“crank”iness & ramblings
getting quite annoyed at my bike. the left crank arm (that attaches the pedal to the axle) keeps working itself loose. it started several weeks ago, but i used to be able to tighten it up and it’d be fine for a while. Now i barely get 1 km before i have to stop and fix it. On my way to my pro-feminist men’s collective meeting last night, i had to tighten it 3 times just to get there, and 3 times on the way back.
for those who haven’t heard about my wednesday meeting, the group is called JunkMale (”junking our masculinity, to embrace our humanity” or something like that…it’s on a pamphlet somewhere ;), and we meet to work on political projects to oppose capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. as part of that, we also work to provide emotional support for each other. Men in our society tend to depend on the women in their lives to do their emotional work for them, so part of our goal is to provide that for each other so we can take some of the burden off the women in our lives.
umm…so i guess i was whining about my bike not working. i’ll just have to go hit up the bike shop for some parts on saturday. i’m itching to go on a nice long ride this weekend, but i can’t really plan it out until i know i’m going to have a functioning bike.
it’d be good to have a day just to sit around and relax a bit though. i’d like to catch up on some reading. i’ve been reading a lot of politics lately (like Edward Said’s “Culture & Imperialism”, and Jeff Schmidt’s “Disciplined Minds: a critical look at salaried professionals”…both are highly recommended), but i want to find some good fantasy or sci-fi or something. it’d be good to work my way through a bunch of Ursula K. Le Guin’s books. i’ve heard great things about a number of her books. there’s also an upcoming TV miniseries based on her EarthSea series, so i’d like to read the books before i watch that. The last fantasy stuff i was reading was Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” series, which was entertaining, but i need to find something new.
book suggestions are always welcome, fiction or non.
Ride hard, ride free
November 26th, 2004 at 12:59 pm
i’m so happy the junk male collective exists. i wish every man - especially so-called “lefties” - would make it a priority to do their emotional homework.
i think you’ll like le guin’s books. i had a ukrainian friend who was translating her books into russian. she told me that The Left Hand of Darkness totally revolutionized her ideas about gender. yay ursula! i often think that artists are able to radicalize people much more effectively than our demos and leaflets.