The Waiting Line

Only in Dreams

2008-11-24T18:50:00.000-08:00

One of the ways the internet shocks me is that sometimes I see things on the internet and then can't remember if I dreamed them or not. The man who turned his penis into a flamethrower? Real. (NSFW, duh.) Shakira trying to sell me an alarm clock? Dream. A decent lion, who doesn't eat people right away. Real. Playing foursquare with Barack Obama? Dream.

A farm duck who adopts a beagle and joy is found, but the duck dies of old age and joy is lost, but the farmers stuff the duck's corpse and joy is found again? Plus, the farmer lady pulls the duck around on a rope so the beagle can play with it? Double plus, it's all in Spanish and set to that Aerosmith song from that movie. No, not that one. Right, that one.

Real.

Please Move Here

2008-09-17T17:12:00.001-07:00

I've been kicking around a text on why it's so wonderful to live in my neighborhood for months now. In between starting the thought process and finally writing it, I traveled to some exotic destinations in order to preempt anyone rebutting me with, "Dude, you've lived in four distinct places that you actually remember so get off of that soapbox and put your pants back on." Fair enough, numerous and vociferous detractors? You chased me from my perfect little country, you bastards. You'll get yours, with walnuts on top.

I live in Arlington; more specifically I live in Nearlington (as opposed to Farlington, which is basically any part of the county in which you can't walk to the Metro, an ATM, and a bar within ten minutes of leaving your doorstep) and around the Courthouse Metro. I'm of the opinion that any point in Nearlington is equivocal to any other point, but I'm discovering this is because I'm willing to ride my bike everywhere. People who walk tend to differentiate by Metro stations.

I think you should move here. Why haven't you? It's expensive, yes, and you can have a comparatively gigantic apartment/house/manse/plantation a little farther out. Perhaps you prefer the more urban feel of actually living in DC and I can assume that you're the sort of person who appreciates walkability, occasional street crime, and not ever having to vote for president again.

Yes, rent here is pricey and I won't pretend that gas is so expensive that I'm breaking even on not driving my car. I won't make that argument because it's akin to people pointing out that hybrid cars aren't cost effective. That thing patting you on the back for being able to do math? It's a starving polar bear. They pat before they kill. I saw it on NOVA.

This afternoon I ran a disparate set of errands that would have taken miles of driving back in my exurb days. I managed to drop off a package, get my car's tags renewed, get my bike fixed, and have two hours of Arabic tutoring within the same three blocks. Earlier this summer I was able to look in three different stores for a backpack for dogs (it goes on the dog, the dog doesn't go in the backpack) before I found the right size and color. This was within a two block area and I wasn't in the dog backpack district.

When my dingy, sketchy-until-you-get-to-know-it bar closed down to make room for yet more condos, there was another, albeit smaller, version right up the street. I had dinner there tonight; hamburger, a pint of bourbon stout, A Canticle for Leibowitz to read, and a seat by the window to watch the joggers go by while I partook of my pickle. Only the absence of my wife made it less than ideal, but she was having dinner with one of her academic mentors. However, last night she got off the metro starving and wobbly from spinning class and we met in our Chinese restaurant just like one of those fancy city couples.

It's possible to run into people you know on the street; hell, I nearly ran down my nemesis L(ee) H(ummer) on my bike half an hour ago. The parentheses are due to the fact that I already know that he googles himself often and he hasn't put my face to this blog yet. I don't want to step off the Metro and find him standing covered in stickers and nothing else, waiting for me to make my move.

The neighborhood is losing some of the independent places that make it so nice, but the real estate slump seems to have put some hesitancy in those who would knock down some civic memory for a couple hundred more unsold condos. It remains to be seen how much longer that will last. Perhaps the Metro will shoot up Lee Highway for a new wacky line and I can look for places closer to the new stops and the German bakery.

Please move here; I feel like people don't have neighborhoods anymore and it leads to focusing the room on the television, only traveling while surrounded in steel and glass, being afraid of other people, and ultimately voting Republican.

An Alternate Life, Briefly Glimpsed

2008-04-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

My wife is a copy editor, web monkey, and occasional columnist for a local paper. God help us, if you click on her byline you see her beautiful face on her bio page and though she's kept it as vaguely nonidentifying as I've kept this blog she has picked up an internet friend. This friend sent her a bumper sticker, care of her paper but with her name on the envelope, advertising a very Alaska specific idea of having Governor Sarah Palin run as McCain's running mate. It is tacked up on the side of her cubicle. This friend, also through the magic of the internet, can be discovered through google to be something of a celebrity. He trains poodles to be sled dogs. He has a web page. He has a picture, too.

So, this is the man my wife could have married. I can see her future, clad in furs, reeking of poodle, wondering if perhaps there was another life for her with a quiet man in a small apartment in Arlington.

On Safety and Fear

2008-01-16T20:28:00.000-08:00

S___ and I were playing the hookster last week, meeting some friends in Georgetown to get some kabobs for lunch. Window shopping on our way there, we heard a loud steam whistle start to sound. It's a sound that you generally have no reference for, but maybe you've seen movies with old steam trains. This was amplified and didn't take breaths.

When I worked at the University, I volunteered to be the office fire marshal. Part of this job, in addition to leading my coworkers to safety in Virginia with my backpack full of water and fruit rollups, was helping run the "shelter-in-place" drill. When there was an emergency that required everyone to clear the quads and run into the buildings, the huge steam whistle on top of Healy Hall would sound and the fire marshals would run outside to ward everyone in. This was necessary because while everyone knows what to do in a fire drill (run outside!), the steam whistle had just been installed and no one knew what it meant when it sounded (run inside!).

In theory, it would go off due to belltower sniper, dirty bomb, poison gas cloud, etc. When it sounded last week, it could be heard all the way down M street and no one knew what it meant. I tensed a little, since I knew it was either a drill or something horrible, and I contemplated pulling S___ into a store and leaving everyone else on the street to die. Then something else took over- there were no police cars blazing down the street, no explosions, no one falling to the ground clutching roses. The part of my brain that has been trained to be afraid lost out to feeling safe.

I know that's bullshit and maybe this actually makes me less safe. I'm sure there are survival stories that could be thrown at me of people who were prepared, followed their training, and lived to tell it. Those are riveting stories and I'm sure they're true, but damn I bet they're statistically insignificant. I read my environment that day and my monkey brain said "safe" no matter how scared and prepared that steam whistle is meant to have made me. I know in Iraq some bases have signs that say "Complacency Kills" on the gate to the outside but that's Iraq and I refuse to walk around my city, on my way to getting a lunch special at Moby Dick, and put my senses on a war footing.

Sometimes I feel like we're doomed by our frozen evolution to not be able to step outside our tribal instincts. My monkey brain wants to see the same hundred faces, to know their names and their proclivities, to trade in good faith and mete out punishment to those who break it. Too many strange faces inflicted on people who are already cut off behind single family homes and car windows, suddenly you find yourself railing against the day laborer depot with that cluster of strangers doing strange things that MUST be criminal. Be afraid, because your tribe is invaded every day. Shut yourself off, become a conservative, fear change and defend your family against all takers and comers.

I understand that, but it ends badly.

The only way I can read the news, or do my job, and not hate everyone is because I'm coming to realize that all anyone wants is to feel safe. The only people I distrust are those that seek to make you afraid to their advantage, whether they're a bully or a priest or a president. I've also been extremely lucky to arrive where I am, with the love I have, without having been knocked around and damaged and distrustful, so I can't blame people for feeling encircled.

I feel safe and I'll always do my best to remember your face and welcome you into my tribe.

Culling Our Books

2008-01-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

When my mother is asked to describe the relationship I have with my wife and the likelihood of its success, she invariably says something along the lines of, "oh, the two of them were made for each other, they both read books."

There's a lot more going on with S___ and I, but I'd be peeved with my mom more if she hadn't helped us move into our apartment together and watched box after box of books come in. If you've ever helped us move, thank you. I know the books are the heaviest, after the sea chest (partially full of books) and the antique jelly cupboard (those colonists made their jelly storage devices to withstand the ravages of savages and catholics).

We have six regular sized bookcases and they're all full. This is a problem, since we've refused to learn an object lesson and stop buying books. We considered a rule that no new books should be bought until we had read all the ones in the house, but that did not make it out of committee. We tried an experiment where we just went to the library, but it was bothersome because all the good ones were checked out. We also made a charitable donation to Arlington County because we're lazy and couldn't be bothered to get the books back in time.

I don't know what it is about books, but if we did this with porcelain figurines or star wars pogs you, our dear friends, would not be the sexy and fashionable people that you are. Your clothes would fit poorly and you would smell like sourdough bread. Because we have a maddening surfeit of books instead, not that many people think we're nuts.

I have a hard time getting rid of books, even when I won't ever need or read them again. One of my favorite things is to have friends browse the shelves while we make dinner or put on our BSG cosplay (I go as Caprica Six, S___ as Baltar. Hot hot hot!) and hear, "Is this any good? Can I borrow it?" We have an apartment full of ideas and you can just walk in and borrow one. I like that and I don't think that will ever change.

However, it's a small apartment full of ideas and some ideas are apparently worth culling. We kept a pile of books in our living room the same way some people keep cardboard boxes of kittens in the front yard. Free to a good home, but not that many takers. What we were left with are weighty fantasy tomes from S___, most of my Stephen King and all of my Tom Clancy, two Ayn Rands, and some Middle East history and politics books that we had duplicates of. I just put them all on half.com last weekend and I've had six buyers so far- we've got cut-rate prices and our inventory must be reduced!

What is interesting (the payoff of the whole post! soon!) is that selling best so far are pulpy fantasy novels and that these are selling to rural addresses. I imagine part of that is due to the spring semester not starting yet, but I was surprised by the rural route numbers or towns with "elk" or "raccoon" in their names. When I want to load up on trash fiction, I can hit two decent used books stores in the area and take out a sack of books. Of course, they rarely want to take these back and we arrive back to our storage problem. If you don't have one of these stores nearby, however, what a treat half.com must be- the selection far surpasses anything you're likely to find locally and you can often pick which book has less wear and tear. Hell, you can even find an earlier edition without the movie cover if that bothers you.

The unfortunate thing is that while my books are being sold at used bookstore prices (generally between 75 cents to a dollar), there's the additional two dollars in shipping. I do feel bad about that- right now I'm wrapping the books in old grocery bags, just like I used to when I couldn't afford wrapping paper, and sending them as media mail through the post office. I couldn't possibly charge less money for shipping. Still, it's nice to know that somewhere out in rural America people are gathering their own collections, even if I should send a note saying "you'll grow out of it" with the Ayn Rand books.

A Whetting

2007-11-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

Between now and my last post, I got married to a wonderful woman in a beautiful ceremony surrounded by dear friends. Then we jetted off to Bali. You'd think these things would deserve blog postings and they do; surely I have stores of purple prose saved up about romance and commmittment and dedicatory offerings and mothers-in-law ready and I do; but I'm working crazy hours (12 hour shifts, either from 10PM to 10AM or vice versa) with erratic days off, so it will have to wait for me to adjust.

What I do have is this little verbal snapshot.

I can't easily ride my bike to work at the moment, but I want to try. I bought some neat gear which arrived today. One objet d'velocipede is a ninja cowl. S___ laughed at someone riding past us wearing one of those last night, so won't she be surprised! I think I'll sleep in it. It's very warm and caused the cat to eye me suspiciously.

Another bit of kit is a pair of tights. Man, were those hard to get on! Whoo, do they ever give me a manmel toe! For some folks, one doesn't have enough balls to wear something. For me, I have far too many balls to wear tights. They make my legs look good (the tights, not the balls. Those have always looked ungainly to me, actually. Like coconuts atop two swaying palms. Full of potential energy that you wouldn't want to sit under, in both cases) so I'll just have to find some tiny, tiny shorts.

I have been awake for a day and a half now and I don't need your forgiveness. I've been putting tea bags in S___'s espresso machine and I've found supa-tea helps me to stay awake without the jitters! Lookitmetype! I just chased the cat around the apartment wearing a ninja mask and tights, yelling "package for you, sir!" until he ran under the bed and I decided to write this.

I think you're neat.

I will write more when I've straightened out a little.

Stay classy, internet.

Omens and Restaurant Biodiversity

2007-08-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

Today I had my first taste of what S___ will be like when she's pregnant and this means that we will have to spend those fruitful 9 months in a major metropolitan area, because she's capable of really exacting cravings from time to time. Last night, it was bastilla, which is a Moroccan dish made of multiple layers of a phyllo-like dough wrapped around a filling, topped with cinnamon, and baked. Traditionally it's filled with pidgeon and pistachios.

She related this craving to me around 9:30 last night, with the only three (3!) Moroccan restaurants in town closing at 10 and damned if I didn't let her down by pointing out that I just couldn't make it happen. Tonight, though, I ordered a carry-out bastilla and biked over to pick it up. On the way home, my bastilla bungee-corded to the back of my bike, I considered what would have happened if we lived in an area with a lack of Moroccan restaurants. I would be out in the parking lot of some bland suburban townhome tract, with a dress shirt clutched as a net and my trusty meat-mallet, stalking the wild pidgeons while the phyllo got wet enough to stretch.

I get cravings, too, but they're normally for the bad stuff I'm trying to cut back on. Wendy's value meal cheeseburgers dipped in ketchup. Mexican wedding cookies. Anything with high fructose corn syrup. All fairly easy to obtain, as opposed to S___'s now-and-then craving for the Cheesecake Factory. There's only one of those every hundred miles or so and I bet that's mainly along the coasts. When she's pregnant (decades from now) we can't be out in some goat cheese farm in Oregon or installing drip irrigation in Oman and I can't make Cheesecake Factory food at home. We just don't have that amount of butter in one place and we buy ours at Costco.

It's actually refreshing to know that when it's time for the chilluns to come, we'll have to clamp down on the wanderlust and start nesting, like we're birds finding a tree that's close to water and acres of unique and culinarily distinct seeds.

A Milestone of Sorts

2007-06-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Today has given me a dubious honor- today marks the first time I've been pulled over by a cop on my bike.

I'd joked to myself previously how funny it would be if I'd been pulled over all the times I'd ridden my bike to Dr. Dremo's and then wobbled back home, sort of along the lines of, "No officer, how fast was I going? No, I haven't been drinking. Yes, these shorts are a little tight..." etc, etc, etc.

The problem this afternoon was that I blurred the line between motorist and pedestrian; when you bike in the bike lane on the road, you are essentially a quiet motorcycle and have to do such things as signal if you're turning or stopping, obey traffic signs, talk on your cellphone, and forget that everyone can see you picking your nose. When you ride on the sidewalk, you are a pedestrian and you obey their rules, like not jaywalking. The demands on your are light at that point, I suppose.

What I did was I went from being a car to a walker and didn't do any of it right: I turned onto a street without "signaling" and then I crossed the street on a crosswalk when there was no traffic but there was no little white man telling me I could cross.

So, a kind Arlington County police officer turned on his siren and pulled me over, pointed out what I'd done wrong, I was very polite and said, "sorry officer," to which he gave me a warning, and I finished with a "it's very hot today, sorry."

There's the crux of it- I'm not one of those evil cyclists who blow through intersections without stopping or kick your car if you come too close. I believe that while in the road I'm technically a car and if everyone acted that way things would be better. However, there are some crucial differences that come up. Today I was biking back from Target, with a precious cargo of cat food, dishwasher detergent, condoms, and toilet paper. I know that doesn't exactly make me Balto, but it's across the county to get to Target. I'll grant that Arlington is the smallest county in the continental United States, but it's really hot out today.

In a car, you're essentially sitting on a couch at an intersection. You're engine does not get tired and is not thinking of how nice a popsicle at home is going to be. If I can keep some momentum going by taking a crosswalk around a deserted intersection, I'm going to do it. When you pull up in an intersection and there's a cyclist next to you, feel free to look at us oddly or admire our rooster tail of grit going up our ass and back but please keep in mind that a cyclist is just a car that gets grumpy.

On a related note, I thought the cop had pulled me over for not wearing a helmet, which is required in this county for anyone under 15. I had my shirt off (IT WAS HOT TODAY, HAVE I MADE THAT CLEAR?) and I was preparing to indicate how much chest hair I had when he cut me off and pointed out the traffic violations.

Apparently cyclists wearing helmets cause this strange thought in a motorist's head that a collision would somehow be amicable since the helmet is present. That's not the reason I don't wear a helmet, of course. I used to read a blog where the author got hit by a bus while biking and received some horrible DC road rash that required broad-spectrum antibiotics. These, sadly, interfered with her vaginal ecosystem and caused yeast infections; her solution was to put yoghurt on a tampon and... apply it. If I wear a helmet, motorists will think I can survive a hit and then I'll have to put yoghurt in my vagina. So, no helmet for me, thanks.

My Arabic Tutor

2007-05-04T17:28:00.000-07:00

I have a tutor for Arabic because I need help working on conversation. I can read it pretty well now, but that's because I can get my brain shifted over and that really doesn't happen when I'm trying to think of what I want to say in English and then processing... processing... processing... ctrl/atl/del?

