Charles has some interesting news. Interesting if you like comic books, anyway.

You probably heard about the Post offering a video podcast. If you're like me you don't own a video ipod and can't stand using iTunes except when absolutely necessary, so you promptly forgot this news. But the segment about the baby panda really is worth watching. He squeaks, you know.

You can download it directly from here, then use QuickTime to watch it, despite QT not naturally recognizing it as a supported filetype.

A lot of military contractors work in Crystal City, and the ads on the Metro reflect that. Instead of ads for firming cream there are ads for fighter jets and night vision goggles. And for this thing — an ugly-looking boat under which are emblazoned the words

THIS IS WHAT LITTORAL DOMINANCE LOOKS LIKE.

Littoral refers to the coastline, apparently. Today, for the first time, the twelve year old in me realized that with the addition of a single letter this word could be made dirty, and therefore hilarious. I chuckled to myself through the gauze of my hangover. It'd be sort of naughty, but the phrase wouldn't really mean anything.

Then I got to work, turned on the radio and learned that the Amazonian (i.e. physically dominant) ex-WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes has come out of the closet in order to promote a lesbian cruise line.

So apparently the universe is as immature as I am. I find this extremely encouraging.

Thanks to DC Blogs I've just discovered Logan Circle News, a site that's doing a great job chronicling the area's recent uptic in crime (worried parents should probably not follow that link). Between this and In Shaw the internet has my neighborhood pretty well covered.

Ah, mid-week happy hours. They always start out so promisingly, as we sip sherry and discuss the prospects for the coming yachting season. Then all of a sudden I've drunk an ocean of beer, it feels like it's 3AM freshman year, and I've resumed my habit of trying to put the "ass" in "iconoclast". Or at least "bombast".

Last night's casualties of my ignorance:

• Piet Mondrian, whose signature work still seems pretty tiresome to me by the light of day. But I forgot that he did stuff like this, which I find genuinely fascinating for reasons that involve torturing cats. Note to self: don't try to talk about art when everyone else at the table knows more about it than you ever will. Next time, try to gently steer the conversation toward TCP/IP networking instead.


• Feminism, which I grossly insulted by suggesting that more men get arrested for sex crimes than women because the male sex drive is greater. A sane discussion of this question is here, but last night I wasn't very good at expressing reasonable reservations about the "rape is solely about power" conventional wisdom. The spectre of reactionary misogyny hangs over all of these chats — did Andrea Dworkin seem crazy because she was crazy or because I'm a sexist asshole? Tough to say. Deciding to table the question in favor of empanadas was probably the right call.


• My friends. You guys are troopers. I promise to try not to be such a colossal jerk in the future.


• Last and least, myself. Today is going to take a turn for the worse when sobriety finally sets in.

Hurry back, Catherine. I'm not sure that your habit of punching me in the arm actually keeps me from embarassing myself. But when you throw water on Yglesias it really helps to distract folks' attention.