alright. so things at work have slowed down a tiny bit, and i can present you with some of the selected photos from my sunday evening. but first, may i direct you over to shesbitter.com, where they have got some really great photos of the show in flickr format. check 'em out.

ps: in addition to the reviews trackbacked at my DCist.com arcade fire post, the ghost of gordon sumner has a good review that echoes my feelings about the two new songs played right in a row: they slowed down the night unnecessarily. but only for a little bit.

pps: look also at these great concert photos i found via the 9:30 club forum.

big day in the blogging world - along with the five new blogs launched by mediabistro.com today, we've got the newest foray from the denton empire: gridskipper, "the urban travel guide." i'll definitely be reading.

I'll fess up: I like talk radio. I start most days listening to the Tony Kornheiser Show, then Don and Mike in the afternoon. NPR fills the lunchtime gap. Occasionally I'll even drag out Charles' XM receiver and turn on Al Franken's show. I know it's not good for me, but it's easier than picking out music.

It's a shame that I mostly listen on weekdays, though -- in the DC area, Saturdays are when things get really good. I'm thinking in particular of This American Life and Studio 360. I usually prefer TAL, but this week's Studio 360 was all about videogames -- so naturally I was intrigued. You can find the "this week's show" page here; it looks like eventually the videogame episode will move to the archives here.

The episode was quite good, providing listeners with a quick background summary before launching into a piece on how games affect people and a segment on the military's use of game-like simulators for training. All of this was tied together by insightful banter between Kurt Andersen and Clive Thompson, Slate's videogame critic.

But the most interesting segment focused on an guy named Cory Arcangel, an artist who uses old NES cartridges as his medium. Arcangel's been shown at the Whitney Biennial, where, among other things, he displayed what seems to be his most heralded work: a piece called Super Mario Clouds. SMC is an installation of three projectors showing a looping animation of clouds coming from a hacked Super Mario cartridge. It looks like this (taken from Arcangel's site):

This may seem a bit silly and frivolous. I think that's normal; it's pop art, after all. Irritating though these NES references may be, we're only going to see more of them. The MiniBosses are enjoying considerable success doing rock covers of songs from classic videogames; and apparel pushing 8-bit nostalgia is keeping our nation's unemployed musicians warm. It makes perfect sense: loving videogames is as close to a universal boyhood experience as anything. It's a touchstone, and both marketers and artists are going to use that to their advantage.

But which is Arcangel? I can't say that I'm sure. Looking at a sampling of his work confronts the tech-savvy viewer with a chicken and egg problem. Much of his art can have conceptual significance ascribed to it -- but did Arcangel himself know the piece's meaning prior to its completion? Customized Nintendo games will no doubt seem novel and impressive to the normal, non-geeky art-lover. But people have been hacking cartridges for a while without demanding artistic kudos. Making Tetris insanely slow only requires the alteration of a few bytes of the game's code. So Arcangel isn't inventing a new type of canvas, or even pushing the boundaries of an established one. It therefore seems critically important to know whether he's coming up with new ideas, or just a new way of marketing a dorky hobby.

The case for Arcangel as a serious artist trying to communicate his ideas isn't helped by stupid, jokey pieces like NIpod -- a hacked cartridge with an iPod-like interface that can play the likes of Weezer and Lil John; or I Shot Andy Warhol, a modification of the light-gun game Hogan's Alley that turns the bad guys into pixellated Warhols; or, most despicably, Doogle, a version of Google that only returns results related to the show Doogie Howser, M.D.. These last three works all seem pretty lousy to me, but they're also considerably more complex technical achievements than the relatively pleasing Super Mario Clouds, adding to the possibility of SMC and Arcangel's other best pieces being merely the good bits culled from mountains of thoughtless technical noodling.

I think this opens up a more fundamental question about artists and the materials they use. Arcangel seems beholden to his medium. Did he conceive of Super Mario Clouds and then decide to implement it? Or was he fucking around with ROM hacking and realized he could market a sub-par tech demo as art? I don't know the answer to that, but I think the line between those processes marks the delineation between "art" and "arts & crafts". I suppose this puts me in the unpleasantly complicated camp of believing a piece of art can't be divorced from its creator's intent and personal history. But for all the pretension and subjectivity such a stance introduces, it still seems preferable to getting suckered by endless medium-specific variations on solarized photos: engaging tricks with meaning ascribed only after their fabrication.

Unfortunately it also means I won't really know what I think about Arcangel's work until I know exactly how he makes it.

i'm sure tommy's probably working on an epic review about the arcade fire show, but for now, all i can say is GODDAMN. my DCist review is up over here. i'm too tired to put up pics, but you can browse a directory of the show (and the pre-show bbq at kriston and matt's) here.

other news: that mediabistro d.c. gossip blog launched today. apparently, the guy who's now writing it found out about the job because of my totally random (and non-spiers-forced) posting on DCist. for now i won't comment about the content, but simply point you towards the always-fabulous DCeiver. what he said.

Stare into the voided warranty long enough, and the voided warranty begins to stare back at you.

Last night Jon and I set out to install modchips on his and our buddy Paul's XBoxes. For those who're scratching their heads: mod chips let you override the XBox's BIOS, and with it the unit's factory-specified hardware limitations. This effectively turns the console into a general purpose computer that happens to have a great interface for games and video output. After you've chipped an XBox it can be used to watch movies, play old NES and SNES videogames or even run a webserver.

Paul couldn't join us for this fun-fest -- he lives in San Francisco -- but he bought some of the components while he was in town for the holidays, then shipped the rest here so that I could do the install.

Well, 7 seven hours later I'd managed to break both modchips by improperly upgrading their BIOSes. God dammit. This seemed much easier when I did it to my own XBox. The situation is fixable, but it'll be a pain. The only worthwhile product of our efforts yesterday? Some pictures of the apartment with electronic entrails spread throughout.

More after the cut.

in honor of the iraqi elections today, i made my patented Middle Eastern Freedom Chip Cookies. just kidding. i actually made them for a smoked meat bbq at kriston's tonight, pre-arcade fire show, but i figured they could commemorate the elections as well.

recipe behind the cut. slightly modified and adapted from the famous neiman-marcus chocolate chip cookies.

so, last night i baked a cheesecake. this is the story of that cheesecake and its birth.

i got inspired last weekend by watching my usual hungover sunday morning foodtv lineup of everyday italian, barefoot contessa, and easy entertaining with michael chiarello. these people are all fancy bitches who are constantly rambling on about how their recipes and entertaining methods are going to make your life SO MUCH easier, when really it's only easy for them because they a) live on tv b) have two billion dollars c) have a staff of minions that actually do everything for them so they DO make it look easy. then you are inspired, and think you can host a dinner party for 12, and the next thing you know you're drunk off the cooking wine and have exploded a bowl of melted butter all over your face.

i speak from experience.

anyway, i risked doing an everyday italian recipe this time around, because it was for cheesecake, which i adore, and the skinny pinched bitch giada made it look so damn easy. so i took a chance on a cheesecake.

(by the way, i just have to bitch about this: i CANNOT STAND when these "italian" cooks on food tv like giada and michael chiarello, who probably grew up in long island or something and can barely sneeze out a proper-sounding "buongiorno", insist on pronouncing absolutely every italian ingredient in faux-authentic-italian. like, mozzarella. i fancy myself able to speak italian, and when i'm IN ITALY, i say mozzarella with the correct pronunciation. but i don't go prancing about saying MOE-ZAH-RRRRE-LLAH with extremely enunciated syllables EVERY OTHER SECOND. JESUS! you're not fooling anybody! and if you've pissed me off with your pretentiousness, you must be WAY GONE.)

anyway. this time around, i decided to modify the recipe. now, you have to know that modifying a recipe is A Big Deal for me and my obsessive type A control freak personality; normally i follow everything absolutely to the letter. that's why i like baking so much better than cooking; baking is pretty and neat and precise; cooking leads to melted butter exploding on face, etc.

anyway, giada's recipe called for a crushed biscotti crust and orange zest. hmm, i thought. that sounds gross. i made some lemon cream cheese bars with a ginger base a while ago that were pretty good. so this time around i decided to take trader joe's excellent triple ginger snaps, crush them, and use them for the cheesecake crust instead of the biscottit that giada uses, and i mixed in lemon flavoring in zest instead of the oranges. i have to say, i think it turned out yummy. pictures and recipe are behind the cut (my recipe is basically the food tv one, cut and pasted, but with my minor changes).

Now that we've gotten actual snow, even those who didn't hate the site's background are probably pretty sick of it. So I set out to make an irritatingly clever replacement. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to make my idea work with the site, composition-wise, and the actual photos have some problems with shadows and the graffiti fading. I had to use the burn tool in photoshop to make it even this legible -- and you can't even see that I'm rocking out to the Dave Matthews Band! Oh well. Although it won't work with the design, our anonymous neighbor's suggestion would still be a great alternate blog title.

And while I'm at it, how about some more graffiti? I shouldn't encourage these idiots, but at least they're more imaginative than simple taggers...

This rings a bell. When Catherine and I started dating, one of the most confounding things I had to learn was that failing to say "bless you" after a sneeze is a clear indicator that you don't really care about the sneezer at all and wished they would die. Apparently the germ of this idea comes from a speech by a female character in Reality Bites. I've never seen that movie, but I can assure you I hate it.

You've got to love the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Okay, so their mission isn't quite as critical as that of the volunteers who provide legal advice to arrested protesters, or fight to keep our science classrooms reality-based. But it's still nice to know that somebody's poised to save fourteen year-old music lovers from the predations of the content industry.

They've been doing a particularly great job lately. I wrote about the EFF-sponsored Tor Project previously -- to recap, it's a network of proxies designed to allow easy anonymous communication over the internet. I expressed some worries about it initially, but it turns out that Tor is better than I thought. By default you don't route other people's traffic -- I don't know if this will work very well if the project becomes popular, but for now it means that you can use the system without worrying about getting subpoenaed for other folks' network use. And it's easy to install -- even on Linux. Once you've got it running it works as a SOCKS proxy, meaning that you can easily point a vast array of applications at it and it'll Just Work. The Azureus BitTorrent client seems especially well-suited to Tor-ifying, having settings for a SOCKS proxy (and being written in java, it'll run on any platform). To anonymize your web browsing you'll have to jump through a few more hoops, but all in all it's pretty seamless. Azureus loses a bit of speed (and compatibility with ratio-enforcing trackers), but it's nice to be able to run a worry-free BT client.

So the EFF is doing a great job technically -- but it's also making some slick PR moves. Check out their just-published List of Endangered Gizmos. Is that great or what? It provides a simple, concrete way for people to understand the current battles in the war over Digital Rights Management, and couches the EFF position in a sympathetic spotted-owlish metaphor. Okay, so it may not be 100% accurate -- outlawing digital/analog converters isn't very realistic, although their inclusion on the list makes a good symbolic point about the "analog hole". But it's a nice, press-release-ready way to get people's attention. Keep it up, guys.

