watch this" Fords?

I for one welcome our new robot-car overlords.

PS - I so want to fill my pockets with dollar bills now, but have to settle for these damned coins. Advantage: USA

Lisa See said...


Kenny was in my hair, my eyes, my fingers, my heart. I day-dreamed about what he was doing, thinking, seeing, smelling, feeling. I could not eat for thoughts of him.

mikeweb said...

I'm back in good shape after a touch of the Lyme.

There may be a lime shortage, but no shortage of Lyme in the Northeast woods.

Anonymous said...

Kenny has either hired a professional film crew to document the opening of the box or he was so exited by the contents, he's out riding with his new toys.

Anonymous said...

We've got that around here, too, Mikeweb. I don't hunt the morel mushrooms anymore.
Hope you're okay.

ce said...

Wild Bard Rote Macbeth,

Disregardeth my lasteth, the "fuck" in Crabfuck isn't going to make it into any number of prestigious publications. I would like to amend my submission to the more broadly acceptable: "Crab-bang".

Sincerely, and all that,

Cletus Errderr

Anonymous said...

FFS, Kenny!

I became so anxious waiting for your report I went and looked at that WSJ story to distract from the disquiet -- it only made Snobby want to cry, it made me want to die.

See what you're doing to us, Kenny!?

Regular guy said...

So now, not only can we don a helmet and feel invincible, we'll feel smart too!

McFly said...

That hoeaeshoe crabette seems kind of slutty.

Dooth said...

I had been riding my bike for a couple of hours and my scranus* was burning, my saddle was like a branding iron. I had to stop at light and was promptly shoaled* by a Fred, a Cat 6*, a fixie-riding hilpster*, and David Byrne sans helment*. Before the light changed, a salmoning* beautiful Godzilla*, her long red hair flowing in the wind, parted the shoal* with her lob*-given powers.

*BSNYC

Willy S. said...

Time to go shake my spear, where's the toilet?

Anonymous said...

Nice, Dooth.

Anonymous said...

too long / didn't read


"Horseshoe clustefucks "


my cod says "bacalla"

Anonymous said...

Hey snob. I broke my femur on some asshole's ford for you. There's a little blue oval on my thigh. Just for you. Well, there was before the surgeons cut me up. "Ohhh, that's so nice" I'm certain you're thinking. Verbatim. Yeah well, I'm calling in that favor immediately. What's the favor? No vacations till I get out of this stupid hospital. And quality content, too: none of this "gluh, I ate too many bagels last night and now I'm too sick to click out more than four paragraphs" business. I don't care if you've got to pull out so- actually it might be kind of cool if you can figure a way of throwing in some tales of your pre-parenthood punkrockness. Do it. Punk show reviews twenty years later. How was biohazard. How shitty your most mainstream show was. Brush out the cobwebs. I need you to keep up the quality content for at least a steady three weeks. Do what you've got to do. I've made top ten on here three times this year, so, y'know, I deserve it. I'm still way to fucked to be trying to be getting in top-anything. Oxycodone. This shit's crap. Who in their right mind would take this on purpose?

I'm stuck doing the exact opposite of what mtn dew always said to do. Yeah. I'm horifuckingzontal.

5593534 and 139 is on a mailbox.

JLRB said...

So another observation on helments from my recent walk about to purchase (everything is McDonald's) stuff:

Neon raincovers on helments are Fredickulouso. Especially when its n
not raining.


what kplauga

BikeSnobNYC said...

Anonymous 4:40pm,

I'm really sorry to hear that and wish you a speedy recovery and the Ford driver a speedy death. I'm sure I will fail you, but I can tell you that once you got on Biohazard's mailing list YOU NEVER GOT OFF.

--Wildcat Rock Machine

A.J. said...

Today's post was the machine gun in the trunk mowing down of Neo-Nazis cathartic release of posts.

/Bravo

Dooth said...

Thanks* DB

*Merriam-Webster

JB said...

