Precious, Precious Overcaffeination

Also this

2008-09-17T00:17:00.002-04:00

coke-fueled sex parties and the Department of the Interior -- a partnership working for you (unless they didn't invite you to the parties.) I mean, sorry for mentioning it... I'm sure they meant to invite you, or maybe your invitation got lost in the mail or something...

out of hibernation

2008-09-16T23:23:00.003-04:00

To bring you this important link.

Love,

Clip Dragon Palin

The coming bailout...

2008-03-19T22:17:00.002-04:00

I don't envy the next President, who will have to clean up a big stinking mess -- and I'm not just talking about the war in Iraq or the environmental issues. The Fed is backing risky bonds and it's nothing compared to what we're going to see during the coming banking bailout. It's going to be massive. And vile.

Progress Report

2008-02-21T02:10:00.006-05:00

Daniel was in the studio working on a song tonight. The boys were cuddled together at his feet, listening and trading stories.

You Got a Big, Fine Couch...

2008-02-19T17:43:00.002-05:00

Props to DC for the best local cable teevee advertising I've ever seen. First Eastern Motors, then John C. Flood, and most recently, this gem:

Whaa-pish!

The Odd Couple

2008-02-19T16:12:00.008-05:00

We're dogsitting again. Yes, it's true. Jasper, the 85 lb bulldog, is once again gracing our humble home with his snoring, flatulent presence. He's like part of the family, and he's visited us often since we've had our other young man, Linus, at the home. But this was his first extended visit.

Jasper is largely indifferent to cats. In fact, aside from a short sniff hello, he tends to ignore them altogether. Linus, on the other hand, is still enough of a kitten that we were worried about his reaction. Because Jasper has been here so often, he has to think of the house as an extension of his own territory. He knows the house, and when he comes over he knows right where we keep his toys. (Yes, Jasper has toys that live at our house). As you may imagine, this perturbs the cat. In fact, the first time Linus caught sight of Jasper, he inflated himself to about five times his ordinary appearance and sought higher ground. But within an hour, Linus had established himself as the Alpha, and things have gotten pretty interesting around here.

We clipped Linus' claws very carefully before Jasper's visit, but were nonetheless concerned that the cat might actually hurt the dog. We found, however, that Linus is keeping his claws in when he hits the dog. And unfortunately, Jasper takes it on the chin a few times a day from the cat, quite literally. To be clear, lest people think we're allowing the animals to abuse one another, we're pretty sure Linus is not trying to injure the dog. He's just making a point.

Of course, all the power struggles end when the kids get sleepy, anyway. The very first evening we had Jasper with us, D and I snuggled up on the couch for a movie and, before long, two sleepy animals settled in on top of us like a warm blanket. D lucked out and got Linus. Jasper, however, who sees me as the Mama he never had, parked his rear end on my lap and stayed there until I lost all sensation in both legs. We weren't exactly comfortable, but the boys fell asleep about a foot away from each other.

Our animal expert friends have suggested that we monitor the animals as they get to know one another, but otherwise not to fuss over them too much. So far, it's been working. Their friendship is solidifying. Sort of. Jasper really likes Linus and follows him around like, well, like a dog. Linus, for his part, is highly amused. He tries to hide his affection, but lately we have noticed some secret naptime cuddling. Linus starts with one paw out and gently touches the dog on the back. Once he's sure the dog is sleeping and won't sniff in his face, he will put the other arm there as well, and the two sleep like that, in a strange embrace.

The daytime invites greater caution on both sides. The two will carefully touch noses now, although Jasper holds his breath, as he knows that Linus has mental problems and that one loud snoof is all it takes to send jittery Linus skittering away at top speeds.

One peculiarity we've noticed is that Linus' position as the Alpha has gone so far that if he is in a doorway, the dog will not walk past him. The cat, for his part, just lays there as if he's not doing anything wrong while Jasper whines and barks until one of us comes and moves Linus from his path. This happens even when Linus is sleeping, so we don't think it's an issue of Linus bullying him but rather a deference issue. Whatever the cause, we hope they work this out quickly, because most of these stand-offs occur in the wee hours of the morning.

All in all, the kids seem to having fun together. They're both getting a lot of attention individually, but when we're not actively playing with them, they seem content to pal around together. And we're making constant progress. Jasper has also stopped trying to demolish Linus' toys, and it's been a few days since Linus fired off any paw slaps. Unfortunately, we still haven't been able to fully prevent them from sampling one another's food.

Here are some pictures of the fledgling friendship:

First night:

Naptime:
While Jasper is nuzzling his "dudes," Linus takes opportunity to sniff a paw:

On Another Note

2008-02-19T15:40:00.003-05:00

On another note, as many of you know, D and I are getting married! I wanted to make note of this happy occasion earlier, but we've been so excited, and so busy planning, that I haven't had much opportunity to post. Also, I wanted to hold off posting the news on my blog until we were sure our friends and family knew. (It's a modern world, but there are better ways to tell your loved ones you've gotten engaged). D and I are getting married in my hometown of Pittsburgh in late summer, 2008, when Pittsburgh weather is at its finest. Not that the weather matters; I'd marry D barefoot in a blizzard. I'm the luckiest person on the planet. Fortunately for me, he seems to think that title belongs to him.

They say that Keynesianism is Dead, but...

2008-02-19T01:52:00.015-05:00

I try to keep my politics out of my blog. Most of you know I'm a lobbyist, so my proximity to the meat-grinding process that is policymaking discredits me with half the population--including my father, who takes great joy in sending me jokes and insults aimed at politicians. This same proximity, however, affords me a bird's eye view of why political decisions are made and the unshakeable grip that campaign donations have on policy.

That said, policymakers and politicians are playing by the only set of rules available right now. It's a broken system, yes; but we're all complicit. Many lawmakers take office, earnestly vowing to resist special interest politics. I may be naive, but I believe a good many of them mean it. Yet, these promises are usually broken by the time the next election takes place.

Why? Because we don't support politicians who resist. It takes money to get elected, and until we truly start to limit corporate contributions and PAC giving, set aside a public election fund and mandate its use, and in the interim, give more on a personal level, there is no other path to reelection. And with respect to personal giving, I mean on a scale that counts.

Naturally, this is not universally applicable. Some people simply have no disposable income to spend on political contributions. I'm talking to the rest of you. If you think spending $100 dollars on dinner or drinks a few times a month is more important than donating a thousand dollars every year to a candidate who is trying to buck the system, then you are the problem. If you abhor special interest politics, put your money where your mouth is and donate to candidates bucking the system, even when they are not your own representative.

But I digress. I didn't make a rare appearance tonight on my own dying blog for a rant against campaigns and elections, but I did come to rant about money. Or, more precisely, monetary policy.

I've been sick, so this is the first opportunity I've had to comment on the $165 billion economic stimulus package the President signed into law last week. The package will be sending checks to taxpayers this summer, with most of us getting $300, $600 or $1,200.

Most of you know I'm mildly liberal. Left liberal on social issues, moderate on fiscal issues. Taking someone's fiscal temperature, however, is usually only possible when done in relative terms. Like even the most die-hard conservatives, I don't believe all spending is bad spending, as long as the spending matches my priorities. I don't consider money spent to shore up our education, welfare, health-care, public safety, transportation, or other socially important programs to be government "waste." So most people wouldn't call me fiscally conservative at all. Some people might dare to call me a "tax and spend liberal." Which is probably closer to the truth.

The difference between me and most traditional fiscal conservatives, however, is that my spending priorities include many American domestic spending programs while conservatives simply favor spending that eventually benefits their own bottom lines. Spend on defense, spend on corporate welfare, spend on tax breaks, spend on policies and programs that bolster the hefty business interests that are coincidentally bulking up their own investment portfolios. I have news for those of you "true fiscal conservatives" who think tax breaks are "conservative." Guess what, it's the same as spending when the deficit is 70 percent of the nation's GDP. (Nope, not the worst it's ever been, but don't say it's not bad.)

But here's some news for you fiscal thinkers, and it's not exactly new. Fiscal policy in general isn't the steadying hand that rights the ship. In the long term, economic health can only be accomplished through fiscal responsibility. In the short term, the kind of fiscal tinkering that includes economic stimulus package is usually worthless.

I keep hearing this 1 percent figure. Well, guess what? 1 percent of this nation's budget is over 150 billion dollars. For you conservatives: shouldn't that be too expensive for you? And for you liberals: remember when you (rightfully) campaigned against the proposed 1 percent budget cut? What do you think this is? This latest economic stimulus package is nothing more than a tax cut in disguise. And proponents hold that reducing marginal tax rates and creating economic incentives, tax cuts (or economic stimuli) will facilitate the flow of resources into production, push products into the market, and boost economic growth, overall. Maybe. But more likely, maybe not.

What galls me is that any liberal would vote for this package. Don't you fools know how to recognize supply side economics? And these supply-siders are still trying to fool us with that tired old argument, which holds that tax cuts, in whatever form, will eventually pay for themselves by boosting the economy and increasing total revenue. I understand the allure of this theory. In truth, it's no better than a pyramid scheme aimed at creating the intangible notion of instant wealth. On paper, the trick looks like it will work and there may be a few anecdotal cases for success. On a long term and broader scale, however, it's nothing but a costly illusion.

I'm no economist, that's for sure. (If I was, I guess I wouldn't consider 5 bucks a day on coffee a "sound financial investment.") But I've followed policy for a long time, and I believe there are three main ways to influence the economy. All three exist on macroeconomic levels, and two are long-term plans. The first is to maintain steady and faithful fiscal responsible. The second is to invest in government programs that provide options for education and growth in the long term. Only the third path can carry short-term effects, and this involves careful adjustments to monetary policy (management of interest rates, mainly), not fiscal policy (economic stimulus, tax cuts).

But the supply-siders are back. Not only are they worsening the deficit now, they'll do more long-term damage than good, both by lowering the amount of revenue available to support current infrastructure needs and the critical domestic spending necessary to run this country.
Keynesianism has been largely discredited. Not many people believe that interest rates and spending should be tweaked in an attempt to "fine-tune" the economy. And I agree. In order to stave off this coming recession, I believe interest rates would need to fall to near zero. And although that would help a lot of people, I can't help but think of the long-term. Private debt is extremely high and we can't continue to sustain this.

In fact, when I do think of monetary policy, I find myself reminded of sailing. My own, that is. My sailing buddies will point out that I'm oversimplifying, but to me, sailing requires both big, smooth moments (tacking and gibing) as well as constant small movements to make sure you're capturing enough wind to carry you forward. I'm a novice sailor, so when the wind is dying down, especially, I tend to overcompensate. As a result, I leave an "S" curve wake trailing behind that suggests the uneven hand of a novice at the tiller.

Needless to say, an experienced sailor knows how to finesse the tiller. So, then, can the Fed. But in terms of short-term tinkering, modest interest rate adjustments is as far as we should go. Economic stimuli are almost always a bad idea. Often, by the time the new law goes into effect, the damage is done (perhaps that's why these rebate checks will be coming this summer, even though the income they're attached to is 2008's). Not only do stimulus packages need to be rapidly enacted to have any considerable impact, they also have to be huge ($156 billion huge?). Spending like that usually invites much larger problems. Again, the difference between tax cuts and spending is irrelevant, at least in theory. Instead of deficit spending economic stimulus package, we are better off encouraging responsible budgeting practices and allowing the Fed to adjust interest rates. And as I mentioned, we should be careful, even with that.

Not to be Dave Barry, and tidily bring it all back to my opening paragraph -- think about who supported this package. Republicans. And Democrats. Supply-siders and hardcore Keynesianists. Why? Because they're afraid to lose an election. It almost invites me to extend this debate into an argument for longer terms for members of the House of Representatives, but I think that's enough wonky stuf for one evening, even if I do want to scare away any remaining readers with boring policy talk!

Is the Sunday Source now written by children? (and if so, where are their parents?)

2008-01-13T15:08:00.000-05:00

I've long been a fan of the lighter side of the Washington Post, having even held a brief stint as a style invitational "Loser" when I first came to Washington. So when the Sunday Source was launched in 2003 to target the 18-34 year old crowd, I was pleased.

Clever and well-written, if a bit light, it was the first section I reached for when the Sunday inserts came; just as the Post intended. Four years later, however, I am deeply disappointed with the section. The writing has become pat and the articles are one-dimensional and singularly insipid. Sunday Source: what happened to you?

Yesterday's issue, for instance, just oozes with mediocrity.

Take Ian Landau's piece about a group of expired frat dudes who offer glib advice in the unlikely event that anyone else might be interested in their quixotic attempt to stave off maturity with a rock club whose members, instead of just going to shows when they feel like it, devote one boozy evening each week to a mandatory and organized outing to whatever band is providing current fodder for the rock blogosphere's feeding frenzy.

Does the Sunday source really need to insult my intelligence with two pages of drivel on a subject like this? Worse, do we really need the feature box, where the idiots featured in Laundau's story share advice on forming one's own rock club -- including tips for handling the wife or girlfriend? To paraphrase these guys: should one's girlfriend or wife object to music night (with its requisite weekly drinking, where hubby returns home after 1 AM to his sleeping wife and kids) then a reconsideration of the relationship might be in order. Never mind if she wants to go see some shows herself or go along, this is a "no girls allowed!" club.

If that weren't offensive enough, Landau goes on to quote the wives, who he describes as "patting their husbands on the head" as they depart for shows while relishing their own "me-time" pursuits, which apparently include "running to target," "quilting," "reading a book or magazine" and those elusive evenings where they even get control of the remote.

Are you KIDDING me, Sunday Source? Is this unmitigated cow dung supposed to pass for journalism? No! This isn't journalism. This reads like a parody, but sadly, it's not.

Lest my vocal discontent be misconstrued as the grumblings of an aging misanthrope, (okay, okay, that's exactly what they are) I would point out that, although I'm now on the older end of its spectrum, I am still the target audience for this section. As a thirty- something trying to balance the concomitant pull of work and family with the desire to keep at least one foot in the "scene," the Post thinks I should eat this up. And if that's true...if you're writing this for me, please stop! Seriously, it's terrible.

If not for me, or someone like me, then for whom are you writing? Sixteen people with no taste and low standards, if the grammar is any indication.

Aside from its inane content, the Sunday Source has become poorly-written. And sure, maybe this is a trend. I've heard before that newspaper journalists are told to write at the fourth-grade reading level in order to keep pace with the general decline in U.S. literacy where readers might otherwise stumble on complex sentences and words like obviate or culminate, which are routinely edited out of copy deemed "too advanced" for the average reader.

Yet, surely a difference must exist between this intentional pandering to the lesser intellectual and the product of writers who just can't do any better.

When the Sunday Source debuted, it seemed well-written, topical, and casual. Most importantly, it had a young voice. Now, it's written by "journalists" who come off as young, alright. In fact, they write like a batch of self-congratulatory interns who perceive their readers as people they need to impress, not enlighten.

Take Suzanne Damato's article this week on fashion do's and don'ts. I know, I know, it's a Q and A, so maybe she's entitled to this type of talk:

"The best rule I know is to figure out what works on you -- with your frame, lifestyle and budget -- rather than blindly following someone else's notions about style. (Yes, even mine.) "

It's possible that Damato meant her parenthetical insertion to be self-deprecating or ironic rather than arrogant, although I'm not sure, considering the fact that she referred to herself at least eight times in half as many paragraphs. Either way, her writing isn't concise enough to aptly convey irony or humor.

What's more, I found her erratic punctuation to be more interesting than her subject matter. After reading the copy, I'm not sure what she finds trendier: the double-collar featured on her model or the overuse of dashes, colons and parentheses. (Too many parentheses usually signifies badly structured text or stream-of-conscious writing, but who am "I" to judge?)

Speaking of me, turnabout is fair play. I use parentheses like mad and I tend to talk about myself pretty frequently on these here pages. But this is a blog. By nature, it is stream-of-conscious blather.

Unfortunately, Damato is writing for a newspaper, not a blog. And its hard to sniff out her credentials when her voice is so distracting. Her fashion chops might be laudable, but she gets in the way of her own ideas. Her articles don't seem to be about fashion so much as they seem to be about what she thinks about fashion. And I'm not sure who cares.

Unfortunately, most Sunday Source writers seem to be without discernible journalistic voice. Instead they come off as a bunch of kids with megaphones shouting "Hey, look at me, no hands!" There's a way to put oneself into copy without coming off as self-congratulatory, if the story demands a first person account. Likewise, one can adopt a casual voice without resorting to platitudes. Clearly, they need guidance. And that's the point of my gripe. This little rant isn't so much a blind criticism of these young writers, whose feelings would be surely hurt if they ever came across this criticism. (I'm sorry!). It's actually aimed at the problem of editorial direction, or, in this case, the lack thereof.

Are these writers choosing their own stories without guidance? Are these writers inherently bad journalists? I doubt it. My guess is that, in its quest for a young, fresh readership, the Post has made caricatures of its writers by offering them free reign without the requisite experience.

Perhaps the best question of all is who are the editors? Debra Leithauser took over for Sandy Fernandez back in 2005 in what FishbowlDC describes as a shake-up. It seems to me the decline in content and readability has been marked and fairly recent, but maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention.

Whatever its current ailments, I hope the Sunday Source gets itself together again soon, because I just can't read it in current form anymore. The paper can do better, and maybe the writers can, too.

Thanksgiving 2007

2007-12-11T01:29:00.000-05:00

The Mammal and I have been having a hard time trying to figure out the Holidays -- should we go to my hometown of Pittsburgh, or his hometown of Baton Rouge? Ultimately, we've decided to spend Christmas with his family and we'll have a belated celebration with mine the following week, alternating years and Christmas locales until we decide on a different strategy. (Which had better not be next year, or my parents will kill me!)

