The redesigned WhaleSpray you all know and love featured to the left!
To the right... a fabulous WhaleTote. THAT'S RIGHT! Pack your shit around in a Whale from Whale Prod Inc.
Next on the list is this lovely WhalePlushy. Not only is this WhalePlushy very attractive on your nite-stand, it ALSO doubles as a guard Whale! Oh YEAH! Scare away any male within sight! Men will turn and run screaming into the night after witness to you carrying this horrendous WHALE!
For My Mommy and Daddy
Please feel free to reuse this for your parents if you feel the same.
Though we’ve had our times,
God knows we have.
You have always been there,
With kisses for balm, and hugs for salve.
To cure what ails me,
With love that is unconditional.
You see me through it all,
Even when things are final.
My gratitude,
For all you’ve done.
Warms my heart,
Like the summer sun.
My parents are the greatest,
There is no doubt.
For you are always there,
To help me out.
I wish I had material ways,
To give back all you’ve given me.
That will have to wait,
But my love I give, deservedly.
You both have earned it,
Proven time and time again.
You are the BEST parents,
And even better friends!
----------ß - April 2004
I want to know who is reading my blog, and more importantly, WHY no one answers my "non-rhetorical" questions. YEAH, this means YOU! FUCKER! Take a half a fuckin second and shoot me an email! If you don't know my email, click the title of this blog and let me know what you think anyway! Why the fuck are you still reading, click the fuckin link! NOW... uh, yeah, now, Fucker! While your at it, do something with your hair, it looks like whale ass! FUCKER!
FINANCIAL DILEMMA!
So here is how it stands, in 6 to 18 months I will have enough money to take care of my debt. So, I'm debating either paying off my debt or filing before then and letting it all go.... issue 1: If I file bankruptcy it will take forever to clear my credit of that. issue 2: If I don't file, and just pay off my debts, it will take about that long for the bad marks to go away ANYWAY. WTF do I do? (again a NON-RHETORICAL question) To file or not to file, that is the question! Now, suppose that I do as I have been planning for 18 months. WTF then? I will have AMPLE opportunities to rebuild my credit. It would be easy. Say, I don't file, it takes me about a year to pay off all my debt, my credit is no better than if I had filed and there I sit, $8,000 less to my name.... sounds to me like the better option would be to take that $8,000 and spend it on the purchase of a newer car, or do what I've always wanted to and UPGRADE MY COMPUTER! I NEED a new computer anyway! LMMFAO!
With a title like that I'm sure you are expecting a mind-blowing conscription of great proportion. Not happening. Sorry. This blog is more for a reflection and ponderance of youth, mine, to be more specific. On with the show... When I was 8 or 10 (I don't remember exactly) I thought it would be a great idea to dismount the motor from the lawn mower. This proved to be quite the task BELIEVE ME! Post dismounting of the motor followed quickly by the bolting of a chair to the mower deck, thought, "It will be a great 'go-cart' type thing!" The chair of choice, of course, had legs. Legs on a chair makes it very difficult to "bolt" down. SO, consiquently the chair had to be rid of the legs. With the cunning use of a hack saw, I was ready to mount the chair to the lawn mower base, only one problem left... there were no mounting holes. Problem solved! I would drill holes in the seat of the chair in the same location as the old mounting holes for the motor. It worked fabulously! I was now set for fun with my new-fangled go-cart. When my mother saw this she completely flipped! I could not figure it out. She was SO FUCKIN MAD, I thought she would kill me fo sho. Turns out, the chair I used was from her grandmothers (my great-grandmothers) table set with 4 (now non matching) chairs and a matching table. That chair was over 100 years old! I would KILL my son for less than that. Well, okay maybe not.
私は猫がほしいと思う、 猫の多くそして多く
私は猫がほしいと思う、 猫の多くそして多く
Click on the title of this blog... it made me LAUGH SO FKN HARD!!! Just chat with Oliver for a while and I'm sure you will laugh many times! OMG too funny!