She used to be an archeologist, which is pretty neat. She's also Iraqi and just got here a year ago, so she has a lot of stories to tell. Sometimes the language barrier gets a little too tall and the two of us revert to that special pantomime of exaggerated faces and wild arm movements. I tried to explain In'n'Out Burger to her; she tried to explain Yazidis (a very old religion spread out in a handful of villages around Iraq, Iran, and Turkey that openly worships Lucifer as the peacock angel, a nice guy who's gotten some bad press) to me.

She found out this week that her brother has been kidnapped and the first thing I want to ask is why everyone in her family didn't get out if she could, but I stop myself. I just say that I'm very, very sorry and people say that they're sorry all the time without meaning it so it's a strange, wrenching feeling to mean it this deeply.

Her work permit renewal paperwork is due and, get this, if she admits to the US government that she has sent money to her family to pay the ransom on her brother, she will have admitted to providing support to terrorists and she will be deported.

It's a small lie, I suppose, to say on a signed document that you did not pay money to evil men so that your brother would not be shot and left in the street to be found the next morning. I know that's what she'll do, but on top of everything that's happened to her that she could easily blame on our government and, as far as I can tell, doesn't, it has the capriciousness to force her to lie.

I'm truly sorry. I'm furious that there's not much I can do. This is a selfish post because I can't even write what she might be feeling right now because I really can't imagine. That's all I have.

Good Will Hunting

2007-04-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen Good Will Hunting since high school and all I can remember from it is the "dem apples" line. I was clicking around on One Good Move in order to catch some of the Daily Show/Reporrrr excerpts they post, when I saw this:

If you can't watch at home, it's the scene in the movie where Will is explaining why he wouldn't work at the NSA. Here is the long quote from IMDB:

---

Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had a no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, Send in the marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

---

Please keep in mind that this movie came out in 1997. I didn't remember a word of this until I saw it again today. It doesn't mean that Matt Damon is a prophet (though Ben Affleck may in fact be a temple whore) but I can imagine seeing this in high school and thinking that it was funny. I would have found it funny because it's the classic liberal hippie "they're out to get me" screed and at the time it seemed comically farfetched for a young man who (at the time) cared more about purple poetry than politics.

The Ubiquitous Foil Wrapper

2007-04-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

I believe in full disclosure. I have a lot of dignity, but very little in the way of shame. Most people who know me know this to be true.

So, Mom sent me mail-order English Muffins for Easter. I don't think there's any specific symbolism there, unless the nooks and crannies are meant to symbolize... Golgotha? There were two kinds, apple and mixed berry. I had an apple one right when I woke up this morning, S____ was in the gym and I had just done three days' worth of dishes. I baked it with some cheddar and swiss and it was very good.

We take a shower and I realize that I'm still hungry. I throw one of the mixed berry muffins in and think of how good it will be with cream cheese oozing all out the sides of it. Keep in mind that I ride my bike 36 miles a day to work so I have a pretty hungry metabolism.

The muffin comes out of the oven all warm and crusty on top and I open our cheese drawer (full of so much cheese!!) in the fridge and grab a foil-wrapped package. I cut off two quarter-inch slabs and notice that the foil wrapper says "not for use as a spread" which leaves me to wonder if this is a weird type of cream cheese that's meant for baking. It's sure as hell not spreading on the muffin very well, so I press the two halves together into a sandwich and this spreads the white substance out nicely.

I eat half of my muffin sandwich when S____ comes out and asks how it is.

"It's pretty good, but I think this cream cheese might be stale."

"Really, let me have a taste." Bite. Chew. Chew. "That's not cream cheese. I think it's mozzarella."

"No, I cut some off of a foil-wrapped package."

We go to the fridge and discover that on flipping said package over, it very clearly says "Crisco."

Keep in mind that I thought the "cream cheese" tasted weird, but I kept eating it until I got about halfway through. It feels like I'm carrying some horrible shortening baby through to term.

My Commute

2007-03-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

My old job was about three miles away from my apartment. If it was nice out, I'd ride my bike and if it was raining I would suck it up and walk with an umbrella.

My new job is about 20 miles away and across the forbidding Northern Virginia trafficscape, a stretch of unmoving steel and rubber that has made grown men quail and stout women miscarry in trepidation of hard times ahead.

I can, however, take the metro and then the bus to work, which takes 15 minutes longer than driving but allows me to do some crossword puzzles in the paper and otherwise completely miss out on the carnage around me.

Sometimes I have to go to different buildings for training and I can't take the bus. This means that once every couple of weeks I drive to work and I was starting to worry that I hate people.

I don't worry about that anymore, because now I know that I don't hate people: I just hate drivers from Maryland and they're not really people, you see.

Ms. Alcarwen, her family, and friends are all complete exceptions to this. Then again, how often have I seen her drive? No, no, I'm sure she's different.

She would never tailgate me on a twisting road because I was only doing 10 over the speed limit. She would never change lanes three times in hope of finding that magic faster route around an impenetrable wall of cars. She doesn't run red lights and sit through green ones.

She doesn't do these things despite being from Maryland, where apparently the slippery abortions that inhabit the state clamber into their cars in order to simulate the wombs that shunned them so they can rush home and sprinkle meth on their Cool Ranch Doritos and knock out their teeth so that their scabrous cocks don't snag while they autofellate themselves next to their fat voids of women shooting up armfuls of baking soda into themselves so they can feel their blood tickle and giggle through their spit bubbles.

I long for the bus on days like this. I like crossword puzzles.

Titus Andronicus and the Chamber of Secrets

2007-02-05T17:19:00.000-08:00

The final Harry Potter book is rumored to be very dark; in fact, two characters are already stated as dying in the course of the book. We've been placing bets on who, but I've started to realize that two is only the minimum boundary.

The new book could, in fact, be the darkest piece of literature known to man.

Chapter One

Hermione, Ron and Ginny Weasley, and Remus Lupin arrive to retrieve Harry early from the Dursleys. Not a word is said between the adoptive, careless characterization of suburban malaise and the bohemian, bonhomie bunch as they depart. This is merely one more parting in a revolving turnstile of hatred.

As the group arrives at the burrow, they find Mrs. Weasley fretting over the absence of Mr. Weasley, Bill, Charlie, and the Weasley twins, as they are late for Harry's welcome dinner. She has prepared a feast of bangers and mash, having called on their trusted magical butcher for a truly prodigious amount of sausage to feed the Weasley clan and the surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore's death hangs unspoken over the table, as the members and the present Weasleys decide to tuck in to the creme of British cuisine. The clock on the wall, which tells of the location of all the Weasley family, reads "mortal peril" as it has for months.

After most of the group has had two or three starch-soaked bangers there is a knock on the door, frantic but limp-wristed. Mrs. Weasley opens it to find Percy, looking wild.

"Mother," he says, "I'm so sorry."

Mrs. Weasley is overcome with the homecoming of her estranged son, but swallows her sobs to welcome him to the table, telling him that the rest of the family will be so pleased to see him when they come.

Percy remains standing in the doorway.

"Mother, no. I'm so sorry."

Everyone is staring at him.

"The Ministry arrested Winston Abattoir an hour ago. Our butcher. He was under the Imperius Curse. Our butcher, mother. He had no choice"

Percy walks to the clock on the wall and pencils in "RENDERED INTO SAUSAGE" in blocky letters. Five of the hands on the clock turn to point at the fresh location.

As he walks back out the door, Percy says over his shoulder:

"I'll leave you to grieve."

The wails follow him across the lawn, as he mounts his broom and flies back to Cornelius Fudge's arms.

Chapter 38, 895 pages later

Voldemort sneered at the bound Harry and Ron.

"The last surviving members of Dumbledore's Army." The Dark Lord raised his wand. "Yet, no army has ever been easier to kill. Observe, Harry."

Voldemort placed his wand on the ground and held out his hand, palm up, with his fingers forming a basket.

"Accio Ron's heart."

And it was done. Harry fell to the ground, the bonds loosened by the sudden space created in Ron's chest. Voldemort tossed something heavy and damp into a shrub.

"Accio Ron's scalp." Voldemort placed a matted and freckled orange beret on his own bare, pale yellow head.

"You see, Harry, Weasley is our king."

Harry felt his wand by its absence. It was still snapped in half inside an inferi's eye socket. He thought it used to be Snape, he couldn't have been sure.

"You won't need your wand, Harry. I'm not here to kill you."

He summoned forth three lumpy sacks on shaking legs.

"You're here to watch."

Voldemort levitated the sacks away with a gesture. It revealed the Dursley family, smeared in blood, missing an appendage each. Dudley no longer had ears or a nose; Harry would never know that Petunia was keeping them in her purse.

"I've made something, you see, and I want you to see it eat for the first time."

Two Deatheaters had their wands out, levitating light-sucking space between them as if it would rip their skin off.

"I crossed a boggart with an interesting plant that I found in the Longbottom corpse's pocket. It was serendipitous, you see, not having the werewolves eat all of him."

Harry blinked.

"It will take the first thing it eats, and then split in two. Then they will eat, split, and forever be hungry for that one thing it has tasted in its dimmest memory. When its food is gone, it will starve and die, but not before it has stripped the planet of every filthy Muggle. It's about to eat these blood-streaked vermin and then my creation will move on to Birmingham."

Harry looked at the Dursleys. He had never seen them more pitiful, even in all the times when all he could feel for them was that wrenching pathos of the superior towards those they have weighed and found wanting.

He knew that his was an invisible world to the majority of the planet's inhabitants, but that was that. Harry had grown pragmatic in his years-long fight against evil and he knew that all that was good had lost, was dead, was corrupted and timorous, damned to a half-life of servitude to blood, their thin picture frames, or the waxing of the moon.

Harry Potter leapt onto the creature and his world went black.

He never saw it divide, consume, and divide again.

Voldemort did not survive to see the black creatures crawl over his armies.

The two mortal enemies did not witness a world that had lost its wizards, witches, giants, merpeople, doxies, elves, goblins, and magic.

Only the muggle, that benighted wretch ignorant of the hidden world, would inherit a world of a logic as rigid as clockwork.

Last Days

2007-01-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is my last day at what will soon be my old job. For my going away party today, we had pizza and our receptionist was kind enough to get me one of those huge bottles of Trappist beer. Those monks sure don't have anything better to do than upping the alcohol content on their giant bottles of beer, don't they? Wow. I probably should have waited until I got home to drink that.

My best advice today came from our Turkish professor, who advised me to "Have a happy life-- watch out for bats!"

A succinct warning for our brave new world. Have a happy life, and watch out for bats, everyone.

Fluency

2007-01-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

One of the findings of the Iraq Study Group was that only 6 people in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq were considered fluent in Arabic. I've read in the Chronicle of Higher Education that this has created an outcry for more government spending on language instruction of critical need.

Let me tell you what I know. I manage a grant from the Department of Education that stems from a similar need back in the 50s for the study of Russian and Russia. Unfortunately, I'm not versed enough in the history of how those students did to speak on it or whether there was a shift to Vietnamese (War), Spanish (Drug War), or French (Culture War) in response to our foreign entanglements.

What I do know is that our particular grant, the Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship, provides tuition and living expenses for either a year or a summer to graduate students interested in the study of Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, or Persian through a degree-granting program. That sounds awfully specific, and it is, but it acknowledges that one can't gain enough knowledge of a language/culture without some serious devotion and study, or delusion and avoidance of a real job, so grad school is a good place to direct this money. Either way, doesn't this seem like a good way to solve the problem of only having 6 people in our biggest embassy on earth able to perceive the inhabitants?

My university has given roughly 10 full-year FLAS fellowships to the four languages listed above since 2000. Consider that it takes 2 years of full-time Arabic study to attain "proficiency," which is not quite fluent, and then at least another year of dialect training (hopefully in the country in question) to be near fluent, referred to in the trade as "really good Arabic for a blond kid from Kansas". So, we should have a little less than 20 fluent-enough-for-the-Iraq-Study-Group people out there just from my university alone. There are 5 - 6 other universities who also have FLAS grants in these languages and they put out similar numbers.

The system works; it creates expertise and fluency.

Our funding was cut significantly this cycle. Instead of offering more FLAS scholarships, we now offer one less. This is in the face of statements from the White House about how important it is to foster these languages given at our grantee meeting this year, in which a poor Department of Education flack was utterly torn apart by a conference room filled with hundreds of angry academics who see what is going on here. Money will be spent, but not on FLAS. The Department of Ed. has been asked by the White House to come up with something new, likely something that will make a detour around universities.

The system does not work, because anyone smart enough to become very good at Arabic is smart enough to stay the hell out of Baghdad.

There are lovely academics named Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer who constantly argue that higher education does not deserve government money if they refuse to lend their expertise and approval to government initiatives, i.e. how does a student accept a free ride at Harvard or Georgetown or UCLA on the government's dime and then refuse to get the first post to the Green Zone? Keep in mind that the FLAS will often just cover the first year, leaving one to take out loans for your second year and therefor being in the sort of debt that foreign adventurism has always recouped in the past.

Universities must be hotbeds of liberal insurrection if students feel they can take advantage of FLAS this way or professors feel free to speak out about Iraq, as there can be no other explanation other than that reasoned study of the issues, a glance over the history of the cultures in question, and the information exchange possible through language acquisition somehow creates a person that looks at Iraq and this administration as nothing they can be a part of without dying or going mad. This is not to say that no FLAS students go to Iraq; one of ours was profiled in the Wall Street Journal as the Defense Department's "Dave of Arabia" for his rapport with Iraqi tribal leaders, but Dave has seen himself reassigned away from where he could do the most good so many times that he doesn't want us to boast about him on our website.

Dave was already in the Army when he started grad school here, so his patriotism is never in question. What about the rest of us? The government created these scholarships in the hope of creating intellectual hammers for use against our enemies, so why won't these hammers hit the nail? There are students here who takes classes specifically on sectarianism, nation building, humanitarian emergencies, etc., students who aren't just the traditional East Coast Wannabe Foreign Service Officers but a former soldier from a bible college and a woman from Appalachian Ohio that I know won't go to Iraq after they graduate. This is partly because they don't want to die and perhaps partly politics, but also because no matter how much you study it and try to understand it there is something about our situation there that makes your soul die and your reason wither away.

You can argue that patriotism is the sort of thing that is meant to overwhelm that feeling, that if our grandfathers had felt the way we do now the Nazis would have won. I'd argue back that even isolationists could be persuaded that militant empires on either of our nation would be a threat one day. No matter how hard the propaganda pounds, you can't convince someone studying the region that Iraq was ever a threat. If asked what to do now, academics will offer the dodge of "we shouldn't be there in the first place," but this is only because they honestly don't have an answer and this doesn't offer much grist for interviews on CNN.

This is the ultimate problem of no fluency and it is one the Bush administration has proven powerless to solve. There are experts on Iraq and people fluent in Arabic, but they can't fix a nihilistic vacuum of death and betrayal any more than anyone else can and no one (especially patriots) should be expected to jump into it in hopes of plugging the hole with their corpses. Of course, there is a minority movement of fluent academics which helped create the vacuum, cherry-picked to give the war credibility. For his unwavering support, President Bush appointed Daniel Pipes to the U.S. Institute of Peace for two years at the onset of the Iraq War. I'll pull a classic blog move and not check up on this, but I imagine he's now in the "nuke it from orbit" camp. He certainly isn't one of the six at the Embassy.

A Call You Should Make

2006-12-05T14:20:00.000-08:00

Between graduation and getting this current job, I was unemployed for two and a half months. I'm hoping I don't ever have to go through that sort of encroaching deadline again; I had my second interviews before graduation, I thought I'd make it by the skin of my teeth, but it just didn't work out right. I'll admit that I didn't get one of the jobs at a prestigious yet slightly tarnished government agency because I was a bit of an all-knowing ass, but the others were just normal, "You're highly qualified and we wish you the best of luck in your search," emails.

So, my credit card. I got a credit card before I went to study abroad in Europe as an emergency backup and also to build credit by random purchases which I would immediately pay off. Responsible credit card use, as outlined by many friends who were in thrall to theirs and wanted me to avoid that fate. I used my debit card for everything else.

Then I became a graduate student and I was only making enough money for rent, but not books and food. This meant automatic credit card by necessity for two years. That must be what taking that first snort of coke feels like: "Man, with this degree I'm going to have a job so damn fast, I'll be able to retire in five years and work on exotic engines like I've always wanted RUN THAT BITCH UP I WANT A BEER FOR ME AND THIS TABLE OF LADIES!!!" Fiscal irresponsibility, which is a stupid thing to have when you're already taking out student loans, was just about in my grasp. Thankfully, I wasn't a total idiot. I could have stretched my food budget a bit farther, but I didn't buy clothes for two years. I didn't buy any new computers, which is like drowning for me. Then the unemployment hit and all my real money had to go into rent and christ jesus did my credit card debt get big.