As for Thanksgiving, we ended up deciding by not deciding, something we're both a bit notorious for doing. I had a series of unfortunately-timed Board meetings here in Washington the week and was delivering my snow-bird Gram to Florida the week after that so it made sense for me to stay put. We put off making a final decision, however, until it grew too late for me to go anywhere, and it grew increasingly expensive for Daniel to travel South. So instead of learning our lesson and commisserating over a Thanksgiving as orphans, we celebrated our procrastination with a little feast of our own. We had so much fun I wonder if I'll EVER go home for Thanksgiving again.

Mammal in Pajamas

I've Learned...One Must Drain the Turkey of Gravy

La Dulce Vida

Linus Had his Own Little Feast

Especially Thankful

Pusher

Postprandial Bliss

Black Friday, Pink Chaise

It's beginning to look a lot like CHRISTMAS!!!!

2007-12-10T18:15:00.000-05:00

We Christmassed up the place the day after Thanksgiving but I'm just getting around to posting it now. That's because we were planning a little party. Pictures of same forthcoming!

Linus in the Afternoon

2007-12-10T18:02:00.000-05:00

No pet ever replaces another. We knew there would never be another Tinkerbell, who was a shoulder rider, a perpetually available companion, a dog-like, loyal, and gentle soul. The Tinks was friendly to all from kittenhood to her dotage, a keen fetcher of paper-balls, sworn enemy of all cats known and unknown, a menace to the rodent world, and the best cat that ever lived.

But Linus is no slouch, either. For better or for worse, our boy is rapidly distinguishing himself as a gentleman of many pursuits...and of many personalities. (Of many teeth, too).

It's true. Our dear Linus has shown himself to have about 17 distinct personalities, most of them fairly agitated. But the remaining few personalities all share a sweet, sleepy disposition, so we love our little fellow just enough not to sell him to the gypsies.

Linus has two perfectly formed little fangs that expose themselves mainly when he is sleeping; the further back he lolls his furry little head in repose, the more visible they become. Like some kind of little fruitbat or gerbil, he seems in constant need to bite and chew in order to relieve himself of some fang-related malady or other; perhaps he is filing down his sharps. If this is true, then he is equally fond of sharpening them back up on our vulnerable exposed flesh, especially while we're sleeping. We could set our clocks to his nightly routine; each night around 3:30 in the morning he stalks us as we slumber. It's very enjoyable for everyone involved. What's not to like about the occasional puncture wound delivered like a swift death-blow through three layers of bedding?

We live in fear.

Of course, we can't really blame the boy. He's just a baby kitty! He is VERY curious. And it's clear that he is also deeply, deeply mental. In fact, he seems to think the Brookstone N.A.P. blanket that the Mammal got for Christmas last year is his mother. (And, occasionally, his wife, but I'll spare you the details on that except to say it caused us to second-guess the neuter job allegedly done at the shelter before we rescued him...)

As I type this, he is slumbering peacefully next to the Mammal, who is busying himself with yet another item on our unending list of home-improvement projects. He sleeps on chairs, on the floor, on the aforementioned "mommy blanket;" he sleeps upside-down, half way on a lap and off a lap, on a pillow, on our legs, halfway on the Mammal and halfway on me, and when he wakes up he's got a jawstretching little squeak in his yawn that fills me with the (seriously ill-advised) urge to take my chances on a little nose rubbing action.

Here is some Linus for your viewing pleasures, in all his many, kittenly glories.

Soft and Sweet

The Mommy Blanket

When the ears turn sideways, hit the deck.

Untitled from faye on Vimeo

A look at those sharp teefs in action

A still shot of those teefs.

Joshua Tree

2007-12-08T23:05:00.000-05:00

In early November as the weather, at last, was turning cold in Washington, we spent a few days hiking Joshua Tree National park. I was there on a business trip to Palm Springs, so we only had two days to visit this lovely place before our return flight home. We split our trip in two, spending a day each in the Colorado and Mojave deserts, approaching the park from the Colorado desert end. It was hard to go home.

Trees near Lost Palms Oasis

Ocotillo

D. Mammal with long shadow in the Colorado

Tortoise on Lost Palms Oasis trail, about 1.5 miles in

Mastodon Peak

Atop Mastodon Peak

Thirsty

Hungry

Midday Desert Sun

Mammal, Boulders

Joshua Trees in front of Ryan Mountain with view of Saddle Rock - Mojave desert

Indian Shelter

Joshua Tree standing sentry on Ryan Mountain

Cactus

Mammal atop Ryan Mountain with view of Salton Sea

San Jacinto is just visible to the left in this picture

Mojave desert from atop Ryan Mountain with Salton Sea

San Jacinto Peak

Mojave Desert approaching Colorado Desert

We'll be back!

Two Birds

2007-12-08T21:11:00.000-05:00

One week after we adopted Linus, I had a business trip to Palm Springs. We'd planned to board our cat, Linus but since he was still adjusting to his new home, we asked my brother, Jaybird, to catsit for a week.

Jaybird (pictured in the Costa Rica teeshirt) was accompanied by his friend The Chick (pictured in the Steelers jersey) a 20-something enigma -- an accountant by trade -- who, rather predictably, drives around in an immaculate, brand new silver Cadillac sedan and, rather unpredictably, boasts a number of facial piercings and an insatiable appetite for heavy metal.

The two of them together are hilarious -- sort of like watching an old, slapstick style sitcom.

I hope they come back soon!

And of course, so does Linus.

Welcome Linus

2007-12-08T21:01:00.000-05:00

D. Ignatious Mammal and I got a new kitty.

We'd been lurking shelters for a while, spending some time with the animals. We weren't ready, but we wanted to check them out. Until the moment we brought him home, we still didn't think we were going to get another cat just yet. But we were walking out of the tunnel of kitties one day, a little grey paw reached out and softly touched me on the arm.

We tried to resist. I didn't want a kitten and I was pretty determined to get another female cat. So we stayed away from the shelter but thought about the little fellow and wondered if anyone adopted him. About week later, we went back to see him and he was sleeping like a little baby. I whispered to him and he woke up and ambled sleepily over to us, sticking his little paw out and touching my face.

We brought him home.

A kitten, really, between 6 and 7 months old, with a long cat body and a squishy little kitten face, Linus boasts two perfectly formed little fangs that extrude happily from his lip when he's sleeping upside down, so neat and perfectly vampirous that we very nearly called him The Count.

He is heartbreakingly cute when he wants to be nice. He curled up between us that first Halloween night as we watched the beautiful Charles Shultz halloween special. In honor of the holiday, we called him Linus.

Welcome, Linus!

"The Great Pumpkin always picks the most sincere pumpkin patch to rise out of. He's just gotta pick this pumpkin patch. He's just gotta! Look around. You can see that there' not a sign of hypocrisy anywhere. Nothing but sincerity reaching out as far as the eye can see!" - Linus Van Pelt, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

thanks, John C!

2007-12-08T01:13:00.000-05:00

John C. Flood (the original) has brought his clever commercial and catchy jingle back. I don't know which part I like better, the great music or the catchy flourish with which they sing "John Ceeeeeeeeeeeeee!" It's so celebratory. I really like this jingle. I also like the woman featured in the commercial. She is all bundled up inside her house, cold and sad with a broken furnace but becomes quite excited when John C. pulls up to save the day. She is jumping up and down with joy. The first time I saw the commercial, I didn't see the beginning and thought maybe the woman was so joyful because the jingle is so good, or even that she was ME, waiting patiently for the commercial to air and then celebrating its triumphant return. As it turns out, she's just happy to have her furnace in working order again.

Enough with the Invite Spam!

2007-11-13T00:02:00.000-05:00

I've had it.

In light of what seems like a universally held loathing of the typical spam that clutters up most inboxes, I find it almost unfathomable that my own acquaintances would knowingly donate their entire inbox to spammers like LinkedIn, Plaxo, and now Doostang.

Yeah, that's right, I said spammers. If it's email, it's unsolicited, and one can't stop it, it qualifies as spam. I have absolutely no interest in a social networking service that will keep my contacts up to date for me and send me clever reminders about birthdays and anniversaries and let me know who is looking for a job or an employee or an exotic pet or that perfect time-share opportunity. It's spam, so stop!

If I want to get in touch with you, I will do it the "old fashioned" way, and send you an email. In fact, for you my dear associates, I will even personally update your coordinates, manually, by pressing the keys on my laptop, should you choose to notify me of any changes. Thanks to the marvels of technology, I can update your phone numbers, address, name, email and everything else all at once, and I don't even have to spam you to make that happen.

Oh, I've heard all the excuses: some bloggers appear to be explaining that doostang extracts (without permission, apparently) and then spams the entire contact list of its hapless users who allow the invites to go out under the impression they're simply forging cyber connections with existing doostang users. Maybe, in this instance, the spamming was accidental.

Still, as the invites continue to roll in, I recognize the same offenders who first littered my inbox with Plaxo, then Linked-in, and now Doostang. Unlike traditional spam, these invites stretch the time-wasting trick a click further by presenting me with a recognizable name in the sender's field. Perhaps even more irritating than the initial invitation emails are the constant reminders when I don't respond. "Reminder: your Linked In invitation from George Cellick is about to expire!"

Cram it, Geore, really!

Frankly, I'm not really interested in giving these contact collectors permission to harvest and distribute my coordinates with their associates in turn. In real life, I probably wouldn't even spare a sentence at a cocktail party on most of these pests, let alone my email address and phone number.

Since the networks themselves have nothing to lose (except you as a potential member) by failing to allow for an opt-out mechanism, I've decided to go straight to the source by emailing my "friends" who bother me with these invites, letting them know in no uncertain terms that pestering is still BAD MANNERS, even when it happens over the internet:

Hi _____,

I notice I've received a number of invitations on your behalf from services like Linked In, Plaxo, and most recently, Doostang.

I appreciate your effort to keep in touch by all electronic means available, especially since the amount of spam I now receive in my inbox is not limited to these relentless social networking invitations sent at your behest. I can easily see a day in my near future where the spam in my inbox grows to such mammoth proportions that I will be forced to close up shop and start anew with a fresh email address, one not currently making the rounds with 16,000 spammers. You may be certain, if and when it comes to this, that you will not be among the lucky recipients of my new (and hopefully more private) coordinates.

Why is this? Because you've lost your privileges. Here I am trying to reduce the amount of senseless clutter in my inbox while you are making a pest of yourself with invitations I'm not interested in receiving to social networking groups I'm not interested in joining.

I'd like to punch you in the face, but since cyberspace is only capable of so much, I'll settle for asking you politely to kindly exclude my name when sharing your contacts with email spammers, much like I'd ask you kindly not to share my home telephone number with telemarketing corporations.

If, however, you continue to badger me with these emails, you can expect to find yourself signed up for all sorts of interesting things -- from Christian dating services to Ozzy Ozbourne's Ozzfest mailing list to Fredericks of Hollywood mailing lists to Canadian Pharmacies...you name it, you'll be registered to get emails from it. I don't care how busy I am, I will MAKE TIME to ensure you are spammed like the day is long.

The bottom line: when you're importing your life details to these annoying websites, think twice before you haphazardly invite your entire contact list to join you. You may think you're increasing your chances of landing a great job. Perhaps you feel you're contributing to an online community that streamlines difficult tasks like updating email addresses (the horror, the horror, of wasted keystrokes!) But chances are, the thing you're actually contributing to is your own growing unpopularity and what you're "sharing" is held in about as high regard as a herpes sore.

Thanks so much for understanding.

Regards,

Red Storm

Halloween 2007

2007-10-28T16:17:00.000-04:00

We had a good idea this year, and wanted an audience.

In fact, D. Ignatious Mammal and I had been trawling for some halloween costume party action for a month, with so little luck that we actually considered abandoning our hermit-like ways and throwing our own party. By Friday evening, we still had no plans, but my young and awesome sister, the KillerIrishRobot, was in town for the weekend so we had added incentive to find something fun.

With help from the Lady Bruner, we ferretted out an NPR party that sounded promising. By the time we secured the destination, however; we'd left precious little time to arrange our costumes. D. Ignatious Mammal and I had previously decided to go as Hall and Oates but hadn't by that time sorted any of the details. After careful consideration of our physical attributes, we determined that I would be John Oates and the Mammal would be Daryl Hall.

I won't lie. Part of the reason for this is that, while I can no longer fit into the black leather pants that seemed like such a sound investment in the mid-nineties, Mammal can. Yes, that's right -- he can wear my pants. It could be worse!

But I digress.

I was very excited about being Oates because, clearly, I had the better fodder for hilarity...or so I thought. Because it turns out a geometric patterned button down shirt, a generous helping of bare chest, a pushed up tweed sportscoat and a pair of too-tight for teevee leather pants all topped with a wrong, wrong, wrong mullet wig (cut and styled ourselves -- oh, the shame of it all!) is all it takes to turn the Mammal into a complete 80's rock idol. Like this:

Private Eyes are watching you...from behind your houseplants:

Concerned with the fact that I could find no images illustrating Oates' footwear preference, I took my chances on a pair of Chuck Taylor high-tops underneath tight, pegged jeans. I added the requisite sleeveless shirt and finished it off with a hair, mustache and eyebrow triad capable of absorbing all the light from a room. No offense to any hairdressers out there, but seriously, it's pretty easy to cut hair. I didn't even need a mirror:

The total package:

During the cab ride over, the Mammal and I discussed the multidimensional humor of our costumes. For instance, let's say someone catches Hall giving Oates a little kiss on his bare shoulder. Shocking? Well, not really. Let's face it, we're merely confirming what everyone has long suspected about this duo.

Because the Mammal is something of a Hall & Oates........enthusiast........I peppered him with questions throughout the cab ride. Imagine my dismay at learning that all the great lines were taken by Hall, with Oates contributing only a modest mix of rythm guitar, help on arrangements and a few choice back-ups here (no can do!) and there (watch out!).

What do I get to sing? Do I sing: "I can't go for that, can't go for that..." Do I say that part?

(no, that's Hall's part.)

How about "ooooh here she goes, watch out boys she'll chew you up!" Is that me?

(no, that's also Hall...)

At least I got to wear the mustache.

Also fortunate: we weren't going to spend too much time "in character." We left that to the multitalented KillerIrish. A true child of the youtube generation, she decided on Liam Sullivan's Kelly. Not only did she have the look down, she knows each of the videos word for word. After forcing us to endure several viral videos, plus a few reenactments of her own, the three of us set out to find costumes, cutting a wide swath across suburbia that included two Targets, two Alexandria wig shops owned by two small, vicious women, and, finally, the Halloween Superstore we'd been seeking.

Though temped to leave her beautiful, natural "hair" showing (see below), K-Irish stuck with the Kelly plan, and thanks to her ability to fit into children's clothing and her acting skills, she had the best-executed costume of the evening.

These shoes rule. These shoes SUCK!!!!!

Evidence of an extremely risky gene pool:

The party itself was good. We waited ages for a cab, so by the time we arrived, everyone was drunk. Nonetheless, the advantages and pitfalls of an "NPR party" were simultaneously demonstrated during our very first conversation:

"Scholar" to us and LadyBruner: "It's amazing how their focus promotes syntax over context..."
"Georgetown Basketball Player" (breaking in): "Did somebody say 'syntax?' I hear the word 'syntax' and my ears perk up'"
Lady Bruner: "Why, are you a grammarian or something?"
"G-town basketball player": "Linguist, actually."

I'm not kidding; that conversation actually happened.

All in all, we had a great time. Our host, Richard Simmons, was so devoted to his character that he jazzercized while carrying out his hostly duties (such as refilling the seriously wicked "sangria" that seemed to have two main ingredients -- frozen fruit and jack daniels).

Having had great success as Hall & Oates -- a number of people actually recognized us although others thought I was either saved by the bell's screech (in his porn days ) or as one of the lesser known Marx brothers -- we now want to restage the duo for another party. Perhaps we could dress up to hand out candy Wednesday night, and instead of giving out candy, give out a Hall & Oates greatest hits cd?? (Tempting as this sounds, I don't think we'd be very popular with the children and the parents would probably try to keep their kids away from D. Ignatious Mammal as long as he was lurking about in those leather pants). I know I would.

I guess we'll stick to candy and maybe Hall and Oates can have a reunion tour this time next year...

Some pictures:

Lady Bruner as a superhero who hasn't been invented yet (and about to get b-slapped on the stairs):

Lady and Lonnie B, Me, Irish, and Mammal:

We ran into K Fed and one of his kids. But is it Britney's or Shar's?:

Daft Punk were as happy we recognized them as we were that they recognized us. Note that they had a boombox playing a mix of daft punk songs. We were going to do that, but thought it might be a pain.

Millions of suspicious fans can't be wrong...

scrabble

2007-10-25T00:29:00.000-04:00

Seriously.

october sailing

2007-10-25T00:28:00.000-04:00

With D. Ignatious Mammal, the Pet Syllable and their Dad. Note me trying to pretend like I have any idea how to read the navigation system (or sail a boat of this size for that matter).

i should win the pop culture game

2007-10-25T00:25:00.000-04:00

Okay, you know that cranium-style pop culture game? Can you guess what I'm trying to get you to guess? Seriously. Answer in the comments section.

new orleans

2007-10-25T00:23:00.000-04:00

still pretty. still drunk. still has bats.

it's a picture blog now

2007-10-25T00:21:00.000-04:00

If you hadn't noticed, a picture is easier than a thousand words. Or something like that.

assicles!

2007-10-25T00:20:00.000-04:00

Assicles, sister b*tchslapping sister, mustachiod purseholders, and punisher vehicles caught on film.

