counting my curses

I got the flu. Then a sketchy thing happened at home: suddenly, my appartment was filled with the smell of spray paint, like I had just painted the inside walls of the place. I puked. In a minute, it went away. It's not been teh best week.

agony

I can barely walk. The air smells like smoke, even inside my apartment.

I made a mistake

I was bored and momentarily felt like human contact, so I went to skate even though my back hurt. When I went outside, it smelled like burning trash. This acrid, bitter flavour stayed in my mouth for an hour, while my back hurt worse and worse. I didn't know anyone at the bridge. Someone repaired the potholes and the box, and had carefully blocked off the virgin cement with orange cones. The strangers moved the cones and skated on it anyway. I moved them back once, but they got moved again. Just so I didn't get pissed off about something that doesn't matter and/or stroke out from pm2.5, I went home. I'm still glad I skated, but it was kind of stupid. Now I have some real pain.

when one quarterpipe closes, another one opens

i m trying to paraphrase optimistic quotes, but i'm not good at that. I went out to the build yesterday and it was still there. i skated the ampitheatre and tweaked my back on a *********. When I went home, the qp was still there.

the next day, fm and i went to get the finishing touches and while we were at the store, we got word taht the spot was swept clean, like a ufo cattle mutilation. the udders of the quaterpipe were completely surgically removed, without any trace of blood, as well as the anus, tongue, and one eye. No one saw anything. DIY tip: don't try to build there. I feel like I got kicked in the stomach. On the way home, the foreman sent a message to say we might get a chance to build somethings at the bridge. at least that probably won't get destroyed right away. we'll see what happens. having lzyk out of town sucks, especially with the injury. i had been planning on spending every night in the streets. the weather is perfect.

the best bank in taipei

my elbow hurts

the troups couldnt be rousted to finish the qp. someone took the time to find it, then put "danger" tape on it, which represents at least an hour of "work". i think we have a 25% chance of complete the project, much less skating it.

since we couldnt roust the troops, most of the troops went to the bridge. it's getting warm, but not exactly hot. it was a weird night for good weather, on a friday night, because only people i know well were there, and only a half dozen of them. we all put in a good 90 min and lights went off, so i went north. rmj is injured for at least a couple of weeks, but he is always down for a kirin walk, so we mosyed across taipei, from my own nieghborhood through some kind of portal into a place i've never been, down back allies and across weird streets, and it started raining, and we talked lots of shit. so much shit, that when we came around a certain corner, he offered the sentence "do you want to see the best bank in taipei?"

rmj knows taipei better than be. i said yes. we went there, not 10 minutes skate from my house. it's a 10 foot black marble bank, dark at night, but not bad for those of us who skate in the city at night. it looked like the black marble monolith from 2001, at a 45 degree angle. I put down my beer, and gleefully pushed to it a few times. I didn't even expect to makeit to the top, just maybe a kickturn. there was no plan. it will immedeatly become apparent that in my joy of seeing this bank, i did no research waht so ever. i have no excuse.

street spots are weird adn hard. you have to research them. this spot has a .25 inch gap betwettn the beautiful black marble and the floor. if you know it's there, you can ride up it as easily as if it was perfect. i didnt know it was there, and it wasnt. so i went into the 1/4 inch executioner at full speed, buzzed enough to never notice until i was slamming into the black marble, but no t so buzzed that i didnt put my elbow down into it first. slamming into marble at speed is a beautiful thing. there is no scraping, just a pressure sore as big as my fist. The pain is in the bone, not on the surface.

anyway, we drank more and talked more shit until i couldn't avoid going home.

lzyk goes to baltimore soon. i used to keep a sig on the nighttable. i hope this wore off on her.

tea eggs and tap water

we spent all our money on cement and quarterpipe supplies. It's going to be a stark couple of weeks. I'm not declaring defeat, but we couldnt finish the qp in the alloted time, so it's sitting unattended until tomorrow night at the earliest. I'm terrified that it's going to get torn down before we can finish, and it will all have been for nothing, excepting of course, the experience of having made a mistake, with friends who are worth it.

I skated home across the city, but each spot had  tiny curse, it was either wet from cleaners, or a cop road block was just across from the ledge i wanted to skate, or a truckload of gravel was inexplicably spilled across the run up. i gave up and met lzyk at mosburger. she's been working 22 hours straight. i cant understand willful wage slavery.

je m'en fout de gwinnett

This has nothing to do with skating.

French rap has now almost caught up with English language rap. Admittedly, catching up is not the same as overtaking, like in f1, in hiphop, and other things. Just ask china. Catching up was the easy part.

French rap used to be a 1985 american hiphop in 2005, but now it's 2014 hiphop in 2017. In other words, they're only as far behind as california.

I tried to listen to german hiphop when those homies were here, but I can't understand much. I like the idea of judging flow based on flow alone, but that got me into mc dragonface face, for a short time, before I realized he sucks.

the generation sauvage is like a collective reincarnation of certain american hiphop from the golden ages, over annoyingly trendy american style trap beats. when france has good rap and unique beats, they will have surpassed american hiphop.

and htey're starting to. some of these songs have less of a gwinnett county and more of a kinshasa style. I hope they can evolve away from their icy gwinnett beats and 25 year old tupacish delivery and do something new.