Is this what that guy on American Idol was talking about? Well, count me as another clueless white guy, but Krumping is still new to me, despite its apparently having been around for years. Fortunately for the likes of my out-of-touch self, glossy celeb photographer and Warhol protege David LaChapelle is going to teach us all about it (from a safe distance, of course) via a short feature called Krumped. An award-winner at Sundance, the film chronicles the emerging west coast dance movement notable for its rejection of hiphop materialism and its participants' tendency to wear clown makeup. No, not like that. More like this. You can read an interview with LaChapelle about the whole thing over at Salon.

Seems pretty interesting, although sometimes I half-wonder whether young black Americans secretly get together and plan out their fads with an eye toward making MTV look as silly as possible when it inevitably steals their ideas. "Carson Daly in clown makeup, people. Come on, this is going to be great!"

UPDATE: While you're at it, check out some of LaChapelle's portraits. I'm no photography expert, and his stuff is of a particular sort that many people may not like -- bright, saturated pop photography with lots of too-cute ideas -- but I still find the shots pretty astounding. If nothing else they're eye-catching.

a bit from abc7:

D.C. residents fought for voting rights in Iraq, and an Iraqi-American is returning the favor.

Andy Shallal calls it unfair that he can vote in Sunday's Iraqi elections, before D.C. veterans of the Iraq war will elect a voting representative in Congress. Shallal says he was moved to join the fight for voting rights when he heard about those veterans.

Shallal and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton were on Capitol Hill where they thanked three of the vets. Norton and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman used the occasion to introduce a bill aimed at giving District residents full voting rights.

Lieberman says bringing full democracy home is a difficult battle which makes many Republicans uncomfortable. Norton says the voting rights in their bill are available to the citizens of Iraq thanks to the service of D.C. residents and other Americans.

fritz hahn of the wapo.com was nice enough to tip me off to a secret-ish event this sunday, which i in turn posted on DCist. go check it out. it sounds neat, but i doubt i'll go - i can imagine that it'll be absolutely flooded and i can't stay up much past midnight these days. nevertheless, much thanks to fritz for the heads up.

sorry that i've been light on the blogging - our office is in the lovely, chaotic process of moving; i've started training for the cherry blossom 10 miler and am constantly out of it; and i'm trying to expand music coverage on DCist and make it a lot better. i've been able to work a couple of labels for ticket giveaways and band interviews, and i'm trying to do more concert listings and reviews. but i could use some fresh ideas - any input, dear readers?

UPDATE: i see the secret arcade fire post is already igniting a discussion - but not about the band. people are arguing about saint-ex, how its patrons have changed, and different levels of gentrification. if the argument gets heated it could be interesting.

I'm sorry to geek out so hard twice in a row, but this story is driving me nuts. It's short, but if you don't care to read it, it's basically a quick analysis of a patent filed by ATI for part of the graphics chip that will show up in the next generation of the XBox console. And it's full of bullshit:

The patent, we think, is part of the effort to get CMOS processing - as in traditional processors - and dynamic logic processing - as in supercomputers - working on the same chip. Dynamic logic works at far faster speeds, hence the need for an integrated circuit to regulate the switching between the two.

The discovery of this patent is the first hard proof that ATI is treading down this road of chip design, as its deal with Intrinsity was surrounded in speculation as to the exact nature of the technology being licensed and which way the information was flowing. The patent appears to confirm that the R500/R520 part will be something substantially different to anything we've seen in the past.

Supercomputers?! Uh, no. You guys are just making stuff up. Graphic chips in consoles are never revolutionary, despite the bullshit press releases put out by the likes of Sony. They may do some things in interesting new ways, but their raison d'etre lies in doing a lot with a little -- the cost and heat constraints posed by consoles mean that Pixar isn't going to be bulk ordering Playstations anytime soon.

But the worst part comes at the article's beginning:

Sounding bizarrely like John Kerry, the patented circuit includes 'a first flip flop having an input port... an output port providing a flip flop output signal..." and other such indecipherable phrases.

Okay motherfucker, we'll let the Kerry thing slide. But I didn't take any digital design classes in college (I just hung out with people who did) and I still know that a flip flop is a circuit component. Seriously, if you're going to have somebody write up an analysis of a microprocessor patent, don't you think you should pick someone who knows something -- anything -- about microprocessors?

Over at BTD, Venkat takes note of Google hiring Ben Goodger, one of the Firefox team's lead developers. He notes that the Mozilla Foundation is a nonprofit, but speculates that this move is still in some way representative of Google getting into the browser market.

I'm not so sure about that. Catherine was the first to point this story out to me, wondering what it might mean. I'm not convinced it means much of anything. If Google wants Firefox they can just take it -- the source code is licensed under the semi-famous GNU Public License, a so-called "viral" license that boils down to allowing folks to do whatever they want with the source code, so long as they release the source code to their own product (or at least the portion of it based on the borrowed GPL code). It's a neat idea, but not only has it not yet been tested in court, it also doesn't prohibit Google from doing anything other than creating a closed-source browser from the Firefox code. So if Google wants to release a Google-branded version of Firefox, they don't have to hire Goodger to do it. Google already has plenty of extremely skilled programmers who could handle that task. And if for some reason they wanted to go closed-source, hiring Goodger wouldn't help with that, either -- he doesn't own the Firefox project, and he presumably can't change the license under which it's released by personal fiat.

What about technical reasons? Well, hiring Goodger seems likely to ensure that future versions of Firefox play nicely with Google's various offerings, but that's probably not a particularly worrisome area for our friends in Mountain View -- Firefox is already tightly integrated with Google, and open source folks share the same enthusiasm for open standards that Google does. Every party involved already pledges allegiance to the official geek-approved pantheon of acronyms (e.g. XMLRPC, SOAP, XHTML). So why bother?

It basically boils down to prestige. There's a precedent for this: Transmeta employed the ur-geek himself, Linus Torvalds, for several years. Transmeta is in the energy-efficient processor business, and while they enjoyed excellent Linux support by virtue of their relationship with Torvalds, Transmeta's products aren't marketed specifically for Linux use. It'd be a stretch to say that Torvalds represented a great technical investment -- by his own admission Linus spent a lot of time working on non-Transmeta-related tasks prior to leaving for OSDL (which is still partially backed by Transmeta).

Transmeta was happy with their arrangement because the mere existence of an ltorvalds@transmeta.com email account instantly produces a huge amount of geek cred. Whenever Linus would go speak at a conference his nametag would have "Transmeta Corp." on it, and for a probably-still-reasonable programmer's salary, Transmeta got a ton of favorable press from places like Slashdot and The Register.

I suspect Goodger's hiring was similarly motivated. Google's rolling in money after a predictably explosive IPO; they like and want to encourage Firefox; and now that they're officially a corporate behemoth, it's worth buying good PR in non-obvious ways. Goodger's salary will no doubt support technical developments that are generally beneficial to Google, but it will also function as a precisely targeted and cost-effective PR exercise.

UPDATE: How's that for a coincidence -- the nerd-friendly ISP SpeakEasy has just released a customized version of Firefox. No money was exchanged between Speakeasy and the Mozilla Foundation.

I've barely noticed, what with dreams of next September already dancing through my head, but the Superbowl is almost upon us. Will it be the patrician fans of the personality-free Patriots that'll be cheering come February seventh, or the criminals and blowhards that make up the Philly fanbase? More to the point, who cares? The Redskins' NFC East rivalry with the Eagles should help me enjoy the proficient steamrolling that I expect to see from the Pats, but I can't get too excited about it.

The Superbowl as a ritual, though -- now that I can enjoy. Get some friends over, turn on the TV and start making quiet promises to your vascular system about how things are gonna be different soon, baby, it's just cause you love it so much that it makes you crazy sometimes. Then, with the help of a variety of simple carbohydrates, consume half a liter of peanut oil.

Although I usually leave the football staples -- pizza and Helluva Good dip (aka sour cream and onion powder) -- to third parties, I do like to try making something for the game. Usually that something is buffalo wings. The recipe is simple: fry the hell out of some wings, then coat with a 1:1 mixture of pleasantly-cheap Texas Pete hot sauce and butter. Gotta keep things healthy and avoid those trans-fats!

The trick, of course, is the actual frying process -- I've tried it with both a Fry Daddy Jr. and just a Big Pot of Oil, and the only difference is that the Fry Daddy Jr. only works in irritatingly small batches. With either solution and despite knowing better I always put in too many ice-encrusted frozen chicken wings at once, creating a roiling eruption of oil and steam that coats every surface in the kitchen.

That end result, though: mighty tasty! And you can hardly put a price on the quality-of-life improvement you'll enjoy as you glide effortlessly across your kitchen's freshly oiled floor. So who's coming over for Superbowl Sunday, and do any of you know how to treat burns?

Thanks to a commenter over at Yglesias', I've been enjoying Oink's Pink Palace the last couple of days which, surprisingly, is not nearly as unpleasant as it sounds -- it's actually an audio torrent site. Prior to this I had written off BitTorrent as a source of music. To be honest, it's still a bit cumbersome -- it's less like a celestial jukebox than a celestial remainders bin. The upside, though, is that unlike Kazaa or Soulseek, Oink's has got a lot of audiobooks available, including a bunch of stuff from The Teaching Company. My dad's a big fan of TTC -- lately he's been working his way through their Great Philosophers series. Overall, the audiobook section is still a little spare, but I've managed to stumble across a torrents of stuff by Bukowski and John Searle next to pirated Lemony Snicket. So, like the rest of the internet, they get points for breadth, if not depth. And hey, how about a belated segue? There's also a torrent of a lecture debunking the Da Vinci Code.

I have to admit that I feel comparatively uneasy about downloading boutique content such as this. While I realize it's hardly a coherent moral philosophy, I intuitively feel better about downloading a copy of Alien Versus Predator than I do a copy of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. In the case of AvP, a lot better. I suppose the reason is that downloading a copyrighted work I respect tacitly discourages the production of content that I think is worthwhile, even if the download generally doesn't represent a lost sale. On the other hand, it's not like there's a looming shortage of recordings of college lectures. Hopefully outfits like AudioBooksForFree will be able to cajole note-taking-averse students and their professors into making their courses available on the web, following the trend set by folks like Christof Koch and, well, all of MIT.

Anyway, back to the morally troublesome present: if you click on the link to Oink's you'll notice that you've got to register with the site. That's a bit of a drag, especially considering that they don't seem to enforce up/down ratios, making the account system rather pointless. Still, the process is fairly painless.

