How much does a Schwinn Stingray really cost?

"It may not be the engineering marvel that was the old Schwinn, but it retails at Wal-Mart for $180, about a third of the original's price in today's dollars."

Of course, it's not a real Schwinn, it's just using that brand name, which Pacific Cycle, a Canadian conglomerate, bought in 2001 after the orginal, family-owned, U.S.-based company went bankrupt.

At its peak, the Chicago-based Schwinn company employed about 2000 mostly high-school educated workers, paying them a decent salary, and making great bikes. Now a Chinese factory makes the bikes and a Canadian firm gets the profits. (For the whole Schwinn story in the Washington Post, click here.)

The worst part of this story is that this Christmas the American workers who lost their good-paying jobs to foreign, bottom-of-the-barrel labor pools will be forced to buy foreign-made TVs, DVD players, and, yes, bikes, because that's all they can afford on their measly $5.50/hr. incomes at Wal-Mart. At least they get the employee discount, right?

Today, 99% of the bicycles sold in the U.S. are manufactured overseas. That figure boggles the mind.

This holiday season, I hope that those of you who are able to will join me in making an effort to avoid Wal-Mart and the other mega discount chains and buy your gifts from American companies (and especially small businesses) who still make most of their products in this country. The Internet makes finding them easier than ever. Here are some of cool, American companies:

Carhartt (Fuck Dickies. They import everything.)
American Apparel (Proving that a tee-shirt doesn't have to come from El Salvador.)
Gibson guitars (Only their Epiphone line is made abroad.)
Venture Snowboards (I don't even snowboard, but if you do, check these guys out—made in Colorado.)
Manhattan Portage (Great bags, made in USA!)

As for the 1% of bikes still made in this country....
Waterford (This is the Schwinn family's new business, which caters to high-end bikers.)
Merlin (Sponsor of the West Virginia Road Team!)
Calfee Design
Cannondale
Serotta
Trek (Trek's high-end bikes are made in U.S.)

Check out the US Stuff product list for hundreds of links to American made products.

If you have any favorite companies that make their products with American labor, comment here and let us know!

Of course, these days it's impossible to buy 100% American goods (try finding a camera made in this country, for example). But by supporting the companies that do employ our friends and neighbors (and us!), we can show that you can, indeed, make profitable products without going to Asia and exploiting their people.

Sweet mother of God, no.

cord
Originally uploaded by Xose.

My psuedo-sister, Suzi, turned me onto this grossness: According to BoingBoing.com, a company in South Korea will gold-plate your child's umbilical cord and frame it for display. They call it a "Blinged-out baby umbilical cord gift atrocity," and I couldn't agree more.

According to the site, "Among new mothers, ordering a custom souvenir made from an anatomical part of their babies appears to be a growing trend. An increasing number of companies are finding profits in processing umbilical cords and hair from newborns." What's the deal Koreans? You can't just have creepy bronzed baby shoes like the rest of us? You just know that some entreprenuer somewhere in Asia is gearing up the placenta-o-matic plating machines as we speak. Yuk.

Who knew?

When calculating for gain in an audio amplifier stage that includes resistances in parallel, you have to take the reciprocal of the sum of the reciprocals of the individual resistors. Duh!

Hence, Gain=(75K OHMS)||(100K OHMS)||(1.47M OHMS)/(1/1400 uMHOS + 0 OHMS)=58.3

OR

Gain=(1/(1/75000+1/100000+1/1470000))/(1/.0014)=58.3

Truly scary stuff

This kid freaks me out. Supreme talent for an 11-year-old.

I must be in front row!

Jenny and I went to San Diego to visit her parents and sister for Thanksgiving. We had a nice time (she's actually returning tomorrow) and ate too much, of course.

I scored first-class tickets both ways by cashing in a bunch (30,000) of MilagePlus miles on United. It was worth every mile cashed in, as anyone who has ever flown in a cramped coach cabin across the country can attest. For those not experienced in the front cabin experience, here's an inside view: Hot fudge sundae, hand-made? But I'm still sipping my after-dinner champagne! Well, twist my arm....

As they say in your country: schweet!

More cowbell.

Cowbell.com supplies sheep, goat and cow bells used for sporting events, promotion gifts, cheerleading, dog training, and the Olympics!

Rock. On.

Black Velvet!

Yum!

Warning: Don't get started reading through all the weekly cocktails on this site or you'll be sucked in for hours....

Also, you MUST check out this bizarre Cinzano ad (click on the "Zoom" button to watch it). Those Italians are something else, man.

Exhausted!

I haven't been sleeping too well lately. I think it's a mental thing having to do with my abhorrence to neighbors' sounds past 11:00 p.m. Thanks to the unwashed Dungeons and Dragons geek and his cackling bitch of a girlfriend who lived under us in Oakland, I'm now super-conditioned to become enraged at the slightest noise from neighboring apartments. This is not good.

Even when the folks are just making normal apartment noise (no thumping bass, thank god), it keeps me up because I'm mentally bracing myself for the next sound. I've tried to Zen out to no avail. Calgon take me away! I've half a mind to buy one of those white noise machines for the bedroom, but I don't want to spend that dough if the things don't work. Have any of you tried them? Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope....

