thanks to the kindness of kriston and susan, i watched the debate tonight and at first i was terrified that kerry was going to shoot himself in the foot, but you know what? he didn't. he did fantastically. kerry looked composed, knowledgeable, and incredibly presidential. bush looked like he was grasping at straws. i can say now with confidence that i am proud and happy to vote for john kerry, and that i do believe he will be a good president.

this is rather sobering:

It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April
when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when
Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began
spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a
foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are thing?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad."

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the
country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of
landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

and 35 children were killed this morning in baghdad.

last night i went with susan and jennifer to two amy's for delizioso pizza, and it was everything i'd been promised. yum! we had a margherita pizza with mozzarella di bufalo and a norcia pizza, with mozzarella, roasted peppers and salami. the norcia was especially good - the margherita i liked, but wasn't blown away by it, especially since it was one of three DOC pizzas - denominazione di origine controllata, which is basically a quality assurance for food - and i expected something really amazing. anyway, two amy's is a member of the associazione verace pizza napoletana, which means association of real napolean pizza. so some of their pizzas have been certified and meet all the standards of napoletano pizza making! which is pretty awesome.

we only had the pizza, but i kept staring greedily at other people's tables and noticed that lots of the appetizers and other dishes looked really amazing as well. so i'll definitely be headed back.

post-dinner we went to jennifer's apartment across the street where she served us this delicious dome cake of awesomeness, which was filled with cream and almond slivers and chocolate and looked very pretty. it made me feel nostalgic for cooking, which i haven't really done in a long time. tommy and i used to make good dinners together all the time, but we haven't really in a while, mostly because we're terribly lazy, i suspect. the last thing i baked was some banana bread (which turned out well; however, in the banana bread i had made before that, i totally left out ALL THE SUGAR until it had been in the oven for five minutes and i stirred it in frantically. it did not turn out so great, as you might imagine).

anyway, i think it's ridiculous that i don't cook more, especially when i live in walking distance of two grocery stores (even if one of them is the obnoxious whole foods and the other is the ghetto giant). so, i wanted to beg some recipes off you all. do you have a particularly good lasanga? some butter squash soup? umm..meatloaf? or sites where you can get recipes from? really, anything. part of the reason i don't cook anymore, i think, is that i have nothing interesting to make. so let me mine your little food brains for ideas!

update: oh god. think i will have to make this.

update 2.0: when susan was driving me home last night we saw that they had begun preparations for a huge greek festival at st. sophia (i think?) so i think we should all go there on saturday and eat large quantities of greek food. (apple picking has more or less been decided for sunday.)

I'll be watching tonight's debate with interest, and only partly because Monday's Redskins loss left me desperate for a victory-by-proxy. See, I was a debater in high school. Actually, I was captain of the debate team at one point, although I wouldn't claim the "master debater" title that my friends invariably suggest when the topic comes up. Really, you guys are too kind.

I can't help but laugh at articles previewing the presidential debates that say things like "Bush's style is unusual by the traditional standards of debate". This is a silly thing to say, because while there are a lot of kinds of debate, none of them really resemble the format that we'll see tonight. Some of the more popular:

Justice Scalia:

"I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged"

via Atrios

i have so little desire to post anything of interest in here lately. yet i feel compelled to at least try, especially since as of lately i've seen the readership go way up in the stats. around 150 a day, which really isn't a lot, except we were getting around 80-90 hits a day previously. what's up with that? i mean, who reads this? i know that my family does; my friends, tommy's friends, and some people from my blogroll who have been kind enough to link here. and i can't tell you the number of hits we get from google for "narcissism." BUT WHO ARE THE REST OF YOU? COME FORWARD, COWARDS.

anyway, since i'm bored and feeling contentless, i'm going to post this dumb little meme i noticed over on a livejournal site the other day. actually, the responses to the site i saw it at were quite interesting. post anonymously if you want; be bitchy if you want. or leave your own pictures for a word that describes you instead. i wish more people who read this site that i have never met would leave comments.

1. Think of a word you would use to describe me (meaning me, catherine. or do tommy. or yourself, i don't care. just clarify who it is you're describing).
2. Go to Google Image Search and search for that word.
3. Select the picture you see as most fitting, and post it as a reply.

you can see the image i found for my word behind the cut.

It's been a while since I've been to the gym. Moving to our new digs caused a serious realignment in my routine. Instead of pointlessly lifting iron I found myself pointlessly lifting cardboard. It felt a little emasculating -- it was definitely time to find a new gym and get back to building the narcissism and brutish aggression that forms the foundation any healthy male ego.

But I procrastinated. There are two gyms within a mile of our place -- the National Capital Y and the DC Jewish Community Center. Unfortunately, both are pricey -- $70/month for the Y. The DCJCC is even worse -- there, $70 is the monthly fee for "young professionals earning less than $30,000". Yikes. On the other hand, the DCJCC is very close and has a lap pool, which would be good for my knee. And I have been meaning to learn more about this vast Jewish conspiracy that I've been hearing so much about. Onward to the community center!

so, tommy and i are going down to charlottesville either saturday or sunday to do the whole apple-picking/stuffing your face with apple donuts thing at carter mountain, depending on which day the weather is nicer. it's really a wonderful experience, so you all should come. let us know in comments if you're interested.

It shames me deeply, but I agree with Michelle Malkin on one thing: Andrew Sullivan is kind of a whore. Sullivan has raised nearly $200,000 in his last two pledge drives to cover "bandwidth costs". Now he's just signed up with blogads, explaining that doing so "will soon provide a real revenue stream for this site". Sure, the guy deserves to earn a living -- which he does through his various print journalism gigs, too. But pretending these drives are for bandwidth is disingenuous. Kos says his site costs him $6000 a year -- and dailykos, being more of a community site, has significantly greater needs in terms of bandwidth and hardware than andrewsullivan.com.

Like I said, I don't begrudge Sullivan his ability to earn a living, but it seems like he's making a very good one while only slightly-smaller bloggers like Atrios or Kos can't make one at all -- which makes me think people are responding to his lame complaints about hosting costs rather than intentionally giving money to provide him with a salary. Misleading people with geekspeak in order to maintain such an arrangement is a little shady -- although I wouldn't hold my breath for Sullivan to see a problem with this or any other income disparity.

ciao tutti. i know you are just salivating to hear about our weekend adventures on ass island, so i'll cut to the chase.

the weekend was fantastic. well, except for getting to the island and back. it took us six hours on friday evening to get up there, due to terrible bay bridge traffic. jon, tommy, and i arrived around 12:30am; julie, matt, jess and robin were already there, fending off pygmy deer and roasting marshmallows. let me tell you about these pygmy deer: they are terrifying. more terrifying than ponies. friday night as i was walking to the bathrooms to brush my teeth, i saw a small group of them on the side of the road, just munching grass and being cute and tiny. "oh, how adorable," i thought to myself. "tiny deer." then i caught the eye of the male deer (who is about three feet tall). he stared me down, and all of a sudden i noticed that he had ENORMOUS horns. he kept staring, and edged closer, and then i decided that was a good time to break into a run. thankfully he did not challenge me to a head-butting duel, as these deer are apparently wont to do, so all was good.

pictures are behind the cut. be prepared for excessive wildlife photos.

Washington's greatest perennial battles are about to be rejoined. First up: Cowboys vs. Redskins.

On one side, embarassingly underskilled yet widely venerated warriors from Texas with a fondness for cocaine and a laughable macho frontier aesthetic. On the other, profligate spenders with a lackluster track record who, while competent, are clearly less able than many of their divisional rivals. Their very name leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many supporters -- but what choice do we have?

Come watch the spectacle with me tonight, Monday, 9PM, and then on Thursday, the same thing but with podiums. If you've got any ideas about good places to get cheap drinks and yell at the TV (preferably in the U/14th, Dupont or MCI Center neighborhood), I'm still looking for suggestions.