HEHEHE I typed "PUSSY" and his reply is this: "That kind of subject does not interest me." Oliver is NOT a male.
Whale244 OUT!
I must conquer my loneliness alone.
I must be happy with myself or I have nothing to offer.
Two halves have little choice but to join, and yes, they do make a whole.
But two wholes, when they coincide . . . that is beauty.
Whale, it's been a long time, huh? I just have one question. Yup, that's all, just one. The question is, "WTF am I doing?" Please feel free to answer my question, it is NOT rhetorical. Now for a little background: I was helping a buddy from work get his truck started this evening. And I must say what a nice evening it is, and a thought crossed my mind, "How can I get out of this FKN mess?" The financial mess that I have found myself in. The quickest solution, of course, is file bankruptcy. PROBLEM.... that takes money, $659.00 to be exact. Now do you think, knowing the situation I'm in, that I can just shit out that much money. FK NO! I'm sure that I could sell my computer for that much, if I included the surround sound, tv card, 19 in monitor, cable/dsl wireless router, battery backup, dvd burner, $800 in software, 180GB hard drive, GD, the list goes on. I do NOT want to get rid of my puter... it is my livelyhood, it keeps me healthy and sane. What is a man to do? I am torn between doing "what is right" and doing "what I want to" And maybe I'm looking at it wrong. What if what I want isn't necessarily wrong, just not fully right? (non-rhetorical as well) I just can't FUCKIN figure this shit out... I know... well, no, I don't. That sucked. So anyway.
I Think I Lost Myself.
What causes life, what causes death,
The answer we all seem to know.
Is it that we love to love and hate to hate,
do these feelings really show?
It seems to often that we love too easily,
and also that we are quick to hate.
but what if we could all forgive
what then, would be our fate?
I know love, believe me I do,
the love for your child is so strong.
but could it be that innocent love,
that makes love last so long?
The questions I hate the worst,
have answers that seem unfair.
When all you can come up with
is worthless and you don't care.
Is it lack of caring,
that causes peoples heartache.
Or could it be that everyone,
and everything seems so fake?
Do you love or do you hate,
The things that your life is made of.
Does it really even matter,
When all you want is love?
I guess my point to this whole thing,
Is a meandering loss of wealth.
For it seems, the farther I go,
The further back I find myself.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -ßeta ¥ 2004
This article was "borrowed" from Maximonline.com I thought it was worthy enough to be on my blog... It's a VERY good story about illegal street racing on bikes. Worth reading if your bored.
Maximum Velocity
Think you’re nuts? On the streets of New York City and across the country, a rare breed of speed freaks leaves it all on the asphalt, risking life and limb and sometimes paying the ultimate price.
Maxim, February 2004
By Tim Struby
Javier wasn’t supposed to die at 140 miles per hour.
This is the way Jay Boogie, a 10-year veteran of illegal street bike racing, tells it. It was April 17, 2002, and his friend Javier was part of a group of racers zipping between cars on the Cross Bronx Expressway, taillights of busy traffic approaching them like bullets. Javier had done this countless times before. He was leaning left, cutting right, slipping into empty spaces—a precisely rendered daredevil act. And there he was, as usual, out in front.
But this time it was different—a car had stalled in the right lane. As he rounded a turn, suddenly the taillights were upon him. Javier instinctively swerved left, but instead of finding daylight, he found traffic at a dead stop. He collided with the back of a truck, causing his body to—literally—explode.
Another of the Bronx’s best bike racers was gone. Another tragedy. But even as his friends paid their respects at the funeral, they were already thinking about the next race.
On a warm July night, Jay Boogie rolls off the Bruckner Expressway onto Leland Avenue in a working-class neighborhood of the Bronx. Tucked between a gas station and a supermarket, this strip of asphalt is known as the Dog Pound to the street bike racers who gather here.
Everyone knows Jay Boogie and his trademark mirrorless Suzuki Gixxer 1000. Ask any bike-riding bad boy in the neighborhood or from Harlem and they’ll tell you Jay Boogie doesn’t need mirrors—when you’re redlining at 190 mph, you already know everyone’s behind you.