Register no more

I found this cool site in this month's WIRED magazine. In a nutshell, it supplies you with log-ins and passwords to free sites that require registration. Everyone justs puts in bullshit information anyway, so it saves a lot of time. The site does not give out registration info or passwords to sites that charge for access. The next time you go to a site that wants you to register before you can read its articles (more and more newspapers' sites are doing this), give bugmenot.com a try.

New York City!

Just got back from four days in NYC at the 2004 Folio:Show magazine convention. A couple of the seminar speakers presented useful information, but too many of them seemed to have made up their presentations the night before. That's not cool when people (or their companies) are paying more than a grand to attend this thing.

Met up with my friend Nevena while there and we got some yummy paella at a Spanish restaurant in the Village. The restaurant's name? La Paella. Catchy, huh?

I stayed at the Herald Square Hotel, which was only a little over a hundred dollars a night, yet not in the hood. It was also clean and the staff was friendly. I can recommend it for those going to NYC on a budget. My room had two double beds and a private bathroom and was fine by all accounts.

I also ate at a Turkish restaurant called the Turkish Kitchen. (NYC is not so original in the restaurant naming area, as it turns out.) The food was the most original and tasty I've had in recent memory. If you have occasion to be in New York, you must try this place!

Blech! Rain!

Today the weather here in D.C. is cold, rainy, and pretty miserable all around. I had a couple of comp days coming from my last business trip to NYC, so I took today off to write a story for FRETS. When Jenny gets home, we'll curl up with a video and some cocoa or something. ¡Qué romántico!

Saved!

Last night Jenny and I watched the DVD of Saved!, the movie about a pious girl at a Christian school who gets pregnant by her gay boyfriend. Many hijinx ensue, of course. It started out pretty funny, in an independent film kind of way, but got progressively schlockier as the film wore on, until it morphed into just another feel-good, stupid teen Hollywood movie. Disappointing.

The premise of the movie, though was very true-to-life. If you've ever been exposed to these crazy, ultra-Christian youth groups and their insane brainwashing, you'll recognize that the film's directors did their homework. During middle and high school, I was sucked into this freaky world in a big way, even going so far as to be appointed to the WV state Baptist youth council (the committee of young people who plan all the year's events throughout the state).

The way these churches suck in impressionable youth is pretty insidious, really. They use peer-pressure, parties, and what seems to a 15-year old kid as compassion to lure you in, and before you know it, you're learning how to hate, instead of love. You're programmed to believe that Jesus is the only one who really loves you, that you should devote every waking second to Jesus and Jesus alone, and that he's always watching you. Then the real hate kicks in: The gays are going to Hell. The Catholics are going to Hell. The Rock and Rollers are going to Hell. The abortionists are going to Hell. African pygmies, the poor things, are going to Hell. One might ask, "who isn't going to Hell? The answer, of course, is "just us."

Thank god I had the miracle that is freedom-loving, open-minded parents as a counter-balance at home. Still, looking back, I have to cringe at my naivete. Some sore spots between the church and me: heavy metal music, abortion rights, my refusal to sign anti-porn petitions and join anti-porn boycotts, and the fact that they thought all my Catholic relatives were going to hell.

That's the ugly secret behind this brand of evangelical religion, they use hate and fear to motivate people instead of compassion and love. (Sound familiar since Nov. 2?) It's pretty sick when you think about it, and what's more, if they really believed in Jesus, they wouldn't do it. (Does "love thy neighbor as thyself" ring a bell?)

More Guitar Player and Frets articles on the way

I'm still getting work from GP and Frets, so I guess they like my writing. My Reverend Horton Heat article was held over until the January issue, and I'll be doing a BUZZ section article on this cool, instrumental band called Grails in the same issue. I've also been contracted to write a fairly long story on an expert guitar inlay artist for Frets. Let's hope the assignments keep on comin'!

My mom deals it like it is from a Red state

My mom is fantastic. She worked her butt off for Kerry's campaign in WV, and she should serve as a reminder to us in the majority-sane Blue states that it's not just stupid, bigoted hicks living in Redland. The following is her amazing letter to the editor of the Washington Post. I don't know if they'll have the guts to print it, but I sure want to show her off. Here it is:

Dear Sir:

I respectfully ask that you publish the following letter to President Bush from me. This is the only way that I think anyone will see it.

Thank You.

President Bush:

The people of this country have just given you permission to do whatever you want. I just hope I can live long enough to see them get what they have coming.

I hope it will be worth it to them to see the middle class completely destroyed just as long as they can keep homosexuals from marrying and put abortion back in the back alleys for everyone except the wealthy.

I can’t wait to see the only jobs ordinary people will have will be serving you and your rich friends for $5.00 an hour, which is what this country is coming to.

I can’t wait to hear the old people crying because they have nothing to live on because Social Security has been destroyed by you. We have it coming.

I hope all the parents who are willing to give up their children in Iraq just so you can get the oil for Halliburton and Cheney will still feel that way when their kids’ body parts come back because there was no armor on their vehicles. I don’t blame you for not giving them the equipment they needed to fight this unjust war. None of your friends or their children are over there.

