Update 7/14: The Salmon Room Is Now Available!

Update: I've been using this page to show people what the house looks like in case they wish to move in. If you've come to the site to see the house and the available room, just check out the images below. For people who want a description of the house in less-than-concise form, here you are:

I'm looking for someone to sign up for a one year tour of duty starting around the middle/end of August. The house is located at 1800 Vermont Ave, NW. at the intersection of 11th and Vermont and is a block south of the U St. Metro exit. It's a three-story, three-bedroom white brick row house built in 1869 and renovated in 2001, with access to the roof, hardwood floors throughout and a full-size washer and dryer. The house is surrounded by a rose garden on three sides (it's at the end of a triangular block) with a large patio area on the western side, perfect for parties and cookouts. The front yard area has recently been redone to allow even more space for gatherings. The interior is very stylish, with recessed lighting, original mouldings and an artistic paint scheme throughout. Other rooms include a large kitchen/dining area, a comfortable family room (with DirecTV, an 80-hour dual-tuner TiVo and surround sound) and a living room great for entertainment. Total interior space in the house is 1,690 square feet, excluding the attic. The two bedrooms in the main tower are octagonal in nature, with 95 square feet of space inside each.

Our Logan Circle/U St. neighborhood is very safe (including four churches, a police station, an elementary school and a middle school all within a two-block radius) and is right near U St. and within walking distance of Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan. A Whole Foods/Fresh Fields is only a few blocks away as is a 24-hour Giant supermarket and several convenience/mom and pop stores on 11th and U streets. The house has central air conditioning, 1.5 bathrooms, gas (for cooking and heating in the winter), a netflix subscription, a broadband internet connection (DSL) and both wired and wireless networking. The total cost for the room is $1200 per month and doesn't include utilities.

Given the paucity of images on the site, one might be tempted to think that I have some loathing for the visual. Far from it. It's merely that I think people use images too often when words would suffice. A good analogy would be color photographs versus black and white photographs in newspapers. The move to color is often heralded as "progress" but too often people without a full understanding of color make the decision. The result? Photos that are weaker than their black and white brethren. The trick is to get good at the "basic" stuff, then learn all you can about the more advanced items before you move.

That said, I think enough time and energy has been spent on the text side, so I'm going to throw up some images of the dredwerkz itself. Some of these are a little barren, like the shots of the Salmon Room. The rest are just everyday sorts of pictures. I have Brad to thank for the camera which enabled me to run around like a half-dead chicken this morning, snapping shots left and right, and then uploading them to the website. You'd never guess that the entire camera is the size of a matchbox.

Here goes. Captions go along with each, naturally.

This is a picture of the second floor bathroom. It has a unique color scheme, with lime green walls, blue shower walls and a bright yellow toilet. Normally it'd appear much brighter but in this shot one of the three track lights has been taken off its track for replacement.

Here's the blue room. Brad used to live here. Not a great shot, but I was pressed for time. If you look closely you can see an amusing gift I bestowed upon the occupant sitting on top of the fireplace. Actually, you can see three of my gifts. You can't tell from this angle, but this room has a great view of both 11th St. and Vermont Ave.

This is a fancy cd holder Brad purchased from Canada that he mounted to his wall in such a way that he couldn't remove it. It's now a permanent, cool, addition to the room. You can see the stairs up to the attic from this shot as well.

Brad's expensive bed, nightstand and mirror, which took months to arrive and are in themselves a story of frustration, are in this picture. It's not the best picture but it does convey a sense of the room's current style.

This is from the second story, as one enters the salmon room (the upstairs bathroom is just to the right of the cameraman in this shot). Obviously, there's very little furniture in this room as Helena had just moved out when this picture was taken.

Once one enters the salmon room, and turn right, one will see the fireplace and a large bookshelf. The bookshelf has seen too much action to move anywhere. The room itself is the largest bedroom in the house, not including the nook, which adds even more space.

Here's the radiator in the salmon room (you could just barely see it in the entrance shot above) along with one of the two windows. I really love this picture, I'm not sure why.