The sidewalks of Leland Avenue are jammed with locals who’ve come to see the stars of the streets—the bad boys on their rice burners and crotch rockets, pure racing machines. Jay watches as the other riders pull up. It’s an explosion of color: polished Technicolor helmets, brilliant B-ball jerseys, bikes of yellow, red, blue, and white. There are Hondas, Yamahas, even an occasional Kawasaki, but it’s mostly Suzukis. Serious racers ride the Suzuki GSX-R 1000, the baddest bike available—all raw, rugged muscle.
Jay Boogie cruises up and parks. He has olive skin, a shiny shaved head, and the ideal racer’s build—neither tall nor heavy. The lighter a racer is, the faster he travels. At the Pound or the motorcycle shop he owns, bad-boy speak comes easy for Jay Boogie, but there is no thuggishness to his persona.
Jay Boogie doesn’t pull wheelies or smoke tires; he doesn’t need to impress anyone. All the burning rubber in the air is just hoopla. Racing is the real action. Jay has raced at the hottest spots—the Dyckman Avenue exit off Manhattan’s Henry Hudson Parkway, Zerega Avenue in the Bronx, Fountain Avenue in Brooklyn. It’s cash up front, winner takes all. As he searches for some action, he explains that you’ve got to bait ’em right, work the hustle, the old rope-a-dope. He knows this because he’s raced hundreds of times, for thousands of dollars each time. And now he’s paying for it; the first race of the year, he blew the plastic off ’em, beat ’em by seven car lengths.
“Stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” he says, searching for an opponent. “Watch—no one will race me.”
But setting up a drag race means a lot of people on the move. And these days that calls for a degree of caution. Fatalities like Javier’s have meant the NYPD uses unmarked cars, roadblocks, and helicopters to put popular strips “on lockdown.” So they’ve started street racing, an impromptu form of cat-and-mouse, head-to-head racing. It’s about street cred, not cash. And in the Bronx that can be more valuable than money.
“Some guy had written on his bike, ‘Why tiptoe through life to arrive safely at death?’” says Jay Boogie. “If you’re gonna be afraid to live, what’s the point?”
Cash ’N’ Cred
An hour later a race is shaping up. Jay Boogie is one of many who have followed a Dominican racer known as Pantera into a lot down Leland. Trash talk runs like a brush fire. A biker in a red Fox Racing cap challenges Pantera. The pre-race posturing begins, and two large groups swirl around each other, Pantera the center of one, his challenger the other. Beneath the murky yellow streetlights, Jay keeps track as the debate builds. A thousand dollars? Two thousand? Nobody can agree. But it’s not just acting; debate over the specs of each bike is a crucial part of the negotiation. Variations like power commanders, high-compression pistons, carbon-fiber pipes, steering dampers, and steel-braided brake lines determine the split-second finish of a race.
An agreement is made, and the crowd mobilizes like a small battalion. Spectators line the highway overpasses, hoping to catch a glimpse of a 190 mph blur. Cars and bikes line the side of the road, waiting for the moment to move across the highway and block oncoming traffic. Then, tense as cowboys in a shootout, the two bikers move to the start.
On the starting line the riders stare straight ahead, ignoring the hundreds of pairs of eyes upon them. A starter stands in front of them, his arm raised. Then it falls. Bam! The bikes scream. The riders lean forward, tweaking the rear brake, dragging the clutch. It’s like they’ve been shot out of a howitzer. Both men stay tucked tight, thighs shaking as they clench their chassis. Bam! They hit second gear, the G-force making them hold on with all their might. Bam! Third gear and they’re almost floating, like a beam of light screaming through the night. Bam! Fourth gear: All neurons firing, the riders are no longer men on machines; they’re supernovas streaking across the tarmac. Bam! Fifth gear, 180 mph, the crowd is trying to keep track of who’s ahead…and it’s over.
Sometimes it’s so close the judges can’t make a call. Not this time. Pantera crosses the line first, continuing up the highway before doubling back. The entire race is over in less than seven seconds.