I saw a guy in a full Grand Fondo New York kit on Lindbergh Blvd. in St. Louis, MO. What does that mean?

Flyover BC said...

It looked into the local source of the word Salmon.

It turns out that you are the source and it has been adopted by the State's Transportation planners, who are also bike advocates.

I also consulted an English major who considers it poor use of the language to "verb nouns"

JB said...

By the way probably the worst non-interstate road to ride in the area.

Anonymous said...

Tell you Major English Major to screw

Flyover BC said...

So, if a bike Salmon has a head- on accident with a motor vehicle, has he been grilled?

crosspalms said...

JLRB,
Here's another helment story.

Olle Nilsson said...

JB, if you pay the airline lots of extra money (and Freds LOVE spending money), they'll let you check your bike in as luggage.

Comment deleted said...

Flyover BC, tell him to go EnglishMajor himself.

Flyover BC said...

I asked the English Major where he got his information at.

He said "It's improper use of the language to end a sentence with a preposition.

So I said "Up with this, I will not put, asshole".

He seemed very pleased that I took his criticism to heart.

Flyover BC said...

It's clear that the verb salmon will live on forever because once transportation planners start using it, it'll never go away. (e.g. road, highway, etc).

It helps that the word is the same in several languages too.

Comment deleted said...

C

Anonymous said...

CI

Anonymous said...

springtime Rollie

Orestes Munn said...

It is excellent English usage to end a sentence with a proposition, e,g., drivers are assholes.

Anonymous said...

Wow, great column, I don't know what I had to pay to read this but it was worth whatever I paid!

Fre Unchio said...

Man, am I glad I never got on Biohazards mailing list. Its been over a week since I got off and I'm going nuts, can't imagine going twenty years or so.

How do you do it, Snob? And how do you explain the 17 offspring?

Regular guy said...

JB, the guy might be lost. Did he look emaciated and disoriented?

Comment deleted said...

Pre-handlebar Rollie!


From back in "Stingie 1860", according to the RobotSniffer.

Mr Nofish said...

Not sold on peak fred. I don't think a guy with two iPhones on his bike has enough brainpower left to actually use the bike as intended.

As such, it qualifies as a show-off moron, which, if you like, is exactly most BikeForums users, whether they think it is OK to give opinions about saddles because they just came back from that one EPIC!1! 15 miler, or they argue to no end about vertical compliance of crabon seatposts and why all crabon frames explode as soon as they are used in a trainer.

However, these people are not cyclists, they are not even people on bikes, they're just morons with too much money burning a hole in their pocket.

PS: I think you're being too generous labeling as annoying the asshole motorists who happen to be on foot and jaywalk deliberately in front of your bike while you're traveling at woohoo/2 speed, even though the chances you fall badly and slip into a coma might be slim, they can still make you crash and that hurts and is expensive.

Dan Webster said...

and I just coined "Antidiscrotalitarianism"

Bogusboy said...

Wow. All drivers are assholes? All the time? Oh, right, you live in the Center of the Universe, aka NYC.

Trust me, pal, Lob is giving you a sign. Hear the wisdom of Alec Baldwin. It's time to move to LA.

Anonymous said...

All the anti-car hyperbole is boring to me. It would be alright if it was funny but it's just boring.Most of your other stuff is great. But the car schtick is not working.

Anonymous said...

IMHo, you forgot to mention another small but important group -horse shit, err, cops.
What ever they on car, or on horses and sometimes even on feet - they are ultimately NYC own horse shit.
At least NYC horses that drive carriages have a bucket behind their, not the cops. riding over their shit every day!

Claws For Concern said...

Never date one of those horseshoe fuckers, you'll end up with crabs.

Hit 'n' Run said...

Flyover BC,
If the bike salmon happened to be a Chinese Horseshoe crab, you would end up with a crushed-asian.

ce said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
leroy said...

