It's tempting to make caricatures out of people you strongly disagree with. I had assumed that was what was behind much of the too-easy labelling of "family values" crusaders as repressed, self-hating homosexuals. There are some studies suggesting homophobia and latent homosexuality go hand-in-hand, but it frequently seems like liberals make this case for conflicting reasons. Sure, it's partly in order to expose their opponents' hypocrisy, but it's also partly to get in a few homophobic cheap shots of our own -- stealth gay bashing, essentially.

Well, the murkiness of such lines of argument aside, there's at least one new reason to consider them: Federal Marriage Amendment cosponsor and fellow Virginian Ed Schrock just got caught making calls to gay phone sex lines. Kos is covering it here if you want the nitty-gritty details, or to bask in the narcissistic celebration (Schrock's downfall is due to a blog).

The earlier link contains the phrases "penile plethysmography" and "male tumescence", though, which are almost funnier than GOP hypocrisy. Formulate your work-avoidance strategy accordingly.

i really liked this article about group traveling in the post this weekend. the author, robin wright (i think she's normally foreign affairs for the post) and all of her friends on her street do a big group travel thing once every year or so. they recently rented a house in tuscany and had a grand old time.

i can't decide if this applied to my own life would be the best thing ever or a huge disaster. but she's got some good ideas:

But neighborhood travel has also proven to be a more affordable way to see the world. On arrival, we all put about $60 per person in a kitty for breakfast foods, basic necessities, evening hors d'oeuvres and wine. We buy staples -- such as cereal, fruit, coffee and milk -- to keep in the house. The morning walkers among us wander into town to buy fresh croissants and the papers. Anyone who buys something later takes funds from the kitty, leaving a receipt behind.

To our amazement, the funds generally last the week. In the process, we get to taste life in the local community and aren't isolated in a hotel filled largely with other foreigners.

and

In 2001, the cost was about $300 per bedroom for a full week. By this summer, when we visited again, it had gone up to $445 per bedroom -- still not bad given the soaring value of the euro against the dollar.

We have it down to a routine by now. The first day, we all drive to San Gimignano, the medieval city of more than 70 towers, many built by competing families to signal their greater wealth and power. Whatever our interests, we're all attracted to the old narrow streets with crafts and wine bars and art galleries. We save Florence to do together later in the week. And then we wander in separate smaller groups -- a mix-and-match on different days, depending on the destinations -- to the fine Etruscan museum and field of Roman ruins in Volterra or the friendly square full of flowers in Greve, the chief town of the Chianti Classico wine area, or Lucca, surrounded by walls that date back to the Roman era.

Each trip, we've learned new tricks to facilitate our travels.

For Tuscany, Alan bought walkie-talkies to communicate when we were separated in villages or on the way home so the end car wouldn't get lost. Maryellen laid out an array of maps and tour books for people to figure out the options as well as information on local buses so we wouldn't have to drive. They also worked out group rates for made-to-order tours -- through local vineyards and villas with the author of "Too Much Tuscan Sun," about $120 per person including transportation and a meal, or with our own guide through Florence's Uffizi Gallery for about $42 per person, including ticket. Six of us took a special cooking class in Florence. Jerry still talks about the tiramisu, almond torte and cheesecake that the class specializing in desserts next door offered our group when it was finished.

In a big cost-saver, Maryellen found local chefs to come in at night and cook, which allowed us to sample good wines without having to worry about driving afterward. In Tuscany, we could eat a sinful five-course meal -- an antipasto selection, prosciutto and melon, lamb cutlets, assorted vegetables, salad, a pastry and fruit or cheese -- for about $24 per person.

i've already decided that i want to get a real career already so i can retire from it and become an italian vacation planner. anyway, i think we should have a big old orgiastic (maybe not) trip to tuscany next year. millions of people. anyone in? i've already got a place in mind (as long as i feel comfortable blatantly stealing from the grays' fantastic vacation location, which i do).

let's not forget about DCist! here are some recent posts by yours truly:

Segal's Signing-Off Symbolizes What?

Trouble on 21st Street: Galileo's Woes

DC Dodgeball

Doughnut Debacle

saturday night i met up with the DCist folks (mike, rob, becca, and kyle, who was kind enough to bring me a burned cd of ted leo's newest! wahoo!) at brickskeller, and it was fun. we talked about the direction of DCist, etc, and it's gonna be HUGE. i'm talking motherfucking blowing up stuff yo. not really. but i still think it's cool.

i think all of you should be contributors, so write me something! look, kriston did a great post! sports would be good, or fashion, or anything you want to bitch about if you can make it seem sort of relevant and newsy. just email me. c'mon. you know you want to have your name immortalized in the pages of DCist.

My moving nightmare has just about concluded -- tonight Jon, Charles and I will be cleaning our old house. After that, it's just a question of getting the DSL set up here, figuring out the parking situation, and a prolonged court battle with our previous landlady (probably). Not too bad, overall.

Moving wasn't fun, but at least it was kind of enlightening. My knowledge of the junkie worldview is pretty well limited to Requiem for a Dream (and, you know, rock & roll), but I think I got a little more insight during the moving process: the weekend was divided between painful, disorienting encounters with reality and periods of blessed relief facilitated by foreign substances. Of course, in my decidedly non-hardcore case, those foreign substances were a lot of Gatorade and a little beer.

But really, I was in bad shape without them. Things sort of came to a head when I was trying to reassemble the bed. This is an operation that involves three pieces and two bolts. It's not like I was building a nuclear-powered robot or something. Teresa eventually saved me from a mechanical problem that I probably can't explain clearly without handwaving and maybe a whiteboard, but I think this made-up conversation captures the flavor:

TOM: Why is this cup spilling so much?
TERESA: You're holding it upside down. Also, that's your shoe.

It wasn't long after this that it became very clear that I ought to go to bed. Somewhere between the bathroom and the bedroom I could feel a knob in my brain click from "human getting out of the shower" to "crazed, half-dead water buffalo crashing through the underbrush", but it worked out okay as apparently dying water buffaloes are perfectly capable of running into things and collapsing, which is all I really had to do anyway.

Today I'm much better, although still pretty tired, and my head feels like it's packed with cotton. Hopefully that's from the lack of AM coffee -- but I did feel frighteningly more lucid after the day's first Gatorade.

is the word of the day, and how i feel about the new apartment. i know that in time, craptacular aspects will reveal themselves to me, but for now i would like to bask in the glow that moving into a phat pad affords one's self. and yes, it is phat. super phat.

i am a little too deliriously exhausted from tommy's and my 3.5 day moving binge to go into a lot of apartment detail this morning, but the sun coming through the skylights in the ceiling this morning and my 25 minute walk to work along P street (I NEVER HAVE TO TAKE THE METRO AGAIN!) made all the muscle pain fade into the back ground.

grazie mille to everyone who helped us move, especially kriston, jon, and aaron, without whom most of our furniture would still be stuck in the stairwell.

if anyone wants to help tommy and me move our entire existences from arlington to nw dc, we would be more than grateful. we're looking for people possibly after work today, tomorrow from something undeniably early AM saturday morning until early afternoon (apparently a block party is taking place on our street starting at 4pm tomorrow, so we won't be able to move then) or anytime sunday. actually if you are a muscle-bound man, sunday would be best, because that's when we have to move the couch and bed up the impossibly narrow stairs. we actually think it will be impossible to move the couch. we might have to construct an elaborate pulley system up to the deck. we shall see.

in any case all help will be rewarded with...wait for it....BUD LITE!!!!!!!! so thanks in advance. i won't be checking email, so you can reach me at 703.966.1876.

excuse the hyperbolic and over-generalized statement:

rnc credentialed republican bloggers are uuuuggggglllleeeeee! (not to mention not ideologically or ethnically diverse!) but most importantly, ugly. so ugly. faces made for blogging.