Mayhem at Eastern Market

2007-10-25T00:17:00.000-04:00

Ridley Scott is directing a film called Body of Lies which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. We didn't see any of the major players during the scene they shot at Eastern Market (near my place on Capitol Hill) but we did see a bunch of worried Washingtonians.

You'd think the smoke machines, camera crews and extras in winter wear might have clued the Washingtonians in on the fact that this was a movie, but not so. Many people were startled when they walked past, thinking a terrorist attack had taken place at Eastern Market!

we miss the tinks

2007-10-25T00:09:00.000-04:00

Even though she always hogged the covers.

orange beach, AL

2007-10-25T00:06:00.000-04:00

By now I'm sure you've figured out these latests posts are not chronological. These were taken at a putt putt course in Orange Beach, AL

tinks plus sandwich plus d. ignatious

2007-10-25T00:03:00.000-04:00

Sick or not, The Tinks will eat your sandwich.

the wall

2007-10-25T00:02:00.000-04:00

before the wall

2007-10-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

the backyard, the kitchen, the living room before painting the wall, and the spare room:

how awesome is my gram?

2007-10-24T23:58:00.000-04:00

Mother Inferior descends upon DC:

home improvements

2007-10-24T23:55:00.000-04:00

We finally painted the wall...

how can i make sure chuck klosterman sees this?

2007-10-24T23:54:00.000-04:00

A few days before labor day, D. Ignatious Mammal and I were playing scrabble and noticed the Tinks with something in her mouth. I had a sneaking suspicion it was a mouse, and sure enough, it was. She hadn't hurt it at all, rather, she simply delivered it to our feet and seemed very indignant that we hapless and surprised humans let her offering escape, uneaten.

For several days, the Tinks, sick as she was, eyeballed the area under the stove, which is most certainly where the mouse had gained entry to our house.

Despite arming the kitchen with a landmine of humane (no-kill) mouse traps, the clever little fellow evaded our clutches, all the while taunting the Tinks with sudden appearances, even making a dash across the feet of my unsuspecting Grandma who visited over Labor Day weekend, along with my sister.

Like any good hostess, Tinks did her best to be social while Gramsterdam and the KillerIrishRobot were visiting, but was tuckered out by the time they departed and had curled up with a good book** by the time I left to take them home. I'd picked them up in Pittsburgh and WVU respectively, and delivering the ladies back home again took about 10 hours, round trip.

At first glance, it appeared that the Tinks hadn't left her perch on the bed. And then I looked closer.

Turns out that the Tinks had left us a little present. I'm not sure whether this is a sad story about a poor little dead mouse, a gross story about a mouse in the house (and on my BED!), a life-lesson that I should make my bed more often (note in my defense -- I kept the bed unmade so that Tinks could curl up in it more comfortably when we were gone) or an absurd but somehow heartwarming tale of a final gift and a last stand against a stated arch-enemy all wrapped up in one.

**Or maybe she just doesn't like Klosterman!

more tinks pictures

2007-10-24T23:30:00.000-04:00

As she was getting sicker, the Tinks couldn't get around so easily anymore. She got breakfast in bed (or wherever she happened to be sitting) and lots and lots of soft chin scratches. She always liked spaghetti, so she had that often when she was sick, along with baby food and of course, the ever-tempting canned tuna juice.

I miss the tinks

2007-10-24T23:24:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since I've blogged, and it's mostly because I've had a sick kitty. We had to say goodbye to the Tinks on September 20, 2007 after she got sick with an inoperable cancer. She gave me almost 13 years -- her whole life -- and I miss her. I'm quite sure I'll never have another pet like her, although sometime soon we will rescue a cat and a dog.

Here are some recent pictures of Tinkerbell. I hope they're sweet and not too sad. After all, kitties like to curl up with a cozy blanket, the Sunday paper, the remote, and the Steelers game too. Especially when they're not feeling good...

Jasper 2

2007-10-24T23:15:00.000-04:00

He belongs to my friend Robinsizzle. Since the Tinks passed away, we've been so lonely for a wet nose. This guy lent himself to us for a week and we're smitten!

dogsitting jasper!

2007-10-24T23:13:00.000-04:00

We've been dogsitting a boy named Jasper. Is he awesome or what?

Jasper III

2007-10-24T23:09:00.000-04:00

He's a lovely boy, as you can see, and good practice for when we pull the trigger and adopt one of our own.

Kid Nation Sponsors -- Come out, come out whoever you are...

2007-09-05T21:09:00.000-04:00

Reality television is repugnant. (I mean, duh...) Still, up until now, I've been able to mollify myself with the knowledge that the contestants, maligned as they may be by the double-jeopardy of decontextualized editing and orchestrated disharmony, have at least signed away their own dignity for some ignoble experience and its paltry prize.

Trust CBS, then, to up the ante by pitting kids (far too young to manage their own self-image let alone the censure of a judgmental nation) against one another and against a bevvy of natural and organized obstacles. Sure, it may well be that these children have noble moments. Some of them may in fact be well-served by their experiences on this televised experience and, yet; will these potential moments of greatness be worth enduring various pitfalls and griefs -- both made miniscule and magnified by -- the watchful and often malicious eye of the American reality teevee audience? Do we really want to feed these pop culture vultures -- these connoisseurs of the basest human condition -- the titillation of little children relegated to pittance wages under dangerous, unsupervised conditions that beg comparison to an Upton Sinclair novel?

And for what?

Never mind the question, "Where are the parents?". It should be obvious by now that people have either become resigned to or have welcomed with gusto the concept that anything, including the dignity of little children, is for sale to the highest bidder (or in this case, for a dismal $5,000 and not a penny more unless the child won something, even if the child were to have died trying).

To be sure, some of the parents must have believed the experience could benefit their children. But really, what's the difference? The question of parental judgment is relevant, but for now, let's leave that particular albatross to the parents, their children, and the mental health counselors the kids may or may not need as a result of this particular "summer camp."

That Kid Nation exploits children in order to generate high ratings and subsequent advertising dollars is a given. A more interesting question is, what actual product does CBS purport to achieve on the backs of these children? What are the goods produced by this sweatshop labor? What are the services? What's the end product? CBS says entertainment, of course, but also touts the "life lessons" such a program might impart upon its participants and viewers alike.

Spare me.

What CBS is really peddling is the voyeuristic pleasure of watching human nature, poked and prodded by the the usual reality teevee staples of hunger, sleep deprivation, homesickness, fear and illness, this time adding in adventures with facial burns and bleach, the fear of monsters real and imagined, things that go bump in the night, and the larger-than-life questions and terrors that surely must dwell in the musings of children alone at night. All of this all to slake our vile thirst for discord, drama, and human folly in the one bastion we should have left sacred: little kids.

Like many people, I am repulsed both by CBS' latest contribution to the ongoing mass debasement of our human experience and by the fact that so many Americans are likely to gleefully play audience to this show, which is just further evidence that our whole society is circling the collective cultural drain.

Depressing. But what to do?

For starters, I'm not going to watch this trash. As for you, I don't want to tell you what to watch on television -- that's not my point. Neither am I interested in censorship as an answer. I don't think that CBS should be forced by non-market forces to yank this program off the air (unless, that is, it is indicted for breaking the law, which would be another story).

That said, those individuals feeling outrage over this ought to punish CBS by turning our backs on this show and, (for those of us who can get by without Letterman, and I'll be honest -- I'm not sure I can), maybe we ought to turn our backs on CBS altogether. In viewing this program, however passively we do so, I believe we become morally complicit and diminish not only those kids, but ourselves. If this seems okay to you, or if you disagree, go ahead and watch it. I'm not stopping you. But I just want to put it out there that I don't like this show. And I want CBS to know it. And I don't want to stop there. I want the sponsors to know it. So maybe I won't just stop watching CBS. Maybe I actually really will boycott the sponsors. After all, why should our punitive pocketbook actions stop with the network?

I'm certainly not the first to note that CBS' Kid Nation itself should be boycotted. What I find to be most shocking is the lack of public outcry over CBS' refusal to disclose the show's sponsors. That CBS has declined to do so to date is not surprising, given the controversy surrounding the show. Corporations choosing to sponsor Kid Nation have opted to remain mum on sponsorship as well, lest they get caught up (deservedly so) in the maelstrom of negative publicity surrounding the show.

Could it be that we've finally found an instance where "any" publicity is NOT "good" publicity? Possibly. But it seems most sponsors are still playing that one by ear.

CBS acknowledges advertising on the program is low going into the season but predicts sponsorship dollars will flow readily -- and grow steadily -- once viewers start demonstrating their typical penchant for this kind of demeaning crap. Given the hubbub surrounding this stinker, audiences are likely to tune in in droves, if for no other reason than to see what all the fuss is about.

Nonetheless, other would-be sponsors have begun to publicly distance themselves from the show. Of its usual big-time sponsors, many have declined to sponsor CBS' first episode of Kid Nation, though vague language in some of these corporate statements, coupled with a reticence to discuss future episodes, suggests these winds may change along with perceived public reaction to the show and, of course, as those ratings roll in. Typical CBS sponsors who have announced they will not advertise during the initial episode include:

Taco Bell
Ford
Verizon
Pepsi
Anheuser-Busch
GM (GM was the only corporation to acknowledge it will be using a "wait and see" strategy for the rest of the season).

Among other top CBS advertisers, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, , AT&T and GlaxoSmithKline could not be reached for comment by an online advertising magazine reporting on the issue.

I'm very curious to see which advertisers will take a chance on this show. Seems like a bad idea to me.

Save the Grammar!

2007-08-24T00:33:00.000-04:00

I'm thinking about starting a new blog called "Grammatically Incorrect" in order to chide professional journalists for posting articles with significant lapses in grammar and punctuation. Blogger mistakes are bad enough, but at least bloggers can claim amatuer status.

Unfortunately, more and more professional journalists are publishing what appears to be little more than a typed up version of notes and story ideas jotted down on the back of a take-out menu.

I read this article posted on Variety's website this evening and found myself so distressed by the lazy writing that I forgot to be distressed about the subject matter. Three sentences starting three consecutive paragraphs left me first scratching my head at the identity of the mysterious "Show" who was being quoted sans first name, and then later asking "where are the editors?" (Or at least, "where are the articles?").

Consider the opening clauses of these three sentences:

"Show took 40 kids, ages 8-15, to a ghost town in the New Mexico..."
"Show was deliberately designed as a kind of..."
"Show's conceit has raised eyebrows and concerns..."

I couldn't help but post a snarky comment about ___ missing articles but Variety apparently reserves ___ right to be choosy about comments; my witty rejoinder seems to be languishing in a purgatory of unpublished comments.

My questions remain. Did the author submit her article by text message? Was she pressed for time or space?

Honestly, I've seen better grammar in the comments over at TMZ.

(P.S. Before you go there and start correcting my own bad grammar, remember, I gave myself a hall pass in my opening paragraph. I'm just a blogger! I do not understand your fancy rules of grammar...)

Nobody reads my blog anymore

2007-06-04T20:29:00.001-04:00

or do they?

Eastern Market Fire

2007-04-30T21:59:00.000-04:00

The main hall of beautiful Eastern Market caught on fire, early this morning. The building facade and part of the inside appears to be salvageable -- a testament to its sturdy construction, no doubt -- and thankfully there were no injuries. Still, the news is absolutely devastating.

Eastern Market is like an old friend. Shopping for dinner at Eastern Market is part of almost every weekend I spend here in DC. It is quite possibly my favorite thing about this city. When I first moved here and was feeling homesick for my hometown of Pittsburgh, I would wander around Eastern Market to cheer myself up. The vendors of Eastern Market are Pittsburgh-friendly and that is not a comparison I frequently make.

It's hard enough to get through Mondays without the market (when the vendors take a well-earned day off and the market is closed), so I don't know how I'll survive while the market rebuilds. Fortunately, most of the vendors will be open for business as early as this week, perhaps in makeshift, outdoor stores. But in the long run, I sure do hope our neighbors who depend on the market for their living will be okay.

I'm looking for information about volunteer efforts or donation sites where I can drop off some dollars or even spend some time helping to restore the interior. I'm sure an effort will be organized soon (check back if anyone is interested and doesn't see the information elsewhere -- I will update this post once I find out how to help).

I just hope that the vendors are not overlooked, and that any losses not covered by insurance can at least be mitigated somewhat by a caring community. The vendors at Eastern Market are just as nice as can be. According to the quotes I've seen, the vendors seem very worried. I hope they are treated to the same kindness they've always shown their customers all these years.

Little Girl on My Street

2007-04-25T22:37:00.000-04:00

Yesterday a little girl was struck and killed by a car around the corner from my house. Reports suggest she darted out between two parked cars and was struck by a green SUV that kept going. It's hard to get your brain around something this sad.

And then a vampire of the news media named Nancy Grace exploits this tragedy as if her bottom line depended on it.

After depicting the lurid details of the accident several times, shouting down anyone who disagreed (or simply dared to speak in her presence), Grace nearly frightened me into forgetting the tragedy she was pretending to cover.

Grace strikes me, having only had the misfortune to watch her program this one time, as someone who exalts in the misery of others and revels in the profits she can make of it.

Why can't I just watch the news and get an update on what's happening? Does Nancy Grace really feel that she needs to fake cry on teevee to remind me of all the phonies, fakers, liars and charlatans that walk the earth?

In the meantime, this poor little girl left the world on Monday a month shy of 7. Her mom watched it happen. The driver didn't stop. Was it an accident? Was it a driver who panicked and fled? It sounds to me that he or she is a coward. But clearly, the city's placement of stop signs and enforcement of speed laws in our neighborhood has been haphazard as well.

It seems to me this little girl deserves a better eulogy than the post-mortem yellow journalism delivered supposedly on her behalf by a bloodsucking, faking, exploitative, law school squeaker-by like Nancy Grace.

If anyone has any infomation about a vehicle for donation to this kid's family, please let me know.

Thank you.

Spring is here...

2007-03-29T23:42:00.000-04:00

And The Tinks is feelin' frisky.

That Seventies Idol

2007-03-29T03:09:00.000-04:00

Is it just me, or is there something oddly familiar about American Idol's Melinda Doolittle?

Band Room Graffiti

2007-03-27T13:01:00.000-04:00

There's something about a band room that brings out the 4th grader in everyone. For instance, let's say one encounters the sticker of a band called "Bones." Who among us could resist completing the sentence? (Bonesmoker!!!! ha ha ha ha ha!)

Bands spend lots of time waiting around in the band room, practicing their moves and staring at their shoes and so on.

This leaves plenty of time for creativity that extends beyond your typical powder room prose:

Then again, others simply like to draw pictures of penises for all to "enjoy." Like this:

A little something for the ladies:

And for the lads. (What's especially nice about this picture is how each band coming through adds a little something of his own to it. Never absent for long, please note the ubiquitous penis lurking nearby. )

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but I'm pretty sure this next one would not make a pretty visual. By the way, I was talking about the description of (what else) a penis, but "semen is freedom" and "I poop my pants" are other candidates just begging for a picture.

Sometimes, of course, band room graffiti isn't clever or funny; it's just lazy and offensive.

Then again, other times it's pretty cool. I'm not sure if they're birds or planes, but I like 'em!

guitar store hero

2007-03-14T21:24:00.000-04:00

While on tour with my former band, we had to make a pit stop at a Guitar Center so our drummer could pick up new drumheads. After we got involved with the luxurious Guitar Center bathrooms, we wandered around the store, trying to avoid eye contact with the ever-eager guitar center employees, who spied our van outside and started firing questions at us:

"Are you a band? Are you on tour? What's the name of your band? Are you guys indie rockers? Where are you from? Where are you going? Are you on a label? We saw your 15-seater, I said, 'This has to be a band coming in. Either that or a church group! Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

Then our eyes (and ears) were blessed by hands-down, the best encounter ever to be documented at a Guitar Center store. Unfortunately, I cut off filming long before the hilarity ended because a stern-looking manager type noticed me documenting the d-baggery of one of his employees and started making his way over. I stopped filming before he could yell at us and we resumed our drive.

The other day I watched an episode of MTV's Boiling Point featuring a guitar store "employee" deliberately trying to raise the ire of his customers and it reminded me of this video. I decided to post my video, in which a guitar center employee behaves even more irritatingly and yet seems to garner only enthusiasm from his customer / victim.

Note the cameo (and butt scratching) appearances by my then-fellow bandmates. They all wanted in on some of the sweet guitar store hero action. And who could blame them?

Enjoy:

The Stinkfoot

2007-01-26T20:30:00.000-05:00

Have you ever read somebody's blog, commented, on it, and then thought, "hm, that would make a good blog!"? Probably not. But if you're like me, and you only manage to blog about once every 16 months, and you've taken the time to write out a mildly comical comment on someone else's blog about (wait for it) ... feet, you've just got to know when to recycle your efforts.

It all started when Bruner wrote a post about dirty feet in Southeast Asia. This reminded me of a party I attended about a year and a half ago.

First of all, a little bit about the host: This party was thrown by a fifty-something college professor of "pop and modern cultures" who had a self-proclaimed obsession with Japanese "girl culture" and an uncanny resemblance to our 16th President. I knew little of these predilections when I dressed for the party, having been invited indirectly, through a former acquaintance who knew nothing of the "shoes off" policy. The invitation, while clearly counseling potential party-goers to "dress sharp," made no mention of the lower extremities exposure requirement.

Enter me in a winter white suit and a pair of shiny (and not muddy, or dirty, or dusty) stillettos. Not only were they an integral part of the outfit, without them, the hem of my "meant to be worn with heels" trousers (pristine white and formidably expensive) dragged all night long over the hard wood floors. To the naked eye, the floors looked clean enough, but by evening's end, my snow white hem had absorbed a bleak ring of sooty grey-brown filth that never did come clean.

