Winterbiking in Winterpeg: an Incredibly Angry Tirade.

It snowed two weeks ago. There's lots of snow. The roads are rarely clean. Everyone's driving about half as fast as usual.

I feel like i'm a pretty considerate cyclist; while i do bike pretty defensively and take enough space to be safe, i'm pretty good about not blocking traffic, about communicating what i'm doing, signaling, etc, and, in these conditions, if i do have to take a lane in order to bike safely, i actually stop every so often to let cars get around me.

(In summer i bike in the parking lane, despite the fact that i'm constantly dodging the doors of people who can't get it through their heads to look before opening them. But in winter that part of the road is icy and uneven, and if i try biking there i'll basically end up bailing and possibly getting run over. )

Despite my being as considerate as i possibly can be, and despite the fact that the real problem is simply that the roads are terrible, and that i'm not affecting that grand picture very much by being there, (how long do i possibly hold anyone up? thirty seconds? a minute?) people say and do rude, borderline psychopathic things to me, every day. I constantly get screamed at by poor, suffering souls who have to drive 20 instead of 30 for a block or two until they can pass me. I get screamed at by people who could easily just pass me right there but for some reason still feel like it's necessary to honk at me and then try to THREATEN me with their VEHICLE by driving up beside me at my speed and then moving over towards me. (what the fuck! who threatens a human being with, literally, a ton, of metal?!). I get screamed at by some ignorant fuck for "not following the rules", (read, running a red light when the coast was clear, to GET AWAY from the traffic, which is to their advantage as well as mine.) I catch up with them, politely ask them if they were trying to communicate something, explain this, and am graced with more childlike profanity and then the person in question speeding away. I get screamed at, god knows why, for biking IN THE BIKE LANE on a bridge with two lanes for cars available and almost no other traffic.

Cyclists don't stop having rights just because the weather changes. Dear Winnipeg drivers: Fuck You. I hope you all die in a cancerous cloud of exhaust.

You are making me not want to leave my house. You are contributing to my winter depression. Although i've managed to be calm when i get the chance to actually have a talk with one of you self-centered fucks, you are making me incredibly angry. There are times when i feel like by the end of the winter i will either murder or be murdered by one of these people in a fit of rage which could come from either side, and the odds are not looking up for me, as i travel on a much smaller weapon.

p.s.: i know that some drivers are not assholes. for the love of god, please show yourselves before i lose all faith in humanity.

Wait! i Lied!

Having another blog that's strictly about things i'm making made me miss having a blog where i can wax philosophical. or whatever.
So, i'm not getting rid of this one. They can both exist. Hooray!

Over the last month i've been really focussed on building up my etsy store, and preparing for three holiday craft sales.
This might appear to be sort of uncharacteristic for someone who thinks that capitalism is inherently violent and consumerism is driving everything to destruction.

Sort of.

It's interesting trying to achieve, well, survival, and ideally autonomous survival (as opposed to being someone's employee), without "selling out". It's interesting thinking about things like how to sell my product and how to find my niche market while being fully aware that some (most?) of the things i make are useless material comforts, and that i'm selling them to, (read: comforting) people who are pretty privileged and might need something other than more comforts in their lives.

I could argue that almost everything i make is recycled, (hooray, we will save the environment and planet through tokenistic liberal environmentalism, etc etc!!!!!) but let's not fool ourselves. Recycled useless material products are still useless material products.

(there is an argument to be made for the value of beauty, or art, or whatever, which i do believe in sometimes. this is a whole other issue and i'm not going to tangle it into this one right now)

The truth, in the end, is that we are all already sold out, and that we need to do what we need to do.
This doesn't mean that everything is hopeless and that we should give up on all the ethical standards we try to hold ourselves to. This just means that i'd rather pay my rent by doing something which is not inherently radial than pay my rent by doing something not radical AND oppressive. (be employed).

The bad news is that nothing is perfect. The good news is that there is sooooo much exciting work to be done.

My Other Blog is a Mercedes.

Er, i mean, tumblr.
This blog is being phased out. my new one is a shared blog with dandy and we're basically using it to try and document every single thing we make. which is ambitious, because we make a lot of stuff.
Check it out:
http://www.ofcourseyoucandistro.com