UPDATE: Yeah, we're lazy. Our place, unless someone complains, in which case I could be convinced to drag my sorry carcass into the rainy night. Either way, feel free to drop by.

I've been pretty bad about holding up even my admittedly-meager end of the blogging this past week or so. There's not much to say about that other than a consulting gig that puts my screen in plain view of a supervisor, fretting over letters of recommendation, and the usual lack of inspiration.

Yesterday presented a nice change of pace, though -- on Wednesday, at the last minute, I got an email from the secretary of one of my former professors, offering me a meeting at 4:30 Thursday. I did some quick schedule juggling, tried my best to weasel out of telling my boss why I was going to Charlottesville, and one sun-dappled ride later I was back on campus. Or, as we pretentious UVA fucks like to say, "on grounds".

thanks to brian and lisa, who donated last night and pushed me over the edge over $2,000! if you had intended to donate but just hadn't gotten around to it, no worries - i'm raising money collectively with my coworker (for a total of $4,000), and she's still pretty far short of her mark, so anything past my $2,000 will go to her.

this weekend tommy, julie, matt and i are heading with ms. jess paar and a bunch of her friends to camp on ASS island. mmm. ass. i mean assateague island, home of all those wonderful wild ponies (along with chincoteague island). last time i was up there was in high school. one afternoon we were sitting on the beach, and a herd of wild ponies came galloping over the dunes. we all rushed to grab our cameras and were marveling and taking photographs happily, until we realized that the ponies were headed straight towards us. and they showed no signs of slowing down. and there were a lot of them. all of a sudden they weren't so cute and little; they were wild-eyed beasts hellbent on destruction with massive hooves. we sat there in blank terror for a few seconds, then started screaming and throwing ourselves into the sand out of the way. about 20 feet in front of us the herd swerved sharply to the right and galloped off into the distance. thus were we spared from the evil ponies.

so, i'm kind of scared to go back to the land with of pony terror. and add to that fact that i've never been camping, and you could have a potentially horrifying weekend. but i'll try to make the best of it! as long as i'm continually fed beer, crabs, and smores, i think i'll be okay. right? i really don't want to be a stereotypically terrible screechy girl camper who can't live without her blowdryer and her 174 beauty products. anyway, i think i'll bring my camera because i haven't had a good photo entry in a while, and i'm sure pictures of me, miserable at a campsite, without make-up and cowering in the wake of ponies will be fun for all to see.

last night's happy hour raffle fundraiser was, by all accounts, a smashing success. people were drunk, lengths and lengths of raffle tickets were bought, prizes were handed out in a rather haphazard manner (with several people who had bought scores and scores of tickets winning multiple prizes, which kind of sucks, but eh, they did buy an awful lot). and...with almost $800 being made! it totally surpassed my expectations. billions of thanks to everyone who came out, including susan, kyle and his friend steven, charles and tommy (who together bought like 150 tickets or something), naomi, julie, becca and mike from DCist, tracey, jen kuo, teresa...oh jeez...and whoever else i'm forgetting. i'm sorry. you saw how spastic i was last night. i can't remember anything.

and then i arrived at work this morning to a donation from the lovely johanna gray, charles' younger sister (i swear to god i think the gray family has given me like $200 total), and with everything totaled i have...$1985!!! the long nightmare is almost over! (i just have to, you know, run 26 miles.) anyone want to kick in the last $15?

anyway: to everyone who has donated and is reading this and doesn't live within me-thanking-you-in-person-distance, please email me your addresses, because i want to send you thank you cards.

HOO FUCKING RAH.

while watching monday night football yesterday, a commercial came on for the most recent show by j.j. abrams, the creator of such awesomeness as "felicity" and "alias." the show's called lost, and i made a conscious decision within 30 seconds of the commercial to become entirely obsessed with it, based on practically nothing, except the fact that it's from j.j. abrams, it stars matthew fox, my freshman college crush lover from party of five, it's got the painfully hipster hobbit as a british rock star. and i think there are dinosaurs involved somehow.

here's a summary of the show, which has garnered positive reviews across the board:

Survivors of a mid-Pacific plane crash have landed on an island of harsh terrain, cruel weather and dark secrets, including a frightful creature that stalks the jungle. Strangers all, even those related by blood, the survivors' pasts — their ethics, religions, politics, and attitudes — threaten to jeopardize the group's ability to endure.

Also, there might be a man-eating dinosaur sucking people up its nostrils.

okay, i added that last part. but there IS something large and in charge hunting the people on the island. we were speculating about it last night:

aaron: i hope it's silverback gorillas.
everyone else: blank stare.
tommy: um, i hear it's like x-files. i'm betting there's some sort of evil government project or conspiracy.
aaron: that would be totally awesome. silverback gorillas are awesome.
catherine (reading online spoilers, as she is wont to do with every show ever): well, i don't think there are gorillas, but apparently there IS a polar bear!
aaron: close enough!

the addition of lost to the wednesday night lineup could possibly create the most perfect two hours of tv watching EVER, certainly creating a wormhole in the tv universe, as during the hour post-lost comes (drumroll, please), AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL: CYCLE THREE. (why do they call it a cycle? that is ridiculous branding. it makes it sound like a washing machine.)

in checking out some of the new season's contenders, i was astonished at, well...the nastiness of some of them. i know tyra bank's team of gay midget makeup/style artists can transform even the fugliest girl into a shandi-worthy looker, but i'm starting to think that tyra's getting a wee bit insecure about her age, so that's why she's surrounding herself with the uglies.

but in any case: this fall, it's all about the wednesdays. you'll find me at home, on the couch with a bottle of merlot, watching "lost" with rapt attention, and then being so drunk by the time ANTM comes on that i'm hurling rabid comments at janice dickinson's plastic face.

don't forget! tomorrow from 5-8 p.m. at front page.

it's fall! it's sweater and scarf weather! it's apple-picking time! hurrah!

in sixth grade, i remember that i had to write some sort of essay for an exit test on what my favorite season was. i went with spring, and even wrote some bullshit about butterflies and the scent of flowers (i was only 12, and even then i knew what i was spouting was bullshit). but i was wrong. the best season in the entire world (well, at least in the d.c. area) is fall.

i had a fabulous fall weekend, thank you very much. friday night i conked out early (while watching the pride&prejudice dvd, yay), because i'm still trying to get over this cold thing. saturday morning i made pancakes (try the trader joe's pancake mix, it's yummy) and then went on a 7 mile run around the city. i showered, hung out, somehow downed three glasses of wine (one of which was drunk on our balcony while i saw a guy come pee in our alley; i went back inside after that). then went out with tommy to meet kyle at saint-ex and grab a drink. gate 54 was packed, so after a half hour or so, tommy headed home and kyle and i went over to the black cat to see the thrills. it was, overall, a disappointing show (except for kyle's company!). we had heard good things about the zutons, but they were bland, and the thrills, if possible, were even blander. every song sounded so much alike that soon i was yawning constantly and we decided to leave mid-show. i have to say, i can't remember the last time i walked out of a concert. it wasn't because the thrills were so utterly terrible - it was just the biggest snooze ever.

kyle dropped me off at dc9, where i met up with tommy, charles, jon, aaron and corrinne. at this point i somehow became wasted off my ass - which confused me, because i had drunk only three or four beers at the show. then i remembered those three glasses of wine pre-show on a nearly empty stomach. i guess dc9 was fun - i can't say that i remember. around 1 or 2am, tommy and i decided we were starving, so we waited for what seemed like forever in line at ben's chili bowl for some halfsmokes and chili cheese fries, then speedwalked home to eat. as we rounded the corner to our block, i saw who i thought was aaron opening our door, so i yelled out, "hey, fuck you!" (don't ask me why. i get belligerent when wasted.) actually, it was our next door neighbor, who looks like aaron from the back, opening his door, and now he thinks i'm certifiably insane. wonderful.

