I saw Land of the Dead on Tuesday with Kriston, Matt, Eric, Jeremy and Sam. Pretty good flick -- it's always nice to see the proletariat demand justice, even if they are mainly comprised of ambling corpses. Also, it reminded me a lot of my favorite hyper-violent anime movie, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Zombies, aristocrats and awesomeness are among the many shared themes. Somebody should make somebody else write an essay about it.

But I have to ask -- if the apocalypse came and you were to find yourself struggling to survive in a wasted landscape teeming with ravenous undead, would you maybe ratchet down the personal affectations? I mean, eschewing an automatic weapon for a bolt-action rifle I can sort of understand. And the single-shot harpoon gun that has to be manually reloaded -- okay. Probably wouldn't be my choice, but whatever. But rolling around on a skateboard? Come on now. I know that self-expression is an important and wonderful thing, but we have to draw the line somewhere. Your rebellious anti-establishment aesthetic seems to be ignoring the fact that there's no longer any actual establishment to rebel against.

So look people, if you and I ever happen to find ourselves in the same ragtag bunch of survivors, fighting to stay alive amidst an ocean of the walking dead, I am going to have to insist on a few things. No monocles. No unnecessary walking sticks. Please refrain from using tobacco products that require two hands or a lot of attention to light. And -- I cannot stress this enough -- please respect the buddy system.

gotta give big ups to zappos.com, who not only had the boots i had been looking for my whole life on sale 50% off, but who also, for some reason, changed my (already free) shipping from 4-5 business days to OVERNIGHT so i got my boots this morning! and they're BOOTIFUL. oh, hahaha. the leather feels like butter and i've been caressing them all day long like a pair of kittens. bruno magli, you are a genius. they're comfortable, classic, and damn-near prada-like. as these shoes originally cost $430, they are officially the most expensive thing i've ever owned (including tommy), and you better believe i'm building them a shrine and beating the shit out of anyone who even looks askance at them.

anyway, just wanted to say: zappos, i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

one last reminder: please come out to unbuckled tonight. black cat backstage, $7, 9 p.m., chances to win lots of concert tickets, all in addition to pure unbridled awesomeness. the bloggerati will be there; great bands will be there; and it'll be a roaring good time. also i will punch you in the face if you don't come.

now leave me alone while i attempt to get over a wonderland-induced hangover. damn you, alcohol. you win again.

a brief note to congratulate my little brother peter, who is about to embark on a year at nuclear power school in charleston, s.c. apparently he'll be dealing with stuff like this:

"Twenty k is 2R and 20k in parallel with 20k is 10k," says the man in a white lab coat, scribbling on a chalkboard as fast as he talks. Twenty-five students look on, seemingly absorbed. "To determine the voltage out we consider that the step is Vin over 3R, times one half to the N, times feedback resistance. N is equal to the number of nodes slash digits; therefore, the Vstep is equal to (Vin/3R)(1/2)n(RFB). Based on that, who knows what the step voltage is?"

A dozen hands go up. For these young men and women - students at the Naval Nuclear Power Command, Charleston, S.C. - the gibberish is decipherable; for them, digital to analog conversion is easy. They could do it in their sleep.

...err. yeah...fun times! i'll be sure to visit him down at the beach when i'm frozen blue from a chicago winter.

the governess pointed out the fun of googlism the other day, so i tried it out myself. guessing game: which of the following is actually in reference to me (and my first and last names that i will not publish on the internets though it's rather useless by now because photos and incriminating stories about me are effing everywhere)?

...is country officer on yugoslavia and albania for the republican institute for international affairs
...is a 8
...is a first year who finally overcame her feelings of inferiority with twelve nipple rings and an eyeball stud
...is an inspirational artist

answer is a blast from the past in the form of my 18 year-old writing style!

goddammit. just realized that link contains my full name, as well being totally embarrassing. oh well!

my dilemma on this particular day: to buy or not to buy these lovely black leather flat-heeled boots from bruno magli. internal debate follows:

no: boots cost $200
yes: boots are actually 50% off, and will revert back to even more cost-prohibitive state come friday.

no: idiot, you own 1700 pairs of boots
yes: but none of them are flat-heeled. you need a different heel for every occasion, you see. duh.

no: you really can't afford these, you really don't need these, and you are just feeling sorry for yourself because you are going to have part of your boob cut out at a date yet to be determined.
yes: you are going to have part of your boob cut out at a date yet to be determined. boob cuttage. good enough, i think. (don't worry, it's mostly likely nothing and is 90% being done just to reassure me that it is, indeed, likely nothing. but still. that other 10%, plus family history, plus my general anxiety levels=not fun. plus, BOOB CUTTING. and i have really lovely boobs. i mean, i like to think so. it doesn't help that they've been felt up and down by, like, sixteen women in the past two weeks. trust me, it's not hot.)

anyway, will update you on forthcoming decision (and of course, later on on the boob cutting thing). i think self-pity and bootlust will win out on this one.

UPDATE: aaaand, the boots are MINE. photos of them to come once they are delivered, along with photos of the awesome mixer that tommy bought me last week, because i am the most spoiled person on earth and he is the best boyfriend ever (except now he is able to demand that i bake cookies for him at the drop of a hat).

take a look at this woman:

i want you all to take guesses in the comments as to why she's notorious before i reveal the stunning truth behind the cut.

During my freshman summer I took a job as an intern at a family friend's DC-area dot-com company. I learned about web programming and databases, and with the motley crew of 7 or 8 fulltime employees, indulged the founder's dreams of internet glory. Alan, a prolific but messy programmer, shat out millions of lines of code that no one else tracked or read. The servers quickly became littered with half-finished auction, mass mail, spot market, survey, bulletin board and other applications. Various business associations were lined up -- look, bakers! You can buy flour from each other! Look, asphalt manufacturers! You can share your thoughts on asphalt production! It's only 1998, and it's ALREADY THE FUTURE.

I came back the next summer, and the next. The staff swelled, then shrank, then shrank some more. Alan left. A room in the office was sublet to someone else, then all of the rooms but two. Then the office moved to the end of the metro. At no point did the underlying code change, except to be given a new coat of electronic paint. The same shitty technology -- now also hopelessly outdated -- was bundled together with tape and marketed to clueless and/or deeply corrupt foreign nationals passing through Washington with an eye toward blowing their country's economic development budget.

Now, every 8 or 12 months, I get urgent, ego-stroking phone calls asking me to fix things. There hasn't been an actual programmer on staff in several years. It's always something incredibly urgent, with a short timeframe -- having tried to sell the client on not really needing, say site search for the last couple of months, they've grown anxious.

I really hate being put in this position. He knows I'm grateful for being given a start, and that I know the systems, and that I'm available on the ad-hoc basis that lets him continue to limp along. I know I'm being taken advantage of, and it pisses me off. But how do you tell a family friend, kinda-smarmy though he may be, that it's long since time to flush his company down the toilet? That his technical assets are worthless, and he has no one on staff with knowledge of any technologies less than a decade old. They're still running Windows NT, for god's sake.

Sigh. I guess it's time to write a stern "ok, but this is really the last time" email. I'm such a goddamn sucker. Maybe if I refuse to take any money for it he'll get the message.

Hmm. Roommate at the baseball game. Girlfriend gone for the evening. Entertainment options that immediately present themselves:

• Programming!
• Drink beer. Learn humility from Halo, then quickly forget it and scream at 14 year olds.
• Go see that new zombie movie.
• Use my newly-arrived external hard drive to redo a Linux install.

This is harder than you'd think.

one other thing from the ball games that bothered me as i wandered drunkenly through the seats and walkways of RFK, searching in vain for ATMs and sausages: why the fuck do dippin' dots still exist? they're being sold all over the stadium. tons of fatty children are eating them instead of the nutty buddies or fudgsicles they should be devouring. it's A WORLD GONE MAD.

if you've never heard of dippin' dots, consider yourself lucky that you don't know about this ice cream abortion. it bills itself as "the ice cream of the future" (though if i recall correctly, i first became aware of its existence in the mid90s), and the "ice cream" is comprised of tiny little balls that are somehow "flash-freezed" in order to make "an enormous globule of sucktardedness." i seriously can't fathom the continued popularity of a cup of tiny, half-formed beads of ice cream that are the size of an ant's butt. i hadn't seen them since the games at RFK and i really thought the franchise had deservingly withered away. i mean, the whole thing really makes me mad. i can get dippin dots all over the freaking country, but no one has the business sense to start up a good GELATO FRANCHISE? COME ON, america. we're land of the free, home of the fat. at least give us some good ice cream to nosh on.

so, it's pretty obvious to everybody reading this site that tommy's taken up a personal crusade against scientology. good on him. it seems like a pretty freaky thing. if you've been reading this site for a while, you know that i also have had my bouts of "how the fuck can anybody subscribe to this bullshit?" about the organized religion.

but so far, we've just been bitching about it on our blog. ANYBODY can do that. i'm thinking we should really take it to the next level...you know, real journalism. some hard-hitting investigation that'll take us to the upper echelons of the blogosphere, where i have been longing to reside for ages. you know what i'm talking about: a journey into the deep, dark underbelly of scientology - a visit to the headquarters of the church, which are conveniently located about two blocks away from my office! FIELD TRIP!!!

look, it'll be fun. here's what i'm imagining. we take a bottle of grey goose. we drink it. straight up. we trip across the street into the scientology center, we listen to one of the daily lectures on dianetics (or even better: go to a sunday service!) maybe we get e-metered; maybe we don't. doesn't matter. we come back, hopefully unculted, write clever, snarky article about our experience; get contacted by salon or slate, become famous, etc etc, hopefully don't get struck down by l. ron hubbard and his ilk. have great, wonderful time!

so. who's in?

