First of all, my MP bag continues to serve me well in a business/bikin' capacity. I took it to Cape Cod a couple weeks ago and it smoothly made the transition from workaday bike riding bag to weekendy child-provision-carrying bag. Here is a nice picture of the bag soaking up the sun on the beach in Provincetown, Mass.
Also, I busted out the needle and thread to make a modification to the bag. You can learn more about this oh-so-exciting development after the jump (along with a slightly NSFW picture of the best graffiti ever).
When Lauren (our favoritest person in the whole world, who works at Manhattan Portage) sent me the bag, she conceded that the backpack straps weren't the most comfortable. And while it is true that they are simple nylon webbing straps, at first I didn't mind too much. But another problem they do have for me is that they are not long enough propoerly to span the rippling musculature of my strong, sun-dappled back and powerful shoulders. After a couple trips carrying heavy stuff, I started to see the shortcomings of these straps. Luckily, I had an old backpack from Target, a pair of scissors, a needle, and some thread, so voila:
Not bad, right? It took about 45 minutes, and increased the comfort of the bag by about one bazillion percent. There's not much to it - luckily, I was able to connect up the buckle-strap-holding thingy on the original MP strap to some webbing on the new strap, so I only needed to sew the two straps together at one place - right at the top. Also, because I used black thread with black webbing, you can't see how haphazard my hand-stitching is.
I know this is sort of a boring post, so here's a photo of the best graffiti ever in the whole entire world, which I saw on the inside of a porta-potty in Truro, Mass.
It says,
Derek Jeter blew me here, 7/2/02 (he did swallow and applied the "shocker")
Crass? You bet. But strangely earnest.
how do you do the shocker on a dude?
ReplyDelete(response not necessary)
Yeah, I pondered that too - I even looked up "shocker" on urban dictionary dot com to see if there was some other meaning I didn't know about (no, there is not). I considered the possibility that the author of this scrawl might be a woman using "blew me" in a gender-neutral way to mean, "performed oral sex on me," but if that were so, the graffito would lose all its oomph: Anything written about Derek Jeter on a Massachusetts bathroom wall must be presumed to have derogatory intent, and we can further assume that that derogation would be achieved by imputing homosexuality to Jeter (not because I think homosexuality is bad, but because, from a sociological standpoint, I understand the ethos and vernacular of bathroom-wall-based character attacks on sporting figures). An anonymous woman's boast of having received cunnilingus and the afformentioned "shocker" from the Yankees' shortstop, while marginally plausible on a ladies room wall in Manhattan, seems nearly unthinkable in Truro, Mass. It would be like writing, "I have the clap, and I gave it to Dustin Pedroia." So I am left to assume that the author misapprehended the mechanics of the shocker.
ReplyDeletei don't know about y'all, but i have never seen Derek Jeter neked.
ReplyDeletePerhaps he is a hermaphrodite?
though, perhaps, given the location...it is very possible the information is not true!??!
yet, it is still very funny.
my bad. i meant the writer could perhaps be a hermaphrodite.
ReplyDeleteactually i didn't mean that either; but after discussing jeter's potential hermaphroditedness with adam bulger, i realized it wasn't jeter in question, but the writer.
blogging is so confusing sometimes.
as is hermaphroditedness.
i hope you can all understand.
it's very gender-neutral handwriting, so I don't think the author being a hermaphrodite is out of the question.
ReplyDeleteAs it happens, I used to work with a woman whose former co-worker had a one-night stand with Jeter (how's that for reliable?). The report from the former co-worker of my former co-worker was that Jeter was emphatically not a hermaphrodite, if you catch my meaning.
ReplyDeleteso, you're calling jeter a dick? can't say I disagree.
ReplyDeletegreat. this has been picked up by one of the two worst blogs ever written...all becasue i ask an innocent question.
ReplyDeletehttp://sittingbehindwill.blogspot.com/
...And now the conversation at the Red Rock last night makes a lot more sense.
ReplyDelete