Wilco Tue. Sept 28
@ Meyerhoff Symphony Hall • Baltimore, MD
On sale Saturday, August 28 @ 10am through Ticketmaster. 410-547-SEAT. www.ticketmaster.com

worth going to?

you know, i really thought it was over. three months or so had passed, and i hadn't thought about the terror in weeks, or heard the terrible buzzing sound in my head when i tried to sleep. things were going well for me -- i could lay out peacefully on the grass in our backyard, or walk to work without constantly looking over my shoulder. i was relaxed. summer was mild and going well. the bad times were over, it seemed.

that was, until this morning. tommy and i were leaving through the door in my room to walk to his car so he could drop me off at the metro station. i stooped down to leave my car key under the doormat (my father was coming later in the day to exchange his minivan with my dodge neon so i can move some stuff into our new apartment), and as i straightened up i saw it, right next to the door jam, unmoving yet powerful, staring at me, ready to leap and eat my face off at any moment.

it was a cicada.

i leapt back and gasped. "WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS. THAT" i yelled to tommy, pointing frantically to the monstrosity that was millimeters away from entering my bedroom.

tommy, clearly unaware of the danger posed, peered closer. "i think it's a cicada," he announced, unperturbed. "wow. it's big."

"YOU THINK??" i screamed. this wasn't just a normal looking cicada, which was a sight bad enough on its own. this was a type of retarded cicada, left for months underground while its brethren bloomed in suburban yards. it had harbored in some sort of satanic subterranean dwelling place, passing the days until it had become uber-developed and ready to unleash its horror on the world.

i'm not sure if i can properly convey the nastiness of this creature. first thing -- this bug was three times the size of a normal cicada. i am well known for my propensity to exaggerate, but i kid you not. three times. the size of a tennis ball, maybe. well, not that big, but it was like 3.5-4 inches long.

second off, it had a well-developed coat of armor protecting its disgusting body. three or four leaves of hard-shelled skin overlapped one another, making its outside look like scales of a medieval human-eating dragon.

third -- and this is the weirdest part -- this cicada was blue. not an outrageous royal blue, but a metallic gray-blue that shone dully in the morning light. and those evil red eyes that a cicada normally posseses? this had blue eyes that were all the more evil, sized as large as marbles. i swear.

if i'd had the presence of mind (and if terror hadn't paralyzed my body, making it impossible for me to step over the bug and back in my room), i would have gotten my camera and taken a picture of the cicada godfather. instead, i ran screaming down the driveway, yelling at tommy to shut the door and that it was every man for himself.

on the way to the metro, we discussed what the hell that thing could have been doing on my doorstep. at first, i resisted any possibility that it was a cicada. i had spent too long in the grasp of terror during may 2004, and i wasn't ready to accept the possibility that they could still be out there. but tommy swore up and down that it must have been one, and i realized that he's probably right. it may not have been a brood x cicada, or it may have been some sort of genetically-enhanced killer cicada, let loose by some deranged scientist, but it was a cicada nonetheless.

so consider this an alert to the masses: what you thought was gone may still be here, more terrible than ever, and ready to eat your face. don't say i didn't warn you.

One of the nice things about a week of working in an office -- besides new opportunities to whine and excuses to skip the gym -- is the Tower Records in the building lobby. So, two micro-reviews for you guys:

Rilo Kiley's just-released More Adventurous must have been named ironically. This is their major label debut, and as you might expect they've traded some guitars for cheesy string arrangements and ditched Jenny Lewis' cute-as-a-button profanities. In general it seems like a bid for adult-contemporary crossover success. I can't begrudge them that; their previous effort, The Execution Of All Things was outstanding. I hope they find enough success with this album to be able to afford to return to the sound of that album. If not, go pick up TEOAT, and download "Portions For Foxes" from the new album. I hereby officially absolve you of any guilt you might feel in doing so -- "Portions For Foxes" is a great song, but the stuff surrounding it is pretty weak.

You wouldn't think it from reading Catherine's posts, but I didn't own Ted Leo's The Tyranny Of Distance until this week. Well, I had a copy my sister burned for me, but I was kind of disappointed in it: the sound was pretty lousy after who-knows how many CD->MP3->CD conversions within her college buddies' music-sharing ecosystem. And the album just didn't grab me the way Hearts of Oak did. Well, what a difference clean audio makes. I still like Hearts of Oak's rhythm-heavy experimentation a bit better, but this is a great rock & roll CD, with Mr. Leo in full guitar-hero mode. Definitely recommended.

Another Wednesday, another issue of The Onion A.V. Club, this one featuring one of their interview non-sequitur roundups: a bunch of interviewees were asked "If you could send one message to the children of the world, what would it be?" Their answers are compiled here and are an interesting read -- they usually illuminate some aspect of the subject's personality. Except for Arthur C. Clarke, who's just a fucking liar. His actual message to the children of the world would probably be closer to "Would you like some candy? I have some right here in my van."

Anyway, the good folks at The Onion have done this before, asking "Who could you take in a fight?" once, and "Is there a God?" twice. Those features are worth a read, too.

And while you're at it, why don't you check out some of the other A.V. Club Greatest Hits: the Evil Clown Band roundup, a guide to celebrity blogs, or a hilarious series of Leprechaun-centric interviews from the Idle Hands press junket.

Unfortunately, it looks like the few transcripts of Mike Loew's crank calls to the Office of National Drug Control Policy have been pulled from the site, presumably since he collected them with others and published a book. You can get an idea of it from Amazon's look inside the book feature, but unfortunately the NDCP call isn't there. That's too bad, but I think this should probably still be enough material for you to waste a Wednesday afternoon.

did kerry have a dog in vietnam or not???? how can we trust this man to be president??? we should thank the press for staying on this canine issue. i would also like to thank matthew yglesias for keeping up the pressure on the cheez whiz story, without which we might never know the true character of bush.

i would like to take this opportunity to say that most of my friends' blogs suck. that's right. you, you, you, and you. stop having "lives." stop this "being productive." you need to come back indoors, sit behind your computer, and starting wasting your days away. okay?

ps: i have been told that this was a "mean post" and apparently it was not clear enough that i a) don't actually think my friends' blog suck or that b) i really in fact would like them to post a lot more because i enjoy reading what they write. sorry!

gawker has a good interview up with ted leo today. he's got a new album, "shake the sheets", coming out soon. it's supposed to be good. how could it not be? he's fucking ted leo. i love him!

this post brought to you by the coalition for excessive ted leo love.

