i spent a big chunk of today at the atlanta botanical garden, which, while nice and pretty and full of adorable little children and a neat asian festival, did not really impress. i guess when the only other gardens you've seen are the boboli (with their sweetass giant bathtubs), the florence rose garden (with the duomo rising in the horizon) and the borghese park (with its kickass trees), it is tough to compare. anyway, if you're the kind of person who gets easily annoyed by endless streams of boring flower shots, then i most certainly would not click here.

i did see one fun thing while i was there, though. part of this random festival that was going on included lots of demonstrations of martial arts and dancing, etc. one was this totally boring sword-swinging routine of some sort. these dudes were swinging around their swords - not all that proficiently, i might add - but then came the awesome part. they cut off the tips of some stalks of bamboo that were stuck in the ground. woohoo. but then, they went absolutely fucking ballistic on the bamboo with their swords, shredding them to pieces. i don't know what the purpose of the whole demonstration was, but i thought it was hysterical.

yes, bamboo-shredding is now hilarious to me. and that fact is driving me back to d.c. next weekend. see you then.