Finally, this won't be of interest to most folks, but as the new owner of a 4G ipod, it seems cool to me: you can turn any audio file into an ipod-ready audiobook by following the instructions here (short version: make it an AAC, change the extension from 'm4a' to 'm4b'). The advantages to doing so are that 1) the file will start showing up in the audiobook section of your menus instead of the music area 2) the device will remember where you stopped listening and 3) you can use the nifty setting that lets you speed up or slow down the audiobook by 25% without affecting the pitch. Neat.

i don't know why i keep reporting updates on the filming of "the da vinci code." i guess i believe it's one of those rare movies that have the potential to be better than the book. but with this announcement, i'm not so positive:

Variety is reporting that Audrey Tatou will play the lead female role of Sophie Neveu in "The DaVinci Code" opposite Tom Hanks and Jean Reno.

now, i'm as big a fan of "amelie" as any other europhile chick, and i think it's great that the director actually cast a french woman in the role of (gasp!) a french woman, but...audrey tautou? making out with tom hanks....? acting in the role of a supposedly-brilliant cryptologist....? and being convincing...? i'm just not sure.

sometimes i love the celebrity puff profile pieces in the post's style section. oh, who am i kidding? i always love them! and today they've got what i think is a particularly fascinating piece on PR guru jonathan cheban, whose job it is to raise the profiles of whatever products have hired him to work on their advertising campaigns. basically, it means he's got to get stuff like evian water bottles or certain products into music videos or the pages of US weekly - because if you can get a shot of lindsay lohan wearing your company's shoes or chatting away on your company's cellphone, it both creates a lot of buzz and saves you millions of dollars in paid advertising.

cheban is apparently a genius at this kind of stuff. but this time around, a PR marketing firm has given him what seems like the most impossible of jobs: making lean cuisine cool!

"It costs $50,000 to get your product in a rap video now," explains Ryan Berger, the head of "buzz marketing" at a company called Euro RSCG Worldwide, the same firm that handles Evian. "That's why Jonathan is so crucial. He makes it okay for Paris to hold that Evian bottle."

This week, Berger is betting heavily on Cheban. He's hired him to fly to the Sundance Film Festival and bestow the penumbra of chic on something that sounds utterly chic-proof: Lean Cuisine. Yes, Cheban's mission impossible is to somehow finagle frozen dinners into the arms of some bold-faced names, and then immortalize that moment in the pages of Us Weekly, or one of its rivals.

The tough part is that Sundance is essentially the Mall of America during the festival. Cadillac, Nautica, Philips, Hewlett-Packard, Heineken and dozens of other companies -- they're all going, too, trying to sideswipe a celebrity long enough to generate an image that can be "serviced," as it's known in the biz, to the press.

"The dream would be to have a Hilary Swank or a Will Smith get hungry at midnight, when all the restaurants are closed, and order 10 boxes of Lean Cuisine to their condo," Berger says. "Then have Jonathan deliver the Lean Cuisine with a deliveryman and a photographer and get a shot of that. It would totally transform the way people think about Lean Cuisine."

did anybody else just BUST OUT LAUGHING upon reading that last paragraph? it's one of the most ridiculous claims i've ever heard - that lean cuisine believes someday that it can be contained in the same lexicon as evian water or (ugh) ugg boots. lean cuisine is what the other half of america eats - the non cameron diaz, non paris hilton, non famous, non-thin-as-a-stick-insect-who-shop-at-safeway-half of america. BWAH. lean cuisine is DREAMING.

but then i started reading the rest of the article.

Talk turns to Cheban's upcoming Lean Cuisine job. How exactly is he going to pull off this miracle?

"I can tell you exactly what he's going to do," Grubman interrupts. "He's going to walk around in the afternoon and stick Lean Cuisine in everyone's hand." She's laughing now. "I'm so glad I'm not going to be there because he'll be like, 'Here!' "

"No," groans Cheban. "It's going to be at a spa, so people will be eating it after they get their facials."

"What if they don't want to eat it?" teases Grubman.

"It doesn't matter!" says Cheban. "I'll give it to somebody else who wants to eat it."

Like Star magazine. The latest issue, the one published last week, ran an In & Out column that announced that fried foods are officially out, and -- you got it -- Lean Cuisine is officially in. Us Weekly, meanwhile, worked a Lean Cuisine reference into its "Best Bashes at Sundance" page, leaking the news that "clean-living stars can nosh on Lean Cuisine's new Spa Cuisine line" at the Shutterfly Lounge.

Ka-ching!

maybe the impossible isn't so unlikely as i thought. and then i read this sentence: "Suddenly, [Cheban]'s surfing the Internet on a gadget called a Sidekick."

and i realize: if this is a man who has made tommy's trademark phone cool, then he can probably do anything.

viva la lean cuisine!

some heartening news this morning: 82% of people polled in a 1,000-person poll conducted by a nonpartisan group support voting rights for the district. and it extends across party lines, too: 77% of republicans supported it, as did 87% of democrats.

"The current war environment and discussion about spreading democracy around the world has an influence on people's thoughts when you ask them whether or not people in the U.S. capital should have voting rights," Richards said.

About 82 percent of survey respondents said the nearly 600,000 D.C. residents should have equal voting rights, after being told that District residents serve in the military and pay local and federal taxes but have no voting representative in the House or Senate. Support was strong among self-identified Republicans (77 percent) and Democrats (87 percent).

Thirteen percent said D.C. should not have full voting rights, and 5 percent said they did not know. Of those who opposed equal voting rights, 28 percent favored granting the District at least a vote in the House.

Richards acknowledged that the poll did not pose any counter-argument against representation, which is not provided for in the U.S. Constitution, and that the question's wording may have influenced the responses. But he said the percentage of Americans supporting equal representation has increased from 72 percent in 2000, when he conducted a survey for Bisconti Research Inc.

via Hack-A-Day: instructions for how to turn your microwave into a foundry. Yeah, people say to keep metal out of the microwave -- but just so they can keep all the awesomeness for themselves.

Seriously though, you really, really shouldn't try this. But I know you all are quite the iconoclasts, so at the VERY LEAST, please don't try it without telling me how totally rad it is.

bad news: the bravery canceled their black cat show on january 31. i was actually looking forward to that concert.

good news: wrens tickets for the black cat show on february 11 are officially on sale at ticketmaster.com.

also: i've got a review of the colin meloy show up at DCist.com. something i didn't say in the review, but wanted to: while other people were calling out their favorite songs, i was trying to restrain myself from calling out "I LOVE YOU AND WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES AND WE CAN NAME THEM WHATEVER RETARDED QUASI-VICTORIAN NAMES YOU PROBABLY WANT TO CALL THEM LIKE ELI AND DORIS MAE THAT'S HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU!" or something like that.

UPDATE: i see now browsing the black cat schedule that the bravery has merely pstponed and is instead playing with ash on march 10! seriously, february and march are already hosting some kickass concerts. maybe this winter won't be so terrible after all.

Rough start to a morning: waking up late and realizing you're going to be late for a meeting.

Bad start to a morning: realizing that the meeting is in a different city. And you still have to go.

Terrible start to a morning: realizing that the city in question is Baltimore.

some photographic evidence of kriston's 25th birthday last night. i was totally surprised to find these photos on my camera this morning, which should say something about my mental state at the party.

my day thus far: woke up at 1pm, hung out with charles and tommy a little bit, then when they inevitably started playing video games, i retreated to the bedroom to watch, oh, five hours of my alias season 2 dvd. soon it's off to trudge through the snow to the nunnery for kriston's 25th birthday! hopefully i can take some incriminating photos there.

colin meloy of the decemberists on his solo tour at iota last night.

cute, innit he? the show was good - a mix of stuff from "castaways and cutouts," "her majesty the decemberists," a couple of new songs from the forthcoming album (out in march) and a couple of morrissey covers. he's also an excellent storyteller, turns out. i guess i could have gathered that much from his lyrics. i'll write a review for DCist next week.

Welcome to the newest revolution in P2P! Well, supposedly: the beta version of eXeem has been released. For those who don't remember, eXeem (henceforth Exeem, because we shouldn't encourage them) is the "next generation" P2P app from the folks behind Suprnova.org, the late, great BitTorrent site.

Exeem is intended to eliminate the aspects of the BitTorrent architecture that resulted in Suprnova's closure. As I've noted previously, BitTorrent isn't as distributed as some other P2P applications. When you start a download you connect to a "tracker". The tracker doesn't supply data, but it keeps tabs on who's participating in the download, introduces them to each other, and issues commands about how quickly everyone should send each other data in order to make sure that uploading is rewarded. Because of their central role in the process, trackers are considered a potential point of failure, both technically and legally. Exeem adopts the BitTorrent architecture but does away with trackers; instead torrent distribution is done through peers, and tracking is performed in an ad-hoc and transparent manner by users. You don't need a central site like Suprnova to aggregate links to trackers. Instead you can search the Exeem network instead of scouring the internet for trackers.

But how does this work? Well, the safe money is on a fixed port range. Each network-enabled application on your computer uses a port of range of ports. Web servers run on port 80; FTP works over 21 and 22; AIM uses 5190. Think of it this way: your computer's like an apartment, and applications are like the people living in it. When mail arrives, the name on the envelope allows it to be distributed easily, even though the address is the same. If it weren't there you'd have to open the message and read through it to figure out where it should go. Your computer receives a lot of pieces of mail in the form of packets. Examining the format of every one isn't practical, so the port number is used to make distribution easier. I've explained this before, but don't you like the mail analogy better?

However, a classic BitTorrent tracker can run on any port -- it's specified in the .torrent file. Similarly, you can tell BitTorrent to use any port you'd like for sending and receiving data because the tracker will keep tabs on it and report it to other users. Exeem more than likely removes this capability. Instead, it probably behaves like a classic P2P application, broadcasting traffic on a specific port into the ether, looking for other users listening on the same port.

The problem with this is that it's easy to find traffic on the internet if you know what you're looking for. By running on a specific port, Exeem makes it simple for BigChampagne and the rest of the MPAA/RIAA's henchmen to find pirates. In the past they could connect to a torrent and see the other peers. But that would only give a snapshot of a moment in time, and only establish one IP violation for each person in the downloading swarm -- and first they had to find the torrent. Now they can patiently listen for Exeem traffic over a period of weeks or months, aggregating a long list of infringing activity indexed by IP address and ready to be fed into their masters' DMCA subpoena factory. Exeem makes it much easier to automate part of IP prosecutions, which will make them more cost-effective, which will make them more plentiful.

