Wow.

First Friday was Fun. With a capital F. The art was so-so, although a late gallery provided some good stuff. The rain provided some drama, and helped us move from the mediocre galleries to the good ways in record time. Plenty of fun and memorable conversations with Deborah, Kevin, Fincher and friends. Dinner at Zorba's was a good way to end the evening. Anytime an experience ends with tasty skordalia and patates teganites is noteworthy in my book.

Only it didn't end. Those left hit "Mean Girls" in g-town which was surprisingly good. Review forthcoming, although the site of a math geek ripping his shirt off and several scenes ripped straight from the best moment of "Final Destination" were all amusing. Another great way to bow out. Only we get to the parking lot and nobody moves. Five minutes later I get out of the car and roll up on foot to the gatehouse. The arm was stuck in the down position, and the entire lot was full of cars honking though nothing was moving. I talk for about two minutes, think what the hell...i can always make up some story about carbon monoxide and manually bend the arm into a somewhat higher position. (I could feel it start to break so I didn't dare lift it the entire way.) I managed to get about 20 cars out of the lot while holding it up, including two SUVs, and my ride, of course, before two large SUV's blocked the rest. Damn Navigators. By that point some police had arrived and my arms were tired, when one cop looked at me and asked if I had keys to unlock the arms. I thought about being a smartass and saying "why the hell would I be holding this arm in the up position if I had a key?" but instead I merely commented "I don't work here" and ran up the causeway. A good way to end the evening.

Only it wasn't. On the way home, Deborah driving, we pass by what appears to be an accident. It isn't until the handcuffs come out that we realize a hooker is being busted at Logan Circle, as we watch. Light turns green, we pull away. Too dark for pix. Icing on a fantastic evening cake. Time to roll out for m-day weekend.

Deborah just reminded me...the best part about me lifting the parking arm for all the people in the parking lot was that none of us paid for parking. Sweet.

No, the 'werkz isn't falling apart. Yet. I just wanted to ask why every person and their cousin is/was/has recently taken their property exam? My co-worker called me up a minute ago to open up some document he left in the office that was about easements for his test this evening. Fincher finished hers earlier today. Forrest took his the other day. Does the entire world revolve around Edward? Are these directorial touches of a deranged mind? Mere minutes stand between me and First Friday Frivolity...

The other Warner from Virginia, that is. Finally the commonwealth will begin to move back towards a pro-business, fiscally conservative outlook. It's about time. A huge victory for him.

Not Rummy. That intern who "forgot to bring" the big charts McCain wanted. It certainly was the only humorous moment of the entire hearing, watching Rumsfeld go "um...we had it...it's here somewhere...wait, we forgot to bring it?!?!?!"

Oh, the protesters were fun too. Props to Warner for letting them chant until they got kicked out. Democracy is good after all, even if evil people live among us (or govern us!).

Lieberman sucks. Rummy is smart. Armed Service Senators are smarter, both Dems and Republicans. (Except Joe. And Jeff Sessions.) The one thing to take away from Rummy's testimony is that even worse stuff is going to come out soon. (See the section linked earlier mentioning "videotaped" and "young boys"). This is a huge disaster, no matter how you slice it.

Oh, and I'm proud that Warner used to be my Senator. He's a classy guy, even if he is a Republican. Plus, the irony of having Senator McCain grill the Secretary of Defense about prisoner of war treatment is enough to almost make my head explode. America, collectively, should be ashamed.

Stop your grinning and drop your linen. Rummy's on at 11:45, on c-span and abc. We'll see what happens...

Okay, it's now official: The FDA overruled common sense and it's own advisory panel to knock down Plan B. Both women and men were hurt by this completely unscientific decision. The first three paragraphs tell the main story:

This is outrageous. Outrageous. For over two years I've had a little purple sticker sitting on the light switch in my downstairs bathroom I picked up from some rally I passed on my way home from work at the USDA. It says that we need over-the-counter emergency contraception now, along with a url with more information. That was two years ago. How long will it take to get a useful drug like this to market? Simply staggering.

Forrest pointed me to this article which perfectly details the essence of America today, namely, that some bright kid thinks of a great idea, implements it, and then the idea is slightly modified, "tweaked" if you will, and the end result is completely against the original purpose. Much like the current administration's idiotic decision to delay rules about emergency contraception despite overwhelming scientific evidence that it would help mothers, not cause an increase in unwanted children (yeah...the logic of the dark side is too twisted for me to even grasp sometimes), what was done in this case is shameful. Let's roll the tape:

As a fictional character one said, fedora on head, "Fools...ignorant fools. They don't know what they've got there." Here's the full report. Read. Enjoy.

