Silly Brad. You thought you could put up some interesting information, suitably mysterious as always. You forgot:

• I was a ninja motherf*****.
• I like to smoke.
• I still like to smoke.
• We got a really phat show.

Yeah, top that, kids.

I am hesistant to divulge the "secret" of the naming convention on the front page, but as I am sure that it will be swiftly replaced off the main page and memories of our illustrious readership, I will offer this, just once, as explanation. If future people question said convention, I will, as I have in the past, merely point them to the nicknames page and ask them to use their head to figure it out.

In short, the convention is all related to a certain director. I never really intended to move beyond the simple limits of the first film, but I quickly realized that a lack of female characters was seriously impeding the number of nicknames I could use. So when I moved to the current system, two things occurred:

1. A lucky person scored the magic name, and with one notable exception, hasn't disappointed me for selecting her.
2. I was free to move to a number of other films as a result
3. Men could be represented by men now, and women by women. Yay!

Thinking that I now had free reign to select characters based on actual actors, I began to try to match up people with their fictional namesakes. (Those lucky few fight-club names can consider themselves to be privileged enough to make the first cut, and thus, avoid any psychological projections upon them.) That is, if a friend is nicknamed Michael, chances are they either have a great deal of money, are somewhat suicidal, or merely look like the person in question. Now, obviously, despite his wealth, Michael Douglas is not suicidal. So the nickname "Michael" would actually be referring to Nicholas Van Orton. Confused? Well, to simplify matters, for each person listed in the nickname page I've linked their name to the movie in question.

I can see some friends quickly going to their name, clicking the film and exclaiming "What the hell?" So just calm down. I'm not implying any of you are serial killers, or disturbed invididuals. Much of the time, I've also simply chosen an actor or actress that plays a character who resembles the friend in question. Many names were also somewhat illogical, especially after I reached the point where my director of choice...um...ran out of films with cool, big name actors in them. So your name, like life, may not mean anything at all.

What could I do then? Well, the guy also produced some films (in addition to directing) so that opened up another avenue I could go down. Now I almost have enough films to last me at least a year or two, so long as I keep the total number down. I then will move to his visual effects experience, etc. I think I should be set.

So the question for Brad is simple: find an actress who plays a character who either looks, acts or sounds like your person. No picture available? Not a problem...one of the nicknames actually is a stunt double for kid rock's sister, and there are plenty of pictures of her. Another is a famous fashion designer who has managed to be in several photographs circulating the net. Even if a picture doesn't exist, if you remember the character well and they behave in a memorable way, that could be your ticket.

So Brad, send me the name, or, better yet, edit the page yourself. We're all waiting to see who you'll pick. And, hell, you don't have to only pick one: if you've got other people who could make the list you'd like to add, go to town. (You too, Helena!) Just remember the system. Helena asked me to pick Heath's name a bit ago, and I think I chose well, but I know Heath well, so it wasn't difficult. Unless I'm mistaken, I haven't a clue as to your person's qualities, so I'm letting you do the honors.

As for the rest of you fools who may wish to dine on a bullet, just remember three things:

1. I've never altered anyone's nickname.
2. If you dislike your nickname, that's tough.
3. Most of the cool nicknames have been taken, at least until another big film gets directed by nomenclature man. So the bar is currently fairly low.

In hindsight, the first couple names do look a little silly, but I'm not going back and changing them. And the self-styled importance of the person with the big name itself should take the random events that were responsible for her title with a grain of salt. Sometimes good things happen to people. Et tu, Brad?

Bring it on.

As a lover of DC, and a strong disliker of NYC, this site kicks ass. Where better to indulge in a petty flame-fest about the relative merits of obscure NYC movie events versus DC's "Screen on the Green"?

Which reminds me...this year, will screen on the green be in the WWII memorial? Because the mall is slowly disappearing, much to my chagrin.

This is disgusting.

We lost 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001. To suggest that our current president, who launched an invasion of a country unrelated to the fight against terror, would be impeached for actions that would've prevented September 11th, is simply wrong. I have never felt so much anger at The New Republic for printing Easterbrook's tripe.

Simply beyond the pale.

It took me a minute to get this cartoon from yesterday. Then I realized that it was like "Whack a Mole"...which would make sense, of course, if Iraq was pronounced like "Ear-Rack" instead of "Ear-Rock". Don't get me started on those who call it "Eye-Rack" which is so far off the reservation only 43 does it. And yes, thanks Fincher for badgering me about this until my brain relearned it.