So if I were you I'd steer clear of Exeem. Besides, not only is the architecture flawed, it's reported to be buggy, is filled with ad- and spyware, and is only loosely affiliated with the guys from Suprnova (not that they were all that technically proficient to begin with). There's already an allegedly adware-free Exeem-Lite available, if you're intent on trying it. Just don't say you weren't warned.

favorite story lede of the day:

The irresistible cuteness of a puppy drove a Bronx teenager to slash his girlfriend and fatally stab her cousin yesterday after the two victims refused to let him pet the little pooch, police said.

this - this is why i want to go back to journalism school. in the hopes that i will one day be capable of writing hardcore reporting like the above.

readers of this site should be very familiar with my worshipful attitude towards tyra banks and my near-obsession with her hit UPN reality tv show, "america's next top model." the show is a fabulous mix of cattiness, disturbing and beautiful clothing, the ever-present eating disorder, aspiring models freaking out when they have to place a spider on their boob, and sweet, sweet sadism dished out by the freakishly bitchy judges. in short, it's the perfect television show.

but in the past couple of weeks, i've started to question the wisdom of tyra banks (i know; i gasp at the horror of my impertinent mind as well). but really, the woman might know how to make good tv, but can she ACTUALLY produce a top model? i've seen no evidence of this. let's take a look at the winners of the first two seasons: adrianne curry and yoanna house.

they are both lovely girls, to be sure. and they both won whatever riches and fashion spreads that tyra promised would rain down over their heads. but once you win "america's next top model," aren't you supposed to, like, be successful at modelling?

curry and house's experiences would suggest not. curry is now a fixture on vh1's latest season of "the surreal life," where faded celebrities go to die (and she's only, like, 21). i saw her in one episode helping an inebriated mini-me get to sleep while he moaned obscenely; she also had the pleasure of acting as a nude serving board off of which her costars ate a meal of sushi. lovely. from the highlights of the next episode, i saw her proclaiming that she had fallen in love with christopher knight, the 40something dude whose only claim to fame is having played peter brady. alright. so adrianne curry is a) not modelling b) having verne troyer eat sushi off her breast and c) dating someone twice her age who is twice as washed up as she.

on to yoanna.

yoanna was supposed to be the recipient of an uningnorable sephora campaign and billions of dollars and infinite fame. but the funny thing is, the only place i've seen her since she won ANTM2 is, crazily enough, on ANTM3, dispensing advice to the new wannabe models and looking, if we're going to be truthful, a little fat.

now i read this report on gawker.com today that yoanna seems to have forgone modelling and is reaching into the uber-realms of something even more inspiring: auditioning for painkiller commercials!

Saw Yoanna, the America's Next Top Model has-been at a casting for a Tylenol PM ad, Friday morning in Chelsea. We, ahem, the models were told to come bare-faced (no make-up, that is) and she showed up in full-spackle in what would appear to be an attempt to camoflage a less-than-flawless complexion. AND she signed in with a huge, black Sharpie in lieu of the blue ball-point used by everyone else, so her name stuck out like a sore thumb. She hung around long enough after, in an apparent attempt for someone to recognize her presence, which didn't happen. So she inquired as to the whereabouts of the ladies' room, in complete ignorance of the HUGE sign stating "restrooms, 2nd floor" at her right.

OMIGOD, she used a SHARPIE. that BITCH. right.

so i've been wondering if tyra merely puts all her effort into the show and none into the so-called career of the actual winners, casting them off into the new york city gutters like used, browbeaten, emaciated raggedy-ann dolls, once they've served their purpose. if that's the case, i fear for poor eva, who has been by far my favorite winner of all the seasons; she's cute, feisty, just the right amount of bitchy and hopefully will suceed in some capacity and not end up hocking Swiffer WetJets on tv one day.

but if you're looking for a model that seems to have had some measure of success AND is spectacularly normal and funny, i suggest you check out the livejournal of elyse sewell, one of the runners-up on the first season of ANTM (AND she used to date a Shin!). she's clever, self-deprecating, and writes nuggets like these from the fashion world of hong kong, where she lives:

Smell that repugnant menstrual tang in the air? That's the scent of Fashion Week, which is still plodding forward more glacially than Naomi Campell on 'Ludes. I'm writing this (in my physical journal) from the hallowed estrogen-saturated Fitting Hall, during my seventh of eight hours here. Models in various stages of undress steal furtive glances at each other's g-string-clad asses and picked-over styrofoam lunchboxes. Vanity is inflated or punctured as designers march down a lineup, scrutinizing breasts, distributing outfits, musing aloud, "Hm, I need model with beautiful legs to wear this one." Narrowed eyes dart toward a scene near a rack in the corner: ohmigod, Ksenia can't zip the pants the designer handed her- another model must heroically step forward and volunteer to exchange outfits, but whose hips will be small enough? The air is constantly thick with tension, or maybe just with drifting hash smoke from the crowd of male models populating the bathroom.

a model with brains and wit. thank god tyra didn't pick her to win america's next top model. who knows how she would have ended up!

this is what working on DCist hath wrought, i assume: i now get press releases for books that teach your kids about marijuana:

Hello,

Magic Propaganda Mill Books is happy to announce the release of a new
children's book about marijuana.

"It's Just a Plant" tells the tale, through beautiful color illustrations,
of how a young girl learns about marijuana: from her parents' own use to the
farm where it's grown to the doctor's office to a police officer's
historical perspective. It's fast becoming the preeminent alternative for
young parents in the face of decades of misinformation about marijuana.

let me treat you to a little excerpt from the web site:

One night Jackie woke up past her bedtime.
She smelled something funny in the air, so she walked down the hall to her parent’s bedroom.

“What’s that mommy?” asked Jackie. “Are you and Daddy smoking a cigarette?”

“No, baby,” said her Mother. “This is called a ‘joint.’ It’s made of marijuana.”

“Mar a whah? What’s that?” asked Jackie.

“Marijuana,” giggled her Mother, “is a kind of plant.”

“What kind of plant?”

“Well,” said her Mom, “that story could take me all night to tell you. How about we go on a bike ride tomorrow, and I’ll tell you all about it?”

The next day Jackie and her mom put on their favorite costumes. Jackie was a samurai and her mom was a bandleader.

awesome.

the web site cites this book as an effective way to fight the drug war and stop youth from trying marijuana at an early age. sure to join the ranks of such esteemed and straight-talkin' kids books as "everybody poops" and "cocaine: it's kind of like candy!"

jeff jarvis will be ecstatic: Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell will step down from his post Friday.

no reason was stated, but i can guess it might have had something to do with the fact that he often launched indecency investigations and fined stations millions of dollars based on the complaints of three people out of millions of viewers.

Ah, the simple joys of the all-day, company-wide meeting. Is "strategy" different from "tactics"? Can we craft a catchy slogan that incorporates the words "leverage", "solution" and "dynamic" that hasn't already been taken? When is the pizza getting here anyway?

As fun as all of that was, the part of the day I had most been looking forward to was the metro ride. As expected, the city's inaugural guests could be found throughout the metro system, but especially at that perennial tourist attraction, the Left Side of the Escalator. Oh well -- a missed train and an extra half-mile walk due to the convention center stop being closed were the only real annoyances I can point to.

But while the day wasn't that annoying, it was kind of disappointing: there were tuxedos everywhere, but I spotted only one pair of cowboy boots! And NO ten-gallon hats! What can this mean? Have the Bush administration's hangers-on traded in their authentic aw-shucksisms for elite east coast trappings? Nah. More likely it's just that guests invited to the Black Tie & Boots Ball arrive via limo. Or horse.

Anyone have any inaugural stories to share? Aside from some eagle-appareled folks dutifully committing scenic Metro Center to videotape and a very unprofessional bomb-sniffing dog, I've got nothing. But then, I spent the day in a conference room. How was the triumphalism? Triumphant?

last weekend when tommy and i went to ceiba for restaurant week, we passed several - how do you say? - interesting looking men on our walk to and from the restaurant. leather-clad men. not like biker leather-clad. leather-clad like studded dog collars, jaunty leather newsboy caps, leather chaps, harnesses. the whole works. and it really wasn't just several of them; it was more like scores. we probably saw 50 or 60 leather dudes just walking around town as natural as could be. later i found out susan had seen a pair of leather-clad men, one of whom was on a leash. we had no idea what was going on, and googling "gay leather convention d.c." didn't really turn up anything. had al-qaeda infiltrated the nation's capital dressed as a bunch of gay leather-lovers? were we under attack?

but browsing some random d.c. blogs today, i found the answer. we can all rest easy. it was just the mid-atlantic leather 2005 weekend! the "second largest Leather Contest in the United States." yup, they have contests. what they're judged on i couldn't figure out from the web site, but last year's winners are here.

if only the MAL organization could have waited a few days to hold their organization. say, like, until january 20th. it would have made today (which has so far been spent holed up in my apartment, stuffing my face with cookies and occasionally peering out the window at cop cars and secret service SUVs rushing by) a LOT more fun.

in response to all the hubbub around the blogosphere the past couple of days regarding larry summers' remarks about women and science, and whether nor not women and men have different talents and inclinations due to genetics and gender, etc, i'm taking on a challenge that i've thought about doing for a good, long while. one that i was always told at which i would never succeed. one that i've never thought i'd be able to do, most likely because my mother dressed me in pink and the social constructs of my environments have been keeping me down. man.

i am going to do a fucking pull up.

i still remember clearly the last time i was able to do a pull up - three of them, in fact. i was a 4th grader at wolftrap elementary school, and we were going through the motions for the presidential physical fitness awards. i got up in front of a huge crowd of fellow nine year-olds, boys and girls, and gave it my best shot.

i ended up getting more pull ups than any girl in my class, and more than many of the flabby, underdeveloped munchkin boys that were my friends. it was a triumphant moment. in fact, i performed well on all the other fitness challenges - the mile, that terrible back-and-forth-shuffle-run, sit ups, etc.

but then as the years went on, probably because my series of lesbian gym teachers were misogynists, i lost interest in physical fitness. i couldn't run as fast, i couldn't throw balls as far, and i could never again do a single pull up. this might also have something to do with the fact that i gained like 120 pounds, but i'd rather blame it on the unconscious discriminations of society.

anyway, in general i'd consider myself to be fairly in shape, but the arm strength thing has always eluded me. i mean, lately i'm even having trouble lifting bottles of wine to my lips. so i decided that something had to change.

tommy and i joined the Y a couple of weeks ago, and i've made it my mission to a) start running again and b) be able to do at least one dead-hang pull up. so far i can do several sets on the assisted pull up machine-thingy, but i haven't yet attempted the holy grail. but soon, grasshopper, soon enough. i will be strong. i will have unholy shoulders a la jennifer garner's. and then i can go kick larry summers' ass.

noted over at the campaign desk blog: a useless post critiquing the fake background from a recent bush speech about education reform.

bush gave the speech at a falls church high school in front of a set that was made to look like a row of lockers (though they didn't do a very good job); the author is concerned that the washington post both wrote an article about the speech and took a picture of bush in front of the fake lockers, but never mentioned that the lockers were in fact fake:

As it turns out, Bush was standing in front of a painted backdrop. The Post's photo doesn't make that clear, but the Associated Press photo featured above -- which shows the whole stage -- does (click on the image for a larger version). This administration is well known for using carefully chosen backdrops to put forth its message, of course. But here they're playing a visual trick -- fabricating a backdrop to make it look as if Bush really is standing in front of a row of lockers, not in a generic hall. And the Washington Post simply plays along.

Now, contrary to suspicions in some quarters, we don't typically ask a lot of our press corps -- simply an accurate recounting of an event would be good, for starters. But by providing a misleading visual to its readers without elaboration, the Post fails even at that very basic task. As one of our readers put it, "if a paper can't run a photo which truthfully captures the nature of an event, it shouldn't run one at all."

i mean, i agree with that. but with all the other fallacies bush feeds to the media, can't we all agree to let the fake locker thing slide and concentrate on important stuff, like, oh, any of the other information in the post article? really. who gives a shit?