the unofficial nickname for august in my office is apparently "No One Come To Work Except the Lower Level Staff Ha Ha They Are Sitting in Front of a Computer While We Sip Mojitos on the Porch of Our Beach House" month. so i'm bored. so you get a painfully detailed account of my weekend.

friday: what the hell happened friday? i have some sort of disorder where i can't remember anything longer than 36 hours ago. oh yes. that was the evening i got a free donut from krispy kreme after work (my 45th free donut of the week and counting), because they are opening a store across the street from my office. (haha; now that i do dcist i will link ONLY TO THEM EVER). post free-donut, i met up with kriston and tommy and we went to the big hunt. which was torture for me, because there was nothing that i wanted more than a friday happy hour beer, but i was running the next day and could not partake of the alcohol goodness. i was much more restrained than the last time i went out drinking with susan the night before a run, saying, "just one drink!" and then ended up moaning on the floor of an orange line metro car three hours later. kriston's roommates erik and jeremy came out and had a few drinks, and we all chatted, and i'm sure i annoyed the waitress to no end by asking for 32 glasses of water. a runner's gotta hydrate!

saturday: i have to apologize, but i'm going to talk about my run. i know that lately you cannot get away with talking with me for more than 15 minutes without learning every detail ever about marathon training, or what sports drink i really like, or hearing about the blisters from hell i am getting. i'm sorry. i can't help myself. i don't know what's happened. but it's too late to stop. i got up at 5:15am, as i normally have to do for my weekend long-distance run. this run was to be 18 miles, which is officially the longest i've ever run. (we're training up to 22 miles.) you know, i was going to include some detailed description of the run, where we went, and what i was thinking the entire time, but it's not necessary: i can just say it sucked. actually, the first 15 miles were rather good, but the last three were like some sort of bizarre painful descent into a halucinatory hell where the tidal basin running path turns into a bed of coals lined with leaping flames and cackling devils, urging me to launch my sauconys at some tourists and go to sleep under that tree over there.

www.dcist.com

any suggestions are welcome! or if you want to be a contributor, let me know.

ps: that would be pronounced dee cee ist, not Deecyst. or desist. etc. thank you.

Susan normally gets to hog all the democracy-promotion glory, spinning tales about teaching blind orphans how to vote in war-torn Soviet backwaters. But today, for once, I can say that I did my part for the democratic process: yesterday my voice was heard on two separate occasions. Which, come to think of it, isn't actually very democratic. Whatever.

The first occurred in front of Safeway. "Excuse me sir," said some fat guy by the door, in that let's-be-polite-but-who-are-we-kidding way that older people do when calling a 24 year old "sir". "Could I get you to sign a petition to get my friend on the ballot?"

I'm pretty bad at saying no to things like that, and before I knew it a clipboard was in my hands. "Do you mind if I ask what party she's affiliated with?" I managed. "Do you mind"? Ugh.

"Actually she's running as an independent, but she has democratic beliefs on education and republican beliefs on business." Okay, way to please everyone. I'm envisioning children eating government-subsidized school lunches while sewing wallets for export; simultaneously I'm signing my name for some reason. Hopefully I haven't just endorsed the American Nazi Party's pick for state comptroller. At least as a non-Democrat it's pretty much a lock she won't get elected in Arlington.

The second opportunity came later in the evening when I received a phone call asking, in a mechanical sort of way, whether I'd like to participate in a political survey. Sure! Am I a registered voter? Why yes. Do I support America's efforts in Iraq? Since you're an automated robot I'm guessing you don't want to get into a semantic argument, so okay, yes. Will I be voting for President Bush in November? Hell no. Do I believe that marriage is sacred and should be between one man and one woman? Hmm. It's always tough to pass up an opportunity to lash out wildly at Mormons, but I managed a "no".

This is where I start to pick up on their game. I was in the middle of a push-poll, designed not to collect information, but to spread opinion. The most famous example of this was Karl Rove polling Carolina voters as to how they felt about John McCain's "black baby" (i.e. the child he adopted from Bangladesh -- this parenthetical context was, amazingly, somehow omitted). So I decided to do my best to be as contrary as possible. A choice between higher or lower taxes? Higher, please; it's nice to feel like you're doing your fair share. And you know, maybe it's time we give a chance to a weak commander-in-chief, someone who'll cave in to the islamofascists -- you know, just to keep things fresh.

The worst one was about Congressman Moran, though. I don't have much of an opinion of him, except to know that he's gotten nailed once as anti-Semitic for making some comments about tempering the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, and nailed as anti-Semitic a second time by a former aid who provided no evidence or corroborating witnesses (and had previously sworn revenge for getting fired).

So, when asked, "Would it bother you to know that your congressman has been quoted making anti-Semitic remarks?" I considered my options -- but ultimately decided that for purposes of Republican push-polling, this doesn't bother me at all. Sorry, jewish friends. I still really like those latke things, though.

i'm moving in with two boys in two weeks, so facts other than the loss of space for my shoes (i'm sorry, poor lover shoes) must be faced: i have to learn how to play video games.

i used to be quite the video game afficionado about, oh, 12 years ago. i was all over anything mario-related, and became quite good at sonic the hedgehog as well. also, i rocked that duck hunting game and the motorbike one. but then i hit puberty, figured out that video games were for loser boys, started to use my hand-eye coordination for tennis instead, and generally lost all sorts of video gaming skills i might have ever possessed. this was proved time after time when i tried to bond with the cute boys living upstairs from my apartment in college by playing mario kart with them, only to embarrass myself by losing constantly. i don't want to even think about the number of times i drove the poor princess off the track into some hellish abyss. i figured if i ever wanted to find someone to love me, they'd have to put up with the fact that i hate video games (mostly because i'm bad at them, and i hate doing anything that i am not good at/will not assuredly win).

thankfully, tommy came along, who will even put up with me screeching drunkenly about how much i hate mario party and how terribly unfair of a game it is whenever we play it. now, in an effort to be an affable roommate to him and charles, i've decided, grudgingly, that i will learn the rudiments of playing video games. i hope to even one day enjoy this venture. i have to admit to being a little apprehensive -- back when i enjoyed nintendo, the controllers only had the little up-down-right-left thing and an A and B button. now, i look at the controllers that involve about 32 different buttons and can like, levitate in midair and stuff, and i'm sure i'll never learn how to work them. but i keep telling myself: patience, grasshopper. the day will come.

anyway, i wanted to mine the vast video game knowledge of zunta's readers, and take suggestions for games that will be most suited to a neophyte. please try to avoid football, basketball, or games where you win by exploding everyone's head with some sort of ninja staff and spray blood all over the screen. i thank you in advance for your wisdom. wish me luck in my endeavors.

I am working in an office today, so I'm afraid I'll have to demur when it comes to snarkily clever internet insights for the time being. Fluorescent lighting and hotplated coffee slowly drain the life from me, like Superman and Kryptonite, or the Green Lantern and the color... yellow? purple? See, it's happening already. I can't remember the Green Lantern's weakness. Instead all I can think about is drafting Best Practices documents and something called Flex Time.

It's my coworker's fault I'm here. He's incompetent, apparently (I thought I was just being arrogant). The client complained, and now I have to show up here for three weeks or so. It's my blinding hatred of this coworker that's keeping me alert at all, but even that is slipping away, like an icecube melting in my hands. An icecube of anger. An angercube.