Here's the nook in the salmon room, colored a deep blue. There'd be more shots of the interior but the spy camera I'm using doesn't have a wide enough lens to capture it. It's got two windows on either side and corresponds to the office nook below it perfectly. Originally, Helena had her bed in this room. It fit, just barely. After a week of sleeping there she decided that, although it was cool, having a huge dressing room wasn't all it was cracked up to be. So she moved the bed back into the regular room and made the nook her dressing room. In the process she covered up the windows, which made it seem less spacious. It looks better now.

Here's a shot leaving the salmon room. The bathroom is to the left in the hall, with the blue room down the hall to the right. All the floors are hardwood, with the exception of the entertainment room.

That's it so far. I'm still uploading other images to this page so be sure to check back often.

Wes Clark rocks. Read this article to see why. A sample:

Clark did shed light that he thought large scale government programs like the interstate system, G.I. Bill, and the development of land-grant college proved government was "important", he made the case of how he changed education for the 44,000 children who attended his military bases, and answered a question on President Bush's recently argued tax cut by saying he favored a stimulus package for small businesses.

"I would like Democrats to speak out and say government is important. Government is important. Government does things for people that they can't do themselves. Why are people ashamed to say that? People say government is so inefficient, look government is just us. It is just a bunch of people like us who sit around and do things for people. The inefficiency is limited by the quality of people who work there.

Along with saying he believed in the "importance of government" Clark also said he believed in a progressive tax system.

"I happen to believe in progressive taxation. I am sure there are people out there who say everybody should pay the same rate of taxes, but I don't believe that. The same people who don't make as much money shouldn't have to pay the same amount of taxes. When you make more money you spend it more on luxuries so you can afford to pay more in taxes. And you ought to. And you should be proud of it. I've given five times more in taxes last year than I made as a general."

It's about time. Years of neglect have let the GOP pound home the idiotic notion that the government is to blame for all of society's ills. Those uber-libertarians over at the CATO institute may be licking their chops, but as they do so, the country gets dismantled, piece by piece. Regardless of his political ambitions, General Clark's thoughts should be taken with respect.

I'm always a little suspicious of Texans. But I have to give props to these guys who shut down the capital rather than get rolled over. Go Texas Dems!

In light of the ongoing issues in Iraq, let's take a trip back to April 15th, when Toles took a look back at September 15th, 2002. Here's the cartoon: It would be more amusing, of course, if we just hadn't seen Baghdad fall into anarchy or the inevitable suicide bomb attack in Saudi Arabia. It feels like we're moving backward...that progress hasn't been made at all. (Though I know, in my mind, that we have moved forward.) The truly tragic part though is that this is the time when strong leadership is needed, when democracy will be planted or crushed. Failure at this moment, more than any other, will have dire effects. Yet our president is single mindedly focusing on tax cuts here at home.

Maybe those Airlite employees in Omaha weren't "thrilled" about the 43 coming to visit them: the company just announced that the employees, after all, would not be docked pay for the duration of the President's stay. Way to go Airlite! Just another example of a misguided company policy being trumped by proper journalistic hinting in the pages of the Post. Er...right.

Check out this pdf document detailing class giving rates. My class, the class of 2000, managed to score the lowest giving rate among alumni all the way back to the class of 1928, and including the classes of 2001 and 2002! Of course, we were the largest class ever at Williams which may have skewed the results somewhat, but I think the real reason is either we're a bunch of tightwads, we can't stand to give money to a college that's already well-off, or we are all pursuing noble dreams and careers rather than selling out to the man. Whatever the reason, I love the class of 2000.

postscript: Our class agent is great. She's super nice and friendly and I'm sure we'd all give her all of our worldly possessions if we weren't so damn cynical. So keep ragging us, Carrie! Sooner or later some millenium-eph will win the lottery and cough up some cash.

Coming from an outsider observer, this article in the City Paper deserves mention. I'll be the first to say that the Post has too many errors and that they lack a place to report them and read about them consistently. But being more of a Postie than a gray lady fan, I have to hand it to the City Paper. They bashed the Post for flawed reporting, but they're apologizing for it. Without any hand-wringing.

