what was that? is that all there is? who is this? this is it.

Ask me about the word cockamamie

Cockamamie means ridiculous, implausible, foolish, silly, stupid, pathetic. About 100 years ago temporary tattoos were all the rage in candy, gum packs and crackerjacks and kids struggled to pronounce the French word to describe the trend decalcomanie but cockamamie stuck around. 

A few days ago Rae Armantrout brought the word out of storage when I read her poem “Uncanny Valleys” and now it's in my head.  

Here's a snippet of it:

They say appearances can be deceiving.

They say essence is cockamamie.

They fall back

on function. 

Function serves the gut;

the gut serves no one. 

Try to use cockamamie in a sentence in the next seven to ten working days. Even if you don’t say it out loud. 

Ask me about the blossoming cherry

give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses but don’t give me your cockamamie inquiries about where you could possibly park your cars on campus to look at the blossoming cherry trees. 

Ask me about “INQUIRY”

INQUIRY magazine comes from The University of Texas at Arlington. A few copies of the current issue arrived at the mothership last week only to be chucked into the recycling bin because of their insufficient addresses. The cover photo of a flood-stage river in Texas got my attention with its textured tactile fancy pants printing. So I peeled a few off and saved them for something. That something turned into these ISRU postcards. 

707 NE Northlake Place

is the imaginary address I imagined for the MotherShip. Because it makes sense. It’s the building sitting between 616 NE Northlake Place and 814 NE Northlake Place. Except somebody decided to call the MotherShip 3900 7th Ave NE. Perhaps because I wasn’t invited to that planning committee meeting. 

Unfortunately there’s a 707 NE Northlake Way that actually exists and my great idea would be an endless snafu of misdeliveries between the two 707s. Way and Place. Place and Way. That's a detail a bike messenger pays attention to.

Maybe I’ll reimagine a 700 NE Northlake Place…  ..it has to be an even number. That's a detail this bike messenger overlooked

The USPS would write in big black greasy grease pencil NSN and return it to sender.  

NO SUCH NUMBER

Which brings me to some numbers I’d like to run by you in the midst of March Madness. 

The number of possible permutations to the 64-team NCAA playoff bracket is 9.22 quintillion. 

That’s 9,223,372,036,854,775,808

If you filled out every possible bracket on a sheet of paper, that stack of paper would circle the earth 21 million times. Twenty one million fucking times. That’s a few reams of paper. 

If you filled out every possible bracket at a rate of one per second it would take you 292 billion years. Our universe has only existed for 13.8 billion years. 

Another perspective on the quantity of "one billion" At my manual labor electric ass bathtub mailman job it would take me 20,000 years to earn one billion dollars. And that’s before taxes. 

run the numbers 

may not be 

from around here

obviously

historically

quantifiably

statistically

actuarially

touchy feely

geographically

architecturally

socioeconomically

psychosomatically

gastrointestinally

anthropomorphically

sore thumb out sticky

fishy  fish   fishy

out of water

out of place

rainy day daze

Tuesdays too

water gets where 

water    g o e s

with or without you

with it or on it

pushing the river

swimming up streams

barking up trees

misdirected energies

ring around rosies

doing hokey pokies

right up my alleys 

off “The Ave”

A photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy lifted from a 63 year old bike repair book transferred to a transparency then exposed to just the right bright light on photo emulsion onto the silkscreen so I could wash it out and smoosh paint through it onto a T-shirt or a hoodie or a onesie and then 27 years later a postcard or two to you and to you two too. 

pilderwasser transparency history pulled from the past for potential pilderwasser futures…

When I have packages to deliver to Benjamin Hall, which I like to call “Hall Hall” but it's actually called The Benjamin Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building, I often walk them over. Taking the final fifty fucking feet on foot. No reason to saddle up the electric ass bathtub just to take it spitting distance from the Mother Ship, a bunny hop away, next door.

By the way, the 668 Neighbor-of-the-Beast building is still a mystery to me.   

