Piping down, color commentary and a hill of beans

Dear Rachel,

Hello young lady. YEA I SAID HELLO. The Harleys are coming to town. Bells, chimes and toot toots, and now Harleys, rumbling, smoke and tats. What are the new people who complain about the train and clock tower chimes going to do? Will the noise from the Harleys make them complain to the city fathers? The Harleys have been around for about 100 years, so I guess they knew it when they moved to Durango. And the rally has gone on before they moved to Durango. I hope you support the $$$ coming into Durango and buy a good set of ear plugs. But Rach, what will happen when we go e-Harley? No noise, and I guess no complaints. Your Biker Babe thoughts.

– Knuckle Head Harley

Dear Knuckle-Dragging Davidson,

People will always complain to… wait, to the city fathers? What about the city mothers? The city people who choose (entirely legitimately) not to have children at all? It’s certainly easier to afford a hog if you’re not always feeding and cleaning up after a bunch of little piggies. But you can’t ever complain about a lack of noise. Harleys, like children, will never be seen but not heard. If we can make fake train sounds for Lionel sets, we’ll have AI-induced revving sounds for electricity-guzzling Harleys.

– Vroom vroom, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I’ve started thinking about colors. How one color shifts depending on the time of day, indoors or outdoors, quality of the light, intensity of the bulb, other colors nearby. And that doesn’t even get into wondering if the way I perceive colors is at all comparable to the way you perceive colors. I’m wondering, when we define a hue, is there some set light parameters we go by to attain the definitive color? Or are we just making it all up?

– Seeing Reds

Dear Seeing Eye Dawg,

I got news for you: We’re all making everything up as we go. Nothing makes sense. Existence is a construct. Language shapes the way we perceive the world. You cannot escape your own biases. Also, I’m suddenly wondering if I should open my own line of philosopher bumper stickers.

– Available in every color, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

Why is “brew your own coffee” the rallying cry of all well-to-do people who decry young’uns for not buying their own houses? Here’s my napkin math: a $5 cappuccino every day of the year is $1,825. If you are kind and tip a dollar each time, it’s $2,190.

Ah, but we must deduct the store-bought coffee you’d otherwise be buying. Let’s call it a $10 bag each week for a total increased cost of $1,670. A decade of saving might get you the first half of a down payment.

So, why don’t rich old people go find some clouds to shout at?

– Caffeinated & Matheinated

Dear Chump Change,

The true mark of adulthood is when you start complaining about younger generations, as if the older generations didn’t do the raising of them. Something in the parenting of these half-caf frap-foaming sludge-guzzlers trained them to spend a significant, if not luxurious, sum on fancy coffee. I think perhaps bikers are the only people who never grow up. They’re ever too focused on pissing off their parents to worry about pissing off their children.

– Back in my day, Rachel