I just heard a teaser for a segment about freeipods.com on the 5 o'clock Fox News broadcast. Nuts. Less novelty = harder referrals.

I know this is a total blog no-no, but I have actual new information to contribute to the world. I know, it's weird. I'll get back to summarizing slashdot items soon, I promise. But for now...

On a whim I emailed The Arcade Fire from their website, asking them to come to DC since the latest date I can find for their current tour puts them in Philly on 1/31. And hey! I got a response back:

we are playing DC in late january.
luv
win.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! He noticed me! What ever will I wear?!

Wait... back to the hard-hitting investigatory journalism, no matter how many friends I lose or people I leave dead and bloodied along the way. Just one more paragraph, I promise.

The Arcade Fire is playing Asheville, NC on Thursday the 27th and Philadelphia on the 31st. DC is in between -- my guess is a Friday or Saturday night show at the Black Cat. Perhaps I'm overestimating the crowds they're drawing and they'll end up playing some hole in the wall on Sunday night... But the Asheville venue looks Black-Cattish in size. So I'm sticking by my prediction.

And YOU'RE ALL COMING. I personally guarantee this will be a great show.

UPDATE: Black Cat's got a show scheduled for January 29th, so a Friday or Sunday night show sounds like the best bet. It could always be at a different venue, of course...

okay, five billion months later, i am finally getting around to writing thank you cards for all you lovely people who donated to my fundraising efforts. so if you donated, please please email me your mailing address. all of you. even if you think i know it or already have it. i don't know it. i have terrible records and a worse memory. i have no idea where anyone lives. so send me mailing addresses, bitches! (except mr. wright, who sent me his ages ago, grazie!).

my coworker just came in with a report that he had met tom wolfe in the elevator. wearing a white suit, natch. what the fuck tom wolfe is doing in the elevator at the center for national higher education is beyond me - but, still, cool! i know he's in town today for a reading at the olsson's on 7th street. reviews for i am charlotte simmons have been, as far as i can tell, mixed. here's a slate book club exchange between two uva professors about the book. i don't know why they picked uva professors - we all know wolfe was portraying duke in the book.

or thereabouts, anyway, i was in rome. jesus h. christ. that is a long time ago.

i haven't done a photo entry in a while, so for nostalgia's sake, i thought i'd link to my posts from my time in the eternal city. for your browsing pleasure. i hope to go back this spring. if you've got any rome tips, let me know, because it's probably one of the italian cities that i know the least about.

Have I mentioned that I love the internet? I know you all know it, but I still don't say it enough. I'm just a very lucky guy. How do I love thee, internet? Let me count the ways: free shit.

That is all.

But oh, what a way it is! I remember the heady days of my freshman year, when venture capitalists blissfully handed sacks of money to legions of incompetent ASP programmers. In between rounds of Starcraft and Being Terrified Of Girls, I amassed piles of $1 DVDs and ill-fitting promotional t-shirts. It was a great time to be young and pale.

That well has dried up, but you can still find a great offer here and there; my enthusiasm for finding too-good-to-be-true deals on the internet is only slightly tempered by the knowledge that most of them are attempts by the Russian mafia to steal my credit card number and, if possible, internal organs.

But here's a free offer that seems to be on the up and up: freeipods.com. I know, I know. But it appears to be legit -- even trusted sources seem to say it's okay. Complete the requirements and you can get a 20GB iPod or a 4GB iPod mini shipped to you for free, for serious.

For those of you who haven't seen these links kicking around, the deal is pretty simple: sign up with the site, complete one of their free trial offers, and refer five friends who must do the same. The free trial offers are for things like credit cards, BMG's music club, a two week trial of Blockbuster's Netflix knockoff... that sort of stuff. Personally, I signed up with Ancestry.com's "14 days for $1" offer and my account was credited immediately. If I forget to cancel within 14 days I'll be out of a couple hundred dollars -- as you might have noticed, all of these "free" offers are of the sort that can net the companies offering them a lot of money if the signee isn't careful. But they're from reputable companies, and having set up free email and SMS reminders for myself at MemoToMe, I'm not too worried about forgetting.

The trick is the referrals, of course. Fulfilling an offer doesn't pay for your iPod, it pays for your referrer's iPod. The whole thing is a pyramid scheme; since you won't be out any money if you play properly, that isn't a bad thing. But it does mean that the so-called "conga line" sites, where people line up in message boards to refer one another, are useless for everyone but the first few people in line.

Which brings us to the title of this post. I'm taking the freeipods.com plunge -- if anyone feels like trying it out for themselves, here's my referral link. Conga lines can't work in the long run -- the last people to sign up won't get anything out of it, and the problem gets worse the bigger the list (bonus points to the first person who comes up with a function to express the number -- I suck at math). On the other hand, there's no benefit to having more than five referrals, it doesn't cost a participant anything to use someone else's referral, and the first few people really do benefit. And you can always bug your friends for referrals if the conga line fails you. So if you decide to join in, post your referral link in comments, and we'll see how many people we can help out.

Oh, and there's one catch you should know about: there's a limit of one iPod per household. So if you and your roommate both want to take advantage, you'll have to play your cards right -- you can't change your address once you sign up. I've got a sneaking suspicion that this has more to do with increasing the number of completed sponsor offers without increasing the number of iPods shipped than with any legal or practical requirements. With that in mind, I'll mention that if you live in say, apartment 3, your mailman will usually be able to figure out that a package addressed to apartment 3G should go to you (even if you live in a house). Promotional websites will not be able to figure this out. Not that I'd ever do something like that myself. Ahem.

something i did this weekend that i forgot to mention - my family and i went to visit the house in foxhall village where i spent the first eight or nine years of my life. my father was browsing the real estate section of the post a few weeks ago, and noticed it being listed for - god good - almost $900,000. a neighbor we were close friends with when we lived at 1417 44th street nw is still there, so we borrowed a key from her and broke into the house to check it out.

the whole thing was supremely weird. none of us had been on the inside for nearly 17 years. i don't think my littler sister had really ever seen it, given that she was like, 5 months old when we moved out to vienna. peter only remembered bits and pieces; he was five or so when we left. i remembered everything almost perfectly, but i still felt like i was an overgrown oaf lumbering through a beautiful dollhouse. thing is, when you live in a house from ages 0-8, rooms seem a lot bigger and more scarily grown-up than they do when you're 24.

the house itself is absolutely gorgeous, though the man whom we had sold it to and who is selling it now (strangely enough, who also happens to be j. bradford delong's father) had done almost nothing to improve on it, except replacing the bathroom tiles and putting in a new stove. the house needs some improvement - it was built in 1932, and though my parents and grandparents (who lived there immediately before my parents) took excellent care of it all, a house is bound to need some updating 70 years later. but all the fixtures and such are original - it's still got gorgeous crystal doorknobs, hardwood floors, a huge backyard and lots of light. even if the kitchen is the tiniest thing you've ever seen (it is literally about three feet wide). in fact, the whole place is rather tiny, but certainly cozy and quaint.

anyway, if i had a billion dollars to spare, i would buy the house because it's adorable and was such a wonderful place to grow up. it's on a quiet, tree-lined street; glover archibald park is directly behind it, along with a secret path we used to take to the c&o canal; it's a short walk to georgetown; and it's close to the many shops and restaurants of foxhall village. unfortunately, i am a bit short of the million dollars it would take to close, so i can only hope that whoever gets to the house next takes care of it. want to buy it? you can check out the listing here.

Thanks to Catherine for finding this: Jackson Publick's LiveJournal. Publick is the creator and co-head-writer of the Venture Brothers (and the voice of several characters, including the Monarch). He's got notes on most of the episodes as well as general commentary about the show and his dealings with the Cartoon Network.

i can just tell, this is going to be one of those weeks when thinking of stuff to post to the blog is going to be about as enjoyable as pulling weeds. i just. have. nothing. to. say. but when i do, dear readers, you'll be the first to know.

anyway, my inability to write is probably because i'm still sleepy from the turkey, and the wine, and the pumpkin pie. oh, god, the pumpkin pie. even though my immediate family had a delicious dinner at my uncle's this time around, and therefore we were barred from having to eat 12 pounds of leftover turkey and potatoes in the following days, i still managed to eat astonishing amounts this weekend. first, whenever i stay at my parents' house, i eat everything in sight - not because i'm actually hungry, mind you, but IT'S FREE FOOD! and i am poor, and at any point i might not be able to afford those $8 bananas at whole foods, and could starve, and therefore i should stock up on my fat cells while i can so i don't die, passed out in front of an empty refridgerator, a single slice of cold light emanating from the slightly open door and casting its harshness over my prostrate, immobile, emaciated body. etc.

then tommy made the Best BBQ Pulled Chicken Sandwiches Ever on saturday so we could stuff our faces while watching the (ultimately tragic) uva vs. tech football game. he got all into it, and also made cornbread muffins and baked beans and it was all very delicious. apparently he just took a few chicken breasts, dumped them in a pot with a full bottle of trader joe's BBQ sauce and a little bit of water, cooked them for 3 hours, and voila! pure deliciousness. this + beer was goodness personified. or foodified. or whatever. oh yeah, and then we went and saw "the incredibles", and that was goodness itself movified. so awesome. i am in love with pixar's rendition of hair. my god, they do gorgeous hair. every single strand was perfection.

sunday, tommy and i hit up the flavin retrospective at the NGA. i'd seen it already, but didn't mind coming along for a second time so i could get some more fluorescent gamma rays or whatever makes my head hurt and my eyes twitch when i see that exhibit. then we cooked a lovely curried chicken-sweet potato thing for dinner that actually turned out pretty well. again, done with a bottle of stuff from trader joe's, curry sauce this time. i have only recently become a huge fan of TJ's bottles of sauces. they are so best.

and in non-related news, this indie xmas mix is getting me excited for the holidays. only 26 more days till the big Christ.

I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving. Taking a cue from Speed Dating (a phenomenon at that perfect interesection of novelty and ubiquity where police dramas use it to kill people), I fulfilled my filial obligations in record time, making a trip from my doorstep to Brewster, NY and back in just under 31 hours. Props to Greyhound's Peter Pan service -- aside from an unavoidable conversation about cellphones with some weirdo who saw me reading Wired (human interaction? what kind of geek are you?) the trip was fast and pleasant.