In the spirit of learning one new thing every day, however, I feel compelled to point out that, evidently, the wacky way 41 pronounced "Nevada" is actually correct. You're supposed to pronounce the middle syllable the same way you say "vapid" so that it becomes "Ne-va-duh" instead of "Ne-vah-duh", the way I've always said it. It sounds silly, sure, but evidently that's the way the natives say it.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

This site is driving me crazy. I can't be bothered to worry about it anymore this evening...there are simply too many changes that need to be made to the underlying database to deal with. I'm not a SQL hacker...I just want to stop working now.

Yes, Helena, I suppose I'll have to drop by tomorrow and see if they have any specials for the occasion. A pity I'm going out of town later, or I could make an evening of it. Oh, well. I desperately wished to break out of the routine this evening but Loaf didn't back me up. After giving me my rushdie and a ride (with no craziness!), I counted my lucky stars and retreated to work on this website I'm helping migrate.

The website that is the bane of my existence, actually. Less talk, more work.

I'll be travelling back to the familial estate for Easter weekend, so posting is likely to be lighter. Annoyingly, I just found out a few hours ago that a couple of strangers (English girls, aged 18 and 21) will be staying in my house over the duration.

Yes, yes, I know that the normal guy reaction would be "yay" but these are choir girls, one of whom is underage. Perhaps I should invite Brad over... Regardless, despite having a cool accent, if I were them and I was trapped in the boring burg of which I made mention, for the entire Easter weekend, I'd be a little annoyed. They're from the same town across the pond, who shares a flag with us. That's probably about all they share.

Now I'm just looking forward to a little Easter dinner and chocolate love. But sharing it with strangers is definitely not my cup of tea, so to speak. I suppose I'll just play it by ear and attempt to generate some interesting stories in the process.

Just for the record, this site is geared for adults. I mean, come on, anyone who's seen an elftor cartoon must be mature, right? Although I'm personally opposed to porn (just as I'm puritanical when it comes to the lottery) I consider the Ashcroft thing to be art. Twisted, bizarre art, but art nonetheless. So there.

You've seen these photos before, right? You know, the ones with lots of tiny pictures used to make up a big picture. Cool, eh? Except of course, that this one is of John Ashcroft.

Only, it's a picture made up of tiny porn pictures. Yeah. You heard me right. Click on it to have it scale properly to the real 100% size.

And no, you don't have to click on it. You can admire it from here if you like. Just remember, this is the guy who had a huge blue backdrop draped over the two classical statues because (horror of horrors!) one of them had an exposed breast. Oh, the humanity! Yes, perhaps this is playing dirty, but I'd love it if one of the people I used to know at Justice had this little guy as their desktop wallpaper. It would be very, very, appropriate.

Yeah, stunning. First she stonewalls Kerrey, then provides ZERO examples of the flies the administration had "swatted" before September 11th. This will definitely make the nightly news shots, if only because it has a good line "swatting flies" and is heated. All the Dems got really good points in, though.

From the transcript:

Roemer's good.

As Atrios points out, here's the real story of the August 6 memo is the timeline:

Wow. Good thing he at least got the stem cell decision right^H^H^H^H^Hwrong.

Neil explains it all. Here's one paragraph, but you really have to read it all:

I have never thought that there was a "magic bullet" that would prevent the events of September 11th. But Kerrey and Roemer pointed out that the lack of a FBI intelligence system linked to the CIA would've easily helped gather info, and that the lack of the principals (or anyone) telling the FBI and their special agents to "look for sleeper cells" is doubly damning.

But what I really would like is someone, like Clarke, to simply say "Hey, we screwed up." The idea that is more principled to claim things couldn't have been prevented is wrong. After the Bay of Pigs incident, President Kennedy apologized for the failure. In this case, no high level advisor has ever publically said the same thing.

Even when the Republicans questioned Rice, she seemed idiotic. As one commissioner tossed out a series of softballs (the only questions Rice answered with short answers...the rest she filibustered on like a pro) she started to answer "no" to each one. Were you aware...? No. Were you aware...? No. Were you aware...? No. Isn't she the National Security Advisor? How come she's more out of the loop than Clarke was? If she didn't have any of this info, how could we expect the President to act on it? Perhaps Tenet should have been giving the PDB to Condi each morning, just to keep her notified. Maybe he did...and she just doesn't remember it. Perjury is a tricky thing, after all.