Before I fade away and completely surrender my will to the corporate hivemind, allow me a few observations:

• This "desk" couldn't even pass for Ikea children's furniture


• The Tower Records in the Lobby doesn't sell music, only DVDs. This probably means something, but mostly it just annoys me.


• It's nice of people to leave their leftover lunch in the breakroom as a snack for others, but not if it smells strongly of fish.


• Window-washers are some badass dudes.

well, i gathered my courage and totalled all the donations to my marathon fundraiser so far...and i've got $1250! which i think is amazing and wonderful and i can't express enough gratitude to everyone who's donated or helped me to raise money, from spreading the word on their blogs, to selling precious vinyl records (thanks dad), to suggesting unique ways to get some cash.

i know i sound like a broken record, but if you read this blog and you haven't donated and you are in a position to do so, please drop $10 (or more!) at the paypal button on the right. i've still got $750 to go by october 22. you can read the reasons why i'm fundraising for the lombardi cancer center here.

so, for a long time, i've flirted with the idea of getting a tattoo. i'm certainly not a flaming-eagle-clutching-a-bleeding-heart-all-over-my-back-kind-of-tattoo girl, but i'm not opposed to the idea of something small and tasteful. i'm not sure where i'd want it, though it'd have to be somewhere that spends most of its time covered up by office appropriate clothing, even in the summer. but not the small of my back, or the back of my neck, or my butt, or my shoulder. i dunno where, really, then, except like, the sole of my foot. but i'm sure i could decide on a location.

the main problem is, of course, choosing exactly what i want to get. i used to think i wanted a chinese character tattoo, except those started getting all lame and overused and every fucking body had a chinese character meaning peace or wisdom or monkey or whatever. i have a legitimate character i could use - i'm part chinese, and i wanted to put the symbol that's used for the family name of hoy - but since no one really understands chinese characters, i would just look like every other poseur out there. not that i'm not a poseur in general, i just didn't want to be one with a chinese character tattoo.

in high school, i used to think that i would get a radiohead tattoo, either of the meeting people is easy logo, or just the r in a circle, and later on, i considered the bear. obviously, radiohead has many a symbol that might be a nifty tattoo when you are 20 years of age or under, but i'm glad i didn't take that particular plunge.

lately, i've decided i might want to get a tattoo related to italy in some way, because i am obviously still sadly obsessed with the country and language and culture. but deciding what italian-ish tattoo, exactly, is not as easy as i'd thought. tommy suggested getting a favorite italian word marked on my body, but i don't have a particular one (except gelato, or pizza, and those are hardly fantastic tattoo material). i could get the italian flag or something, but, eh. the iconic symbols one thinks of when they think of italy - david, or the colosseum, or the leaning tower of pisa, or, um, a bottle of wine - well, they're impersonal, and plus, i think a tattoo of david would look pretty lame and scary. unless i got him on my forearm and i could make him wiggle. ideally, i'd like something that is somewhat recognizable as italian yet still personal to my experience there.

so does anybody have a viable idea? tommy and i were talking about this recently, and he suggested getting a small, stylized image of the milan duomo, which is an idea i like. it's personal to where i was in italy, and it's an insanely beautiful building. i wouldn't have the actual facade recreated in a tattoo, of course, but something like the representation of the duomo in the corner of this logo is along the lines of what i was thinking. you can be brutally honest, if you think that is the stupidest idea ever. but you better give me some other suggestions then!

Being faced with perfectly sincere, wholly naive belief is frequently an uncomfortable situation. The natural reaction is to raise your psychic defenses, engaging your sense of personal superiority via sarcasm, detachment, irritation or smug patronization. Once in a great, great while -- for many people, this never happens -- you might decide to join in the abandon; hopefully, only after a dispassionate consideration of the believers' movement. It may sound over the top, but this is the situation facing the audience at a Polyphonic Spree show.

There are a lot of irritatingly clever reviews, at least one of which I've written, that compare the band to a cult. These usually come off as cheap shots prompted by the band's size and Jesus-Christ-Superstar-yardsale wardrobe. Having seen them perform last night, I'll be taking those charges more seriously from now on. There was hugging, and ecstatic Christ poses, and a big banner with "HOPE" written on it, and audience members trying to lay hands on their charismatic leader. I came away with the distinct impression that the story of the Polyphonic Spree could end very, very badly.

Fortunately, the band doesn't ask you to renounce your family or marry a randomly selected audience member. All they're asking at the moment is that you believe that life is great, that there's no reason to be unhappy, and probably that the universe is made out of crystallized rainbows. Something like that -- I'd have to consult the liner notes.

With all that in mind, it was an amazing show. Tim DeLaughter has built a pop orchestra and taught himself to use it well. I won't pretend that 24 members can really be justified sonically -- some lines inevitably blur together. There's also a noticeable mic hum during quiet sections from all those inputs, and I suspect that the percussionist and at least one of the three keyboard players could be dropped without a perceptible difference in the sound. However, having a chorus, harpist, violinist, brass section and what may be the world's only virtuoso theremin player at the ready really does let the band do things that would normally be impossible. The arrangements stray from the album enough to be interesting without being alienating, the pieces flow into each other nicely, and the light show is simple but well-conceived. The uniqueness of the spectacle is enough to justify the ticket price; add in a show as well-executed as this one was and I'd say you should definitely be keeping an eye on their tour dates.

If, that is, you can handle a band employing vocal fills that go "Love, Love, Love". I understand if you can't; I'm not entirely sure that I can, either. I won't lie to you: if you go to a PS show, you will hear an awful lot about how great the sun is, how love is good, and vice versa. There's also a bit about trees (they're in favor of them).

I left the show without the blinding hatred of my fellow man that almost always accompanies watching a rock show in a crowded club; this is a significant achievement for any band. On the other hand, I didn't leave with the wide eyes, bursting heart and manic smile that I got from the PS's psychedelic brothers in arms, The Flaming Lips. I think the Polyphonic Spree are certainly worth your concert dollar; they're probably not worth your belief.

ohmigod this is the cutest thing ever, and includes many of my former ASM students. the little monkey boy, second from left in the first row? that's lorenzo (monkeyface) loverboy, who was five years old when i taught him and had three girls fighting over him. the little korean girl in the same row, fifth from left, se-jin, was one of his multitudes of girlfriends. ack! fourth row down, 5th from left, that's one of my favorite students EVER, sofia (who is trilingual). here's another picture of her during halloween last year (with florencia, who is like five-lingual). and i *think* the little girl in the bottom righthand corner is camilla, one of natania's nursery students, who had a penchant for drinking out of the toilet. what a cute little ad thing, or whatever it is, because i guess you wouldn't have a commercial ad for a school. i'm pretty sure there's some sort of illegal copyright infringement on united colors of benetton, but who cares.

in other good a.m. news, krispy kreme, as some sort of promotional event (they're opening a store in dupont soon), just dropped off 5 dozen free donuts. hurrah! i've eaten six already. check out the mad fanfare they're planning for the opening. i would normally say that a ribbon cutting ceremony for a donut store is a bit over the top, but hey, this IS krispy kreme.

tommy, knowing well my extreme hatred for merriweather post pavilion, sent me a link (via charles) to this review of a sarah mclachlan concert at the MPP. they end the review with this scathing paragraph, which sent shivers of glee up my spine.