The abandoned stillettos in question were sandals and, as one might expect, I was otherwise without further foot adornment. By the looks of the hem of my pants, the floor was marginally cleaner than, say, a seven-eleven convenience store. That, coupled with the host's aforementioned predilection with fetish-like "cultures," made me less than eager for a barefoot encounter with the end-product of his obsessions and related perversions.

As distressing as the above may have been, the gross out factor of this story pales in comparison to the cold front that set in on my toes that evening. Because the host expected a press of partygoers to heat the place by body temperature alone, he lowered the heat to a balmy 58 degrees, putting my naked dudes in danger of frostbite.

As if this all weren't bad enough, our host had a few feline friends, who kindly tracked and scattered kitty litter across the hard wood floors. Over the coruse of the evening, tiny shards of litter embedded themselves into my vulnerable footpads. Of course I tried scraping them off before putting my feet back into shoes, but to no avail; the following morning I awoke to a blanket of kitty grit in between the bedsheets.

Gross! The sheets in question were never the same and neither was my winter white suit. Still, there is a silver lining to be found within this painful, podiatric cloud. At the end of the evening, all the hipster hangers on couldn't figure out which Chuck Taylors they ought to wear home.

Pittsburgh is beautiful.

2006-12-28T02:04:00.000-05:00

Driving home from my family's house in Pittsburgh earlier this afternoon I decided to take a video of my favorite view of the city, which is about as nice an approach to an American city as I've seen anywhere. It's one of the reasons Pittsburgh, my hometown, will always be my favorite place.

John C. Flood (the original)

2006-12-23T02:09:00.000-05:00

John C. Flood (John C!!!!!!)

Please, somebody send me a clip.

Thanks.

Hot hell I'm back...

2006-12-18T21:36:00.000-05:00

And I want to talk to you about a pet peeve.

A friend of mine recently paraphrased some statements made by The Economist about fair trade and "organic" versus traditional farming.

My chief problem with this article -- and with the whole entire English-speaking world, frankly -- is the blatant misuse of the word organic by people who have clearly amassed sufficient education to write for The Economist yet appear unable to regurgitate a simple high school biology lesson.

The word organic, used not to describe a carbon-containing molecule but rather to describe anything from farming, to computing, to music and recording has become so sickeningly pervasive that the "inorganic" use of the word "organic" is now accepted universally, even outside the crunchy chatter of hippies who once used it chiefly to describe reefer and the hipst-icks who, lacking anything else intelligent to say about music, particularly when referring to a recording, pronounce it "organic."

What?!

The word organic, as used by today's modern farmer, bothers me a bit less than the other uses. I might grudgingly allow that at least the farmers are discussing vegetable or animal-based pesticides versus their chemically derivative brethren. But to use "organic" with respect to computing, or recording?

Could it be that my exercises in self-recorded glory are, after all, chock-full of hydrocarbons?

Let's play a fun word game where we substitute an adjective's literal definition for the adjective itself.

Example: "Lisa is really hot. / Lisa has a high temperature which may cause burning."

Now another one: "The new (insert hipster flavor of the month band here) recording is truly organic. / The new (insert hipster flavor of the month band here) recording is truly COMPOSED OF CARBON-CONTAINING MOLECULES."

Huh.

Darlings, the definition of "organic," as I learned in "organic" chemistry, is a MOLECULE THAT CONTAINS CARBON!!! So - (and duhhhh) - all life is carbon-based; therefore, any cell that is or was at one point living is referred to as organic material. So let me explain something.

The hipsters in the band, believe it or not, are carbon-based and therefore, organic.
Their recording is not, even if they use analog equipment. Unless, that is, they have found a way to manufacture listening devices out of skin. (Have they?)

Let's continue the lesson:

A fungus is organic.
A dead Labrador in a driveway is organic. (note: while the dog is organic, the driveway is not)
germs are organic.
Kleenex brand tissues are nnooo(oooh - wait, kleenex are made of lumber--thus, kleenex brand tissues ARE ORGANIC!)
And so are your chairs! If they are made of wood, that is, regardless of whether or not logging of said wood is contributing to deforestation.
Your lawn chairs may be inorganic. Check to see if they are plastic before labeling.
A fur coat is -- yep! -- organic! Unless it's faux fur. Faux fur is inorganic!
So is water! (whoa)
But fish in the water are..(wait for it)...organic!!!!
Are Swedish Fish organic? (I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!)
Exclamation points are inorganic.
So are feelings and ideas.
Teeth are organic, even when chomping "inorganic" food.
Unless they are gold teeth. Which are...organic? This one's tricky. Gold is inorganic, but gold jewelry is the element gold (au) paired with other metals, like zinc, which is...organic!

I know it can be confusing. But you know what's not confusing? Whether or not music is organic. It's NOT!

The result of today's lesson should be this: While your music may in fact be "alive with pleasure;" unless it has spontaneously mutated into some form of carbon, it is not, I'm afraid, organic.

Mind you, I'm not making any value judgments about organic foods. I like the idea of something that uses processes and methods that are closer to those that nature intended.

Wait, who am I kidding? Nature did not intend for me to wear contact lenses or have straight hair, nature didn't intend for me to brush my teeth with sweet plastic bristly brushes or to floss, to put aluminum on my armpits, to fly, to enjoy cable television, or to get pedicures.

So forget nature, forget organic, and let's dissect whoever added all the inorganic definitions of the word organic to the dictionary down to his or her parts.

Remember: If frequent misuse was sufficient reason to incorporate a word into the accepted vernacular, "alot" would be in the dictionary by now.

Thanks.

-- also --

Props to P. in Baton Rouge for the shared ire not to mention the hot pockets.

fireside chat

2006-10-23T19:59:00.000-04:00

So I've been busy. Writing music reviews for all-star heavy metal side projects, apparently. Did somebody steal my name or is there really another **insert Red Storm's real name** out there?

User Reviews

Score: 10
Date: 28-June-2001
Name: ____ ________

"Corrosion of conformity, Pantera, Eyehategod and Crowbar all fused together in a blinding display of hardcore stoner at its very best. Each member brings great influence to the best album that I have ever heard. The cover says it all with a portrait of Jesus smoking a reefer. This album is predominated with Philip's pain and anger, which bleeds through the rest of the project. This album has been so successful, another is on its way. The epitome of music."

Huh.

In other news, the real reason that my entries have been sporadic at best is, well, I'm lazy. Also, I've been playing with a new band.

In case you were wondering, we look like this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

On a separate subject, AT LAST! I am getting a new laptop. That's pretty sweet news, considering my current laptop has 1 percent of its disk space left, not to mention the battery life of a lawn dart.

Everything's coming up me these days...

Garrison Keillor, thank you.

2006-10-17T21:21:00.000-04:00

Until the courts dispose of this piece of garbage, you'd better believe I'll mark those names down. But why should I say it when you already have?

Thank you for this article. And thank you to the enemy combatant herself, (though not formally a Czech au pair, caring for Xavier sometimes may still warrant the title) for sending it to me.

I am deeply ashamed of my government. But that's nothing new.

You know what's super about this rainy weather?

2006-09-05T15:19:00.001-04:00

Nothing.

Don't get me wrong, normally I really enjoy the rain. Something about the act of carrying an umbrella makes me happy. But today the rain has been my nemesis.

The rain started off my morning by striking so insistently at the skylight outside my bedroom door that the resulting racket was not unlike the sound of large automobiles falling onto a heap of scrap metal. Since I didn't need a 7 AM wake up call, I thanked the rain anyway and tried to get back to sleep but, quite inexplicably, considering how tired I was, I lay in bed sleepless for about 43 minutes until a blissful slumber once again claimed me about two minutes before my alarm was set to jar me back to a state of wakefulness. I promptly ignored the alarm as it sounded, (or rather, silenced it) which set off a sequence of events eventually culminating in my tardy arrival at a staff meeting 20 minutes late.

Here's where things get tricky, though. Unfortunately. the rain and its deleterious effect on area traffic meant that I was not the only one. So instead of missing out on 20 minutes of a two hour meeting about projects I neither know nor care about, the whole meeting was pushed back. I didn't miss a word. Sadly.

I had to wear a suit because I have a meeting on the hill this afternoon. I won't have time to change before I leave for practice, which is super sweet. I'm wearing a black suit today and a black shirt underneath it, lending me the appearance of either:

1. a waiter.
2. a ninja
3. a cat burglar (meow!)

Today I had to have some head shots taken for an article I am authoriing in some arcane trade magazine read only by members of my industry and maybe a handful of eager beaver Congressional staff. As an added bonus, the photographer gathered up our entire staff in the lobby of our building for a staff photo that is going on our holiday cards. It's going to be beautiful. Due to the rain, my hair is completely flat and is lying around my shoulders like a dead cat and my suit, having been soaked through, dried back in a wrinkled fashion that suggests I was hit by the metro this morning and then dragged along for a few stops. The best part is that the photos were taken in front of the unintentionally hilarious foliage gracing my company's lobby. I tried to convince my boss, who is generally a good sport, to pose behind the shrubbery as if we were emerging from the wilderness, all suited up and successorized, ready to defend the business of our corporate benefactors but for some reason she decided this was not in her best interest. Maybe she reads my blog?

I wish I had a few dried leaves or twigs to put in my hair for added effect, just to further the illusion widely held by many in my office that I sleep in my clothes, in some van somewhere. I also wish I had the picture to go along with this blog.

Watch for updates.

This one's for you, Martina

2006-08-31T15:17:00.000-04:00

Blogs, jokes, and snarky commentary about Snakes on a Plane are getting to be about as ubiquitous as my black jetta. Nonetheless, I have to go there. Truly, I am sorry. Only because my housemate, the Chzech Chzick, recently returned from the movie all agog.

First of all, she and her friend smuggled a bottle of gin into the movies, in her purse. This rocks. Secondly, because she said she actually screamed when the snakes jumped out of the overhead bins and such, because she was startled. No, no. I'm paraphrasing. What she actually said was:

"I mean really. I would crap in my pants I mean shit. In my pants. If there would be snakes there. On the plane."

"You don't say," I offered in response. "So tell me, oh dear Chzechy one, from where exactly did these snakes come?"

I thought the response would be something standard like "the cargo hold" or "the overhead compartment." But I was mistaken.

"I mean," stated Martina, "Asia, Latin America, everywhere. They come from all over. Just kind of gathered and had family reunion right there. On the plane. All the snakes."

After a few more quaffs of her smuggled gin, C.C. began to hallucinate, claiming to see snakes in the movie theater. But this of course, is a blog for another time.

Until then, I leave you with this:

It's not even funny anymore

2006-08-14T15:38:00.000-04:00

Must it really be 6 degrees in the office?

Okay, I can understand a cold office last week, when the weather outside took a surprising and refreshing turn for the cooler. Maybe the air conditioning was pre-programmed to remain at the subartic levels needed to stave off the typical DC heatstroke air coming in and up through the elevator shaft even though the air was in fact, cooler. What I'm saying is, this sort of chill was understandable, given the drop in outdoor temperatures, last week. But now it's once again hot as crap outside and just as bone-chillingly frigid in my office as ever. Why? Why must it be this cold? Who is requesting this temperature level? Who can work like this??

It must cost a lot to keep things refrigerated all the time. I think I'm going to raise this at the next executive staff meeting. Or maybe during my next performance review, when I am once again reminded that my salary is exhorbitant.

(Side note: HA HA HA HA HA! End Side note).

Anyway, next time I hear talk about keeping personnel costs down, I'm going to suggest we cut other controllable costs. One idea is to boost the thermostat to, oh, I don't know, at least the mid-40's next summer.

In the meantime, I can't wait for winter, when it will be warm again...

Yahoo!, China, Dog Slaughtering and Why it's More Important (duh!) to Care about People Slaughtering

2006-08-02T14:05:00.000-04:00

Yes, I read it too. A friend sent me the article about the 50,000 pet dogs that were recently slaughtered in Southwest China over a period of 5 days. That's a sad and tragic fact.

Here's another aching fact: Thousands of innocent humans are wasting away in Chinese prisons, hoping to be rescued. Thousands of Chinese dissidents are hoping the account they make of the suffering Chinese people will be heard before they, too, are silenced. Many of them will be tortured or killed. Just like the dogs. Except, well, these are human beings.

We should be paying attention.

Look, I'm as horrified about what the Chinese government did to those poor dogs as anyone else. My heart breaks to see the images. But I have to ask the question: Why have I seen so much internet traffic about the dogs and so little about the human condition in China? If anything, the very real slaughter of the dogs ought to be seen for what it truly is: a tragic metaphor for the greater brutality of an oppressive political culture in which not only dogs, but human beings, are disposable.

In the article about the dog slaughter, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announces it will boycott Chinese products and terminate current contracts amounting to about $300,000 with China.

You know, because of the dogs.

Wow. Thanks, PETA! Seriously. Thanks for looking out for the dogs. But I have to say, an organization that prides itself in furthering the rights of living creatures should think twice about admitting it ever contracted with China in the first place. Tell me, PETA, how do you feel about the rights of the political prisoners and orphans whose li'l fingers labor over your "Go Vegan" tee-shirts? Are these humans not also compelling and worthy of your boycott power?

I know, I know. PETA is an animal rights outfit, not a human rights outfit. Love it or hate it, it does what it claims to do, which is to foster and further the rights, as it sees them, of animals. I'm not sure I agree with PETA on all (or even more than maybe three) issues but I respect the organization for acting on an issue about which it cares greatly. By all means, PETA, cancel that order. Business works. Hit 'em in the pocketbook. Good move.

But how about backing the fuck off with the talk about the rights of all living creatures in the same sentence acknowledging an order with a known human rights offender?! PETA apparently had no problem with China before, when the abuse was limited to dissidents, practitioners of Falun Gong, and orphaned baby girls. But now, great shit, they're killing the little doggies, so look out!

There is no fathomable excuse for ANY organization claiming rights for ANY living creature to brag about eliminating a contract for clothing that was most likely assembled by forced labor in a sweat-shop. End of story.

I'm not going to extend my castigation of PETA to the committed animal lovers who sent the information my way. We are, after all, just human beings who react to the information we see. Instead, I'm issuing a fairly simple challenge, which is just this. Look further.

No doubt, the dog slaughter was sickening. But how about the thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands of deaths of children (especially little girls) in orphanages? They lie there in squalor, chained to their beds, brutally beaten, sometimes raped, and almost always systematically and intentionally starved to death, all in order to propagate the fake success of China's failed one-child policy. That is to say, if their parents manage to escape the forced abortions that the are the government's other answer to the failed policy.

According to a Human Rights Watch study, ChinaÃ’s best-known and most prestigious orphanage, the Shanghai ChildrenÃ’s Welfare Institute, has mortality rates running at nearly 90 percent; and even official government estimates put the annual deaths-to-admissions ratio at an appalling 77.6 percent. And credible evidence shows that the fates of babies dwelling in lesser known orphanages have an even higher fatality rate. At all the institutions, a majority of the deaths are described as "unnatural."

And remember the urban myth of the vital organs harvested from the randy, unsuspecting businessmen? Turns out in China, maybe it's not such a myth. China claims it only harvests the organs of executed prisoners and only if they or their families consent. But the death penalty in China is an assembly-line process where (according to the U.S. State Department) between 5,000 and 12,000 people are executed every year.

Yeah. So, "Lookout China!," says PETA. You can fuck with the women, the political dissidents, and the baby girls, but please do not fuck with the dogs, or else PETA will boycott your ass.

Some people say that China has the equivalent of modern day concentration camps. I'm not sure how I feel about that claim. After all, one doesn't draw that parallel lightly. Are the Chinese human rights atrocities really on par with something as terrible as the holocaust? Well, probably not. While the Chinese government is systematically torturing and executing thousands of humans based on religion, ethnicity, and gender, it's nothing at all like the Nazi's who, um, er, systematically tortured and executed millions of humans based on religion, ethnicity, and other factors. Hm.

Okay, okay. Again, I know there are huge differences. But in fact, there are differences that are not so huge. And if it takes publification of an article about the slaughter of dogs to wake us up from our collective slumber, then so be it, because we don't seem to pay much attention to China otherwise.

Here's part of the problem. The United States now has what's called Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China. Prior to the move to PNTR, the President would grant or deny China Most-Favored Nation (MFN) trade status on an annual basis. Once approved for MFN status, the U.S. would apply our lowest tariffs on goods exported from China to the United States. Congress had the authority to overturn the presidents' decision by joint resolution.

Congress typically upheld the annual approval; however, at least the process itself was a vehicle for debate on the issue and a clear motive for the Chinese government to clean up its human rights act (temporarily and superficially in my opinion, but still) each time that trade debate unfolded.

With China's 2001 induction into the World Trade Organization and the substitution of permanent normal trade relations for annual MFN status, Congress no longer has to publicly defend, year after year, its support of free trade with china because under PNTR, the favored trade status is automatic. This robs the media of an important context through which to cover human rights abuses in China. Consequently (and arguably) media coverage of the issues has fallen off somewhat.

Perhaps that's why it takes the slaughter of dogs to regain our collective attention.

As a result of Doggie D-day, a few of my well-intentioned friends have started to forward the articles around. And why not? Such slaughter, even of animals, on such an abrupt, massive, and brutal scale, clearly invokes a terrible reaction. It breaks our hearts and makes us want to defend the underdog (trust me, no pun intended). In fact, the reason I'm taking this break from my usual hilarity (no comments please) to bore you with a post about Chinese atrocities is I felt heartsick when a friend sent me the article in question.