Oh, the title refers to a nice juxtaposition of "plan b" and legalese in my mind. Don't ask.

If you haven't been reading wonkette today, they shut down the building at 12th and E St. Which, unfortunately for me, contains the Barnes and Noble I needed to go to. I walk around, snag a mango lassi, head south, all for nothing. Grr. At least the lassi was tasty.

Now, it appears that the substance isn't Anthrax. Yeah. I could've told you that hours ago.

Deaf, dumb and blind. One of Toles' best, in my opinion.

If anyone notices that the site is broken, or that there is a spelling error, or a huge mistake, please e-mail me using the link at the bottom. That way the information stays crescent-fresh without problems. Thanks! Too often I hear people tell me hours or days later, "Hey, you were wrong about..." I'd much rather correct things as quickly as possible.

Apologies ranked by order of best to worst. I think the knock on Kerry is a little unfair (if only because if he really goes after Bush on this, he'll be viewed as an opportunist...every god pol knows when someone is digging their own grave you don't help out) but contrast the army statement with Bush's. A big difference. Levy's original article is key. Let's look at just two:

I love that TNR is finally getting its backbone back after the debacle of the Lieberman-love-in during the primaries. Today Ackerman is brilliant with his dissection of the delay releasing State's report on US human rights. And for a real stomach turning look, check out another TNR piece on Limbaugh's horrific non-apology. Perhaps TNR is finally returning to its roots.

It just keeps getting worse. From the article:

The Washington Post unearthed a whole bunch more photos today. Really bad ones. With that same woman who's in most of the others. I mentioned this before but it bears repeating and reiterating: this administration seems determined to lose. Every opportunity (the Washington Times today blared "Bush Does Not Apologize") they have to make a mistake, they do. That's why I'm convinced that they're going to pull out a large number of forces before the election. It'll allow them to claim a "victory" and to lower the number of forces in Iraq, thus reducing casualties. It'll also be the worst possible option at this point, but Bush and Co. aren't worried about Iraq anymore. They're worried about getting re-elected.

From my perspective, since I'm already convinced that they won't be re-elected, I can only look at these pictures and read these stories and think that Bush has managed to recruit more terrorists for Al Qaeda than any one person, before or since. His bungling has cost us lives, and is endangering the security of the United States.

You know, after looking at them, the floorplans are fairly good. Plenty of space, and better organized. (Where does the radio station go, though? And where, exactly is the...um...dining hall?) They tried hard.

The problem, of course, is that the my college's brand spankin' new student center is dog ugly. I won't even disgrace these pages to show you it, but it manages to look like some sort of Dr. Evil lair...and along the James Bond mega-villain lines, what's up with the hokey 1960's Great Hall? It looks like a stinking ski lodge. A total lack of imagination on the architect's part.

A great piece by Spencer Ackerman in his TNR blog. Read the whole thing. A quick clip:

Ackerman goes on and finishes with his best quote yet:

A known known, indeed.

Another wheel.

Here is the full Taguba Report. Read it if you haven't been sickened already, or even if you have. Props go out to LTG Sanchez, LTG David D. McKiernan, and of course, MG Taguba, who did a thorough job investigating such a horrible incident.

The wheels are falling off the bus. Yesterday the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah said Zionists were responsible for the attacks against the oil hub at Yanbu. Smooth move.

Bush is apolo^H^H^H^H^H evidently not apologizing for the prison behavior. Smooth move.

Can it get worse? Sure. But it's difficult to see how. We've already admitted that we've killed prisoners, after torturing them. Simply horrible.

My mind is filled with fees. A fee simple subject to condition subsequent, for instance. Or the deliciously Virginian fee tail.

I walked home through the Morg at midnight and saw a couple breaking up. It made me feel good, to not be them. Well, to not be dating them, too. People have this idea that they are special and unique but it's crazy. How many other people were screaming at each other on street corners...in DC...in America...the world? Too many to count. You just have to enjoy the drama, the delicious discord of everyday life. It hurts but you roll with it. The trick is (in addition to the trick mentioned in the title occasionally above) to appreciate the moments of bliss, to have lunch outside when the weather is nice, to drop your pile of work when your friend is free for lunch, to reschedule that boring political event when someone come into town. Failure to be spontaneous should be a sin. Along with silence, of course.