sunday morning, i dragged my hungover ass out of bed to meet susan and jennifer for brunch at saint ex. it was delicious - i had the nova cold plate, which consisted of salmon, cream cheese, tomatoes, rye bread, pickled onions and capers. thinking back, i should have ordered a mimosa to ease the pain, but i had a good time anyways. especially since we went shopping afterwards, and i was introduced to the superwonderful stores of home rule and pop. pop seemed to have nice, trendy stuff at fairly reasonable prices, and home rule was like if the alessi and umbra brands and every awesome product designer in the world threw up in a 1,000 sqft space. it was like high-tech, one of my absolute favorite milanese stores, condensed down for d.c.

post-brunch, i watched the redskins game. yes. well, i won't dwell.

and past that, things of even less interest took place, like laundry and statement of purpose work, so i will stop with the intention of not being the most boring person ever.

arcade fire tours entire east coast except, naturally, d.c.

britney wed skanky rat love fiance!

and it was done with the classiness you would expect.

if anyone out there has an extra ticket for the sold-out killers show at the 9:30 club, sunday, oct. 3, please let me buy it from you, so i can gift it to my little brother, as he would like very much to go, and everyone would be happy. grazie.

this is the most pathetic missed connection ever

man, who knew bloggers were such alcoholics. goddamn. but the DCist happy hour was quite fun. i'll post pictures later tonight.

this weekend, i think i want to try to hit the arts on foot thing and the greek festival, if anyone is interested. and i think kyle and i are going to the thrills show on saturday at the black cat, also if anyone is interested.

for now, i am going to spend the remaining half hour of the work day curled up under my desk, wallowing in my hangover. happy weekends!

update: dcist happy hour pics behind the cut

I just called Carter Mountain Orchard, and for once they picked up their phone. Weird. It took me a second to remember what I was calling about.

Oh yeah! Their apple-picking festival thingy. Back in Charlottesville we somehow stumbled across Carter Mountain's yearly harvest festival and had such a good time that we've done our best to make it back each year. Unfortunately our best hasn't been nearly good enough, and Catherine and I have only made it down for post-festival, post-hurricane apple picking. Which, it turns out, isn't nearly as great (although still fun).

Well, this year's gonna be different. The festival's happening the first two weekends in October (2nd & 3rd; 9th & 10th). If you like hayrides, cider and authentic old coots playing bluegrass as much as I do, you ought to join us. Catherine's particularly keen on the apple cider donuts, which she swears contain actual apple content of some sort. I'm not so sure, but I know better than to get between her and a translucently oily paper bag of fried batter. There are also pumpkins, a beautiful mountaintop view of Charlottesville, lots of little kids constantly falling down (another Catherine favorite), and the opportunity to purchase various strange acoutrements to your new apple-centric lifestyle. What the hell is apple butter used for, anyway?

It'll be so goddamn wholesome you'll feel like voting straight ticket Republican for at least a couple days.

the wonderful and lovely becca has donated $100 to my fundraising, for which i send a billion kisses her way. becca is one of my major inspirations for the fundraising and marathoning, for two reasons - her mother is currently fighting breast cancer, and i never would have started long-distance running/racing in the first place if it weren't for becca's help and motivation. she's done two marathons herself, and was the one who convinced me to run a half-marathon a year ago. she hasn't been able to run in ages because she needs knee surgery (which she's getting next week), but i hope she can be my running buddy again very soon. yay becca!

so, i'm not too good with the math, or with, you know, simple addition, but as far as i can tell, i have...$1400! that means only $600 to go! with the fundraiser next week, and a letter-writing thing i'm doing today, i will hopefully be done with this in the very near future.

geez. let me tell you, i will never look at people's fundraising efforts the same again. this has definitely been one of the harder tasks i've tried to accomplish, what with the constant begging of friends, begging of businesses to donate certificates to our raffle next week, begging of coworkers, begging of family members. but everyone has been amazing -- especially readers of this blog. i really need to throw a party for all of you, or something. honestly, i wouldn't have anywhere near the amount i currently do if it weren't for what readers have chipped in. it's quite amazing. i don't know exactly how to thank everyone, especially those who live far away, but i hope you know that your donations and words of encouragement have meant so much to me.

ps: thanks also to mr. grammar police himself, kriston capps, for his generous donation! everyone rocks! i am so happy!

and thanks to jessica!! so close now. yay.

If, like me, you've read about and been intrigued by the new documentary "What the Bleep Do We Know?", don't miss the article about it in today's issue of Salon.

On its surface, the movie is an inspiring spiel that repackages a number of Saganisms about the wonder of the subatomic universe and uses them to sketch a just-vague-enough picture of God and the Meaning of Life. It's a perfect pitch for wannabe pseudointellectuals like myself -- you get to keep your closely guarded "Fuck-You-Mom-And-Dad" secularism without having to face up to staring into that oh-so inconvenient void.

Unfortunately, it turns out that this uplifting tale of quarks is being spun by disciples of a woman who claims she can channel an ancient Atlantean philosopher named Ramtha. And who knows how this happened, but somehow the taped commentary of many of the experts in the film was horribly twisted from what they intended to say. Whoops!

In general, it's pretty tough to cut through appeals to quantum weirdness because, frankly, it's really weird, even by weirdness standards, and a lot of supposed experts only half-understand it. I don't mean to dismiss all subatomic accounts of the seemingly-supernatural. Some undeniably serious people have put forward metaphysical theories that lean heavily on quantum mechanics -- here I'm specifically thinking of Roger Penrose, who thinks that consciousness arises from quantum wave functions collapsing in your brain's microtubules. I'm not a big fan of that particular theory, but serious people have considered it and concluded that, at the very least, it doesn't rely on the existence of disembodied 30,000 year-old Atlantean philosophers.

Still, when someone starts talking about quantum physics and doesn't look either a) confused or b) exhausted, it might be a good idea to mentally substitute every mention of "quantum" with the word "aether".

So, a new Microsoft security hole has been discovered. Basically, your computer could begin downloading child pornography, emailing the FBI, and/or exploding at any moment.

Okay, maybe not that. But it can be made to run unsigned (aka arbitrary) code simply by someone making it display a properly manufactured JPEG. All it would take is someone slipping one of these things into an ad banner to zombify any number of Windows machines. That's no good. You might want to give Windows Update a ring.

On the other hand, there are more pressing technological threats.

the new arcade fire cd really *is* as good as everyone is saying. damn. tommy's playing it for me right now. (i stayed home sick today; i thought i had beat down the cold, but apparently running in rainy drizzle all over d.c. last night didn't build my immune system up.) wow. it is really good. one of those cds that grabs you right away (much like their live show did). not one of those cds that i have a delayed appreciatory response to. like a.c. newman's "the slow wonder". you should also go buy that. it's one of those albums that i really didn't like the first two listens, so i shoved it under my bed and forgot about it for three months, and then listened to it again, and was like, "damn catherine, were you on crack? this is awesome." albums included in the delayed appreciatory response category are both shins cds and b&s's dear catastrophe waitress. anyway: BUY ARCADE FIRE.

and a little lesson i learned today: you can go to the 9th street giant to buy milk, OJ, and artichoke hearts (being sick gives you weird cravings), wearing sweats, glasses, with greasy hair and the remnants of neutrogena zit cream smeared across your face, and STILL get hit on. lovely.

mr. matty wright just donated (a third time! for a total of $100!) to my fundraiser for the marine corps marathon. so i wanted to thank him effusively. i also realized that i had forgotten to thank a couple of other people who had donated recently -- mark silver and tracey parker. matt and tracey are people i've only hung out with briefly in person, and i've never even met mark, so i am amazed by their willingness to give me money (i mean, how do you know i'm not really running off to rome with it? moo hahahhah). anyway i owe them all a million beers if i ever get the chance.