UPDATE: woah. woah, woah, woah. greta van susteren is a scientologist? man. i always kind of liked her.

And I bet you thought Afghanistan was just full of poppies

"myself and Cpl Owen as we watch close air support give some bad guys a bad day"

"me and some of the Afghan National Army soldiers after we did a joint patrol in a really hairy area"

The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously in favor of the entertainment industry in MGM v. Grokster. Disappointing, to be sure, but the net's early IANAL consensus seems to be that the ruling is fairly limited. The decision states:

One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright ... is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device's lawful uses.

Regardless of the specific contours of liability that emerge from this decision, it seems likely that there'll be a lot less investment in companies developing consumer media technology. In the hardware space, this is a real shame -- the next Tivo will take that much longer to emerge.

But for software, it's probably irrelevant. The open source movement is well-positioned to avoid Grokster-style liability, and doesn't need to find brave venture capitalists in order to ship a product. With private industry slowed by litigation, open source offerings already dominate P2P. This decision will probably cement that position.

(crossposted at Begging To Differ)

this weekend, if you can believe it, i went to both (both!) nats games at RFK stadium and totally, thoroughly enjoyed myself, even though we lost on sunday. i think baseball game attending will be my new summer hobby. forget the fact that i know zero about the sport and couldn't name two players on the d.c. team - for $10 a ticket, it's better than an in-theater movie, *and* you can get drunk off of your face!

my only question is this (and perhaps those more well-versed in stadium and baseball talk can provide me the answer): what's wrong with RFK, and why must we build a new stadium? RFK seems lovely. it's super easy to get to on the metro or by driving (from my three-game experience). replace some of the seats, move the outfield in a bit closer so not as to waste so much space back there, and maybe spruce up a bit of other stuff. put in more ATMs, for sure. anything else? i don't know. maybe i'm an idiot. but it seems like a nice place to me. which might be because i'm tipsy every time i go there.

UPDATE: it has been proved, in an 18-point manifesto by scott in the comments, that i am indeed a drunk idiot when it comes to suggesting that RFK is a decent stadium. but then again, y'all already knew that.

That's how I, and another more notable Tom, are feeling. See, Scientology reveals all of its ridiculous bullshit at a level called Operating Thetan 3, or "OT-3". The levels proceed in order, so OT-1 happens before OT-2, etc.

Tom Cruise is an OT-6. So he knows about the alien ghosts, and the intergalactic overlord Xenu, and the nuclear volcanos, and storing souls on magnetic tape.

For some reason, this has kind of sent me into a panic. I had just assumed that they kept the celebrities at a relatively plausible level of doctrine, to better sell themselves to the public. Not so. Wow.

Oh, and I should probably mention that revealing the above high church teachings to individuals who haven't completed the necessary courses is supposed to induce fatal pneumonia -- which is why the church keeps it secret. So, er, sorry about that.

UPDATE: proof of amazing OT-3 powers!.

Giant supplied a tetramethrin-based spray that claimed to go 22 feet. Also, the tetramethrin sprays weren't the ones labelled "environmentally friendly" -- the eco-conscious bug spray was made out of patchouli, or the sweat of yogis meditating on wasp removal, or something. With its cheerful green and brown cannister, it didn't make a very convincing case. I don't want the wasps to see it and think "what a beautifully cylindrical patch of ground!" No, I want them to think "the legends are true -- the doombringer has come". And I think the black and orange can of Raid I got accomplished that task nicely.

And yes, I did deploy the poison prior to retrieving the tea, and yes, I am drinking my first glass of it right now. But c'mon -- the jar was loosely covered. It'll be fine.

so, last night, ted leo concert. it was pretty good, but i have to say that i think i enjoy seeing him more at the black cat than the 9:30 club. the more intimate venue seems to suit him and his performance better, i think. he just looked so tiny on the big old stage. he's got massive presence, to be sure (even though his bandmates act about as excited in concert as sloths on quaaludes), but the whole thing felt a little less energetic and a little more sterile than times past. in my opinion. the crowd was semi-dead - who were all those people, anyway? - but i do have to give props to the group of kids in front of me who i thought were adorable. they were singing along to every word and dancing excitedly, but not with flailing elbows or anything. they made me smile.

biomusicology and timorous me were the best songs of the night, i thought. c'mon, listen to those mp3s. if you don't like them, something's wrong with your brain. how can you not get a little buzz when, in timorous me, he sings, "Now me and Jodi spend a lot of our time/
Just sitting in silence, driving late at night/And maybe even wondering what’s on each other’s mind/This time" and the drums and bass kick in - buh duh duh bud duh duh - and it's TOTALLY AWESOME. timorous me is one of about three songs in the universe i could listen to on repeat all day and be still be pleased as punch.

and i do have to admit that i thought it would have been nice if he covered "since u been gone" instead of "suspect device," like always. but still. good show, and i do love the ted leo. he's probably one act i'll never get sick of seeing.

is it just me, or, from this seven-minute montage of clips from cameron crowe's newest film, elizabethtown, does it seriously look like he wants it to be the next garden state?

I guess I know what they're getting at...

i have to say that i've been really into salon's audiofile summer soundtrack contest. i'm even clicking through the ads daily to get to it. the deal is simple: you have to create a summer soundtrack mixtape type thing by selecting a bunch of awesome and uberindie mp3s - but the downloads all have to be legal and free. there's been three or four of the soundtracks posted so far, and they're all pretty good. it's like getting interesting mixtapes for free from ubercool people who'd probably spit on your music taste in real life. except we're on the internet now, and you get to download their soundtracks, and all is harmonious.

the board chair of the CTA in chicago has A BLOG. how sweet is that?

UPDATE: i just wanted to clarify why i think this is cool so everybody doesn't think i'm retarded. i mean, just imagine the board chair of the WMATA having a blog, or, like, riding the metro - you know, little things that might make a difference in communicating with the public and improving the hole of turtle dung that the metro can be.

I don't want to alarm anyone... but we have wasps. I want to stress that you should not panic. Stay in your homes and places of business, and go about your daily activities. But at this point I am going to have to elevate our wasp terror alert status to orange, or: "oh shit! wasps!"

I wouldn't say we've got an infestation, but there's definitely a cloud of a few dozen of these flying jerks hanging around the end of our deck. They're up to something, and my bet is that they're thinking about building a nest.

On the upside, mankind's anti-wasp arsenal has advanced much faster than our relatively sucky anti-ant technology. You've probably seen cans of wasp spray in the supermarket but never bought one. But did you know that these cans are regularly designed to shoot their poison in a twenty foot stream? If you did, I bet you would've bought more. Come on, that sounds like fun.

Check this stuff out. I know what you're thinking: "Green Chem? How's that supposed to kill any wasps, much less make the environment uninhabitable for future wasp generations?" Fair enough. But it's made out of something called "tetramethrin". That sure doesn't sound environmentally friendly.

Also, allow me to direct your attention to the fact that in addition to launching itself twenty feet at the slightest bidding (and sometimes without, to keep the wasps off-guard), this particular chemical has a dieletric breakdown voltage in excess of twenty-five thousand volts! That seems like a lot. Unless these wasps are unusually powerfully ionized (always possible), I don't like their chances.

The trick is going to be rescuing the jar of sun tea I have brewing underneath Wasp Central prior to the deployment of poison. Or I could just aim extra carefully. And afterward, maybe try to drink the potentially-tainted tea extra fast, so as to minimize my exposure. Yeah. Something like that.