Work has been a little crazy of late...but there'll hopefully be more and lengthier posts tomorrow.

So I posted a couple of new reviews up on the reviews side of the site. I finally managed to finish "point counter point" which ended, oddly, exactly as I wanted it to. Too exactly.

You'll never read it, I know. So I don't feel bad saying that a major character dies from meningitis in the last couple of chapters. And that there's a murder and a suicide. I was reading the symptoms of the character who got sick and recognized them. It was a little surreal...to be sitting in a bright green park (the one with the homeless men and attractive girls who all read books at lunchtime) and to read about someone dying from an illness I would wish upon no one. Huxley, as usual, was completely wrong about the ills of modernity, but he's a damn good writer all the same. It was, how else to put it, moving. To see life as it is: a series of events too trivial to mention with the tedium broken by LOVE and SEX and MURDER which makes us what we are, human to the core. Life is laughing when you're soaked with water, intoxicated with the pleasure of knowing a camera, a book, an eye could catch you in the midst of a tiny cosmic joke. Life is smiling when you have no reason to be anymore, when your bloody bones wish to collapse after successive hits, and you stand anyway, asking if that's the worst they could do to you. Life is pain, but in small quantities.

I went to the gym this evening. A wall of monitors is on one side, and the middle was the mindnumbing gym/dance/music video channel. To the left was CNN. To the right was NBC. At one moment, on the left screen images of the Iraqi prisoners were being shown. On the middle, a woman gyrated with almost nothing on. On the right, four people competed to be able to suck a bowl full of mashed maggots into a container filled with live flies, before they then gulped the concoction down.

Huxley was wrong: modernity's problem isn't that it divorces us from what it means to be human, but that it idly lets our oddest emotions take control of our desires. He thought that in a natural state, men would love women freely, without pain and deception. Without the need to mechanize everything, he thought men would behave as they were supposed to do: eat when they were hungry, kiss when desire came upon them, and sleep when they were tired. He never realized that the curse of modernity is the opposite: it satiates through indulgence. Want a really big bowl of ice-cream? Want to drink yourself silly and then go to work the next day? Want to watch your friends do revolting acts so that you can laugh at them? Want to watch, voyeur-like, towards ordinary people? Eliminate shame and you eliminate prudishness...in this Huxley was right. People are no longer ashamed of their bodies, their personalities, or who they are. But the lack of shame hasn't helped many appreciate themselves...instead it has created a whole new ideal of a perfect form divorced from reality.

Strip prisoners? Why not? It's in good fun, right? Make them wear ladies lingerie? Why not? It's in good fun, right? I looked from left monitor to right, watching people debase themselves for the purpose of 50 grand, and wondered, for a second, what "Fear Factor" was trying to prove. A minute later, the three remaining contestants each got the opportunity to drive a car over a speeding freight train. Cool stuff. Which made me even more curious as to the maggots...what could be more American than having attractive people drive fast cars and do death-defying stunts? So who thought the maggots were cool? What person thought, "hey, that'll attract the viewers like flies!"

The answer is what Huxley missed: if everyone becomes more free, inevitably some mediums will move towards the poles in order to attract attention. I am only partially puritanical, and hateful towards censorship. But the same idiots who think that the nipple incident during the superbowl needed to be censored are probably congratulating themselves for watching "family fear factor". Not that I dislike reality tv in all its incarnations: the best show ever created was on Fox, called "the love cruise" which involved different couples sleeping around and getting kicked off. A great, amoral show. But no one was hurt...or really, even embarrassed. Instead, you played by the rules and won or lost based on personality and attractiveness.

That, to me, is the key distinction: shows that push contestants to their physical limits are fine, as are shows that require contestants to be judged by appearances or personality. All are socially acceptable. What's not acceptable is debasing contestants: making them eat live animals, tricking them into hitting on unavailable men, etc. As long as tv producers think that the perfect combination of drama and plot-twisted suspense is having someone be humiliated, I'll think that they're in the wrong. Yes, people who sign up should know these shows do this...but I don't care about them. I just think it's boring to watch. I'd much rather watch a car shoot over a train than watch someone eat a maggot shake. And I think most of the public would agree with me. So, someone, a small maggoty minority has managed to get their preferences to go over mine. What gives? Is American tv doomed to resemble those bad Mexican game shows with ugly middle-aged men getting stroked by young, attractive, women?