I just looked at more Iraq news coming in late this evening. I think right now that they have no choice but to escalate, which as I mentioned earlier, isn't a smart move. But we're out of smart moves at this point. The time that we were supposed to plan for this already passed...and the Bushies idiotically set the June 30 date as the drop dead date for passing over authority. Obviously, we won't pull our troops out then, but if we were to increase the number of troops so close to the deadline, it would show the timeline to be completely made up for political reasons.

Do I doubt the U.S. military can crush the irregulars in various city? No, not at all. But unlike the situation in Israel, U.S. troops are far from home, defending a land we "conquered" in order to find weapon that now don't exists. What about the democracy plan? Well, let's just say that by the time June 30 rolls around, I'll be extremely surprised if things are perfectally peaceful. For every innocent person you kill you anger tons more, and the size and scope of the weapons the Americans are using will inevitably hurt people who aren't actually fighting. It's unavoidable. Perhaps if we'd lined up the Sunni or Shia behind us early, instead of providing each a big, fat target to blow up, things might be different. Perhaps if we hadn't listened to Chalabi so much. Perhaps if the plans CIA and State drew up hadn't been nixed by the DoD. A lot of perhaps, perhaps. The point I want to make is this: even without the benefit of hindsight, a great deal of smart people here had already worked out preventative solutions to many of the problems we're facing now. Those ideas were ignored for the "welcomed as liberators" meme.

And, man, is it biting us in the ass now.

Classic. Be sure to watch Condi tomorrow attack gas prices...er...I mean Richard Clarke. The arrogance of this administration knows no bounds.

I finally knocked my inbox down to zero messages. Zero. It's taken me months...even with the old computer I never had it down for almost two years. Now almost everyone I know automatically gets sorted into a neat little box. Perfectly pigeonholed into place, really. It does allow one to see a progression, at least...I can move through years as easily as opening a door. Although this sounds cool (to me) there's not enough words to make a clear division between a few years ago and today. Most concern rather mundane things at school like leaving a book in class and needing to borrow another one, or going down to work on the newspaper after dinner. Perhaps things haven't really changed for anyone in the past couple of years: the old sources of stress have been revised and updated, locations have changed, but nothing seems too far off.

My e-mails haven't altered either. All seem to be variations of some sort of faulknerian rip-off placed decades later in the district. Oddly, over the past year I've stopped writing so many lengthy e-mails to people and put more thoughts on the website. Two years ago this entry itself would be composed to someone else in the form of an e-mail and although the list has grown shorter over the years, it's odd to think that I don't do that anymore. The consequences are interesting. Because what formerly was a private conversation has now become public, I am often forced to tell people a somewhat sanitized and hyperbolically off-the-wall story instead of what I really think or remember. Of course, given the amount of leeway I used to use in my e-mails, perhaps things are more "real" now than they used to be.

I do miss the specificity of saying something completely nasty about someone else, even if I'm not good friends with them. It's as if I've been Kerrysized, reduced to saying banal pleasantires about everyone, with my level of complements indicating how pleased/displeased I actually am. Far more telling, as always, are the absences in my dialogue to the ether, in the stories I don't tell. I remember that people used to (and still do) find Brad somewhat circumspect in revealing personal details...random stranger or not-so-close friend would assume he was playing things close to the vest, and therefore, was mysterious. They would then spend an absurd (in my mind) amount of time trying to figure out "his deal" in order to "know" him. If it sounds silly, it is. At the time, I thought that anyone who actually had something to hide would always develop a convenient cover story, rather than simply stonewall. My cover story currently is the same as it ever was, except that I'm able to transmit it more completely to more people, enabling me to stay on target.

You just have to keep your head down and your mouth shut. Explain everything that happens to you and make sure you don't lie. Just don't include every detail, even if they're relevant. Chances are most people will either be bored to tears and tune you out, or will simply assume that you've told them the high points. This latter point can easily be helped through hyperbole, e.g. "I met a woman with the most attractive face ever in dc last night at St. Ex", "I was so tired after I got home that I forgot to take my contacts out", "I worked for 27 hours this weekend". Each statement, by itself, implies far more than it actually says. The first makes it sound like I was hitting on a super-hot person. In reality, of course, the person could've been halfway across the room and might have had an incredibly unattractive figure. The second implies quite clearly that, having reached my house, I went to bed and forgot to take my contacts out, when I could've watched a movie, hung out with another friend or done any number of items before I forgot to remove said eyewear. The third implies I worked for 27 straight hours at work without doing anything else. In fact, I took at least 1 hour off to go to my house and open it for my art show. And a 15 minute lunch break.