Anyway, you can see that a plan is emerging. Don't worry about anything. Continue to shop and patronize restaurants. But if in the next few days you call us and the phone line is picked up, but all you hear is a strange buzzing... well, maybe drive by with your windows up before trying the door.

well, not really an announcement, especially for those of you who know me and have been reading my blog for a while. but anyways!

come september, i am leaving D.C. for chicago to study new media at northwestern university. it's a year-long program, and i do hope to return to the area after i graduate, but i can't be in denial any longer: i'm going to have to give up my position as Associate Editor at DCist.com. and so we're looking for a replacement.

i'm posting this on my personal blog instead of on DCist itself mainly because i want to hopefully get responses from a smaller, more select group of people. not that like my readership is of UTMOST AWESOME quality - uh, i mean, you totally are! best readers ever! - but that people who read this blog probably have a better understand of a) what i do at DCist b) the music scene in D.C. c) the blogging scene in D.C. and d) blogging and DCist style in general.

as it stands, my responsibilities at DCist aren't entirely focused, but i do the following every week, or at least try to:
-write a weekly music agenda on mondays of shows that i think will be good
-do a DCist music interview with a local band, to be published on thursdays
-write a weekend picks post on fridays, highlighting interesting events on friday, saturday, and sunday
-try to write or solicit-and-edit one or two concert reviews every week or two.

every once in a while i'll write a post on a random topic, like my Baking In post from yesterday, or various news items that interest me. you can see a list of all my posts ever here.

behind the scenes, the responsibilities are more general. for example, i've done (with kyle) most of the planning for the Unbuckled concert (to which you ARE coming), and some planning is usually involved with happy hours and editorial direction. the core staff of DCist meets, i'd guess, about once a month to talk about these things.

anyway, DCist is totally great and has been one of the most positive things i've ever been involved in. all the staff have become good friends, and they're an amazing group of motivated and talented people. i'm too sad to be leaving, but since i have to, i want to find one (or two, perhaps) really good, committed people that would be willing to cover music stuff and help DCist grow even more awesome. so if you're at all interested and would like to email/meet in person to talk about it, send me one of those email thingies, and we'll chat.

I like videogames; I dislike politicians scoring points for railing against (but not acting against) videogames in order to mollify irrational parents. To me, this Penny Arcade strip pretty well sums up the situation, at least for the foreseeable future.

But then I go and see something completely confusing and terrifying, something like this, and all I want to do is put my Xbox beneath something heavy in the closet, then go hide under the covers.

i think today should be a national holiday. two reasons: 1) it is too effing gorgeous outside to be at work today, no? 2) ted leo is playing a sold out show at the 9:30 club tonight and i'm a-going! and i'm super psyched.

ted and i have had many special times together. there was the time we locked eyes across the patio of guapo's when i was there with kriston pre-fort reno show, and i proceeded to act like a complete ass (with photographic documentation). there was a time when we had a serious spiritual connection over our love for "since u been gone." and there was...well, that's about it. but obviously, ted and i are just about as close to soul mates as you can get, so in celebration of national pretty-day-outside/ted-leo-concert day, here are some mp3s of my favorite songs of his that you should all listen to. ain't nothing nicer than listening to catchy ted leo tunes on a beautiful summer day.

-where have all the rude boys gone?
-me and mia
-biomusicology
-his cover of "since u been gone"
-under the hedge
-the high party
-timorous me

in my continuing quest to become a plugged-in, organized new media guru, i have decided that i want to purchase a PDA. given that i have no idea what PDA actually even stands for, or the capabilities that certain PDAs may have, i need some help on making a decision. things i need: web browsing capabilities, email capabilities, RSS reading capabilities and, uh, a puppy screensaver. i don't know what else. tommy says there are PDAs out there that you can hook up collapsible keyboards to, to turn them into portable computers, so that'd be pretty sweet. anyway, blogosphere hivemind, i turn to you in your infinite wisdom. what PDA should i buy?

for those who are interested in my maniacal baking, my DCist Baking In (cakelove cupcake style) is now up. yummy:

other dessert recipes from zee blog:
-chocolate zabaglione
-hazelnut chocolate torte with raspberry filling
-serious chocolate chip cookies
-honey ricotta lemon cheesecake with a ginger crust (this is the infamous 'michael chiarello' post)
-hazelnut cookies

are you reading waiter rant? it's the musings of a waiter at an anonymous bistro in new york city. he's funny and moving and caustic and though it's mostly him offering up social commentary (ie bitching) about his various customers, every once in a while he'll go off on a well-written tangent totally unrelated to food or dining.

you really should be reading it. i dare you to take a look at this post, about his time as a priest-in-training, and not be moved.

unbuckled is next thursday, june 30th. black cat backstage, 9pm. we've put a lot of work into prepping this show, so it would mean a lot to me if you came out. tickets are only $7, there'll be giveaways, and good live music. plus drunk catherine. frankly, i should charge for drunk catherine alone. so come on out, or i'll stay sober for the rest of my life.

Am I the only person who hasn't heard of Blank of the Day? Well, if not, go check it out. I think you'll agree it's pretty funny. Well, if you're the kind of person who thinks facetious articles about videogame hardware specifications are funny. Which I pretty clearly am.

But this is the real reason I want to link to them. They're holding a contest to engineer a new bad joke for use in Slashdot threads. This is such an pointless, overthought, juvenile, and impossibly geeky project that I'm starting to worry that the idea was somehow stolen from me without my ever having thought of it.

And the winner gets a pink Nintendo DS! Score.

just in case you have a few thousand extra dollars to spend and are itching to go hiking in exotic locales, the new york times travel section points you towards a few destinations that should fit the bill. i enjoyed this article because we hiked one of of the spots that they recommend - the gran paradiso park in northeast italy, and it truly was one of the more magnificent trips i've been on. the article ain't shitting you when it says the landscape is about as sound of music-ish as one can get.

the times recommends you do this with a group that'll run you $1,500, but i suggest following our model:

1. take train, bus, and walk your ass off for several hours to get to random italian alpine town.
2. kind of start off without any idea of where you're going; pick up trail off street behind dumpster.
3. walk for several hours amongst the most beautiful scenery you've ever scene; nearly die because you are hauling ass behind your eagle-scout-boyfriend and rabidly determined psycho hiker friend.
4. reach a crest that looks exactly like the photo from the nytimes article:

don't forget to come out to bluestate tonight at saint-ex! it's kyle's birthday (well, technically yesterday it was) and we can expect to hear several hours of OASIS. joy! (just kidding. happy birthday dj leafblower!)

things i've been enjoying/not enjoying over the past couple of weeks, squeezed down into bite-sized assessments for your reading pleasure:

-brendan benson's the alternative to love. fun, retro-sounding, shiny good power pop. at least the first half of the album. the second half, for some unfortunate reason, comes to a grinding halt and enters the realm of total premeditated crap that sounds like pete yorn but somehow even more formulaic. but the first five songs - pure pop goodness. you can download "the alternative to love" here and you can watch the video for "spit it out" here. my favorite is really "pledge of allegiance," and i've got an mp3 for it at home, but can't find it on the internets right now.

-"mr. and mrs. smith." this movie wasn't half bad, but i thought it could have used a) more rocket launchers and b) more sex. and c) more assassin scenes, because the two scenes where jolie and pitt go off to kill their respective bad guys are pretty kickass. there's a good amount of humor laced through the film, but otherwise i found it kind of clunky. and weirdly slow-paced. definitely not as good as "the bourne identity."

-"batman begins." i really liked this movie. i don't have any comic book baggage, and i barely remember the tim burton movies, so i had no basis for comparison, which might have affected how i saw it. but i thought it was great. the first 1/3 moved slowly for me - the part where christian bale is off at that ridiculous asian boot training camp - but i thought it picked up as soon as michael caine and morgan freeman came into the picture, and as soon as bale was allowed to inject bits of humor into his delivery. cillian murphy as the scarecrow was weirdly fascinating, and i didn't want to rip katie holme's always-twisted mouth off, though she was certainly the weakest actor in the whole thing. my main beef was the fight and chase scenes - i thought they were shot too dark, too close and too fast for anybody to get a good sense of what was going on.
UPDATE: it is with much glee that i discovered that katie holmes has been dropped from the "batman begins" sequel while everybody else has been signed. suck it, scientology.

-the irving penn exhibit at the national gallery. totally fantastic! i just wished they'd had more posters for sale. the only one they had was this one, which i like, but was so straightfoward compared to most of the other stuff.

I've tried buying different kinds of gifts for Catherine, but they've all been failures. CDs? Already had em. Jewelry? It's sweet that I tried. Books? Oh lord. Let's not reopen that shameful chapter. Girls don't like Neal Stephenson, it turns out.

But there's one thing I can buy: technology. I can sustain enough of an interest in it to learn about it, so it's possible to pick things thoughtfully. The aesthetics of clothing escape me, but I can tell you that that MP3 player simply does not match with your computer's peripheral bus, at all. What were you thinking?