My grandfather's Dutch, and consequently we had an Indonesian rijsttafel for Thanksgiving. Once they colonized Indonesia, the Dutch figured out pretty quickly that their own cuisine -- which is inexplicably boring considering their proximity to France and Germany -- could use replacing (although their breakfast and dessert items are pleasantly interchangeable). So they kind of borrowed the Indonesians' cuisine. In exchange the Indonesians got... uh. Well, let's just say it wasn't a great deal for them.

My grandfather loves Indonesian food -- partly because it's tasty, and, I suspect, partly because he's a bloody-minded old coot who gets a kick out of colonialism. After all, this is a guy who tells stories about fighting the Germans as if Hitler was a stepdad he was trying to piss off. Think Gordon Liddy with an aristocratic European veneer.

He cooked most of the Thanksgiving meal: satay, eggs in pinda sauce, krupuk (like potato chips, except made out of shrimp), coconut rice and generous helpings of sambal (fiery red goo). Good stuff, although I am sorry to have missed the traditional turkey.

It was an entirely unrelated culinary tidbit that fascinated me, though. My grandfather's live-in nurse/housekeeper is a wonderful lady named Jo, who's Jamaican. She joined us for dinner, and during it she said that Jamaican Heineken is an entirely different recipe from normal Heineken, and that the difference is sufficiently distinct and beloved that you can buy it in Jamaican groceries. I'm not a big fan of regular Heineken, but for some reason this fascinates me. Anybody else every heard of this?

happy thanksgiving, everybody. i am about to embark on a massive, epic journey of pie eating, so i thought i'd take a second to tell you how thankful i am for this blog and its readers. blogging is fun, and i enjoy sharing my inane thoughts with you all. i just had to let you know that in case i die of eating too much. i will admit to being a little frightened, but somebody has to take care of those freedom-hating pecan and pumpkin pies, and i am resolute and ready to stay the course. even if it means eating until i burst.

fare thee well, god speed, and happy thanksgiving. remember, i did not go in vain!

For those of you pining after a TiVo (or just the ability to watch pay-cable TV shows), have a look at Engadget's "BroadCatching" how-to. It's surprisingly simple -- all you need is a java-capable computer (that includes Macs, Linux and Windows) that you can keep online for extended periods. Set your filter to catch the shows you want, and a java BitTorrent client called Azureus will keep an eye on some RSS feeds for you, and automatically handle downloading whenever a new episode of, say, "Lost" becomes available. After you specify the shows you want, you just have to check your download directory periodically for new episodes.

Seriously, it's easier than it sounds. There are only like four steps. You can do it. Oh yeah, potential copyright violations, nobody sued yet, liability, etc etc... Get real. You're a rebel. You're not going to let the man hold you down.

Last Thursday Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's COO, warned a variety of Asian governments that Linux violates 228 patents. The implication is that governments shouldn't use it if they don't want to get sued. And say, as long as you guys are shopping for operating systems, have you heard of this little firm in Redmond, Washington?

Software patents are a serious threat to open source software like Linux. There are a lot of stupid patents out there for extremely obvious things -- Microsoft just received a patent for the double click, for example. Homegrown hackers can't reasonably be expected to do a thorough patent search before writing their software, project maintainers can't tell if code they accept is ripped off, and OSS users don't have a corporation in between them and IP owners who might get into a suin' mood when a piece of software violates their patents or copyrights.

Exactly how big a problem this is going to be is up for debate -- the author of the study Ballmer was citing says his results were willfully misinterpreted by Microsoft. And there are some companies like Novell that sell Linux services and offer indemnification to their clients; in fact, there's even a company that is solely in the business of allaying legal concerns over open source use. But IP lawsuits are still a legitimate concern for the OSS community, and Microsoft has been getting some real traction out of it.

So permit me some schadenfreude: it turns out Microsoft violates IP law, too. Every copy of Windows XP comes with some sound files -- startup chimes, incoming mail noises, that sort of thing. Inside the header of the file format there's some space for comments that's commonly used by the program authoring the file to identify itself. You can only see these comments by using a hex editor or a specially tailored program, but they're in there.

You might be familiar with "crack" programs. For shareware or otherwise unregistered programs, cracks make some small modifications to the executable that allow the software to be pirated. As it turns out, one particular crack for an audio editor named SoundForge also modified the comment inserted by SoundForge to include the cracker's name. And guess what has shown up in the comment area of those Microsoft-authored sound files?

It's a little unfair to jump on this -- all it really means is that some engineer at Microsoft had a piece of pirated software on his system. Checking every file with a hex editor in a mammoth product like Windows XP is not something we can reasonably expect, and I'm sure Microsoft doesn't have a policy of pirating development tools. But it's still pretty funny, and it'll be nice to see the evil empire dragged into court one more time.

I've made stabs at using various RSS applications before, but couldn't really find a free reader that I liked, so I dropped the search and relied on endlessly refreshing my browser tabs.

But Catherine's enthusiasm for Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature has rekindled my interest in RSS, and thanks to the commenters at kevin rose dot com, I've finally found one I like: FeedReader. It's open source, it's free, and it works under any version of Windows. It's worth going into the settings -- by default, sites open within FeedReader instead of your browser, which is kind of a drag. But once you get that ironed out, the app will happily check all your favorite blogs every X minutes and pop up unobtrusive notification windows whenever one of them is updated. You can set the app to start up when your system does and live in your system tray. Overall, a pretty efficient way to be inefficient at work. Hopefully future releases will include a little more customization, and better integration with Firefox -- but for now, I'm pretty satisfied.

Now I just need to bug my friends who don't use RSS to update their sites (for those of you that are interested and use blogspot, you can read here how to add an Atom feed, which most RSS clients can use -- to support those that can't, you can also check out FeedBurner).

while i'm blabbing on about what to buy people for christmas, susan is keeping us up-to-date and informed on the election going-ons in the ukraine. she really knows her stuff, having actually, you know, been there as an election observer. check it out.

i'm going all martha stewart this year. my christmas will be easy, elegant (but casually so), and everything, absolutely everything, will be planned and done with weeks and weeks in advance. coworkers will get baked goods. friends will get baked goods or little italian tidbits - amaretto cookies, jars of pesto, illy espresso, olive oil. yum. and best of all, i'll do it all online. moo ha ha ha. i'm never leaving the house. i refuse to drive to tyson's mall or target. i'm going to be the most misanthropic, anal jolly christmas person ever. ho ho ho.

but there are five people for whom, every year, i never know what to buy. of course it follows that they are the five most important people in my life. tommy, brother, sister, mother, father. so here is a thread for people to suggest what to get them. matters not if you don't know them. i'll help you out. general suggestions would be great.

-by now, you might know tommy's personality and likes fairly well. technology and nerd stuff, basically. gadgets. he needs new clothes, as always, but that's boring. video games. he likes italy as much as i do, and is an excellent cook. likes to drink. up on new music. would like to be better than he is at golf (though i can't afford a set of clubs for him). tom, feel free to chime in. you need to drop hints, boy.

-my sister is going to be 17 the day after christmas. good god. i know she reads this blog, so you can drop hints too, marggie. or tell me outright. she knows her music stuff. leans towards emo-ish punkish tastes. plays bass clarinet in high school band. learning spanish. LOVES interior decorating stuff and is quite good at it. she can tell the difference between god knows what sorts of flooring and architectural styles of windows. good fashion sense, too. maybe would enjoy a cheapish digital camera?

-my brother is...god. how old is he? he can't be 22, really, can he? a senior at uva, majoring in chemical engineering. enjoys historical stuff about wars, politics, etc. reads tons, mostly nonfiction, biographies, warfare, etc. also excellent musical tastes. loves banana republic clothing. i got him a bottle of whiskey from scotland once, and he seemed to enjoy that. cigars? (dad, don't kill me, i know i've been corrupting him since he was a wee lad.) actually my mom would kill me if he opened cigars from me on christmas morning, so that one may be out.

now, my parents. they're even harder, if possible, than tommy and the siblings, because they have been around quite a bit longer and therefore basically own everything they want. not calling you old, guys, just stating the truth. so you can't really get them anything they actually NEED. in which case i would buy them some sort of service thing; but they don't really like frilly service-y stuff, like spa stuff, or cooking classes, and they don't really travel, so getting them a weekend somewhere wouldn't work. they need a new tv; maybe i can get my siblings to chip in. or a gift certificate to a nice restaurant. except my mom can't really eat sugar or gluten, so it would have to be a very special restaurant that, like, didn't serve bread. man, parents are hard. what have you bought your parents in christmases past?

A quick bit stolen from Gizmodo: Amazon's Japanese branch has launched a new service that lets camera-phone users take snapshots of bar codes and get back the Amazon listing for the product. That's kind of cool... but tie it in to Froogle and you'd have a pretty awesome application (and a new threat to brick & mortar stores).

For $125, Sylvester Stallone's mom will look at a hi-res digital photo of your butt and use it to tell your future.

I don't know what else to say.

Looks like dcbaseball.com has unveiled the official team name and logo. It's the Washington Nationals, and the logo is a pleasantly shaded bit of nothing.

It seems like a conscious decision was made to keep the team as featureless as possible. An adjective for the team name -- and a somewhat abstract one at that. Great. Red white and blue color scheme on the logo? Daring. I particularly like the use of a fucking baseball as the logo's centerpiece. In case people forget what sport they're watching, I guess.

The worst part is the inevitability of the merchandising evolution. First there'll be the initial wave of "we'll buy anything" purchases. Then sports talk radio will get sick of using two unnecessary syllables -- there are so many athletes and coaches who we need to talk about firing, after all. So Nationals:Nats as Capitals:Caps. Reluctantly, we'll finally admit to ourselves that we're cheering for an airport (or a dead crooner), and Nat will come to mean Gnat.

Almost immediately, a wave of starter jackets emblazoned with a ferocious-looking anthropomorphized insect will be disgorged onto area department stores. Post sportswriters will start a major push to convince readers that baseball puns involving the word "swat" are clever.

Finally, a couple of Christmas seasons later, someone will design a real logo, which will be used for the absolute minimum period necessary to allow the sale of throwback paraphenalia.