You can't spell car without Carlin:

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
George Carlin



ce said...

Wildcrab,

Upon further reflection I realise "Crab-bang" doesn't roll off the tongue particularly well due to the two b's in the middle. It's a pity we are not describing crayfish, as "Craybang" works nicely.

I also like the term "Swinger Crabs", as it sounds like Swimmer Crabs, but unfortunately in my extensive research (googlesearch) I found that the mating practices of Blue Swimmer Crabs are quite exclusive - at least for the 13 day period during which the male carries the female around, helps her moult, fends off other males and then roots her. Also, their distribution in the world's oceans is limited predominantly to the waters of non English speaking, developing countries, like Australia, which probably limits the resonance of the term Swinger Crabs in the western world, where all the money for Word Inventors resides.

So, back to square one.

Yours trying-too-hardingly,

Crab Enthusiast

babble on said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
babble on said...

C-C-Can't type!

OMG!!! Be careful of the wordings you choose, snobberdooders. Never ever ever say "NEVER GOT OFF." Please. Never. No matter what.

Jeez. Don't scare me like that. :S

BikeSnobNYC said...

Anonymous 9:56pm,

I'll be sure to run future posts by you first.

--Wildcat Rock Machine

ce said...

Good morning Snobbo, sorry for carelessly bastardising your nom de plume earlier. I see the error of my ways now, I should have more thoughtfully bastardised it. If I had my time again I would have gone with "Wordycunt Rote Macbeth", a more cohesive refinement.

I'll show myself out now.

McFly said...

Howzaboot ol' Minor Taylor Phinney breaking the oppressive chains of Super-Uber(Ed. note: No Umulets)-Domestique and breaking away FTW AND DOING THAT SWEEEEET GAY-ASS BOW AT THE LINE?!?!?!

I liked it.

(He dedicated the win to some guy named Kenny)

Peter Schalch said...

Hi Bikesnob,
So I know this is gonna sound preachy or annoying or whatever but talking about rape casually and trivializing it encourages a culture in which rape is not taken seriously, treated as a joke, or treated as inevitable. Please view as its more articulate than me.

http://thefeministhangout.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/rape-culture-101/comment-page-1/

BikeSnobNYC said...

Peter Schalch,

You're right, it does.

--Wildcat Rock Machine

JB said...

Zing!

Angry Beaver in Miramichi said...

Is that 5 male crabs and one female? If yes, it's called Babbles Dream.

Angry Beaver in Miramichi said...

Flyover@527 flies in for the win.

JB said...

Snob, your lexicon is infiltrating my non-bike-blog-reading/commenting time. I just put this on the family Google calendar for Monday: 9-Noon: [JB] is doing the mountain biking.

(Going to a kindergarten party in the afternoon - taking the whole day off! Pray to Lob for good weather.)

Anonymous said...

Angry Beaver at 8:52.
Good call my friend.

JLRB said...

JB @ 9:00

If you were really brainwashed it would have said "JB is doing the Cunt Biking" which would be hard to explain to a kinderkid...

JLRB said...

So, who has coined more phrases, BSNY or the Captcha beast?

Female Horseshoe Crab said...

Peter, save us!

JLRB said...

I don't think I want to take your abuse.

I know I don't want to take you or your luggage to the airport. How about that, huh?

FART SLOT said...

Bike Snob wroted "(a superlative roughly equivalent to 'epic' or 'awesome,' which I just now invented)."

To which I reply:
YOU DID NOT INVENT "AWESOME" YOU LIAR!

From the land of the bean and the cod (the testicular definition) and where we have delis that will make smoked salmon subs of excellent quality called gravlax grinders. I think someone else coined "gravlax grinder" some time ago in the comments section, but I'll take credit with a T/H to the sticky-fingered writer known as Bike Snob NYC.

OOPS OOPS said...

FYI, Biohazard is playing at this years Gathering in Ohio.

Whoop-Whoop my Ninja!