As you sit in your airconditioned delivery van and try to figure out how 616 NE Northlake Place relates to 3900 7th Ave NE. I’ll already be done with the delivery and walking back. 

January 9th on my stroll over I couldn’t help but notice a discarded dental pick. Then two months later on March 10 I made a delivery and on my stroll back I noticed the same pick kicked to the parking strip, but it’s still there, still hanging on. Just like it will be for the next 10,000 years. 

 1/9/26  12:28pm

3/10/26  12:34pm

bartender says “is this a joke?”

Eight Seven says “I’m a frayed knot”

Zero Seven says “can I get an [87] ?” 

like it's 1999 

crows know

the arrows know

do-si-do

quid pro quo

go figure

Armantrout’s 2024 poetry book got my attention again this morning, calling out from a dusty shelf to go for a ride

revisiting

rewinding

replaying

didn’t give it

enough time 

the first time

but this time 

is different

the Loteria card postcard

is on its way

to you-know-who

in ABQ

tabla #6 

carta #31

las jaras

crows know

the arrows know

do-si-do

quid pro quo

metaphorically

fixing a flat

followed by

fixing it again

three more times

because it was 

halfassed 

the first time

a story here

there   is

an epic fable

but I’m not 

going there

into that 

actual fix a flat 

I’m proud or maybe

I’m embarrassed

by how many flats

I’ve actually fixed

my own

as well as

bike shop bikes

replacing 

swapping

scuffing 

sanding

vulcanizing

patching

booting

triggering 

feelings of 

diminishing

PSI

squeezing

feeling feelings 

sincerely

for real

really

they say they

come in threes

are you kidding me?

it was all  

summed up 

succinctly 

by my 

Canadian girlfriend 

when she said

“I thought you worked on bikes”

as she drove me

and my bike 

back to the train station 

I’ll tell you a story 

someday when 

you buy me beer(s)

but not at the  

74th Street Ale House

on a rainy Friday the 13th

spring forward

clockwise wise

if you can keep your 

head on a swivel

…if you can keep 

your head when 

all about you

are losing theirs

and blaming 

it on you…

Rudyard Kipling

walks into a bar

bartender says

“If- and only If-”

as if it’s

all about you

a piece of cake 

to have & to eat too

you want it 

that way

you want it

this way too

but it doesn’t 

work that way

it appears to

work this way

if and only if it’s 

all about you

Everyday after work I slowly grind up the hill back to the train station to begin part two of the roundtrip that is my epic daily  commute. Many of those days I’m waylaid for a pint at Big Time. Then I get back on my uphill line from 42nd to 43rd. I never take the Ave, sometimes I take Brooklyn, but I prefer to take the alley. It’s like a rite of passage, running the gamut, running the gauntlet, a garbage-strewn shitshow defining the U district. The seedy unsightly smelly underbelly behind the scenes with unappetizing dumpsters overflowing everywhere behind all the restaurants on the Ave and between a handful of pay-for-parking lots that will all be 15 story apartment buildings soon enough.  My line adapts, overcomes and changes depending on the delivery trucks or the posse of Uber Eats-Grub Hub bros in their cars waiting and clogging up the South end. 

The day before yesterday in the alley I had thoughts of pausing and leaning my bike on a dumpster for a photo depending on what just right light through yonder building breaks. Looking to sum up the U district in one digital snap shot.  But as I rolled up to an ideal spot, there was a guy pissing by a dumpster. He was in no hurry and wasn’t trying to disguise it at all.  So I kept rolling on to the station and waited for the elevator with my bike. 

got on the elevator and pressed the PLATFORM button. The doors were almost closed when someone pushed the down button and paused the elevator. Two more passengers got on. One of them was the piss alley piss guy. The toe of his right shoe (his downhill foot) was still a little wet dappled with piss.  I shook my head and said to myself “welcome to the U district”

Yesterday I was grinding up the alley until a delivery truck clogged up my line. So I took a left through the parking lots over to Brooklyn where I paused and took the symbolic photo above. As the ideal U district piss alley underbelly shot exists only in my mind. 