The devil, as they say, is in the details, and the sin is in omission. Fortunately, there's plenty of faux drama to spread around, so even if I miss something (whether intentional or not) I have fun writing the descriptions. In many ways, it's far harder to hold back my hands from simply penning all the idiotic things that happen to me during the day, from fast food stories to actually meeting someone cool. All are fairly boring, so I don't feel as if I'm doing the site a disservice. Consider the text contained herein to be more of a director's cut.

I'm still angry, by the way, that a bit back someone convinved me to remove a story. In hindsight, it seems silly, but I thought I was being nice. I should've put my foot down and demanded that she calm down a bit. That's the best part of pseudo-anonymity: no one knows this site exists. Maybe a handful of people you reading this? happen across it during the day, but most of the people I see on a regular basis are blissfully unaware that they might be included in any particular episode. Which is, thankfully, how it should be. Those larger blogs where thousands of people analyze every utterance, greenspan style, and then fill comment boards with vitriol, seems alien to me. I'd much rather have someone e-mail me during the day and say "have you seen this?" or "nice post last week on..." Small, but more personal.

Which reminds me, since I'm incredibly tired for some reason, that I need to crash so that I can get up early and go watch Condi on tv at my office. And that I should really e-mail Helena. I haven't spoken to her since my office life turned into a living hell.

In what could be viewed as an inappropriate post, I'm going to cover three subjects which have nothing to do with one another.

First, and most importantly, what the hell is going on in Iraq? We bombed a mosque today, killing 40 people. A mosque. Big mistake. What were we thinking?

Second, last night, at the gym, there was nothing on, so I watched two episode of the Real World: San Diego. I'd forgotten how much I hate it. By the end of the second episode I felt as if my brain had been shrunk in half. At least 20 minutes were spent in one episode discussing the acquisition of a pet snake and a pet mouse. Ten minutes were spent on a moment where one woman said "you know, people who are crazy and full of energy and like to dance on bars, kind of like you, those people like to have one night stands" to which the woman in question said "i don't like to have one night stands" to which the original woman said "it was just an example" and then got angry that the other was "being defensive". The entire first episode focused on this one chick who kept complaining about being cold and out of breath at her job. Later, they revealed she had cystic fibrosis. Whahuh? Because she didn't reveal this, everyone kept telling her to "suck it up" and deal. Totally inappropriate on MTV's part. Later, it turns out the chick is cutting herself. In addition to having cystic fibrosis. And being a jerk. There wasn't even any real drama in the episode, other than having some guy call his parents and argue "about my bike" constantly. What a tool.

Third, the post exposes more GOP hypocrisy. Who knew the Republicans would say they were trying to recruit more minorities only to give most of the money to Phil Gramm and Tom Delay? I am shocked, SHOCKED!

Just an aside: shouldn't fundraisers in Miami kind of, you know, pay for themselves? Spending more money than you take in at a "fundraiser" isn't the best long-term strategy to help your side. Unless your side is extremely malnourished, of course. Or needs some photo ops to highlight diversity when you're actually composed of mostly old, white men. Yay GOP!

At least we led the division for one day, right? Now we're back to being tied with the Yankees (ugh) and the Red Sox.

Fox sent Wonderfalls over in a barrel. Only 4 episodes, the last of which was particularly good. Of course, they've still got 9 in the can, which makes it all the more infuriating I'll never get to see them. Oh, well. I guess I should've seen this coming.

This is unbelievable. Yeah, a legit CPA press release. Not an April Fools joke. It's almost absurd.

On the other hand, maybe they're optimistic about this. And let's not forget Paul Bremer's response to losing the city of Najaf, "I know if you just report on those few places, it does look chaotic...But if you travel around the country, what you find is a bustling economy, people opening businesses right and left, unemployment has dropped...The story of the house that doesn't burn down is not much of a story in the news. The story of the house that does burn down is news."

Um, they're burning us down right now. As a liberal hawk, I think we can choose to either escalate or ignore them. Escalation never works. We've really painted ourselves into a box in this case.

