Well I finally took pictures of my bike tonight, and noticed some interesting damage, too...
Crappy dark shot, sorry:
Excuse the cat, this is with the visible damage to the left bar-end that I did with my wrist in August. The bar part swivels around/is loose, so I can't crank on it much (though I do use the corner of the bracket to switch up my hand position) - I need some loctite for it, is all.
And the damage I found:
Firstly, there's a screw missing (which is what caught my eye), but on closer inspection, the next eyelet is sheared off the inner part (forgive me for not knowing the names of the parts) - I do want to replace/switch up my gearing to get some taller gears, but don't know exactly what I'm going to do about this yet. This certainly explains the creaking I've been hearing just the past couple of days.
Anyway, that's my el cheapo ride..
It gets me from A to B, I love it.