Good news: Google, Yahoo and MSN have announced an initiative to end comment spam. From now on links with the attribute rel="nofollow" won't be counted by search engines. Blog software will intercept submitted comments and alter all links so that they include this attribute.

For Movable Type users, SixApart has a page explaining all this here. They've issued a plugin that implements nofollow for MT versions 2.661 and 3. Download it here and unzip it into your plugins directory. That should be it! I'll have this implemented here sometime later today.

Well, it's snowing in DC. Hard. So, to my friends and family: I love you all. We had a pretty good run. See you at tha crossroads.

Snow in DC area is less about meteorology than eschatology. Half an inch and school gets cancelled. Much more and discussions begin about whether we've reached the end of human history, or just the end of our particular civilization. Across the region stores are now out of bread, milk and toilet paper. If they sold ammunition they'd be out of that, too.

Well, good luck to everybody -- it's getting slippery out there. Walking back from the convention center metro this morning I slipped on a snow-covered metal plate and fell soundly on my ass. Between the irritatingly dangerous conditions and the dangerously irritating inaugural festivities, staying inside is looking better and better. Say, how do cowboy boots perform on black ice, anyway?

so. it's been cold outside, huh? the kind of cold that freezes the interior contents of your nose into a crystallized fountain pouring down your upper lip; the kind of cold that makes you tear up, except you don't know you've teared up, because the liquid your eyes are emanating in response to the extreme polar weather has actually glued your eyelids together; the kind of cold that causes somebody who has never in fact lived above the mason-dixon line to whine unendingly on her blog.

and it was during the first real cold weekend of the year that i had an altogether wonderful time, despite the fact that i had to wear, like, sneakers and sweaters and scarves instead of flipflops and the slutty tank tops that i like to characterize my days off work. ah well. we all make sacrifices.

Since Catherine and I are both suffering from some serious writer's block, let me take the current blogospheric football and run with it -- but in the opposite direction from my right-minded friends. Girls stink at math! (At least to a small but statistically significant degree more than boys).

Okay, so for those of you with something better to do during the day than follow every micro-controversy: Harvard president Larry Summers has irritated a lot of folks by suggesting that the lack of female scientists may be due, in part, to biological differences.

Some people are making good criticisms of Summers' comments, pointing out that other factors figure in: the career-derailment frequently entailed by having kids, or simple discrimination from male-dominated academic committees. That seems perfectly right -- everyone seems to agree that female professorial candidates in the sciences lose out more than they ought to.

But that doesn't invalidate Summers' point that there are relevant differences between the sexes. To admit that there's a statistically relevant phenomenon going on here is not to deny the excellence of individual women in science, or to justify discrimination of any sort.

If I maintain that men have a biological advantage in terms of (non-endurance-based) muscle strength, does that mean that a given man -- let's say me -- is stronger than any woman? Or that, given a need for, say, jar-opening that must be satisfied by either myself or an unspecified female candidate, I should be given preferential consideration? Of course not! There are plenty of women who could kick the hell out of me. But that doesn't make the more general "men have a strength advantage" position invalid.

There are good reasons to think men and women perform differently on different types of mental tasks. Guys do better on tests of spatial reasoning; women are better at some types of verbal tasks. These differences aren't huge, but they do seem to exist.

Now why, you might ask, is this line of reasoning any less objectionable than the usual Bell Curve-style justifications for discrimination? How can differences in mathematical ability be disentangled from other contributing factors? Maybe girls don't get called on as much in physics class... Fair enough, but this ignores the fact that women have surpassed men by many -- probably most -- academic metrics. They've got higher GPAs, and there are between 5 and 10 percent more women in college than men. So I think there are good reasons to question the significance of institutional barriers to female academic success -- at least at the levels where the aforementioned tests are administered.

I don't mean to impugn the intelligence of any woman. Certainly, such slight disparities in specific kinds of mathematical ability are the sort of things that any fair-minded person ought to ignore completely at the level of individual performance. I'm ready to believe that, say, different levels of childhood exposure to Number Munchers is far more relevant than the presence of a Y chromosome. But to me, different in-built biological advantages seem like a perfectly reasonable way to explain trends at a population-wide level. The differences are small, but they seem to be there -- and given that, I don't see anything wrong with acknowledging them.

I love reading Dan's Data. No other site so reliably rounds up useless but impossibly cool scientific gadgetry. I can't justify buying all this crap, so I'll just throw it out here. If you're looking for something science-y to put on your desk that's a little more interesting than a set of those goddamn clicking chrome balls, these should fit the bill:

• An electromagnet that can lift 500lbs -- running off two D batteries. That's got to be useful for something, right?


• Or are you looking for finger-breaking fun but hate replacing batteries? Well why not buy yourself a gigantic rare-earth magnet? Besides the broken finger part, I mean.


• It would be irresponsible to imply that at-home science is exclusively about hurting yourself. There are also large parts of it devoted to ruining your furniture. So how about some ferromagnetic fluid? It's a freaky black liquid that changes shape in a magnetic field. These guys have a starter kit that's only sixteen bucks.


• Alright, so magnetism's awesome and all, but if you'd prefer using a different sort of invisible force to amaze and terrify your coworkers, you could just get one of these. "Like being punched by a ghost." Cool.

Via Kevin Rose, check out TheyRule.net. It's nifty flash website that plots the web of relationships between corporations and members of their boards of directors. You can build your own maps, or just use some of the predefined ones. Click "Load Map" then "Popular" to browse their presets, which are usually constructed to illustrate some entertaining point about the secret, unspeakable desires of global conglomerates (e.g. money contributed to Democrats vs. Republicans; media outlets owned; that sort of thing).

Does anybody care about them? It occurred to Catherine and me that eliminating them in favor of the advantageously-bland "permalink" might help prevent doocing. If you'd be sorry to see them go, speak now or forever... well, you know the drill.

I know I've been pretty quiet recently, but today should put me firmly back in the blogging saddle. Unfortunately, unlike you lazy federal government employees, I don't get MLK Day off from work -- funny how it works out that way in small companies with no minority employees (at least our boss didn't declare the inauguration a holiday, either). But today should still be highly unproductive, work-wise: the last week or so has allowed me to witness a phenomenal string of technical failures, from laptops to ipods to the goddamn roof collapsing over my company's server in the US Capitol. At the moment, there isn't much work that can be done, making the "will be done" subset even smaller than usual. Plus, perhaps in sympathy, my own body has decided to come down with a cold, despite the epic quantities of antibiotics that until recently were coarsing through my veins. It's cool though -- getting sick is totally in right now.

As you might imagine, I've been pretty busy attending to these various matters via the only productive avenues available: downing Nyquil, playing huge amounts of Halo and buying new gadgets like USB controllers and ipod skins. I've nearly completed this important work, though. I'll resume pulling my weight around here shortly.

the long national nightmare is over: with any luck, in two hours i should have submitted my last graduate school application, sent off with many kisses and much arduous editing from tommy, kriston, and jessica. thanks to you all. you took statements and essays that were large steaming piles of rhetorical doo-doo and polished them up into smaller, not-so-smelly piles of somewhat coherent wording (hey, you did what you could).

and so the Weekend of Birthday Fun can officially commence. having your birthday on a tuesday can kind of suck (despite many goodies from tommy, all i did that day was come home, change into my pajamas, bake a loaf of banana bread and proceeded to eat 2/3 of it), so i'm taking this weekend to celebrate. the itinerary:

friday: drinks and dalliances with many a friend at the helix lounge. i've never been there before, but i chose it because it looked like it had lots of good girly drinks and was within a reasonable distance of our house. anyway, i can only hope that the night doesn't grant me too many bombay sapphire martinis, but i'm betting by monday there'll be photographic evidence of me on the internets puking up olives all over the place.

saturday: if i can drag anyone out, i think i'll head to the monopoli show at dc9. i have yet to see a concert at that venue, and i hear monopoli is pretty good for d.c. "for d.c." being the operative words in that phrase, so we'll see.

sunday: tommy and i will head out to ceiba for some restaurant week action. kanishka has a full report of his experience at ceiba here.

and the best part of all? natania, the girl with whom i shared many a glass of wine on our balcony overlooking the alps in italy, is coming down this weekend to visit. so if you see two girls, out on a drunken red-wine bender, stumbling and muttering incoherently in italian - well, just stay the hell out of our way. for your own safety.

this is super-old news in the d.c. blogosphere by now, but i wanted to write about it anyway: as of yesterday around noon, local station 99.1, WHFS, was totally and unexpectedly turned into a salsa-carribean music station. yup.

this isn't really sad news for me, as i rarely listen to radio any more. i mean, i guess i'll have to fix the preset stations in my car, but that's about the biggest incovnenience it'll cause. but i do want to credit HFS for two great things it did for me:

1) it turned me on to radiohead. when "the bends" came out nearly a decade ago, i was hardly what you'd call a music fan. i owned no CDs, had never been to a live concert, and couldn't place half the bands shown on MTV. but when i heard "high and dry" one day on HFS during the winter of '95, i was immediately hooked. i bought "the bends," listened to it three times a day, and officially commenced my ten-year obsession with radiohead, which in turn has really affected my life in a lot of other positive ways (travels experienced, friends made, new music exposure, british musicians stalked, etc).

2) this is also radiohead-related, but so what: during the tibetan freedom festival at RFK stadium in 1998, radiohead's performance was canceled due to lightning. several friends and i were making a disappointed trip home, listening to HFS, when a cryptic announcement came on air; it announced something to the effect of a secret concert that night at the 9:30 club, featuring one of the bands that had been lightening'd out of the TFF. "karma police" then started playing, and the whole thing wasn't so cryptic anymore, and we hauled ass to the 9:30 club and just made it in the door. which in turn led to one of the greatest concert moments of my life: michael stipe and thom yorke singing "lucky" together. i assure you, it was totally orgasmic.

anyway, DCist has a post with a big ole comment thread here; frank ahrens, former resident of our apartment and go-to radio guy for the post has a chat here; some other post guy will have another chat about HFS here at 2pm; and Heres a Hint has a good post that reflects a lot of my feelings about HFS and radio in general here.

Oh hell yes. Pitchfork is reporting on an upcoming They Might Be Giants tribute album featuring acts like the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players and Frank Black.

But what's really got me bouncing off the walls is the news that one of my current favorite bands is considering a cover of my all-time favorite TMBG song, "Birdhouse In Your Soul". For those unfamiliar, BHIYS is an epic and uplifting existential rumination sung from the point of view of a canary-shaped nightlite. It's also a phenomenal pop song. Here's hoping everyone's favorite Jersey pharmaceutical clerks/rock gods have the good sense to keep their version true to the energetic original. Nothing's more disappointing than having a good band half-ass a cover by giving it the "sensitive" treatment with a few acoustic guitars and twenty minutes of studio time.