The spectators drift back to their cars. But the bad boys will keep talking about it, replaying it, reliving it. They know the drill, know the level of concentration needed just to stay vertical. The dangers are all too real: Miss a gear and you’re laying out cash. Come off the line crooked and you’re a laughing stock. Lose control and you’re dead.
The Price of Racing
Sport bike sales have more than doubled since 1996, mainly because $10,500 will now get you a 988 cc, four-stroke, 145 hp Gixxer 1000 that nails 60 mph in three flat. That means more bad boys on the road and more drag races. And that means more rookies over their heads, more ambulances, more police tape. “It’s all about ego,” Jay Boogie says of the young guns out to prove themselves. “That’s why people are getting hurt. They’re thinking with the wrong head.”
A street race is different from a drag race. There’s less formality and organization. No cash changes hands. A glance or a nod sets it off. On the Bruckner, the Bronx River Parkway, or the Cross Bronx, a street race means flying between lanes, weaving among cars, tight turns, and long straightaways. It’s drafting and passing. It’s spontaneous, creative, a five-minute blur carved into a summer night.
It’s the improvisation that makes street racing less predictable, more dangerous, and highly addictive. “The feeling is unbelievable,” Jay Boogie says. “People compare it to drugs, but I’ve never done drugs. It’s like a roller coaster, but faster. And you’re in control.”
On the streets of the Bronx, there are no lights, no film crews, no Laurence Fishburne. “Biker Boyz? Total bullshit,” proclaims Boogie. “They exaggerate every move. They even have guys racing on dirt.”But the price can be high.
“I know over 20 guys personally,” says Boogie, “guys I consider my friends, who have passed away.”
Then why keep going? Speed? Money? No, it’s something more. It’s something for bad boys growing up in the Bronx who don’t have a 401k or a summer home. Guys who love what riding does for them. Like Jay’s friend Angelo Rodriguez. They called him Captain America because he had stars and stripes on his bike. When Jay Boogie opened his shop, Angelo worked for free because he loved being around the motorbikes.
“We’re not nobodies,” says Jay Boogie’s friend Brandon. “In our community, when you show up, they know who you are.”
Homeboy
Jay Boogie sits quietly in the kitchen of his two-family house in the Bronx’s Country Club neighborhood. Off the streets life is neither fast nor furious. It’s watching the Steelers and paying bills, vacationing in the Bahamas and taking the kids to the water park. Jay’s live-in girl, Lilly, dishes out some rib tips from the neighboring Chinese place. Their 11-year-old daughter, Jessie, sits nearby, doing her homework. Jay Boogie’s mom, Irma, lives in the apartment downstairs.
“I’m my mother’s only child,” he explains. “I try to give her the best, like she gave me.”Examples of the best fill his apartment: a 54-inch television, a leather living room set. Like most of the other racers, he’s working long, hard hours—like Billy, a Battery Park doorman; Hector, an EMT; and Adam, who has spent a decade at Cablevision. Jay’s shop, Cycle Depot, is a dream come true.
“I’ve been riding something forever,” Jay Boogie admits. “But then the GSX-R dropped in 1985, ’86, and that’s what blew up the whole street scene. I went half on a Ninja 600 with a friend, but splitting a bike between two guys who want to ride and pick up girls isn’t good, so I got my own GSX-R750.”
Lilly knows about the escalating scene as well as the danger. She is a New York City cop. It’s a conflict, but not irreconcilable. “We don’t even talk about it,” Lilly says of the legal implications. “Anyway, a lot of cops ride.” Jay Boogie’s got a few cops’ bikes in his shop to prove it. Lilly is a good cop and a good girlfriend. She understands that while the shop may be Jay Boogie’s business, motorcycle racing is his life. But sometimes it’s tough for her to watch him go.
“I worry more than ever,” Lilly says. “But they’re still gonna ride anyway. When he leaves at night, I just assume he’s coming home.”