At this point, I had some options. I could have just cut myself off and crashed on couches. I feel really lucky that I had offers to do so and could have rotated around so that I wouldn't have become too much of a bother; maybe people like the way I cook? I definitely could have asked my parents, but I had too much pride and I don't think they had quite enough money to cover themselves, my younger brother, and rent in Northern Virginia. Instead, I just went into deeper debt because no matter how much I told myself that I hated it, I was also secretly hedging my future against my failure like any canny, mildly retarded gambler ought to.

My new job let me start chipping away at it, but then my student loans came out of deferral and that was just one more bill (or three, as the case was...) to pay. Add in Christmas, car trouble, bike after bike getting stolen, and a bon vivant lifestyle to uphold and that bill wasn't evaporating quite as much as I wanted it to. I won't say how much I owe, because I'm embarrassed by it, but I will say that I was paying 24% in finance charges, which is embarrassing enough. Apparently you can do worse, which is even more disgusting.

The internet looked down on me and saw the plight of its supplicated and devoted believer and led me to worship at the altar of consumerist.com every day at lunch. They mentioned that the credit card market is such that you can actually lessen the bonds of slavery by threatening to be someone else's slave. Ayn Rand would have loved credit cards; you actually get to assert your independence by threatening to take your crushing debt elsewhere in the market. I called up my credit card company and said I was going to cancel my card because I'd had an offer of a better rate at my company credit union. I am unsure as to whether we have a credit union.

I am a liar.

I am also now down to a finance charge of 5% for the next nine months and 5% over the prime after that. If that's gobbledygook to you, the Pope couldn't get a rate that nice from God.

If you're in the same level of credit card debt that the statistics indicate, making that call can save you hundreds of dollars a month. Please do it before everyone else does and the customer service reps start to catch on.

Photo Trail

2006-11-09T09:57:00.000-08:00

So I was serving as an ersatz bartender for an event at work last night, when one of the students in the Arab Studies program strikes up a conversation with her friendly wine pourer.

"Are you on facebook?"

"No, why?" I'm not. I was on friendster, but it was too slow, so I moved to myspace. Now that's getting a little too cam-whore filled, but I can't fathom moving everything and playing triage with who is really a "friend" and should be re-added, etc.

"Someone has a picture of you, you know, at that party."

"Oh. Huh."

For clarification, the party in question is the yearly student/faculty/staff eat and drink and dance party. I've gone to three now (two as a student, one as staff) and every single damn time, I drink a little and then there's a bellydancing contest and no one will pony up to the challenge. I tie my shirt into a bra and, well, I have these gifted hips.

I don't think I won the contest the first two times, as we had some rather talented bellydancers who were also women. The third year there was a contest for best female AND male dancer. In the spirit of gender studies, I won both.

The student continued talking.

"It's someone's profile picture."

"Great, who is it and I'll take a look."

"See, I don't remember and I don't think it was a student in Arab Studies..."

This picture (or, wow, pictures) of me in a DC Star Wars Collector's Club T-shirt (which my lovely fiance got from her job) tied into a functional bra, my white otter-belly showing beneath my lustrous crop of blond chest hair, my hands in the air twisted into the serpentine shape that have led so many sheikhs to comfort, perhaps with my hips blurred because there is no force that can capture them, this picture (which I have not yet seen, granted) has made its way through the larger Georgetown online community and if you want to do me a favor, poke around on facebook for a while and try to find it...

... because someone is getting a lot of sexy ladies through false advertising.

Hobo Camp

2006-11-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I consider our new apartment so wonderful is that it's right on the Custis bike trail, which either allows you to loop down around the river to Georgetown or old town Alexandria, or back up 66 to Falls Church and all the way to Leesburg if you're feeling the "this isn't a hobby, it's a lifestyle" vibe. I only own one pair of bike shorts, so it's only a hobby at the moment. I crap out around Reston.

There are some interesting things on this extended bike trail, such as the Vienna Inn and a brindled cat in Falls Church that blocks the path unless you pet it (or run it over, depending), but right behind our apartment is a pedestrian bridge that leads from the bike path, over 66, and then... nowhere. I thought it would be a bike path out to a neighborhood or maybe Spout Run or the Potomac, but it's not. It goes to a hobo camp.

The first time I crossed the bridge, it ended very abruptly in a gate with a gravel path behind it. I didn't have a bike lock and I'm a huge pussy, so I didn't go any further. It looked like the gate to hell, if hell could be described as arboreal and full of wolves and giant spiders. Elven witches, etc. Not an inviting forest, is what I'm getting at. Last weekend, we were coming out of four days of rain and the first sunshine said that S___ and I should take a walk. So I figured that there are two of us, one will survive long enough to tell the tale before it passes into local legend. The gravel path splits off into two or three well-worn trails that go down the hillside to Spout Run or parallel 66. The leaves were still wet, so nothing made a sound. We were walking for a while when I noticed a ragged, bearded man on one of the paths below us. He didn't see us and we didn't move until he passed. We briefly had the jibblies. As we walked further, we saw sleeping bags and flannel shirts hanging on tree branches to dry. After walking past one makeshift tent, we came into a clearing with five or six piles of human/human accoutrement under tarps arranged in a rough scattered circle.

There's a hobo camp behind my apartment. As we made our rapid exit, we saw another man washing his clothes in Spout Run before coming out behind some other apartments a short while later.

I am weirded out because I've never encountered a total failure of government before, at least not on this scale. I see homeless people in DC, I can think that they have shelters to go to if they want. Arlington County, though... the social services are pretty good (it's a very wealthy, very democrat-leaning county) and here is an encampment of people who want no/can't have any part of it and live in a petty kingdom within the state. I suppose that's heartening if we ever need to live outside the known law for a while, but I have always imagined that requiring a trip to Nevada with a case of guns and a wind-powered generator and not a five minute walk from my apartment.

The mid-term elections are tomorrow and the hobo camp is a middle finger to the whole process. If you're a liberal, how can anyone want to escape the services set up for your benefit? Surely we know what we're doing? If you're conservative, on the other side of an earthen landscaping berm next to the camp is a cluster of multi-million dollar micro-mansions. These came with wooded lots that apparently are never ventured into. Hobos eat children; you don't hate *children*, do you? Paid for by Citizens for George F. Allen for Senate.

I'm no better than anyone who didn't give a damn about the homeless in that camp to start with; I know they're there and I assume that it would be immoral to change that situation without their consent, treading on the fine line between individual will and social health. That's a dick move, since winter's coming hard this year and no one could really want to be camping using plastic bags and old shirts. It's a hobo camp, not Walden pond.

Still, I'm voting extra, extra hard this yeard because the gay marriage amendment makes me physically ill and I want my brother at my wedding next year and not in a third tour in Iraq or, for fuck's sake, Iran. I suppose the Democrats are more geared towards addressing social ills, but I'd love to hear what any of the candidates could say on the people camped in the woods. No politician can talk about poverty yet, because it takes the electorate out of their comfort zone. My comfort zone is occupied by a stack of books, a cat, a quite beautiful woman, and the internet on a big screen. Foreign policy and "values" issues have succeeded in getting in my zone and apparently other peoples' as well. I suppose we'll see tomorrow night. Right now crushing poverty is about 500 feet away from me and maybe it will start to edge into enough lives that it will be an issue we can talk about.

Who can possibly wait for that to happen?

"Sneaky" Pete Jupiter Pumpkin-Face Schroedinger

2006-10-28T05:32:00.000-07:00

Last month, we went down to the Arlington Animal Welfare League and S___ paid $100 for a retarded monster.

You, too, can rescue a retarded monster from your local animal shelter. I urge you to do so.

Crimes against dignity:
1. Slamming into cabinets while running into the kitchen at speed.
2. Pawing under the bathroom door during my quiet time like a zombie at a farmhouse.
3. Falling into a full bathtub and acting like nothing happened.
4. Ignoring any purchased toys and instead playing with the balled-up receipts for said toys.
5. Latching onto our faces at 4 AM.
6. Creating "kitty profiling," in which anything missing is blamed on the cat.
7. Producing noxious clouds of gas when relaxed.
8. Climbing the window screen to freak out the neighbors.
9. Giving us a taste of what being the parents of an ADD, inbred child would be like.
10. Licking my ear while I sleep, creating dreams of rough-tongued women.

Mearsheimer and Walt

2006-09-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was working a presentation by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who created a storm a while ago by writing a paper about the Israeli lobby's influence. Their thesis is that American support for Israel is chiefly the result of organizations such as AIPAC and occasionally the Anti-Defamation League. I think the best rebuttal came from one of the students tonight, who pointed out that while the lobby's influence might be part of the reason our foreign policy is how it is, it's more likely that we're suffering from incompetence on our end. Well, yeah, probably.

An event like this attracts a certain sort of person.

I can no longer summon the ardour required to enjoy a good drag-out debate on the Middle East. After this summer's Lebanon/Israel war, I just feel like I've been cheated on by the whole region. Not a little bit of indiscretion on its part, no, nor just a simple mistake in the heat of the moment, the Middle East has cheated on me in that cold, twisted way that someone who is just looking to see how you will react does it.

After Lebanon, I realized that the side I'm supposed to be "rooting" for because it doesn't tell people their village will be destroyed, then bombs them as they're fleeing, and then bombs their funeral processions -the side of the glorious Party of God- still kidnapped two soldiers while killing 8 others while launching rockets against local civilians to divert attention.

So I'm sitting through this talk tonight and plenty of idiots from both sides are flinging their own myopic but allegedly legitimate perspectives around and all I can think about is that I don't have the energy for this right now. The Middle East is gorgeous and has a lot of interesting things to say, but it's got a sloppy pussy and a fickle dick.

Chili Dogs and Food-as-Lifestyle

2006-09-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

Last weekend S___ and I took our friend N___ out for our monthly gourmet food-on-the-cheap shopping dash. This involves the Lebanese Taverna deli for garlic sauce, Arrowine for cheese and pasta, Heidelberg Bakery for pretzels and marzipan frogs, Mediterranean Bakery for spices... sometimes we'll hit an Asian gorcery store for random things, just not last time. N___ seemed to enjoy himself, in the sense that he kept looking at his wallet and looking very, very sad.

I was wondering if this made me a foodie.

Wikipedia defines a foodie as synonymous with a gourmet, with some differences. As an aside, shut the fuck up about Wikipedia being inaccurate and unreliable. I want the information on some things to be argued about and I want that argument to be visible to me, the information searcher. Just cruise on over to the Israel/Palestine Conflict page and click on the "discussion" or "history" tabs at the top. The "teach the controversy" argument for intelligent design might be utter horseshit, but in this case it will tell you more than you ever wanted to know AND the facts.

I'm allowed to digress; I'm rabid.

Anyway, Wikipedia defines a foodie as synonymous with a gourmet, with some differences. "Some gourmets would not consider themseleves foodies and many foodies would not consider themseleves gourmets. A foodie might easily get caught up in a taco hunt--a search for the best taco stands and trucks in an area. But this would not be an adventure for a gourmet, strictly speaking." I hadn't really considered that distinction before. I post on a bulletin board for the gourmet folk and I thought I'd see that split in the posters. The creator of the board is rumored to have never cooked himself dinner and attempts a different restaraunt every night, no matter how much that costs. At the same time, this gourmet Keyzer Soze also just posted about how delicious Chik-Fil-A can be and then, because it's a bulletin board, listed his favorite regional Chik-Fil-As. The best is apparently in Reston. I shit you not.

Instead of the foodie/gourmet split being along lines of class/price/complexity, I think it divides people from those that can make food their lifestyle and those who can still see food as potential energy to fill a belly. A vegetarian or a vegan sees food as a lifestyle; I haven't heard arguments that people are born not wanting meat, stubby little canine teeth or no. Perhaps that's forthcoming. A gourmet is someone who chooses a lifestyle where food doesn't necessarily have to be filling. Taco carts fall outside their purvue not because they're cheap, but because you can get filled up at a taco cart without having much diversity in taco taste.

Some restaraunts that serve small plate meals have taken to calling the selections "amusements." This is the crux of the gourmet choice- you can fill up on "amusements," but only if you have three or four different dishes. This doesn't bother me and I have had some fantastic small plates, but chili dogs... chili dogs are something else entirely.

Chili dogs are in the same vein as a ploughman's lunch, which I loved when I was in England. Starch, complex carbs, and protein will get you through all the long days you need until you get scurvy and can't eat anymore forever. I just had a chili dog and cheese fries at Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street. I am good to go, foodwise, until late, late tonight. I could plow a field or fix a car. It's a good thing that I rode my bike there, as when I was done I heard a million veins and arteries cry out, then suddenly silenced.

Was the food good? It was good for what it does; I've had better chili and better cheese fries. I've never had a better combination, however. The building is old, the rap on the jukebox is dancable, and the vibe is busy. I got chili juice in all the crenelations on my ring, the wrinkles in my knuckles, and I hope it doesn't come out for a while.

Same deal with the Vienna Inn. There was a hostess there who used to yell at people if they wore their ties in the restaraunt. She just hated ties. Great chili dogs, though. Again, not delicious, not an "amusement", but filling, warm, spicy, and cheap. Every seat faces a TV and the floor creaks without being stepped on. Plus, they have birch beer on tap! I'm not sure if that was found to be carcinogenic in rats or not, because any drink that comes out blood red and fizzy can not be good for you.

I think those two paragraphs render me a foodie. I have gourmet tendancies: my homemade chili doesn't taste quite as good without buffalo in it and good lord I enjoy some ash-wrapped goat cheese. Deep down, though, I don't want to be amused by my food. I want to be full of something good without having to muck around. I want a steak and it had better be covered in onions. I want Five Guys because I haven't been able to finish a "normal" sized burger there in a while. My baby makes me peach cobbler and I have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I am the dark desires of a gourmand that would cast him from his polite society.

I am a foodie. It's not a lifestyle, I'm just hungry.

Babies with Rabies

2006-08-29T19:41:00.000-07:00

I have a deep debt to Mr. Quicksilverwolf, who commented on the previous post, because I was really ill this weekend and was just getting better when I read his suggestion about the rabid hordes of rabidified virii that I might have gotten playing with bats that were, oh, flying around my apartment like crazy ass mad bats. So, I checked the good doctor (webMD) and the symptoms were the same and then I went to the bad doctors (Kaiser Permanente- der Kaiser... er ist permanent, ja? Ole'!) and after they called around to some experts they agreed that I should do the rabies shots.

Let me tell you about those. They put a coke can's worth of vaccine into me. Into my ass, specifically. Then they shot my arm with some Golobulus thing and now I can't raise my left arm above horizontal without muttering "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck". I read the "side effects" that come with the vaccine and I swear to god that one of them says that 30% of those vaccinated will feel "malaise." Oh, lord if I could be part of the 70% that just feels ennui. But no, I have malaise, which generally means that I feel like shit all over, but ESPECIALLY in my ass. The selfsame ass I use for sitting.

I get to have these shots four more times over the next month or so. Granted, the other option is foamy, foamy death. I love this world and the lady I've found in it, so shots it shall be. But all of you keep in mind one important thing: a vaccine is just a dead virus. That means that for another month or so, I'm going to be a smidge rabid: and there's nothing worse than a horde of rabid smidges.

The Animal Song

2006-08-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

Come; gather around this fireblog and listen to the song of the animals.

Five days ago, I was putting on my jeans. In the right leg down around my shin, I felt something out of place, something that had the same heft and texture as a roll of Smarties. I pushed it down through the material until a roach about the size of my pinkie finger fell onto the floor and looked at me with such impudence that I couldn't bring myself to stomp it. Also, I wasn't wearing shoes. He scurried away behind my computer and I realized that I hadn't seen a roach in this apartment yet (one roach-free year!) so I was not as armed and well prepared as I might usually be, roach-wise. I grabbed a can of Tinactin and sprayed back behind the computer, but I don't think that killed him. Lord knows I probably just made him invincible. For five days, I have been feeling a roach on me and shuddering.

Four days ago, milady S. and I went off to a cabin in North Carolina with my family. I was looking forward to seeing some non-roach wildlife and the occasional deer off in a clearing was quite nice. I even left some of the bad ears of corn in the yard of the cabin in hopes of attracting critters, man-eating or otherwise. I didn't have much luck and it left me a little despondent. Since it was a family trip, we couldn't just sit around and read all day. We had to have activities and such activities could be found in the brochures thoughtfully provided by the cabin-keeper. One such brochure was for the local New River Zoo and damn if the front fold didn't have a picture of Francis the Fennec on it. S. and I have a bizarre fixation with this north African fox, a giant eared creature of such endearing bearing that I'm making plans to somehow save Qaddafi's life so that he'll give me two out of gratitude. Seriously, Google a fennec and tell me they're not the perfect blend of cat and dog. You'll find yourself saving Qaddafi, just you watch.

We went to the zoo and thank god they had two fennecs, because that was the most depressing place on earth. Most of the animals had something wrong with them and were in cages that seemed a little too small. A black leopard was missing an eye and constantly pacing back and forth. A New Guinean singing dog came out of his hovel to the corner of the cage to wimper at us. A ringtailed lemur pressed himself against the bars so that we could pet him (the good thing about zoos this bad is that there's not much supervision) and then finished us off with a hearty and precise display of his genitals. After that, I didn't want to see any animals for a long time.