I'm pretty excited about the rest of the album, too. I can't think of another act band as perfectly suited to the tribute treatment as TMBG. It'd be silly to deny that the two Johns are great songwriters; unfortunately, the sad truth is that much of their best work is locked away behind their nasally voices and synthesizers-can-do-everything approach to production. TMBG eventually assembled a real band for John Henry, and while I love tracks like "Subliminal" and "AKA Driver", ever since the musicianship improved they've only rarely attained the combination of abstract cleverness and precise pop construction that characterized earlier songs like "Ana Ng". Having others revisit that earlier material might help these guys get the credit they deserve.

guess what? opening approximately 32 browsers in firefox and refreshing each of them at the rate of 100x per second scores you two wilco tickets for wednesday, february 23! RAR!

i really wanted to do a big old pop culture roundup post today - on "Lost," women in "24" (since "24" is the hot new blogging topic, ya know), maybe a bit on the new seasons of "alias," and my impressions of "Garden State," which i finally saw last night for the first time. unfortunately, i've got a hugeass essay to write for a grad school application on whether or not i believe there's an overt liberal bias in the media. and it's much harder to do than i expected. (i can't really just write, "duh, i'm a liberal, so no, i don't think there's a bias. but hey, even if there was, who am i to critique my fellow journalists advancing our communist agenda! mwahahahahah!"). also, i love how my JOB or REAL WORK doesn't displace blogging; other stuff that is NOT my job does. i LOVE my job.

so anyway. it shall have to wait. however, i wanted to point out what is perhaps the most retarded sentence in tv criticism about "alias" that i've ever read. courtesy of charles taylor in salon.com today:

Her entrance in last week's season opener, in a short blond bob and a baby-doll nightie with push-up brassiere, was the closest the show has ever let the character come to being a sexpot.

reading this grain of wisdom, i must believe that mr. taylor has never actually watched "alias", like, ever, not even for a half a second. honestly, the show would be bereft without jennifer garner and her slutty, slutty costumes. the only thing holding her back from being a true sexpot in every meaning of the word is her enormous shoulders. it's hard to be sexy when you look like a transexual linebacker half of the time, but i think if anyone can pull off it off, it's jennifer garner.

Here, have some insight-by-proxy: Jeff's fulminating against the administration's ideologically loaded appointments to scientific advisory boards -- and the WaPo's milquetoast excusal of this behavior. Go have a look.

It's true that Jeff has lived in Berkeley for the past few years. He's biased -- by this point has probably secretly begun to have opinions about things like organic gardening, if the condition is progressing at a typical pace. But he's also a scientist, studying cell membranes or synapses or some other such nonsense that'll eventually get him burned as a witch.

The new iPod Shuffle doesn't look that appealing to me, but goodness gracious is the Mac Mini a sexy piece of tech. It makes me wish my perfectly-fine desktop PC would spontaneously combust. If you or someone you know is looking for a secondary, web-&-email, get-one-for-grandma-style computer, there's no longer any question about what you should buy.

Oh well. For the time being I'll have to satisfy myself with an iPod -- now that Jobs' keynote is safely over, there's no worry about missing out on an imminent upgrade. Clarendon, here I come! Now if they'd just hurry up and get Linux running on the 4G iPods...

i mean, d.c. is perfectly safe from terrorists. president bush, feel free to take the city's money to pay for your party:

The District of Columbia will pay the overtime costs for all officers from all law enforcement agencies involved in the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.

The city will pay $11 million from its federal homeland security budget to cover the costs, City Administrator Robert C. Bobb said Tuesday.

"That includes District of Columbia police as well as all other law enforcement agencies that will be coming in to support the district," Bobb said. "As the city's homeland security advisor, I feel that's appropriate."

The city is also seeking permission to dip into its $240 million allotment from the federal government to pay for other costs it is incurring during the inauguration. D.C.'s total cost for the event is expected to be $17.3 million.

District residents shouldn't have to pay those costs from their own pockets, Bobb said.

Other district officials said the federal government should pay for the city's share of the inaugural costs directly.

"The president and Congress saw fit to grant $50 million to New York and Boston for security at last year's political conventions, but they won't lay down a single dime to pay specifically for the inauguration," said D.C. Councilman David A. Catania, I-At Large.

not to mention that tommy, charles and i really are likely to be confined to our house on january 20th: "The Mount Vernon Square-Convention Center station is likely to be closed at some time, Farbstein said, because almost all the inaugural balls will be held at the Washington Convention Center. "

like i said, it's the apartment's roof and a bottle of tanqueray. good times, good times.

Did anyone else hear this piece on All Things Considered yesterday? It profiled some good-hearted folks responding to the tsunami with what the segment's producers termed "grassroots aid". Rather than contributing to a high-profile organization like the Red Cross, these folks are responding to the disaster by seeking out more direct ways to help. Their stated reason is a concern over inefficiencies in large aid organizations.

This seems very NPR, and very naive. Okay, so the folks who're sending nets from one community of fishermen to another are probably accomplishing some good -- but the urge to grassroots-ify everything needs to be reined in. The FBI is warning that scams related to the disaster are already in full swing; I'm afraid that the folks quoted in the ATC piece who're collecting money to send to a Sri Lankan bank account may be getting taken for a ride. With these sorts of ad-hoc partnerships there simply can't be oversight of the same quality employed by established aid organizations with good track records.

There's a tendency to distrust bureaucracies -- certainly I fall victim to it as much or more than most. And given the occasional large-scale charity scandal, it's understandable to have some level of skepticism. But equally important is the fact that the people running those huge charities are professionals who are in a better position to coordinate efforts efficiently and to leverage economies of scale. Grassroots charity is a nice idea, but it seems unlikely to do as much good on a per-dollar basis as cutting a check to the Red Cross. To the extent that that relationship is true, boutique charity -- while still an admirable impulse -- looks unfortunately narcissistic.

happy birthday to me! as several people have put it to me already this morning, "you're now a quarter of a century old!" or "you got a couple more toes in the grave, eh?" yes. well. thanks very much. anyway, the first day of 25 doesn't feel much different from the last day of 24, not surprisingly, so i have very little input about being "officially old" as my sister likes to say. but overall, 24 was a pretty good year, so i'm excited for 25.

additionally, my 24th year was an excellent one for blogging. this site has been around since august 28, 2002, and my first "post" (actually just a gigantic shot of milanese streets from the roof of the duomo) was on september 2nd, 2002, but for the sixteen months or so, it was primarily a photo blog where i could share tales and shots of my year in italy. as it happens, unrequited narcissism only morphed into a "real" blog more or less around the time of my 24th birthday. reading through the archives last night, it was actually pretty interesting to see how amazed i was about the world of blogging, and totally naive about everything else as well. for example, from like, january to march, i am constantly Outraged! at all the Really Terrible Things conservatives were doing, and then i also proceed to get excited about sites like talkingpointsmemo.com and eschaton.

but time went on, my writing style became less idiotic (i think), and whenever anything interesting or good or bad happened, i wrote about it here. so let's review some of the minutiae in catherine's 24th year, blog style:

fabulous. i can't even get over irony of the fact that most of the major players in the US government right now would rather drink a rat milkshake than consider giving DC statehood, but they've got no problem with the city spending $17.3 million out of its own pocket to fund the inauguration:

The District expects the whole thing to cost it $17.3 million dollars. Mayor Anthony Williams would like a federal appropriation to help with the costs, but his spokeswoman, Sharon Gang, says they've been told that won't happen.

Instead, the mayor wants to use 5.4 million from the Emergency Planning and Security Cost Fund. That's been dipped into before to cover costs for things like Ronald Reagan's funeral and World Bank protests.

But that leaves nearly $12 million unfunded. So the mayor suggests using regional homeland security grant money. He's sent a letter to Secretary Tom Ridge, asking if that's an appropriate use of the funds.

brilliant, mayor williams! instead of getting a federal appropriation to cover the costs, we're going to take money out of a fund that should be protecting us from terrorists. D.C., a town that's about 95% blue, that is probably one of the highest-risk targets for terrorism, that has no congressional representation, is going to spend a good chunk of its Don't Kill Us, Please money on paying for the activities and alcohol of a bunch of republicans.

i am so totally spending january 20th on the roof of our apartment with a bottle of tanqueray, throwing spitballs and incoherent, slurred insults at anybody who passes by in cowboy boots.

UPDATE: from the moonie times: "The Washington Post reported the money is for construction and security costs and the Bush administration is balking at reimbursing the money to the District of Columbia as it and other administrations did previously."

and more from the post:

D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack.

... A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District, agreed with the mayor's stance. He called the Bush administration's position "simply not acceptable."

"It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind. How can the District be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay for this instead?" said Davis spokesman David Marin.

... The $17.3 million the city expects to spend on this inauguration marks a sharp increase from the $8 million it incurred for Bush's first.

According to Williams's letter, the District anticipates spending $8.8 million in overtime pay for about 2,000 D.C. police officers; $2.7 million to pay 1,000-plus officers being sent by other jurisdictions across the country; $3 million to construct reviewing stands; and $2.5 million to place public works, health, transportation, fire, emergency management and business services on emergency footing.

Congressional aides said the District sought unsuccessfully last year to boost the annual security reimbursement fund from $15 million to $25 million to pay for inauguration expenses. In contrast, New York City and Boston-area lawmakers were able to obtain $50 million from Congress for each of those two jurisdictions to cover local security costs for the national political conventions.

If you'd asked me before the election, I would have said that the internet would get less shrill after the presidential election. Clearly I would've been wrong. Turns out we lefties aren't such magnanimous losers after all.

I don't think it's all our fault. I expected the blogs to be sore winners, but between the crowing about a mandate, the confrontational appointments, giving Wolfowitz the Congressional Medal of Freedom... it feels a little like the President's trying to rub our noses in it. At the same time, I know liberal bloggers seem a bit more knee-jerk anti-Bush than before. Partly this is because we've seen how little conciliation gets us. Partly it's because we think the President is foolish and has done a poor job in his first term, leading us to greet anything he does with suspicion. But in large part it's because we genuinely don't like a lot of the administration's proposals. And I'm sad to see online discussions with people I like and respect degenerate into rancor.

So let me offer a tiny, admittedly lame olive branch: I like the President's tort reform proposals.

Dammit. I was prepared to ignore 24 this year -- last season irritated the hell out of me. Having inexplicably killing off the pouty-lipped, double-dealing, druglord-dating latina love interest halfway through the season, the series' producers left us to slog through a maze of bureaucrats, geeks and metrosexual villains. It fell apart pretty rapidly.

But then, that's always the problem with 24: the people plotting the show make it up as they go along. I still find it amazing that each season's arc isn't set in advance -- doesn't the premise demand it? Realistically, yes. In practice, no. As a result the show always gets off to a gripping start, then degenerates into plotlines about amnesia, mountain lions and bad Russian accents.

I'd finally had enough after season 3, and was determined to avoid this year's installment. I was prepared to be exposed to it -- Charles remains devoted to the show like no other -- but I hadn't counted on the blogospheric pop culture currents that this franchise brings with it. The first two hours seemed a little unexciting compared to previous 24 premieres, so maybe I'll be able to jump off this bandwagon earlier, but for now COMMENCE BLOGGING.