I didn't go to church on Palm Sunday. I felt somewhat guilty. But along those lines, everyone who's reading these words should go read this article in The New Republic. It's a devastating look at the intermix of politics and religion. It begins:

You really have to read it all. The article covers the founders' beliefs, many of whom were Deists and the conclusions one can draw from their decisions. Oddly, I've had conversations with Loaf and Jill on this same subject in the past week. I also remember distinctly a conversation Brad had with a parental unit some time ago in which he attempted to explain the Kierkegaardian idea that faith must be absent of all reason. The Deists always took this to be a sign of weakness in the "revealed religions", but frankly, abandoning faith would probably lead me to Aetheism, not Deism. Either way you look at it, "ceremonial deism" is as offensive to those with faith as it is to those without. Of course, the Episocopal Church (motto: all the pomp and ceremony of the Catholic Church, but none of the guilt!) has plenty of ceremony, but it doesn't pretend that the ceremony is somehow responsible for faith. It just is a tradition, no more.

Which brings me back to a point I've made before that always seems to seal the deal in the pledge case: we added the words "under god" in the fifties. They didn't use to be there. Much like the idiots in Georgia who amended the state flag in the 60s to include a confederate flag, the entire point of adding the words "under god" was political. Not one more child has been converted because of the pledge. The Soviet Union fell because of many reasons, but our pledge of allegiance wasn't one of them. Why does this bother me? Because the same idiots who added the pledge words also changed our national motto from a bold, secular one "e pluribus unum" to a hokey, saccarine "in god we trust". "Out of many, one" is probably one of the best national mottos to ever be devised. It implies a support for immigration, a belief that an idea of a nation can supercede individual nationalism for one's mother country. It implies that we as a people are stronger because of our diverse backgrounds. The English, French and Germans can all "trust God" and be none the better for it. Only Americans can point to our mongrel background as a strength. I hope I live to see the day "e pluribus unum" is restored to its rightful place, as the founders intended.

I was driving through the city two years ago, at three in the morning, having come back from a job in Tyson's Corner. I had accidentally locked myself out of an office and was forced to break back in using a kitchen knife and a paperclip. It took me about half an hour, but I eventually did it, finished up my work and drove back to the city. On the way back I saw a couple cars flipped over in the median, their drivers too sleepy to pay attention. I popped a couple cds in and let the music hit me.

I needed a mix then. Only now, that I have a new computer, do I have the ability to compose an entire four hours of minor-chord late night driving music. Of course, I'm sans vehicle at the moment, but it still helps when writing to have some music that affects a certain area of your brain. Neither loud nor soft, as long as it subtly succors sleepy synapses, it will do. The kind of songs that have lines that make part of your head think long after the notes have moved on, a kind of neural multi-tasking that enhances the entire experience.

I managed to finally burn almost all of my discs to Chiaotzu, leaving me with plenty of tunes to make a quick-and-dirty four hour playlist of said songs. Now I can sit and type away, my mind distracted from its desire to simply crash, my finger moving of their own accord despite the chilly air in the house. Bad e-mails are always composed in this sort of mood, so I've kept my replies to others to a minimum tonight. They always seem to contain nuggets of idiocy I regret later, comparisons that are so unapt as to be unbelievable, little pearls of bad analogies. I reminded someone awhile back that everything mentioned in this medium is pure hyperbole. E-mail, by virtue of it being personal, always seems to aspire to truth, whereas the writing on the web should always be taken with a grain of salt.

It's a good thing I love salt.

More code annoyances this evening. It only took me an hour to figure out that I didn't have the right permissions to the job I needed to. All my backdoor wrangling got me was frustrated. I'm not a big fan of hacking sites you're supposed to be helping, but I was at a loss for what to do.

Now I smell smoke. Some idiot probably outisde lighting up. I can't figure out how I could detect it, but they say smell is the sense most tied to memory. I had a conversation over the weekend with some people and it reminded me strongly of high school, of all the kids who smoked constantly, of the kids I knew who were either on anti-depressants or regular drugs, of the lack of knowledge most of the higher-ups possessed. I remember sitting in English class, day after day, talking to the girl behind me. Mostly, she talked and I just listened. One day sticks out in my mind: the teacher, annoyed at having her class disturbed, walked over to the two kids sitting in front of me, one of whom was partially deaf, and berated them for talking in class. She didn't even look back one seat to see where we had been talking the entire year. She either didn't care, or knew we didn't care.