Tonight, I got home after a long day at work and putzed around with the computer. I noisily installed a new video card, then played a rather loud video game at my desk. I heard a rustling over by the trash can and I thought that super-roach had returned to seek his destiny. I went over to the can and was very, very, very surprised to have a small brown bat fly up off the floor, pass my face, and start leisurely circling the ceiling fan. I ducked, ran out the bedroom door, and shut it behind me. I thought, well, I might need some help on this one, but the cell phone was back in the bedroom. Before I opened the door, I noticed that a bat was now flying around the living room. Did he sneak out? I opened the bedroom door; no, still in there. I have two bats in my apartment.

I do what any sane man would do: I grab a Trader Joe's bag and start muttering "here bat bat bat." Their echolocation is amazing, as every chance I had to even get him near the bag would result in a perfect 360 degree turn and a resumption of flying around and narrowly missing my head. I realized that the bag'n'tag method wouldn't work, so I go to prop the front door open. As I'm opening the door, one of the girls on the floor is just coming out her door with her arms full of laundry. I very quickly shut my door with a stupid-ass smile. What she must think of me. I wait to hear the laundry door shut, then get my door propped open with a book.

My main goal is to present a barrier to the bat, so that he might feel that only the door will do. I start using my squirrel language, clicking my tongue and waving my arms. Squrriel= small mammal, bat= small mammal, what the hell are you looking at me like that for? Knock it off. I'm waving a place-mat at Mr. Fleidermaus until finally he bounces off the door frame and flies out. At this point, I've had bats for a while and I'm seriously considering just letting him hang out in the stairwell. People are coming home from work, I'm sure they can take care of their own little fuzzy surprise. Alas, I can't just let it go and busy myself with shooing my charge down three flights of stairs.

By now, I'm cooing to the bat, telling him, "oo, uggums hit his head? Are you otay uggums?" Finally, after repeatedly flying into my place-mat shield, he flies out the front door... and I still have a bat in my bedroom. She wasn't quite as bright, or I'm just a piss-poor bat wrangler, and took a very long time to get out the door. As I was moving back the smokers' bench that I'd used to prop open the front door, one of the other girls in the building was coming in and to her credit asked a sweaty, dusty, place-mat wielding man if he was all right. I just came clean and said, "two bats. In my apartment. Just got the second one out." She didn't even bat (snicker) an eye when she told me that she and her room mate plugged up their kitchen fan vent because sometimes bats would get through.

I hadn't even reached that point yet. I knew I was going to have to find how two bats had gained ingress unlawfully, but I wasn't looking forward to it. How long have I had bats in my apartment? Have they heard me having sex? How did my room mate, who left for a concert shortly before I discovered bat numero uno, miss the one in the living room?

As the animal song fades out, listen for the mournful hoot and chirp of the night. The fire dies and it is their world again.

Hoot.

Chirp.

You're on Notice!

2006-08-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

This personal "You're on notice!" board created here.

Fiona Apple at Wolf Trap

2006-08-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

Milady gave me a wonderful early birthday present of tickets to see Fiona Apple last night. I am aware of at least two friends who would snort loudly upon reading that sentence, so I'm just going to remind them that despite my appreciation of certain musical genres I still go to sleep at night with a beautiful woman beside me, on top of a pile of money, which is on top of a bed made of the bones of my enemies (encrusted in gold and jewels) and pulled around Arlington by a team of armor-covered timberwolves. I'm manly. That's all I'm saying.

The show was pretty interesting; we got there late because we were too hungry to take our Pollo Rico dinner out of the restaurant as planned. Where do they find those handsome, handsome chickens? They're delicious. We missed the opening act, who was apparently David Garza. My better half inquired as to whether we were out of the hipster loop if we didn't know who that was, but I figured since we were at Wolf Trap anyways we were probably pretty far out of the loop. Getting there late meant sitting on the back, back lawn and not really being able to see the stage, but this isn't really a problem if you've ever seen Fiona Apple perform live before. Having seen her on TV, I knew that I wouldn't be able to pay attention to the music if I had to keep staring at her "dancing." This is similar to seeing Radiohead's Thom Yorke do his spastic weasel dance. Sure, it's iconic... and yet. Fiona, more precisely, reminds me of the way that staring at a sparrow hopping around can start to freak you out because they begin to resemble little velociraptors that would gleefully eat you if they could. Fiona's movements on stage are inhuman; they exist as some other creature and the creature is at times angry and at times very, very sad.

So, most of the show was spent lying in the grass listening to the music. This was fantastic. I think a lot of her raspiness gets studioed out on the CDs, so it's wonderful to hear songs I'd imagined as a hormonal teenager sounding raw already turned even more real. Of course, this meant she ran out of breath on a couple of notes and ducked out of a couple of bars during my favorite song. Hell, she even closed with Criminal, which I have sung with my shirt tied into a bra at karaoke so many times it's not even funny anymore, and taught me how to really sing it. I'm working it into my act as we speak, you lucky snots.

After this I only have one other act to see before either I or they die: PJ Harvey. Plus, I don't think she has any songs explicitly or implicitly about castration so my fiancee won't have to worry about me wandering off by myself and getting torn apart by some Dianic/Amazon cult.

I Have No Idea What's Going On Anymore

2006-07-31T12:46:00.000-07:00

Serves me right for prognosticating.

However, note two important things: the Post this morning said that Sec. of State Rice had cancelled her trip to Beirut after the Qana bombing yesterday, but did not mention that the reason she didn't go is most likely because Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora has refused to speak to her.

Then, the Post went on to state that the 48 hour break in Israeli aerial operations was Secretary Rice's chief achievement of our diplomatic efforts. 12 hours into it, the Israeli Air Force had resumed air strikes using the caveat that ground operations needed to be protected and potential threats neutralized. In the course of this, a drone aircraft fired a missile at a car in Tyre that was thought to contain a senior Hizbullah leader. Instead it was filled with Lebanese soldiers, one of whom was killed.

So, with these two slights in mind, contemplate the larger potential peace process. Lebanon refuses to speak to our envoy and Israel will ignore her when they see fit. We refuse to speak to Syria, Iran, and, of course, Hizbullah. Previously, our chief contribution to arbitration in this conflict was to insist that a cease fire be withheld only to change our tack after it became unfashionable to be responsible for the deaths of children in multiples greater than five. Where the hell are we going with this?

The world's sole superpower has been reduced to asking its citizens to donate to the Red Cross and the Magen David Adom. Hell, I haven't even heard that out of the State Department.

Maybe I should be seeing more movies this summer; I still haven't seen the new Pirates of the Caribbean.

Prognostication

2006-07-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

I have this creeping dread when I watch al-Jazeera in the lounge at work and I think I finally figured out why. I’ll offer a prognostication in a bit.

I started off being incredulous and angry, which is typical for any day spent thinking about the Middle East.

Why the hell would Hizbullah seemingly go nuts for no reason, attack across the border, and kidnap Israeli soldiers?

Why is Israel claiming to want to punish Hizbullah, but bombing outside of southern Lebanon with the strikes on the airport and the Beirut-Damascus highway?

I went on being mad until I started seeing conspiracies, which is another thing that al-Jazeera can make you do. The airport and the highway were bombed so that Hizbullah would have a hard time getting the soldiers out of Lebanon. Where would they go? Syria? Iran? Would Israel go so far as to invade Syria? Would we go so far as to put even more pressure on Iran?

So, you see Hizbullah carrying off a master stroke. World opinion is already moving towards anger at Israel for re-invading Gaza, the family who were blown up at the beach, and now re-invading southern Lebanon. The Israeli government can’t invade Syria without losing the support of the Israelis who voted for unilateral withdrawal from these sorts of situations, but if the kidnapped soldiers are taken out of Lebanon and the Israeli government can’t get them back through force, it might also give votes to the Likud who want a more hawkish response and, of course, a greater control of the government. Either way, the current Israeli government loses.

Now, if the soldiers are taken as far as Iran, we might be revealed to be overextended and unable to threaten Iran militarily if the soldiers are held for, say, as long as the last time the Iranians held hostages. That’s bad enough; the Bush team loses even more international face and we lose one more threatened stick to go along with our carrots in the nuclear negotiations.

It could be much, much worse. Suppose Hizbullah decides to truly cast the region into a chaos that they think could be better filled by them and other like-minded groups: the kidnapped soldiers are executed on Iranian state television. Israel, unilateral detachment or no, begins air strikes and declares outright war. They ask us to help and suddenly we either have to tell our ally that we’re currently occupied with occupying or we have to pull up the very reserves that we’ve already burned out for war with Iran. The sad thing is, I honestly don’t know if we could win against a nation willing to send schoolchildren running through minefields to clear the way for tanks.

Where would we be if we lost?

That’s my current crystal ball gazing. I’m hoping that either they get the soldiers back immediately or offer Hizbullah some incentives to trade them before it gets worse.

Strange Conversations

2006-07-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

I run into some interesting people at work- various Arab royalty, former U.S. government members, occasional lunatics spraying invective. This afternoon I was getting a form from the dean's office for a student I'm trying to pay scholarship money to, when George Tenet started talking to the woman next to me about Zidane's headbutt in the World Cup Final yesterday. He said something along the lines of, "I just can't believe he did it," and then looked to me for confirmation. I, being scrappy, disagreed:

"There was a nipple twist that they didn't show."

"Really?"

"Yeah, the Italian guy totally twisted Zidane's nipple right before the headbutt."

"Huh."

(exuent)

I had other things I could have probably talked to George Tenet about. The politization of the intelligence field, the difficulty of finding Arab language specialists that can meet sometimes esoteric security clearance requirements, or, hell, the two weeks of rain we've had. Nope, I had to talk about the dreaded purple nurple.

Well, fuck.

For the record, I wanted Italy to win regardless of nipple action.

Afianced

2006-05-23T12:16:00.000-07:00

I asked this weekend and we're gonna get maaaaarrrrrried. The wedding is in October 2007, so start looking now for high priced kitchen appliances, power tools, and I guess some books or something for her.

I'm a damn lucky man and I'll never forget it.

More "The Internet is a Wonderful Thing"

2006-05-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I've just discovered Improv Everywhere and they make me want to move to New York right now. I highly recommend their "Even Better than the Real Thing" and "Antov Chekov."

Then my girlfriend sends me a link to a discussion of "The Oozinator," which then helpfully leads to the Amazon customer reviews of said device. I love, love, love the internet.

EDIT 8/8/06: Well, I was wondering how long it would take Amazon to discover that children were reading rather graphic depictions of Oozinator use, but here's the Google Cache for some of them.

The Role of Satire

2006-05-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

I think that laughter is the result of two intertwined thought processes: release of mania (laughing about the talking squirrel) and the release of scorn (laughing at the talking squirrel). A good satirist can mix these two things together in such a way that your laughter is magnified beyond merely one or the other. Stephen Colbert delivered a monologue in the voice of his Colbert Report character at the White House Press Corps Dinner that I found incredibly funny, but seemed to make the Press Corps uncomfortable just as much as the President. I’ll link to this page, which has a smattering of ways to see or read the performance, and not spoil any of the jokes here.

The effect was very similar to Jon Stewart’s Academy Awards opening monologue, in which some actors revealed that they don’t actually like being made fun of. In contrast, George Clooney, who was at both of the events under discussion here, appeared to enjoy it just as much as Justice Antonin Scalia enjoyed Colbert making a series of dirty Sicilian gestures at the Press Corps dinner. They both laughed and engaged in some lighthearted heckling, in comparison to a gradually less and less amused President Bush.

The media reports that I’ve seen so far this morning have omitted this or barely mentioned Colbert at all. Mostly, they have focused on Bush appearing with a Bush impersonator who spoke clearly only to have the President gaffe up his lines (newklier made an appearance). We are meant to enjoy this; the President is showing us that he can take a joke, that he realizes that his being president is a little crazy and he welcomes criticism. Except when he has to sit through actual satire, the melding of one man’s recognition that this situation is insane and worthy of mocking, he is no longer insulated and no longer having fun.

The fact that Colbert managed to get through his entire act while feeling the increasing anxiety in the room is indicative of either his brilliance or his indifference. He called the Press Corps spineless, showed that no one mongers a war like this administration, and revealed Helen Thomas as the lumbering and voracious Elder God that she is.

Most importantly, he showed that satire grown popular is the last refuge of a populace that has grown dejected in their current society. Our generation is making The Daily Show, South Park, and The Colbert Report popular because they’re tearing down the government and the media with no interest in replacing it. I know these shows skew towards Democrats (South Park less so than the others) with softball questions during interviews, but the satire paints Democrats as washed-up and spineless just the same. You can watch nightly as Jon Stewart repeatedly shows that the world is speeding towards madness and he’s not sure there’s anyone able to stop it. It looks like it’s physically taking a toll on him even as it’s making him relevant and rich.

This, unfortunately, is the true role of satire. Colbert, Stewart, H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, Ambrose Bierce, Voltaire all spewed their ideas into societies that felt powerless in the face of inhumanity and had no recourse other than laughter, but nothing changed immediately. It was only when someone who had laughed came into power could they refrain from perpetuating what they now found ridiculous. The satirist has to hold this future as the last defense against all-consuming cynicism and misanthropy. Colbert spoke truth (or truthiness) to power and power has never changed by holding up a mirror; it’s being played repeatedly on CSPAN now, however, so perhaps enough people are seeing this to move us back to where the only thing we had to laugh at was a horny President and general hypocrisy throughout the rest of the government.

I Can Talk to Squirrels

2006-05-01T07:40:00.000-07:00

I used to lie on my resume and say that I could speak an “elementary level” of French and Spanish because I could order food in those languages and understand street signs. My girlfriend pointed out the patent disingenuousness of that and I have since removed these claims.

I have one other secret, elementary understanding of a language that I have also left off of my resume: I can speak Squirrel.

I discovered this while I was walking around Georgetown, listening to the varmints in the trees chatter about to each other. I practiced a decent imitation using my tongue and some clucking and saw to my amazement, and theirs, that squirrels would stop what they were doing and pay strict attention to me. If they’ve been accustomed to being around people, I can get amazing results. One friendly bugger kept scampering closer as I clicked until it finally started climbing up the outside of my pants.

Unfortunately, this does not bear out for all squirrels. My girlfriend has seen the mixed results, but she makes the noise now, too. The problem might be that we have the words down but not the syntax. We haven’t considered dialects, or whether Squirrel has ten verb forms like Arabic does, or even whether we’re dealing with passive or active tense.

We get interesting reactions. Yesterday, a squirrel in the park by the Vietnam memorial sat on his haunches and pointed at his chest, as if to say (in a Sam L. Jackson voice), “are you speaking to… what are you trying to say? SQUIRREL, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?”

This, of course, makes for a really lame superpower until you fully explore the possibilities.

Coincidence

2006-04-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

I have this obsession with searching for ex-girlfriends on Myspace. I can honestly say it's not because I'm still carrying a flame, but that I am addicted to that weird feeling that sweeps over you when you see someone from old memories. It actually feels like getting my feet knocked out from under me by a wave.

I had two exes who I regard as my white whales, because I can only get these periodic glimpses through worktime Googling that don't really spell anything out. They tug at my memory (I can remember a little love and, for one particularly lucky lady, pretty raw high school-depth hatred) but it's not the same as seeing someone with a picture of their new infant on their lap or seeing that they're waiting tables in Vegas.

I finally found one on Myspace and I was struck by one particular coincidence- she wound up going to Oxford at around the same time that I would have gone. At one point in my life, that was my big goal, every plan I had tied up in a clever, snobby knot. It didn't work out and it's for the better considering how happy I am now, but it's strange to think of the coincidence of running into her there in my alternate future. Oxford is a small enough place that the Americans bump into each other eventually, generally in search of something spicy to eat.

Since this ex and I had broken up, I had run into her once before in another improbable location (Potomac Mills, which is a huge mall far from either of our hometowns). If we had improbably met again, would that have been fate? Bullshit. I call shenanigans on fate. Think about the grander plan that opens up when you just trust to coincidence: there's that perfect shiver when I think that someone I've known has walked on the same cobblestone thousands of miles away that I have. It's like being a linked photon, but instead of the binary arrangement you're linked to everyone you've ever known with invisible lines of memory that pull taught and break, falling at your feet in cords to stumble onto years later.

I feel bad that I haven't kept up with people that have shaped me, for better or worse. I can't let my informational obsession go, though, knowing now that I can see the near misses of people I saw every day years ago. I like knowing that fate has nothing on the raw coincidence of running into someone in a dingy bar in Nepal or the steps of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul or the Apple Blossom Parade in Winchester, Virginny. Since most people I've known tend to be a little odd, I can trust that coincidence is handicapped by the joyous fact that freaks flock together. Even with that in place, I can still marvel at those that have stood before me once now floating around like dust in a sunlit room.