You were right when you said you had been given the capital and you were going to spend it. Oh, and you are right, we don’t deserve health care, because we think it is more important that no one is going to take away our right to own any kind of weapon we want to keep in our homes. If we don’t have the money to buy insurance, we don’t deserve health care.

In this country from now on it is survival of the fittest and God help the poor and the sick because, in this society, no one else is going to. Have at it, Mr. Bush, and have fun.

Your humble servant and member of the dead middle class of America,

Pat V.

I love you mom! Jenny and I are so proud of you! Never give up the fight!

Screw depression! 2006 Baby!

Okay, folks, you've had enough time to wallow in your sorrow. There's work to do. We've got a Congressional election coming up in two years, and we're already behind the 8-ball, so let's get cracking.

Step 1: Write an email to the DNC demanding the ouster of Chairman Terry McAuliff, who is a fundraiser, not a strategist. We need someone with long-term plans and the cojones to make them happen.

Step 2: Quit bitching to the opposition's supporters. They don't want to hear it. Instead, offer solutions. Suggesting that "isn't it a shame Johnny lost his job? You'd think the congress could do better, huh?" is better than, "Johnny fucking deserved to lose his job, think he's happy about Bush now?" I know the latter is MUCH more satisfying, but it's less effective. Plant doubt in the common voter's perception of their Republican congressional representation, and it just may stick in 2006.

Step 3: Donate your time and money to Moveon.org and the DNC (but not until McAuliff is fired).

We can do this. It took the Republicans 40 years to get control of the House. We can't wait that long to get it back!

Fear defeats hope

It goes without saying that I am disheartened and disappointed. It breaks my heart that the Republicans and George W. Bush have transformed my country into a land ruled by fear.

Last night it became readily apparent that a majority (a slim majority, but a majority nonetheless) of the people in the United States are driven not by hope of what's to come, but rather by fear of what could be. The message the Republicans were able to drive home with 58,319,499 of our fellow citizens was this:

The terrorists are coming: Be afraid.
The homosexuals are coming: Be afraid.
The abortionists are coming: Be afraid.
The gun ban is coming: Be afraid.
They'll take your Bibles away: Be afraid.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, a man who no one would argue faced some of the most dreadful times the world has ever known, said the immortal words, "All we have to fear is fear itself." It's staggering that the exact opposite message would resonate so deeply with so many of our fellow citizens. Maybe that's why I'm so disappointed. I thought we were braver than that.

Vote!!!!!!

I'm sure I don't need to remind you, but this election is kind of important. YOU HAVE NOTHING...I REPEAT....NOTHING BETTER TO DO TODAY THAN VOTE. Unless you're a Republican. You all can stay home.

Pre-election day material happiness list

Okay, with an hour to go before election day, I thought I'd list 10 things that bring me joy, just in case I need a pick-me-up after tomorrow. I'm not listing family or friends in this list because if I need a pick-me-up tomorrow, so will they, and that won't do anyone any good. With that in mind, here are the 10 material things that make me the most happy:

1. Gibson Les Paul guitars
2. Playing through an amp I made with my own two hands
3. "All Hail the Black Market" by the Archers of Loaf
4. Dooce.com
5. AX84.com
6. Being able to read El Mundo and La Nueva España on the Net
7. The Asturian-American Migration Forum
8. My iBook G4
9. iPod Mini
10. Port wine

Not an all-exclusive list, by any means, but if I was stuck with any three of the ten on this list, my psyche could survive. Here's to hoping that I won't have to refer back to this post.

Dear California Lesbian Friends: Did your $25,000 check arrive yet?

I thought I'd seen it all from the disgusting vat of vile, ignorant, scum-ridden puspool that is midwestern Republicanism, but this whack-job takes the cake:

[From Salon.com--full story]

"Jesus! Jesus!" screamed 26-year-old Joe Robles, pointing to his Bush-Cheney sign. "The man stands for God," he said of the president. "We want somebody who stands for Jesus. I always vote my Christian morals." Robles, a student at Ohio State University, told me that Kerry's daughter is a lesbian. I said I thought that was Dick Cheney's daughter, but he shook his head no with confidence.

Robles said that Kerry would make it illegal for preachers to say that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. In California, he informed me gravely, such preaching has been deemed a hate crime, and pastors who indulge in it are fined $25,000, which "goes to lesbians."

I don't know about all California lesbians, but the ones I know deserve much more than $25,000 apiece, just for having to put up with ignorant, simple-minded, culturally retarded, cowardly shitheads like this every day of their lives.

Thanks, Mom! (Volunteering for Kerry)

Well, I went to Kerry/Edwards national headquarters last night after work and volunteered for a couple hours. I was inspired by my Mom, who has been doing the same thing in West Virginia for a few weeks now. You're the best, Mom!!!!

I manned the phones, calling non-senior voters in Jacksonville Florida to get them to early vote (if, they were for Kerry, that is). I didn't get ahold of too many people, and most of the ones I did were voting for Bush. :-|

Still, it felt good to volunteer for the cause. God I hope Kerry wins so I can go up to every smug ass Republican I see and go, "FACE!"