Unfortunately, the pace of invention for actually-useful consumer technology can't keep up with the pace of a boyfriend's trinket obligations, and for Christmas I sucked it up and got Catherine some earrings. They went over okay, but the experience was terrifying. The jewelry counter was staffed by an astoundingly beautiful girl with a thick Russian accent, who had no doubt been shipped in specifically for the holidays. She radiated a cool unattainability that made every hapless male patron sure of two things. First, regardless of how much money he had planned to spend, he was a cheap jerk who deserved to die alone. And second, and more definitively, he would never, ever score with a hot Russian ice princess (although if you were to buy a couple thousand dollars of jewelry from her, she might at least not belittle your masculinity with her supermodel girlfriends later on).

I quickly retreated and bought the same earrings for $20 more from an excitable Indian kid manning a counter two stores down. He made me feel emasculated too, but only because they were giving away teddy bears with every purchase.

So buying jewelry does not agree with me. The margin of error is low, the financial stakes are high, and interaction with the salespeople is terrifying. Technology is my home court. All of which is to lead up to the news that Gizmodo might have just supplied me with a compromise (or at least another internet-based means of horrifying Catherine).

So far my internet evangelism for the excellent Scary Go Round seems to have mostly fallen on deaf ears. But now its creator, John Allison, has a blog! Like everyone else! At the very least, the clear evidence it contains of his delicate constitution and outrageous Englishousity should be enough to hook Catherine.

And speaking of Catherine, via a blog linked from John A's, I found this, the newest entry in the "cute or deformed?" parade of kittens.

is anybody out there who reads this blog an accountant? or a sorta-accountant?

because i could use your help.

it has to do with the D.C. government telling me i owe them $1500. and me drinking a lot of vodka in response. i don't need help with the vodka part, though.

i turned to my mother, but this was her thought: "the D.C. government is a BUNCH OF IDIOTS. you CANNOT FATHOM THEM. you NEVER SHOULD HAVE MOVED TO THAT CITY! your credity history WILL BE RUUUUUINNNNNED OH MY SWEET CHILD."

so, yeah. i could use a bit of advice.

I haven't really kept up with this since hearing the news ages ago that a GC mod chip was in the works... but it looks like it arrived. And now somebody's got a good tutorial up (link via hackaday). Looks like a pretty easy mod -- although the chip's pricey ($60) and you'll need to get your hands on some miniature DVD-Rs to make it worth your while.

To be honest, the projects involving LAN bootloaders (imperfect though they may be) and internet multiplayer seem a lot more glamorous. The GC's lack of a hard disk more or less limits the modding applications to piracy and a few assorted applications like MP3 players (oh yeah -- and running Linux, for some reason). That was exciting circa the PS1, but at this point I'd actually rather just buy the damn games.

I've totally sold out.

impressions from the bloc party show last night at the 9:30 club:

-holy shit, their drummer is amazing
-kele okereke is freakin' adorable
-DC crowds can, in fact, show energy

overall, a pretty good way to spend a thursday night, i thought.

DCist, jake, dcaffeinated, and kyle all have reviews and/or pictures.

Let's say you and your party have just been thoroughly embarassed by the results of a high profile autopsy. It's now apparent that that your medical theorizing was uninformed bullshit. The "questions that must be answered" -- aka slanders -- about broken bones, strangulation and missed MRI opportunities now have been, and the answers are substantially less scandalous than you expected. An issue that was always a loser has now turned into an embarassment. What do you do?

Why, reopen old wounds, of course! To that end, Jeb's calling for an investigation into whether Michael Schiavo called 911 quickly enough. Did Schiavo rush to the phone like a dutiful husband? Or did he just stand there, laughing and smoking marijuana cigarettes with his activist judge buddies? I don't know. But the question must be answered.

Wal-mart and other digital photo printers are starting to refuse service to folks whose photos are deemed to look too professional; they're worried about infringing professionals' copyrights when folks download photos from the net and head to walmart for a cheap reprint. Better watch out, Matt.

FYI, everybody: i'm ashamed that tommy beat me to the punch on the announcement of tom cruise and katie's engagement. well, good on him. my embarrassing obsession with repugnant pop culture must be rubbing off, which is great, because now that i'm reading comic books and watching "the justice league" on a regular basis, and, like, quoting lord of the rings or tony kornheiser or whatever, i feel it is only fair.

i just think it's funny that cruise proposed at what is possibly THE MOST PHALLIC BUILDING ON EARTH, bar the washington monument, but that wouldn't have been in gay paree, n'est-ce pas? do you think he chose the eiffel tower on purpose? like, "hey everybody, here is something that looks like a giant penis, and i also have a giant penis, don't you forget, and it is UBERheterosexual, and i will be using it constantly in the future, and PENIS! STRAIGHT! GO SEE WAR OF THE WORLDS!"

has anybody ever seen anything faker than this relationship? i have seen silicone breasts the size of watermelons that emote more reality than cruise and holmes. sigh. and of course, i cannot tear my eyes away. i'm seriously worried, like susan, that this entire parade will not end itself before i go away to chicago - not because i will miss anything, but because if it is still going on, i will have to run away to LA and become an entertainment journalist instead of a new media guru.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are engaged. But then, you already knew that.

Nobody believes this is a real relationship, but the the exact contours of their sickness remain vague. Is Cruise gay? I don't know. I kind of doubt it. Doesn't that seem a little too conventional?

I suspect it's something much weirder than that. A horrifying sublimation of his sexuality beneath Scientological principles? Maybe. But right now I'm leaning more toward something like this.

UPDATE: I guess it could be something like this, too.

holy shit, are penguins the best thing ever, or what?

and is morgan freeman narrating over a montage of penguins EVEN BETTER?

i think we all know the answers.

And while I'm on the subject, I should mention that Charles has recently been outed as a blogger. He's there in the blogroll as of a couple days ago -- or you can click here. Give him a visit, why doncha, and larn yourself somethin about music.

Charles has been adding to his impressive array of musical talents by learning the piano, and he has his first recital tonight. Coincidentally, Jeff's younger brother Henry goes to the same teacher; he'll be playing at the recital, too.

Mercy is for the weak, Charles.

MORE...

This unpleasant looking root is a yucca. Well, not really -- it's a manioc, but everyone calls it yucca, despite yucca actually being something that's not only completely different, but also inedible.

At any rate, this weekend I think I'm going to try to fry up a few of these suckers ala Crisp & Juicy. But the internet is oddly silent on how to go about this. Everyone seems to agree that I should peel it, but I could pretty well figure that out on my own. There's a fibrous inner core that some sites say to remove and about which others say nothing; some folks say to boil it before frying, others seem to think you can plop it right in the oil.

In fact, the only clear information I can find is Google's persistent suggestion that I "oven fry" it. I won't dignify that with a response.

So the pictured vegetable is an experimental root. I'll let you know how it goes.

This or this?

Just a quick note: as of today you can run unsigned code on Playstation Portables with the 1.5 firmware. That means emulators and homebrew games can be run from your memory stick -- in the past only the Japanese version of the PSP could do this, and people were going to great lengths to import them. I'm not a PSP expert, so I don't know if all US PSPs have the 1.5 firmware, but at least some do.

This also opens the door to homebrew media players, freeing folks from Sony's proprietary format requirements, and perhaps dooming the manufacturer's ridiculous plan to sell movies in the UMD format. Yes, I know -- there have been articles crowing about what a great success the UMD already is. Nearly 10% of PSP owners have one! Ignore, for a moment, that Sony heavily pushed a bundled offer including a Spiderman 2 UMD with PSP purchase. Well, now enterprising geeks can rip their own DVDs, or download files off the internet. There's no need to buy a tiny, $10 movie disc that will only play in your fancy gameboy.

But take heart, Sony: I predict your 1GB memory stick sales are about to skyrocket.

I'm not much of a runner. The first time I can remember going for a serious, self-motivated, coach-isn't-making-me run was my freshman year in college, when I decided to give the gym across from my dorm a try. After lurching a pathetically slow mile I staggered off the treadmill in a daze. Then my nose spontaneously started to bleed. That pretty much set the tone for my running career.

i have to say, as much as i love the song, the video for spoon's "i turn my camera on" is effin' ridiculous. what the hell is going on? the legs? the crawling on the lawn? the cat on the bed? THE SHOE COMING OUT OF BRITT'S MOUTH? please. try again.

A rainbow over the Human Rights Campaign HQ. Taken on Monday.

Catherine is sitting next to me looking at pictures of kittens, barely able to speak from the sheer cuteness of it all. I mean that literally: I've seen her catch a glance at a particularly adorable puppy and just stammer for a moment before finally squeezing out a complete English word.

But with her it's not just conventional cute. Sure, the fat babies and kittens in ribbons will get a rise out of her, but it goes beyond that. And I think that examining the cuteness outliers provides a fascinating insight into the Catherinean mind.