The Humanitarian Party

2006-04-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

I had an argument with my mom after Easter dinner about immigration and I’m worried that as I get older, I’ll lose my sense of empathy. She actually referred to illegal aliens who came to her hospital without insurance as “those people”, with the tone implying that she’s none to sure that people is the right word. I love my parents and I know she has a stressful job, but beyond some grievous infractions against the Hippocratic Oath I can see a larger separation between the way she and I see the world.

I think my country is interesting because the founders eventually reached for Enlightenment ideals of universal human rights to life and living, but then counted on politics to decide who qualified as a human. You can actually watch the progression of amendments to see who makes the new cut until you get to our current widest parameter for civil activity being set at an 18 year old black woman. Given the current debate, we’re looking at whether we can extend rights in extremis to an 18 year old Mexican lesbian.

The roots of my crippling liberalism lie in my finding this debate to be a waste of time. Here, in this tiny blog read mainly by my lovely girlfriend, are the outlines for a new political force, the Humanitarian Party. The platform is as such:

1. Anyone born of a woman is a human and can never be denied the right to life and family.

2. Anyone who attempts to contravene Article 1 (one) is a criminal and must be prosecuted as such.

Everything else that the party stands for stems from these two statements. It plays out like this: a living wage for heads of household, universal access to preventative healthcare, and no undocumented labor. You, the American consumer, will pay two dollars more for your lettuce and McRib instead of millions more in deficit spending for the enforcement of laws against criminalized immigrant labor. Part of your insurance payment will go into the preventative care pool, decreasing the number of expensive treatments stemming from easily preventable ailments and thereby lowering your premiums. If employers only have documented workers, then several million people instantly start paying income tax where there was only several million paying sales tax before. All the Party asks for is that your employees and their families aren’t impoverished, have time to better themselves, and have a workplace that’s safe for the worker and the consumer. After that, cutthroat laissez-faire capitalism is fine by us.

The Party wants to cut the crap that’s only really good for campaign fund-raising. The Party can end the abortion debate: we respect human life, but abortion can be a lifesaving procedure for the mother or in the case of multiple fetuses. So, the Party will sponsor non-hormonal and reversible birth control, which will be available freely and anonymously. The Party can end the gay marriage issue: they’re not infringing on any other human’s right to marry, so it can’t be illegal to be married to another human. Plus, it will increase the tax base. The Humanitarian Party doesn’t want you to pay more taxes; we just want everyone to pay the same taxes you do. The Party doesn’t care about political correctness beyond the Golden Rule.

Won’t you feel better knowing that the Party will only go to war against countries that are actively conspiring to kill you and pose an imminent threat? That we’ll commission an all-volunteer contingent of the armed forces trained in peacekeeping and emergency management for humanitarian emergencies abroad and a functioning federal level emergency relief group for disasters at home? That the police, firemen, and hospital staff who are in charge of saving your life will have more funding?

Won’t you feel better knowing that you can vote for a third party that will keep your interests in mind regardless of your party affiliation?

The Humanitarian Party: we’re fighting for you, no matter what.

If They Only...

2006-03-22T18:01:00.000-08:00

What the various stranglers of Main Street would be like if they were brothels:

Target- The whores would be stylish, but would fall apart after the first good rain.

Costco- Your friends made fun of you when you bought the family-pack, but they saw the light after that snowstorm.

Wal-Mart- Sickly prostitutes who can't speak English will stomp on an old lady for five bucks.

Sam's Club- Large, sickly prostitutes who can't speak English will stomp on an old lady for three bucks.

BJ's- Writes itself.

K-Mart- Where the scarlet ladies just make everyone sad.

Depicting the Prophet

2006-02-14T14:07:00.000-08:00

There is some interesting quibbling in U.S. media over who will be the first to republish the Jyllands Posten Muhammad drawings, dithering over freedom of the press and speech vs. propriety. What are missing from this are not just the heaps of context that are lost as the predefined battle lines are drawn up, but the original setting/framing of the drawings. Not in the pansy-assed deconstructive manner of speaking, but in an actual picture of the drawings as they were put on the page. Wikipedia has it right away, because through all the controversy it serves as the touchstone that one could use to explain what is going on (or at least base your arguments off of.)

Here’s the original layout.

You might be immediately drawn to the bomb-in-the-turban which has been selected for wide-consumption, as it is offensive (Muhammad as violent) but not so much as to justify the rioting.

If you look at the other drawings, however, you find that there are far more offensive cartoons on the page. Muhammad as dagger-wielding enslaver of women? There’s even the classic Muhammad as the devil (his crescent-halo is positioned a bit awkwardly).

There are also drawings which are funny in that meta-South Park sort of racism that, sorry, I think is funny. I belong to the big tent bigots, we think everyone’s up for roasting. One has a bearded gentleman calling off the guards (he’s not explicitly the Prophet in this case) because the drawing is just from some Dane in Jutland. Two refer to the entire “contest” as a publicity stunt for the erstwhile Danish author of the Muhammad biography or Jyllands Posten as a bunch of “reactionary provocateurs.”

I suppose the editor might have thought that including these entries balances out the worse ones, but there are deeper troubles here. The Iranian call for cartoons lampooning the Holocaust is tasteless, but shows a grasp beyond the usual idiotic Jew-bashing (though that, of course, is there). You would not draw and publish something showing Anne Frank in bed with Hitler unless you really, really hated Jewish people. You would not draw and publish something showing the founder of a major world religion as a hook-nosed, dagger wielding, Satanic enslaver of women unless you really, really hated Muslims.

The Iranian youth in one of the cartoons, which calls the newspaper “reactionary provocateurs” wears a soccer jersey of a team that plays in an immigrant-heavy part of Copenhagen. There are still people alive in the countries these cartoons were reprinted in who remember the last time millions of people were killed for religious differences. The “Holocaust Industry” that the Iranian president rails against exists to indelibly mark the world with, “This must never happen again.” Questions of freedom of speech aside, the aforementioned Anne Frank cartoon will never be printed in Germany, because it is against the law no matter how many Western principles of free expression it occludes. This is part atonement for past sins and part prevention, but apparently not extensible to other parts of Europe and other minorities. Our rights extend just far enough to make these measures only apply retroactively to genocide.

To clarify, I believe in free speech because I believe that it is revelatory of all things in society, no matter how ugly. I want racist speech protected, because it reveals the racist. What the Danish cartoons have revealed is that there is a very real racism in modern Europe, that only the most die-hard idiots publicly hate Jews, but Muslim baiting is printable even if only a publicity stunt.

Ann Coulter spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference last Friday, where she is reported to have said in relation to 9/11, “Raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.” The blog report I’ve read says that there was a boisterous ovation following this, but I’ll de-bias that down to polite applause. Change that particular ethnic slur to one that gets you angry and ask yourself why she gets away with this. I don’t want a law against what she said, because then I couldn’t call her an uncle-fucking hatesop without breaking the law. I just want to know where the wall of shame that should be falling over on her is. Why isn’t she stuck lecturing at one-room bible colleges to skinhead conventions just to make enough for one more bottle of Elmer’s to snort?

The situation in Europe is partly divorced from the riots in the Muslim world; you have an entire region of dreams deferred and organizations that are looking to take the heat off their own authoritarian sponsors. You can’t find a dozen Danish flags in Pakistan to burn without some planning ahead of time and forethought it not generally in the domain of the angry mob. There is also some confusion as to the difference of state-owned media and a Jutland daily. On the other hand, what if the Muslim world sees these drawings as a symptom? What if, instead of asking, “Why do they hate us?” as we did after 9/11, we ask now, “Is the feeling mutual?” Why hasn’t this argument shifted from, “They hate our free speech!” in the same way that, “They hate our freedom!” passed into inanity?

Puppy Bowl II

2006-02-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

I’m prepared to never watch the Super Bowl again.

It’s not that the game was boring or didn’t have a good underdog back story. I really enjoy having people over and eating lots of badness and drinking worse. I enjoy the commercials when they’re good.

However, the entirety of Super Bowl experience pales in comparison to the Puppy Bowl that was running for 12 hours on Animal Planet. Some brilliant staffers at Animal Planet decided they had nothing to lose other than dead air and took a bundle of puppies, some of fine lineage, some of adorable muttness, and dropped them into a large box done up like a football field.

Animal Planet then filmed a bundle of puppies running around in a box full of toys and other puppies. The end result is hypnotic. They go nuts, then get sleepy, then go nuts again. They move in herds towards the camera whenever it moves, snuffle it, lick it thoroughly, and go get a drink before some other fluffnugget of cuteness piles on top of them.

Last night we made fried calamari, homemade corn dogs, beer-battered onion rings, and homemade potato chips and washed it down with some donated homebrew with an alcohol content that skewed far north of Canadian Nunavut hooch, made it through the “people” game without getting too sucked in…

… and then we flipped over to Puppy Bowl II and I couldn’t move. The sink flooded from the myriad greasy implements soaking in it onto the floor and into the apartment downstairs and I didn’t care. If you’ve seen the movie Serenity, you understand what this level of calm is. It was the Pax.

Then the Kitty Halftime Show came on and the puppies were replaced with a handful of strung-out kittens that could smell dog on everything but were far too entranced with the tinsel stage dressing to care. I can’t describe it. It would take a poet.

Internet Grab-bag

2006-01-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

Not a day goes by in which I forget that the internet is an addictive and wonderful thing. Here’s a brief recollection of what I was able to learn in an about an hour at work while I was waiting for some paperwork to come back:

Some people craft helmets for their cats out of fruit, and then take
pictures of them.

When pandas do get around to having sex, they seem to prefer the reverse cowgirl position.

There are two Spanish autonomous cities on the coast of North Africa encircled completely by double razorwire topped fences because they represent European Union soil and are besieged by Sub-Saharan refugees.

Jack Abramoff wrote and produced the movie Red Scorpion (occasionally seen on late night cable) before he turned to lobbying. In a chilling vision of the future ethical miasma to come, Dolph Lundgren blows communists up in a movie made with financing and technical assistance from Apartheid-era South Africa. The movie’s definitive line? “Are you out of your mind?” “No. Just out of bullets.” [burps]

You can make your own caffeinated chocolate, if you’re the sort that can stand crunching on grounds.

I bitch about Georgetown students a lot, but this makes me damn proud. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was on campus to sell the wiretapping effort when some GU law students stood up with their backs to him, holding a banner with a bastardized Ben Franklin quote, “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”

I don't pretend that the internet allows me to know everything, but it does let me make good conversation at parties, i.e. "You know, you should really make a fruit helmet for little Wemmick here. It would keep me from trying to put his head in my mouth."

Let Freedom Ring Choir

2006-01-16T18:13:00.000-08:00

I was privileged today to be a part of the Let Freedom Ring Choir, made up of Georgetown University students, staff, and faculty combined with community gospel groups, for their Martin Luther King Jr. Day Concert.

Tickets were really hard to get; not in terms of scarcity, but in terms of hoops to jump through to get them (one hour to pick them up, three hours before the show) which is my best excuse for not telling many people. However, give a little click on over to here to find it in the archive. You can find me right in the center. I'm the blond guy. I haven't seen the show yet, but you might catch me getting choked up during "We Shall Overcome."

Some highlights of this experience:

On being told in the green room that President Bush had just arrived, 250 people groaned.

We had a fast pre-show practice in the ballet warm-up room, where I found so much bored ballerina graffiti on the wall that I just had to document it for the non-ballerina world to see:

Frankfurt Ballet- "No Fear - No Hope"
Big Balls (in Cyrillic)
Order of the Incubi
Hey to Arsen, from the Polish Chicos
I'm Great
M. Kupinski= respect
Sokolowska was here!
EAT SALAD
I love you Hyun-Oh Shun (in Korean)

There was a good deal of security with wandings and very, very angry puppies in the hall, so I can understand why the choir wasn't terribly excited about the President coming. When he took the stage to give a speech honoring Martin Luther King Jr., the wire-tapped, pacifist, champion of the discriminated and the poor, I begrudged him his applause from the audience. Then I heard the roar when we came out. We kicked his sorry Connecticut ass.

Things I have purchased which, because I purchased an economy pack of condoms at the same time, have necessitated a wry look from the cashier

2006-01-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

1. Large tub of Land o’ Lakes Whipped Butter

2. French press and pack of Sour Apple Bubblelicious

3. Package of Tofu, Firm

Number two neatly illustrates just how easy it is to get EVERYTHING you need at Target.

United Parcel Service

2005-11-18T02:43:00.000-08:00

I am a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. I have been described by some people (mostly jerks and simpletons) as “diplomatic.” I do not get angry at people. This is because I understand that no one is really out to get you unless they have been paid to do so and how often do you run into your own personal assassin? That’s right: only once. Everyone else you meet is just muddling through.

I ordered a DSL modem from Verizon for my new apartment (party forthcoming, I swear it) and was informed that it was being shipped via UPS and would arrive within a week.

I was content with this.

I checked my email and received a tracking number, which is always great if you sit around on the internet all day anyway and there are no penalties for compulsively checking and checking and checking. But hark! I checked the tracking number online and the delivery address listed didn’t have my apartment number! Well, let me just pick up the phone and get that straightened out… lessee… put me hold for a while, sure, sure, standard operating pro- yes, that’s fine that I’m being monitored, I won’t say anything that can be used in a court of law, and AHA! A person; please, Mr. UPS Person, change the package so that it says Apt. 14. Ah, it’s already gone out. That’s fine, I’m sure I’ll get it on the second try.

I come home to find that UPS has left me a helpful little note saying that they found the building, but they don’t know what to do and could I please call. I went to bed, reassured that I had done all that needed to be done.

The next day, I return from work to find a second note explaining that someone must be home to sign for this package between the hours of 9 and 5. Ah, of course, if only I hadn’t killed and eaten my Filipino houseboy. Now who will jerk me off whilst I smoke opium and sign for my packages? I suppose it would be better if they tried to deliver to my office. I call, I am informed that I am being monitored for “training purposes” and I snicker, since I plan on being the model customer that legions of UPS phone people in a session with a stately man in a tweed blazer, brown shorts, and dark socks are directed to as “the Prince” of docile, calm interaction on the phone. “Listen,” Professor Brownsockington will say, “how this saint of a man doesn’t mention the impracticality of signatures necessary for home delivery during business hours. Listen to his exquisite diction (do I detect, UPSettes and UPSmen, a faint Oxford accent?) as he recites his work address and listens to it read back to him. You should be so lucky as to have the likes of him whispering his assertions and polite deviltries into your ear.”

I check the tracking number, just to make sure, and it does indeed say that an address change has been requested. Peachy. I sleep, knowing that soon the internet will be here for me to tickle.

I return from work the next day to find another notice stuck to my door. It says that they’re sorry that I wasn’t home to sign on this second attempt and that they will try a third and final time before “the real trouble would start,” as I interpreted it. I imagined that some time for processing and whatnot should be allowed and surely, surely I would have it turn up at my office tomorrow.

I spent the entire next workday checking the tracking number and interrogating fellow staff as to when UPS normally comes. I took a lunch break from checking the UPS website. I was famished from anxious clicking and mumbled threats which only dire, fell, wolfish men would carry out. Five o’clock came. Nothing greeted me except the knowledge that I would come home to a third note on my door. A note like a red mark, with a DSL modem passing over my apartment instead of God’s wrath.

This note called me naughty. How could you not be home THREE times? Couldn’t you make ARRANGEMENTS? Well, sinner, your package is now in a resettlement camp and will be sent out behind the chemical sheds and shot in three days if you don’t come and get it between the hours of 10AM and 5, Monday through Friday.

I called again, again with nary a hint of aggravation in my voice, again with the knowledge that these systems aren’t perfect and you’re not even the one paying for this the way poor, poor Verizon is. UPS put me on hold for a bit, said I was important, and then subjected me to half an hour of looped UPS advertisements. Did I know that UPS ships more packages to more locations than any other company? No. Did I know that for my really very awfully important documents, next morning delivery was possible? No. Did I know that there are hundreds of thousands of UPS drop-off boxes, nanominiaturized to rest under my fingernails and set to spring forth and unfold using elements drawn from the surrounding air at the very thought of having to send a package? No, wow, that’s really quite amazing.

I didn’t know; but now I did and I would never be able to forget that they had me captive and made me learn their ways.

The man who picked up saw my tracking information just as I could and said that the package really should have come to my office, but in a cosmic sense how could anything be anywhere when it would just double back around time and space and meet itself as it left? It would be at my office in the morning and to make sure, he read back my office address to me. Not too shabby. Now we’re getting somewhere, surely.

Another day at work passed with no package. I had made it a matter of will not to check the tracking number all day. I checked it before I left. It said, “Insufficient address- unable to deliver.”

I went home and called. Very little hold time, which was nice. I explained to the woman what my tracking number was and she saw the oozing litany of hatred for packages. She said, “I do apologize, but we were unable to deliver to”- and she recited the address to my office, if every third letter and number had been removed in order to squeeze all the other characters together. I told her that this was not the address that had been repeated back to me and she said, “I do apologize, but this is the information we have.” I asked how they could get my package to me, quickly, because at this point I was entering ha-ha-ha-hee-hee-hee land. She said that they had already exceeded the number of times they try to deliver a package by one. She prefaced this with, “I do apologize.” I asked for her manager, which is something that I have never, ever done. I felt powerful. They put me on hold for 52 minutes.