But at the same time, I'm forced to recraft the disingenuous statements of PETA alongside the dog slaughter atrocity into a broader appeal to the individuals who have seen those photos and read that article and want to do something about it. Look more closely, and force your hearts to break also for the children and the men and women who are tortured to death or executed outright. After all, they are being slaughtered for one underlying reason: they were born into aoppressiveve regime that values broken policies over human life and treats the latter like an object to be abused and ultimately discarded.

Of course, it's a bit feckless of me to offer up this post without offering iaccompanimentnt any tangible solution to the China problem. The China problem, after all, is exceptionally complex.

As a nation, we ignore China at our peril. China has the world's largest army, nuclear missiles, and a population of 1.3 billion. Its GDP grows between 8 and 12 percent per year and it has the world's second-largest economy (second only to the U.S.), making China's value as a trading partner clear. But even this trade is not without its own set of controversies. According to the Department of Commerce, the U.S. had a record-high $725.8 billion trade deficit in 2005. Of this, over $200 billion was with China alone, an all-time high for a deficit with any nation. Ecocomists further suggest that China deliberately undervalues its currency to artificially cheapen its exports while illegally subsidizing Chinese companies -- a clear violation of World Trade Organization rules. Of course, that's just part of the problem.

Last year, the State Department offered a comprehensive report on human rights abuses in China. The report portrayed the current Chinese regime as one of the worst violators of human rights in the world. Few other nations match China's heinous record of repression, from the systematic denial of political rights and freedoms to the use of torture to interference in the most private matters of family and conscience. The report, nearly 45,000 words in length, listed the following major human rights abuses:

1. denial of the right to change the government
2. physical abuse resulting in deaths in custody in jails and orphanages
3. torture and coerced confessions of prisoners
4. harassment, detention, and imprisonment of those perceived as threatening to party and government authority
5. arbitrary arrest and detention, including nonjudicial administrative detention, reeducation-through-labor, psychiatric detention, and extended or incommunicado pre-trial detention
6. a politically controlled judiciary and a lack of due process
7. detention of political prisoners, including those convicted of disclosing state secrets and subversion and those jailed in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations
8. house arrest and other non-judicially approved surveillance and detention of dissidents
9. monitoring of citizens' mail, telephone and electronic communications (ummm, that's rich, State Department. But let's leave that one for another post)
10. use of a coercive birth limitation policy, in some cases resulting in forced abortion and sterilization and orphanage murders
11. restrictions on freedom of speech and the press including closure of newspapers and journals, banning of politically sensitive books, periodicals, and films, and intentional jamming of broadcast signals and internet functionality
12. restrictions on the freedom of assembly, including detention and abuse of demonstrators and petitioners
13. restrictions on religious freedom, control of religious groups, and harassment and detention of unregistered religious groups
14. restrictions on the freedom of travel, especially for politically sensitive and underground religious figures
15. forcible repatriation of North Koreans and inadequate protection of many refugees
16. severe government corruption
17. increased scrutiny, harassment and restrictions on independent domestic and foreign nongovernmental organizations
18. trafficking in women and children
19. societal discrimination against women, minorities, and persons with disabilities
20. cultural and religious repression of minorities in Tibetan areas and Muslim areas of Xinjiang
21. restriction of labor rights, including freedom of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, and worker health and safety
22. forced labor, including prison labor

Evidence gathered by the State department and other reputable nongovernmental agencies have demonstrated that recent economic reforms, however incrementally beneficial they may be in terms of reducing overall poverty in China, have not resulted tangible human rights advances.

What's worse, gigantic American corporations are helping to further the attrocities. For instance Yahoo! colluded with the Chinese police a few years ago and turned over emails, address files, and other information that resulted in the jailing and possible torture of dissidents.

Maybe PETA should boycott Yahoo!, as well. Wait, nobody uses Yahoo! anymore. We Google things these days, right? And Google is a noble company. Do No Evil and all. Right? Not so much. Caving to pressure from Chinese officials, Google created a sweet little Chinese search engine that, as Congressman Chris Smith put it, "only Joseph Geobbels would love." Should Chinese citizens Google such bad words as "Tiananmen Square" or "Falun Gong," for instance, Google China will magically redirect them to a government propaganda site.

Protesters descended upon Google headquarters demanding an explanation as reporters began to focus on the topic. Google explained, however, that it viewed the cleansed or rerouted sites as part of a greater compromise to allow it to provide Chinese consumers at least some small bite of freedom. After all, not all content is blocked. Only the content that Big Brother deems subversive. From reading Google's public responses on the issue (since only four executives in the Google empire were allowed to make public statements on the issue, there's not much to read) I was struck by the fact that Google genuinely seemed to view such incremental changes as important. A Chinese perestroika, of sorts.

Really?

When lawmakers begain to take Google to task for enabling the Chinese dictatorship to expand its message of hate while curtailing the same freedoms it claims to protect in other markets (where the curtailment of freedom is, ahem, less lucrative), Google responded by hiring big time Washington lobbyists to kill all associated legislation. All the while, even Google's most fresh-faced executives lauded the same supposed principals: "Worry about making money later, first worry about doing no evil."

Really?

I'm not sure what the answer is here. Maybe Google is right with the Perestroika approach. I used to think we shouldn't deal at all with the Soviet Union, but it turns out that these gradual economic reforms, among other factors, eventually contributed to the end of the cold war. So who am I to say that Google's not onto something? After all, they claim they won't make a profit off the Chinese market for another (cough cough) several, um, years.

Am I being sarcastic? Sorry...

Anyway, I digress.

I guess the point is, if we start boycotting China and want to be intellectually honest about it, we have to admit that our boycott list is going to be a lot more exhaustive than we first supposed.

But hey, on the upside, it looks like old unhealthy Castro is finally preparing to turn over the reigns of his terrible communist outpost, so at least we have that going for us, which is ni--- Wait a minute.

Who cares?

Do me a favor. If you cared enough to read to the end of this post, visit this website, which works very hard to educate Americans about all atrocities committed by the Chinese government (including perhaps those inflicted upon the dogs). Take a look around. Read the press releases that put a personal face on the stories of human suffering, the way the story about the dogs seemed to do. Write a letter if you have the time. Or donate a couple of bucks to help the organization continue it's important work.

Human Rights in China

Thanks.

Oh, and by the way, this is by no means a scholarly report and it's been a long time since I've gotten down with the MLA style, but I figured I should cite the sources I didn't link to directly:

1. Thompson, Clive. "Google's China Problem (And China's Google Problem.)" NYTimes 23 April. 2006.
2. (United States Congress. Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations. Hearing: HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: IMPROVING OR DETERIORATING CONDITIONS?. 109th Cong, 2nd sess. Washington.)
3. Armstrong, David. "U.S. racks up record trade deficit in '05
$725.8 billion total is 17.5% increase over 2004's mark." San Francisco Chronicle. 11 February. 2006

Washington, Washington

2006-07-17T14:31:00.000-04:00

Bruner found this days ago. I'm so late to the party all the time... (Not work safe):

Sometimes You Just Have to be Direct

2006-07-13T17:10:00.000-04:00

STOP RIGHT THERE, OFFICE SUPPLY PIRATE!

I know what you’re up to. You’re eyeballing my wastebasket again. Or maybe this time you’re after my chair. Perhaps scissors are your pleasure. Or tape. I know I make an easy mark. My door is unlocked. Nobody is here. Nobody is watching. My office supplies seem unworn. Unloved, even. Perhaps they ask you to take them and put them to more regular use.

(Is it the siren song of my lonely stapler that beckons you?)

I cannot know this answer or your motivations for removing my office supplies and putting them to use elsewhere in the office. I cannot know whether it is a misplaced sense of altruism towards underused inanimate objects that motivates you or if you are simply too overworked and frazzled to consider complex guidelines to life like the social contract or the golden rule.

I can only say: Please stop boosting my office supplies.

I need them.

And when I do need them, I like to find them in my office, where I left them, in the place where they belong.

While it may seem like a fun diversion to embark upon a scavenger hunt for my office supplies every single time I come into the office, it’s actually kind of a pain in the bottom drawer.

So please, Pirate of Supplies, do not touch my booty.

Or I will punch your teeth off.

Thanks.

Post Fourth of July Boxing Thank You Pie Gone in a Flash of my Sharp Sharp Teefs

2006-07-10T20:10:00.000-04:00

I made a blueberry pie, motherf***ers!

I'm very sorry about that bad language, actually, but I am feeling so frightfully domesticated by this blueberry pie thing that I had to say a bad word or commit a sin as soon as possible just so my readers didn't begin to think I'm trying out for the housewife brigade or something up in here.

Because it gets worse. I made the blueberry pie in order to say thank you to my neighbor.

Why? I just moved from one little house in the hood to another last weekend (as I have mentioned no less than sixty times previously). When I finished moving I put all my boxes out front, broken down only partially, with the faint hope that the garbage men here in DC would pick them up despite a certain known rigidity about "unscheduled collection of bulk trash." I had convinced myself that I might wake up in the wee hours of the morning, pre-trash pick up style, to actually finish the task at hand, but naturally I did no such thing.

Later on that day, as I luxuriated in the newspaper and my morning latte, it occurred to me that the garbage had not yet been picked up, because all this had taken place after a mid-week holiday, which of course pushes trash collection back a day. So I went outside, scissors in hand, to break me down some boxes. But it would seem that someone had already beat me to the task because I stepped outside to find that all my boxes had been carefully broken down and placed neatly inside 7 heavy duty trash bags, lined up beside my recycling bin.

There is only one culprit for such a sweet act,and that's J----. Sure enough, when I came home from work that afternoon, J---- was sweeping broken glass out of an area where some children were playing and I asked him if he had done me the nice favor. He smiled shyly and nodded in the affirmative.

J---- is a true Southern gentleman, a transplant from South Carolina long ago, who now lives next door with Mr. and Mrs. G****. Mr. G**** acts as official community leader and unofficial godparent to half the kids on the block. And by the block, I mean street. You see, I live on a street in Northeast Washington that spans the distance of one city block. It's one of those wee little places tucked up among the letters, numbers, and states that seem to have been placed on the cityscape almost as an afterthought. And what better thing to do with a forgotten block than to throw a block party, like this?

The block party, of course, was hosted by Mr. G****. I met the G****es when I moved in. Mr. G**** introduced himself straight away and offered me a piece of the fried catfish he was grilling up for the friendly gaggle of white haired fellas who flock to his front porch (more on that later) every day for food and friendship. It's like a scene out of barbershop, and just as charming, except for the one minute detail that the front porch is actually a rather unsightly makeshift tent rigged up in on the front lawn(and adjacent to my front door), dragging down property values even as he personifies the characteristics of a perfect neighbor. I've learned, however, to enjoy the tent. Come to think of it, the tent in the front yard could be Mr. G****'s otherwise gentlemanly way of sticking his middle finger up in the face of gentrification. But that doesn't seem to fit, since he treats the lot of us professionals who have moved onto the block to as much of his charm as anyone else and, if anything, seems to have a bemused affection for us white fools. During his July 4th party, he said to his son in law: "How about getting my picture with the white kids."

(Like this):

So maybe it's not a protest after all, but is rather that he simply likes his tent and sees no reason to tear it down. After all, he has pictures hanging up inside of it. And for the July 4th block party, he actually put up an extension to the tent, (complete with a beach towel / American flag). I even helped put up the flag. See how helpful I look in this picture? Notice I'm using one whole hand to help, while the other clutches a beer.

I suppose my attempts to stabilize Mr. G***'s beach towel / American flag weren't really that "helpful" after all. At least not helpful in quite the same way as breaking down your new neighbor's boxes and carefully setting them out for garbage collection tends to be helpful.

So that's what's up with the pie; I spied fresh blueberries at Eastern Market and decided to make the neighbors a thank you pie. Of course, I decided to use honey and a dash of vanilla in the homemade whipped topping and I had to taste a sliver of the pie and the toping together; you know, to make sure it tasted okay.

(It did.)

It tasted so tasty and scrumptious that I ate 3 pieces of that bitch. I mean, after all, the edges were just the slightest bit crooked. It simply would not do for me to present nice people with such an affront. So now I have to close this blog and bake me another pie. Because fortunately for me, (and for the G****s and J****) I bought enough blueberries for two pies and doubled the dough when I made the first crust.

Happy baking, babies!

P.S. The block party, incidentally, was a resounding success. It got loud and rowdy towards the end of the evening, prompting the law to show up. But rather than concern themselves with the blatant open container violations or the dubiously legal fireworks display, the officers made straight for the buffet table. It turns out Mr. G**** had invited the officers, who are members of his extended family, to the feast.

I have to say, I really love this neighborhood. A garish white tent next to your property is no small price to pay for a real sense of community here in otherwise stuffy DC.

Catching Up

2006-07-09T18:23:00.000-04:00

First of all, this blogging thing is making me famous as some sort of nerd. Last night, three separate people came up to me asking me if I were red storm. My fame is really growing. I'm like an online personality. Well, to be fair, the first person just asked me if I was friends with Lonnie Bruner, so technically, in this instance i am famous only by extension. The other two, however, asked me if I write Precious Overcaffeination. What I'm saying is, people know me. They know me for my nerdiness. First the Swedes, Russians, and haters, and now people are coming up to me in bars.

Finally. I HAVE ARRIVED!

This was at the opening of my friend's new bar, the Red and the Black last night, which rocked, by the way. You should go there sometime. 12th and H Street. And you should hit Palace of Wonders next door too. Just don't stare at the decor too long or you'll get dyspepsia.

Anyway. I've got such a blog deficit it's hard to catch up. So I'll start with last weekend. My brother Brian came in, ostensibly to help me move, but since I'd already moved, this left plenty of time for day drinking that involved some world cup action and pub games. While I put up a strong effort, my brother ultimately killed me at pool and then at darts, as depicted here. See how I put up a strong effort in this picture?

Unfortunately, my brother snuck me with a dart to the back of the neck, thereby preventing me from scoring my final bullseye.

After that we went out to my friend's restaurant, and drank champagne all night, to celebrate. I was celebrating my move. My brother was celebrating the fact that he did not actually have to help me. See us celebrating?

See how we continue to celebrate?

I celebrated so hard my housemate, the Czech Czich, became alarmed:

Brian celebrated a little bit too hard, actually.

He still rallied enough to go to home depot and prevent me from having a stroke while trying to use the deviously crafted self-checkout machine. Who invented that anyway? Does this sound familiar to anyone? "Unexpected item in bagging area. Please remove item in bagging area. Please place item in bagging area. Unexpected item in bagging area. Please remove item from bagging area. Please wait for assistance."

They might as well program this thing to say "Unsuspecting person trying to use this checkout machine. Please go kill yourself."

So anyway, that was last weekend. It was a good one despite the crazy move.

Stay tuned for Mr. G****'s July 4th Tent City Spectacular and Rehoboth Beach Memories (or lack thereof).

Putin Kisses Boy on Stomach in Public Act of Creepiness

2006-06-29T23:00:00.000-04:00

I guess if you can't disrobe and kiss young boys on the stomach, what's the point of being President?

Okay, sorry, sorry. Forget the jokes. I'm asking seriously: What do you think was going through the brain of Russian President Vladimir Putin to cause him to kiss a little boy on his abdomen?

Do you find this creepy? Because I find it creepy. In fact, I'm pretty sure everyone finds it creepy. But maybe Russians do not agree. Can someone elucidate? Is this something that happens frequently in Russia? I mean, I know Russians one-up the European two-cheeker kiss-kiss with the Russian trifecta, but still.

My dear Russian readers, (a girl can dream, can't she?) I don't mean to offend. In fact, I sympathize. I mean, it must be obvious that we here in the States have grown accustomed to our fearless leader putting body parts where they don't belong. Of course, our President -- at least, ahem, our current one -- usually confines the misplaced body parts to inserting his own foot into his own mouth.

Your leader, on the other hand, seemed to lose his lips, only to find them again on the stomach of a tow-headed, little boy. Gosh, how embar---

Wait a minute. Let's face it. This is still waaaaay less embarrassing than Bush.

So there's that.

But there's still this:

Grody! Somebody get that boy some therapy, STAT.

To Please the Swedes

2006-06-29T10:51:00.000-04:00

Okay, so for some reason I'm big in Sweden. I keep getting mail from my Swedish readership requesting updated posts. (Thank you! Thank you for reading my little blog!)

When I explained the reason for the blog hiatus is that I'm moving, my correspondent requested further that I "just write a little something, then." Wow. First of all I'm flabbergasted that I have a readership at all and secondly, I'm flattered to have requests. I feel that me and my little blog are ready for the big time at any moment! But anyway.

Mark Twain once said "I didn't have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one instead." If you understand this, and you've noted the length of my blogs, then you'll understand why writing just a little bit is impossible for me.

So I can't really write a little bit. I mean, look, even this "short" note to explain why I can't write just a little bit is overly verbose and, well, kind of long-winded. That's why instead of writing more, I'll leave you with this:

I stink! No new posts!

2006-06-28T15:24:00.000-04:00

I was on vacation with my family and now I'm moving. The vacation and nightmare move should prove good blog fodder upon my return. Especially considering I'm moving this Saturday and have exactly 3 boxes packed so far. Can someone please come over and pack up my place for me? Thanks...

My Grandma versus Pitchfork Media versus My I-Pod

2006-06-14T13:38:00.000-04:00

Allow me to introduce you to my Grandma.

My Grandma has several aliases, which are useful in describing her character. These include but are not limited to: Gram, Grams, The Grams, Snowbird, and Gramsterdam. As you may have inferred from her airbrushed license plate, she also goes by "Rea." This is short for Mary, leading some of her partners in crime to dub her also "Mother Inferior."

In short (and she is wee indeed) Gramsterdam is a 4'10 octogenarian sick unit with a sense of humor like none other and a stockpile of dirty jokes that rivals the resources of the entire internet. She is at the same time the sweetest and most devious creature on the planet.