It was odd to have a relationship with someone that exists for an hour or so every day, and nowhere else. Just one class, for one year. We never hung out. Her friends did a lot of drugs, but they seemed to have a good time overall. I caught up with her a couple years ago on a bike ride into West Virginia. She was living with some of the old crew. I felt sad for her, if only because she seemed like a waste of potential. I remembered the weeks she didn't do what she was supposed to do; I remember the alteration in her moods. I remember wondering if any of the advice I gave her amounted to anything when she could turn on a dime.

It should've been a warning sign. She wrote in my yearbook that she wanted me to keep in touch because I'd be rich and famous one day. I thought to myself at the time that it was an odd sentiment, since I assumed she'd go far as well. She was smart and attractive and had a good family behind her. Seeing her that day in WV made me want to tell her to run, to go anywhere but to leave our crappy little town behind. To escape from her past.

Nothing bothers me so much anymore these days as a waste of potential. And, no, it's not kettle/pot comparison time. I'm doing perfectally well for myself these days: I'm financially solvent, have a great job, and have a multitude of diverse, cool friends. I know people in towns all over the country, and a few overseas to boot. I live in a perfect house, typing in front of an insanely expensive computer. I have plenty of toys. I am in perfect health. I still have a limitless future.

That's the real gist: I see people everyday that are limiting their futures. Some still are my friends and some simply used to be. You can never tell your friends they're making bad decisions. (I never told the girl in question that her novel ways of sneaking drugs through airport security, while effective, would lead to increased public gropings and/or her getting caught. I merely laughed and gave her promptly ignored advice about life, love and anything except whatever was going on a few feet away from us at the blackboard.) You can only hint. But you can't tell strangers that information either. It's a perfect catch-22: to be friends with someone you need to tell enough white lies to make them disappointed should you ever have a reality check moment.

The solution is simple: don't hang out with friends who waste their potentials. Unfortunately, although I'm excellent at stereotyping people after a short conversation, I'm not that good at seeing long term trends. I remember a far more annoying girl on my high school cross-country team who said multiple times that I "used big words a lot" during conversations. Low potential, overall. But she could end up making a fortune. Likewise, there are tons of smart kids out there who are so socially awkward I would be surprised if they ever managed to make something of themselves. An even greater number of my friends seem to think that life isn't some game with a score tally at the end, and that dying with toys but no friends is the real failure. I differ with them, if only to claim that there is a score tally, and that people who are given natural talents and fail to use them are scoring badly in the game so far. If you're great at socializing, find a job that uses that; if you love kids and are intelligent, maybe you should teach. It's the small minority of people who aren't limited by anything that I love to meet. The people who leave you wondering what insight they'll come up with next, or why you were never introduced earlier to them. They often don't live in the super posh house, or drive the best car, or make tons of money. But the expectation, omnipresent, is that they will go far in life simply because they act as if they will. Call it the power of self-belief.

And no, I'm not talking about arrogant fools like y.t. We may have a lock on pure ego, but that turns off as many people as it converts. Our humility is always seen as false, and should anyone dare to ask the question if we had a god complex, we'd answer thusly. It's the silent people, the ones who learn early on in DC that saying "I'm running for office" when asked what they are doing later in life translates into "I am a tool who should be run into the ground for an unimportant campaign and then spit back to the midwest." They are the ones who are competent and make friends, who just later happen to become important people. They're the people you want to network with, but who have too many false friends to keep track off. I, personally, prefer to blow off a small number of people rather than suffer a deluge of socially inappropriate behavior. I like to go to the gym and leave my cell phone at home. These people could never do that, because someone important might call. I can't imagine someone important calling me who couldn't wait for me to get back to my house.

Of course, being an arrogant sob, the number of people I'd qualify as this type would be incredibly low. Why? Well, because my standards for people who think that they're going somewhere faster than me is a little high. If you're rich and think that equates to power, you don't count. If you work for someone important, that moves you up not a bit. I've seen too many people, including Brad, manage to move up to a level unheard of, by sheer luck alone. Then again, the ability to be at the right place at the right time is a skill in and of itself. When I look back at my life it appears that every single decision I've made has led to my current position, which is so good, (in my not-so-humble-opinion) that I wouldn't change any of the events leading up to here.

Well, I would change one. I'd probably park the car on a different street from the night the kid who eventually died got in the accident. But that goes without saying.

Charmed. That's the word. The people in question lead a charmed life. They're not star-crossed. And they probably get eight hours of sleep. Which I really should target, one of these days. There's just so much to do in one day that it seems a waste to give up before you're completely exhausted, which is why I never do. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the best way is always to run until you cannot run anymore. You may lose a few minutes of your life, but it's a fun time.