Charm was necessary on this night. Since we regularly slam Nissan Pavilion in this space for its odious parking, let's examine the Merriweather Post experience. Ushers sent ticket holders to the wrong side of the arena; the unreasonable $20 ATM limit carries an offensive $4 charge; food was limited to sushi and pretzels at three of four stalls; overflowing toilets sent women to the paperless men's rooms. Contempt for the fans was palpable.

in order to be fair and balanced, let's take a look at how the merriweather proprietors view their shithole of a venue:

Merriweather was designed by the world renowned architect Frank Gehry, who is best known for defying architectural conventions. In the early 1960’s, he accepted the challenge of developing a design that would least disturb the natural topography of the Merriweather site (yes, it would be a real shame to disturb some bushes off I-95 in maryland). He succeeded (this depends on your definition of success - if success is building the most terrible outdoor concert venue ever, then gehry is one successful bastard) and the pavilion opened in 1967. Its acoustics were considered by many in the industry to be the best among outdoor venues. (if you're comparing it to outdoor venues that are like, that spot under that tree over there.)

Conveniently located (this is another example where the description depends on how you would define 'conveniently located' - ie, if 'conveniently located' actually means 'the most inconvenient location ever', then once again, they are spot on) in the Baltimore/Washington corridor off Route 29 in Columbia, Maryland, Merriweather is nestled (or dropped like a big old poo) within the 40 preserved acres known as Symphony Woods. The natural, outdoor concert setting is one that simply can’t be matched.

For more than 35 years, Merriweather has hosted a diverse range of artists and events, offering the area’s absolute best in contemporary entertainment. At Merriweather, we are committed to delivering a concert experience that is the best in every way (i can't even try to make any more lame-ass comments on the merriweather experience because my blood is boiling over with such rage and hatred at these blatant lies and ARGGGH MERRIWEATHER I WILL END YOU).

DID YOU KNOW? Many of the trees on the property are tagged and numbered to preserve the natural beauty of the site.

whatever. someone needs to drop a nuclear bomb on merriweather. it would be more appealing as a radioactive burned-out hole than a concert venue.

buongiorno! it's monday, and i am barely coherent. i had a pretty good weekend. friday night i did nothing, as i have mostly done for the past few months, because i had a long-distance run at 6am saturday morning. even though it was only 10 miles, it was one of the worst runs i have been on so far. first, i kind of got lost (we were running around haine's point and the tidal basin and i went the wrong way around). second, my knee was killing me, which is not a good thing, since i thought i'd banished that particular problem. third, i managed to develop and then pop an enormous blister on my toe, so the last two miles of the run involved me limping from one leg to the other, since my left leg had the bad knee, and my right foot had the popped blister so it felt like a million needles were sticking in my toe. i'm sure my waddle-run-hop-thing was an amusing sight for everybody.

saturday night was the bbq, and even though it rained, we stuck the thirty or so people who showed up inside the house and/or under the carport and managed to get some fun out of it. julie was the kickass grillmaster and made some very tasty burgers, and we got to play some beer pong and whatnot. i found that my beer pong skills are sadly lacking and very rusty, so i propose an immediate solution to bring them back to their peak: beer pong all night, every night. we have a perfect table in the basement of our house, and i'm only living there for two more weeks, so i've got to make use of it.

oh yes, i forgot to mention, the bbq involved a girl throwing up on the floor of our basement, then on herself, then maybe in the toilet, then in our kitchen sink? and some guy who literally stayed by our kitchen sink for at least three hours, laying his head down on the counter and moaning. for three hours.

sunday involved some post-party cleaning and bagels, and then: i started the process of Getting Ready to Move In With a Boyfriend Who is Going to Steal Your Closet Space. these are the facts: i am a girl. i like clothing. i like shoes and purses. i like beauty products. i currently have three closets worth of all the above. i am moving in, with my boyfriend, into one bedroom where there is one closet (ie, i can no longer have one closet solely for purses and shoes). i am also going to be sharing one bathroom with two boys. i'm not really worried about this fact, as both charles and tommy are far cleaner and neater than i or any girl i've ever lived with, but the fact remains: i own 32 different kinds of shampoo and conditioners and about 12 different kinds of lotions and face washes. we've only got one shower and rather limited counter space. some streamlining must be done.

so i went to target and bought all sorts of lovely rubbermaid bins and storage cases and little plastic boxes in which to put my 700 containers of maybelline eyeshadows. (which made me wonder if i'm actually going to create more clutter by getting so into all these cute storage boxes, but i'd rather not think about that.) i put all my sweaters and purses and scarves and a few other things into bins which are very neat and fit perfectly under my bed. i cleaned out my dresser, leaving two and half drawers for me and two and a half for tommy (who has recently become terrified after learning that i don't want to let him have any of his own furniture in our room because it won't match. well, it WON'T. i love tommy dearly, but his furniture is ugly, and mine is beautiful, and that's how it is).

but i suspect in the upcoming two weeks until our move-in date, i am going to have to learn how to share, compromise, and to not buy a dozen new products every time i step into a CVS. it'll be a life lesson, for sure.

our move-in is friday, august 27, and we'll be working all through the weekend, so if anyone wants to give us a hand, let us know. we need some manly men, because we're on the second floor and it'll be a pain the ass. i'll provide cookies and lemonade and beer!

Wonkette PSA: Stalkers, May We Have Your Attention Please

A reader alerts us to the presence of actual famous people within the District. (How did they get through the boring-o-fier?). George Clooney and Matt Damon are filming the Steven Soderberg-directed CIA thriller "Syriana" at L'enfant Plaza today. Better get while the getting is not hampered by a restraining order! (We wonder if a certain famous-for-DC lady will do a drive by, hoping for a more successful go at shameless Clooney canoodling than she got away with at last year's "K Street" premiere.)

you know what i realized this past week on vacation at the beach? that i am a much happier person without knowing anything that's going on in the world. i think that must explain why i was so content at uva. i lived in a bubble. voting for gore by absentee ballot was the most informed thing i had ever done in my life. i read the washington post online, and my friends' online journals (livejournals, that is, i had never heard of blogs back then) but that was it. i never read political blogs, or watched cable news, or even the evening news.

it was even better in italy. i had a vague idea of what the whole sniper thing was about, and i was worried for tommy and my family and friends, but not freaked out. when we went to war in march, i barely even knew the [non]reasons for going, and the entire ordeal seemed like a stupid game to me that would, for all its stupidity, probably be over in a matter of months. to be honest, i didn't even care that much that bush was president. i'm a lifelong democrat, but bush seemed harmless, and i figured the US would be okay in a general sort of sense.

then it all went to hell. i got back from italy and decided one day, on a whim, to become more politically informed, because it was apparent that i knew nothing about everything and it was shameful. i read the nyt and the post cover to online cover every day, and devoured all other sorts of online news sites. i watched cnn and msnbc and different news shows constantly, and started to feel proud of what i was learning and that i knew more about politics than the average american.