Just look at the sweetness depicted here:

So prosh, huh? You're probably trying to hug your computer. In fact, I thought about submitting this picture to Cute Overload but I don't think they take Grandmas.

But she also has a sharp tongue and an acerbic wit that she will use without mercy if the situation merits.

Take for example the time my six year old self knocked over the goldfish bowl and put poor Floppy into my mouth, only to have him spanked back out of me in an episode that left my rear end red and stinging for a fortnight. I was outraged, but a life was at stake. A little, orange fishy life. I'm happy to report that floppy was extracted, safe and sound, from my Jaws of Death, though his home was in ruins. After I suffered the indignity of having a goldfish spanked out of my mouth, my Gram went on to inform me that Floppy would now die, because I didn't listen and knocked over his home.

My little six year old lip started to tremble. My little six year old eyeballs started to water. And then my 60-something year old Gram started to feel guilty. So to make up for making me cry, Grams bought me a bracelet while we were shopping for Floppy's new digs. Floppy was saved, Gram's guilt was assuaged, and I learned a valuable lesson early on. You can undo harm by purchasing shiny objects for your victim.

(I'll save the rest of these stories for my therapist so we can move on with this post already...)

As you'd guess from her snowbird moniker, Gramsterdam winters in sunny Florida, just east of Orlando. She lives there half time, spending summers in my own dear hometown of Pittsburgh. As you can imagine, because of both her scintillating wit and because people are afraid to let her out of their eyesight, she has loads of friends in both zip codes. Right now, Florida is winning, as shown here during her recent 82nd birthday celebration:

But her Pittsburgh crew, while smaller, is equally sassy, as shown here at the Ascension Church friday fish fry a few lents back:

The act of snowbirding requires Gram to uproot herself twice a year and consequently requires me to load Gramsterdam and her 9000 bits of miscellany (Gram's two occupations: crossword doing and trinketry) into her Lincoln and to drive the 17 hours up or down through the states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. This trip has become increasingly dangerous, due to the fact that sometimes I look over to find my Gram slumped over the passenger seatbelt, snoring merrily (and reassuringly) in the most alarming position I've ever seen.

Clearly, the trip is rough on her. See her sleep as I chug coffee just to stay awake:

(Wow, that's a bad photo, isn't it? I really need to stop performing my own haircuts).

In addition to drinking 100 cups of coffee to stay awake, I also frequently drink of the musical goodness that lives in my ipod. In order to compete with Gram's snoring, I sometimes have to turn the ipod to ear-shattering levels, which occasionally has the side-effect of rousing Gram from her typical "I wasn't sleeping I was just resting my eyes," in-car state of being.

Perhaps because my filthy coffee addiction led to a pitstop that ultimately led to us being rear-ended as our journey commenced, Gram stayed more alert than usual during our most recent sojourn. In her wakeful state, Grams graced me with a music review that was as acerbic as it was dangerous. Dangerous, I say, because once the music-review commenced, I spent the balance of the trip driving with my knees while transcribing her comments into the memo section of my blackberry.

It wasn't until later that it hit me: While I don't agree with her hate-all assessments, it's only a matter of time before Pitchfork Media gets wind of my Gram and starts paying her handsomely. Making fun of pitchfork writers grasps the proverbial low-hanging fruit, but still, I think you'll agree that my Gram is much pithier. And at least her puns are intentional. Of course, my Gram's musical expertise is questionable, since I'm pretty sure the last CD she purchased was Conway Twitty, but she does have some rock experience, having endured an endless barrage of bands staying at her former Crafton Heights residence. As proof, I offer you a picture of Gramsterdam with some actual rockers, who, as it happens, have recently been maligned by pitchfork.

Coincidence? I think not.

Here's the review in the order my ipod decided to play them that fateful morning:

1. Mogwai - Auto Rock: "What IS this? It sounds like they are trying to beat one another up with sound."
2. South - Safety in Numbers: "Not too bad I guess. But all these friends of yours in bands. Don't they ever do something you'd recognize? Nobody does songs that are recognizable anymore. They all just want to do their own hits and it's not even catchy! But these boys sound nice. Nice voices. Did you say they were French?"
3. The Cure - Lullaby: "Now see, what's so interesting about that? Whaaa Whaaa Whaaa. I'm so sad. I'm sad because I'm bored doing the same thing all the time."
4. Men at Work - Who Can it Be Now: Okay, the best part about this whole music review is that she thought this was my ex boyfriend's band and refused to comment. Bha haha ha ha
5. Unrest - Suki: "Too much goofy. They don't impress me with that bass. Bang Bang Bang! Does anybody dance to these songs?"
6. Flaming Lips - Evil will Prevail: This was too much for my Catholic grandmother to endure and it had to be turned off immediately.
7. Drive like Jehu - Sinews: "Borrring. Oh! oh that's terrible. That's terribly discordant. Is this serious or just a joke? Tsk, tsk. They don't even have to practice to play like this, do they even tune their instruments? It sounds like a bunch of apes got into the band's equipment closet. Just think, their parents probably paid good money for guitar lessons and they ended up like this!!!"
8. The Who - Legal Matter: I don't understand this. You couldn't jitterbug to this, that's for sure!
9. T Rex - Life's a Gas: This song gives me gas and I can't even understand the words.
10. Marvin Gaye - Li'l Darlin': He's okay but his backup singers, (gives thumbs down sign).
11. The Bats - Made up in Blue: Gram refused to comment on grounds that she thought I was trying to trick her into criticizing my old band. Hey, at least she didn't think we were Men at Work!
12. Monopoli - Everybody Anyway: Gram straight fell asleep to you. Sorry Chaim and Alfonso, you're not big with the 80 year old set...
13. Clap Youe Hands Say Yeah - Upon this Tidal Wave of You. Okay, this is the best one. Halfway through the song, my Gram perks up from her nap to exclaim, inexplicably, "Donkey, donkey, donkey!" Then she starts mocking his voice, which i can't easily transcribe. Then she asks me "Is the lead singer Chinese or something? Chang chong, chang. Gah, that's horrible." Then, as a loud sound marks the end of the song, "Whew. Thankfully somebody shot him."

Gram, you really aren't being very nice!!!

14. VU - Sweet Jane (at the end of the live set, upon hearing the audience applaud): "those fools! clapping for that?"
15. Magnetic Fields - Fido, your leash is too long: "What, a horse walking around is music now? Fido, this song is too long!" Then Gram gets on a roll. After hearing the lyric: "I don't know where I went wrong" gram answers, helpfully, in rhyme: "You started this song."
16. Love - Old Man: This garnered the best review of all the music, where my Gram says, "the music doesn't overpower. For once. I like this one." Wait, what?
17. Hot Snakes - who died: Ok, so apparently the Drive Like Jehu crowd did no better with my Gram as their latest reincarnation. Her response was "Terrible!" Then she offered the blanket condemnation "I haven't liked any of them so far" and slept through the next 5 songs. until
18. Magnetic Fields - The One You Really Love: "Hm. Banjo. But....no."
19. Night Ranger - Sister Christian (I've decided to be honest with what's on my i-pod here). Gram sez: "What in the heck kind of song is this?"
20. Mission to Burma - Max Ernst: This song merely provoked laughter.
21. Big Star - When my Baby's Beside me: "When my Baby Baby Baby's beside me I go crazy because I'm a big jerk who can't sing!"
22. Magnetic Fields - Nothing matters when we're dancing (my ipod loves the Magnetic Fields, and finally, so does my Grandma). "Okay I like this one. this one is nice. You can hear them over the music and you might be able to dance to it. You can understand the words. Very romantic." (I thought it best not to tell her Stephin Merritt was definitely talking about dancing with a dude).
23. X - Straight "Can we skip this one? It's hurting my hair." (her hair?????!!!!)
24. Stereolab - entrez vous - "no thanks, frenchie french fry"
25. My bloody valentine - magic nights. "borrrring." (Frankly, Gram, it may make me unpopular with my indie set of friends, but I wholeheartedly agree. There, I've said it, I FIND MY BLOODY VALENTINE TO BE THE MOST BORING BAND ON THE PLANET!) Wow. that felt liberating.
26. The New Year - Plan B. "They should have stuck with Plan A."
27. The Fall - oh brother. "Oh brother."

Okay Gram, you're getting too obvious here...so while the list and the review went on for 14 more hours, this post shall not.

Martizzle is Banned from the Hizzle

2006-06-12T14:56:00.000-04:00

Most of you have heard me reference my roommate M, known in some circles as the Czech Czich, in previous posts. For reasons I'm sure you can all understand, M is now banned from the house. Are you reading, M? I mean, thank you for all your helpful calls throughout this afternoon's game to give me a Reality Czech and to proclaim a Czechmate at the game's end. But now you might want to Czech out Czraig's list, if you know what I mean.

He Is Not My Monkey and So What?

2006-06-12T10:30:00.000-04:00

My blog has taken on a corporate bent lately that I am loathe to acknowledge. But sometimes the corporate life lends itself to a singular hilarity that begs for a transcript. Take, for instance, this piece of pure unintended comedy I received the other day in response to public statements I made about legislation pending Congressional action. I've removed all parts that might compromise the author's privacy, but otherwise transcribed excerpts from the letter faithfully.

This guy definitely gets the pulitzer prize for hating, but I have to say he earns my grudging respect for his innovative turns of phrase. I mean, why settle for calling me "ineffective," "inexperienced," or even "incompetent" when he can point out that I run from traffic signals? I have to admit that I probably would have merly skimmed a less colorful missive but read his letter several times over. All of this goes to show that bad grammer, like a well placed typo, can sometimes be elevated to an art-form. Especially when you've attended the Sex Pistols' school of letter-writing.

-------------------------

Ms. Red Storm,
June 7, 2006

I have read the bio for you on this website and find it very interesting, also you have my respected as using to care about hard-working union employees when you were at the Clinton white House and as a Senate staff. However, I cannot believe how far the apple has fallen from the tree because I do not see those values now. I look at your credentials and bio and see that you are a politician who has worked for politicians all your life but I do NOT see that you do my job or have ever so HOW WOULD YOU KNOW? anything about these issues like your letter suggests?!?

You are a pencil pusher with no ideas and I cannot understand why you feel so strongly about opposing HR ----. You are a pencil pusher that can no longer lead by example! This should not be decided by you, some executive who would run scared from a stop sign.

I hope that you give this some consideration and remember that when things continue to get worst that YOU had a hand in it.

Best wishes to you and the parties that you represent,

John Q. Hater

Put Me Out to Pasture (on the Georgetown Waterfront)

2006-06-08T14:15:00.000-04:00

I've made mention, in previous posts, of the fact that a friend of mine is managing a new restaurant called Agraria on the Washington Harbour. I've visited the restaurant a number of times over the past week and the place is an absolute knockout.

My friend is the restaurant manager and sommelier, invited me to an exclusive, "friends only" bar preview last week. Unable to decide between the classic and inventive drink menus, I split the difference and ordered myself one of each - and by one of each I mean one of each and every drink on the menu (almost, anyway). Fortunately for everyone involved, I did not sample each of the countless whiskeys available but instead contented myself with fondling a 30 year old. (Macallen that is).

One of Agraria's superb bartenders started me off with best proper martini I've had in at least a year. I next turned to the tasty prickly-pear infused margarita, followed by a sidecar and then the evening began to dissolve when I imbibed my way through 3 or 4 champagne cocktails in such rapid succession that I can only vaguely recall their contents, though I'm pretty sure these included pureed strawberries getting involved with a basil leaf. Despite the, er, memory lapses, I can fairly sum up the bar menu like this: The classic drinks were classic and delicious. The inventive drinks were tasty and inventive. In fact I'm pretty sure the cocktails at Agraria are secretly made by angels.

Fallen angels, that is. Because the Agrarian bachannalia was directly responsible for the post-Agrarian debauchery depicted in my previous post and some other assored misadventures, which are perhaps best left unsaid, if not undone.

The restaurant itself is owned by farmers and, once Agraria gets its menu sorted, they plan to offer a variety of organic offerings from smaller, family-run farms. I was hoping to see some real, live farmers at last night's grand opening but, sadly, if there were any farmers in attendance, they'd traded their pitchforks and overalls for Brooks Brothers finery and were indistinguishable from the architects, lawyers, journalists and political types enjoying the scene.

And an enjoyable scene it was. I really like this place. The decor is stunning, the staff are knowledgeable, attractive, and hip, and the drinks are strong and delicious. What more can you ask? Maybe a few pictures...

Elysian:

Utopian:

Anticipatory:

Intemperately:

Lobbying Scandals

2006-06-03T16:24:00.000-04:00

As I have mentioned before, I am a lobbyist. Considering all the scandals about legislators and lobbyists currently bogarting coverage in our nightly news, I thought maybe I should set the record straight once and for all. You see, my friends and family have been calling me daily to ask some predictable variation on the following questions:

"So are you affected by all this Abramoff business?"
"You're not going to wind up in jail, are you?"
"Do you do stuff like that? I mean, do you buy them furniture and hookers and stuff?"

So here is your answer: HELL YES.

Actually, quite the opposite is true. I am an effective lobbyist, but not because I make good arguments (I do, but as you know Congress isn't interested in the facts). I don't buy lawmakers furniture, hookers, firetrucks, or kitchen appliances. I don't pass them foil-wrapped money-cakes. I don't take them on gambling junkets under the guise of "fact-finding" missions in Monte Carlo. My friends, I am an effective lobbyist for one reason, and that reason is my mad lobbying skillz. I thought I'd outline just a few of my innovative techniques here for your edification and reading pleasure.

Reverse Lobbying

The first creative lobbying technique I employ is a little gem I like to call "reverse lobbying." A friend of mine actually coined the phrase. This friend was formerly Chief of Staff to the Federal Agency That Makes Rules Affecting My Industry (FATMRAMI) but has recently left his post in an entreprenuerial venture that involves highly caffeinated vodka. Before he left, he bought me many dinners and picked up my bar tab on more than one occasion. As he defines it, "Reverse lobbying" occurs when I go out to dinner with a hill staffer or Member of Congress and THEY PAY. Unbelievably, this actually happens sometimes. Reverse Lobbying is especially useful when dealing with cabinet officials, who are expressly forbidden from accepting even the cheapest meal from lobbyists.

Picture one such reverse lobbying scenario that happened several years ago at a conference in Miami. We were all at some club called Mint about 2 hours before I had to wake up and make a presentation about "industry trends" and I had enough drinks to make me think jumping jacks on the dance floor with some Italian dude in a white leisure suit was a good idea and that stealing said government official's wallet and impersonating him in order to direct traffic and harass taxicabs was an even better idea. (Side note: Is it generally considered a "bad idea" to admit to felony offenses on a blog? If so, I must remind all my viewers, especially those in federal law enforcement, that I'm only KIDDING. Do you believe me?)

Anyway, at the end of the evening in question, we all got our tabs. Mine was noticably lighter than expected. I noticed a grim look on the government official's face when he got his bar tab, but I thought nothing of it at the time. Turns out my drinks ended up on his tab.

Oops.

These days, reverse lobbying is really losing its efficacy (that is to say, ever since this particular government official migrated to the private sector) so I've had to supplement reverse lobbying with other creative methods. Unfortunately I am not going to get a realistic lobbying budget any time soon, so I've simply learned to do more with less. As another step in my continuing journey for legislative excellence on a shoe-string budget, consider:

Bait and Switch Menus

The Bait and Switch Menu technique involves taking a staffer out to an extremely expensive and classy restaurant but insist that they order from the lounge menu.

Staffer: Wow, Citronelle! How nice of you.
Me: It's so nice out! Let's sit outside and order from the lounge menu!
Staffer: Well, if you want to...but it's 96 degrees and raining.
Me: Shut your cakehole and enjoy this nice bar food!
Me: Can I have the rest of your fries?

I Wanna live like Common People

See, the thing is, the bait and switch only works a few times before staffers stop having dinner with you. So you have to mix it up sometimes. Because my industry is a straight-laced, old-boy dominated industry, staffers who deal with my issues do not often encounter a lobbyist who is wearing Chuck Taylors with her suit. Rather than hide my weirdness behind serious attire and fine dining, I embrace and even trade on my reputation as an eccentric.

Doing so allows me to skip the expensive restaurant altogether in favor of taking the staffer to a dive bar, where I insist that they drink Shlitz all night. (PBR is another great choice, where available). The Velvet Lounge is one such great location because it's actually a second home to me and the staff is like family. If the staffer gets hungry, I can always run across the street to the soul food joint and bring them back some collared greens. Yum, yum, slumming is FUN!

Me: Hey, cupcake, I'm headed to the bar. What are you having?
Staffer: Um, a heineken?
Me: A heineken? A HEINEKEN?!?! F*ck that sh*t. PABST BLUE RIBBON!!!

Wrasslin for Earmarks

A third technique is both cost-efficient AND ethical, because it takes the quid pro quo out of "dinner deals" and puts it right back where it should be: "arm wrestling contests." This technique can be used on lawmakers, staffers, and even other lobbyists! In fact, it levels the playing field quite nicely. For instance, let's say I'm competing for earmarks with a lobbyist from a much larger corporation with a much larger PAC than my own (Note: My PAC is so small we don't have one). Ergo, why would i try to out-fundraise Goliath when I can arm-wrestle him instead? As you can see by my pictures, with arm wrestling you can cheat and call in reinforcements in order to secure victory while still remaining within the ethics rules. Pretty sweet, huh?

Me: So if I win, I'd get $900 million in the Agriculture bill for taxicab zoning changes, right?
Staffer: And if I win, you will water my boss' plants while he is working in the district. Or if he goes on an extended trip. Like, say for instance, jail.

