Half-Mind Weblog

At last month’s Pedalfiles bike hash I signed up to hare the next one, scheduled for Sunday, July 19th.  The GM asked me to keep it short — 10 miles or so — since July is always hellaciously hot, even at 9:00 in the morning.  I told her I’d start and end the trail, and host on-afters, at our house.  A couple of days later I decided to add a running/walking trail and invite members of the P.I.S.S. HHH.  The P.I.S.S. is taking the summer off, but since the bike hash will be in the morning (hot but still survivable) this’ll give those who need it a quick hash fix until we start hashing regularly again.

This morning I got on my old hybrid bike and scouted a bash trail.  Over the next three weeks I’ll go out again to look for places to set checks and bad trails, but I’m not planning more than one or two diversions.  Pick’n'Flick agreed to set the hash trail for the P.I.S.S., and I’ll probably walk it with her at least once.

Although I’m both a regular and part of mismanagement at the Pedalfiles and the P.I.S.S., when it comes to the main Tucson group, the jHavelina HHH, I’m more of a visitor these days.  Recently I posted a long whinge about jHavelina mismanagement, but after getting all that off my chest, it hit me that I really shouldn’t be arguing about mismanagement issues with a hash I rarely attend.  I don’t have a stake in the issues; I don’t have anything to contribute.  So I’ll stand aside and shut up (until the next time they piss me off, that is).

What else is happening in my hashing world?  Other than InterAmericas Hash getting closer, nothing much.   There . . . all caught up!

Major Update

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
Off to far-away hash weekends
Ride the road-trippers.
Forward, hash road-trippers!
Ours not to make reply,
Ours not to reason why,
Ours but to hash and die:
Off to far-away hash weekends
Ride the road-trippers.

He’s been busy, our Major Update, combing national HHH web sites for Africa, Europe, Indonesia, East Timor, New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and the UK, looking for upcoming HHH events to add to the Half-Mind Calendar.

Did Major Update miss your event?  Click on the big button and tell him about it!

Who loves ya, baby? Major Update, that’s who!

How many hashers know there’s a Wikipedia entry for Hash House Harriers?  Not many, I bet.

Most of us know Wikipedia’s a user-edited online encyclopedia, where regular people like you and me can write, update, correct, and (if we choose) falsify entries on any topic.  Someone (I don’t know who, other than that it wasn’t me) started the Wikipedia HHH entry in September 2003 by posting the Hash Primer I wrote for Hawaii RacePlace Magazine in 1995.  It wasn’t credited to me and there was no link to the site it had been copied from, the Half-Mind Catalog, but what else is new?  And anyway, I didn’t even know there was an HHH entry on Wikipedia until months later, when someone emailed me about it.

By the time I got there, other hashers had started adding additional information, a lot of it shameless advertising for certain hashing web sites (you know who you are).  Responsible hashers began editing out the more flagrant instances of self-advertising and ax-grinding, and over time the Wikipedia HHH entry has become neutral, informative, and to the point.  I can’t tell you who all the individual editors are (some of them choose to be anonymous), but they’re doing a good job telling the story of hashing to what I hope is an interested and curious non-hashing audience.

Anyway, you should check it out.  It still needs work, and maybe you have useful suggestions or something to contribute.  If you don’t want to get your own hands dirty, contact me with your suggestions . . . I’ve already got Wikipedia inkstains up to my elbows.

Everybody’s talking about Iran, especially about Iranians using Twitter & YouTube to express their outrage over a stolen election, organize protests, and get the word out about government repression and killings.

Local hash mismanagement takes a dim view of such things. Here are some items from a post-hash election email sent out by our new GM this morning:

mismanagement will be this sunday, june 28, 6pm at dirtbags (south-west corner of speedway and campbell). we’l’ have a pick-up hash starting from there at 5pm. we’ll try to get both things started kind of right on time … for those who are fairly new to the hash: everybody is welcome to voice their opinion there. no matter how long you’ve been hashing with us, your vote will count the same.

i would like to get as many wankers as possible involved in this. lets try to get the bitching out of our systems there and keep it there.

below is a list of topics that will be discussed and, if necessary, voted on. if you have something you would like to add please come to mismanagement. if you can’t make it please mail it to me (not the listserve!).

[ . . . ]

PLEASE, don’t start discussions about this on the listserve. mismanagement is there for the purpose of these discussions. ( i am still on the listserve committee )

And here are two items on the proposed mismanagement agenda:

3) new listserve control committee.

4) is there a better way to keep non-fun emails from the listserve.

Dear Gispert, I don’t even know where to begin!