and then, i discovered political blogs. some say worst day ever. at first it was just a passing fancy - i would read sullivan, yglesias, daily kos, instapundit very briefly and not regularly at all. but then i started reading the bigger sites more and more, and found through their blogrolls these sites that were so vitriolic and terrible and petty about politics, but so much so that they were mesmerizing and i couldn't keep away from them. at first it was fun to read the angry debates and even participate in them from time to time, but in the past few months the hate and name-calling involved in politics has risen to such a level that it was actually physically stressing me out to read them. i wanted to not read them, but i was so often bored at work that i kept doing it anyway.

so i was happy to be away from a computer for a week. at the beach, i guess i made a sort of conscious decision to not really pay attention to the news. my parents bought the nyt every day, but i would only read the arts and entertainment sections. when the tv was on, it was mostly switched to cnn and other cable news, but i found that unless it was basic news coming from an anchorperson's mouth, straight from the teleprompter, i couldn't bear to listen. like, when a pundit got on a show and started ranting and raving about something, i physically couldn't stand to watch and would beg for the channel to be changed or would go outside to read. i guess also in the past year i've learned what a horrible sham most of our mainstream press is, and it sickens me to watch them.

so i came back from the beach much more ignorant (i had no idea what the whole kerry cambodia thing was about, and i still don't really, and i don't really care to) but much happier. i caught up with the blogs written by people i know in real life, and read some yglesias and kevin drum and daniel drezner, who are basically the only political bloggers i can stand anymore, and a few other sites on the blogroll and that was it. i think i'll try to strike a balance between being reasonably informed yet not so consumed by politics and debate that it stresses me out.

anyway, i guess i have no idea what the point of this post was, except i am bored at work and wanted to say that i think i'll be much happier if i let the daily show and the onion be the source of all my world news knowledge.

If you haven't already, you should go read this short post from Kevin Drum. This administration has no shame.

tommy and i watched paula zahn eagerly last night (no, 'watching paula zahn' and 'eagerly' have never appeared in a sentence together before) because we thought matt yglesias was going to make an appearance. turns out he got preempted by some TNR guy, oh well. but i did hugely enjoy this comment on yglesias' blog, about matt and his roommates, and i know kriston, susan & co. will enjoy it as well:

matt sez: Looks like I'll be on Paula Zahn tonight...

UPDATE: No such luck, they got some guy named "John Judis" to be the liberal instead. My plan: Go drink with newly arrived roommate. Hope Judis kicks John Fund's ass.

then, in the comments:

Somehow I picture Matt and his roommates like the guys in Entourage, riding around in limos, playing golf, and getting naked fan letters. Only, you know, the DC version of that.

Posted by: jz | August 12, 2004 11:10 PM

which begs the question: what IS the dc version of that?

tommy's friend justin was kind enough to use his lexisnexis magic abilities to find us an article about the shaw neighborhood written by washington post guy frank ahren, who has lived in the place we're about to move into for six or seven years. full text behind the cut.

MORE...

haha. being a longtime proponent of making fun of wacky religious people, esp scientologists, i think these statements from tom cruise in an interview in rolling stone are hysterical:

"Who are those people that say those things?" Cruise asks when I bring it up over lunch one day. "Because I promise you, it isn't everybody. But I look at those people and I say, 'Bring it. I'm a Scientologist, man. What do you want to know?' I don't mind answering questions."

He lists some of Scientology's selling points: its drug-abuse, prison-rehabilitation and education programs. "Some people, well, if they don't like Scientology, well, then, fuck you." He rises from the table. "Really." He points an angry finger at the imaginary enemy. "Fuck you." His face reddens. "Period."

bring it. i'm a FUCKING SCIENTOLOGIST, man, and i will FUCK YOU UP.

from the beach! it was pretty nice, as vacations to soulless beach towns go. (sorry, mom.) we were at stone harbor, a little town on the south jersey shore. the beaches there were beautiful - somewhat reminiscent of the outer banks - but the town was flat and cutesy and kind of terrifying, in a soul-sucking way. everyone there was a beautiful tanned teennage god/goddess who would stare you down for attempting to look on their glowing beings, or else a leathery 50 year-old woman with a louis vuitton imitation bag and frosted poufy blond hair and lots of bling. and everybody is white. i saw two black women, and that was about as ethnic as stone harbor got.

the food there was also terrible - terrible in the kind of way that makes you want to eat rice krispies and lactose tolerant milk out of a solo cup in your hotel room for every single meal, which is what i did about 30% of the time. we finally found a decent italian restaurant our last day there, but up until then my meals had consisted of rubbery spaghetti with diseased-looking mussels, many a crabcake sandwich smothered in tartar sauce to hide the taste, or ice cream for dinner.

but, to sway away from my inherent negativity, like i said, the beaches were beautiful, i got to spend time with my family (minus my brother peter, who is toiling away as a research assistant to some nuclear grad student at uva or something), we had absolutely fantastic weather every single day, and i got to read a lot, watch a lot of tv, and see a lot of movies, which are three of my favorite time-sucking activities. we saw spiderman II (a reviewing for me; even better the second time); collateral (actually pretty decent; jamie foxx was great, and i still despise tom cruise, though i think he's better when he's an evil, despicable character); and the princess diaries II (shut the hell up; my little sister wanted to see it, and if you don't bow down and worship at julie andrews' fabulous feet, then you clearly didn't watch mary poppins and/or the sound of music 3200 times when you were 10).

i read slammerkin, which is an intelligent, sort of dickens-ish historical fiction about a london prostitute in the 18th century (go whores!). then in about two days i read the entirety of the his dark materials trilogy by philip pullman, which I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING LOVED AND IT WAS AMAZING AND GO READ THEM and dare i say - it was better than harry potter? not as fun, more serious and adult, kind of emotional and heavy-handed, and i'm pretty sure it's all a recreation of paradise lost so i'm not sure if you're down for that sort of thing, but i thought it was awesome. i don't normally go in for the fantasy genre of books, but i completely fell in love with everything about it. a movie is in the works, with the wonderful tom stoppard writing the script, and new line cinema producing, and if they can carry it all off, it will be better than LOTR and harry potter and everything in THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD INCLUDING ALCOHOL.

anyway, i am back to the normal world now, and going to work tomorrow, and doing all sorts of boring things. in case you didn't receive an evite for some reason (because i am a lazy, mean bitch or don't have your email addy), my roommates and i are hosting a bbq this coming saturday, starting around 6 and going till whenever. you can email me for the location. please come out and drink with me to validate my existence.

Tim DeLaughter of the Polyphonic Spree will be taking questions in 40 minutes or so over at washingtonpost.com. I finally got myself to pick up tickets to their Monday performance -- anyone else who's interested in seeing what's sure to be a unique show might want to check out the chat and see if it'll inspire a ticket purchase.

So, Mean Girls, 7:30 tonight. Who's in? I'd suggest we rendezvous either at my house or the Drafthouse, as your particular schedule allows. I'm also hoping to grab some Crisp & Juicy for dinner; I guess we'll have to just play things as we see it, depending on how quickly folks can get out of the office. No big deal either way -- dinner nachos have never seemed like a particularly terrible worst-case scenario to me.

Let me know what you're planning to do -- if it involves meeting at my place, any time after 5:00 or so should be fine.