Beat the Gift Ban on the Cheap!

With today's lobbying reform bills moving through Congress, cost-saving methods can also be important way to avoid getting south of pesky ethics rules such as the "gift-ban." The solution: all your Congressional gifts should be hand made. Think back to when you used to make your mom presents and how much more she appreciated that hand-crafted Valentine than its storebought counterpart! While this generally does not translate to adulthood (my old boyfriend tried this technique on his Mom one Christmas when he found himself financially strapped, but I'm pretty sure she did not hang his painting on the refrigerator...), it DOES work on hill staff.

Me: Hi Jane! Thanks for agreeing to meet with me this morning. I brought you a present! It's a bracelet made from beads that came from a necklace my sister left at my house while she was visiting, which I broke. I fashioned the salvaged beads into a bracelet, just for you. Do you like it?
Staffer: Do I have to wear it?

In conclusion, dear readers, I want to remind you that not all lobbyists are scandalous. Well, at least, not scandalous in the traditional sense...

Sorry about the Blog Hiatus

2006-05-23T18:09:00.000-04:00

As depicted below, please note that I'm away on a business trip and am extremely busy doing important lobbyist things. Never fear, I'll be back this weekend with more posty posts.

wine tastings and existentialist bandmates

2006-05-12T13:34:00.000-04:00

Last night I joined my bandmates Lonnie Bruner and Isaac Washington and their significant others at the residence of Bruner and wife. Bruner had some new gin to check out, Isaac Washington brought over 5 wines from his new restaurant to taste, and his honey, Crystal, brought over a selection of the finest cheeses. Our banter was like something out of the party scenes in Metropolitan. We indulged in the old college throwback discussions of discrediting science versus discrediting god, the scientific method as art form, the characteristics of a fine distilled spirit, existentialist and post-modernist thought, the suburbs, blogs as dangerous weapons, and whether or not a cocktail should be supersized. (Answer: don't supersize me!)

Do any other bands talk about this stuff? Seriously. We're a bunch of pseudo-intellectual fools up in here. But everybody was so terribly urbane!

Nick Lachey vs. The Pogues vs. My Roommates (Past and Present) vs. Falco

2006-05-10T19:21:00.000-04:00

If you have an i-pod, then you know that when you update, (unless you're some clever genius who has learned to circumvent the apple music store's aggressive automatic sales pitch) you're exposed to a barrage of new release advertisements on the i-tunes screen below your music library. Right-o. So last Tuesday, I noticed that one of these such adverts was for a sneak-preview of the new Nick Lachey single, "What's left of me."

We're all friends here, so there's no need to lie to you. I downloaded this like it was my business.

What can I say? I was curious. You see, I had some minor surgery earlier this year and was laid up for a whole week. It's not my fault that well-intentioned friends took to dropping off copies of US Weekly and Page 6 during my recovery. (I disparaged you to your faces for giving me such trash and promptly read it cover to cover as soon as you left. Bhahahahaha).

So anyway, I know all about Nick. His love. His loss. The estrangement. The strippers. The brave face and the false front. The tomfoolery. The cuckholdery!!! Johnny Knoxville. Bam Marghera for crap's sake! (And by crap, I mean crap. These dudes have made their fortunes off sticking objects up their bung). How can one NOT have a modicum of sympathy?

By the time I was recovered from my surgery, (roughly five whole days later), I'd developed an unholy bloodthirst for gossip magazines. I fed my filthy habit with ease at the GentrifiSafeway checkout aisles. (You'd think the tabloids would wise-up and start charging by the minute at checkout counters).

What I'm saying is, it's really not possible to go about one's daily business without encountering Nick's cheerful hangdog visage and without reading some sad-sack story about his love and his tragic loss. And that was why, when I later encountered his song winking at me on i-tunes, like the lone stoplight blinking tragically in a Southern, baptist town, I said "Sweet merciful crap, yes!"

It wasn't enough to torture myself with it once. I listened to it at least four times. It was like looking at a car crash. You know, traffic is backed up so you're already thinking, don't be that guy, don't rubber-neck - and then you also think, don't look, don't look, because there's no way anyone survived that mangled bit of car - and you feel horrid and say a quick prayer that no one was hurt and then you look again just in case there's a chance you'll see a leg lying on the side of the road or something.

Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I played it twice for myself and then I've played it for 2 or 3 of my friends. My most recent victim was my roommate, the Czech Czich. I caught her humming it a few hours later and I had to put on the Pogues to knock it out of her for goodness sakes.

- sidenote - the Pogues cannot be stopped once they are in your head. Just think about the songs "Sunny Side of the Street" or "Sick Bed of Chuchulain" in your head and you're already effed. - end sidenote -

Anyway, all I can say is that I feel bad for that guy although I suppose I shouldn't, because if you believe what I read in US Weekly, he's got no shortage of little Hollywood hoes hoping to dry his tears and he has half of Jessica's cash cache, to boot, given their lack of a pre-nup. So I'm curious about his fate. And I guess somewhere deep down I was hoping that he'd produce something with some merit.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard i hold the song upside down and shake it by its ankles, nothing meritorious falls out of its underpants. But what fell out of my underpants (OK, my wallet) was a cool $1.09 - cuz that's what it costs to download the song off of i-tunes. I'm not sure how much of that goes to Nick, but I was just thinking, for every sucker like me there must be hundreds more willing to pay one dollar and a fistfull of pennies to hear Nick's latest solo work. So perhaps Jessica will be the one taking HIM to the cleaners when it comes time to divvy up the marriage spoils?

Speaking of Nick, and roommates.

My poor old roommate bears such an uncanny resemblance to the former boybandit that I took to calling the roommate 98 degrees. In fact sometimes I would leave him little notes around the house (such as this instance, where I suggested that he leave my beer supply intact) making exactly this reference. I mean no harm. This person is my good friend and is a great musician and if he sees this he's probably going to kill me twice (the first killing would be for borrowing his 4-track for almost a year now). But for your enjoyment, my 6 li'l readers, I will take that risk.

Here's a pic of Nick Lachey.

Here's a pic of a note I left my former roommate.

And here's my former roommate, who if you are reading this I promise I will be doing a wickedly butt-kissing blog the next time you have a show on how you're a fantastic singer-songwriter and also how nobody does Dylan like you do Dylan. (Not even Dylan).

-------

UPDATE: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! My roommate (present not past) just exacted a malicious revenge upon me by blasting "Amadeus" followed by a montage of catchy romance songs in the German Language. Oh my god Baltimora! Tarzan Boy. She is relentless.

I'm turning to the Pogues. I'm turning to the pogues! Shane don't let me down!!!

UPDATE 2: I just hit her with Europe: The Final Countdown.

It's on. I have to go now.

Window Dancing

2006-05-08T13:02:00.000-04:00

This weekend I had custody of the Better Half here in Washington. Sadly, our practice space was unavailable so we did no actual practicing, unless you count a late-morning kumbayah session in my kitchen where I tried to force Jenny and Kat to sing along with my substandard guitar and morning-voiced accompaniment to some old stand-bys.

On Friday we went out to a Mexican restaurant, to celebrate cinco de Mayo. Or should we say, given the late hour, Seis de Mayo? After being roofied by the wait-staff, Jenny spaceship was fairly tired out, but we still made it to the Velvet Lounge to see my friends' - Tom and Fernando - band play.

The highlight of the weekend was probably Saturday, when the weather grew too suddenly cold for the plans we'd already made and we hosted an impromptu wine tasting at my house, courtesy of Isaac Washington.

We were tasked with tasting 6 different varietals from the same vintner. Perhaps because we chose not to expectorate, the verdict was this:

Best Pedal Review, Ever

2006-04-26T18:15:00.000-04:00

Dear Paradyme420 from East Providence,

I encountered the following review while researching distortion pedals on Musicican's Friend:

"For the right genres, this box rocks!

Features: 9
Quality: 10
Value: 10
Overall: 9

paradyme420 from East Providence, RI
Experience: I own it
Background: active musician
Style of Music: alternative, grunge, post punk

"Mar 8, 2006 - Ok metal players, I officially don't understand you. Why would you buy a fuzz pedal??? That makes no sense. If you want to "shred" stick with BOSS and DOD Pedals and things that say like death crunch or whatever as the description. As for me, this pedal gives a very thick fuzz, perfect for Hendrix style freakouts, post punk, alternative, etc., it is perfect. If you want to "shred" my advice is (because I see horrible reviews for fender instruments as well) stick with guitars with humbuckers and pedals that have the word death on them, because it's sad to see good products get bad reviews because some knucklehead Dhimmu Borigir fan buys the wrong gear in their pursuit to unlock the gates of hell or whatever it is you do for fun."

And so, Paradyme420 from Providence, I was wondering...

Could you please come to my house and maybe be my best friend so that we could just sit around and write reviews about everything that we encounter? And by "we," I mean, "you" could write the reviews? You can start by reviewing all the musical equipment in the house but why stop at that? I have plenty of cereal boxes, sofas, and lamp shades, and houseplants that could benefit from such descriptive hilarity.

This request, of course, is based on your review of the Electro-Harmonix pedal I am thinking of buying, pictured above.

Based on your review, and because I wouldn't count myself a fan of Dimmu Borgir, I am totally sold on the Big Muff pedal. For real.

Which of these two bands do you want to punch in the face harder?

2006-04-25T17:25:00.001-04:00

This band:

or this band:

?

My Opinions on Indie Rock (or any music for that matter) Are Invalid. Here's Why:

2006-04-25T17:25:00.000-04:00

Is Indie Rock "Dead?" Is Death Cab for Cutie "Good?"

2006-04-13T00:20:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine recently lamented the state of music today, falling prey to the old adage that it is impossible to create anything new since anything one can think of has been done already.

I'm never sure what to say when I fall into this conversational trap. I mean, true enough, anything I usually think up has certainly already been done. It's probably also fair to say that, in terms of great breadth, most styles and genres that will ever exist have come into existance long before our time. But what's so wrong with achieving newness by changing the details? Tinkering around the edges of brilliance?

Considering music can either be stunningly complex or staggeringly simple and still bless the ears, it seems to me that by indulging in the intricacies, one really might be able to innovate after all. Mind, I'm not talking about plagiarism, or blatant rip-off artists like Franz Ferdinand (let the hazing begin). I simply mean that if a chord progression occurs to me, chances are it already occurred to some more talented mortal long before I decided to write a song around it. But does that mean hands off? Or that if I happen to hear the same string of notes that someone heard before, I have to bust them up even if the influence is subconscious or even unknown? Sure, there are only so many chords and even progressions. But there are infinite songs.

We can't ever really say with any authority that no new ideas remain, because if we could predict ideas, then what's the point? I know if I could predict what might someday change everything, I wouldn't be writing a blog about it. (I'd be writing songs around it). Until somebody stumbles across the next idea or innovation, what's wrong with simply writing new songs that rock?

My discussion with Bruner was chased close on its heels by another careworn discussion about the state of the music industry in general (note that Bruner and I are bandmates, and this constitutes fun for us when we're not busy discussing Nixon's secret war in Cambodia). In any case, Lonnie asked me the dreaded endless discussion question:

Do you think Indie Rock will ever die?

My reply of course, was that according to Robert Pollard indie rock died on April 24, 2005, at the Bowery Ballroom. I'm not sure I'm inclined to agree with Bruner, who thinks it is locked in eternal stasis, or with Pollard, (who you probably know once claimed he could write "five songs on the shitter, and three of them would be good"). Somewhere in between those two extremes, a lot of indie rock bands are still churning out incredible music. Fair enough, nobody's written "I am a Scientist," lately, but I could name a dozen songs that give Pollard's masterpiece a run for its money.

With respect to the whole innovation and indie rock is dead commentary, my estimation is that originality remains while perception of that reality has changed dramatically. Listeners can no longer consume music in a vacuum. Whether or not a given band was influenced by a another given band, the listener nonetheless draws his own parallels. These comparisons aren't even always based on music solely - but rather an assortment of the listener's own life experiences and associative contexts.

I remember whipping myself into a high-school frenzy of delicious melancholy over an unrequited crush. I would lie awake at night in a haze of happy despondency that could only have been perpetuated by The Cure's disintegration album played on repeat night after night after night. If, as a result, I've always associated the Cure with melancholy and if, someday another song gets associated with a later sense of melancholy, does the music recall the Cure or does the melancholy recall the earlier experience - including the music that fueled the flames? It's hard to say.

More importantly, today's concept of originality is drastically different than the previous generation's. The sheer volume of music and the unparalleled access to music that listeners enjoy today means that more and more of the good ideas have been heard by more and more of the unwashed masses. It doesn't take as much effort to criticize and compare anymore, so today everyone's a critic, and everyone draws comparisons. My college band got away with ripping off the then-extremely underground band Love. Today, thanks to i-pod deejay nights and internet programs designed to lead listeners from an artist to their supposed influences in the hope of shaking loose a few more nickels from listeners wanting to be "in the musical know," Forever Changes is about as underground as Pet Sounds. Since we have more to consume, and we enjoy greater facility of consumption than ever before, we set higher standards for originality.

The natural reaction to this seems to be to compartmentalize music into genres and to marginalize bands we get tired of by claiming one genre is more "original" than another. Those who subscribe to this reasoning usually conclude that "Indie" was once a genre filled with innovative music, but as it has subsequently crawled out of the underground and onto Starbucks compilations and the OC, it's hackneyed and unoriginal by default. But that's silly. Most of us grew up getting our music from the radio, and we all know it does't get much more "commercial" than that. Wanting to deliver one's music to large audiences is natural.

Okay. So most singer-songwriters these days emulate some combination of Jeff Buckley, Dylan, or Nick Drake and most bands seem to want to sound like Joy Division. (I know I do and I'm not even a man!). But in making this generalization, critics dismiss almost out of hand the enormous number of bands out there writing good music and playing good shows. And I don't think the assumption is fair or accurate.

To close this post out with some fun, I've uploaded footage I captured last night at the a show headlined by (arguably) one of the most readily-named "indie" rock band out there: Death Cab for Cutie. This song didn't change music or the world, but I put it on every mix tape I made for a few months after its release.

Enjoy...

Trotsky Loves Mao, Borrows Equipment, Writes a Few Songs, Goes to the Bank...

2006-04-11T15:04:00.000-04:00

So I totally have a new side project. Here is our bio:

It was at Isaac Washington's instigation that Lonnie Bruner, Red Storm and Isaac Washington formed Trotsky Loves Mao and, with his encouragement, the three began to make a name for themselves in rock music, first by heart, idealism and raw talent, and later by hard work, copious amounts of alcohol, and innovation.

Building on their early twee pop sound, the trio soon began layering their delicate guitars with increasingly edgy riffs like some kind of heavy metal birthday cake from outer space with a deliciously sweet frosting.

Isaac W authored most of the band's early work. Heavily influenced by gaypop and Motorhead, his work was later complemented by the songwriting of fellow founding bandmate Red Storm. It was in there in the dining room "music laboratory" of Red Storm's Trinidad residence that the trio performed a series of magical ceremonies that prefigured Red Storm's elaboration of the techniques of rhythm guitar and lead vocals, or, as she was later to call it, "being divine."

(In this case, the ceremonies combined the performance of advanced ritual magic with helmets and other assorted implements of torture, including guitars, a makeshift tambourine, spirits, and some incense).

It was this episode in the music lab - sublime and terrifying as an experience, profound in its effects, and illuminating in what it reveals of the engagement of advanced magical practice with personal selfhood and music making - that constitutes the core focus of the band.

Lonnie Bruner, the twelfth of nineteen children and the third founding member, brought new direction to the band and is best known for his innovative guitar and steady talent. Lonnie Bruner's father, a soothsayer by trade, was quite musical and passed his talent to his twelth-born. On Sundays, the Bruner family often gave private concerts. Bruner's father played the harp while little Bruner and his mother sang. A music industry rep "discovered" five-year-old Bruner and took him under his wing for musical instruction. The care for young Bruner was meager and Bruner has said himself that "there was more flogging than food." Still, he persevered, determined even as a young boy to maximize the opportunity and learn all that he could.

It was not until early 2006 that KD, a force to be reckoned with on keyboards and tambourine, joined the group, rounding out the former trio's hard-driving but melodic sound with crisp keyboards and sweet harmonies. Recalling her mispent youth, KD says she now regrets the drunken rampages she used to lead friends on in her native Colorado, and claims that she was merely a footsoldier in the "army of anarchy." KD and her gang of ruffian cohorts would get drunk, put on army boots, and take to the streets wearing colorful wigs and carrying dainty purses they'd looted from their grandmothers.

They were fearless, drunk, and extremely beautiful.

In early 2000, BFF, self-proclaimed scion of the comfortable middle classes, undertook a journey to Washington, DC. The stated purpose of the trip was pleasure. BFF, later to be dubbed "the wickedest drummer on God's Green Earth," was in his late twenties when the band recruited him to provide percussion for their rock outfit. BFF, widely traveled and an experienced mountaineer, nonetheless loved Washington, DC and had personal reasons for wanting to be out of his hometown and so he accepted. Dreamy and mystical by nature, BFF is far from benign behind the drum kit. The band, now at full strength, soon learned that in much relating to life, (or at least to percussion), BFF held a wisdom beyond his years.

If you thought the giant picture of my toes was disconcerting, wait 'til you get a load of what Metro is offering tourists this Cherry Blossom season!

2006-04-04T21:46:00.000-04:00

So I get on Metro mid-morning today amid tourists, students and the occasional commuter still straggling after the 9AM rush and as I'd already read the Post, I had no choice but to read the advertisements displayed on board Metro, which is much like reading the sides of cereal boxes. Not exactly literature, but hey, we can't all be Shakespeare. In the midst of the local merchants pedalling their wares, (you know the standard assortment: Crate and Barrel, Tiffany's, the Dadaism exhibit at the national Gallery) what to my wondering eyes should appear but the poster shown at right?