AKA nitpicking. Jim Henley (via Yglesias) has already picked apart the nonchalant acceptance of torture that we saw last night. There's also the apparently silly decision to make this season's terrorists Turkish -- I'm no expert on this stuff, but a country as publicly secular and westernized as Turkey seems like a bad candidate for breeding zealots determined to strike against the far enemy. Plus, it sounds like Turkey's actual terrorists are Marxists. If that's who this season's enemy turns out to be, count me in: now that the conflict is safely fictional, I love jingoist anti-Commie entertainment. Their debauched ideology killed Apollo Creed, for pete's sake!

But I have a feeling they'll be pushing America's more contemporary fear buttons, so instead let's talk about the other fun aspect of 24: the technononsense. We're still easing in, but this season is already off to a rollicking start.

Macworld will be starting up in a little under three hours, but its two most interesting developments seem to have already leaked -- or at least convincing hoaxes have been created to back up the two most talked-about rumors.

First up: the new headless iMac. There are some pictures here, although irritable Mac zealots seem to think they might be fakes. I guess I'm sort of hoping they are -- iHome is an unfortunately dopey name. A sub-$500 Mac would be exciting whatever it looked like, though. I'm not likely to ever switch, but I've got to admit they're sexy machines. It'd be nice to be able to buy a computer that just works when Grandma decides she wants to try email.

Second is the iPod micro. An Italian Mac news site claims to have seen the device, and the answer to everyone's question: there's no screen. It's shaped "like a small remote control". They also have photos of banners being put up for the product's announcement. The slogan? "Life is random". Er... great. They're not going to sell you on the device, they're going to sell you on shuffle mode.

Well, it's true that lots of folks are stupidly excited about shuffle mode. And it's true that some of those people are journalists with nothing worthwhile to write about. But I think Jobs may have miscalculated if he's counted this as a cultural phenomenon that can Apple can cash in on. The iPod is a runaway hit because it's pretty, because it was first to market, and because of its interface. Aside from that nifty scroll wheel, you can get more bang for your buck from a variety of other products. Get rid of the screen and you're getting rid of most of your interface advantage. I have no doubt it'll be a beautiful piece of gadgetry, but at $150 for a gigabyte of storage, paying for that Apple cachet is getting harder and harder to justify.

a couple of shows coming to the area that i'd be interested in going to if anyone wants to join me:

the bravery - black cat - jan 31
exit clov - black cat - feb 4 (i've never actually listened to them, but they're a local band that's gotten a lot of buzz, so i'd like to check them out)
low, pedro the lion - black cat - feb 7
the wrens - black cat - feb 11 (i am attending this show come hell or high water)
the futureheads - 9:30 - feb 21
ash - black cat - march 10

and, of course, wilco on feb 23 or 24, if the ticket gods should choose to bless me.

and some band named final fantasy is opening for the arcade fire on 1/30.

one new year's resolution that i made to myself was that i would try to be better in my 25th year about documenting my life in photos. i mean, i lead such a fascinating existence that i feel i owe it to my readers to present it in more visual terms so they can be that much more jealous of the fabulousness of it all. so, behold behind the fold: the weekend in breakfast tacos and the black cat. unphotographed, fortunately for all involved: hours of dance dance and karaoke revolution.

I forgot to mention this before, but while doing the redesign I registered a domain name for the site as well. I realize it's too unwieldy to be very practical, but eh... it's official-looking. So feel free to use www.unrequitednarcissism.com for all your linking needs.

Charles reports that those jerks at NBC4 has finally done something besides dashing the snowday hopes of suburban schoolchildren. Seems that the bed & breakfast across the alley from us wasn't too keen on the security restrictions being put in place for the inauguration -- they were fully booked up, but under the security policy their guests wouldn't be allowed in the area. Put that on camera with a sympathetic reporter, add a little incoherent rambling from Jim Vance and suddenly you've got the MPD's ear. I can't find a link for the story on WRCTV's website, but Charles assures me that a police department functionary has promised the security policies will be reviewed and revised.

Way to go, local news! You may now return to your usual schedule of stories about the lurking threat of death by shopping cart, and the silent epidemic of orthodontia-induced pediatric blindness.

brad and jen are done. and so is coverage of the tsunami.

for posterity's sake in this tragic moment, i'd like to remind you of the burgeoning bud of the pitt-aniston alliance, which i witnessed in all its glory at the secret radiohead show at the 9:30 club several years ago. what starts off with dreds can never end well.

as tommy mentioned below, we're apparently going to be under house arrest/suspicion of treason for the days before, on, and after the presidential inauguration due to our proximity to the convention center, where many of the events will be held. hmm. time to kick out that terrorist we've been renting our laundry room to!

i got curious which events, exactly, will be held at the convention center, and found a web site with all of the balls listed for my convenience. out of something like 32 balls, six will be held at the center, all at the same time. there's got to be some law of physics that states with that many drunk cowboy-boots-wearing republicans in the same place at the same time, mixed in with red state triumphalism, bad music, and awkward dancing, anti-matter itself will spontaneously be created.

but the funniest part of all is the names of the balls. whoever's on the Inaugural Balls Naming Committee should be congratulated for their originality. we have:

The Freedom Ball
The Patriot Ball
The Liberty Ball
The Independence Ball
The Democracy Ball
The Stars and Stripes Ball
The Constitution Ball
oh, and the Texas-Wyoming Ball

what's even funnier? ohio and florida get their OWN balls, which is, of course a coincidence. meanwhile, we're still awaiting the announcement of the Iraq is Not Fucked and the Our God is an Awesome God Balls.

alright. i've been sick the past two days with some sort of lymph-node attacking, joint-eating viral nastiness, so apologies for not having put up a Lost recap/post earlier. not that anyone is demanding an apology. not that anyone cares if i write about it or not. in fact, i should probably be apologizing instead for forcing this on you all. but nevertheless, i'm bored, hopped up on advil and coffee, and i VONT TO WRITE.

We found this on our doorstep earlier this week (it was in all caps -- I've altered that to make it readable):

Dear Residents and Business Owners:

On Thursday, January 20, 2005, the nation will celebrate the Presidential Inauguration. The events are held in the nation's capital. This year there will be the inaugural parade on Pennsylvania Avenue during the day and then several inaugural balls during the evening hours.

This year multiple inaugural balls will be held at the D.C. Convention Center, thus your neighborhood will feel an impact from these events. Some of your nighttime activities may be restricted (parking, driving, having visitors).

We would like to report that traffic may be blocked along the 7^th and 9^th Street corridors. There may be areas (streets and parking lots) that parking may not be permitted during the event, specifically in the 1200 blocks of 7^th streets.

Residents will be required to present identification that verifies their residence in marked, secured areas. Those that do not have proper identification will not be permitted in secured areas around the convention center.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this event may cause. Due to the heightened security in the nation, extra security precautions are required in a large scale event such as the presidential inauguration.

Thank you and for further information, you may contact:

Etc. Great. Look, I understand the need for security, but let's get real for a second: the convention center is gigantic structure spanning 3 or 4 city blocks. I am quite certain that it was designed to allow for security. Now, believe me, I am intimately aware that lots of people are upset with the kind of tuxedo-and-cowboy-boot-sporting dickheads who'll be trundling their Excursions past our home come January 20th. But what do you really think people in the neighborhood could do? Car bombs? It doesn't look like the kind of structure that'd be susceptible to that, but if you're worried, why not just put some Jersey barriers up on the street and some guards at the door? If your guests are terrified of walking past some black folks on the way to their car, maybe they could just take the train to the metro station in the convention center -- wouldn't that be easier for everybody?

Seriously, am I really not allowed to have visitors? What's with all the "may" bullshit? And what's this about requiring "proper ID" -- my license still says I live in Virginia, you know. Since I haven't changed it, I guess the upshot is that I'm under house arrest for a night so that the Republicans can have a party.

Yeesh. Count me slightly-more-embittered than usual.

attn internet stalkers: i, and most likely every single blogger in the washington area, will be attending the bluestate DJ collective this saturday night at the black cat's backstage. there'll be beer, beats, and a bunch o' fucking bloggers. and what's more fun than a plethora of navel-gazing, meta-loving, alcoholic bloggers in one room who are all going to write about the event the next day? that's right: nothing. so. i'll see you there, right?

my uncle, my grandparents and i went to the newish national museum of the american indian on the mall this past weeked. having lived in wyoming most of their lives, my grandparents never failed to educate us on western issues and history, so my siblings and i grew up with an above-average knowledge of western north american native americans, dinosaur digs and rodeos. we even went to their friends' buffalo ranch one time and drove around in a truck, happily leaning out over the bed and feeding the ginormous beasts some leafy things with no disregard to the possibility of death by buffalo hoof. i have some pretty distinct memories of watching dance circles, learning about reservations and dropping in on some teepees. also, i've seen "dances with wolves" multiple times, so i'm practially an indian expert.

anyway, overall we liked the museum. i think the architecture is pretty stunning. the inside of the building is comprised largely of a huge dance circle that rises four storeys in an open air space. there are three or so permanent exhibits that deal with indians from the mayans to the lakota, stretching from peru to ontario. we also saw a few current exhibits on former congressman ben nighthorse campbell's jewelry making (his stuff is absolutely gorgeous), and a space showing two native american indians' modern art (i've forgotten their names, but i took a few pictures of their stuff).

the washington post has a great section on the museum here.

Via Hack-a-Day and Slashdot, an enterprising geek named Shadowmite has completely redefined the capabilities of one particularly hot smartphone, the Treo 650.

The 650 is a pretty sexy piece of tech -- produced by PalmOne (henceforth Palm), it's a cellphone/PDA that people actually like. Integrated keyboard, a nice color screen, not-too-big size... it's a good product, even if it was a step backward, in some limited respects, from the 600. However, one thing has always bugged Treo users: the device has an SDIO slot. Folks make SDIO wifi cards. And similar Palm devices -- specifically the Tungsten C -- support wifi. So why can't the Treo? "Interference with the cell phone antenna!" cried Palm. "Impure thoughts from the user! The fundamental cruelty of the universe!" Basically: we tried, it's not our fault.

Now ask yourself: would I be telling this story if the corporation came out looking like the good guy?

Sorry for the light blogging this week. We've got the official corporate Intern/Child-Of-The-CEO's-Best-Friend in town during her holiday break from college, and somebody's got to begin the lengthy process of breaking her freewheeling collegiate spirit, in order that she might be better prepared for a lifetime of drudgery. So I'm teaching her some programming stuff. Also, laptop briefly dying, applications... hell. It's a mess. Next week I should be back in my PJs, on the couch, and in the mood to entertain.