Like doctors forced to switch antibiotics as bacterial resistance develops, users have to periodically shift P2P apps as lawyers and record companies continue to serially neuter filesharing programs -- and others simply self-destruct under the weight of spyware. I've been recommending Overnet to folks for a while, but since its reincorporation into the eDonkey project, things on that network seem to have dried up.

So I've got a new P2P recommendation for you all: Soulseek. It's spy- and adware-free, and has a good recommendation tool. Most important, its user base has really good taste in music, and actually bother to hang out in chatrooms. An especially neat feature: if you find someone with some files you want, you can browse the rest of their shared directory. I imagine some other P2P apps have done this before, but this is the first time I've bothered to check it out. Turns out it's a pretty great way to find out about new music. All in all, Soulseek is well-suited to figuring out what you might want to buy in the future, which, if you feel any guilt about postcollegiate filesharing, is what P2P is all about, right?

The downside: they use a centralized server architecture. Ouch. Worse: they collect money for providing P2P services. Oh dear. You can pay $5/month and not have to wait in line when another user's upload slots are all taken. This is a nice system to my mind, but charging money is sure to attract the lawyers awfully quickly, and the centralized architecture will make it easy to shut down.

For those using Macs, it's possible to use the Linux client with a little work -- you'll have to check out the homepage for details. If you're feeling lazy, Kriston tells me Acquisition is good. Looks like it's a Gnutella client though, so you may have already seen what it has to offer through the lens of a different interface like BearShare or Limewire.

I imagine a lot of you have already heard of Soulseek or are using it already, but I'm sufficiently impressed with it after a day of use that I feel like risking preaching to the converted.

Via Gizmodo, check out this article outlining some of the technologies that'll be employed by protesters at the RNC convention. From bikes that spray-chalk text messages on pavement as they're ridden to rollerblader-pulled balloon-cams for getting a reliable headcount, there's some very cool stuff being done.

Someone got paid for this?! It's barely a hundred words, and all it tells you is that Madden 2005 is out. Sheesh.

Here at Nerd Central we've decided to eschew the Madden franchise and throw in our lot with the relatively new line of ESPN-branded football videogames, developed by the same folks who ably handled sports-title duties for the Dreamcast. I enjoyed the Dreamcast's NFL 2002 a lot. It also helps that ESPN is undercutting Madden by $30 this year.

Why stray from our longstanding commitment to intellectual property theft? Well, you can only play online if you own the actual disc -- otherwise Microsoft catches on and you get banned.

Thing is, we've had the game for a while now, and I still haven't tried out the online features. Okay, it's kind of cool to have the league rosters updated weekly to reflect injuries and trades. But that isn't exactly a feature that justifies the purchase. Online multiplayer is the reason for getting the game, but I can't bring myself to try it out. I'm too scared.

The game is frightening in a lot of ways. The graphics are eerily realistic: while playing it I've had more than one person walking by ask whether it was a real televised game or not. It's creepy in more subtle ways, too: as you play your friends, the game silently records every move, creating a profile of how you play. In a few weeks' time if I want to play a game against Charles he won't have to be here. Heck, he wouldn't even have to be alive! It's all very HAL-9000. I suppose you could make the case that this functionality is something people might like to have. Okay. Did I mention the game comes with predefined profiles for celebrities like David Arquette and Jamie Kennedy? I'll leave you to decide whether this is a force for good or evil.

The most disturbing feature, though, is the franchise mode. You get to be the coach for your favorite team over the course of a season; you manage trades, set rosters and define a custom playbook. Fine. You also determine when each squad practices, how much time they spend viewing game film or in physical therapy, and whether you storm out of each week's team meeting or end with a team prayer. I quickly realized I wasn't up for this stuff, but I imagine at some point you have to choose what to say to the press when your star player gets pulled over for DUI.

I find all this more than a little horrifying. I don't ask much: I just want to throw some hail marys and run a fake on every single punt play. But somewhere out there are people who use every bit of this game, indulging their football ids to an extent that the human brain was clearly not designed to handle. The chance that I might hear their tortured ravings coming out of my TV speakers is a risk I'm not prepared to take.

The usually-wise Susan has suggested that it would be best to go see Mean Girls at the Drafthouse. Who am I to argue? She has access to millennia of inherited feminine wisdom & shit.

Shows are at 7:30 -- Kill Bill 2 being the 9:45 show; so if the early movie is too early, a solid Plan B exists. What days are good? Wednesday or Thursday get my vote.

And yes, this is a transparent attempt to increase post-count.

I do not like my landlady. If one were inclined to thoroughly analyze the situation they might conclude that this is the result of a serious subconscious mischaracterization on my part, whereby I unintentionally seek maternal approval from a business relationship. They might say that. I just think she's kind of a bitch.

As Catherine mentioned, she'll be gone for most of next week, so you suckers will be stuck with me. I promise to increase my blogging output to compensate, but you'll probably still want to update your internet routine appropriately.

More self-servingly, Charles will be leaving for a week, too. Goodness! Jon will still be around (although busy entertaining a guest), and Mark is usually available, so long as the planned activity involves acquiring experience points. Still, an entertainment surplus must be coordinated! Let me know if ya'll are up to anything exciting.

the long national nightmare is over. tommy and i have taken the GRE with more-than-reasonable success. hurrah! we're about to sign a lease on an apartment with charles. hurrah! i go to the beach tomorrow for a week. hurrah!

now i can finally let that little ball of stress that was building up behind my eyeballs melt away. apologies if i've been a huge bitch to anyone this past week, but now i can go back to my normal, only stressed-out-and-paranoid-three-quarters-of-the-time self.

the GRE went as well as could be expected. tommy's appointment was a couple of hours earlier than mine, so we went in separately. they basically sit you in a windowless, camera-monitored room with a little gray cubicle and a crappy computer and say, GO! once again, i scored nearly equal on verbal and math, which continues to astonish me because i am VERY terrible at math. in fact, i basically guessed at half the questions on the math section. i would see time was down to 15 minutes and i still had like 32 questions or something to go, and i would say, okay, the area of that particular shape-y thing is...3 square root of 2! sure! makes sense. not that i actually did any equation to come to 3 square root of 2, but why not!

i thought verbal was a lot easier, and i wish i'd done better on it. i didn't quite break 1400, which was my goal, but i came awfully close and my verbal score was still like 80 points higher than the average of a journalism grad student at berkeley (the arbitrary standard to which i was holding myself) so i was satisifed with the results. tommy did significantly better than i, so no doubt he will go to The Best School Ever for Whatever It Is He Wants To Do (that weird cognitive science/neuroscience thing).

also compounding my happiness is the fact that we're about to sign a lease on a very cute apartment in d.c. it is kind of between the convention center and logan circle. it's not the hippest or most centrally-located part of town, but the apartment is adorable, with 15-foot ceilings, lots of exposed brick, great windows, and a neat balcony overlooking a "historic alley." now, based on what that alley looked like to me yesterday, you could call any alley with trash and cracked concrete "historic", but whatever. it's a great little street, with rows of well-maintained, freshly-painted houses and a grocery store right around the corner. frank ahren lives there now, we learned, who used to be the radio critic for the washington post but now writes for some other section. apparently a while back he wrote an article about his apartment and the neighborhood, but the wapo archives have not revealed it to us. weird. i'm going to be a dc resident. weird! i haven't been one since i was 9 years old.

anyway, i've got to get now to some mundane chores like cleaning out the carport and mowing the lawn, which i am extraordinarily happy to be doing, because they are not a) taking the GRE or b) looking exhaustedly for a place to live. amen.