That's right: I have seen the future. And it's like today, but with slightly more holograms.

Charles, Jon, Karl and I caught two bands at the Galaxy Hut on Saturday. Since there's no thread over at HaH for me to cause trouble in, I figured I might as well write it up here.

A trio named the Rachel Nevadas opened things up. My initial impression was that they sounded like early Wilco at their most directionless and rocking. That's meant as a compliment. Then came a song with the energy and percussive melody of Ted Leo. And then the available beer began to outpace my desire to come up with comparisons.

These guys can write songs that sound different from one another, they can play well and with energy, and they can make you bob your head. But they can't sing. Lead vocalist Prabir Mehta has an acceptable if mediocre rock & roll range, but he wanders around the notes; bass player Chris Freeman sings occasional backup, but he doesn't sound like a plausible solution to the problem. These guys are definitely worth seeing -- I think all four of us agreed on that. It could have been an off night for Prabir, or it could be that some instruction will pin down those notes. It could also be that I'm blowing the badness of the singing out of proportion, as I was sitting directly under the PA used to pipe out the vocals at an unpleasantly high volume.

I'm a lot more confident in my opinion of the Hurricane Lamps. I've been wanting to see these guys since reading this enthusiastic review on Pitchfork. Unfortunately, the live experience didn't live up Pitchfork's no doubt highly scientific 7.4 rating. Ridiculously pinched vocals and uninteresting songs had our table tuning out halfway through the set. I was ready to like these guys. Oh well.

What's wrong with DC vocalists anyway? I'm no expert on the local music scene, but it seems primarily composed of lackluster singers and post-punk operations that get away with slightly melodic yelling or lilting narration. The last genuinely interesting local rock singer I saw was Martin from WSC. He's no Jeff Buckley, but he can hit a note, has an interesting timbre, and seems well on his way to developing a classically debauched and androgenous rock & roll stage persona. Is that asking too much?

UPDATE: HeresAHint has put up a review after all. I'll agree that the RNs' harmonies were well-written -- they weren't very well executed, is all.

Man. No American Idol for me this year.

this is something i've thought about doing for a long time, ever since i mentioned a deal i found for travel to bali and hong kong on this blog, and julie ended up using it to go visit our friend jessica. i've made it a habit every monday of going through all the travel sections of newspapers from over the weekend, and i often find some really great deals that i would take advantage of if i could, even though 99.9% of the time i can't. well, even if i can't, that doesn't mean that somebody out there wouldn't find the info useful - and it might even inspire some vacations amongst our friends. so some travels deals i thought were good are behind the cut.

woohoo! from their newest issue, the best of washington:

HABIT-FORMING BLOGS

One of the stars of the "Blogger Alley" at this year's Democratic National Convention was Duncan Black, senior fellow for the Web site Media Matters for America - and better known by his pseudonym, Atrios. Black fills his blog, Eschaton (atriosblogspot.com), with staunchly to-the-left political news and incisive media criticism.

Among the first big-name bloggers, Time and New Republic social critic Andrew Sullivan gets some 85,000 visitors a day to AndrewSullivan.com. His smart, conservative commentary has even inspired Sullywatch (sullywatch.blogspot.com), a critical blog about his blog.

Count on the DC message-board users at Chowhound (chowhound.com) to
sniff out the newest restaurants before the critics can get into print and to argue for pages over who serves the best banh mi. For more concise analysis, we like software engineer Jason Storch's D.C. Foodies (dcfoodies.com), a chronicle of his adventures in Washington dining.

The editors at DCist (DCist.com), an offshoot of New York's popular Gothamist, collect tidbits of political and cultural arcana - like news that former Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug was selling her armoire in Arlington and an obituary for the "historical" bathroom at Georgetown's late Au Pied de Cochon.

CapitalWeather (capitalweather.com), run by EPA climate analyst Jason Samenow, calls itself the "power center for DC weather." Look for meticulous reports from experts on sunrises, snow, and tornadoes plus interviews with meteorologists and snowfall-prediction contests.

The curmudgeonly missives at Why.i.hate.dc (whyihatedc.blogspot.com) are equal parts comedy and contempt. blogger "James F." calls Washington a place "where common sense is kidnapped and hunted down for sport." Recent rants take aim at Marion Barry's reelection to the DC Council, the dimness of Arlington streetlights, and - surprise - the Redskins.

In the great tradition of the Onion (onion.com), ScrappleFace (scrappleface.com) crafts hilarious fake news stories with headlines like KERRY: BUSH OUTSOURCED BIN LADEN VIDEO PRODUCTION and BUSH SWATS KOFI ANNAN WITH ROLLED NEWSPAPER. Editor-in-chief Scott Ott doles out slaps to both parties, and the short reads are perfect for procrastinating at work."

here's a cool site; it takes a news article off the web and then links several blogs that have written about the story. it's a great way of mixing straight news and unofficial blogger commentary.

(via e-media tidbits)

damn. when i went to youth group in high school, they sure never did stuff like this. if only they'd faked terrorists coming in to kill all the youth group members, i might have attended more often.

i know i've already talked about the o.c. a lot today - well, who am i kidding, i talk about it ALL THE FREAKIN TIME - but as i was browsing the show's site today, i was really totally struck by what an insane empire it is becoming. what's it called, horizontal integration? econ 201 really did not stick in my mind very much. but here's just a small sampling of what the o.c. can offer you, yes you:

well, thanks everybody, for your input on the post below. i have to admit i spent a lot of time thinking that i was going to email him the URL without restrictions, but because i am a self-conscious loser, crippled by paranoia and with no faith in my writing abilities, i ultimately decided against it. i'm not ashamed of anything i write on my blog (well, not ashamed of like, 75% of it, anyways...) but i do think my posts are a little more livejournal than "real" blog (no suprise, since i've been keeping an online diary since i was 17 or so, and that's just what i enjoy writing), and i didn't want to expose him to that side of me. as weirdly engaging as it may be.

i ended up sending him an email with a link to my posts on DCist.com and links to several other blogs i enjoy, more mainstream fare like yglesias, talkleft.com, buzzmachine.com, a food blog and a couple of funny, normal personal sites that i read. (no, don't worry, nobody reading this got a link. some of my absolute favorite sites are by people who comment here, but i didn't email those because i'm linked on them, and i feared he would click through and discover this.) i know i'm linked on dcist.com, but you have take a while to find out where. and if he finds that, well, so be it.

anyway, the interviewer was very nice, and funny, and overall, i honestly don't think he would have minded reading this site, and may have even enjoyed it. but i just wasn't prepared to let someone whom i need to view me professionally see this side of my writing.

well, phew. i'm glad THAT's over. oy vey, the huge, terrible ordeals i go through in my daily life... i can't even begin to tell you about them. well, actually, i can. and that's what's i love about this blog. poop, partisan bile and overly nostalgic ruminations on italy; i can write about it, you can read about it, and we can all exist in perfect harmony.

Witness the terrifying and unrelenting wrath of the phone company! Truly, when you stare into the void, the void will try to sell you ringtones.

Alright, fine, I'll make sense. It's called ringback, and it, paired with a personal aversion to Huey Lewis, is the reason I won't be able to call Jon any more. For a couple of extra bucks a month your cell company will replace the sound callers hear while your phone is ringing with one of those pop songs the kids are talking about. Some services will let you record your voice over the song as well.

Here I am acting all high and mighty, when truthfully, nothing would please me more than to have my phone erupt into Styx singing "SHE'S MY... LAYHEEDEEEEEEeeee" everytime Catherine calls me. It's only through a lot of willpower and a smattering of not-knowing-how that I avoid committing this crime against the lot of you. Remember folks, cell phone music customization is like masturbation: completely self indulgent, and best conducted in private.

linkfests are safe for blogs, right? they won't get me fired or turned away from grad school. and they're so wonderfully easy.

well, i had my grad school interview this evening. overall, i think things went fairly well. the alum interviewing me couldn't have been friendlier. i looked respectable, i think. i wore black slacks, a cream sweater, my black pumps - i looked, i dunno. i looked like a republican. i don't think i came off as an idiot, which was my lofty goal. we chatted, we laughed, i feel i articulated why i want to go to the school and the specific new media program in particular and that i have the experience and dedication to do so.

but there's one problem.

in the process of talking about new media and online journalism, the interviewer asked me if i ever read these "blog things." yes, i admitted happily, i do in fact read blog things. i think they're great. oh, he asked me, well, do you have a blog? i hesitated for one second, and before i could find the presence of mind to outright lie, i blurted, yes, yes, i do have a blog. ah! he said. would you mind sending me the URL to your site? i really would like to read more blogs and see what they're about. SURE! i smiled through clenched teeth. you can read my blog!

and thus the alumni interview is expecting me to email him the URL of my blog. by tomorrow or monday.

shit shit shit shit shit.

how can i have this guy read my blog? he's an alum of what is probably the best journalism school in the country. he is judging whether or not i should be allowed into the hallowed halls of his institution. he wants to know if i have the presence of mind to be a fair-minded, intelligent journalist. i'm not sure how much weight his input will have on the application process, but i'm pretty certain it's not going to help me if he reads huge entries by me, bitching about everything and nothing under the sun, frequently mispelling things, showing my terrible partisanship, and just plain being stupid.

if he comes to this blog, he is going to see nothing but...crap. from me. (not tommy's posts; those are great, and i'm tempted to pass them off as my own.) this blog is all inanity, profanity, insanity. it's nowhere near respectable, and certainly my ranting and raving doesn't show any capacity for intellectual journalistic endeavors.

so, dear readers, in my state of panic, i turn to you. what do you think i should do? wait a few days before i send him the URL, hoping that he's already sent off his impression of me to the school? delete all the terrible, stupid, celebrity-centered posts, no mind the hours it would take me to purge the site of them? bump up some of my more writerly posts from months ago, hoping that he'll only look at the first few entries and not browse the muck that is the archives?

please. this is my hour of need. and in the spirit of interactive writing/jouralism/blogging, i am asking for your input.

by the way, this post will self-delete in 48 hours.