if you'd like to help out, but can only afford a few bucks (i know times are tight for all us poor post-college kids), make your way to our fundraiser next week! it's just $5 for drink specials and a raffle ticket! (i promise this will be over soon. just one more month.)

muse is playing the 9:30 club november 8th, the upstate life is reporting. though i haven't listened to them in a super long time, i used to be obsessed with them. they were some damn good britpop. earlyish radiohead, at least when i last listened to them. i even wrote an overthetop gushing review of their first cd for the dec.

anyway, that's one of the cds i am meaning to pick up, along with the arcade fire. where the hell is a good record store in d.c., by the way?

ms. jessica yu has sent me the answer to all my entertainment-related questions. since i'm still not very familiar with logan circle/shaw, i don't know what restaurants/bars/theaters/trashy liquor stores are easily accessible. (okay, i lied, i've already familiarized myself with the neighborhood booze stands.)

but here comes yahoo with smartview! all you have to do is map your address, hit enter, and it comes up with icons for all the establishments that are nearby. then you can search by type of food, bars, theaters, banks, atms, etc. it's fantastico! maybe this has existed for years now, but i haven't ever seen it.

by this i learned that the wooly mammoth theater is about 2 blocks from my house, which is awesome, because i'm going there tomorrow with teresa to see a play for 25 cents. i've already forgotten what the play is about, but how can i pass up culture for a quarter?

anyway...i hope you all can come to the happy hour raffle at front page in dupont next week (sept. 22). we have such awesome prizes as gift certificates to many restaurants, an hour massage (!), trial gym memberships, $50 to spend at the ritz-carlton, etc. and a raffle ticket is only $5! if you didn't receive an evite from me, email me and i'll pass it on.

so, today i gathered courage and shot off an email to a professor from uva who i want to write me a recommendation for grad school. i had to gather courage because i hadn't taken a class from him since spring 2001, and i was sure he didn't remember rinky dink old me. but he was a journalism professor, and since uva has, oh, two journalism professors, one of whom i hadn't talked to since my first year, i figured he was my best shot. so i sent an email, complete with transcript and resume and other information to try to jog his memory even a little bit as to who i was.

anyway, upshot of the story: he'll write a recommendation for me! EVEN BETTER: he ADORES the shitty magazine i work on! this crap magazine, with its tiny circulation, has apparently played a vital role in his life, and he seemed impressed that i was associated with it.

so i just wanted to thank the gods of fate. this job kind of sucks, but it might have just landed me a better-than-subpar grad school recommendation.

naomi let me know the other day that our race pictures from the half marathon were online. you see, during the race, at strategic points, they have cameramen up on ladders, perches, etc, taking photographs of absolutely everybody, and later on you can search by your bib number and order any prints you like.

i'm not going to order these shots, but i just think the succession of them is funny:

1. woo! i'm running and all energized and nothing can stop me!

2. between that photo and the finish line (which is like 50 feet later) something apparently goes terribly wrong; i am so busted that i cannot even be bothered torun across the finish line.

3. cameraman captures me immediately before i list confusedly off to the side and pass out. at least i beat the fat dude behind me.

i am SO AHEAD of the curve. yes, indeedy. if you'll remember, several months ago i alerted you, dear readers, to the awesomeness of a band called the arcade fire.

today, pitchfork gives their new cd, funeral, a 9.7:

Earlier this year, Montreal-based The Arcade Fire's ferocious live show secretly incited a bidding war that saw the band bouncing between three of North America's most respected indie labels before finally landing with Merge. While their demos offered virtually no indication of potential to outsiders, those who witnessed the group in concert would vouch that the band would soon prove to be of an exceptional caliber. Funeral is that proof-- a profoundly catharic, sophisticated, and melodic debut that finally restores "emotional" as a positive descriptor.

go buy!

buongiorno, tutti. did everyone have good weekends? i sure did! joe gibbs and his magical fantasy football team plus everything else made for a fun two days. especially when i made a conscious decision to ignore typegate 2004, the terrible situation and dozens of civilian deaths in fallujah, and, basically, reality.

friday night i went out with college buddy naz, who, turns out, lives like 3 blocks from me in a new condo building on N and 13th that's just gone up. we went out to trio's on 17th street, and enjoyed boy watching, fried calamari and kalamata olives. i went home fairly early, because i have a nagging cold. in response to this nagging cold, i've made a kind of big decision - well, not really, considering decisions that are actually important - but i've decided to stop social smoking. at least until the marathon is over. charles used to liken my smoking and marathon training to someone wearing rocks while training for a swimming event - once i cast off the cigarettes, my lungs would rejoice in clean air freedom and perform at 10x their capacity! i'm not sure that will happen, but with my being sick and the marathon about six weeks away, i think it's the right thing to do. so if i beg to bum a cigarette off you, do not relent! you're helping out the children. or something.

saturday morning was supposed to be a 20 mile training run, but, eh. sick. so i slept late - well, as late as i could with our gay neighbors deciding to hold a rowdy yard sale at 7:30 in the morning. the rest of the day was spent doing not all that much - tommy and i went to his dad's house to pick up some household items, and eat our crisp n juicy sandwiches. mmm. i have to find something in d.c. that can hold up to crisp n juicy. later that evening, we went over to kriston's and matt's to watch the UT-arkansas with them and susan, jeremy and non-blog matt. with their help and several bottles of beer, i somehow became a raging longhorns fan by the end of the night. eat shit and die! fight! whatever it is they say. tommy, charles, scott, aaron and i went to the red room post-game, but it was late, so we headed home not too long afterwards.

the next day was fight on, fight on, sons of washington, etc. let me just say - one of my earlier memories is when i was 7, living at 1417 44th street nw (where i spent the first 10 years of life) and being extraordinarily happy that the redskins had won the superbowl. we all know how things went after that (excluding 1991). i'm normally not a big football fan, but joe gibbs hold one of those special places in my heart that is normally reserved for chocolate, puppies and thom yorke.

anyway, kriston and matt came over (because kriston had promised to prepare us totally delicious breakfast tacos, which he did, and they were pure awesomeness) and we all saw how the redskins totally dominated. hurrah! i would absolutely love to go see a redskins game at some point, so if you want to gift me any tickets to any game this seasons, i will be your eternal slave.

i spent the rest of the day sketching out personal statements for grad school. which are hard, man. i much prefer college application essays. i can't even remember what i wrote for my uva college application, but it was like, on how awesome radiohead is, or something. or my favorite word. what the hell were the essays our year? anyway. this week's goal: finish university of maryland application, and ask people if they're willing to write recommendations for me.

tonight i think we're trying to make a not-so-triumphant return to trivia night (we haven't been in several weeks), so if you want to go, let me know! it'll be fun, because i'll likely be high on sudafed!

well, we all know what happened three years ago today. and across the internet, people are writing thoughtful and beautiful tributes and rememberances. so i won't add any ineloquent words to what's already been said. instead, i wanted to wish my little brother, peter, a happy birthday.

three years ago, and all the years before that, september 11th was just my brother's birthday. so as i went to work at the rotunda that morning, a fourth year at uva, i planned on buying him some booze (don't kill me, mom) and maybe a cake, and celebrating that evening.

an hour later, i had rushed home from work, found out through email that my father's building had been evacuated, and that all my other family in northern virginia was fine. i didn't know what to do next - everything was obviously surreal - so in a rather zoned out state, i decided to drive over to harris teeter, and bought peter a chocolate cake and a case of heinekin. he was turning 19.

i went over to his dorm, where the first years were milling around anxiously or grouped in front of tvs in their suites. peter was hanging out with some new friends on the balcony, and none of them knew it was his birthday, so when they saw a strange girl trudging up the stairs with a cake, they all wished him well, in a rather melancholy, subdued manner. i could tell they were thinking that this day wouldn't really be his birthday anymore.

at that time, peter had just finished his orientation week for navy ROTC. i hadn't thought about it then, but for a young man who had just signed up for the military and promised four years of his post-college life to service, september 11 must have been a terrifying day, seeing what was basically an act of war against your country and realizing that you might have to eventually really fight for it.