And is this the image the world sees us as? Money grubbing? Literally? Where our women gloat over prisoners with electrodes attached to all of their appendages. The sight of that woman's gleeful smile is more revolting than earlier said shake. These are the real animals. Give someone enough power and they will be corrupted....

Okay, grain of salt taken. I just think that many of the networks are run by idiots. And many in the media encourage it, whether by saying informative comedy shows like the Daily Show suck or through cancelling other shows like Wonderfalls...grr. I'm not going to write anymore. When I make my network, it'll be hard news, all the time. My second network will show really great action/suspense movies. My third network will be all original programming that rocks. Got it?

werkz advice: super-snarky...despite being old.

Aldous Huxley's "Point Counter Point" was described by "The New Republic" as being "the modern day Vanity Fair". In 1928. Yeah. Actually it's a good read, with plenty of funny moments despite the overall premise being flawed. The ending is also superb. Be sure to check it out, even if you don't like Huxley's political tendencies. (I think he's an idiot, but a brilliant writer.)

werkz advice: a decent book. don't run out...but worth borrowing.

"Charlie Wilson's War" details how one crazy Texas Democratic Congressman personally increased the appropriations flowing to the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. The book has fast parts and slow, and is fairly morally ambiguous. It's worth checking out, or at least borrowing from a friend, like I did.

Sunday I cleaned. And did laundry. And ate some extremely tasty food in the evening. Monday I went to work. It was no fun at all. I'm home now, eagerly awaiting the chance to go to bed to do it all over again. Life gives me plenty of chances to improve things, so I think I will.

So four o'clock rolls around and Dwight and Deborah arrive at the 'werkz. Some pleasantries are exchanged, along with a "game over man" or two. Hicks notwithstanding, we roll into the dwightmobile and careen off on an ass-backward way to get to the party. It was a great day for a drive though, and courtesy my bad navigation skills we showed up perfectly fashionably late, found a parking spot right out front and sauntered in through the back door. (Not sure why...) It appears to be a sausage fest, so I make introductions and ask for Nikki by name. The guys there inform me that she's not around but that there are spirits aplenty. I notice the party is also full of good wholesome white people (foreshadowing!) and pop down to Nikki's basement apartment.

About to raid her fridge, I run into Nikki herself and a friend of hers from high-school, who has met Brad from school, being a second year k-kid. Small world, eh? In addition apparently both the friend was at spices with Nikki the night before, eating while Fincher and I were attempting our herculean 3 dish boat plus task. Washington is always perfectly sized: you can be in the same room with friends and yet not notice! I note to Nikki that her housemates' male guests implied she wasn't around. Their lies were pretty thinly based on fact. The three of us pop upstairs and conversations begin to flow.

At some point later, I found myself, mint julep in hand on the front porch swing, with rain coming down in the warm air. An excellent way to spend derby day, even if the race itself was so-so. Whilst sitting with Nikki's friend, a girl with red hair approaches and climbs the steps, asking if "katie is around". I deploy some snark, saying "well, the party is full of good wholesome white people...i'm sure someone named katie must be in there". A glare is returned. Katie-seeker says angrily, "My name is Kate!" I shrug. Not my fault if her name is ordinary. Just think what it must be like to be called Edward!

Later the triumvirate reassembles in Nikki's digs, with potshots traded all around. I belatedly realize my cellphone doesn't have service in the basement and that I'm supposed to be at Kevin's dinner party at some point. Apologies and goodbyes abound, I'm out the door, into the rain, running towards Connecticut. A cab ride later and I'm fashionably late again, but well in advance of the main course and in love with Kevin's new housemates' fig/cheese dip. The stuff is like catnip for humans. Or crack. Simply amazing. Followed by handmade ravioli! Kevin has clearly upped the ante, housemate wise, so for that I must give him props. The guests of said second affair were also very cool, with a wide range for such a small company. The evening wore on perfectly, with even a perfunctory (still raining!) visit to the roof. Altogether an excellent Saturday experience, and a bargain to boot in comparison to my spices odyssey from the night before.

"Frankly, there just aren't a lot of Democrats to give money too..."

