Macksims

Sitting, working, listening to Satie in a coffee shop, I'm pondering one of my favorite quotes:

"When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere."
- François de La Rochefoucauld

Recently I've been interested in François de La Rochefoucauld, a 17th century aristocrat/author. The dude published a whole book called "Maxims" which is quite remarkable. It's just a long collection of pithy sayings, with no narrative and no context other than that which the reader brings. Yet somehow it's really engaging, readable and relevant 350-ish years later. Anyway, I've always thought I'd improve upon quotation over my usual logorrheic way, so maybe I should publish my own books of "Macksims." But I write like I speak, and concision was never my strong suit. Maybe that's why I love punctuation so much: it just lets my thoughts keep on going.

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The weather is nice and I wish that I owned a bike that wasn't currently being used by some West side thief. (We're coming up on the anniversary of when it was bikenapped out of the old apartment.) I'll get another one eventually, but in the mean time I'm just going to dream about these killer accessories:

Phrenology Bike Helmet. Hand-painted by the artist, all of these bike helmets are amazing. I think it would be well worth $80-$250. I also quite like the wood designs.

Hermes-style reflective pant clips. Are they built on snap-bracelets? There are like 10 cool things about this simple little product.

And as long as I'm dreaming, I wish I had an iPhone so I could put it in this. That's real wood folks! I'd get the bamboo one.

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THAT REMINDS ME: I think I'm developing an aesthetic fascination with phrenology (not to be confused with my already established love of Phrenology.) I can add this to my (similar?) fascinations with clipper ships, clocks and old maps. Clearly I am channelling some 19th century explorer, scientist, or general quixotic type.