but peter, if he was ever scared or apprehensive about his military service, never let on. and in the months following, when we went to war with afghaninstan, and then iraq, he never mentioned the possibility of dropping out of ROTC. it wasn't as if he needed the tuition money - my family could well have afforded his years at uva. but instead he threw himself into it all, eventually becoming batallion commander his third year, and serving two submarine cruises in the past two summers. recently, he was offered an exclusive position within the navy - a very high-paying desk job doing nuclear research in crystal city. if he took the job, he would stay there for five years, and not have to go out to sea. he decided not to take it. after graduation next may, he'll go to nuclear power school in charleston for six months or so, and then he'll serve on submarines for the next four years.

it has been exceedingly strange to witness the transformation of peter from skinny, retainer-wearing brat into a navy officer and intelligent chemical engineer. i remember days when i was 9 and he was 7 or so, when we would have fights, rolling around in the living room, and he would literally grab clumps of hair out of my head. i remember calling him a buck-toothed nerd, and him calling me pizza face. i remember getting incredibly angry when i realized he was as good as tennis as i was. then i remember chasing him around the neighborhood with a tennis racket. i remember wanting to basically punt him through a window every day of my life. what i don't really remember, what i don't remember happening, is how we eventually became best friends, how he grew up, how we started listening to the same music, how i saw him playing trumpet in jazz band in high school and seeing how talented he was.

now peter is 22, and basically, he is one of the best people i know. i'm realistic; i know that serving on a submarine is not the same as being a marine or being on the ground in iraq, but still, i think of the years ahead for him, and i get scared, and worried, and wish that he had been a normal college student like i was, getting drunk and not waking up early on weekends and just going to colllege football games instead of having to clean up after them to raise rotc funds. then i think about it some more, and i realize that i don't actually wish that he was like that; i feel lucky that i have such a brother, who is more admirable than many people i know, that he is someone i respect, that he is someone i know who has taken the time to learn about the middle east and that he can help the miliitary become a better place. i am glad he has looked at my father, and grandfather, and seen that they served, and learned from it, and taken their lessons with them through life, and have decided to help the government and america become a better place. i know he's going to do the same.

there wasn't really a point to this post, except that i wanted to focus on something positive that happened on september 11th, and my brother's birth was by far the best thing i knew. and i wanted to share that, for some reason, with the people who read this. horrible things happened on september 11th; we all know that. but i also wanted to let you know that things happened on september 11th that will eventually make this world a better place.

happy birthday, peter.

As part of our constant efforts to blend in with the blogging masses, here's today's mandatory amateur typographical analysis.

Catherine alerted me to this post at LittleGreenFootballs comparing an image of the new documents from CBS to a version ginned up in MS Word. Astounding! They do match closely. But I think it's a little disingenuous for the author to line the two copies over top of each other in grayscale as proof of the samples' identity. Times New Roman is a specific thing, you know, invented in 1931 by some guys named Lardent & Morison. When word processing software engineers sit down the design spec doesn't say "something that looks newspapery", it says "Times New Roman". Different examples of it are supposed to look the same.

But in this case, that's all they do: look the same. They aren't the perfect match that LGF pretends. Have a look here:

I just put one copy in front of another, changed the color, and lined them up as best as I could. You might expect scaling issues, the rotation of the scan, or antialiasing to account for the red bleed-through. And they do, to some extent -- fortunately the LGF folks have formatted the picture as closely as possible to prove their point, so we don't have to worry too much about making it an even closer match.

Now, like I said, it's close. But notice that it really isn't an identical match, and, more importantly, the offset is not uniform across the document, and does not increase linearly along any direction. Some words and phrases, like "pushing", "obviously pressured" and the date are more offset than other sections. If you bother to zoom in, you'll see there's actually whitespace between some characters and the red bleedthrough (and no, I don't mean the superscripted "th"). To me, this all implies that this isn't just a case of a heavily-xeroxed laser print.

So add one more uninformed partisan jerk on the internet to the "genuine" column. I'm just trying to keep the score even. I've got a sneaking suspicion that CBS's experts aren't as dumb as the blogosphere thinks they are -- and let's not forget, they had access to the original paper stock. And to me, the white house's failure to jump on the forgery bandwagon has got to figure into this debate somewhere.

UPDATE: An expanded, considerably more thorough and overall better version of the above is available over at DailyKos.

i cannot fucking wait for this election to be over.

i think i'm going to drink myself into a stupor for the next two months.

not that that's so different from my normal lifestyle.

that is all.

apparently other people think travis morrison sounds like dave matthews.

not a totally terrible interview, anyway. i can't wait to hear his new album. i'm a little afraid i'll be disappointed, though, because it's apparently nothing like dismemberment plan stuff.

alrighty, craploads of pictures! naomi, becca, julie, jamie and i went down to va beach this weekend for a half marathon. we ran, we cried, we celebrated birthdays with an ice orgy. pictures follow.

a couple of upcoming events:

thursday, september 16th, 7-10pm, DCist is going to have a launch party at reef in adam's morgan, and you are all invited. it's not a hip exclusive thing - it's not like we have the place to ourselves, it's just kind of going to go on. i'm betting it will turn out more like a big happy hour. i think it'll be really fun, and i'm going to bring my digital camera and maybe your mug will end up on the fabled pages of DCist. so come on out!

wednesday, september 22nd, time TBD, my coworker and i are hosting a fundraising happy hour with raffle prizes at front page in dupont. i think raffle tickets/cover charge will be $5, and all drinks are $2.75 (which is front page's normal happy hour specials, but those are still pretty awesome prices). you should definitely come to this, as i have about $700 left to raise in one month. eek. ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVENT DONATED YET, MOFO.

la la la...i'm going on a six mile run on the mall tonight, so if you see a girl in black running shorts and a gray tank top dry heaving by the WWII memorial, that'll be me! 20 miles comes on saturday, and i refuse to even think about that. anyway hopefully i'm staying in tonight and can finally put up the vabeach/ice orgy 2004 (TM) pictures from labor day weekend.

oh also, kriston and jeremy were kind enough to join me last night at the ipod party thing at saint-ex. it was fun, pretty low attendance though. best part of night: me putting dismemberment plan's "the city" on my playlist, and when the song came up on rotation, the bartender (not knowing we had selected the song) went into an absolute rant on how much he hates travis morrison. "he's famous in d.c., big fucking deal! d.c. is nothing! i've met him, he's a HUGE asshole, he's crazy! i hate him! terrible music! sounds like dave matthews band on dischord! he's got a LISP!!!" we really just didn't know how to respond. whatever. "the city" is an AWESOME song.

haha, whole foods suckers! you're actually eating poop:

But as organic products — and their claims to superiority — have grown more common, scientists, policy analysts and some consumers have begun to ask for proof. Where's the evidence, they ask, for the widespread belief that organic foods are safer and more nutritious than those raised by conventional farming methods?

The short answer, food safety and nutrition scientists say, is that such proof does not exist. Indeed, by one well-established measure of healthfulness — contamination with fecal matter and potentially harmful bacteria — some organic foods may pose greater risks to consumers.

As food fights go, this one might not be as raucous as the cacophony over low-carb diets or reshaping the food pyramid — yet. But since 1989, when organic-food activists raised a nationwide scare over the pesticide alar in apples, many scientists have seethed quietly at what they perceive as a campaign of scare tactics, innuendo and shoddy science perpetrated by organic food producers and their allies.

Now, many of those experts, who had been content to pursue their research in academic anonymity, are being called to testify before congressional committees and weigh in on a swirling public debate about America's diet. As they begin to find their voice, the organic food industry may find them about as welcome as a plague of aphids. And it will take more than cow manure and dried chrysanthemum leaves to make them go away.

