Ride til You Die: the Last Chapter (maybe)

hey team,
Sorry that it has been a while, but school has been running my life a bit, as I guess is to be expected. I made another 'ride til you die' thing, probably the last one, but I kind of went off of Andrew's remix and incorporated some environmentalism into the concept. I have been thesis-writing a lot lately, so I'm getting my learn on a lot, and have spent more time in the library this semester than ever before. Now I am going to make some music and go to a party to see some friends play in a band.
Ethanol is a dumb idea. My economist friend is writing his thesis on it, and how stupid and inefficient it is. Oh well. Here's the new image.
Megacat

Faster Pussycat! Pedal! Pedal!

I loved Megacat's letters, so I got to work applying them in a context that made them make more sense to me. "Ride" is obviously referring to a bicycle, right? Or since I love my motorcycle, it must have been meant for motorcyclists. Or is Tupac just a serious roller coaster 'ridah', in addition to being a self-admitted rapist? In the end I decided it would make the most sense to use a bicycle, plus bicycles have the least to do with Tupac. And because bicycles are awesome.

The idea of being "hardcore" about some activity or another—so serious that you would die doing it—is hilarious to me. It implies the sort of extreme attitude that tends to produce outrageous absolutist statements. If we take a different approach to interpretation, however, and rather than "I will ride my bicycle and I will stop for nothing until I expire, panting down the road", we assume the meaning is "I will always be a bicyclist because it is wonderful. When I die, I hope that I will be able to look back at a life filled with bicycling", everything sounds much more rational. The people who, in my mind, most closely embody the (latter) implied relationship with their bicycle, however, are those in the radical community, anarchists and radical leftists in general love their bikes. They see it as a symbol of independence from consumerist commodities like gasoline, as well as a symbol of self-reliance. After all, in the absence of an engine, it is the rider that provides the locomotion.

Incidentally, I couldn't get this movie title out of my head today. It looks totally bizarre. And sorry if this post seemed mildly schizophrenic.

Ride til you Die

This one might require some explanation. "Riding" is a pretty general verb, one that has a history in hip-hop music, going back in my memory to Tupac, with the track "Ambitionz az a Ridah." If he didn't start it, he popularized it.
Anyway, in Tacoma, in the UPS crowd I hang out with, I really got into the self-coined saying "no sleep til you die, work til you die" a couple semesters ago when SDS had seemingly endless projects constantly happening. It has a flow to it that really can't be communicated through this medium, so I understand if you don't get it. Regardless of why I thought that statement was good, "ride til you die" has better phonetics and can kind of apply to everything.
Obviously the top one is my favorite. I was doing some hand-lettering for this stuff, but it didn't quite work out as planned, and the font looks okay. As usual, they could use some more work, but getting them to this point has been pretty fun, and I just have more ideas than perfectionism.
Okay. Here are two goals.
1) start updating stuff that is almost entirely pen & ink based, plus maybe colors done digitally.
2) figure out how to give you my music in blog form. (This one is probably very feasible, but I'm working on feeling more comfortable with letting anyone hear it; that's probably what the blog would be best for).
The thesis and my other classes will be very demanding this semester, so I'm not making any promises, but I'll do my best.
megacat