"The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin." - Jay Leno (may god and tommy forgive me for quoting him.)

if you read this blog, you more than likely just received an invitation to the O Street holiday party. you better come.

if you read this blog, are not a creepy internet stalker, and did not receive an evite to the holiday party, click here. you can come, but really, only if you're not a creepy internet stalker. seriously. let me know if that link doesn't work for some reason.

our holiday party is only the beginning. that particular weekend, i have four, count 'em four, holiday parties to go to. thursday: my company party. friday: our O St. party. saturday: tommy's company party. sunday: a friend's family's party. as much as i love the holidays (it really IS the most wonderful time of the year!), i'm getting a little scared. i can only hope that i don't projectile vomit eggnog everywhere at some point.

You've been warned.

As reported by DCist and others, DC taxicabs may go on strike for 12 hours today to protest Mayor Williams' plans to reform the way the city cab system works. The most important of these changes: an end to the zone system. Hallelujah.

I think it's wonderful that some people are willing to devote themselves to the level of taxicab scholarship necessary to figure out this goddamn system. I'm just not one of them. When I use DC cabs it's usually after a few cocktails. I'm sure the system is a hit after last call at whatever bars cartographers hang out in. The rest of us would just like little red lights, please.

As it stands I can't even figure out the system when I'm stone-cold sober. Cab drivers know this, and I've gotten the "tourist special" more than once. And goddammit, I don't deserve to. I don't stand on the left side of the escalator. I don't trundle down Constitution at 5 mph looking for parking. I'm terrified of the very idea of snow! I meet all the qualifications, so why am I paying $12 to go ten blocks today when it cost $4 yesterday?

I realize that some folks like the system. When used with cunning it can save you some money. And when your fare is determined by the number of zones crossed, getting stuck in traffic is only psychologically draining, not financially.

But let's face it: I suspect that many of you are like me -- too dumb and/or apathetic to work this byzantine system out. And the no-cost traffic-jam advantage mostly helps daytime and rush hour cab users. Those saved costs have to be covered somewhere. That means nighttime cab users like ourselves are paying a regressive surcharge to underwrite John Q. Lobbyist's lunchtime commute from Capitol Hill to the Prime Rib.

So I say, go ahead, taxi drivers. Strike! You won't be getting my sympathy. You can do your worst, but zones must go!

Just try to wrap things up by Friday night, ok?

image courtesy of/stolen from DCPages.com

At the Vibe awards the good doctor got punched, the puncher got stabbed, and the stabber is on the run. Also, he's a member of G-Unit. Click here for some glamour shots of the aforementioned unit posing with automatic weapons. Classy.

That's two award-show catastrophes in two days. Has the total quantity of statuette-distribution telecasts finally reached critical mass? Could stabbing and slurring be metaphorical alpha particles streaming out from the unstable and rapidly collapsing core of American celebrity culture?

No? Are you sure?

Nuts.

House Republicans plan to change their rules in order to allow members indicted by state prosecutors to remain in a leadership post, a move designed to benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, GOP leaders said today.

The rules change, which leaders said is likely to be adopted Wednesday, comes as House Republicans return to Washington indebted to DeLay for the enhanced majority they won in this month's elections. DeLay led an aggressive redistricting effort in Texas last year that resulted in five Democratic House members retiring or losing reelection. It also triggered the grand jury inquiry into fundraising efforts related to the state legislature's redistricting actions.

...House Republicans adopted the indictment rule in 1993, when they were trying to end four decades of Democratic control of the House, in part by highlighting Democrats' ethical lapses. They said at the time that they held themselves to higher standards than prominent Democrats such as then-Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (Ill.), who eventually pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced to prison.

Via Slashdot, check out this interview with Wilco. Jeff Tweedy is a cool dude. But then you already knew that.

i'm looking for a new, d.c.-based running partner to run in the city (anywhere from the mall to mass. ave to glover archibald park) to run with me. i used to run with my marathon-training coworker, but now that the marathon's over and done with, she's taken to running on a treadmill at her gym. and i don't blame her. it's cold out there. unfortunately, i no longer have that luxury, as i canceled my gym membership months ago, feeling that i was too robust and wild to run on an unfeeling, boring machine any longer. stupid me.

said partner would be willing to run with me 2-3 times a week, twice during post-work evenings and possibly once on the weekends, 4-6 miles each time (or longer, if you feel like it). normally i'd be happy to run by myself, bopping along to my ipod, and i often did in the summertime and fall, but frankly, it's getting a little too dark out there for me to feel comfortable hoofing it alone on rock creek parkway, aka Rape Lane.

c'mon, it'll be fun! i will be master to your pupil, pat morita to your ralph macchio, um....mickey to your rocky. etc. if you've been looking to start running, now's your chance. don't think you can't do it; i barely ran and was in extremely poor cardiovascular shape before i bizarrely decided to start just running all over the place. and it's fun! if you run, you can eat and drink whatever you want. if you run, you will develop calf muscles the size of grapefruits. if you run, you'll constantly be buzzing on endorphins. sounds nice, eh?

so. wanna run?

i'm normally not a theater-going, drama-watching sort of gal, but mssr. dceiver writes such a glowing review of dario fo's "accidental death of an anarchist", currently being performed at the rorschach theatre, that i think i must go. plus, i have a soft spot in my heart for dario fo, as it was one of my italian professor's personal favorite torture games to have us constantly translate passages from his work.

in other news of people attempting to educate philistine catherine, teresa has convinced me to go see a play called "a bad friend," which has something to do with communism, and since i'm a democrat, and all democrats love communists, it follows that i will LOVE this play. also, it's cheap. $3.50 for those 25 and younger, and if i don't take advantage of my youth getting me free shit, i will regret it later in life.

anybody in for either? you, too, can unwillingly learn about theater.

tommy's been using it forever, but i only converted yesterday. and boy, was it worth it. if one could be in love with an internet browser, well, i am, and i want to have 10,000 of firefox's babies. you can download it for yourself here, and read a post article on the benefits of firefox here, along with a post live chat here.

mmm. tab browsing. rss reader. mmm. automatic popup blocking. major security advantages. mmm.

dcbaseball.com

season tickets go on sale thursday, nov. 18th.

(via kanishka of dcist.com)

for all of you breathlessly following the casting of the da vinci code movie...well, for me then: tom hanks has been cast in role of robert langdon, havard symbologist.

interesting facts from the article: the movie's producer, brian grazer, originally wanted to use the plot of the book as a storyline for the third season of "24" (!!!), but dan brown wouldn't sell the rights to a piddly tv show. also, they plan on using foreign actors to fill the foreign roles, ie for hottie cryptologist sophie neveu and french cop bezu feche (jean reno is on the shortlist. huzzah). apparently a "recent oscar winner" wanted to play sophie (i'm guessing nicole kidman; can you imagine her attempt at a french accent? eesh), but they turned her down.

you can read tommy's hilarious interpretation of the da vinci code here.

but maybe TrimSpa's not so good for the ol' noggin. Or maybe it was just booze. Either way, we've got a new chapter in the big book of Awards-Show Meltdowns.

ohhh I'mabadperson...

is this one, which Brian and I came up with while riding back from the UVA game last weekend. Route 29 has got a lot of stoplights, and at highway speeds it's tough to tell when you ought to stop for a yellow light and when you ought to keep going. The problem seems likely to come to a head as red light cameras are rolled out.

The image above expresses the basic idea. The yellow light now has multiple states, counting down from a full light to whatever minimally-thick donut-shape is safely visible (better to go from full-to-donut than full-to-point to prevent problems with depth perception at night). This is all possible since incandescent traffic lights are rapidly being replaced with LED lights. All it would take is the addition of a cheap timing circuit -- I don't know much about circuit design, but with a morning on the internet and an afternoon at Radio Shack I'm pretty sure I could whip one of these up.

I'll admit that this might seem kind of silly. The yellow light is already a transitional warning -- do we need warnings about its transition as well? Reductio ad absurdum, etc. But the yellow light interval isn't standardized -- this would give drivers an immediate, intuitive sense of how long a yellow will last. The traffic light system wasn't designed for modern highway speeds, and the cost to implement this would be minimal. Making sure folks know what the hell it means before they get on the road might take a little effort, but I bet some warning signs could handle the job.

I swear. I just haven't gotten around to writing about it. But thanks to Jeff, here's some photographic evidence.

I do intend to write up the trip before I completely forget it, but my next blog opus is a gigantic post I've been writing that combines more BitTorrent pedagogy with some bullshit philosophizing, in which I make an ill-advised attempt to draw parallels between hacker sociology and the thermodynamic laws of physics. I know you're all excited.

Ut oh. It looks like Microsoft is banning users from XBox Live when they connect with a modchip -- even if the modchip is disabled.

A brief explanation: installing a modchip in your XBox turns off Microsoft's copy protections. This lets you do all kinds of neat stuff, from making, uh, "backups" of retail games to emulating your old NES favorites to playing downloaded movies on your TV. It's a handy thing to have.

As you might expect, the "backup" thing -- more commonly referred to as "piracy" -- doesn't sit well with Microsoft. MS takes a loss of between $25 and $100 on each XBox sold, so they're also not nuts about people buying XBoxes for legal purposes that don't involve buying MS games. Consequently, it's always been the case when you connect to their online gaming service (XBox Live) that active modchips will be detected and modded systems banned. Each XBox has a chip inside -- called an EEPROM -- that contains a unique identifier. This is what gets banned. Once you've been banned the only fix is to somehow get your hands on a new EEPROM and install it. It's a pain.

The modchip people solved this simply enough by putting external power switches on their chips, allowing them to be easily disabled prior to going onto XBox Live. This worked fine. You had to own a legal copy of your games in order to play them on XBox Live, but with the flip of a switch you could still fire up Super Mario 3. Fair enough. The nerds were soothed, and the world spared their terrible fury (e.g. irate newsgroup posts).