“I say it all the time,” says Boogie. “I’ve been down, like, 10, 12 times. You play Russian roulette once you put the key in the ignition, but I’ll be racing as long as God lets me ride. I want a racing sticker on my casket.”
Street Life
The rain has been killing them 12 out of 15 weekends. It’s finally a dry Friday, but word has it that the Five-O is all over Leland Avenue, so everyone’s down in front of the Wild Aces club underneath the Bruckner Expressway. The crowd is bigger than normal, egging on the six bikes that are whizzing back and forth, up on one wheel, then the other. Itching for action, Jay Boogie spies a racer named G on his Hayabusa.
“Run the mile?” taunts Boogie. “Stock for stock,” he specifies, meaning racing against an unmodified bike. It’s Greek to most, but to bad boys it’s the rules of the game—a mile or a quarter mile, a four-length head start—that make a race.
“No mile,” says G. “Quarter.”
A crowd gathers.
“Give me four on the break and I’ll do the quarter,” Jay answers, asking for a lead of four bike lengths.
“You’re beggin’ for too much.”
Boogie and G get nose to nose. Electricity crackles through crowd. G holds up a wad of cash.
“I got $500. Let’s do it!”
“I got a grand,” says one of G’s posse. “Who gonna cover it?”
“Zerega to the bridge,” says Boogie, outlining the course.
“You’re the king of the 1000, but I’m the king of the 1300,” taunts G, referring to Jay Boogie’s bike, which is a 1000. G’s Hayabusa is a 1300.
“Shit. We do the mile, after third gear I’ll pass you in reverse.”
“If you’re trying to hustle me, I’ll shoot some motherfucker.”
They stand a moment awash in an eerie silence. Then the engines fire.
Last Ride
On a cloudless afternoon, it’s business as usual at Jay Boogie’s shop in the shadow of the White Plains Road 2 and 5 trains. Outside, bikers meticulously wipe down chrome wheels and steel chassis. Inside, behind the counter, Jay Boogie handles orders and helps customers. The showroom holds several bikes, wall-mounted gear, and gleaming parts behind a glass enclosure.
But the real action is through another door, where nearly 70 bikes are in various states of disrepair. Today faces are long, conversations short. The shop closes early, at 4 P.M. Within the hour more than two dozen bikes take to the road and pull out slowly, a strip of black ribbon tied to every handlebar.
Forty minutes later they arrive at the white-brick Rivera Funeral Home in Astoria, Queens. Angelo Rodriguez’ maroon Chevy truck pulls up in front, towing a Gixxer 1000 on a trailer, draped in a black sheet. Two by two the bad boys quietly enter the doorway to pay their last respects.
Jay Boogie leaves the funeral home. Angelo Rodriguez was one of us, he says. A good man who worked hard at his mailroom job, helped friends, and never asked for anything in return. Angelo’s aunt and uncle approach. They want to know what happened. So Jay Boogie tells them, not only because he was there but because it is his duty. They were riding back on the Belt Parkway from Coney Island. They’d handled much sharper, steeper, and faster rides, he assures them, but somehow Angelo grazed the wall and couldn’t get off. Somehow he couldn’t avoid the pole.
“He died doing what he loved!” proclaims his aunt, like a woman who has just heard the word of God.
But Jay Boogie doesn’t tell them there were too many cars and too many bikes, that they were going too fast. He doesn’t mention that some of them were racing each other because they wanted to be in the front, because that’s where you show your skill, your cojones—because that’s what you do with 145 horsepower. His friend Angelo Rodriguez was only 34 years old. He leaves out the part about the puddle of bubbly blood and the lone boot sitting in the middle of the highway.
Despite the thrill of the growling engine, most guys know when enough is enough, when to pull on the brake lever. But for the racers of the Bronx, there is no turning back, no surrender to moderation. “Racing’s made my life better,” Jay Boogie explains. “As sad as it is to see someone I know pass away, it makes me appreciate my life that much more. And if I die on a motorcycle and you stop riding because of it, I’m coming back from the dead—and you won’t sleep till you get back on a bike.”
An Old Irish Blessing
May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life's passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!
