Monday, February 05, 2007
HELMET LAND or, TIME TO GROW A PAIR AMERICA!
One of my comic drawing students & his mum saw me riding my bike to work the other day. About an hour into the class he asks me, "Mr. Sean, why weren't you wearing a helment while you rode your bike?" I took a moment & replied, "Because when i was a kid, we didn't care about safety. No one wore bike helmets. No one wore elbow pads & knee pads. You didn't even have to wear a seat belt. People smoked & it wasn't the end of the world." The kids were flabbergasted that people didn't wear seatbelts or helmets. If only the kid & his mom had seen me riding through Oakland drinking a 40 oz. of Coors & smoking a black & mild like i used to after work! These are the same kids that are spending more & more time interpreting reality through electronic boxes. If the kids are this conditioned to paranoiac wimp helmet culture, just think about their parents! Bloody terrifying if you ask me. There is a lot of talk about how sad it is that the middle class is shrinking, but if you ask me, they've never done anyone a lick of good.
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5 comments:
I've knew of a guy that died in a bike accident, hit a train stop sign on his bike and split his skull right open. I always drove past the spot on my way to get taco bell. I will say there are some cool looking helmets out there. I have a friend who has some harleyesque bike, when he rides he wears a black spiked helmet, looks fuckin awesome.
known of a guy, fuck I sound retarded.
i know people who've been killed on their bikes too. but also, i know people who have died in all manner of ways. the biggest cause of death seems to be getting old. next seems to be drug abuse & drinking. then having unprotected anal sex with random men. that's just from my own observations of people i know. it's funny, while i wrote this i started thinking about condoms & the idea of "wearing a helmet". It's a similar argument, but i totally fall on the other side about that one. anyhow, with bicycles, it's more about the spirit of the thing for me, the safety culture. i don't actually give a toot about helmets or not, it's more the people who seem to worship them these days! with me, it's never the specific, but more, the spirit of the thing. they make some cool german looking helmets too, i might get one just for the heck of it. i do have a son. on the other hand, i do plenty of unsafe things.
I'm reminded of the Mass. school district that outlawed tag at recess...
Out entire culture seems to be dominated by fear; wether it be personal safety/health, the 'terrorists', etc. It's ridiculous.
Minnesota is in the process of writing up a bill for a state-wide smoking ban; they're forcing private bussinesses to disallow their customers from smoking ( a perfectly legalactivity) inside their own fucking buildings. It's disgusting. The "science" behind the seconf-hand smoke scare is completely ridiculous too. I recommend the Penn & Teller episode that delves into it.
And what's on the proto-socialist "public" radio in the days after the announcement about the smoking ban? -
a report about how cancer rates in the US are down significantly for the first time in many years. What was this decrease attributed to? Yep. The decrease in the 'spread' of second-hand smoke. This claim is too dumb to even counter..
people used to believe in freedom & danger in this country! let's bring it back!
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