TOM SAYS: So, like Catherine said, it was a productive morning. I ended up with a 1470, which I'm happy with, although I was hoping for a really amazing, boiling-ocean, rain-of-blood kind of score, given that my letter of recommendation best case scenario is currently "Dear Sir or Madam: Records indicate that the student to which this application pertains attended one of my classes." Math was a little too brutal for my girlish dreams to be realized, however -- too much probability stuff, too little geometry. Oh well.

If anyone's curious, here's a link to a map of where our new place is (note to internet perverts: no stalking, please). I'm apprehensive about moving out of Arlington, but anxious to be able to put a check mark next to "lived in the city" so I can flee back to suburbia's WASPy patrician embrace without qualms. Anyway, it'll be good to have a change of pace.

ralph fiennes cast as voldemort in next harry potter

sorry for lack of substantive posting today. i have been busy flipping my shit about a) the GRE tomorrow morning b) ever finding a neat house to live in come september c) incompetence of coworkers that is cutting into my normally relaxing, task-free work week. thank god for vacation come saturday.

Atrios and Chris Bowers are covering this one -- the Bush campaign blog said some dumb things about firefighters:

Generally speaking, the likelihood that a firefighter will vote for John Kerry is inversely proportional to the number of fires he has actually fought. Witness all those T-shirted "Fire Fighters for Kerry" you saw at the convention. A little soft around the middle some of them were, weren't they? Do you think some of them could haul a hose pack up 50 flights of stairs? I'm not betting on it. I'm guessing the only fires many of them have seen lately were at IAFF barbecues.

I'm not that outraged at this -- while firefighters are certainly deserving of our admiration, I think post 9/11 our national cult of the fireman has gotten a little out of control; being a cop is a more dangerous job, after all, and while police have been paid plenty of lip service in the last three years, the fact that firefighters won't arrest you for simple posession -- combined with the rise of the Great Outdoor Games -- seems to have cemented them in the collective unconscious as the prototypical American Heroes.

Still, it's kind of amazing that someone would think calling firemen lardasses would be a good campaign strategy. And who's copy editing over there, anyway? "A little soft around the middle some of them were, weren't they"? Is Yoda working for BC04?

UPDATE: Sorry, correction. The Bush blog merely quoted from an article from an LAPD officer in which the above quote appeared. Still seems dumb to me. Anyway, visit the GWB.com blog for the source material, and other great tidbits. Example: John Kerry said he was going to go get some ribs from a Milwaukee BBQ joint, and then he didn't. George W. Bush, on the other hand, DID eat at that BBQ place. Why do you insist on lying so much, Mr. Kerry?

Okay, so maybe the President thought he was going for Chinese. Things didn't go according to plan. It could happen to anyone! The whole press bus thought they were going for Chinese too! At least he set his mind to something, god dammit, and made the best out of a bad situation.

totally depressing - i was informed today that i can never donate blood again because i've lived in italy (well, can never donate again until they develop a test for mad cow disease). i went down to the building conference room, where the red cross had set up shop, and was promptly sent away (though all the staff were really sweet about it and gave me cookies anyway). i understand that they don't want mad cow disease sweeping through the country's blood reserves, but since i've donated blood a lot and firmly believe in doing it, especially since there is almost constantly not really enough blood and this summer has been particularly bad, i was sad. fucking european cows.

anyone want to donate in my place? if you've never done it before, it's kind of a fun experience. there is the whole sticking-an-enormous-needle-in-your-arm part of the deal, but then you just lie back for 15 minutes and squeeze a ball repeatedly. and then you get all the juice, cookies and soda you want. you also then have a fool-proof justification for not exercising for the next few days, and it can usually get you out of work for an hour or more (what boss is going to say you can't cut out for the afternoon to donate blood?). and you get to wear a "i donated today" sticker around, proclaiming your donor superiority to all who can see.

info here. go donate!

you have to see it to believe it:

from eeeevvverbody's favorite security mom, michelle malkin.

this book is a great addition to malkin's recent column on townhall, where she complains about a UNITY conference where minority journalists argue they aren't receiving fair treatment in the business of journalism. malkin rightly takes these whiners to task for asking for this silly thing called "diversity." what is this "diversity" that they chatter on about? then she complains that she wasn't invited back to the next UNITY conference, which really doesn't seem to make sense, since she hates minorities who ask for equality and wants to put all muslims in an internment camp and you think that UNITY would really want to talk about these issues. in the column she also includes a great "media diversity checklist" that she suggest you pass out to your favorite colored reporter to make sure they are on the right side of the line. it includes questions such as "i oppose bilingual education", "i oppose gay marriage", and "i cry when i hear 'proud to be an american' by lee greenwood." it's true -- that song always does get me right here, in the gut.

only will journalists (and, we presume, the rest of america) be truly diverse when we all become an army of self-loathing, condom-fearing, sappy song-endorsing, gun-toting malkin bots! preferably with bullet-spraying nipples.

i know i shouldn't sputter self-indignant hatred of crazed, racist conservatives before i've fully finished my cup of instant coffee. but i couldn't help it. this woman drives me insane.

respond to this argument:

The University of Claria is generally considered one of the best universities in the world because of its instructors' reputation, which is based primarily on the extensive research and publishing record of certain faculty members. In addition, several faculty members are internationally renowned as leaders in their fields. For example, many of the faculty from the English department are regularly invited to teach at universities in other countries. Furthermore, two recent graduates of the physics department have gone on to become candidates for the Nobel Prize in Physics. And 75 percent of the students are able to find employment after graduating. Therefore, because of the reputation of its faculty, the University of Claria should be the obvious choice for anyone seeking a quality education.

the sample response that received a score of 1:

Is true that University of Claria is generally consider one of the best university in world. Because instructors reputations. Because research and publishing record. Because teach in other countries. Because win Nobel prizes. Because find empolyment after graduating. But other school good just as Claria. Can be little money. Can be good teachers too.

i find it so totally depressing that where i go to grad school can, in part, be determined by if i know that a "die" is a "tool used for shaping."

i've been doing some studying for the GRE this weekend and was feeling increasingly worse about my likely score. then, i read this sample GRE essay responding to a question about if we need more specialists or generalists in society today:

I disagree with the statement about specialists, we need specialists who take individual areas and specialize. A generalists can pinpoint a problem. He or she cannot determine the magnitude of the problem. A specialist can find the root of the problem. When he or she has years working in that specific field. For example, when i got sick i went to a doctor. He did blood work, x-ray, talk to me, ect. He prescribed me a medicine. I got worst. So i decided to go another doctor. Now, i am doing great. A specialist knows the facts right away. Otherwise, it will take longer or not at all.

this essay, not surprisingly, was scored a 1 (out of 6). but it makes me feel so good to read it. if there are barely literate people taking the GRE out there, then i'm not going to be the absolute worst!