I got through this by plugging my headset into my cellphone and then going about my life. I read for a little while. I drove to my girlfriend’s house; one of her room mates let me in and I waited in her room, fiddling around with her computer. She came home around the 51st minute of my listening to a quiet whisper of UPS ads in my ear (they were trying to make me learn again) and asked what I was doing with that smile on my face. I explained and she (because she is beautiful) pointed out that whoever had put me on hold had probably gone home by now.

I called back, got someone quickly, and asked for a manager right away. I got one, gave her my tracking number, and waited for her head to explode at the sheer evil she was confronted with. Instead, she said, “Well, we tried to deliver it to your office, but the address was wrong.” This was my fault in a deeply obvious way that I had somehow missed. I explained that the address had been mangled in an interesting way and asked if it would be possible to just get this sent to my apartment on Saturday, as I would be more amenable to being home and at least I was certain that UPS knew where that was. She said that Saturday deliveries have to be made straight from the airport, as they are special.

I am not special. A week late, over two hours altogether on hold being told what I didn’t know about UPS, and I was not special.

She promised that it would be sent to my office Monday morning. A wiser man would have gotten that in writing, with a name and an address to be reached at, so that a bisected pig fetus could be mailed (via FedEx, of course) to her with a note that said, “this was our trust-piglet and you broke it.”

Monday morning I checked the tracking number. It said “out for delivery.” This could only mean that I would be done, finished, ready to move on. 5 o’clock passed by and I checked the tracking number again. My package had been delivered to Verizon in Pennsylvania. Sent back, away from me.

I called. Very little hold time, as if I was telegraphing my mood down the phone line. Here is my tracking number. Read everything that has transpired. I used a dirty word, said that they had done this dirty word upwards, and done it five times. I asked what I had to do to get this package. The guy, who to his credit sounded really astonished, said I would have to ask Verizon to send it again. I hung up.

I am not proud of two things. The first is that when I called Verizon, I made the poor man repeat my office address to me twice and had him double check the shipping slip. The second is that when I had a manager on the phone, the only person who could possibly change things for the better, I was polite right up until the point where I yelled, “I’m putting this all on my blog” as I hung up. So, passive-aggression fulfilled, this is my history. Tell everyone you know that hasn’t been burned by UPS that this is the fate that awaits them. Make everyone learn what they don’t know about UPS. Hurt them to help them.

Hershey's S'mores Candy Bar

2005-11-01T17:06:00.000-08:00

Put away your memories of campfire smoke-scented graham crackers (for those who were raised in the city, the ancient incense of crusted with old food stovetop burner-scented graham crackers) and embrace this new idea from Hershey’s:

Layers of actual graham cracker in the candy bar would lead to a sensation while biting down of chomping through the multiple decks of a Spanish galleon filled with a cargo of marshmallow from the West Indies. Delicious.

Instead, just use graham flour mixed with enriched wheat flour, corn syrup, and glycerin to create a two-thirds-of-a-S’mores colloid encased in a milk chocolate shell.

The effect is not terribly far from dropping a traditional S’mores sandwich into a blender and just eating that.

Conversation

2005-09-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

While talking about chaos theory and butterflies in Brazil causing hurricanes in America...

Me: So, President Bush said that he was going to invade Brazil because we're fighting the butteflies over there so we don't have to fight them here.

Girlfiend: Because our butterflies our pretty.

The Things that Matter

2005-09-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

I feel powerless, because work is a little light at the moment and I spend too much time sucking in information from the internet that I have no capacity to effect. My girlfriend had a good idea about seeing if Habitat for Humanity in NOLA would take us for the winter holiday, but until then I'm stuck wondering why impeachment proceedings can be started for lying about a blowjob and not this.

However... a couple of weeks ago, she and I saw the creator of HummyKids at my neighborhood Staples, wearing a HummyKids long-sleeve t-shirt. He appeared to be buying supplies for something; perhaps supplies for something nefarious or mayhap for something benign. She made the "that's a scary man" face and now I am wary.

I'm looking at a new apartment tonight that happens to be in the same complex as the "HummyKids' Mansion" and I want you to know: I'm watching that guy. I can't fix what I see every day (the Washington Post website this morning had a picture of two beagles in a cage, pawing at the bars, still unclaimed from whatever hell they'd been left in. How do I obtain these dogs? I will feed them snausages), but my (maybe) new neighborhood has got something worth keeping an eye on.

Peekaboom

2005-08-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend was telling me a trick that she once used on kids she was babysitting, called the “How Long Can you be Quiet?” game. I imagine you understand the gist of it. One has to beware the perils of using a game to advance nefarious aims, as the participants eventually grow wise and either co-opt the game (Hurry up to bed, little Timmy, or Santa won’t come) or come to resent it (Santa’s not real, little Timmy, and Jesus was born in April, too. Now go to bed and read your Proust).

If you’re very clever, though, you can make something a game AND keep an ulterior motive without causing too much strife and Santa bashing. Take, for example, Peekaboom. On one hand, it’s a fun collaborative online game in which two people take turns either revealing an image through clicking it or guessing what the image is from the area revealed by the clicks. For example, player one starts with a picture of a flamingo stooping to drink. The computer states that player two has to guess “wing,” so player one clicks on the flamingo’s wings. Player two sees a black screen gradually lightening to show wings and guesses as best as possible. Player one can give hints like noun, verb, or related noun, but otherwise can only work through revealing choice pieces of the image. After one image is guessed or both players agree to pass, the roles are reversed until three and a half minutes go by.

On the other hand, the hidden purpose of Peekaboom is that it’s an effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the National Science Foundation to help train computers that can recognize objects within images. This would allow for a search engine that could look at every picture on the web and return every one that contains “Keira Knightley’s earlobes.” What makes this so hard is that computers are not very good at doing what human eyes do, which is define objects within a field of many objects (just watching Photoshop’s Magic Wand brush try to grab things is pretty damn amusing) and separating foreground from background. Every session of Peekaboom is feeding data into computers regarding just what a human eye needs to see to recognize “wing” or “airplane” or “sky.” One of the pictures was “landscape.” Think about what you need to see to recognize “landscape” and you can see how computers might have a hard time with this and the joys of competition from trying to get another person to see what you see.

Just like any good game, scores are logged according to your own private screen name for everyone to see and are calculated by both how fast you guess images and how fast you get your partner to guess. At the moment, Butthilda is in the lead. If you’re looking for something fun to do to kill time and advance the eventual subjugation of man to robot armies, head over to Peekaboom and try a couple of rounds.

Walk Your City

2005-08-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

I had the good fortune to see author Bill Bryson give a talk at GW last week, which left me in a particular mood. For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Mr. Bryson is a native Iowan who fell in love with Britain and a Briton, married one, moved to the other, and began writing about the various differences he found and the changes he went through. He gradually extended his curiosity to other countries and continents, stopping briefly to write a brief history of science and then another of language, but his approach to writing about a place remains the same throughout: start walking until one can find a place that serves beer, drink said beer for a while, then continue walking to another bar while keeping a keen and observant eye on everything.

So, also last week, I had the fortune to apply a bit of Brysonian trek skills to my hometown. My girlfriend was leaving for the weekend via Chinatown bus, so I dropped her off at the bus stop, waited for a communication breakdown between some passengers and the staff to be resolved, and bid her a heart-heavy-I’ll-never-last-a-weekend farewell. On the communications problem, I had wrongly assumed that all the Asian languages were mutually intelligible. Korean passengers who do not know exactly which city they’ve been dropped off in are not helped by a Chinese driver yelling and pointing to the writing on the side of the bus. This came as a shock to me. Does this mean that everyone in Africa can’t just speak... African... and get by, either?

Finding myself in Chinatown late on a Friday night normally might mean that you, my dear reader, would saunter over to the Hard Rock Café and try to roll some tourists for cash. I am above such thugwit desires. It was too late to call anyone and I hadn’t had a night alone in a while, so I figured that it would be nice to walk for a while past the various Metro stations that were on my way home and if I became tired I could just hop a train or a bus and that would be that.

Then I noticed, after about three blocks, that my favorite German restaurant was open. It also happens to have my favorite German bar inside, too. I ordered a pear schnapps in my high school German and was rewarded for the effort with what could only be called the Big Gulp of schnapps. It was, for want of a better liquid comparison, roughly the size of a pear made out of pear schnapps. I was about halfway through it, taking very small gulps, when the bartended walked over and said, “goink for a long valk tonight, ja?” I finished the damned thing, overtipped the kind barmeister, and stumbled into the humid night.

I set off down K Street, past my old office building, and marveled at the lack of whores. If you’re not from DC, here’s an interesting thing: K Street (NW) is where the majority of the lobbying firms and other NGOs that sort of Lady Marmelade their way around for Big Poppa Gubmint have their offices. But after 5, they clear out, all the little lunch places close, stores shutter, and not too long ago the doyennes, oldest professionals, and the occasional traditionally bedecked pimp would take over. I have no idea where they went, though I understand that the MCI center and the convention center picked up where K Street left off. Every now and then you’ll be driving down K Street and see some office worker overly underdressed on their way to a club and you’ll slow down to get a good look to see if the Street is back. It isn’t.

There is one place in the midst of the business district of K Street that stays open past 5; a strip club/pool hall named Archibald’s/Fast Eddie’s. This is located right across the street from the Catholic Information Center, so if you’re ever looking for a strip club to go to for an after-work breather, just look for the Catholic Information Center, purveyor of fine books on the lives of saints and the place of morals in this world, turn around directly, and walk across the street.

Sinner.

I know Archibald’s from a fateful evening with a friend and coworker who also happened to be a very attractive lesbian who had just broken up with her girlfriend and had been drinking heavily with me. I was driving her home when she saw Archibald’s and literally pulled on the steering wheel until we curbed next to the place. The bouncer let us in with that “you kinky freaky couple” look and I took a place at the bar while my friend went off in search of the bathroom. After a while of staring down at a watery whiskey, the bouncer tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I knew where my girlfriend was. He then pointed me to the stage, where my friend was onstage with one of the strippers, halfway through getting her shirt off while trying to keep a fiver clenched in her teeth. I turned to the bouncer, finished my drink, and said, “she’s not my girlfriend,” to which he could only reply a drawn out, “daaaaaaamn.”

DC is a weird town even when you’re not out with an Albanian Muslim lesbian. It was a late Friday night in a part of town that there’s not much to do in and there were still plenty of people just wandering around. There were small groups of elderly people, resplendent in their “I (heart) DC” T-shirts, khakis, and fanny packs. There were solitary black guys riding low-rider bicycles that didn’t seem to be going anywhere, just enjoying the empty streets and the slow pedaling. You could see homeless guys coming back from begging by the dance clubs, looking for an overhang that would be out of the sun in the morning. There was a white guy in jeans and t-shirt (Hey!! Me, too!!) who was walking the same path with me for a while and I was almost schnappsed up enough to ask where he was going, but after a block he turned to actually go somewhere.

There are strange things that one notices while drunk and alone. There is a giant blue fluorescent ziggurat that rises out of one of the office buildings. A Chinese restaurant as you approach Washington Circle has the traditional pair of stone lions out front, but one has its paw on a tiny globe and the other is crushing a baby lion to death. It must symbolize being owned by one of the Triads. Write in if you can think of something better. I noticed that more and more “going out” wear for girls incorporates sparkly things and shiny coins splashing against sexy bits. There is nothing more effective than reducing men to mockingbirds.

On M Street, after leaving K via a brief trip down Pennsylvania Avenue (not the bit with the White House on it, out-of-towners), there was a beggar without the usual strain of “God bless you,” or “help a brother out,” but instead “please help so I don’t have to sell my car on E-bay.” I’d been slowly doling out my change all night, but this was so specific as to deserve a dollar. There was a guitar and violin duo who were playing Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” which I had been singing to my girlfriend that morning. They got a dollar for the coincidence. A band in the Rhino Bar was playing the theme song to “Shaft” and a convertible full of Persian girls stuck at a light emptied itself so that they could make blaxplovocative poses behind the band, snap a picture, then get back into the car before the light changed. If I’d been sober, I would have just seen a blur. It was like finally being able to see the city’s hummingbird wings.

I walked across the Key Bridge and into Arlington, not really feeling my feet. All in all, from Chinatown to my apartment is about 4 miles and took about 2 hours. I wrote as much as I could remember in a pocket journal before I crossed the bridge because I knew that I would climb into bed with a popsicle and pass out. So, if you think you know your city, walk the breadth of it. Use whatever cheats you need, whether it be drunk, coked up, or with a 2 liter bottle of espresso, but no matter what get the street under your feet and feel it in the flex of your knees and smell it in the back of your nose.

An Explanation, of a Sort

2005-07-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

I decided when I started this blog that I wanted it to be informative and hedging away from a livejournal-type thing. This was banking on my doing something adventurous and interesting every now and then, followed by my droll description of it and a hope that you, too, would get a chance to see what I see.

It's been nearly forever since I've updated and it is very important for me to say that I have been doing adventurous and interesting things, almost every day, but you won't get me to talk about it, because I'm in love with the most amazing woman I've ever known and I don't want to blaze her glory across the internet.

Every time I see her means one more chance to see if I learn to cope with her beauty. I still haven't. I still make horrible gawking faces and lose my train of thought. She saves frogs, reads the entire internet every day, knows the name of everything, corrects my (awful) Spanish, melts for kittens, flicks off Marines, dances to things that she should be too pale for, and eats. I mean, she eats like a goddess would eat, if goddesses could have nothing but goddess steak until the patriarchal monotheists came to cast them down. Which, if she could help it, would be never, if only for the sake of the heavenly sirloin.

So, just as soon as she and I get tired of doing every damn thing there is to do in this city and move on like hungry locusts, maybe I'll get around to writing like I wanted. I'm fine sharing my Bryson-esque miscues and drunken stumblings with the larger world, but as to the things she and I do together... I'm keeping those secret.

She's mine.

I'm hers.

And we're greedy.

Living for the City

2005-05-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

There are several ways to know that you are truly living in an urban setting. The classic ways, i.e. losing your religion, wearing more black, calling your parents less, suckling at the bitter teat of irony, are all really just stereotypes concocted by shadow organizations in Colorado Springs and worried parents worldwide. In a place where you can be anything for a day, you can be a perfectly fine and functioning Christian as long as you're willing to live next door to a nice gay couple from Bangalore.

No, the true ways to know that you have become urbane beyond your aspirations as a young sod-covered farm boy are subtle things. This morning in the shower I found myself lathering in motions coordinated with the pounding of the jackhammer across the street. I made it into a little dance. I've never been cleaner faster.

I finally have a hot dog cart in my neighborhood. Two blocks away, if I so wish it, I can have a hot dog, burrito, or eggroll for more or less than a dollar. There are no tourists in Rosslyn, so I'm paying worker prices for my pretzel, my delicious triple-bleached dough pretzel with flecks of salt the size of fingernails, again, for little over or under a dollar. I'm going to start bringing my own mustard.

Last night, I was tired of writing and decided to go for a walk. It was 2 AM (it's finals week, this isn't something I normally do) and as I went out the back door of my apartment building, I discovered that there were homeless men doing their laundry in our laundry room. They were standing around naked, because when you're panhandling you don't really have change to spare for a second load of wash for what you're wearing.

Sunday, my girlfriend and I took her dog to a dog park a couple of blocks from my apartment. She has a very big dog and I was worried about how a big dog would cope in the city. This is a farm dog, a hunting dog, a dog that lies under the table and chews massive bones while you regale the family with old war stories. At the park were dogs that put her dog to a diminutive shame. Massive beasts that are only slightly removed from eating humans but still willing to eat cats. So now I think having a big dog in the city is a great idea: to protect me from the bigger dogs.

I know I'm a dazzling urbanite because I feel like I could have everything I want in a five-block radius. I can have a big dog, casual nudity, and a pretzel just by stepping out of my door. Some more privacy would be nice, but you gain that at the risk of losing that certain level of connection to the world outside. Even if the world outside connects to you by stealing your bike twice in one week.

Mitch Hedberg 1968 - 2005

2005-03-31T23:32:00.000-08:00

Comedian Mitch Hedberg also died today.

I know that in a larger scheme of things, this will probably be unnoticed, especially since the Pope just got last rites and the political and moral gloves are off now that Terri Schiavo is "dead" dead. On a slower news day, Mitch might have gotten a quick blurb on CNN. He occupied a special place, in that he was a stand-up comic who was simply too weird to base a sitcom on. Lewis Black (1) is in the same vein, but of a different blood. Funny, but not people funny.

