it's a sad day for the return of the union book club.  i had hoped to offer inspiraiton for the masses.  for those who chafe at the yoke of imperialist corporate oppression, a literary balm; for those who thirst for deeper knowledge of the revolution, a heady draught; and for those who yearn to further the union message, a constant companion and source of solace.

regrettably, i have found the opposite.  rather than an uplifting message for young cyclists, i have uncovered a conspiracy.  i can say with absolute conviction that up until yesterday, book burnings had seemed laughably stupid to me.  no longer.  the book being reviewed today is a purported children's book called messenger messenger by robert burleigh with illustrations by barry root.  it is subversive, and a clear violation of racing union thought.

this book appears to defy simple analysis.  it also appears to defy complex analysis.  i attempted to take a cue from roland barthes, and used the tools of structuralist poetics and literary deconstructionism, but found myself no closer to a breakthrough.  it's just not clear what message this treatise seeks to pass along to our youth on bikes.  because i am so unclear on where this book is going, i have attempted a sort of photo essay, in which i document the experience of reading it and the reactions of the union's young pioneers who have perused it as well. 

in the following picture, it's not clear if calvin is cold as in frigid or cold as in "stone cold freak".  i'm not down with the hipsters and their modern urban patois so i think i miss a lot.  even my five year old son thought he was smoking.  and what's with the beirut/haifa street landscape he's riding through.  it's surreal.  he's biking through a war zone with smoke coming out of his mouth.

lest you think the sketchy landscapes will give way to safer suburbs or the relative security of the big city, think again.  apparently a good part of messenger man's job is floating around exceedingly flaky locales and making pick ups and deliveries of non-descript materials.

but messenger man can't do it on angst or urbane cool alone.  no, he needs fuel.  my son took one look at this photograph and asked me if i rode my bike like this, with no hands, eating and drinking, with cars very close by.  i was dumbfounded.  you sort of have to wonder if the guy who drew this picture even knows what riding a bike in traffic is like.  there may be people stupid enough to try to pull this off, but i've never seen them.

if there's any upside, it's that he wears a helmet.  and though this is a positive, like so much else, it just seems to show how out of touch with bike couriers the illustrator is.  we all know that the cool couriers don't wear helmets.  and what's up with the circa-1976,white formula one car in the background?  this is simply a myserty wrapped in a puzzle shrouded by an enigma.

the sole member of the racing union's young pioneers who this was beta tested on seemed to take a shine to it, though he admitted to a considerable amount of confusion regarding the images and text.

attempts to debrief this child were made.  when this didn't go well, attepts to deprogram him from the hipster chic and surrealist guidance that the book contained were redoubled.  appropriate literature was substituted...

but was met with loud denunciations and threats of physical abuse.

so in closing, this book gets no hammers and sickles: the default rating system of the racing union book club.  oh, and formal orders have just been promulgated that...er...um....karl marx has been removed from the racing union young pioneer's official summer reading list and has been replaced with a 24 page glossy stock book called "ultimate nascar", a book about pirates and a book about a robot who is taught to swing on vines by monkeys.  this decision is, apparently, rather set in stone so appropriate orders to local community bookstores should be placed immediately by parents of young pioneers who serve in the vanguard of the revolution.  that is all.

-dear leader