NOT EVEN COW MANURE will stop these people. that's the kind of renegades they are.

and some dude over at the volokh conspiracy agrees that organic food is a bunch of bunk:

WHAT’S SO GOOD ABOUT ORGANIC FOOD? Not all that much actually. While environmental activists and some health food junkies swear by it, there’s little basis for believing that organic food is any better for you or the planet.

One reason people advocate eating organic foods is the claim that pesticide residues pose a threat to human health, specifically cancer. This argument sounds plausible – after all, what kills bugs can’t be great for people – but it ignores the basic fact of toxicology that the dose makes the poison. Pesticide residues on food are too miniscule to pose a cancer threat. Ample research, such as that by Bruce Ames, shows that most of the carcinogens that humans consume are natural. Fruits and vegetables come with various pesticides of their own, thanks to Mother Nature. As with synthetic residues though, the doses are too small to pose a threat to human health. In addition, the above argument for organics assumes that such foods come without pesticide residues. This too is a questionable assumption , as Howard Feinberg explains. So, eating more fruits nad vegetables may help keep you healthy, but sticking to organics won't reduce your risk of cancer.

What about organic farming’s environmental benefits? The BBC claims a study published in the May 31 Science gave the environmental impact of organics “a ringing endorsement.” Not so. What the study found is that organic farming uses less energy and other inputs than conventional farming. (See summaries here.) As a consequence, however, organic farming is far less productive. On average, the study found, organic farms produce 20 percent less per acre than their conventional counterparts. This means that to produce the same amount of food, organic farming requires substantially more land than conventional farming. This may not be a big deal in the U.S., but in developing nations, organic farming will mean more habitat is cleared to make way for farms, fewer people get fed, or both. Moreover, as Ron Bailey points out, organic farming’s energy benefits may be a mirage, as the Science study didn’t consider the newest, most energy-efficient conventional farming techniques.

So, eat organics if you want, but don't think you're doing yourself or the planet any favors.

i've decided i'm going to wage a war on organic food, just like i've done with the retarded low-carb diet. people. just eat normal food. buy it from your safeway. you'll be okay, i promise.

anyway, if you want to keep spending hundreds of dollars on free-range beef and hormone-free milk, blow your life savings away. i'll be over here, eating my waxy, pesticide-soaked apple. at least it's not covered in fecal matter!

ah, there's nothing like a damning indictment of the president to make you feel cheery in the morning:

...In retrospect, it's doubtful that even White House aides understood all the information embedded in the records, specifically the payroll documents. It's also unlikely they realized how damaging the information could be when read in the proper context. Seven months later, the document dump is coming back to haunt the White House, thanks to researcher Paul Lukasiak, who has spent that time closely examining the paperwork, and more important, analyzing U.S. Statutory Law, Department of Defense regulations, and Air Force policies and procedures of the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, Lukasiak arrived at the overwhelming conclusion that not only did Bush walk away from his final two years of military obligation, coming dangerously close to desertion, but that he attempted to cover up his absenteeism through swindle and fraud.

you don't say.

Nevada's now has e-voting machines with paper-trails. They're the first to manage this meager feat. The fuss that the e-voting companies have been kicking up about implementing auditable paper records sends chills down my spine -- it's hard to think of a reason for these companies to pretend it's impossible to get computers to print things on paper (unless, of course, they actually were planning on rigging an election). Well, Nevada has developed an actual counterexample to the e-voting companies' ridiculous claims. Good for them! It almost makes you feel guilty about filling their state with nuclear waste.

The electronic voting issue hasn't raised enough eyebrows this year. I think that's probably because people don't understand the grave threat that computer programmers like myself pose to democracy. But to do so, you really only have to know three things about programmers:

• They think they're much, much smarter than everyone else.


• They are much, much smarter than everyone else about technology, but are significantly dumber about most other things.


• And finally, a lot of them are asshole libertarians of the worst sort.

This is a combination that's primed to do clever things to save America from its hopelessly misguided self.

Even more horrifying, the folks at Diebold, one of the biggest vendors (and certainly the one that's gotten the most press thanks to its CEO's status as an outspoken Bush supporter) seems to have substandard engineers who exhibit all of the above negative traits, yet built their system on top of an unsecured version of Windows 98, opening the door to election tampering from an even larger pool of evil nerds.

I have absolutely no doubt that many software engineers would tamper with election software if they had the opportunity. I don't think they'd do this without getting caught, but it's likely that an awful lot of votes would be lost in the process. It looks like Nevada's leading the charge on stopping this, and I for one am grateful. Enough so that I think I'll go lose some money in its casinos at the next available opportunity.

UPDATE: I mistakenly indicated above that Diebold's voting system runs on an unsecured copy of Win 98. Actually, it can run on any variant of Win32 (ie 98 and above). That copy can be secured as well as any vanilla install of the given version of Windows. What's not secured at all is the MS Access database that contains the voting records, or the administrator password of the GEMS system. This url contains a thorough explanation of how to circumvent the system -- it's an obvious exploit that's easy to pull off (in fact, it's tough to call it an exploit -- "using MS Access" is more like it). The authors conclude that these vulnerabilities are so gaping and widespread that they must have been left deliberately. I don't know if I'd go that far (although I could be talked into it), but whatever state election officials paid money for this system -- and yes, it is being used "in the wild" -- ought to be fired. And maybe jailed.

I should note that this vulnerability applies to "GEMS" -- the management software that would be used collect and count votes from individual machines in an election official's office. There are some accounts that claim the voting machines have a backdoor as well, but I have yet to find any thorough documentation on this.

anyone want to go to this with me tonight? the tornado warning might deter some people, but i spit in the face of terrible weather!

i cannot let the lovefest for whole foods that i see amongst so many people of my age and economic class continue. jesus. when did where you buy your groceries become a status symbol? i know i'm going to get shit for this, but i can't help it: i burn with hatred for whole foods. especially after moving to a neighborhood where my grocery shopping options are between the P street whole foods or the 9th street giant. it's a choice between me busting into a yuppie-fueled rage and running over some hipsters with my shopping cart, or getting mugged in a parking lot after buying some crappy produce. lately, the latter is sounding much more appealing.

i don't want to offend anyone who shops there - i think being all organic and stuff is a good idea. but there are certain things i am not willing to endure in order to buy groceries (of which whole foods has, by the way, an incredibly limited selection). #1 is ridiculous prices. i cannot get eggs for under $10 there. #2 is taking an act of god to manuver my way past all the yuppie hipsters (can i make up a word for these people? yupsters? yes, i realize i am a yupster and that this term has already probably been made up) who stand around in the aisles for 15 minutes making their choices between 32 brands of organic wheat berry bran cereal. #3 is wanting to kill everyone there, from the SUV driving gas guzzlers who think they doing all good healthy environmental things by shopping there, to the sorts of people who actually eat stuff named "Eden Organic Edensoy Extra" or "EnviroKidz Organic Crispy Rice Bars", to the people who are willing to go way out of their way to drive to this store and spend hundreds of dollars on organic food that you could get for half the price by DRIVING TO TRADER JOE'S.

which brings me to my next issue: when the fuck is d.c. going to get a trader joe's? i've only been living in the city for a week and i'm already dying for it. i was unfortunate enough to only discover this gem of a grocery store in the past six months, but i shopped there as much as i could in the short time that we had together. $4 bottles of wine? gorgonzola walnut tortellini that tastes as good as something you could get in italy? being able to spend under $50 to supply yourself with a week's worth of healthy, delicious groceries? that's the life.

the couple of things i will grant whole foods is that they seem to have excellent produce, and their storebrand olive oil is really good and cheap. but that's it. i've shopped there twice in the past few days, and i know that if i have to go again, the experience is probably going to end with me shoving a plantain up someone's butt. so fare thee well, obnoxious whole foods - you can find me making weekend pilgrimages to the trader joe's in tyson's corner.

Chemical pollution specialist John Emsley on NPR, about 1 minute ago: "Most people don't realize that nearly every product they buy contains chemicals."