So, some examples:

1. These kittens linked to from the Flickr blog. She thinks these things are cute as hell; I think they're missing a chromosome. I mean c'mon -- check out this shot. Something isn't right.
2. Rusty the narcoleptic Daschund. Okay, I'll admit this is cute. I'm just building my case.
3. Fainting Goats -- these pygmy goats' legs lock up when they get scared, making them fall over. It's pretty funny, but cute? I don't know.

So, what have we got here? Personally, I think a clear pattern emerges: if it's tiny and infirm, Catherine will think it's adorable (also, if it's a musically talented British man weighing less than 130lbs, but that's not strictly relevant to this discussion).

Tiny and infirm. I can only imagine the reaction that an infant on teeny tiny baby crutches would get out of her. Does anyone know if they make cards like that?

remember my design to replicate cakelove greatness? well, i started getting down to it on sunday. the cake part of the cupcake i've got - well, at least the consistency (which, because i am a shameless hussy, i think is better and moister than that of cakelove) - however, i do need to make it a bit more chocolate-y.

but icing was eluding me. i mishmashed a few recipes and threw together a mixture of butter, vanilla extract, confectioner's sugar, and milk. it turned out to be good, but way too sweet and a little too runny. not cakelove icing quality at all.

so tonight, i took on the icing. i downed a glass of wine, slammed a bowl and wooden spoon down on the counter, and it was ON. and by it being on, i mean i mixed a stick of butter with A TINY TINY DASH OF SUGAR AND EXTRACT. like, miniscule.

and you know what? it tasted a LOT like cakelove icing. i didn't know whether to be disgusted or, you know, devour the entire thing. anyway, beware: cakelove icing has 63 billion grams of fat and seems to be made of entirely buttery goodness.

Check out the concluding paragraph from this article on Coldplay:

It's strange for a man as morally outspoken and well-meaning as Martin to defer to such generically pop instincts—to retreat to the ambiguous power of crying "Aaahhh." But it's almost stranger for him to offer a collection of songs infected with the same low spirits as 2000. The State of Coldplay has never been stronger and Martin, with his celebrity wife and new child, has cobbled together a pretty good life. If it's not the sadness of worldly affairs that gnaw at the aching heart of Coldplay's songs—and the lyrics suggest not—it can't possibly be his own life, either. Maybe it's those bastard shareholders. Worse yet: Maybe it's nothing at all.

a weird surrealist moment: the first tour of a band i want to see where the show i'll be watching will be in chicago, not d.c.

where/what the fuck is the metro, anyway?

can you get pizza in a FUCKING CONE.

[hat tip to whatevs.org]

This article over at Slate... it's not so good:

Sometime in the next decade or so, neuroscientists will likely identify the specific neural networks and activity that generate the vague but vital thing we call consciousness. Delineating the infrastructure of awareness is biology's most difficult problem, but a leading researcher like Christof Koch, Gerald Edelman, or Stanislas Dehaene could soon solve it. Science will then possess what might be called a "consciometer" — a set of tests (probably an advanced version of a brain scan or EEG) that can measure consciousness the way kidney or lung function is now measured.

The author, a guy named David Dobbs, goes on to rhapsodize about the revolutionary impact the consciometer will have on the abortion debate and living will decisions.

I've written the word "consciometer" before. It's a nice rhetorical device when talking about these kinds of things. But this is a pretty stupid article.

i rarely talk about my ob-jay on this og-blay, mostly because a) i think it's bad form and b) i do genuinely like the people there, though the ob-jay itself can be a bit mind-numbing. but, surely i can freely talk about other people's jobs, right? and thus i present this information from my, um, friend...err...let's call her fatherine. fathy, if you will.

fathy has this problem. and this problem is that she hates social interaction with people who are not as irreparably cynical and bitter as she. lately, in the past couple of years at her job, this has become a problem as she has been required to attend several baby and wedding showers at the office. not only has she been required to put forth a forced cheery and optimistic and cooing presence at these events, she has often been roped into a) preparing or buying food and b) buying presents for the occasions. well, not so much roped into as passively-aggressively pushed into it, by receiving several dozen kindly-worded emails requesting help or containing links to half a dozen different registries.

now, see, fathy often thinks that the rage that sometimes boils deep down inside of her should not be revealed for public consumption, as it is not exactly normal, so she goes along with these things, even going so far as to acquiesce to a different coworker's desire to buy a basket, several yards of pale blue ribbon, and sparkly glitter in which to wrap one gift. it is tough not to reveal rage to her colleagues, but fathy has by now long been a master of being nice in public and bitching only on her blog. but she wants to know one thing:

isn't this kind of shit illegal?

baking cookies for somebody whose major interaction with you has been asking you to create a PDF document? buying a present for the unborn spawn child of somebody who HAS to earn AT LEAST twice what you are making? PLAYING BRIDAL SHOWER MAD LIBS?!?!?!?!

now, fathy wants to make it clear that she loves her coworkers and is only bitter about the social constructs that dictate these sort of showers. but as long as she is buying an artfully arranged pile of diapers for somebody who owns a beach house, she will bitch, and one day hope that society will be as such that SHE will get her own personal showers thrown for her milestone accomplishments like powering through a friday hungover, spending rent money on a really sweet pair of shoes, or eating an entire bucket of KFC chicken. come on now, people. what are our REAL priorities in life that should be celebrated?

last week, i was wondering, as i am wont to do, if there was an uglier summer trend out there than tunics. tunics are heinous, and i can't understand why they're so popular. it's like, somebody just HAD to bring back that crusader-era style shirt, and oh yeah, let's make everybody look fat and shapeless and like a big old woman tent.

but while in chicago, i saw a popular trend that eclipsed anything unflattering i've seen here in d.c.: the long swishy stretchy shorts that accentuate your butt in a very bad way. that should be its official name, cause that's what it does. does anybody know what i'm talking about? i can't find a picture on the internet, but i saw several not unattractive women wearing them in chicago. and it was terrible. no matter how skinny you are, putting these pants on makes you look like an elephant wearing saran wrap. i was walking behind one average-sized woman wearing these monstrosities, and it was like everything...went...into...slow...motion. the jiggles. the horror. shudder. i'm not sure i'll ever be able to forgive chicago, which otherwise seems like a fashion-forward city, for allowing their residents to put these things on.

worst of all: i saw a woman wearing the shorts this morning on my way to work. it has started. DC, if anything, we are uglier and fatter than chicago. our fashion reputation is bad enough. let's just leave the swishy shorts to the midwest. please?

exhibit one:

"[T]his is the longest day of the year. Its called the 'summer solstice' and happens around 21 June. Astronomers call this the start of summer"

Today is June 14. I haven't double-checked my math, but I think that makes it still officially spring.

exhibit two:

"The high temperatures Tuesday are forcing some schools to close early, including D.C. Public Schools, which will let students out at 12:30 p.m."

Hmm.

On the upside, the mayor's heat plan includes the extension of public swimming pool hours and "street showers" (which are presumably more pleasant than they sound). I hear Fenty's promising free ice cream.

Thanks to Jeff sending it to me, I can now encourage you to go check out our buddy Scott's AnySoldier page. Don't be frightened by the gruff guy chomping on a cigar and flashing a US flag that greets you when you follow the link. Sure, you could accurately call Scott "Sarge". And yes, he could kill you with his bare hands. But he's a nice guy, and a medic besides, so he'd probably be willing to resuscitate you if you asked nicely.

Although he's technically stationed in Italy, at the moment Scott's deployed to Afghanistan -- and writing about the experience whenever he can. It's fascinating reading, if occasionally unsettling.

And hey, if you've got a yen to mend your liberal America-hating ways and send some stuff overseas, Scott's got a list of stuff that the locals and the guys in his unit would appreciate receiving. I'm going to try to get a package together in the next couple of weeks if anyone wants to piggy-back with that. The slurpee machine thing is a particularly tempting engineering challenge...

This is pretty funny. Via hackaday.

(For those who don't know, 127.0.0.1, synonymous with localhost or loopback, is a reserved IP address that always points back at your own machine.)

Well, like Catherine said, our weekend was great. Good friends, nice weather, and plenty of wine -- nothing to complain about there.

I really liked Chicago, but I came away feeling that it's got a serious branding problem. You know that guy in college who suddenly decides he needs an "in", and tries a little too hard to manufacture a unique identity? Overnight, he becomes, let's say, "that juggling guy". And juggling is fine, and actually pretty great when performed at a very high level. But come on, is that really going to be your whole shtick? The rest of us just kind of wanted to hang out. And I was going to eat that orange you just took.

Chicago, you're like that. You're really a great city, and you have a lot to offer. It's just that sometimes it seems like you try a little too hard. Improv comedy and deep dish pizza are both perfectly nice, but give it a rest already. It's okay to just be you. I know Seattle's got coffee and rain, and San Francisco's got the gays, and New York's got everything and being a jerk about it. But let's face facts: deep dish is basically just a lazy man's lasagna, bad improv ala the American Whose Line Is It Anyway makes people like me want to murder-suicide everyone on stage, and the whole Blues Brothers thing is too detestable for words.