But the order has been disturbed! Microsoft can force users to download new XBox Live software whenever they'd like, and the latest round of updates seem to have included some new anti-modchip features. People are getting banned with their chips off, and no one's sure why -- there's a lot of confusion. The mod community has put together a survey that should help identify the real algorithm being used to ban, but results aren't yet publicly available. So for now we're stuck with a lot of wild speculation. The most popular theories:

scanning hard drives for game backups

Folks with backups aren't getting banned consistently, so the verdict seems to be that this isn't the problem.

detecting non-stock hard drive models

The XBox hard drive is only 8 gigs, so nearly everyone installs a bigger one as soon as they mod their XBox. But again, this isn't happening consistently, and there are some technical reasons to think that this may not be possible for MS to do in a rigorous way.

scanning the LPC bus for modchips

Some users are reporting that their modchip status light is changing colors briefly prior to getting banned -- this would certainly imply that MS has installed a program that pokes around the system for hardware that shouldn't be present. Modchips have become ridiculously over-engineered, so it's not inconceivable that some would have a detectable presence even when they're nominally "off". If this really is happening, it likely only applies to some modchips -- perhaps only the newer models. It's too early to say.

the "marriage" theory

This is the favored explanation at the moment -- the thinking is that when you first log into XBox Live the service records your EEPROM ID and pairs it with your hard drive's serial number. If you connect to XBL in the future and have a new hard drive, MS knows you've cracked open your XBox, voided your warranty, and most likely hate America. Bad consumer! If your XBox was already modded the first time you got onto XBox Live, you're probably okay.

So that's where things stand. For my part, I've been playing Halo 2 online all weekend with Charles, Scott, Kriston and Yglesias -- so far, without any problems. I've got an older modchip (Xecuter 2.3b lite) and only signed onto XBox Live after the modchip. Maybe I'm safe, or maybe I've just been lucky. I'll keep you posted.

(Miles apart, I can still tell that Catherine is rolling her eyes.)

You can make useful stuff out of cheap junk using the power of SCIENCE . Witness -- alchemical booze and a frankenscreen TV.

Next week: turning a discarded water heater and a handful of LEDs into a cheap and effective robot bride.

a story of intrigue, italian food, the NSA and girls in catholic school girl uniforms contained within.

what a beautiful d.c. day, eh?

tommy and i are going out on this rainy evening to have dinner at galileo to celebrate our four-year anniversary. our anniversary is technically october 31st, but since i was running a marathon and all on that day, the anniversary stuff got pushed to the background. i'm pretty excited. even though the group behind galileo and roberto donna's other d.c. restaurants is apparently dead broke, the food is supposed to be amazing. i haven't had great italian food in a while. i haven't had great food at all in a while, actually. my dinner for the past two weeks has basically consisted of microwavable spinach tandoori bowls from trader joe's. anyway, i'll be sure to write a full review later on.

any other crazy weekend plans? full minute of mercury, a band i've never heard of before yesterday, is getting all sorts of crazy buzz, and they're playing the velvet lounge tonight. matthew sweet is playing an early show at the 9:30 club tomorrow. artomatic is going on. the delgados play the black cat on sunday night. actually, i keep hearing great things about the delgados, so perhaps i'll make my way out to that.

so, who saw the o.c. last night? is it just me, or is marissa's latin lover the CREEPIEST NASTIEST ICKIEST guy ever? and how good was the soundtrack? keane, elefant, the new year, sufjan stevens. not too shabby. this season so far hasn't blown me away, but i feel like it's settled down and is maturing a little bit. whatever that means.

alright, i'll shut up now. but first, in the spirit of liberal superiority, check out this ass hat.

letter to the editor i read today in the latest issue of the wasington city paper:

God Damn Us, Every One

With this recent election ("Kerry vs. Bush," 10/29), citizens of the District of Columbia made apparent their disdain for America by casting 90 percent of their votes for Kerry. Frankly, people who love God, and love America, voted to re-elect George Bush. Those who cast their ballots for John Kerry did so because they hate America. One hopes their hatred will be returned ten times by those Americans they despise.

I pray to God that during his second term George Bush enacts policies that mercilessly punish Washington, D.C. Let this be an example to the many traitors among us. America is not going to tolerate your insolence and depravity any longer. You are not welcome here.

Austin Porter
Eckington

this has GOT TO BE a parody. right? some whacked-out d.c. liberal set out to paint the true hatred of bush-loving evangelicals? and the city paper fell for it?

i knew i'd finally learn something from constantly watching hours after hours of west wing reruns on bravo:

you can lay down the washington monument inside of the national cathedral.

amazing!

via becca i see that the post had quite a cool gallery of the aurora borealis that showed up in the upper midwest on monday. i mention it 1) because the photos are astonishingly beautiful and 2) because it reminds me to remind you yet again that you should read the his dark materials trilogy by philip pullman, which feature the northern lights prominently (in the UK, the first book is actually titled the northern lights, though it's called the golden compass in the US).

can anyone explain to me how this phenomenon works? i read it in the trilogies, and i guess i could look it up online, but i'm lazy.

from the wapo.com

i mean, i find it hard that no one would want to spend new years in a cabin in the blue ridge mountains while snow fell softly on the pine trees outside and meanwhile you were passed out drooling in the hot tub as the result of drinking too much champagne + ice 101 in your hot chocolate. but, you know, just checking. let me know if that picturesque holiday scene i just set appeals.

Over at Begging to Differ they're talking about electronic voting irregularities, and ways to solve them. One solution being discussed in comments is a voting receipt. Obviously printing how you voted would be a problem -- you'd end up with folks offering $5 for every receipt for candidate X.

The BTD commenters know this, so they suggest having a random voter ID printed on the receipt. Then, later on, the voter can log into a website and check their vote. But this is still no good -- someone else can look at the screen over their shoulder, confirm their vote, and hand over a five-spot. Vote buying is still possible. It's just a little harder to do on a massive scale.

But I think there is a solution -- one that occurred to me during the e-voting presentation that I wrote about previously. I couldn't tell you the proper cryptographic name for it, but it has elements of hashing and public key cryptography, if you feel the need to apply terms to it.

Here's the gist: when you vote, you have the option of entering your email address and a private seed. In this case, let's say the seed is a number from 1 to 10. Simple enough, right? You also see some text explaining how this works: depending on how you vote, the number you enter will be transformed. If, say, you voted for the Republican candidate, your number will have one subtracted from it. If you voted for the Democrat, 1 is added to it. If the number goes outside the 1-10 range, it wraps around -- so a Democratic ballot with a seed value of 10 will spit out a result of 1; so will a Republican vote with a seed of 2. Without knowing the seed, you can't know how the vote was cast.

That algorithm could doubtless be adapted to accomodate multiple parties, and probably made even simpler. The important thing is that the output of whatever function you choose is ambiguous, and that the function is well-known -- tables of seed values and their outputs could be published; the voting machines could also explicitly state what the possible outputs for a chosen seed value were once a user entered it.

Then, when the votes are counted, the tabulating machine sends out emails to voters with the output value specific to the seed they entered. This has two advantages.

First, it enables people to know how their vote was counted, without opening up the possibility of vote buying. With the help of those published tables, a potential vote seller could always lie to the buyer about their seed value, allowing them to collect the money while still voting how they want. So long as the seed is secret, there's no problem.

The second advantage is that this would do a lot to prevent Diebold-style problems. Instead of having to safeguard the code for the voting machines and the machines themselves you just have to safeguard the counting code and the counting machines. The counting program could be ridiculously simple -- maybe ten lines of code, open to public review. Securing the tabulators would be much easier than securing the voting machines. And this way if someone screws with the voting machines a lot of people will know about it right away, since they'll be expecting an email with a specific result code -- if they don't get it, they'll presumably raise a fuss.

This might all sound complicated, but I honestly think that a decent marketing campaign could make it easy to understand.

does anyone have new year's even plans already? i believe i have a standing invitation to join some friends up in nyc, but i'd rather party down in the D to the C.

matt welch writes a reasoned and articulate argument on a subject i've long been honestly confused about: why the right seems to think the moonbat left is a) a legitimate part of the democratic party and b) is actually something to be feared:

Michael Moore did not even belong to the Democratic Party in 2000; his candidate was Ralph Nader, and Ralph Nader got a meager 2.7% of the vote. For the sake of argument, if you assume (wrongly) that every single one of those Nader voters, plus the 1.3% or so that defected from him in the last minute, represent "the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party," you are talking about 4% of the electorate, and maybe 8% of the Democratic Party. The real figure is likely much lower.

What about this year? In the primary season, Moore endorsed Wesley Clark, who campaigned like a boob, won one primary, and bowed out. Howard Dean, who is assumed (wrongly) to have Moore-like values (despite being a fiscal hawk who supported the four previous U.S.-led wars), didn't win a single primary. The Democratic candidate whose politics most closely mirrored Moore's was Dennis Kucinich, who was beaten like a rented elf. The nomination went to the former prosecutor & War Hero, and he picked as VP the second-most hawkish candidate from the primaries. And the Democratic Party Platform contained few if any of the provisions that the Moore/Nader/Kucinich 8% wing have been advocating for lo these many years.

Look, I used to work for these people, I have covered these people, I have certainly criticized these people, and from this extended exposure I can look you in the eye and say these people do not have a significant voice within the modern Democratic Party.

the michael moores of the world are as loony as everyone makes them out to be, and guess what? most of the democratic party looks at these people with the same disdain one would one feel towards, say, pop up ads on your computer. they're an annoyance; they're obnoxious and loud and can interfere with your otherwise purposeful and noble internet surfing experience; but WE NEVER CLICK THROUGH ON THEM TO ACTUALLY BUY THEIR SHIT AND IN FACT ALWAYS CLOSE THEM IMMEDIATELY OR INSTALL GOOGLE TOOLBAR.

now, that may have been a lousy analogy, but it's more or less truthful. how much actual electoral power within the democratic power does michael moore have? the unwashed hippie protestors of the world? the people making bush-hitler analogies? the noveau communists?

the answer is: absolutely zero. they have an agenda, but it is ignored. they put up their candidates (nader, kucinich), but they are soundly defeated within the democratic party and primaries. and i am absolutely convinced of the fact that moonbat lefties only get any attention at all because republicans seem so utterly terrified of them that they are constantly bringing their stupidity and pointless rhetoric into the limelight. and why shouldn't republicans do it? it serves them well. they can convince moderates that michael moore is actually running john kerry's campaign and once he's elected, moore will be the PUPPETMASTER and totally make abortions mandatory for everybody, publicly execute all returning marines, and install osama bin laden as chief justice of the supreme court.

meanwhile, over back on the ranch, welch elaborates on the fringe of the republican party...except they're not the fringe. they're powerful GOP politicians:

At the Republican Convention, one could find strolling the halls and signing autographs for worshipful Republican delegates the likes of Jerry Falwell. Who, you may recall, reacted to the Sept. 11 massacre by telling a nodding Pat Robertson that:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen."

