A sweet new bike being sadly neglected

I got this in the mail a couple weeks ago:

Not this exact frame mind you, but one that is an awful lot like it. Only subtract the nice ceramic bearings. And I find it a little bit sad that I am so busy that I actually haven't even stripped off the packing materials to properly gaze upon this beautiful new (to me) machine. Or started spending money I shouldn't on getting the bits necessary to build this up into the powerful steed it will become.

Pitiful, in a way, but also good to know that my priorities are not entirely demonstrably misplaced. At least not all the time!

And I was struck by another, significantly different observation today. Some of you are familiar with the "Charge of the Light Brigade" by Lord Tennyson. The most often quoted lines come from the second stanza:

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

   Someone had blundered.

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

When one team leader quoted it to another team leader in a flashback sequence in Netflix's new Punisher series, Frank Castle (the other team leader) gives a reply that paints the poem in a new light for me:

"Ours is not to reason why, Frankie Boy, ours is but to do or die" mis-quotes the soldier.

Frank's reply: "That's from a poem about a bunch of guys got their asses handed to them on the back of bad intel, right?"

The idea of the rough and tumble Frank Castle having actually read a poem shocks his buddy.

But it is reminiscent of a few good portrayals of the more-complex-than-you-thought hero or anti-hero. Perhaps my favorite is still Omar in The Wire.

One of the sweetest scenes in the series:

That stuff is deep. Truly.

So is the explanation of "Charge of the Light Brigade" as "a poem about a bunch of guys got their asses handed to them on the back of bad intel."

Good work whoever wrote that episode!