Also, what's up with this whole "second city" thing? Isn't that a bit defeatist? At least stop putting dual antennae on top of all your skyscrapers. It's like the whole skyline is proudly proclaiming "we're number two!" You've gotta dare to dream, Chicago.

I suggest getting back to your strengths. You've got the whole wind thing -- that's nice and abstract (if a bit effete). How about a kite festival? And you should totally name your new WNBA team after it. Oh, and the Cubs! Let's not forget them. Now that the Red Sox are tragically successful, you've got America's #1 hapless baseball team. It's adorable.

And of course there's the El. The soothing clacking; the infinitely painted-over ironwork in the stations; Charles is right: it's exactly like riding The Grizzly at King's Dominion. You should sell tickets! Oh. Right. Well, maybe getting some funnel cake stands and guys wandering around dressed up as Klingons would help draw the crowds.

Finally, you've got Lake Michigan. I'll be honest with you: I think "great" is overselling it. Nonetheless, it's a pretty good lake, and you should run with it. You just need a good slogan to sell it -- something snappy and assertive. How about, "All the lake, none of the Mormons"?

there has got to be somebody out there who wants to see "mr. and mrs. smith" with me, right? right?....gawker's jessica coen says that it "was the perfect, mindless summer flick. If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie weren't fucking off-camera in between every take, then they are the best actors on the face of the earth."

back from a fun if whirlwind weekend in chicago, where tommy and i hung out with charles, his family (including his sister, who graduated from uchicago - congratulations johanna!) and mssr. nye. twas fun, if excruciatingly hot and humid - almost worse than normal d.c. summers. please lord tell me that isn't normally the case with chicago summers. if so i think i will melt and die, because it is just not fair that in addition to much more terrible winters, i will get summers that are the equivalent to those of d.c., which are so awful they make you want to wear clothing made out of ice cubes and electrical fans. anyway, the apartment search continues - it's just too early, i guess, for me to find a place for september 1. all the places i called and harassed told me to check back in late july, so i wouldn't be surprised if i have to make another trip back to the windy city to find a 400sq ft abode of joy. and a cat. did i tell you i'm getting a cat? i'm so going to do this to it all the time. (PS - to buddies who live in chicago that i did not contact to tell of my arrival, don't take it personally. we had a full schedule with graduation-related stuff, and, like, i'm moving there in a few months, so you can see me then all you ever wanted.)

so. i obviously have nothing interesting to say, so here are some links!

-gopnik hits the biennale in venice

-an article on development in U street (courtesy of matt; be sure to read his commentary as well); article only serves to underscore the fact that I WILL NEVER EVER OWN REAL ESTATE IN THIS CITY UNLESS I BECOME A HIGH CLASS HOOKER

-five things you didn't know you could track with RSS (some of them i did know, like packages and weather, but i didn't realize you could do tv listings and library info as well. soon you'll be able to track EVERYTHING with rss, including a) people who have crushes on you b) your mortal enemies and c) puppies

-bob mould talks to billboard about his new album and tour

-beep thrills - a city paper article from last week about a series of mysterious beeps in a man's falls church home and the internet cult that originated in order to find them.

“You couldn’t tell where it was coming from,” said the 28-year-old Byrnes. “You’d go to one place and say, ‘It’s coming from across the room.’ Then you’d go over there and the sound would come from where you were just standing.”

When the beeps first began, Byrnes stood under every smoke detector in the house to listen for the telltale screech of a dying battery. He also gathered a group of friends and positioned them in various strategic spots, hoping to triangulate the beeping. But everybody pointed in a different direction. His experimental side exhausted, Byrnes finally decided to try to ignore the new soundtrack to his life.

“It’s really a testament to my apathy,” he says.

When the power went off on his block in February and the neighborhood sat in silence, Byrnes was at home, blanketed with beeping.

Byrnes’ beep-enriched existence might have continued ad infinitum if not for his impending wedding to Lindsay Moss. His betrothed was not a fan of the beeping. Moss issued a directive: Fix the beep by June 17, her prospective move-in date. “I told him I wasn’t going to move in if it was still beeping, but the reality is that I would have anyway,” she says. “I was going to be on his ass every day until he figured it out.”

But I still really want to see Howl's Moving Castle. Now: how to fool Catherine into it?

I understand that comment spam is a fact of life. People need easy access to mature granny xxx pics, worlds-best-party-poker-online, and of course cheap ph3nterm1ne vioxx!!!1!

But I got some pharmaceutical comment spam this morning containing a URL that ends with "seroquel.html". And seroquel is an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia.

So, a request. Fellow internauts: please don't buy your crazy pills from the web. Maybe Sam's Club sells them in bulk.

That's right: the above lyric is from a mobile phone commercial. Which should tell you something about my knowledge of rap. My knowledge of Chicago is pretty similar -- I've been here once before, but I was what, twelve? I went to the top of a big building, I stayed in a nice hotel, and I ate a pizza that was thiiiiis big. Well, this time I plan to pretty much do the same thing. But I'll be drinking more.

After Catherine and I got in and rendezvoused with the rest of the crowd we grabbed Charles and split off, then wandered around the city a bit. We had some authentic Chicagoan Potbelly sandwiches (the deep-dish comes tonight); bought the requisite spirit-crushing graduation card (we're here to see Charles' little sister Jo get her BA); and went to the top of the Hancock Building and had high-priced drinks in a high-class, high-positioned bar among our decidedly low-class tourist peers. Tank tops and hairy shoulders abounded; for maybe the third time in my life I counted as relatively well-dressed without there being an affianced or dead person nearby.

But now our room is ready, so we've retreated into the AC. Also, there are beers and seats here. And after getting 4 hours of sleep the previous night, I'm ready to take it easy. There's drinking and eating to be done soon, after all. We need our rest.

But we did see some sights, and here's one of them. It's a river of some sort, maybe? Let me know if I'm dishing out Chicago trivia too quickly. My cameraphone didn't seem to capture this, but it seemed pretty green already -- do you guys really need to dump thousands of gallons of dye into it every year just to make it marginally greener?

DCist presents: Unbuckled! save the date and come on out! or i will cry like a little girl...

pitchfork's got some new info on the upcoming radiohead album, including a link to a video of yorke playing as-yet-unreleased track "house of cards." which, acoustic at least, kinda sucks. oh well.

in other news, apparently channel 9 did a segment on iPod dj night. video is here. it is unbearably dorky. and, oh god! they interview that bartender i hate.

You leave a good rock show at a cool bar because you can't wait to get home and shave.

(See, I couldn't let Catherine claim all the lameness for herself.)

In my defense, for some reason my face started itching like a motherfucker and I just couldn't take it. Weird, I know.

^* With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy. Just kidding. Actually he can go fuck himself.

upon going to the doctor today (i decided last night it was not good for me to be hacking up enormous green and yellow colored...things), i was given - guess what? - that's right, ANOTHER INHALER! the doctor today said the last inhaler i was given was a little dangerous to be using four times a day (apparently it is a heart stimulant, something i noticed when i would puff into it and then clean the kitchen, bathroom, and go grocery shopping all in under 20 minutes. thanks old doctor, for trying to kill me, though i do appreciate the productivity that came out of it).

but my new inhaler is not just any regular inhaler. it is the FUTURE of inhalers. in fact, it is so damn futuristic that i can barely figure out how to use it. it involves some rotation, some clicks, there's some sort of counter on there...really, it's crazy.

behold, the future, where inhalers are PURPLE AND ROUND AND LOOK SORTA LIKE BIRTH CONTROL:

wanna fuck with me now that i've got this cool inhaler? huh? i'll beat your ass! ...or i would, if i weren't wheezing so much.

Barbara Walters said, on TV, that she was made "uncomfortable" when a woman seated next to her breastfed her child. Apparently expressing this opinion in a forum as well-respected as The View is TOTALLY unacceptable, and Walters is a bad mother who hates babies. See here for a sample of the insane overreaction.

Can people really not express discomfort about this without prompting "nurse-ins" like the one staged to protest Walters' comment? I'm not opposed to public breastfeeding, but yes, when I see it I do experience a certain "Hey! I didn't expect to see a nipple over there!" reaction. To quote Homer Simpson, "It's not... usual."

I'm easily irritated by rants against ill-defined political correctness, but it really does seem like pro-public-breastfeeding mothers are incredibly easily offended by any opposition to the practice. The only explanation I can come up with is that mothers view this (largely non-existent) debate as an attempt to interfere with their childrearing efforts, which makes something angry and biological kick in. Walters is the hapless camper standing between a grizzly and her cubs.