Hmm...

did anyone else watch serena/capriati last night? i only caught the last ten minutes, since we went to meet kriston, matt and susan last night for half-priced belgian beer at bohemian cavern. but man, that was one bad call that i saw in a point in the last game, and apparently there were several more like it.

Capriati played superbly, without a doubt, but what always will be remembered is the miscue by chair umpire Mariana Alves of Portugal. She awarded the point to Capriati after Williams hit a backhand that landed in — and was ruled good by the line judge.

"I don't need to see the replay. I know my shots. Not only was it in, it wasn't even near the line," said Williams, who couldn't defend her 2002 Open title because of left knee surgery that forced her to miss eight months. "But I'm not making excuses. I didn't lose because of that. I probably should have closed her out in the second set."

It was eerily reminiscent of Wimbledon, where Venus Williams (news - web sites) lost in the second round after Karolina Sprem was mistakenly awarded an extra point in the final-set tiebreaker. Venus didn't argue at all, saying later she was confused; chair umpire Ted Watts was kicked out of the tournament.

Alves won't officiate another match during the Open, said tournament referee Brian Earley, who acknowledged the overrule by Alves was wrong.

"I'd prefer she not umpire at my court anymore," Serena Williams said. "She's obviously anti-Serena."

what was really amazing was the computer recreations the channel was showing of the ball bouncing. apparently it could recreate exactly how the ball went and where it landed. i'd never seen that before. how do they do this?? tommy suggested that perhaps there is some chip implanted inside the ball? but i found that doubtful - would they really implant chips in every ball used in major matches? anyway, it was kind of amazing. there must be some crazy new cameras working the court.

i hadn't seen a tennis match in a while, and it definitely made me want to play again. are there any good courts in d.c.? i almost yearned for the days of high school tennis team, where we didn't have line judges and i could make my own dirty calls.

i feel like in the week since we've been living on O street, i haven't really taken advantage yet of being close to bars or restaurants or anything cool. my biggest socializing to date involved inviting lauren and glen over last night and drinking wine on the balcony. also, kriston just made me feel old, and i refuse to have that feeling even though i'm in my mid-twenties. anyway the upshot of this post is to beg someone to do something with me tonight. the scissor sisters are playing at the 9:30 club. i know nothing about them, but i hear they are crazy and disco-y and loud. or there's plenty of happy hours in dupont, etc. and i still haven't seen garden state, if anyone wants to go. please. i beg of you. if i go home, it means i HAVE TO UNPACK STUFF. and if you saw the state of our bedroom, you would understand my reluctance. on the other hand, the living room and kitchen look fantastic, because charles and tommy are domestic divas and took ikea home with them this weekend and set everything up very nicely in my absence.

oh and this is completely unrelated, but i thought i would issue a warning because i love my readers so much: do NOT, under any circumstances, go see vanity fair. it will blow your mind with its awfulness. the best thing about the entire experience was the previews. we saw three, count 'em three, jude law previews. it was like the jude law showcase. and they all look good.

oh wait, i realized that serena williams and jennifer capriati will be slugging it out tonight, so perhaps i will stay home with a bottle of wine and cheer that on.

I guess I'm a terrible person, but I found this article in today's Post pretty amusing. It discusses the phenomenon of sleep-eating, which is pretty much what you'd expect. I know it's wrong to laugh at a syndrome that its victims can't help, and about which they feel shame, but you'd have to be a much better man than me not to find passages like these hilarious:

"Many sleep eaters realize what they have done... after they wake up and find cereal boxes in their beds, frosting in their hair or debris strewn around their kitchen."

or this one:

"[S]he found that she'd started to use her toaster oven and a blender during these episodes."

or my favorite:

"...one of his patients broke the doorframe getting out of her bedroom; her mother had locked the door at her request."

There are some other good tidbits in there, too, including that must-have accessory for any competitive syndrome-of-the-month, the celebrity sufferer: Montel Williams, who had to alter his food purchasing habits in order to avoid eating raw chicken.

But I think the most interesting factoid is that one profiled sufferer solved her problem by putting a rubber snake on her kitchen table. She's scared of snakes, and the sight of the fake one usually sends her right back to bed. It's interesting to wonder what bizarre subset of a person's consciousness is working at that moment -- clearly it's something without much memory, volition or self-awareness, but it is still capable of figuring out that food good, snake bad. It makes you wonder if perhaps the older, stupider parts of these folks' brains are puttering along happily, while their swollen mammalian forebrains, usually responsible for grappling with sophisticated concepts like counting carbs and complaining about the price of gasoline, doze peacefully. It's a little creepy, but also kind of fascinating.

Anyway, I'm sure it's a difficult condition to live with, and I can certainly understand how a loss of self-control would be frightening. But for some reason I find the idea of my ancient caveman ancestor posessing my body, wandering around my kitchen and maybe trying to work the juicer -- well, kind of endearing.

does anyone want to see snow patrol/eisley this friday at the 9:30 club?

also, can i mention how many awesome shows are coming to d.c. in the next couple of months? and now that i live in the city, i can actually go to them!

for example:

930 club has got...

snow patrol
guided by voices
The walkmen
Old 97s
Keane
The killers/ambulance ltd
The faint/tv on the radio
The libertines

black cat has got...

Les savy fav
The thrills
The fiery furnaces
Kings of leon
Q and not u
Rilo kiley
Clinic
Pedro the lion

who's up for what?

even though i would ace this course, i still have to say that it is some of the dumbest crap i've ever seen (and i thought "symphonic masterworks" at uva was a gut):

Grant Huling wrote in to say that he's teaching a class about Radiohead.

We'll learn their history and interpret their music at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, USA. In the class, I'll be exposing the students to nearly every song Radiohead has written, in addition to their music videos, Radiohead TV, MPIE, etc. With homework and class discussions, we'll talk about the themes, literature references, etc that permeate their music, from On a Friday through whatever leaks in the next few months.

Starting today (Sunday September 5th) you can sign up for "Blow Out: The Radiohead Exco" through Oberlin's Experimental College program, through which students and community members teach courses on more unconventional things.

if only i had gone to a college where they offered seminars on radiohead and buffy the vampire slayer.

more radiohead - moby comes up with this brilliant observation:

you know what politics is/are like in the united states?
it's like pop-music and/or dating.
example a: pop-music.
republicans are like ashley simpson, and democrats are like radiohead. radiohead fans will forever be mystified as to why someone would buy an ashley simpson cd, but ashley simpson's handlers/managers understand what the lowest common denominator are looking for and they give it to them. radiohead fans think 'that disposable pop music is terrible, and someday people will see the error of their ways and buy radiohead cd's instead of ashley simpson cd's', meanwhile ashley simpson and her managers are selling millions of records.
example b: dating.
democrats are the bright, conscientious, responsible guy in the corner of the party and republicans are the loud, boastful, arrogant guy in the middle of the room. the bright guy in the corner thinks 'that loud guy in the middle of the room is a jerk and eventually everyone will see him for what he is', but the loud guy goes home with the hot girl and the bright guy in the corner goes home alone.

my point?
yes, radiohead are better than ashley simpson.
and yes, the bright, interesting guy in the corner is better than the loud jerk in the middle of the room. but ashley simpson and the loud jerk in the middle of the room know what people want, and that's why they(and the republicans)are winning.
democrats are nuanced and complicated and republicans are simple and sound-bitey.
people want bright shiny simplicity, not dark obscure complexity.
the democrats put their trust in people's better instincts whereas the republicans put their trust in people's basest instincts.
and that's why the republicans are winning, because they're not governed by ideals, they're governed by results. the republicans want to win no matter what, whereas the democrats want to win because the public will, hopefully, recognize the primacy of their ideas.
and that's why democrats are the step-child party. that's why democrats are the avis to the republicans hertz. that's why democrats are the runners up. because the republicans know how to sell and they know how to win.
of course my hope is that the democrats will learn from the republicans and learn how to win.
but too often it seems that democrats take the 'high road' when the noble and effective thing would be to join the battle in the trenches.
republicans are dirty, and will stop at nothing to win. we saw in 2000 that when democrats take the 'high road' that they lose.
so that's the choice, democrats: take the 'high road' and lose, or learn how to compete in the real world and run the risk of winning...
bill clinton did it, and he won.
al gore didn't do it, and he lost.
i hope that john kerry learns from bill clinton...
-moby'

moby: making the political arena a better place.