Holy crap.

I mean, I'm all for softcore porn in the guise of an "urban erotic tale," but can you just picture the conservative Christian couple from Iowa with thier matching fanny packs fielding one of these likely questions from their chubby, hot-dog eating offspring:

"Mommy, what's happening in my pants?" or
"Can we come to DC every Spring?" or
"Isn't 'Noire' usually spelled 'Noir?' and isn't it meant to depict some sort of nihilism or existentialism in addition to the dark sexual overtones?"

So I thought maybe I could facilitate activities at the Metro Complaint department by offering up this website for their forwarding pleasures:

Ask Noir (Apparently).

So kiddies, have at the Cherry Blossoms this tourist season here in DC. If you're riding Metro and you ask the right questions, you just might learn something.

The Tale of the Glass Splinter

2006-03-15T14:05:00.000-05:00

I have a new friend. In fact, we've been spending our days and nights together. Trivial and mildly funny, as far as problems go, my new friend is a problem indeed. A real pain in the toe.

What it comes down to is I have had a glass splinter lodged in the pad of my right big toe for the better part of a fortnight.

I don't know when or how I found my new friend but I suspect it was in the relative safety and comfort of my own home. See, I walk around my house barefoot all the time, which is probably a not a great idea, but I don't like shoes and socks so much. And slippers get on my damn nerves.

Anyway, I first found my friend a few days ago, while my sister was visiting. No amount of home-surgery could coax it out. At first, I was a bit alarmed. I kept thinking back on some story my Gram told me about someone kicking the bucket after a sewing needle entered their bloodstream by pricking the foot, traveled to the heart and wreaked cardiological havoc. I mean, I didn't really ever buy that story, but dang, I had some kind of glass splinter in my foot. Naturally, I did not consult a medical professional but instead continued efforts, based on internet research, to coax the little vixen out myself.

Even after I stopped poking at it with make-shift surgical implements, I could still feel the little bugger all the time. At no point did it actually *hurt* badly or anything, but it was pinching when I step down a certain way. Also, during the salad days of our new symbiotic friendship, I found that when I took off my shoes, some sort of Friday the 13th had taken place up in my socks.

Ok, I realize, nobody wants stories about feet, but what can I do? It's not a medical malady so much as a bizarre a science project. A science project in my very own toes. And if you're reading this blog, it probably means you're a sick unit anyway, so you probably enjoy this sort of thing. Back to our story.

After a few days, the intruder (and the host toe) stopped bleeding altogether, leaving behind a tiny magenta dot. The dot has been involved with my toe ever since and remains to date. The dot itself is slightly translucent and kind of pretty. It's like a little bindi. A wee li'l toe bindi. Decorative, if you will.

Yeah. So anyway, I did some I did some internet reconnaissance on my glass splinter and it appears that it'll just eventually work its way out or become a part of me forever. Some fellow sufferers bemoan this possibility, as if they prefer not to host foreign bodies in their feet. As for me, I feel I'll never be truly alone again. Or truly naked. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Fast forward to the present. Little Bindi doesn't hurt at all, not even the occasional pinch. I mean, I have pretty thick soles from my mis-spent youth - years and years as a barefoot lifeguard. It's like he's taken up a quiet residence in the calloused skin of my toe and isn't really bothering anybody much. I'm kind of growing used to the little guy. Plus, the next time I go to get a manicure pedicure and the stylist is gaping at my calloused guitar-player's fingertips, I can tell her, wait til you get a load of my glass toe! The possibilities for fun overwhelm me!

What's more, I feel like something out of a fairy tail. And by fairy tale, I mean one specific fairy tale, which is Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen. You remember, where a microscopic shard from a shattered, evil mirror (made by the devil himself), which was designed to give back ugly reflections to everything beautiful worked its way into little Kay's eye then into his bloodstream, eventually turning his heart to a lump of ice and distorting his view of all the beautiful things in his life and made him scorn all the beauty around him, including his (perhaps too?) loving sister and his sweet old grannie.

Wow, the metaphor opportunities here are endless, considering I know lots of people in life who seem to have developed glass splinters of the more traditional sort, but I'll settle with the truly obvious outcome instead: WHAT IF MY TOES BECOME SURLY? Let's face it, nobody, least of all me, wants her toes to suddenly get uppity. I mean, my toes have been submitting to my will all their lives, what with the pointy shoe discomfort and running and the aforementioned barefooted tendencies, so this is no time for them to grow sullen and discontent.

Do you know what I mean?

there aren't many things that make you feel this much better about the world:

2006-02-26T00:15:00.000-05:00

Hope for humanity?

Holy Starbucks, Trinidad Safeway!

2006-02-17T09:40:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've visited my neighborhood safeway. I mean, let's face it, calling it the unsafeway might be reaching for that proverbial low-hanging fruit, but as my friend Aziz says, sometimes the low-hanging fruit can be very tasty.

Guess what else is tasty: The newly renovated safeway.

You see, normally I make the trek up to the Giant on Rhode Island Avenue. It's conveniently situated near the Post Office and Home Depot, making it easy to achieve a trifecta of errands in a fraction of the time. But time was slipping away from me yesterday and I was on a mission to make my friend a Bundt Cake for his birthday. (The Bundt Cake was very tasty. Here is a picture of it unfrosted, which looks a bit nude and oddly pervy). I served it with powdered sugar and a fruit medley of blueberries, strawberries and mangos. All of which I got at the newly remodeled safeway, which brings me back to my point.

The new safeway is tricked out with all sorts of gourmet trappings. Not only does it feature a starbucks inside, it also features grocery carts with special coffee holders built-in. God, have I ever arrived! This safeway says "luxury, baby," and all at a fraction of the cost of Whole Foods.

I do wonder what this palace of gentrification will do to the community. It was a bit disconcerting to see some of the low-income shoppers navigating the shiny gourmet displays, and I have to expect that many of the products offered by the renovated safeway would bang the budgets of its previous shoppers. (Damn you, Tantalus!) On the upside, however, employees I spoke with at the store said the improvements translated to a better work environment and one nice woman behind the deli counter said Safeway had hired upwards of 100 new employees.

The one concern I have? The Starbucks better not eff with the business at R&B Coffee. I know I will continue to visit with Alfonso, Kenya and company over at R&B when I'm not going shopping. But the addition of the starbucks and other niceties at Safeway definitely caught my attention.

Step it up, Giant!

This li'l baby actually works!

2006-02-15T12:39:00.000-05:00

I keep buying espresso machines to feed my filthy latte habit, and most of the products I've brought home have been real stinkers. So when I saw that crate and barrel had this gem. Could a stovetop drip machine possibly create the barrista style espresso delights a demanding caffeine connoisseur like me desires?

Answer: Yes.

This espresso maker is perfect and I love it.

the mystery of tuan dat

2006-02-15T12:05:00.000-05:00

So my boss went to Viet Nam and brought me back this Vietnamese candy called Tuan Dat (Cashew Nut Candy). I hate nuts and I don't eat candy but I am so busy that I didn't take time for lunch today so I keep shoving these things in my cake hole cuz I'm starving to death.

So here is a better description of "Tuan Dat:"

Picture an oreo. Now take away the chocolate cookie outside and replace it with a communion wafer and/or the substance used to make those UFO candies we used to eat (and play communiion with as kids) as kids. Or maybe it's a hybrid of that and siding - you know - from a house.

Are you still with me? Remember that this stuff is the outside - the cookie part of the oreo, if you will.

Now. Take this (questionably) edible alloy and on top of one side spread a mixture of pecans, sesame seeds (hey don't ask me i didn't come up with the idea i'm just eating it) and um, I don't know exactly what else this is, crushed glass?

Wait, I have to eat another one just to be sure.

Yep, definitely glass. Or else maybe Amber. You know how those fossilized insects get trapped in Amber? Like mosquitos? And out of those mosquitos you can extract DNA and make dinosaurs for Jurassic Parks? Yeah, it's kind of like that. And guess what else? There are definitely unidentified black blotches in the glassy / ambery substance that are no doubt insects of some sort.

Hold on, my mouth is bleeding.

Okay i'm back. So did I mention pecans? I hate nuts, but truth be told, these pecans are really the best thing about this whole enterprise. And further, I have to tell you, if I'm a pecan, I know what I'd be screaming:

Why the eff would someone do this to me? Who says, let's take some pecans, suspend them in glass, then smash it between two pieces of communion host and also, involve sesame seeds and (alleged) insects.

But I'm hungry as hell so I'm eating it. So I've got that going for me.....which is nice

UPS and me, mano y mano, and I think I won

2006-02-15T12:04:00.000-05:00

I caught the little bastard red-handed today, in case anyone wants to know. I had two days of "missed you slip" anger building up so I let him have it when I saw him sneaking up to my door with his little slip ALREADY MADE OUT to announce that I had missed his third due-dilligence attempt to deliver my goods and services. Due dilligence my ass!

I'll tell you, I really felt I was channeling the spirit of good-naturedness as I called this delivery man out on his deceptive little "missed you!" slips.

"Hey, you weren't even going to knock!" I cried as I tore open the door and assaulted this man with my insane person hairdo. It is important to note I had not yet showered, not wanting to miss his knock for the third day in a row!

"I've been waiting here for four days!" I exaggerated at his back as the broken man tried to escape to his truck. He didnt say much, except a few futile attempts to convince us both that he had rung the bell.

I mean, whatever. No he didn't! And I let him know by signing for the package EXTRA HARD. If I would have been signing with a pencil it would have been broken and boy that would have showed him not to mess with me! Yeah, he was "just about to knock" when I opened the door but we both know that isn't true. That's why when he said happy holidays I said it back but VERY QUIETLY.

I also sighed a lot.

No sense calling to complain about the guy (I would feel terrible if I got somebody fired) but I think you'll all agree that I showed him what's what in the kind of passive aggressive way that is absolutely impossible to argue with.

That's right, I'm all up in your face, Mr. UPS Man, all sighing and shit. What now!?

it is an OSHA-violating 57 degrees in my office

2006-02-15T12:03:00.000-05:00

This angry little charmer hails from the summer archives of my previous blog

It's so cold in my office. Sooooo......cold.......I'm getting sleepy. Seriously, I already disabled the A/C vent in my office with a hammer and I keep my door closed to close out the chill from the vents outside my office (I'd have at them too only I'm concerned about security cameras).

I know, I know, it's sweltering outside. But this just makes the situation that much worse. Becuase, given the marvels of modern air conditioning, it is now in fact at sub zero temperatures in my office. Even when I have my TWO SPACE HEATERS running at full tilt under the desk. (These are contraband. I don't care.)

And since it is this cold, I have to dress for the weather! This means I can't wear skirts, or summer weight materials, or leave my legs uncovered. So when I do venture outside, I sweat profusely either from wearing or dragging around multiple layers of warm clothing, and then have to come back inside where the sweat instantly freezes into ice for a personal cold shower inside my pants.

The poor soul who sits in a cubicle (and is therefore even more vulnerable to the gale force winds issuing forth from the A/C unit than me, with at least my office walls for protection) is wearing GLOVES right now. I tried to explain to her about the hammer and A/C but she knows about the security cameras too and apparently likes her job more than I do.

God damn it office services! When I call you and complain of the painfully freezing temperatures in here, stop reminding me of how hot it is OUTSIDE! What you don't seem to understand is that while it may be sweltering outside it happens to be very fucking cold where I have to work! Recently, they've grown sick of my complaining so they just tell me that they will adjust the temprature but they are full of shit. Or else they say "If we raise the temperature for you, we will get complaints from the other people in your area." WHAT? From whom? From the girl wearing mittens in July? From the dude with chattering teeth who is wearing a WINTER COAT?!

I'm shivering and just told my boss that, in addition to the space heaters, I am going to expense a blanket! I brought in a thermometer and it registered that it is in 57 in here. 50 fucking 7! That is TOO COLD! I'm going to get sick! Imagine if I didn't pulverize the A/C vent?

Maybe a little less with the "popcorn Wednesdays" and a little more with the "reasonable temperatures," corporate. Damn!

A product that craps out this quickly has no redeeming qualities

2006-02-15T11:56:00.000-05:00

A few nights ago, my $150.00 DVD player refused to play and is (of course) beyond warranty. It kept giving me this error message H07, which the manual told me means "trouble likely to have occcured - reset system." So I did, to no avail. Now, I realize that DVD players are cheap these days, but I wanted to watch a movie, not drive into Northern Virginia traffic hell, hope to make it before Best Buy closed its doors, lay down some bucks on an unresearched product (not that research served me particularly well the last time) and then come back and watch my movie. I mean, damn, the popcorn will be stale!

So yesterday morning, after 1 1/2 hours on hold with panasonic, I happened to enter the error code into google and found at least 100 sites featuring people condemning the product.I decided to write one of my own.

Subject: Panasonic DVD-RV32K

Summary: Junk product from a junk company

Pros: None. A product that craps out this quickly has no redeeming features.

Cons: Like virtually everyone else who has owned this product for at least one week, I got the "H07" message. I'm suprised the crackhead engineers at Panasonic didn't just program the code to read "F.U." because after you talk to their customer service department, you'll know that's what they mean!!!

S.O.T.U.

2006-02-15T11:49:00.000-05:00

in case you missed the S.O.T.U. (I've prepared a transcript)

Hi, America, how are you? Now, I'm very honored tonight, because I've got some honor to spread, to you, America, one awkward little soundbite at a time. Oh, yeah, and Hi Congress too I GUESS. Just kidding. Hi congress. Love you. Good times.

Ok.

1. First of all. Stop telling me what to do! If I want to torture terrorists (or tourists, as I prounounce it, and actually, I've been thinking about expanding my torture network anyway), I will. So shove it McCain or I'll send you right back to the tiger cages. I'm also going to wiretap your ass.

2. Smirk, smirk.

3. America is Super Double Number One! Forever!

4. Employment! During my Administration! Walmart! Jobs.

5. Yeah, yeah, you got me, haw haw. I screwed us royally and lied to all you gullible bastards regarding the War in Iraq. But let's all put that behind us because now we REALLY are fucked! Considering all my costly mistakes and grave errors, there's no possible way to pull out without starting WWIII. Ha ha! I mean, this is a grave situation. Just ask those three people there. They lost a son. Well two of them, the kinda hot lady there is newly single. wink wink. The dead guy, this brave soldier, he wrote a letter. A letter of honor. Like something out of braveheart. His parents and widow are here just one month after his death to stand up for America. (reads letter) See America, he died in Iraq so they wouldn't have to die in Iraq. So you wouldn't have to die. In America. Ever. I like corndogs. Nobody dies in America! Could you guys, I mean, could the family of the fallen soldier please stand up tonight? Yeah, standing up for America. For me. Wink wink. (camera reverses focus to grief-stricken, exploited family. Camera returns to Prez, enjoying applause). Thank you. No, really. Thank you. Thank you. Wink, wink!

[Editors note: Did the winking strike anyone else as horrifying, considering these poor exploited people were standing there fighting tears and truly believing they were honoring their departed loved one by letting this dick stand there and wink and make no effort to seem sincere while they fight back tears? I mean, crap on a stick what an asshole!! I want to hit him with a shovel.]

6. Isolationists, beware. We could be best friends with a dictator in Iran that merely suppresses his people in a way that doesn't deprive us of oil! Might as well face it we're addicted to oil. Technology for fuel efficient cars is the answer! But I'll refuse to sign any legislation with any teeth! And you, Europe! That's enough out of you. You better shut up I mean it! Remember when we had to save your asses from the Romans? (aide whispers in ear) I mean the Nazis and the Commies? We asked for nothing in return. (aide passes folded note) uh - that is to say, asked for nothng except your eternally grateful subterfuge. Subservience! I meant subservience. I always get those mixed up. Did I pronounced that right? What I mean to say is, did our brave soldiers die so you could disagree with us? (camera reverses shot to family of fallen soldier, standing and holding one another and clapping confusedly).

7. I love Laura. Doessn't she look pretty, Congress? Blue. And Black people. I love them both! America's economy could NOT survive without immigrants and blacks! I also like blacks in Africa enough to pretend I'm going to give them some money for their AIDS problem. (the frisky fornicating bastards). That reminds me of a joke I heard one time...these two Africans walked into a bar - oh, right. Sorry. What was I saying....?

8. Yay America!

9. Hi Alito! There he is. Hi, Sammy boy! No more activist judges, right? wink wink. But hey, just one thing, feel free to strike down pesky Congressional laws that seek to mitigate my uncontrolled expansion of executive power. I'm the President! I can do whatever I want despite the opposition of Congress and the lower courts. That's not judicial overrreach, that's how we do it in America. (smirks)

[Editors note: Does the prospect of a presidency unrestrained by the courts or congress worry strike anyone else as imperialism?!!??]

10. Hey guys, do me a favor - make my tax cuts permanent. I know they've sunken us into the largest deficit scenario, ever. But I need them to pay wealthy people to vote for me and as an excuse to cut domestic entitlement programs! I'm going to cut 140 of them! I'd cut welfare, but my buddy Clinton (one of Daddy's two favorites - see I"m endearing and funny!) already did that for me so I'll have to find another focus. Ok here's one: down with healthcare for the poor! Oh wait, did someone just tell me that the polls say Americans support affordable health care? Oops! You know I'm clumsy with words. What I meant to say is "Up with healthcare for the poor!" Up! Up! Up! Sike. God, I can say anything here! It's like I have tourrettes! (wink wink).

Okay America, that's all the winking I can handle. God Bless America. Good night.