I realize that this theory is insultingly patronizing, but I really can't come up with a better explanation.

so, i've gots a question.

do you ever read those eating in articles on DCist, written and cooked admirably by scott reitz? i tell you, the recipes always look fantastically delicious (though i've never gotten past my laziness to make one) and everybody loves them.

anyway, i was talking with kanishka and scott and they suggested that one day i should do a baking in, since i do love the baking. it took me a while to come up with a semi-well-known D.C. dessert, but then it came to me: i should take on the cupcakes from cakelove!

for those who don't know of cakelove, it's about a five year old enterprise. a lawyer quit his job to open a bakery, bought a store on U street, made great cakes and cupcakes, etc etc, and everybody raves over the baked goods. a few years back he was named one of the most fascinating entrepreneurs by inc.com.

so i went in there the other day to test these things out for myself. and don't get me wrong - they're pretty good. but they're also $3 a pop. for a $3 cupcake i better be getting, like, an eyebrow wax, silk pajamas and a puppy. additionally - i just tasted a cupcake again (the research is demanding), and it had been in the fridge, and the icing - the icing was literally like a slab of butter smeared on top of the chocolate. i can't necessarily say that this is a bad thing. but the cupcakes, for the money, i just don't know.

anyway, i've never made cupcakes outside of a mix box, so the attempt to make cakelove quality ones should be interesting. but i'm pretty sure that as long has i have several slabs of butter on hand, i should be okay.

I usually try to keep my mouth shut about abortion issues, but this post over at Kevin Drum's place is horrifying enough that I feel compelled to link to it.

taking a page from susan's ET-concern about mary-kate olsen...i don't think things are likely to get better.

she looks like she raided all the curtains from her grandmother's house and just decided that swadling herself in them was as much effort as she was willing to expend. i mean, count it. she's wearing like 5 scarves.

why didn't he just release them earlier?

WASHINGTON -- Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records.

The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry's Vietnam service.

The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions. An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records.

But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him.

come on, mainstream media. you can't have it both ways. is it "why does everyone hate coldplay?" or "Coldplay is admired by everyone - everyone except me"? you know, there's a reason we don't trust the MSM anymore. and it's cause you can't make up your mind about the appropriate amount of hate to level at this british band.

related is this heeeelarious irony about the pareles article from stereogum.

i just want to note that i wouldn't have a problem with a review of coldplay's newest cd that said "this cd sucks because of x" or "the arrangements on this album are a bunch of hokey bullshit." what i can't stand are the articles that level criticism at coldplay because they are successful. they're only insufferable because they've made millions of dollars. nobody would be bothering writing about coldplay in the nytimes if they were toiling away at the level of relative obscurity (in the US) as a band like travis (which, by the way, mr. pareles cited as having been spawned by coldplay when in fact they were around well before coldplay).

i mean, come on. if you're going to hate on coldplay, do it because martin makes annoying political statements or wears stuff like this on his hands.

I guess this has been out for a while, but I just came across it today: BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow speaking to Microsoft about DRM and why it's bad.

Lessig's more complete, but this is succinct and snappy. Give it a read.

I mentioned GreaseMonkey the other day, and promised future evangelism, complete with wild-eyed predictions about how it's going to Change The Internet Forever. Well, here we go.

i'm so sorry. i can't help myself anymore. but this is weird: do you remember the creepy, washed-out woman in the background of the kidnap boat who threw the molotov cocktail on the SS lost? was she actually TINA WESSON OF SURVIVOR FAME? she is listed as a guest star on lost on imdb. and that looks a hella lot like her.

i mean, what the fuck?

UPDATE: additionally, that lost guest star page gives a few tidbits about next season; for the first episode of season 2, they list the following:

Andrea Gabriel .... Nadia
Neil Hopkins .... Liam Pace
Skye McCole Bartusiak .... Young Kate
Angus Scrimm .... Mr. Meahpares
Tina Wesson .... Alex Rousseau

tina wesson as danielle rousseau's long-missing daughter? that's gotta be incorrect. for one, they're about the same age.

additionally, we get an actress playing "young kate," who i assume will delve into even more boring backstories - maybe related to the childhood abuse that i suggested kate suffered (which possibly caused her to murder/harm somebody).

Go check out this post of Michael's, featuring an unusually totalitarian MARC poster. I'm guessing that the commissioned artist decided to have a little fun with his employers -- but that the employers either failed to notice or care is a little bit frightening.

why i never shop at jcrew: because i'm not willing to pay $500 for a shoddy-ass camisole with an ugly leaf on it.

Today I started playing around with GreaseMonkey (which is amazing, and about which I'll write more later). Inspiration hit, and I've spent today working on a kind of cool (I think) GreaseMonkey script that'll provide a framework for automatically stripping ads out of webpages. I'll explain how all this works when I'm ready to release it.

But because this script relies on a central server, I'm going to have to register a domain name, and that means I'll have to think of one. For development purposes I've been using the incredibly-imaginative "AdKiller", but of course that's already taken by some similarly creative folks.

So I'm hoping you all can help. I'm looking for something witty and short that conveys the script's function. Suggestions?

Well, it looks like talented Redskins safety Sean Taylor has just turned himself over to police in Miami-Dade. ESPN is reporting that it's for a felony count of aggravated assault with a firearm and a count of simple battery, but the cops aren't yet confirming that. There seems to have been some shooting, but nobody was hurt. Well, Coach Gibbs did say he was going to have the team use the shotgun more. HAH!

Anyway, it's nice to see that Sean's been keeping himself busy. You might remember that Mr. Taylor has declined to participate in the Skins' "optional" workouts, or even pick up the phone to let the team know where he was. His buddy from Miami, Clinton Portis, assured us that Sean was just letting off some steam. In retrospect, someone probably should have asked for a clarification.

Oh, and those optional workouts? The team posted video of them on their website, showing drills being conducted with contact -- which under league rules is a no-no for these kinds of offseason gatherings. It's likely that the Redskins will face some sort of sanction as a result.

I find all of this highly encouraging. The team's had great offseasons and terrible uh, onseasons, for years now. And if one gets worse, clearly the other is likely to get better. C'mon, you went to elementary school. You remember Opposite Day. That's how these things work, right? Right?

i just wanted to say that this article is completely insufferable. people who think they are superior for vocally hating on a band, a movie, or whatever that has recently become very popular - spare me. coldplay isn't going to save the world with their music, but what's wrong with a band that has a mass appeal?

and not only is the article completely insufferable in its self-appreciation, it's also terrible. his main problem with coldplay? they write trite lyrics, are sometimes hokily mournful, and are often influenced by older bands like U2 and the beatles. well, jeez. none of that shit has ever happened before!

Clearly, Coldplay is beloved: by moony high school girls and their solace-seeking parents, by hip-hop producers who sample its rich instrumental sounds and by emo rockers who admire Chris Martin's heart-on-sleeve lyrics. The band emanates good intentions, from Mr. Martin's political statements to lyrics insisting on its own benevolence. Coldplay is admired by everyone - everyone except me.

well, congratulations buddy. you must be very proud.

So I headed over to the Oceanic Air website that Catherine just posted about. I have a nervous tic when I'm reading web pages, where I highlight and unhighlight text rapidly with my mouse. Well, doing this revealed that the DHTML on the page around the fake President's closure notice is (intentionally?) broken. Dragging your mouse around, you can find an image of a page of the show's script. A page of a (EDIT: presumably) upcoming episode's script. A page about the monster.

This page, in fact. Click on it for the full-size view.

Click here for an article about the Mapinguari. Short version: mythical deadly Amazonian bigfoot. The script appears to add "cyborg" to that list of adjectives.

Rockin'.

UPDATE: Needless to say, whether the DHTML was intentionally broken or not, fake-crumpled-up script pages don't magically photograph and upload themselves onto servers. It's clearly planted. But is it to throw us off or to tantalize the faithful? I think it's the latter -- the monster's not the punchline.

UPDATE 2: From the last post I see that Susan found it, too. A time-release easter egg, maybe? It's a little hard to believe that Whitney Matheson's Lost-obsessed acolytes couldn't find it, but we both did within the span of ten minutes.

UPDATE 3: This is hilariously plausible.

to help keep us occupied in the lonely summer months...

1. Go to the "official" Oceanic Airlines Website.
2. At the bottom, where it says "Travellers," enter Hurley's unlucky lottery numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42.
3. Click the "Find" button.
4. Click on the row numbers on the flight's seating chart that match Hurley's numbers.
5. Don't blink.
6. Change shorts.
7. Figure out what the hell it all means.

go also here.

hey, everybody! feel like wanting to kill yourself? then i suggest heading to the black cat this monday night.

(for background, see here.)

some hard-hitting journalism over at poynter.org, where they interview washington post writer hank stuever:

How do you manage to be witty and wise on deadline?