The sky is so blue it hurts today. Or maybe that's the bone-chilling wind blowing through the smallish district canyons of steel and glass. Either way, simply looking at it is enough to make the day seem great. Back to work!

So it turns out they built the bike from Akira. Bad ass. Some more pics are here and the manufacturer's website is here. Special thanks go out to the former denizen of the dredwerkz, who sent the link over to me. You know who you are. Hopefully she'll come by to visit sometime this summer, so that we can hit St Ex together.

Did I mention that I hate computers? Because I do. I've been trying to help some people out with a website and they use a specific CMS system that they wish to upgrade. Sounds simple, right? Except that despite this being version 4.5 of the software, they still don't have an easy in-place upgrade. Overwriting most of the files doesn't work, and even when you spare some of the important configuration files it doesn't work. So I've been forced to read through a whole bunch of php, track down some wacky MySQL errors, and in general waste my time when I could be sleeping, or finishing my laundry, or sleeping.

This is why I hate to volunteer: you stick your neck and you get it chopped off. And I'm sure all the computers at work will be just as happy to see me later this morning. Some days I wonder why I do what I do. Then I get my paycheck and things make more sense. "They" say to do what you love, but they never ask how you're supposed to pay the bills. One of these days...

I need another vacation. That and/or some warm weather. Neither are in the forecast.

This cartoon expresses my perfect frustration with the conservative response to the Spanish elections: if people were capable of prediciting what would sway elections, this sort of stuff would go on all the time. If it had been ETA, and no Al Qaeda, or if the ruling party had said early on they believed it was AQ, then the election could've gone the other way. But armchair warrious who simply say voters are "appeasing terrorism" are talking out of their ass on this one. And I say that as a liberal hawk. Did the bombings influence the election? Sure. But the reason why is that the government tried to suppress the information that it was Al Qaeda. It was that suppression, the clear avoidance of facts, that cost them the votes needed to win.

First off, I'd like to point out I threw a couple more reviews up of "Hellboy" and "Walking Tall". Go check them out.

Second, since I'm still desperately trying to avoid doing actual work I should've done hours ago, I'll comment briefly on the sequence of walking that's been a factor of the past four days. Put simply, from Wednesday through Saturday night, I've been forced to hoof it home at late times.

Things started out pretty normal: Wednesday night I had dinner with Fincher and walked home afterwards, full of tasty Mexican food. I later decided to go to the gym, which meant I had to walk back past Lauriol Plaza to get to the Dupont Circle one (the only one open super-late) which then put me up late on a Wednesday night, at least later than I'd be if I hadn't gone. Thursday night I hung out with Jill, (sans food...big mistake) then hit a party and got dropped off near the Cathedral. At a very late time. Friday, of course, after hanging out with Dwight and some frinds, I end up walking home from Cleveland Park, which would've been about the same level as Thursday except that it was pouring rain hard enough to almost negate my umbrella. Saturday would've been the worst of all if I hadn't managed to get a cab near the edge of Rock Creek Park. As it was, the time difference probably made it just as bad as Friday.

My plan tonight has worked like a charm: I haven't left the house since three in the afternoon. The combination of huge, gusty winds and recently cool temps combined to make a partly-cloudy day a mostly-awful day. On the bright side, I did catch a fairly cool action movie I'll try to review later to go up with the other two. The good thing about ending a series of nights with a lengthy walk is that the next morning you wake up and you're just tired, but you don't feel bad. Except, of course, for the large gash on my knee (Saturday night?) or the huge bruise on my leg (Thursday night?) which hasn't gone away yet.

Finally, I have to get back to work. My fingers are too cold to keep trying to stay awake and postpone what must be done. Curses.

werkz advice: a good, solid short film.

The remake of "Walking Tall" does just that: it doesn't pretend to be complicated or nuanced. The Rock is an excellent switch from the original's Joe Don Baker, and adds a little more heft to the role, which remains somewhat true to the original (and, again, somewhat true to Pusser's real life) which is nice. The setting is Washington State instead of the deep South, but the familiar roles of class and working families still resonate. It may not pretend to be breat, but by the end of this (very) short film, you'll agree that it's a solid work.

Ever have one of those evenings where you're supposed to meet someone and you don't, and later you discover you were at all the same places? I was supposed to hang out with Deborah and her sister Saturday night. Here's what ensued:

8ish - Deborah tells me she's having dinner then hitting the reef at 10/10:30ish; I'm hitting Cactus Cantina with Loaf and Trish.