Well, I’ll start with the election. I don’t think our local hash election was stolen, but I do have questions.  We voted by email, but my ballot was unacknowledged.  Was my vote received?  Was it counted?  Mismanagement told us who won, but that’s all.  I’d like to know how many hashers voted and what the count was for the different candidates.  How hard would it be for mismanagement to share that information? Shit, at least the mullahs in Iran took the trouble to come up with numbers, even if they did pull ‘em out of their asses!

The new GM goes out of his way to warn hashers about bringing up mismanagement issues on the listserve, our Yahoo email group.  He wants to restrict discussion to the monthly mismanagement meetings (and, to be fair, so did the previous GM). The listserve, he says, is only for fun emails. Asking questions is not fun.  It’s bitching. And bitching, he threatens, will be dealt with by the listserve committee, who will delete controversial emails and ban the hashers who post them.

Instead, we’re supposed to hold our bitches until the next monthly mismanagement meeting, to share with the dozen or so hashers who attend those meetings. Concerns are not to be voiced to the hundred or more hashers who use the listserve but don’t attend mismanagement . . . the hundred or more hashers who, based on comments I heard at Sunday’s hangover hash, have questions of their own about the recent election.

Here’s how mismanagement meetings work: there’ll be 10-15 hashers at the meeting.  Members of mismanagement will be there, along with members of the unelected inner circle that calls the shots in the hash.  You, with your issue, complaint, or suggestion, will be one voice.  Without any prior group discussion of issues on the listserve, no one knows whether you’re speaking for yourself, for a few, or for many. It’s a system designed to resist change, and it’s been my experience that it resists change effectively.

(Not) the Inner Circle

Well, you may ask, if there’s no group discussion of mismanagement issues prior to the meeting, does word of what happened at the meetings get out to hashers, so that at least some discussion can take place prior to the next meeting?  Yeah, sort of, but not always.  Mismanagement usually publishes minutes of the meetings on the listserve, but sometimes details are glossed over.  In some cases, when particularly unpleasant arguments have occurred at mismanagement meetings, previous GMs have actually suspended publication of the minutes.

With no group discussion allowed prior to mismanagement meetings and limited publicity on controversial issues put out afterward, the majority of hash members get their information through the rumor mill, which is almost always inaccurate.

I hope our new GM will cut the unelected inner circle out of the decision-making loop, give hashers their say at the monthly mismanagement meetings, and act on their concerns. I hope he’s not planning on keeping hashers in the dark about mismanagement actions.  But it’s not a good sign that his very first message to the pack tells us to shut the fuck up.  Maybe local hashers will take a lesson from the Iranian people and start using the listserve to speak up, no matter what the GM says.

It’s times like these I’m glad I have a blog, where I can say what I want . . . even if no one reads it!

Update (6/25/09): I find myself obsessively updating this post, trying to clarify exactly what I mean. But the more I revise it, the more I feel like I’m just whining. After all, as long as there’s a trail, there’s a hash, right? That’s what’s important, and everything else is fluff.

But . . . while there’s a lot to be said for non-democratic hashes, where one person is in charge and there’s no discussion or debate, the trouble with this particular hash is that it prides itself on being a democracy, and members, including myself, expect to have some say. Mismanagement meetings actually do mean something in this hash, but few attend.  I think that censoring the listserve, the one avenue of discussion available to all members, is misguided. That’s really all I meant to say.

You know what makes for a good Fathers’ Day?  Going on a bike hash!

Today was the hangover hash for the jHavelina Red Dress weekend, set by three members of the Pedalfiles Bash: Redheaded Woodpecker, Bimbo by Day, and Stick Me Anywhere.  The pack — runners and riders alike — gathered at a favorite Pedalfiles hangout, Reilly’s Irish Tavern, for a few pre-hash libations:

The gathering

The hares set two trails, one for traditional hashers and one for bashers.  About a mile into the bash trail, we came upon evidence of a catastrophic hare failure:

Hare Fail (click to enlarge)

The beer check

At the beer check, we found out that Redheaded Woodpecker had gone down when his flour bag got caught in his spokes, but fortunately lost only his flour, not any blood.  The second half of the trail was short for both runners and riders, and ended in a high-rent parking lot, otherwise abandoned for the weekend.  How can you tell when a Tucson parking lot is high-rent?  Shade!

The circle

The girl in the photo is the Lady in Red, who shows up at all the big red dress runs.  God knows why she takes the trouble to show up at our piddley-ass events, but we’re glad she does!