somewhere between

substantiation  &  successional 

down in the lower left 

corner of the page

this page here

not so subtly torn 

from a thesaurus

you’ll find 

the word    subtle

old school like

pasted onto a scrap

of cardboard and

magically transformed 

into a postcard 

hand-delivered

via electric ass bathtub

to my penpals

in the greenhouse  

in the LIFE SCIENCES 

consortium

circa box #351800 

where the mail 

sometimes sits & sits

for 7 to 10 days 

until a student worker 

picks it up 

and sorts it out

judging a journal 

by its cover

as if the cover

is all I need

can’t stomach the contents

leave it at that

this morning at the mothership I tossed this journal into the Math Department’s mail cubby. And that’s all happened before,  but today I began to consider my own ill-posed problems and the inverse proportional relationships in my day-to-day 

travelling salesman story problem paragraphs rolling out in real time Monday through Friday…    …it’s the same on the weekends as the rest of the days

the talk being talked

occasionally

coincides

with the walk

being walked

when it does

the syzygy

appeals to me

alignment & authenticity

Polar opposites don't push away, it's the same
on the weekends as the rest of the days
and I know, I should go, but I'll probably stay
and that's all you can do about some things

what we talk about 

when we talk about

the super worm blood moon

lunar eclipse 3/3 @3:33

appeals to me more than

what we talk about 

when we talk about

Michelob Ultra Zero

Early this morning as I was screening this shirt for Mr. Hella Corndog Classic himself, I was trying to recall what year it was when I busted out a batch of HC/DC shirts and that spiffy Hella Yellow Jersey for the race winner, Stacie Bain.

This was not the epic Monorail Kevin Cool Guy Hella cracked sternum Corndog Classic...

this was 2009 perhaps? Hella Hella 

April 26 did fall on Sunday that year...

Soon this throwback will be on its way to Rip City. 

the big picture

the little things

the attention to detail

the road to hell

the road less travelled

the long & winding road

the short cut

the hypotenuse

the   A   to   B

as the crow flies

over    yonder

down by the river

neither 

here nor there

everywhere

single use

throw away

plastic

a dictionary definition

of the word

spastic

toner cartridges

K-Cup® pods

dental picks

take a moment

to locate one

near you

keep in mind

it   may   be

behind you

a map within a map

within a map

within a map

a quality of life issue

ARE YOU HERE

YOU ARE HERE

HERE YOU ARE

wish you were beer

a potato salad sandwich

wrapped in two tortillas

served on a pile of pasta

carb-o-rama

arrows know

4cm/year

adds up 

totum pro parte

ONEWAY

or another

pars pro toto

0 1 0

zero one zero

oh  ONE  oh

quid pro quo

the arrows know

it’s like riding a bike

non-drive side

pant leg

rolled up

old school

ye olde school

like a bike messenger

a legal messenger

on a bike    like

a notary seal

embossed

raised

tactile

for real

in and for

the state of

Washington

residing in Seattle

throw back 

going way      way back

8.5” x 14”

legal size

reams of it

stacked 

stacks 

stack

dust

collected

redirected

repurposed

taken out of context

and put back in

Big Time

like a liberal arts degree

trapped   in   the   body

of a former messenger

wait

What?

Where am I?

What day is it?

What    is    this?

electric ass bathtub

Merce Cunningham

and Patsy Swayze

walk into a bar

all throttle

no pedal

final fifty fucking feeting

it’s like riding a bike

Would you rather

drive a truck around and suck the shit out of Honey Buckets?

or

work in the Lane Powell mail room?

as you know

it continues to be

a quality of life issue

On Saturday I was hoping to find The Copywriter in the Peak Pick section at the library, but this book found me instead. It jumped my reading list queue and became the al la carte book of the day. The number one book of the weekend.  

After I finished it, I found its book review in the New York Times. Then I realized if I had read the review a couple weeks ago I would have no motivation to read the actual book. 