Did Bush "miss a Souljah moment" by refusing to allow Falwell his seat at the RNC (which the Souljah-jonesers in the media demanded of Kerry and Moore)? Somehow, this didn't come up.

Anyway, the main point is not to compare competing fringes, but mostly to point out that the Republicans' extremist fringe includes powerful senior elected politicians from their own party. Moore, for all his sitting-next-to-people action at the DNC, was not invited on the podium. Rick Santorum, the senator from Pennsylvania who has described outlawing gay marriage as "the ultimate Homeland security," gave a rousing speech to the Republicans. Tom Coburn, the new Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for abortion doctors, and held up Fidel Castro's forced AIDS camps as a model worth emulating. Jim DeMint, your new Senator from South Carolina, thinks that single pregnant women shouldn't teach in public schools. If Bush wanted to deliver a "Sister Souljah moment," embracing cross-over moderation at the expense of his own party's fringe, he wouldn't need to take a swipe at a non-politician like Ann Coulter -- he could start in the august hall of the Unites States Senate.

so, anyone whining that the democratic party is controlled by the whacky left, you can shut your trap. i am a lifelong, card-carrying democrat of a gal, and i can tell you: these people never have had any power. they never will have any power. at most, they make up something like 5% of the democratic party. you can continued to be terrified that they will one day rule the earth, but if you're actually so afraid of fringe elements taking over our country, you'd be well advised to look inside the GOP and deal with and denounce them there.

As Catherine mentioned, last night we watched Van Helsing. It was surprisingly bad in the same way that getting hit in the groin is surprisingly uncomfortable: even if you know exactly what's coming, your expectation can't truly convey how unpleasant the experience will be.

I was ready to like this movie. There are two reasons for this. First, I love Halloween, and the Van Helsing universe is a pretty obvious attempt to capitalize on the holiday. Second, I have terrible, terrible taste in movies.

It's not that I can't recognize quality in films, or at least echoes of quality. It's just that I find the idea of emotional investment in a film completely exhausting and discouraging. Thinking about how I felt when I walked out of the theater after Requiem for a Dream... yeesh. I can't muster up the mental stamina for that very often. Put me on a couch, hand me a beer and start up Under Siege for the dozenth time. Check back with me in 90 minutes, or when you hear the sound of the bad guy's head getting shoved into that radar screen at the end.

So Van Helsing seemed like it might satisfy my perverse movie watching habits, even though the presence of radar screens for purposes of head-smashing seemed unlikely in a movie set in the Victorian era.

The plot is completely incomprehensible. There's a bit about Dracula needing Frankenstein to electrically bring his stillborn vampire children to life. Then there are werewolves, who serve Dracula, but are also the only thing that can kill him. Fortunately, though, Dracula has a special lycanthropy-curing serum that he can use to change a werewolf back to human, should one ever turn on him. Except of course werewolves are mentally enslaved to him after the final stroke of midnight on the first full moon after they're bitten. But they only become werewolves for the first time at the first stroke of midnight, providing a seconds-long Dracula-Killing/Lycanthropy-Curing window that the movie agonizingly explains, then completely ignores. And I haven't even gotten to our hero yet. He works for the Pope.

I can only imagine the circumstances under which the writers came up with this shit. It's late, in a nondescript LA conference room: the air stinks of whiteboard markers and half-smoked joints, and the table is a mess of coke residue and spilled candycorn. Finally somebody says for the one-too-many-th time that he doesn't understand something about the tragedy of notecards taped to the wall. He's fired and everyone goes home. Eight months later a movie pops out.

On the upside, the monster per capita ratio is hard to beat, and Kate Beckinsale appears in a number of outfits that Catherine assures me would be not at all practical for slaying the undead.

The worst part, though, happens immediately after the final shot. First, an obviously fussed-over graphic proudly declares: "WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY STEPHEN SOMMERS" (screenwriter for Deep Rising and The Mummy Returns, both of which I am ashamed to say I have seen).

And then, the buzzkill -- a dedication to his late dad. Well, shit. Suddenly my snarky putdowns of a disposable action movie make me a bad person, instead of just a boring one. Thanks a lot, Stephen Sommers. I'll be going into your next awful movie with a grudge.

oh god. i just scheduled my first interview for the grad school application process. i am terrible at interviews. i make a terrible first impression. i come off as a bitch. i really do. well, i mean, that is mostly what i am, but still. i'm lovable, really. but people who like me really only end up liking me after they are forced, by whatever cruel circumstances that god puts upon them, to spend a lot of time around me. and i'm not even sure if they really actually like me. they might just be pretending so i don't punch them in the mouth.

does anyone have any good grad school interview tips? will dressing in that slightly slutty v-neck sweater get me in? or should i go all-out puritan and wear a black suit with a collared button-down and my Very Serious Glasses with my hair in a bun so i look like someone who might someday be a real journalist? should i be chummy and giggly, or straight-faced and intellectual? personal and friendly, or cool and collected? DRUNK OR SOBER?

i have a 50/50 track record with admissions interviews, both of which were during college applications, both with fairly prestigious schools. one, the school i ended up getting into, was perhaps the best interview experience of my life. i somehow morphed unexpectedly into Witty Catherine. at 18, i was wowing the married couple who interviewed me in their posh home in mclean. i was amazing, intelligent, rattling off people i admired and serious goals i had in life. i was funny, kind, a tad sarcastic (but in the good way), self-depecrating, and determined. i hardly knew myself.

the other interview was with a school where i was eventually wait-listed. it took place over a cup of coffee at the amphora diner in vienna, which is perhaps the most atmosphereless place to talk to a person you have never met before and who is about to judge you mercilessly and then make a decision that could affect the rest of your life.

i did everything badly. i spilled sugar. i sloshed coffee. the dull, mousy man "interviewing" me barely did any talking, so i got extremely nervous and overcompensated by blabbering on for the better part of an hour. he only showed any sign of interest when i talked about my experiences as tennis team captain, and even then, i'm fairly sure it was because he was a gross fat lecherous person, not that he was inspired by my leadership.

anyway, seriously, if you do have interview tips, please let me know them. i can't write, i have a lackluster academic record, and short of sexual favors, an interview is my one great chance to convince these people that i'm worth a shot.

last night i was drinking some pumpkin ale, as i am wont to do, and sitting around chatting with charles and tommy, as i am wont to do, and we were thinking about watching "van helsing," as we eventually did, and i hope we are never wont to do again. i had been reading a book i picked up at olsson's yesterday called love in idleness, which i'd bought mostly for the fact that i had intended to buy jonathan strange and mr. norrell, because it is the hot blogger book to be reading, but then i looked at the price and it was $30, and i put it quickly away, and my eyes went to the next shelf down, and love in idleness immediately popped out at me because it had cypress trees on the cover, and i knew it was a fluff book about italy, and i couldn't resist.

anyway, i was complaining that this particular italy fluff book was not all that great (a bit too fluffy, apparently), and charles asked why i didn't read any of his collection of books. i gave them the once-over and declared i didn't like any of them either, because they were mostly philosophy and biographies, and i'm not a fan of those.

well, what do you like then, asked charles.

well, nothing, really, i responded. i mean, have you even read my blog? i hate art, i hate philosophy, i hate the GOP, i hate bush, i hate whole foods, i hate video games, i hate merriweather post pavilion, i hate trains, i disparage my job, my friends, my city, scientologists, everything! i hate everything!

i have realized that my blog is a den of festering hate.

so now has come to decide what to do this problem. i figure i can either channel my widespread hatred of everything into something positive and productive (ie, aiming to become a columnist who writes about stuff she hates, and people can read it and feel superior because they're not as bitter as i am and can rejoice in that sentiment, and thus i make the world a better place), or i can start a blog positivity campaign, wherein i only write about puppies, fluffy bunnies, flowers, my elitist europhile tendencies that i love to indulge in, food, alcohol, and only glowing reviews of books, music, and movies.

i'll have to think if i'm going to be on a descent towards all hatred, all the time, or revamping my outlook to be sunny and shiny and happy.

i hate thinking.

It was inevitable. The MPAA has finally gotten into the hot new trend that its kid sister RIAA has been pushing for years: suing P2P users. To their credit, they seem to be behaving a bit more sanely than the RIAA -- although their actions are the same, their rhetoric is at least a little less inflammatory. Most likely, though, this is simply because they can afford to be: movies on filesharing networks tend to be at least 150 times larger than songs, and a lot of people simply can't be bothered.

But there's a glaring omission on the list of the prosecuted-to-be. Kazaa, Gnutella, eDonkey -- it wasn't hard to see those coming. But where's BitTorrent?

some things i've been enjoying lately:

>>i read the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (yes, i have fallen victim to the today show book club. lucky me.) i found it interesting mostly because when i worked in italy, i babysat two brothers, one of whom was ten years old and pretty severely autistic, and his younger sibling, who was mildly so. i had never really encountered autism at all before, and in fact, barely knew what it was, except for stupid stuff like "rain man," and i think the only thing the public took away from the film is that autistic people can count the exact number of toothpicks that you've spilled on the floor. or something. babysitting the kids was tough, even though they were lovely and incredibly intelligent and sweet, especially the younger one. the older one liked me a lot, i think, and as long as there were defined rules and boundaries and expectations, it wasn't too difficult. but then one day i lost my patience after he was really cruel to his brother, and i spoke harshly to him, and he flipped his shit, really, like, lost it for a couple of hours. it was kind of terrifying. ever since babysitting them, i've wanted to know more about autism, and though i doubt that reading a short fiction novel on the subject qualifies anyone as an expert, the book definitely gives a lot of insight into how to deal with autistic children and the kind of things that they are going through. plus, it's well-written and a bit of a mystery novel, so it's a quick, enjoyable read.