9ish - I text Deborah and say I'll call her later; I'm hitting Zebra lounge with Meat, Loaf, Trish, and several other friends.

10:30-10:45 - I get to the reef and look around for Deborah; not seeing her, I settle in upstairs with Loaf and Trish (Meat et al have gone home)

11ish - I text Deborah saying I'm at the reef (in case she has forgotton)

11ish - Deborah calls me and leaves a message (which i get later) saying she's upstairs at the reef. We do not see each other.

11:30 - We still don't see each other; Deborah texts me (which I get later) saying she's downstairs at the reef

12ish - Convinced Deborah and her sister have gone dancing in Adams Morgan, as she said she was planning to, I move with Loaf and Trish to Heaven/Hell

12ish - Deborah moves with other people to Crush (next door to Heaven/Hell)

Some Point Later - I go to Joe's Pizza Place across the bridge with Loaf and Trish. Unlike last time no tempers rise in the process. Trish and I decide that I should drive Loaf home.

4ish - I drive Loaf to her house in Virginia. Her dogs assault me. I leave and attempt to pick up a rare credit-card cab, having spent my "emergency" twenty during the evening's festivities.

5ish - I am forced to walk back from Virginia, across the Key Bridge. It begins to rain lightly, and gust hard, creating a painful sensation across any exposed skin surface. Within seconds I am soaked.

5:15 - After having three cabs refuse to take a credit card, the fourth tells me he'll drive me to an ATM. By this point I have walked through Georgetown and am almost into DC proper. I am still soaked. I go to the ATM and get money and hop in the cab. I arrive home, pen a few words and crash.

Altogether an enjoyable night, although I still can't figure out how Deborah and I missed one another. Go figure. At least I had an excellent time with Loaf and Trish, and amazingly, (perhaps Trish has some special amulet) there were no fights, nothing was stolen and I arrived home all in one piece.

The moment that will stand out in my mind, though, was in Hell, waiting to visit the restroom. A woman noticed the men's line was empty, and attempted to use it, only to be verbally smacked back by the bathroom nazi woman (dressed in a blue turquoise jacket that looked like something out of Miami Vice) who apparently took her craptastic job a little too seriously. The girl in question couldn't believe it had happened, and Trish and I (who were standing right next to her) couldn't either. Bizarre.

werkz advice: worth seeing in the theatres, but not on video.

"Hellboy" is a decent film, neither great nor bad. Unfortunately, the bad parts of the film occur near the end, leaving one to exit the theater thinking, "that wasn't that bad a film..." The film is oddly paced, with quick action scenes wedged between long periods of introspective brooding by Hellboy, et al. Hellboy himself, played by Ron Perlman, is quite good. The other main character, John Myers, is a vague distraction from the rest of the crew, and as the film winds on, each scene he entered I left wondering "why the HELL is he in this movie?" Even the annoying over-the-top FBI director has some great moments later in the work, but Myers remains boring, bland and in the way.

There are two major flaws of the film. The first is a monster problem. The reliance upon one bad monster (it keep reappearing, and each time, yep, it's just as scary as it was the last time around, which is to say, not very) detracts from the film because Hellboy just keeps fighting him over and over. The only time a new monster is introduced is in the anticlimatic final battle scene, which is over so quickly that if one were to spill popcorn and then look up, it would be completed. Bad pacing. The second major flaw is the lack of Nazis. The trailers would have you believe this was an all out good guys versus Nazis battle for all time, and yet only in the first ten minutes are any Nazis seen. Later, we learn the "real" bad guy is Rasputin. Yes, the crazy Russian himself. And the character introduced in the beginning as "Hitler's Top Assasin", who looks cut straight from an SS cloth, actually turns out to be Russian as well. It detracts from the film.

Yes, it's a long review, mainly because I think the film is good enough to be seen in the theatre, but bad enough not to see it when it comes out on DVD. Go figure.

Yeah, I just realized it was daylight savings time today. I guess I just didn't think about it last night, because no one mentioned it to me. Stupid lost hour!

I am cold, wet and alone. But I am not unhappy (despite circumstances involving a failure to meet Deborah and her sister for fun and frivolity) because I am merely tired. If it is past winning time, it is because I have lost. Yet the attempt was fun in and of itself. Now I just need to dry out. A long walk home and a crazy cab ride polished off the wacky evening.