I recommend this book and if you want to read it, please don’t read the review yet. If you don’t really care to read this book then the review will sum it all up for you, too well. 

There’s an authentic satisfaction that comes with actually reading a book. It’s a feeling that’s quite different from the hollow jibber-jabber empty chit-chat that comes from only reading a book review and pretending like you’ve read the book. 

Read the book. 

Later you can read the review and compare notes. 

Yesterday I made this postcard on a scrap of matboard that Heather gifted me the day before. Today it’s on its way to a penpal in Palo Alto. 

The working title is “shift” as if you’re reaching down for your downtube shifter to get another cog on your 5-speed freewheel, the chain guided by a trusty Suntour derailleur. And all of that is OK. Literally.  In a simple retro road grime work-a-day refurbished BikeWorks bike kind of way. 

However, the “shift” that I find more interesting occurs with the changing light as you hold the postcard in your hand. Given center stage the silver and gold arrows take over and it’s kind of a jumble, a tangle, a mess. But as you turn the card, changing the angles of incidence and the angles of reflection, the arrows recede and the white paint of the derailleur shines through clearly. 

It’s hard to describe at 4:33 in the morning, on my first cup of coffee, with just a couple slap-dash digital shots. But you get the picture. 

s h i f t

This my current reading list. Bouncing between these two...

“Show Don’t Tell” by Curtis Sittenfeld is a collection of short stories. You may have seen her name in the New Yorker or on one of her several other books. 

I got this book from Molly months ago and now I’m finally into it. Good stuff these stories are. Good stuff. 

“Football” by Chuck Klosterman. This book is not for the average football fan. I’m confident it would not appeal to the Seahawk fans I saw last week crowding my 5:30am train on their way downtown to stake out a spot on the curb on 4th Avenue to wait six hours for a chance to see the superbowl trophy roll by. 

I’m a Klosterman fan but I need to take his work in small bites. He knows his shit and can talk about anything for a long time. He talks about football and a wide range of other things as well. It brings to mind a fictional metaphorical road trip in a minivan from Flagstaff back to Grinnell listening to whatever radio station came in clearly across Nebraska when long-time KEXP DJ Kevin Cole, one the backseat passengers, couldn’t stop commenting on every song that came on the radio, expressing his amazing knowledge of music, bands, musicians and the music industry, until one of the other passengers finally told him to “shut the fuck up and just look out the window or take a nap or something” 

I consider myself a football fan but not “an average football fan” and therefore I’m within Klosterman’s target audience with this book. I’m taking it in small servings. When I got to a passage on page 182 where Klosterman mentions Public Enemy’s “She Watch Channel Zero” I had to pause and smile and give an imaginary fist pump ::: two seven five four eight she watched she said all added up to zero and nothing in her head 

 It might be hard to watch a game with Klosterman if you wanted to actually pay attention to it. But he points out several times in the book, a three-hour televised football game contains only 11 minutes of actual live play. Klosterman would have no problem keeping you entertained for those other 169 minutes of down time. 

This is my next next next book. I've only read a review of it but I can already recommend it to you two too. 

Ask me about NE Northlake Place

and how it relates to

NE Northlake Way        as if

anyone gives a shit

Ask me why someone

chose 7th Ave NE

over NE Northlake Pl     as

the mothership’s address

Ask me why

The University Bridge (1919)

is on the National Register

of Historic Places

Ask me about spitting distance

and how it relates

to long tailed cats

in rooms full of rockers

Ask me about pints of beer

at the Northlake Tavern

and how it all relates to 

earning a living wage

Ask   me   about 

what    quantifies   as

more than you can 

shake a stick at 

Ask   

me

what

I’m  looking  at

two brass nipples walk into a bar

Righty Tighty & Lefty Loosey

bartender says, “linseed oil?”

i have vague recollections

of the events in question

the more I focus on details

dates and times

names and faces

people and places

the more fuzzy my focus

fades to black

fading back

to vague recollections

Pouring one out for

the Chemistry Library

her days were numbered