i have to write a one-paragraph biograhpy for the DCist staff page. i really do hate these sort of things. you're supposed to sum up your entire being in one witty paragraph, and if you're not clever or funny enough, you are doomed for eternity on the web page. AND i have to find a good picture. blargh!

did everyone have very fun labor day weekends? va beach was good, even though it was cloudy the entire weekend, so we didn't make it out to the beach. i finished the half marathon in 2 hours, 3 minutes, which was a little disappointing because i wanted to break 2 hours, but whatever. we went out later that night for becca and julie's birthdays, and an insanely good time was had by all. scandalous pictures will be forthcoming.

update: something i found heartening this weekend, though hardly meaningful or scientific. we did a lot of driving around virginia this weekend, down and up I-95, through some rural areas, and around va beach/norfolk, which is basically the biggest military area in virginia. i couldn't keep count of the number of kerry/edwards bumper stickers that i saw, which surprised me. probably 15-20. but what really surprised me is the number of bush/cheney stickers that i saw on the road. it was a grand total of...two. now, if we're going to equate military support bumper stickers with bush supporters, then bush was winning out, because i saw about 32 million yellow ribbon/i heart my soldier/support our troops bumper stickers. but my family has a US Navy bumper sticker on our car and no political bumper stickers, and we're about as liberal as you get. so, anyway, i am crossing my fingers, based on my bumper sticker observations, that virginia is going to go blue.

This is little more than another be-khaki-ed white boy shouting at the night sky, but something must be said: these new Gap ads are horrible. You know the ones — Sarah Jessica Parker, all miniskirt and gristle, whirling around while Lenny Kravitz pretends to play guitar in various positions against the requisite white background.

Look, I understand that no one mourns the death of Jimi Hendrix, the unreliability of Vernon Reid, and the lack of other high-profile black rock stars more than the Gap marketing department. But that doesn't justify putting money in the sweaty leather pockets of a serial plagiarist like Lenny Kravitz.

To be fair, Gap is a victim here, too: somewhere in the last few years MTV decided they might like to have a conventional rock star to kick around after all, so they grabbed Lenny and made an entire awards-show crop of aspiring has-beens pay homage to him as if he were one of rock's elder statesmen. How could he not be? He's got Hendrix's skin tone, Bono's glasses, and dresses like Prince's square older brother: there's a poster of him on the bedroom wall of every teenage focus group. You can see how advertising types might get suckered into pairing this hack with the ghoulish but perceived-to-be-popular Parker.

So why complain? Well, I flatter myself, but I like to think that somewhere out there, in a glass tower filled with blonde wood and tall people in moderately priced sweaters, there's a fresh-faced intern compiling a powerpoint for the marketing department. And maybe, just maybe, there's a slide with the word "blogs" in it. If there's even the remotest chance that I can be part of the red slice on that 3D pie chart, I have to try.

UPDATE: non-snarky disclaimer after the jump

DCist.com is going to start an Ask feature. not just advice, but all sorts of questions about the city or anything you want, basically. we just need a few to get started. so anyone have any good question ideas?

i have blogging malaise. it happens. my mind is pretty occupied with other stuff right now - nothing important, but i'm busy enough not to have time to sit around at work and think of pointless things to write about. actually i'm not busy at all with actual work, but instead of blogging i keep doing web research on things like grad school, home furnishings, tuscany, and stuff for DCist.

i haven't been watching a terrible lot of the GOP convention the past few days, though i did cackle with glee, as everyone else did, at the bush twins' terrible performance. i mean - yes, these girls are young. yes, they're entitled to drink underage and fall over at bars. god knows millions of others have done the same thing. but what gets me is that because of their positions in life, they could be doing so much more. they can meet anyone they want, go anywhere they want, get any kind of job they want. instead they 'campaign' for their dad, don't follow through with applications to teaching at harlem schools, and act like animatronic republican barbies in front of the nation, making jokes about how they currently have no ambition in life - just like their dad at his age. and you know what? THEY'RE NOT ACTUALLY HOT. i know many of you think otherwise, but get a grip. jenna is fat, and barbara looks like kate beckinsdale with down syndrome. it just goes to show how far liberal guys will let their standards drop when it comes to their dreams of hate-fucking a yuppie republican tart.

anyway. wow, that was good to get out! i'll be away this weekend in virginia beach, celebrating becca and julie's birthday (happy birthday, ladies!), and running the rock 'n' roll half marathon. every year, the bands they get to play this thing get lamer. we have sugar ray and collective soul, for chrissake. i thought collective soul were off giving handjobs at rural rest stops or something, but no, lucky for us, they are still making music! but i bitch excessively. the race last year was a ton of fun - local bands play the 13.1 mile course, and high school cheerleading squads cheer you on. and, of course, you get to jump in the ocean at the end, and later that night, during birthday celebrations, if we're lucky, we'll get to see becca take body shots off the hot bartender once again :)

It'll be another nine days until Verizon turns on DSL service here, so at the moment Charles' laptop is propped up on some boxes by the window, "borrowing" wireless internet service from one of our neighbors (thanks guys!) and sending it down an ethernet cable to my laptop.

So maybe I'm just in the mood for free wifi love, but this seems like a pretty good idea. For the clicking-averse: Philadelphia is exploring the possibility of rolling out free citywide wireless internet service. As you might expect, the nerd community thinks this is a great idea, since it could help automate all kinds of things like self-reading gas and electricity meters, smart stoplights that report when they're out, and citywide support for VoIP cell phones. And let's not discount the social value of every Half Life 2 player having the same ping. Equality at last!

Of course, it'll never happen. Comcast HQ is based in Philly, for one, and they're unlikely to think this is a particularly great idea. The cell companies would never tolerate it either. And then there's the question of how you can secure a citywide network -- is the city culpable for filesharing? For DoS attacks? How easy will identity theft be when everyone is on the same network, and switching ISP subnets is as easy as driving down the street, looking for unsecured network shares?

Still, I think this is how things are going to have to go, eventually. Digital packet switching means that methods of transmitting information are interchangeable -- with modern network technology, there's no reason why you should have satellite TV, DSL internet and analog phone service: everything can, and probably should, come out of the same hole in the wall.

It might seem like this is impractical -- what happens when that infrastructure becomes outdated, and all services suffer from a crowded data pipe? I don't think this is likely to be a major problem, however: people continue to consume an increasing amount of data, but the rate of increase should be slowing shortly. HDTV represents a major leap in consumer bandwidth, but it seems plausible to say that consumption by bitrate is going to level off for a while -- there just isn't any household device now or on the horizon that can consume data faster than HDTV. And frankly, there's a limit to the bandwidth of the human nervous system. Until we develop technologies to interface with new sensory modalities (3D, smell-O-vision, etc), we're probably pretty well set with a few tens of megabits per person. And while that's a huge information rate relative to current consumer broadband bandwidths, it could be satisfied with feasible current technology: Verizon is rolling out fiber-to-the-home in select markets right now.

It doesn't make any more sense for competing private companies to own your broadband connection than it does for them to own your water or gas connection, or the asphalt under which they run. Efforts to ensure competition have been problematic at best: do we let the world's Verizons freeze others out of the broadband game, or do we force them to let competitors use the network Verizon paid to build? Neither makes much sense. Data delivery is a natural monopoly, and natural monopolies ought to be run by the government.