It seems Stray Dog has a relative on Capitol Hill:

From: Becton, Elizabeth
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 9:55 AM
To: XXX; XXX; Democratic Schedulers
Subject: RE: We Have a Mole Amongst Us

What kind of nasty, petty, poorly written (Did these people graduate from middle school to high school?) site is www.wonkette.com? And what a base, narcissistic, illiterate group of readers they have! I will never venture to that site again. It was a total waste of my time. However, this email is for the mole among us. You are a poor excuse for a human being. You are not a team player. If I ever find out who you are, I will gladly advertise that it was you who forwarded the emails to the low-rent wonkette site. I will further inform the Speaker’s Office, Standards on Official Conduct, and all the other appropriate offices of what you did. And if you got paid for it, my lowly, putrid, little wonkette reader, you have committed a crime and you will be punished for it when you are found. I have contacted Telecom and I have informed them of what has happened and since it’s a quiet day, they are checking all the forwarded emails from this list serve.

And to my team players and fellow schedulers, I apologize that I had to include you on this email. This email was intended for the lowly loser among us.

Have a nice day!

Elizabeth Becton
Executive Assistant/Office Manager
Office of Congressman Jim McDermott

Remember when we were all laughing at Stray Dog for threatening to sic the FBI on us? Maybe we should have been running for the Mexican border instead.

Well, next time I hare for the P.I.S.S. Hash, I’ll dedicate eagle trail to Liz Becton and turkey trail to Stray Dog!

And as Himself would say . . .

Cheers and On On!

A recruiting opportunity came my way today, and I gave it my best shot.  I stopped at the corner coffee shop toward the end of my morning bicycle ride, and when the guy at the counter rang me up, he asked me what my T-shirt had to do with Ikea.

I hadn’t even thought about which T-shirt to wear when I rolled out of bed today; I just grabbed the top one from the drawer.  Turned out it was my Ikea Hazmat shirt (sorry, can’t find a photo): the one with the blue & yellow Ikea-style “On On” logo on the front and the hazmat suits on the back.  The shirt, of course, commemorates the August 2007 hash terrorist anthrax attack on the Ikea parking lot in New Haven, Connecticut.

I told an abbreviated version of the story to the barrista while he poured my coffee.  He thought it was an awesome story, so I told him how to look up our local hash groups on line.

I love it when non-hashers notice hash T-shirts and ask about them . . . so long as they’re not hostile, that is, like the fundamentalist who stopped me in traffic once because the Jesus fish on the back of my car was holding a beer!

Work on the HHH T-shirt quilt continues:

Wet Toe Job & Pick'n'Flick

You know it’s a hash project when you work with one hand and drink with the other!

Not a Hash (click to enlarge)

Update (5/27/09): When I cross-posted this photo to Hashspace, my reference to cotton T-shirts mystified some fellow hashers. But I knew that if we just waited, Lord Douchebag would clarify matters:

The old cotton vs. blend argument again, on which I stand firm with the ability of blend to shed water. Those who do not exert themselves very much and still call themselves hashers like the cotton, as they do not sweat enough to have a heavy, cold, sweaty shirt. The rest of us who are hashers who actually participate in the trail for any length, know better. However, I give them this, cotton is great for changing into after the run, standing around at the On-In or for those who “never leave camp”.

One can only marvel at Lord D’s ability, no matter the subject under discussion, to belittle other hashers. How does he do it?

When is a hash not a hash? When Lord Douchebag says it isn’t!

When things get dull in Hashville, you can count on Lord Douchebag to stir things up.  In the middle of a long thread about building kennel membership, he tosses this into the punchbowl:

I have not recorded one “NO alcohol” hash since I began keeping records in 1993 and were some such running club request to be in the world directory, I would suggest they create a hounds and hare club. It is one of those fake arguments that are an effective scare to some to tighten up on what is and is not a hash despite its total bullshit rating.

Naturally I could not resist posting a link to the website of an actual no alcohol hash, just up the road from me in Phoenix, Arizona. To which he could not resist harrumphing this response:

If there is a hash that does not allow alcohol listed in the directory, send me the name (not some link to some forum somewhere) and it will be removed.  No beer allowed, not a hash. On that I agree. Otherwise, as far as I know, I have no hashes listed in the directory that do not allow alcohol.

Uh, Lord D., the founder’s email address is hotlinked right there on the website.  You know how to click your mouse, don’t you?  And just who are you agreeing with?  Yourself?  Because the link I posted was meant to indicate that some hashers in Phoenix disagree.  And who says a hash isn’t a hash if it isn’t listed in your directory?

Oh you are so one of these!

Well, this is all very entertaining, but it’s even more entertaining if you try imagining Lord D. sticking one of these up his ass and trying to pump himself up real big to intimidate anyone who dares question his hashly authority.  Try it.  It’s fun!