DCist clues me in to the report that marion barry isn't satisifed with his title of councilman; he wants to be called mayor-councilman, which, for the sake of convenience, would have to be shortened to mayor. additionally, barry said he would also respond to the title Your Supreme Dark Overlord.

adult blogging personality of catherine, meet high school/college/angsty/self-involved blogging personality of catherine: Moveable Type is about to acquire Live Journal for an undisclosed amount.

hey! you haven't changed that much!

i get screwed EVERY SINGLE TIME on wilco tickets. EVERY TIME.

alright. because 1) i am a benevolent blog goddess whose only interest is in disseminating interesting info to my worshipful readers 2) i am hella bored at work and 3) after the Interminable Winter Break of Terrible Reruns i am starved for new, good tv that involves mechanical dinosaurs and possible religious conspiracy theories (which makes me think that dan brown should write his next book not on the freemasons in d.c. but on how opus dei is actually an organization set to bring hell on earth by releasing hordes of trained robot triceratops, therefore validating catholicism), i am going to start a thread on both the TV show Lost and the subject What The Hell Is Happening On Lost?

(apologies to any blog readers who don't watch Lost; but really, you should be apologizing to yourself, because you are missing out on some great TV. and did i mention mechanical dinosaurs?)

It's getting to be the best time of any Star Wars movie's release cycle: the period after we've seen hints of how awesome the movie could be, but before we learn how bad it actually is. Check out this site for some newly-leaked images.

Despite what this post might indicate, I'm not a huge Star Wars geek. My sophomore roommate in college (to whom I was randomly assigned) owned a life-size cardboard cutout of Han Solo that would scare the shit out of me every time I opened the door on my way home from a party, doing little to endear the franchise to me. And witnessing my roommate Rusty's level of devotion firsthand made me realize that of Star Wars, computers, and dignity, men are only allowed a choice of two.

However, I am pretty psyched about these images, because they include what looks to be a CG version of the impossibly awesome lightsabre-wielding robot from the Cartoon Network Clone Wars miniseries.

God dammit, I swear I'm not a geek. Shit.

Most of you have probably heard about how scandalously overmedicated we Americans are -- handing out antibiotics indiscriminately has produced superbugs that threaten to defy treatment. But less widely reported -- although, in my opinion, no less newsworthy -- is how direly undermedicated *I* am. Instead of superbugs, though, this injustice just produces gallons and gallons of snot.

It's almost like clockwork: every year in late-ish January I get sick, then a little better, then back to my original level of sickness, then better still, then descend into zombielike state of near-death that feels like a giant boiled lasagna noodle has been draped over every hole in my head. By the fourth week or so, when I finally drag my sorry carcass to the doctor, it's started to clear up on its own.

Now, I realize that antibiotics may not be the answer to all this -- it's a long but relatively mild illness without much fever or exotically-colored phlegm. Odds are that more often than not, my January illness-du-jour is viral. But I can't help but remember my dad telling me a story about suffering a similar problem, and having it resolved by a family friend administering a large injection of penicillin one year, in advance of his annual cold. He still gets sick from time to time, of course, but his particular yearly affliction never came back.

I bring all this up because I'm sick. I started feeling tired and achy yesterday. I thought it was just the usual Sunday malaise -- thoughts about wasting a day watching football segue so easily into thoughts about wasting a life watching TV -- but around 5AM this morning it was clear that parts of my throat were significantly larger than I usually prefer. It also occurred to me that just this Saturday I had watched the Rose Bowl with, among others, the ever-charming but, it must be said, potentially disease-ridden SueAndNotU. So I'm on high alert, illness-wise, and immediately made an appointment with a doctor. Only thing is, I haven't been to the doctor since moving into the city, what with being a hale, hearty, health-insurance-underwriting twentysomething. So off to the Blue Cross website to find a new sawbones.

I think I've found my guy. He's a little cold, and a little off-putting, but on the sole basis of a "very red looking" throat he immediately gave me a rubber-stamped prescription for some brandname amoxicillin named Augmentin XR. I mean that literally, by the way: he had a rubber stamp for it. Then, to my confusion, he gave me another prescription for the same thing. And this time he used a sticker! Oh, man.

Between those two scripts and an extra two days' worth of free Augmentin samples, I am practically swimming in antibiotic horse-pills, Scrooge McDuck-style. Bring it on, my microscopic foes. I'm ready.

buon capo d'anno, tutti. i hope your new years were not as painful as mine was. after not really having any concrete plans for our evening, and resigning ourselves to the fact that the night might involve hours of mario party + cheap champagne from the 8th street giant, we were rescued by two possible parties to which we could tag along. we first visited kriston and yglesias's house, where they were all dolled up in order to attend the libertarian party (which i will continue to refer to as such, even though yglesias informed me that the libertarianness of the party may have been overstated, seeing as the house throwing the party actually consisted of one libertarian and two liberals). after a few beers there with kriston, though, tommy, charles, julie, jon, paul and i decided to attend erik brolis's party near brookland, because he is latvian, and we all know what that means. actually, i don't know what it means, except latvians drink a hell of a lot, and erik's parties usually end up with his father taking shots with everybody.

anyway, i told tommy i think i got roofied at the party, because there is NO WAY a healthy, responsible girl such as myself would drink so much that she became a rambling idiot who loved and hugged everybody and then proceeded to black out and not be able to move from the couch for the next 24 hours, only having enough brain cells left to watch 5 episodes in a row of the alias season 1 dvd she received for christmas (and by the way, HOW EXCITED AM I FOR TWO HOURS OF ALIAS ON WEDNESDAY; shall we make a party of it?). nope. that was not me. okay. it was me. it hurt, but i had a fabulous time (i think), so it was worth it.

and now it's 2005. some things of note that are not at all related to one another:

-the arcade fire show is already sold out. DCist has two extra tix (yay foresight), though, so we'll be doing a contest this week to give those away.
-the wilco dates at the 9:30 club go on sale january 5th at 10am. here. i tell you because i love you and also i didn't get tickets to the sold-out show last year, so i don't want that to happen to any of my friends this year. i am so empathetic.
-cocktails using italian digestivos are apparently going to be hot in 2005, which only proves, once again, how ahead of the curve tommy and i are. okay, we're never ahead of the curve, but just humor us. we (well, mostly tommy) have been into digestivos for YEARS now, especially the artichoke-flavored one, cynar! actually, that one is really disgusting. if you're going to try a digestivo, go for averna or braulio.
-the NYT lets us know that " There is a growing fraternity in the American tourism industry: vacationers who plan their travels primarily — often solely — around food and wine. " and they're named tommy and catherine. i don't even give a shit about tourist sites anymore. bring on the bacchanalian times!
-speaking of bacchanalian, my 25th birthday is in 8 days. i would like to maybe do something for it. tommy and i are already going to ceiba during restaurant week to celebrate avec food, but i think a bar night with some friends is in order. any suggestions as to where or when? this saturday is the blue state DJ night at the black cat, so i think i'd prefer the weekend after that, if people are amenable. let me know!

Taking a cue from DCSOB's year-end review, I think I'll make some arbitrary predictions for 2005.

Music

Everyone begins to grimly accept that only two or three of last year's crop of dance-rock records were any good, yet can't quite stir themselves to move in a new direction -- nobody wants another fad as embarassingly awful as electroclash. Say, isn't it about time to exploit some kind of folk music again? Despite the confusion, it shapes up to be another good year in music -- those Republican administrations do something right, but who knows what it is?

Technology

LCD begins to edge out plasma as the display technology of the near-future, and commercial OLED products bigger than a cellphone screen (but not much bigger) make it to market. So does digital paper, but nobody uses it for anything but advertisements. An iPhone fails to emerge. The first water-cooled computer systems to be offered by a huge system integrator like Dell go on sale. A decent HDTV-capable projector becomes available for under $700. Internet movie piracy is officially deemed the most dangerous non-Islamic threat to the American dream, and your aunt has heard about BitTorrent and the DiVX codec from Newsweek. Americans are briefly riled up by a corporate invasion of their privacy, but after receiving $2 off coupons, decide they don't mind Walmart maintaining photographic records of its customers' genitals after all. Oh, and blogs are totally over. But then you already knew that.

Food

Everyone stops drinking mojitos and starts drinking caipirinhas. I continue drinking Miller Lite, but at least start feeling a little more ashamed about it. Despite my best efforts, caffeinated beer joins Clear Pepsi and Orbitz as one of mankind's greatest crimes against the concept of "beverage".

Sports

Washington baseball proponents begin to realize that their new baby isn't developing as quickly as the other children. Something is horribly wrong, as we must redefine what we expect to get out of this relationship -- Bostonians are quick to offer suggestions from their gloriously glory-less history, but everybody's pretty fucking sick of them by now. Meanwhile, the Redskins unleash an offensive onslaught so potent that, three games into the season, Paul Tagliabue calls an emergency meeting to draft rule changes aimed at keeping things competitive. Anthony Williams and Linda Cropp forge an unlikely alliance, but despite their best efforts Joe Gibbs is crowned emperor for life. At first the compulsory prayer and NASCAR-watching are kind of a drag, but all is forgiven when Lavar knocks large chunks of Vinny Testaverde's torso into the stands, where avaricious eBayers swarm over it like fire ants. Oh, and something happens with the NHL. Or doesn't. Who cares?

Science

A big asteroid threatens to hit us! And then, whoops, it turns out it won't. The Cassini probe makes Mars look boring, and a new NASA administrator plans to wind down the ISS and shuttle programs. We bask in a golden age of stain-free pant technology, but aside from that everyone wrongly consigns nanotechnology to whatever pile "gene therapy" is current sitting atop. The annual addition-of-the-extra-year-to-fusion's-ETA goes smoothly, reactionaries preclude a reasonable discussion about fission power, and I still don't own a flying car, god dammit. 75% of all federally funded research now involves the exact quantification of how fat Americans are -- preliminary results suggest the answer is "pretty fucking fat," but we should really wait for peer review.

Personal

I continue to fear making plans for the future. Wait, how did we get to this item? This list is over!

And of course, the domestication of the dog will continue unabated.

Please feel free to add your own predictions in the comments below. Just imagine I've issued a barking, John McLaughlin-style command for them. But try not to sound like Pat Buchanan.

Still no apocalypse -- but then, this year wasn't divisible by ten, so what were the odds, anyway? It did seem like the end of the world for a while there: I've now firmly established a New Year's tradition by getting food poisoning on Dec. 31st for two years running -- be sure to join me next December 20th for the preparation of the ceremonial New Year's Egg Salad Sandwich!

Last year was quite bad -- I was out of action for days thanks to a new Indian restaurant in the neighborhood -- but this year's passe Christmas leftovers turned out to be nothing that some cheap champagne couldn't fix. Unfortunately, it broke a few other things in the process, but aside from a nasty welt produced by a falling bottle of Jagermeister, I think we'll be alright by sunset. Good time, all having it, etc. Thanks to Eric for providing the venue for the self-destruction.

Most entertaining/horrifying moment of the night: driving to Eric's a couple of guys pulled up next to us and motioned for us to roll down our window, which we did. "Happy New Year, folks! Y'all be safe!" the driver said, then continued, "...and we won't be," holding up a pint glass of something frosty and fruity looking as the guy in the passenger seat proudly displayed a bottle of Tanqueray. They seemed awfully charming at the time -- hopefully they didn't end up killing anybody.