A spur-of-the-moment thing, written last night at the lovely Grand Royale in Binghamton, New York. If you’re interested in some meta-discussion of auto journalism, check it out: Avoidable Contact: torture, forgiveness, meaning.
Have You Heard
The personal site of Jack Baruth
Month: March 2013 (page 1 of 2)
…and I didn’t even write it. “When Hope Tramples Truth”. The actual subject matter of the piece — the Arab Spring and same-sex marriage — is irrelevant.
This page gets fewer than 100 visitors a day right now. No surprise there — it’s brand new and the subject matter, namely moi, is not compelling. But more than half the visitors are searching for “jack baruth road and track”.
Well, here it is: Jack Baruth Road and Track. Don’t say I never did nothing for you, as my BMX mentor Richie Hetzel once said. Check it out, and let me know what you think.
It’s with great pleasure that I announce my partnership with Mohamad Azman to run his “Black Baron” Proton Satria at Sepang for MEGALAP in May. I don’t know how well I’ll fare on a brand-new course after a 23-hour flight in the cheap seats… but to me this is what autowriting is all about. Going someplace great, meeting great people, avoiding the pre-written PR story. I’ll let you know where to read all about it soon.
“I avoid your words.”
That was the complete text of the e-mail I received this evening from a woman who is officially dead to my readers over at TTAC but very much alive to me. It was in response to six heartfelt paragraphs packed almost to Eliot-esque levels with allusion, alliteration, allosaurian anger and allotropic assemblages. I avoid your words. Her brilliant malice, fueled by fear, fills my sails like the trade winds. In rapid but random order I considered: Robert Farago, Joseph Campbell, Lena Dunham, and Lady Duff Twysden. Warning: troubled water ahead.
The second part of the Battle Rifle series is up. So far, I am enchanted with the overall readership at The Truth About Guns. Sure, there’s the occasional dude in a basement with ten AR-15s praying for the zombies to come but there’s a Fox Wolfie Galen in every hobby, right?
Responding to a recent op-ed I wrote at LeftLane, user “bajuke” says
Probably the most ignorant artcile out of Jack I’ve read so far. Classic Jack… intellecutally insecure with a contempt for facts that only a true devoted promoter of mis-information could pull off.
I honestly think he hears people cheering him on when he rights this crap… Feels like I just read an essay from a kid in grade 10 that is made at his parents for something rediculous.
Even worse, the idiots that applaud this $hit.
LLN, stick to car news. If I wanted bigoted opinions I’d be on the FOX website.
He’s right about one thing: I distinctly recall being very mad at my parents in “grade 10″. They wouldn’t give me the $6 entry fee I needed for my weekend BMX races. Two races meant twelve dollars plus maybe five bucks to eat. I had to get a job at the local pizza place washing dishes from 8PM to 2AM Friday and Saturday nights. The owner paid me $2.50 an hour because I was 14 and couldn’t legally work in Ohio. I was able to race on the money but I was always tired as a consequence of working the nights before the race. On the positive side, the owner knew I was hungry all the time so if somebody sent back their pizza for wrong toppings or whatever he made sure I got it so I would have dinner. At the time I was sad and frustrated but now I look back on it with satisfaction. It’s nice to work for what you have. It’s nice to earn what you own.
The first fruit of my new gig with The Truth About Guns can be read here. I’m excited to see that it drew well over 100 comments today. I’m trying to avoid the usual theorizing and silliness that takes place on gun forums and just discuss the historical and technical details. Working on the followup now.
From the Department Of Venom, a new Avoidable Contact on TTAC. I tried to keep the social commentary to a minimum in this one, but I am becoming more and more concerned by what Charles Murray calls the “New Eloi”:
There are so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven’t ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn’t count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don’t count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn’t count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.
Now all I have to do is make sure my son impregnates one of their women, and I’ll be set for retirement in the spare room of some Connecticut commuter home.
Selling this Carvin SB400. Fully loaded with stainless frets and active electronics. $699 plus shipping. It’s already been replaced by another SB4000 with an ash body and birdseye fretboard; this koa/mahogany body and rosewood fretboard combined for a very soft sound. Great for rock, not great for R&B or pop music.
My bass player, Patrick, has full details on TalkBass.
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