What bothers me about Mitch dying is that he was 37 and as far as anyone knows died of a heart attack in his hotel room. If you've never seen him perform, Mitch's style was to stare at the floor and rattle off observations. An escalator can never be broken. It can only become stairs. This shirt is dry clean only, which means it's dirty. To a straight-laced person, he would appear to be on drugs. People who have actually been on drugs know that he probably wrote down his jokes while on drugs, but was probably performing them with a beer or three in him.

This leads to the main problem. Drugs were professional equipment to him. He could have written them off on his taxes but he used to perform sober. I saw him two months ago with some friends and my girlfriend, caring woman that she is, was visibly concerned for him. Mitch spent a good part of an hour just lying down on the stage, mumbling into the microphone. Not everyone, but a large portion of the crowd was clapping for him. They would shout out old jokes, and he would rattle them off in response before sinking back into himself. That's Mitch, we supposed. That's what we came to see. He could have spat blood across the stage and it would have been five minutes of applauding before someone thought to call an ambulance.

That show bothered me. We were applauding his drug use and not his brilliance. We were applauding, because we've all either been or seen that guy who would say the funniest shit when he was stoned. He was better than some drowsy sage at a party, though. He was actually brilliant, with the doors of perception blasted open or safely shut; a much better comic than a simple stoner hero. I almost wished that he had died in a bacchanalian drug rut, but I caught myself. I'd rather have him still making jokes.

"Alcoholism is a disease, but it's the only disease that you can get yelled at for having. Dammit Otto, you're an alcoholic. Dammit Otto, you have Lupus. One of those two doesn't sound right."

(1) Lewis Black will be reading from his new book at the Court House Olsson's Monday the 4th at 7.

Extraordinary Machine

2005-03-24T23:13:00.000-08:00

It's been a while between postings, which is a thing related supremely and completely to school starting to wrap up and all those promises I made to myself in the beginning of the semester starting to ring oh.... so hollow...

However, when I'm meant to be writing papers one of my favorite things to do is look around for new music. I normally have a 'net radio station on and when something catches my ear I'll download it, legally or otherwise. One of my favorite radio streams is Radio Paradise, which broadcasts raw eclecticism out of Paradise, CA, and features some of the snarkiest, Warhol-channeling people on the discussion boards (there's a different board for each song) that you'll see outside of a $7 Black Cat show. (1)

In the midst of studying for a vocabulary test (ayna al-ustadh? = Where is the professor? Al-ustadh tahta al-taawila. = The professor is under the desk) a catchy tune came on, which sounded vaguely like Fiona Apple playing with Bjork's band. Turns out it was Ms. Apple, who I haven't heard from in a while (musically, as she's not the sort to return calls) and have fond high school memories of. It would appear that she's had a new album complete, called Extraordinary Machine, since 2003, but Sony has kept it shelved because it's not, in the words of many a Fiona fansite, "playable" according to Sony's unspoken critique. There is even a petition you can sign if your blood is up.

While it's certainly not marketable, short of pulling a Liz Phair and adding some tween appeal, it actually sounds pretty good. Jazz/bluegrass piano fusion, plus a cartoony oboe, aren't going to end up on the radio, but I think that people like me, who were of a sullen age but coming upon Tori Amos right when she went into the batshit breathless lyrics phase and found Fiona fit nicely, would really enjoy some of the songs. I recommend Better Version of Me, Red, Red, Red, and Extraordinary Machine

The problem being, however, how to listen to it. Members of her backup band leaked the album, either to pressure Sony to release it or just to get their work heard. The files posted online, sadly, are mostly put out by Sony and assault you with hiss and static. For fifteen minutes. You can click forever and not find one that works and you probably have a paper you should be doing. However, I know a guy... wink wink winkety wink. Leave me a message in the comments or email me if you already know who fronts this masked blog.

(1) The Black Cat is a bar/concert venue in Washington D.C. that will play up-and-comers at $7 shows, so you can finally say, "I saw them BEFORE they sold out" and "Are you going to finish ALL of that blow?" or "That guy gave Steph the flaky CROTCH bumps."

HummyKids

2005-01-23T22:32:00.000-08:00

D.C. is not New York City. I know that a thousand pot-boiling stories have been written in workshops about the mystical/hyper-realist adventures one can have by just turning down a different street on the way home in New York. Not so much in D.C.

Sometimes, however, you can be greeted with utter random madness, even in the outlying spots like Arlington. The sign above greets me as I walk from my apartment to the Metro station. I would pass it, remark, "Jesus, that's strange. Is it some sort of day care...," and try to remember to go to the website. I finally did. You should, too. In fact, go there, click on the links randomly for a minute or two, and come back here.

I'll wait.

How do you feel? Do you want to know more? You can't, sad to say. Mr. Hummer asks for donations and offers licensing and merchandising opportunities for his creations, but there's no contact information. The sign is just in front of an apartment building, mocking all passerby with a lunatic stab, but you don't know which apartment to bring your questions, your demands, your summons.

Imagine if you stumbled onto that webpage by accident through random weblink clicks. The twisting and turning pathways of the internet lead to strange places and this is no stranger than most.

Now, instead of some isolated node of the electronic world, the origin of this website is two blocks away from where you sleep. The cartoon characters with words stitched across their lips, the theme songs, the very goddamn HummyKids Mansion and the stickers... the stickers... are all within the mind and hard-drive of someone your friends and loved ones could run into if they followed directions to your apartment incorrectly.

D.C. is not New York City, but they don't have a monopoly on rabbit holes, wardrobes to Narnia, and phantom tollbooths.

War and Remembrance

2004-12-21T20:17:00.000-08:00

I was riding the bus across the Key Bridge when I saw a long string of luminarias along the side of the road. There was a small group of people, some signs, and a large banner which read "Remember the Iraq War Dead." I took some pictures from the top of one of the skywalks; the luminarias marched along the edges of the triangular median, sometimes three or four rows deep.

I asked the people standing among them, who had a table set up with refreshments, what brought this about and was told that it was spontaneous. Which group was behind it? No one, really, just individual members of churches and local peace activist organizations. How long did it take? Only three or so hours to get organized and everything lit up.

Some of the cars honked as they passed. I didn't see any rolled down windows or middle fingers flashed.

What an interesting idea it is, to force people to remember a war while it is ongoing. Before the swords have been beaten back to plows and the soldiers are aging and fading back into a civilian life and death, the front page still has the death toll of soldiers and civilians if the attack is big enough. You can feel it fading under the white noise of non-war life, as Christmas muscled in before Thanksgiving this year and nothing seems to get quite completely done anymore and family is beckoning.

A small group of people never stopped feeling that there was something wrong and that the little brain tic that we can't address has a name. The ill-at-ease, the restless, the mildly depressed have many reasons for feeling as such; the American life is a full one, a sea of somethings and someones that drowns Buddhas and invades nations unbidden for better or worse. A small group of people took a day from their Christmas shopping to remind us that the world doesn't stop at a border. Since this doesn't seem like the sort of thing that will make the paper, here is my journalistic salute to them.

Grammar Fun for All Ages

2004-12-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

There is great wealth to be found in languages, dear reader. In fact, the word for “vocabulary” in German is “wortschatz,” which translates to “treasure of words”. How cute! Especially for Germans! I will always, of course, stick up for my native language of English; to quote Warren Ellis, it “expresses hate well” and it will increase its slow inky blot on the rest of the world. There is one particular absence in our language, however, that I find ably represented in other languages. This concept is the diminutive.
The diminutive is a grammatical expression that makes whatever you tack it on, in non-grammatical terms, cute and tiny. A smidgen, really. In Spanish, it’s the suffix –ito, as in “I couldn’t eat a whole burro, I’ll just have a burrito.” In French, it’s the ubiquitous –ette, as in kitchenette and coquette. Some would say that this feminizes things, but mon dieu!! Tre sexist!! I seem to remember that in Latin the suffix is –ela, but nothing comes to mind, which means you Latin nerds can leave some examples in the comments if you’ve really got a dead language mojo working. In Arabic, it is the addition of set long vowels before the last consonant. And in German, the suffix is –chen, as in “wortschatzchen.” This would mean “little treasure of words.” I’ve been tempted to call my girlfriend this, but I have refrained because she is also a “wutechen,” meaning “cute little ball of rage.”
English has no diminutive particle that I know of. You could make an argument for –ish, but this demarks a “sort of” that is less the “cute as a button” connotation that I’m looking for. So, I’ve decided to make one and try it out on the English speaking world to see if it sticks. This is similar to the experiment carried out in “The Chimpy Corollary,” which I highly recommend that you read.
Why not –bit? It already has wide use as an adjective/noun, but its use often requires the cumbersome “of” in between it and what it makes diminutive. From now on, just tack it on the back of the word for instant cuteness. Try it on food- pizzabit, steakbit, or stewbit. Drinks? Of course! Beerbit, juicebit, coffeebit, or teabit will slake your thirst. Surely you know people that these would apply to: kidbit, girlbit, tardbit, bitchbit. Even thoughts and feelings are a perfect fit and just roll off the new tongue I have gifted the world with! Lovebit, ennuibit, thoughtbit, deepbit, and deathbit are the new “I love her, but we’re not in love,” “Feh, dunno,” “Wait, I just had a great idea,” “I'm not capable of great ideas,” and “nickel hot dogs.” Just give it a try and spread the word; or, in this case, the grammatical particle. I’m sure that you’ll find yourself in lovebit.

SorryEverybody.com

2004-11-17T20:28:00.000-08:00

This site has been getting some serious attention lately; let me be the first to jump on an already crowded bandwagon.

A couple of comments; I'm apologizing first of all to the people we've hurt the most and damned if it doesn't look like it will get much, much worse. I remember joking before the election that Bush winning would mean extra job security to all us cracker Arabic speakers, but I take it back.

Secondly, I was in Britain for 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. I had the dismay of watching as all the free beers and sympathy dried up to be replaced by candlelight peace vigils and intense questioning directed towards me about American policy objectives. For once, the "you'd be speaking German right now, limey" defense fell flat.

So this website serves two purposes; when we go travelling, perhaps more people in the world will remember that a democracy means a bickering ideological Balkans and nothing will piss off half the citizenry more than being mislabled as voting for "that guy," whichever he may be. Secondly, I suppose when the Canadian troops invade these pictures will be used to place Jesusland's traitors in places of power.

I believe that might does make right, but it's never been done. Please, put me in charge.

On Seeing the State of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on the Morning After Halloween

2004-11-01T00:41:00.000-08:00

Ohhho say can you seeeeee,
the bridge covered with TeePeeeeee
The streets proooooudly were creamed
with white stuff-for-shaving

Whose good sons and bright girls,
were transformed into churls
and the saaaaaane of the world
into maniacs, raving.

And the brakelights red glare!!
And skirts that show underwear!!

Gave proof to the might
of drunks ev-ry-where

Oh say does that sun dap-pled toilet paper yet waaaaaave
o'er the morne of all saints' day
and the caaaaaaaaandy I crave.

TV's Jeff

2004-10-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

The wonders of the Internet are, indeed, myriad.

In a moment of IWillNotConjugateOneMoreVerbWithoutDrugs, I decided to look for some of my past friends from high school online. This is an extension of Googling ex-girlfriends, but of a much larger scope. I wasn't having much luck and was ready to just snort the blow and get back to my homework when I remembered my friend Jeff Henry.

And his website.

Jeff was a good person. He was just difficult to approach. He shuffled when he walked, with his giant body supported laterally by huge Converse running shoes. He would never look anyone in the eye. Jeff would talk to you, but with a sideways glance and often with both index fingers pointed at you, like something Fonzie would do.

He was teased a lot until the Columbine Moratorium of "Jesus, do you think?" was declared. After that, he was left to himself. I remember him mostly from my creative writing class; he would crib some of his stories, poems, and songs from Ur-nerd texts and only I could call him on it, but only by sputtering out, "you got that from Mystery Science Theater 3000: Pod People (1993)" and watching as my tenuous grasp on the female form slipped ever farther away.

This is not to say that Jeff wasn't brilliant. He was; the proof is in his website. TV's Jeff (which, again, is borrowed from MST3K) was an alternate reality that he created on the internet, in which Jeff was a befuddled but horrifically violent middle-aged man with a wife, kids, and an arrest record.

The trick here is to determine whether some of what he wrote was funny because he wrote it well or because he wrote it first. Know that this was the mid-90s and websites weren't exactly profligate; those that were around (like mine), weren't things one would want to read. But TV's Jeff gained readership, despite being hosted on various free servers and consisting entirely of yellow type on a black background.

The only way I could find the site was because Google had it and this is only because so many people had linked to it, often in the same "MY FAAAAAAVORITES" list as The Onion.

TV's Jeff's site no longer exists, I'm afraid, but Google has cached it and I managed to dig some of the pages up. I would like to do my part to further the preservation of both TV's Jeff and my friend Jeff Henry, in hopes of his one day finding this and perhaps thinking better of me. Just without the yellow text on a black background.

The Undateable, Timeless Story

There I was, in the current year. All I wanted was an item of food.

"I'm sorry sir, but this digestible item costs no less than five units of currency." the restraunt employee of unspecified gender said.

"But I only have three!" I protested. "Can't you give a guy a break?"

"Again, I'm sorry but that's the non-negotiatable price."

"5 units of currency? I could get a sexual favor from the elected leader of this bordered region for that much!"

"Trust me, I know..." the employee said. "But there's nothing I can do!"

"That's the problem with this bordered region of land we live in today...people don't even care about other people! That, and the illegal aliens who steal our jobs." I swiftly said.

Then we were all murdered by pirates.

The End

Also, please enjoy "Please Sue Me, Delta Burke." It did not succeed, that I know of. There's always hope.

Hello! Are you Delta Burke? And if so, are you looking to sue someone for abusing his right to free speech? Then you've come to the right place!

Even if you're not Delta Burke, you're still welcome here...but please, try to do everything you can to get this website noticed by Delta herself. Thanks.

Did you know Delta Burke likes to eat children? It's true! I would know, because I have a website. If, for some reason, you would like to dispute this(although I have no idea why you would, considering how the above statement is 100 percent true), you can e-mail me at: Delta_Please_Sue_Me@hotmail.com

Delta Burke doesn't like black people! In fact, she hates them! I overheard her saying this over lunch at a local restraunt. Delta Burke likes to eat lunch a lot because she is fat. Are you a black man, wanting to express your outrage at being hated by well-known celebrity Delta Burke? Then by all means, e-mail me at Delta_Please_Sue_Me@hotmail.com(also good for suing purposes)

Whoops, I'm sorry. I should have specified that Delta Burke hates adult black people. She still likes to eat black children. "They are so meaty, those colored's...I could eat a dozen and not get tired of them. In fact, I have!" was her exact quote. For those who don't know, my e-mail address is Delta_Please_Sue_Me@hotmail.com. Feel free to write to me for general discussion about Delta Burke, science fiction and fantasy novels, or hell, even some plain ol' suing!

Ewwwww! Oh my god, ew! Look at that! She is trying to be sexy! Ewwww, oh man that is so disgusting! Jesus god, that is just sick! She's so damn ugly and fat! And fat! I won't be able to sleep for weeks because of that! (Since I'll be awake, and probably bored, you can help me pass the time by e-mailing me at Delta_Please_Sue_Me@hotmail.com)

Delta Burke is very fat.

This website is brought to you by TV's Jeff's Website--the website so contraversial, it can only be viewed on the internet.

For Jeff Henry.

"Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe"
-Richard III

An open letter to the automatic soap dispenser in my office building’s 10th floor men’s restroom.

2004-10-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Soapmatic,

You are something beyond my comprehension.

When I place my hands beneath the chromed swan’s neck that is your whole visible form, a sound similar to a Polaroid camera being used is heard, and a tiny globule of pink soap lands on my eager, confused palms.

You, my automatic enigma, operate beyond my clumsy fumbling.

Yet, flanking you on either side are sinks that are manually turned on and off. The technology exists; I’ve seen it. How can it be that automatic soap dispenser and clumsy steel-age sink exist in such close proximity?

You, Soapmatic, are far beyond logic.

If the standard procedure is followed: I approach the sink with my hands covered in unspeakable filth or ketchup. I turn the hot water handle, to better kill filth/condiment. I wet my hands, scrub vigorously for some preemption, and then THEN I apply the soap. I rinse it away. Then I turn the hot water handle to the off position.

Those who are terminally afraid of germs and mustard understand what I mean by this.

Whatever was on my fiiiiiiiiilthy hands was transferred to the hot water handle and then reapplied by turning it off. Only an automated sink could have prevented this. The automated soap dispenser is only so much brass polish on the Titanic.

You, wonder of our age, are beyond futility.

So, why you and not the sinks? Did some prostate-addled CEO put his foot down and demand taps that could be left running? Was there just enough in the building budget for you and nothing else? Did it come down to either automated soap dispensers or death? I know you can’t answer me; all you offer is a small pictogram showing outstretched hands and a tiny, perfect teardrop of soap hurtling downwards.

You, coy little soap-squirter, must feel like you’re beyond the smartest kid in class.

But no one gets you, Soapmatic. We all secretly hate you.

Truly,
Joshua G.