>>tommy, charles and i went to see washington social club on friday night at the black cat. i know that they've been around for a while, and everyone already thinks they're a great band, and i'm late to the game, etc etc. honestly, i wasn't really into them at the start of the show. i stayed in the back and sat at a table because i am 84 years old and can't be bothered to stand for long periods of time. but as soon as tommy dragged me to the front, praising them to the high heavens, i started to like them a lot more. he bought their cd, so hopefully i can soon steal it from him unnoticed and listen to them more in depth.

>>saturday afternoon, i went to see the dan flavin retrospective at the national gallery of art, and also ended up taking in the gerard ter borch exhibition in the west building. now, it should be noted that i know absolutely zilch about art, and in fact, i rarely enjoy it. i am an uncultured philistine; when in italy, i could barely be bothered to waltz through the uffizi gallery or any other of the innumerable and amazing collections of art easily available to me. i nearly fell asleep in the galleria borghese. so, you're just getting the opinion of an art retard here, basically. you can read kriston for some actual art knowledge, and a couple of posts about flavin.

anyway. i liked the flavin retrospective, mostly, though i have to say i definitely don't get a lot of his work. for example - i think his most famous piece is this golden-colored fluorescent tube that's set up on a wall at a 45 degree angle. and that's it. please to explain?

most of the other sculptures, or whatever you would call them, were really beautiful and interesting, and i liked the multi-colored ones because they were purty. i like purty things. a few things about the exhibit itself - i wish the floor hadn't been carpet because i think it would have been cool to see the lights be somewhat reflected off a different floor material, and also, i wish some of the sculptures had been in their own rooms. a lot of the time there were several in one room, and there was just too much light coming off of all of them, and i think some pieces might have benefited from being alone and having their light more concentrated. also, it might have helped my eyeballs from being burned out by all the fluorescent light that attacked me at every turn.

then i went to see gerard ter borch, who was a big old dutch painter, and i liked his work, too. kind of graceful and intimate. also, he is apparently the BOMB at painting fabric, and i have to say i agree. you'd look at some of the satin dresses on the women in his paintings, and it basically looked like he had cut out a piece of white satin and glued it onto the canvas. incredibly realistic. and purty.

>>oh, still listening to the arcade fire. funeral. i've recommended them about 37 times already. please take my advice if you haven't. and please let me know of any awesome new music, because i am itching to buy some cds.

I've made a few more anti-spam modifications around here -- if anyone's curious, this site has a great roundup of anti-spam tricks for Movable Type (although I'm still waiting for an anti-spam hack that puts a mandatory check for an existing session in mt-comments.cgi. Nerds? Nerds? Where are you?).

Anyway, the reason I mention this is that it might've broken the comment or trackback systems on some pages. If you find any of those, please let me know by email or in comments here.

UPDATE: Yup, I broke something. Thanks to Kriston for pointing it out via email. For those curious, the specific hack I applied is item 2 from the linked list. The problem I ran into is that a number of our templates had mt-comments.cgi hardcoded, rather than using the correct <$MTCommentScript$> syntax (which gets automatically replaced with the name of the script as it appears in your config file). I know, it's fascinating.

reporter on bbc world news this morning:

"everyone knows that falluja will eventually fall to the marines, even the insurgents know that. victory, for them, will be taking as many american lives as possible."

via kos, Juan Cole suggests a solution to the gay marriage dilemma that had occurred to me while arguing with Mark over the summer: get the government out of the marriage business altogether. Instead simply issue legal recognition of partnerships. Rights are granted on that basis; the word 'marriage' is left to be dished out by the churches.

But would anyone really fall for this? I think there's just too much history of legislating around marriage. Hatemongers would see this for what it is -- an attempt to give rights to gays -- and ideologues would be able to spin it easily enough ("they want the government to say you're not married!"). I'd kind of discarded it as a real possibility, barring the discovery of a rift in time leading back to the 1700s.

But on the other hand, Prof. Cole is way, way smarter than I am, so if he thinks this is a workable idea, maybe it is. What do you guys think?

(also: I promise I'll stop with the political posts soon)

There's a lot of speculation about possible shuffling within the Bush administration. The rumors seem to be going like this: Powell is definitely out, Ashcroft is probably going, Rumsfeld may be forced out but intends to stay, and Rice may be changing jobs to Secretary of State or moving into Rummy's office.

Getting rid of Ashcroft and Rumsfeld would immediately make the second Bush term a huge comparative success. I suppose their replacements could be worse, but I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt, whoever they are. I hear the reanimated cyborg corpse of Ty Cobb is on the short list for Ashcroft's job, and I, for one, think it would bring much-needed reform to the Justice Department; provided, of course, that its insatiable hunger for the still-steaming organs of sleeping children doesn't get in the way of any official duties.

It's a shame to see Colin Powell go; he's been so pleasantly inoffensive, except for that whole lying-at-the-UN thing. Still, given the way the President pursues foreign policy, sticking an incompetent like Rice into the State Department seems like a good way to neutralize the damage she can do, rather than putting her in a more important position. Like, say, Secretary of Transportation.

But here's some speculation I haven't heard that occurred to me last night -- and if Karl Rove really is the beady-eyed Machiavelli that we Dems have spent the last two days rapidly re-convincing ourselves he is, I wouldn't be surprised to see this happen: Cheney leaves the administration.

There was a lot of talk about it before the election. Well, that didn't happen. It's not hard to see why: it would have been admitting a liability, it would have alienated the base that loves Cheney, and it would have removed some grizzled experience from a Presidential ticket that frequently looks like it could use some after-school tutoring.

Cheney's not going to run in 2008, but his replacement would be well-positioned to do so. This would also conveniently short-circuit the primary process, allowing the neocons to continue running the Republican party. Not that they have any opposition now -- but if the GOP loses seats in the midterms (which, given my complete lack of faith in the President's ability to govern effectively, I think to be likely) the party's going to start looking more fractious, and someone without the Crazy Evangelical seal of approval -- John McCain, for instance, although he'll be pretty old by then -- might slip onto the national GOP ticket.

But replacing Cheney before November '06 would likely prevent that from happening. And it'd be easy to do: the heart condition is a good excuse, and they have control of congress, letting them confirm whatever replacement they'd like -- they only need a majority in both houses under the 25^th amendment.

So there's my prediction. Make of it what you will. But I don't think something as simple as a term limit is likely to make the people currently running the Republican party loosen their grip on the reins of power.

Obviously there's been a lot of soul-searching being done by Democrats during the last two days. How can such a large part of America unite specifically to oppose the rights of homosexuals? Why do so many people want to enshrine prejudice in the Constitution? Do we need to change strategies, or principles, or both?

Well, Catherine, Charles and I have been caucusing/watching TV, and we're pretty sure we have the answer. It's clear that America is not ready for gay marriage. That's unfortunate... but frankly, it's understandable. What do you think of when you hear "gay marriage"? Andrew Sullivan? Andrew Sullivan naked? It doesn't take the additional threat of eternal hellfire to convince people that constitutional protections from this might be a good idea.

So let's change gears. Gay marriage is clearly a losing issue. Lesbian marriage, on the other hand, is totally hot. Shift the vocabulary, change the spokespeople, and start working anecdotes about slumber parties into speeches. Oh, and Charles suggests that mandating cheerleader outfits for the ceremonies might help provide an all-American, heartland-friendly image.

Soldiers Describe Looting of Explosives

WASHINGTON — In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Iraqi looters loaded powerful explosives into pickup trucks and drove the material away from the Al Qaqaa ammunition site, according to a group of U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen who said they witnessed the looting.

The soldiers said about a dozen U.S. troops guarding the sprawling facility could not prevent the theft because they were outnumbered by looters. Soldiers with one unit — the 317th Support Center based in Wiesbaden, Germany — said they sent a message to commanders in Baghdad requesting help to secure the site but received no reply.

The witnesses' accounts of the looting, the first provided by U.S. soldiers, support claims that the American military failed to safeguard the munitions. Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N. nuclear watchdog — and the interim Iraqi government reported that about 380 tons of high-grade explosives had been taken from the Al Qaqaa facility after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003. The explosives are powerful enough to detonate a nuclear weapon.

During the last week, when revelations of the missing explosives became an issue in the presidential campaign, the Bush administration suggested that the munitions could have been carted off by Saddam Hussein's forces before the war began. Pentagon officials later said that U.S. troops systematically destroyed hundreds of tons of explosives at Al Qaqaa after Baghdad fell.

Asked about the soldiers' accounts, Pentagon spokeswoman Rose-Ann Lynch said Wednesday, "We take the report of missing munitions very seriously. And we are looking into the facts and circumstances of this incident."

The soldiers, who belong to two different units, described how Iraqis plundered explosives from unsecured bunkers before driving off in Toyota trucks.

The U.S. troops said there was little they could do to prevent looting of the ammunition site, 30 miles south of Baghdad.

"We were running from one side of the compound to the other side, trying to kick people out," said one senior noncommissioned officer who was at the site in late April 2003.

"On our last day there, there were at least 100 vehicles waiting at the site for us to leave" so looters could come in and take munitions.

"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," another officer said.

He and other soldiers who spoke to The Times asked not to be named, saying they feared retaliation from the Pentagon.

however, these soldiers are probably planted operatives of the liberal media, so take this info with a grain of salt. a spoonful of salt, if you will.

jesus. this article is too gratingly pretentious even for me, an unrepetent elitist europhile.

Dr. Joseph, a bearded, broad-shouldered man with silken gray hair, was sharing coffee and cigarettes with his fellow dog walker, Roberta Kimmel Cohn, at an outdoor table outside the hole-in-the-wall Breadsoul Cafe near Lincoln Center. The site was almost a cliché corner of cosmopolitan Manhattan, with a newsstand next door selling French and Italian newspapers and, a bit farther down, the Lincoln Plaza theater showing foreign movies.

"I'm saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country - the heartland," Dr. Joseph said. "This kind of redneck, shoot-from-the-hip mentality and a very concrete interpretation of religion is prevalent in Bush country - in the heartland."

"New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of consciousness where we realize we have to think of globalization, of one mankind, that what's going to injure masses of people is not good for us," he said.

His friend, Ms. Cohn, a native of Wisconsin who deals in art, contended that New Yorkers were not as fooled by Mr. Bush's statements as other Americans might be. "New Yorkers are savvy," she said. "We have street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what their friends say."