I overheard several rich-looking professional declare this on the street a minute ago when I went to work. Complete garbage. Even if we ignore the obvious first choice of Stephanie Herseth, you've got tons of second tiered timely people like Al Weed in Virginia or Tony Knowles in Alaska. Not to mention big prizes like Obama in Illinios. There are tons of them and that's just off the top of my head.

A quick visit to actblue.com lists a whole bunch of others I'd forgotten in my anger, like Salazar in Colorado or Bowles in North Carolina. Or pickups like Carson in Oklahoma and Hoeffel against a weakened Specter. I hate stupid Democrats...most of us are hard working and smart but the defeatist ones are complete idiots. We will never give up.

Jetting in a minute...so this may be a half-post.

Anyway, Saturday dawned bright and beautiful, the only problem being the tons of trash and laundry lying around my house, untouched since I went to Boston. Resolving to get some rays and do some work, I managed to plow through nothing at all. Instead, I read a bit and prepared to hit Nikki's party in the afternoon with Deborah and Dwight followed by a dinner affair with Kevin and his new flatmate. A full evening, to be sure

Whoops. There's the bell. I'll be back.

Yes, it's broken.

Uh, huh. I'm going to fix it.

No, I don't know how long it will take.

Yes, computers suck. No, I am not responsible for hardware failures. Blame the guy in Taiwan who messed up the entire batch.

Grr.

On my lunch break I'll try to post about Saturday evening's festivities. Some of you may have noticed a recent trend (in the past couple days) of a focus on personal stories and the occasional web design rant, rather than the normal political items. This is probably only because the last several news items out of Iraq have been beyond the pale. I'll comment on them in a bit. This administration is rapidly running out of time to salvage itself.

That and, of course, I've been busy. As usual.

So Friday night Fincher and I are supposed to hit Spices for some sushi. After our last couple of visits, both of us expressed a desire to take down an entire "boat" of sushi. For those who have not been to Spices, if one orders enough rolls (over 60) then you can get your meal delivered on a wooden boat. Sounds simple, right? The original plan did, for the record, include the possibility of friends being brought along, but my work schedule and Fincher's study schedule ended up precluding such a mixture of people. In the end, this omission would come back to bite us.

Fincher and I were, to put it mildly, a little ambitious with our ordering. We ended up managing to get not only an entire boat, but a huge circular dish full of sashimi and more rolls, in addition to another entire platter filled with even more nigiri and special rolls. As you can see from the picture above, the initial view was daunting. Nevertheless, I thought we could plow through it all, given enough time. Oh, simple, naive Edward. We stuck mostly to old favorites like salmon and tuna, with a few chef specials thrown in for good measure. My normal pro-sashimi outlook was probably the coffin-nail in the process, since the pure fish aspect is not only very filling, but the twelve piece version we chose contained a few items which were less than delicious, especially in comparison to some of the rolls we chose. Other than a few white-fish looking sashimi and some rolls I swear we didn't order, everything else was incredibly tasty.

As the evening wore on, the consumption slowed mightily, until even I had to admit that we were no match for the awesome amount of fish and rice placed before us. How much did we consume? Don't laugh...but well, here you go:

We did manage to plow through a great deal of it before bringing our sails down, although the picture doesn't do it justice. The process weakened my normally masterful powers of listening, so much so that Fincher was forced to spend an otherwise enjoyable post-dinner session teaching an unruly student the vagaries of crim pro. (Even the mighty mariott dollar-fifty dr. pepper failed to stem the sleep inducing sashimi mess!) All I can offer as a salve, post-session, is the knowledge that at least two people asked about her identity this evening in mixed company, and this was before the sushi adventure was fully explicated to interested parties.

In the end, I'm sure that we'll come back to take down the boat another time. Bringing friends (or housemates...at least those that like fish and rice!) would be an excellent idea. I'm not convinced that, even had we managed to avoid the sashimi and nigiri, that the two of us would've been able to polish off a single boat by ourselves, that being about 30 rolls apiece. A large number, to be sure. With some additional reinforcements, however, we should be able to take it down with no problem. The only thing for certain is that the level of humility I take into the next encounter will be far greater. Now if I can only have some sushi before Fincher finishes the rest of the rolls we took to her house...

My rather enjoyable evening from tonight will have to wait until later to be explained, as I am unbelievably tired at the moment.