Sad musings on the inherent cruelty of a bike rider

Last night, Aaron and I decided to bike to our church activity, some 14 miles away. Unfortunately, Omaha has (I'm convinced) only ONE ~1 mile stretch of bike lane in the entire city (I am so not kidding. And it's not even really a bike lane. It's actually the gutter. They painted a white line next to it and put a picture of a bike on it, and then they left it full of storm debris, like leaves, twigs, and trees. It's actually only there so they can say they're a "bike-friendly" city. Right.). So anyway, due to the lack of anything resembling a bike lane, we had to bike quite a bit on some narrow streets on our way to trails and wider roads. As we were biking up a hill on Western, we apparently greatly inconvenienced a gentleman driving by himself in an enormous white truck (and I'll leave it to you to imagine exactly what he was compensating for), forcing him to drive slightly below the speed limit for the entirety of approximately ten seconds. It was terribly inconsiderate of us, I know, and he was happy to let us know as he drove past ("Use the f---ing sidewalk," he said, clearly demonstrating his superior creativity and grasp of the English language). It was fortuitous that he was able to pass, thereby saving himself several seconds of precious time before he had to come to a halt at the stop sign just ahead. As we biked up, he rolled down the window, gave us his best look of indignant stupidity, and, in yet another feat of superb articulation, said "Seriously? Are you kidding me?" Feeling deeply sorry for the emotional pain we had inflicted on him, I said in a mollifying voice, "We're legally required to ride on the road." In his extreme agony, he was able only to reply, "I don't f---ing care about legal," adding, much as a threatened little bully might say on the playground to the frail menace of the scrawny child in glasses, "Next time I'm going to f---ing hit you." Unable to look any more upon the faces of his tormentors, he fled from our presence. At this point, a tiny tear escaped my eye as I sorrowfully beheld his broken spirit; broken, no doubt, because of the immense suffering he bore as he drove along behind us, going a mere 20 miles per hour in a 25 miles per hour zone for ten seconds/an eternity, thereby costing him a total distance of .01388889 miles. Maybe my tear was actually caused by the cloud of noxious gas his truck spewed out at us as he drove away, but it still reflected the agony of my soul for the permanent damage I'm sure he suffered in his traumatic ordeal.

eMusic Plottings

I have a confession to make. I have taken eMusic's 50 free song downloads introductory deal and shamelessly manipulated it to get more than 50 free downloads. Yes, it's true. See, the deal is, if you sign up, using your email address and your credit card, for a new subscription (I always get the basic plan, which is just around 10 bucks for 30 downloads/month), you get an extra fifty downloads your first month. So the clever scheme I came up with was to use my many email addresses and many credit/debit cards to sign up for new subscriptions and get more free downloads! Work email, gmail, hotmail, BoA credit card, AFCU debit card, MCU debit card, you name it, I used it. HA! I totally beat the system*. And now, they're offering me an extra fifty free downloads to come back to eMusic on my gmail account, which means I'm going to re-join and then cancel after a month! It's so diabolically evil**, and I love it. In fact, as I write this, I have my hands steepled in front of me (which is tricky, since I'm also typing...) and I'm muttering "Excellennnnttttt..." at my brilliant conniving.

* I really didn't beat the system, because I always forget to cancel the stupid subscription and end up being on the plan for at least half a year. Then I finally do remember, but haven't yet used up all the downloads for the month, so I decide to wait until I've used them. Then I forget again, and the process repeats itself. In fact, I'm almost positive that I'll re-join and forget to cancel after the first month, thus rendering my fantastic scheme useless.

** Please note that this is an exaggeration (which, as my illustrious sister Nicole once said in her blog, "is funnier than hell"). I don't really think it's diabolically evil. I mean, it's not as if I'm plotting to take over the world by stealing babies and raising them to be my own private super army augmented by genetic modifications that I'm developing in my top secret underground research facility guarded by laser-guided turrets and bear traps or anything. Wait, that's brilliant. Why didn't I think of this before? Does anyone have any surplus babies or know of anyone with surplus babies? And also nannies? Because there's no way in hell that I could raise an army of babies by myself. If you do know of surplus babies or nannies, just let me know their schedules, addresses, and possible escape routes, and I'll take care of the rest.