"They're very 1950's," she said of Midwesterners. "When I go back there, I feel I'm in a time warp."

The pair then adjusted their berets, hopped on their vespas, and shouted, "Au revoir, fuckers!" as they roared off to see a screening of " L'Anee' Derniere a Marienbad."

guys, c'mon. of course we're better than them, but we have to at least pretend like we're all equal.

seems like calling conservatives asswipes, blaming those durn homosexuals for our electorla loss and having me get homicidally angry about my support of the troops brings in record numbers of viewers! yesterday was our first day here at zunta with 200+ visitors (or 500+ visitors, depending on which counter i'm using. they're wacky.). we're obviously on a meteoric rise to blogfame.

Four injured as empty train plows into an idling train at Woodley Park. Red Line closed between Van Ness, Dupont.

You know, not to be a huge whiner, but things like this, this and this push me toward the stereotyping of wingers as classless, abrasive buffoons that I'm already far too ready to make. Grace, guys. C'mon. Just try. Shouldn't you be talking about how great privatized social security is going to be, instead of finding new ways to say "suck it"?

well, i think we could all use a little cheering up (especially my family. i just received this report from my father: "very depressing. I remember nixon's victory over mcgovern--my first election, I think - in 1972, but that was nothing like this. mom and marggie are in deep depression. I can't watch tv, read the paper or check the webblogs. from now on, its only espn and victorian novels for me." jesus. large bundle of prozac to the andrews family, stat).

so i propose a small party tomorrow celebrating the second biggest event of november: the premiere of the O.C.!

here's the deal: if you're obsessed with the O.C., or would like to become obsessed with the O.C., come on over to our place a little before 8 p.m. tomorrow. positive attitudes encouraged; talk of the election not permitted; democrats only need apply. (sorry, repubs, but california is a bastion of godless communism and mandatory abortions for everyone, so you're not invited to our hedonistic enclave. enjoy the cornfields.)

i'll buy the ingredients for the beachiest, sunniest, O.C.-est drinks we can imagine. sex on the beach... umm, any ideas?...we should do a drink named after marissa that involves mixing tequila and anti-depressants. that'd be a big hit.

if you watched the O.C. the first season, you'll know it'll be great. and if you've never seen it before, come learn what the magic is all about.

let me know via comments or email if you'll be making an appearance.

Not the whole democracy thing -- that was good. And it seems to have worked without too many major problems. But, while I think Kerry's right to insist that all the votes be counted (if nothing else, it sets a good precedent and has very little downside), it seems all but certain that Bush will serve a second term as President.

I'm feeling much too gloomy to think about where we go from here. And let's face it, there's plenty of time for that. Without a polarizing battle of personalities, interest in politics will immediately drop. It's like the World Cup. Once every four years, I'm a soccer fan. I find politics a lot more interesting than soccer, but I doubt I'll be checking Atrios multiple times a day anymore. I think a large portion of the netroots are going to resume doing the jobs they've been ignoring for the last year.

No, right now I'm more interested in throwing around blame. Clearly the Democratic Party has been unable to sell itself to America for the last two elections. It's time to get rid of McAuliffe and the rest of the Clintonian establishment. Centrism sounds great, but if it doesn't deliver elections, what's the point? I'm beginning to think that having a candidate that the base actually believes in could be an asset. If we're genuinely sold, maybe we can do a better job selling.

Of course some blame must rest with Kerry. He was an unexciting candidate with an unexciting record, who somehow let his opponents turn his status as a war hero into a negative. Still, it's tough to see what he could have done differently from a strategic standpoint other than be smart about Iraq back when almost no one was. Or not run in the first place.

The final relevant party isn't guilty, or to blame, or at fault. But I feel they do bear the most responsibility, if such a distinction can be made. I'm hesitant to point it out -- scapegoating a consistently persecuted minority is not a business I want to get into. But this election was too important to ignore what I think is staring us all in the face.

The gay rights movement has made incredible strides in the past four years -- I'm amazed that a national conversation on gay marriage is taking place. I thought this was a good sign.

Clearly, I was wrong. All indications are that the Republican strategy worked, that this issue served as a wedge, and that "morals issues" -- e.g., dudes kissing -- played a significant factor in Bush's reelection. I certainly won't begrudge anyone the desire to enjoy the rights they deserve. But, as I've argued in comments elsewhere on this site, I think the actual social payoff is small and the political liability huge. Many of the rights that gays and lesbians are currently denied boil down to economic benefits afforded to straight married couples -- and given that the demographic does better than median, this becomes more an issue of fairness than a pressing injustice. No one should have trouble visiting their loved one in the hospital. But that's not what was on the ballot, and I have a hard time believing that such tear-jerking concerns would have been difficult to achieve quietly.

To my mind it's clear that insofar as the Democratic Party can be considered a body capable of deliberate action, pursuing gay marriage was a serious mistake. I am aware that Kerry did not endorse gay marriage. Still, he was flanked by his own supporters, infatuated as we are with the righteous moral clarity of the civil rights movement, to which comparisons are inevitably made and inevitably overstated. We couldn't resist that narrative, just as the right can't resist the idea of a righteous war against a looming global evil. The difference is that their fairy tale is one that American culture is used to and comfortable with.

Like I said, there's no blame here, just disappointment. I don't blame anybody for trying to move the fight for equality forward; unfortunately, the result seems to have been a huge step backward. The Republicans won't be doing gay rights any favors; after this election, it's tough to imagine that the Democrats will be, either.

well, barring some miracle in ohio, it looks pretty clear that dubya won.

so...there's only so much despondence that you can feel. and i felt it all last night from midnight until 4 am. so this morning, i accept the fact that bush will be president for the next four years, and i hope for the following:

is it just me, or is the ENTIRE FREAKING INTERNET DOWN?

how i am supposed to blog without receiving my talking points from josh marshall?

also, is it just me again, or is this the SCARIEST POST EVER?:

If the Kerry does win, the mainstream media will have gotten him elected with their biased coverage and they will pay for it more than they could imagine. And it will be the blogosphere and you, our supporters, who will make them pay. Our strength will grow incremently with a Kerry victory in terms of influence and even economic power. And both will be at the expense of the mainstream media. Yes, we too have "plans."

um, what exactly is roger l. simon going to do? blog the media to death? write another terrible detective thriller with the "MSM" as the villain?

check out some of the freaky comments on the thread:

"Bush will win.

And Our strength will grow incremently in terms of influence and even economic power. And both will be at the expense of the mainstream media, no matter what."

cue EVIL CACKLING.

via gizmodo (original source unknown)

VA 52 - 47 in bush's favor

from sullivan

not that i really expected otherwise...but i had a faint dream.

so, i voted. it was nothing extraordinary. we drove to arlington, went to our various elementary schools, stood in line for 1.5 hours, voted, and then i got a bagel. i feel good about doing it, but i don't feel INCREDIBLY PROUD or special or anything. voting is an easy thing to do, and everyone should do it, and not take it for granted. my brother and some friends drove up from charlottesville to vote. people are standing 4-5+ hours in line to vote. people voted by absentee ballot, then went to other states to help people there vote who might not be able to otherwise. as a single voter, i don't feel incredibly proud, but seeing what's going on in aggregate, i am pretty freaking amazed.

we're going to an election viewing party tonight somewhere near the cathedral, and depending on which way the election goes, i'll be drunk, or i'll be really drunk. as it is, i currently am so nervous that i feel like i'm going to throw up. let's hope that passes.

I'm standing in line waiting to vote right now. Why is the A-K line moving so much faster? Some sort of conspiracy to disenfranchise those of us from the righteous half of the alphabet? I'll have to ask Charles and Catherine; they're probably in on it. While I'm figuring that out, I might as well mention the other source of electoral fraud that's been on my mind.

One of the things I saw in California was what I considered a mildly silly presentation at Stanford by a guy named Jason Tester. He calls himself an "archaeologist of the future," but the traditional, even-less-credible name for his job is "futurist."

Tester has put together a number of speculative objects pertaining to the intersection of democracy and technology -- you can find most of his presentation at accelerateddemocracy.net. It's worth a look.

The guy's design and fabrication skills are inarguably impressive. The ideas, though, would be amazingly, catastrophically bad for democracy. To his credit, Mr. Tester knows and admits this at the start of his presentation. Still, you kind of end up wondering what the point is.

However, a question from the audience brought things back to reality: what about cameraphones in the voting booth? People can now take a snapshot of the screen or ballot, proving how they voted. Buying votes is consequently made that much more attractive, since buyers can know they're getting their money's worth. When you consider the potential for social networks to facilitate massive, small-scale vote buying you have to start worrying about something like a distributed digital conspiracy -- with individual violators being too numerous and their infractions too small for the government to do anything about it. It'd be filesharing all over again, with token prosecutions doing nothing to stop endless waves of young, self-righteous criminals.

It occurred to me that this is a problem that touchscreen voting can actually solve (as opposed to create). LCD panels emit polarized light. I won't bore you with physics 101, but if you remember that class, you know that you could put a polarizing filter over a camera, point it at a voting machine and see everything but what's on the screen. Make the program randomize the position of the buttons representing each candidate, and you can have a video feed of what each person is doing behind the screen without revealing how they're voting.

Okay, so maybe the solution currently in front of me -- low screens concealing the machine and voter's torso, and little else -- works as well as the cameras and is much cheaper. But is it as cool? Clearly not.

well, the marathon is over. i am alive, and sort of in one piece. my mental state is questionable, but overall, i feel the experience was a pretty good one. read on for my overly-long, florid, too-detailed account of my mano-a-mano battle with the evil 26.2 miles.

Well, I'm back from my first visit to the west, or "godless" coast. I had a good time, saw a lot of California, and will be writing about it more later. But for now, allow me to share three fascinating tidbits about the Golden State

• The only seasons are "normal" and "rain", and Californians react to rain the way we react to snow. My friend Jeff, observing San Diegans on a day with light drizzle: "This is literally the worst thing that's happened to these people in six months."


• Odds are about even that Republican paraphenalia will be interpreted as being worn for ironic intent. This is probably accurate.


• All food must legally be categorized as "burrito" or "sushi"

For right now, though, I'm anxious to dive back into the world of creating dynamic, integrated e-business solutions. Hurrah!