Binivorism

2004-10-08T18:01:00.000-07:00

I can count among acquaintances and good friends both vegans and vegetarians. The one thing that runs through them all, like so much refined soy product, is not environmental concern, or ethical outrage, or poverty, or health.

It is pure bitch-goddess stubbornness.

Consider my classmate, D____. Not only is she vegan, she is also an Irish convert to Islam. When I was tasked with bringing food for a class that we were in, I wanted to make sure I brought something she could eat. Before I could launch into the options, she stopped me: “If it tastes good, I probably can’t have it.”

This, as a lifestyle, is simply untenable for me.

But I do agree, though, with a lot of the points that no-meat people make. I want to be good. I want to sing with the Morningstar angels among the clouds of tofurkey. But, damn it all, I’m just not strong enough.

So, I did what any red-blooded yet red-meated man would do. I rationalized. I created a social and dietary movement out of it. I was Paul, making a limited idea more palatable. Sure, diluting the Word in the process, but where would we be if he wasn’t such a pandering hack?

Behold: binivorism. I am binivorous.

Eating meat isn’t inherently wrong, since we seem to have the teeth for it. What’s wrong is the amount. The gluttonous consumption of whole herds of creatures to meet some protein requirement hardwired in for humans that were still being tossed about by mastodons. Consider how just eating less meat works out in the terms of vegetarianism:

Ethics: Killing animals is wrong. Yes, but the cute and wonderful things do die eventually, at the hands of a capricious god who has abandoned them. Might as well eat them. Just not in such a quantity to force them to live merely as food, raised in drawers with no sunlight. With a decline in consumption comes a decline in the need for factory farming; couple this with an insistence on free-range meat, and one can seriously improve the lives of all animals, both delicious and otherwise.

Environment: Rainforests are stripped away in order to clear grazing land. Again, decreasing the demand decreases the need for wanton razing. Of course, still having a Brazilian burger now and then ensures that the ranchers remain employed. In a completely unrelated side effect, the reduction in meat-consumption as a status symbol (picture a peasant-defiling king with a bronzed pig in front of him) might lead to more social heft being attached to those that are smart enough for moderation. No more SUVs, micromansions, breast implants…

Poverty: Meat is expensive. Then picture a world in which you’d have a hard time giving a filet mignon away. It’s not that no one wants it, they just already had some chicken for lunch and they’re already pretty well meated, thank you. Decrease in demand leads to decrease in price.

Health: Meat will kill you. I am looking forward to when the collective mistake of Atkins catches up to us. I will be in New Zealand, I promise you, when the bill for all the colon cancer appears. But remember, it’s not eating meat that kills you: it’s eating too much of it. There’s a reason that we eat it; you need what it gives you oh so tenderly. Plus, when you give meat up completely for too long, you can lose the ability to digest it. Far too many sophomore-year vegan converts discover the consequences of this when their cheatin’ hearts get the best of them.

So, how does one go binivorous? Just cut back gradually. I have meat once a day, down from twice. When I break this rule, I don’t twist my arm. It’s a party, there’s only pepperoni pizza? That’s all right. Because for the whole week beforehand, I saved one collective chicken’s life. And I am only one man. 100 other people means 100 fewer dead chickens a week.

I’ve also discovered the joys of cooking without meat. There’s no obsessively washing the salmonella away with tofu. Most vegetarian cooking comes from adventurous and spicy cultures. I also don’t feel as loagy and weighted down. Rare is the veggie meal that males you want to lie down afterwards.

Here are some things to help you, the potential culinary convert, out in your transition to non-excess. Meat eaters can only eat extra firm tofu. The slimy stuff is repellant, unless we’re dealing with one of those people that eat the skin off of the gravy. Those freaks will eat anything. Try putting nuts on everything; cashews and pecans are fantastic in various places. You can make a good Thai peanut sauce with chunky Skippy, some red curry, olive oil, and a frying pan. This is good on anything you would have put meat sauce or gravy on before.

When I informed D____ of my wonderful and capacious idea for living, she said, “Yes, I’m sure that portion of a cow that you saved today thanks you.” But the big picture!! We can make a difference if enough people change and binivorism intentionally makes it easy!! No more worrying about bringing your vegetarian girlfriend home for Thanksgiving. Instead, picture this: a happy couple, lying in bed and reading, when one turns to the other to say, “Darling, sometimes I just want to eat a swan.” The other smiles, knowing that the two of them had collectively spared a small group of pigs in the past month, and says, “You’re a monster and I love you.”

Parable

2004-09-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

There is something to be said for a rut.

Not a rut in the sense of what stags do, though there is certainly something to be said for this, too.

Yesterday, I got to the bus station early and was able to spend some time waiting for the bus to get moving in contrast to my usual pounding on the door to get it to stop. The driver, a man of indeterminate age and from some place in deepest indeterminate Asia, was humming to himself, greeting the people out of the rain onto the bus, wiping down the steering wheel and instruments with a soft cloth, and ticking things off slowly on a checklist. When we left, he drove leisurely and without malice towards the bumper crop of idiots between Georgetown and my stop. He managed to snake through traffic and drop me off early, which got him a thank you and me a slightly hysterical laugh in return.

Utterly happy in his task, if not outwardly happy in his job. In a rut, but making the best of it.

I haven’t managed to get many groceries this week, so all I have to eat are eggs. I made two hardboiled and had a beer, which would be the greatest peasant’s dinner ever if not for two things- a good deal of Vietnamese hot sauce, which I’ve been putting on everything lately, and some ginger cookies, which I wouldn’t even have if not for the advice of a kind person grocery shopping with me. Otherwise, a meal that is simple, unchanged for thousands of years of human consumption, and really damn satisfying.

I read some of my book, went for a walk, and realized that I am truly happy right now, in this calm between the various sturms and drangs. Later I’ll be dodging missiles and dissertations, but right now I’m comfortably supporting a simple life and I can’t think of anything directly important to complain of. This might seem not exactly newsworthy, but sometimes knowing that only the passage of a large period of time is going to massively change your life is a happy thought in itself and worthy of sharing, if only to give hope to people in ruts that have become prisons.

There is something to be said for a rut; they’re difficult to get out of but provide a good view of what’s ahead and behind. There is peace in that.

People United for Sane Fashion

2004-09-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

Part social experiment, part personal jihad, People United for Sane Fashion is the shadow organization that I have created to combat my inability to deal with undergraduates confronting me with my advanced age.

Those that have not been on a college campus or high school grounds, malls often enough, or at dining places of cheap price and late hours might not know what this organization is about.

Essentially, youth fashion co-opts personal ironic statements- wearing your visor at an unnatural angle, fluffing out a miniskirt to make it flap open seductively in some extremely select cases, or, most egregiously, turning the collar of a polo or dress shirt up. These personal statements are rendered cool/in/desirable and are imitated by those unwilling to make personal statements on their own but willing to bank on the status conferred by possibly being the originator of said ironic statement. Turning up your collar and wearing Top Gun sunglasses is funny; it reminds us of a time gone by. The sin of this joke is in its being told too often. Suddenly, too many people are walking punchlines and the style becomes popular.

At this point, the statement has become a badge. The badge must be worn, in order to conform to guidelines issued by major publications and television. Suddenly, the lone person in New York who thought he or she would be the first one to pop their collar is awash in a sea of idiots who have their collars turned up much in the way a sweetly retarded neighborhood child might have directions to home and a phone number pinned to their shirt. It's a sign of helplessness to the larger society, but somehow comforting to the wearer.

I am too old to put up with this.

Thusly, the following simple fliers have been posted around my campus:

You look like an idiot with your collar turned up like that.

Your visor is upside-down and backwards. Something is horribly, horribly wrong.

Permission to wear aviator sunglasses, Tower. Permission denied, ghostrider.

It's not your fault. No one looks good in a pleated miniskirt.

Thou shalt not wear what Paris and Ashton wear, for they are abominations.

No one woke up this morning wanting to read something scrawled across your ass.

At the bottom of each flier is "People United for Sane Fashion" and an email address: pusfashion@hotmail.com

I thought that pointing out some simple truths might do something to change the situation, and it has. I also thought the email address would mean people who wanted to defend their choice in dress to me had a means to do so.

The end result has been this- after two weeks of posting fliers, a limited victory has been achieved. The fliers are torn down fairly regularly, but there has been a sharp decrease in the sightings of the aforementioned grievances-to-the-eyes. There have been no emails asking for a frank discussion of values, but instead there have been four or five heartfelt testaments to the cause (you rock, etc.). On posting the wall, which is pictured below, an effort was made to make the statement too big to tear down without someone noticing. Someone has written "End cookie-cutter fashion" on it, however.

As for PUS, since I am the cabal and there was no rush to swell the ranks, I don't think any more posters will be necessary. Until the next wave of faddish nonsense sweeps through. Then, the truth must return for all who have turned aside from its sustaining embrace.

My identity has been withheld to protect me from retribution.

Those Who Can, Teach.

2004-09-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

There is a lot to be said for the joys of being a teacher. I was a teacher for three years, teaching English to children of immigrants, autistic kids, and anyone who needed extra attention.

But if you asked me to remember the faces and names of every teacher I've ever had, I would fail. There are some that stick out especially; ones who were gifted or crazy. But most have faded until a blow to the head brings them back again.

A teacher is just one (if an important one) of the billions of factors that form a child's brain, factors which recede in necessity as life goes on and their direction takes better shape.

However.

When I have an all-night whiskey bender with a former roommate and good friend, and spend the night on a cat-fur covered couch, and I stumble out into the daylight to attempt finding my car to get some contact saline, and I run into a former student who does not remember my name or even where the hell I'm from, (Mahita, from India, who needed help on her verb conjugation. HAH!!) but instead gives into her base impulses to reel from those who reek of scotch and cat piss, those who are red-eyed and itchy, those who are inexplicably happy to see you, then maybe the benefits of teaching are not so easily apparent. Especially when they squeak and hop on their bike, pedaling as fast as the drag from all those pink streamers will allow.

I reiterate.

When I walk into Denny's on said morning, and all I'm thinking of is a little tub of ranch dressing to dip my fries in, and I run into another prior student who has no idea who I am (Dennis, from Korea, SAT vocabulary!! Yes!!) but hides behind his mom at the prospect of an adult's salary meaning that Moons Over My Hammy are a gourmet treat and that clothes must always look slept in, then maybe, just maybe, we should let the little tots teach themselves the old fashioned way- a lion pit and two sticks. If the adorable little scamps can't figure out how to make fire before the lions get hungry, then the eternal scales of pass/fail land on the "wanting" side and the lesson is over.

Secrets of Arlington

2004-09-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

I don't think you've ever really lived somewhere until you can say you know all the little secret places. I was out looking for new apartments (I'll graduate eventually and I'd love to stay around here) when I stumbled on some places that deserve an internet cataloging. I live in Rosslyn, which is the part of Arlington closest to DC. There are parts insanely built up around the main roads, while there are these little forgotten neighborhoods off the side streets. Here are some of the strange things you should see.

The Church of the Holy Spigot

This is the Arlington United Methodist Church, located at the corner of Fort Meyer and Key. On top of a Chevron Station, also located at the corner of Fort Meyer and Key. When you start to feel the Holy Spirit come over you and you feel dizzy, for the sake of the souls in three city blocks, don't light a prayer candle. Remember, it's the fumes and not the puddles. Stop, drop, and roll.

Freedom Park

Freedom Park is part of the Newseum, the DC musuem for news and broadcasting. They wanted to put a park in Rosslyn, but discovered that there was, in fact, stuff already here. So they built a platform over Wilson Boulevard and most of Lynn Street and put a park on it. So, come enjoy the flowers, the wide views, and the fact that you're 30 feet up in the air. The flame statue in the background is engraved with the names of journalists killed in action.

Key Boulevard Community Garden

Walking along Key towards Quinn, there is this beautiful garden. I've seen people tending to it, but I'm not sure who's allowed to take stuff from it. I want to find out, because someone is growing habanero peppers and I like to put those in my omelettes. They've also just started on the pumpkins for this fall. The temptation to launch one off of Freedom Park (see above) must be overwhelming.

Abode of Grooviliciousness

Down several one-way streets, and past multiple signs that say dead end, I found this house. The picture will never do it justice, because the place just shines. I want to live next to this house. Sure, my place will look bland, but every party will be filled with wacky neighbor stories and the gentle smell of patchouli wafting over the fence.

Buses and Marches

2004-08-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

This will be a two part entry, both instructional and journalistic. Yesterday, two friends and I sought to take part in the most pointless yet satisfying endeavors of the American democratic process: the Big Ol’ Protest. I packed something to cut handcuffs with, packed my money in my boot, and declared myself ready to take a rubber bullet for my friends (if not necessarily for Kerry). Having driven to New York recently from D.C., I’d decided there was no way in hell that I was driving. This proved an issue, as the three of us shared this sentiment.

“Chinatown Bus DC go now!!!”

I suggested taking a Chinatown bus, having heard from friends in college that they were both cheap AND an adventure. This suggestion fit with the group-spirit of “charge the barricades for cheap” and I looked online to find schedules and reserve tickets. The most prominent three are listed below, henceforth to be referred to as “The Triads.”

New Century

Eastern

Dragon Coach

A round-trip ticket is generally $35 and most of the lines offer alternate pick-up and drop-off points outside of Chinatown(s) proper. This is not as it used to be, back before they gained some fame as costing 10% of what a Greyhound ticket would cost. The drivers, equipped with aging buses and a cut-throat business acumen, could get into a bidding war for passengers that would result in $10 round-trip tickets. Attention and many more passengers has allowed an upgrade in buses (at least that I saw) and in the not-even-covering-the-gas fare. If you posses the non-American heart to haggle, you can talk down the prices by ten dollars or more, but you also risk not making it on the last bus out of Chinatown. Reserving seats on the internet is almost a formality, as the drivers do not read the paper you hand them and boarding can mean using the Elbow of Truth on a crowd of people at the door.

The buses are clean and there is generally a short rest stop to stretch your legs and evacuate. As in airplanes, concerts, and most everywhere, try not to sit too close to the chemical toilet in the back. Above all, do not fall asleep in that area, as those dreams will be both vivid and will linger. You can thank the Triads for whatever you end up addicted to.

You get a nice mix of people riding; interns going home for the weekends, people visiting family, salespeople who didn’t do so well. I understand that the Friday and Saturday night trips back to DC are a veritable meat-market of drunk people who wouldn’t mind a ride home if the metro has stopped running. Since it was Sunday night, I rode home sitting next to a very talkative woman from Trinidad and Tobago. Her kids are fine, but one of her sons is very lazy. If you’re reading this, you know who you are.

“Four more wars!! Four more wars!!”

The protest was impressive, mostly for what didn’t happen. We were only in the march from about Noon until 2, but most of the police were not in riot gear, some of them chanted along, and all of them had a look of “I don’t want to work on Sunday, make this easy so I can go home.” Much obliged, NYPD. This also may have something to do with the Administration cutting pay and benefits for first-responders and then holding the GOP convention uptown from where so many of them died.

The count of people marching has varied from two to four hundred thousand. I wanted to climb a barricade to look down the avenue to see how long the snake was, but apparently you couldn’t see the end of it. Aerial shots of the protest aren’t getting in the papers much, since you can always argue number estimates but it’s hard to ignore a solid mass of people and signs taking up an avenue in Manhattan.

There was a strange mix of people- Korean drum groups, Women in Pink (“Pink Slip Bush”), some people carrying Iraqi flags. The best group that I saw was Billionaires for Bush, both for the costumes and their chants. The women were dressed in their old prom gowns, long gloves, and tiaras; the men wore suits and bowler hats, while smoking huge cigars. A man dressed as a secret service agent instructed the marching group to “Keep to the right, as that’s what we’re good at.” Then a rousing chant of “we’re here, we’re rich, get used to it” was led. Give them some money.

Billionaires for Bush

I think that at first, I was there mainly to see the spectacle of so many people agitated at once. I pointed out amusing signs (Who would Jesus bomb?) but didn’t really chant at first. Something caught me near the convention center; a giant Fox News billboard. I’m a fiscal Republican, social Democrat, libertarian populist with fascist tendencies, but even I had to shout FOX NEWS SUCKS and thank the lord it turned into a chant. I doubt I was the first one to come up with that, but it certainly caught on quickly. Much quicker, in fact, than my earlier billboard-inspired chant of “We want an iPod!! We want an iPod!!”

Did any of this matter? No. Protesting is for the protesters. It’s something primal, to feel like you’re finally moving in a village of your own people to a new land. The delegates in Madison Square Garden couldn’t care less how many people surged past, and no one was going to change the counter-protesters (couldn’t have been more than 50 altogether) minds. A soldier in civvies flashed his military ID from the sidewalk and I have no idea whether it was a show of support or disgust, but I flashed him the peace sign and said “Hey”. An Australian woman next to me asked if I knew him, and I just told her that he was a soldier and I wanted him to know I saw him. I suppose that’s all.

Inaugural Post

2004-08-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

This might just be a way for me to comment on other blogs, but I bet I can whip up some things to make this interesting to read. Just you wait.