The only thing I can compare it to is something like a guitar-riff contest at the state fair. When it's your turn, you just get all Van Halen on it, and give it your very best moves, using everything in your arsenal -- reporting, talking to colleagues, talking to sources, talking to the funniest person you know. Googling and surfing like a beast. A quick contemplative walk downstairs for a Diet Pepsi. Some typing. Some pruning.

then they asked, "why exactly is it that your sexual prowress is so renowned?" followed by "how is it that one man can be so good-looking?"

am i revealing how incredibly anal and uptight i actually am when i say that i agree with a lot of this article?

truth is, the american apparel advertising campaign creeps me out (and if an ad for it comes up on a site i'm reading at work, i close the window, feeling unsettlingly like my coworkers would think i'm looking at porn).

and you know what? i think their clothes are kinda ugly. take that, unexploited garment workers!

Susan's got another predictably hilarious post up, this time about boxing, at which she's apparently a prodigy.

Well, good luck to Kriston. I remember a brief fit of panic when Catherine went to a kickboxing class. Fortunately it didn't take; she still punches with mantislike limp wrists (presumably learned from watching Buffy) and usually accompanies each strike with a little explosion noise that she makes with her mouth. Oh yeah, and an evil, deliberate glower. Needless to say I find the whole thing pretty cute, which infuriates her and makes her punch my shoulder until it's okay maybe not so cute anymore.

Anyway, yeah. Girlfriends punching: hilariously terrifying.

(graphic blatantly stolen from this site, which seems amazingly germane given that its introductory blurb states that "THE SITE IS DEDICATED TO WOMEN. WE LOVE AND RESPECT ALL THE WOMEN, NO MATTER IF THEY ARE STRONG OR WEAK, COMBATIVE OR NOT, FEMINISTS OR NOT TOO MUCH" and much of its text appears to be in Cyrillic)

susan recounts here the hilarious time we had at the beach playing the game of "celebrity," of which i'd never heard but enjoyed enormously because i am a pop culture whore. it's very easy - everybody writes 7 generally-well-known names down on scraps of paper, it's all put in a bowl, you split up into teams and one person from each team goes at a time, drawing a name out of the bowl and, in the first round, trying to get their team to guess who the celebrity is without saying their name. sounds almost too easy, but the subsequent rounds become more difficult - in the second round you must only use two words to describe the celebrity, and the third round, if you make it that far, you do charades.

the second round was a lot of fun, mostly because you don't use the phrases you might think for the two allotted words. for example, in the first round susan revealed when, attempting to get us to guess "sandy koufax," that he was a baseball player and she could never remember his name when he came up in other trivia (or something along those lines). so the second round, another team drew sandy koufax and merely said, "susan baseball," and that was enough. or, for ani difranco, as susan noted, we could say "ugly musician" and that'd work.

the charades are where it got pretty difficult, especially since we constantly seemed to be drawing jack osbourne. i ask you, how would you mimic jack osbourne? my instinct, which failed SPECTACULARLY, was to try to a) impersonate a bat (think short little bursts of wings and some circling around) and b) post-bat-attempt, mime somebody viciously biting the head off of something. i can assure you that this drew blank looks all around, and as the confusion spread, i only grew more panicked, hysterically flapping my arms and opening and shutting my mouth. when that didn't work out, i tried to mime, erm...birth. because you see. well. i thought perhaps in the subconscious understandings of my teammates' minds, they would have gotten the "biting off bat's head" thing and merely needed some sort of hint that we were looking for a son of ozzy osbourne here.

i have a question. have you ever tried impersonating birth? silently? it's not as easy as it looks. and i didn't even think to try to lie down or anything, so my birthing impersonation consisted merely of me semi-squatting and making a sweeping gesture wherein i sort of waved my hands in the general crotch area and then thrust them out over and over again. in my head, post-sixteen margaritas, trust me. it made a hell of a lot of sense. the miracle of life encapsulated in some wild squatting gesticulations.

which leads me to a second question, which i must know the answer to. how DOES one successfully impersonate jack osbourne in a game of charades? because, um, i already have some crazy plans for saturday night, and i'm gonna need to know.

...to brian, who presumably read my plea for spoon tickets and came through with a pair at - GET THIS - face value! i do love me some blogging. now, come friday, i can go drool on britt daniel like he deserves. thanks, brian!

What with all the fun, sun, and combinations thereof, I nearly forgot: Catherine and I saw the Bright Eyes / Faint show at the 9:30 club on Friday. I hadn't seen Bright Eyes live before, or heard anything by The Faint.

Well, in the case of the latter, I don't intend to hear much more. Catherine disagrees with me about this -- she says she thought they were a lot of fun. Personally, I think this band is what happens when hipsters eschew their responsibilities and refuse to euthanize a faithful trend. Fad-ownership is a big responsibility, you know. We had some good times with new-wave dancerock, I admit, and I'll always treasure it in my heart. But now it's just suffering. If you ever really cared for it, you would say goodbye, take it out back and put it out of its misery, presumably by purchasing some devastatingly sarcastic t-shirt.

The Faint had a bunch of cool lasers, and a strobe light that they seemed very enthusiastic about. They were also extremely tight musically. But the songs were just godawful. I can't tell you much about the lyrics, although one involved screaming "PARANOIA!" in the middle, and one was called "Agenda: Suicide", I think. But I can tell you that whatever song it might have been, you or I or anyone else without any musical talent could pick its single melodic line (always bass or synths, and never lasting more than one measure) out on a piano with one finger. That mind-numbingly simple melody was always surrounded by an impressively full and textured clatter of instrumentation and percussion (part of it prerecorded), but the songs tended to get very boring very quickly. The crowd was really into it, though -- well, by DC standards, anyway (the band still made a crack about everyone seeming bored).

So this wasn't up my alley, but it may be (ahem) up yours. But even if you love the albums, I'd warn against seeing them more than once. From the tightly syncopated light and video show, it was very clear that the arrangements are pretty well set. I doubt that the show varies much between performances.

Between sets was when I started to get worried. It was pretty obvious that the college kids in front of us had come to see The Faint (they kept referring to Bright Eyes as "they"). It also rapidly became apparent that they were kind of dumb (they endlessly repeated the same now-years-old jokes from Chappelle's Show and Best in Show) and, with the arrival of the evening's first round of Lemon Drops, likely to get dumber. Sure enough, they commenced screaming at each other as soon as Bright Eyes' set began. But after politely asking them to shut up I was able to enjoy the show, despite a steady stream of oblique (but quiet!) insults directed my way.

Alright. Enough bitterness. Bright Eyes played an expansive and impressive show, with fully ten people on stage performing material primarily from Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Ten was perhaps a bit too many -- despite a desensitizingly loud set from The Faint, Bright Eyes' crescendos tended to partially dissolve into ringing white noise. I don't know whether the acoustic problem was happening in the rafters or the bones of my skull, but either way a slight volume reduction probably would've made everything sound a lot better. That's right, I am a million years old: besides those damn kids and their stupidly simple rock music, everything was too loud! Why can't those punks just list to some nice Artie Shaw in front of the wireless instead of all this concert hoopla?

Ah well. The performance itself was great: energetic, nicely arranged and earnest. At first I was convinced by the critics' consensus that I'm Wide Awake It's Morning was the better of Oberst's two recent albums, but now I'm not so sure. His songs about relationships and wanderlust are good all right, but so are lots of other people's. Not that many folks can pull off songs about consciousness and death. But Oberst can.

Maybe it's just that Oberst's probably-actually-silly philosophical impulses line up pretty well with my own. But when he added and dropped a couple of words from Easy/Lucky/Free and suddenly turned it from a peaceful coming-to-terms with death and into a distinct (but related!) half-frightening catharsis about meaninglessness and self-determination -- well, that kind of stuff impresses the hell out of me.

So, to summarize: Bright Eyes is good, The Faint is bad, and the state of America's Youth is, as always, deeply troubling.

another distraction/aid in helping me move to chicago: housingmaps.com. works in any city in the united states (that has craigslist). i have an appointment to see a nice little studio apartment when i go to chicago in a couple of weeks (cross your fingers for me that it doesn't get rented until i see it and charm the owner into letting me lease it!).

in other chi-news, i got a northwestern email address! firstname.lastname@northwestern.edu. i am all official and shit now. except for the 2 billion other things i have to do to attend the school (dr's appointments for health insurance, reading lists, finding out about financial aid, figuring out where the fuck i go the first day of class) - you know, the little things.

Yes, Virginia, there will be a sequel to Karaoke Revolution on the XBox.

The article claims there'll be better multiplayer support, duet modes, and the ability to incorporate a DDR pad into the game. The only announced songs so far: "Sweet Caroline", "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me", "Crazy In Love" and "I Don’t Wanna Be". It's supposed to be released sometime in the fall.

Dignity: totally overrated.

i know i've been bombarding you, but brian's italy photos are finally online! and they're lovely. check 'em out.

UPDATE: and julie's!