In case your army of googling monkey's took a lunch break, be sure to buzz over to this essay detailing the administration response to September 11th. If we can't expect our leaders to offer a full and uncompromising account on the most horrific day in recent history, how can we trust their tax cut predictions or other seemingly rational analysis? And unlike 9-11, there's no security apparti surrounding the idiotic predictions of a tax-cut bonanza. Security through obscurity is always a bad idea.

I forgot yesterday's icing on the cake, this great article detailing the GOP's insane push for tax cuts, each year, with no end in sight. Combined with the NYT admitting their journalist was a fraud, and the Post is rapidly taking over the top spot in my mind. Of course, it was already there. We've got Milbank. They don't. Enough said.

If you spent yesterday with your mother, you may have missed two great articles in the post. The first details how the search for WMD is wrapping down without any major finds. The article's information is top-notch, but the real star is the actual writing, consider the following bit:

McPhee, an artillery brigade commander from Oklahoma who was assigned to the task force five months ago, reflected on the weapons hunt as the sun set outside his improvised sleeping quarters, a cot and mosquito net set down in the wreckage of a marble palace annex. He smoked a cigar, but without the peace of mind he said the evening ritual usually brings.

"My unit has not found chemical weapons," he said. "That's a fact. And I'm 47 years old, having a birthday in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces on a lake in the middle of Baghdad. It's surreal. The whole thing is surreal.

"Am I convinced that what we did in this fight was viable? I tell you from the bottom of my heart: We stopped Saddam Hussein in his WMD programs," he said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction. "Do I know where they are? I wish I did . . . but we will find them. Or not. I don't know. I'm being honest here."

Later in the conversation, he flung the unfinished cigar into the lake with somewhat more force than required.

That's great writing. For the next example, check out this piece from yesterday as well. In it, the author details how workers in Omaha would lose pay for time lost when the president comes to visit the plant on a "jobs and growth" promotional. Let's roll the tape, a lengthy excerpt, this time:

SANTA FE, N.M., May 10 -- About 340 workers at an Omaha plastics factory will lose pay or have to work next Saturday to make up for time lost during a visit by President Bush on Monday to promote his "jobs and growth plan," their boss said today.

Brad Crosby, president of Airlite Plastics Co., said about 170 of his workers will lose a full day's pay and another 170 will be docked for part of their pay for Monday unless they make up the time they spend attending Bush's speech.

Airlite, which will shut down for its first shift and part of the second shift to provide a photogenic backdrop for Bush's speech, will be the Monday afternoon stop on a two-day swing by Bush to pressure senators to support a large tax cut as the measure heads to the Senate floor. Bush will stand near a production line that makes polystyrene containers for shipping steak, vaccines and other goods.

"Since we have another shift that will have to work, it would be difficult to just give credit to the people who didn't work while they were attending the event," Crosby said in a telephone interview. "The really good option was just to offer the chance to work on Saturday. We feel that's a more fair approach."

Wipe the sneer off your face as you read these choice cuts:

Crosby said he spoke to several of the company's 510 hourly workers about the decision this morning, and they were not concerned. "They're just thrilled about the visit," he said.

A White House official declined comment except to say that Bush looks forward to talking to the people of Nebraska about his plan to "put money in their pockets."

Bush said in his prerecorded radio address today that his message in his travels next week "will be simple: The surest way to grow this economy and create jobs is to leave more money in the hands of the people who earn it."

You can almost hear Allen asking his editor, "how can we make the president look anymore like a hypocrite without actually using the word 'hypocrite'"? So, I'll do the math: people who make claims about putting more money in people's pockets need to let people do their job and not prevent them from earning a living. Otherwise, they are hypocrites, just like me. It takes one to know one, after all. And saying your employees are "thrilled" to lose a day's wages or to have to come in on Saturday shows some serious chutzpah.

So it seemed like a normal day. The administration decided to scrap a plan that would've punished comapanies from hiring dishonest lawyers who would withhold evidence that might be damaging to their case. What kind of case, you ask? Well, the example given involves Black and Decker making some killer toasters. The little bread holding devices were responsible for over 1,000 fires. But B&D's lawyers withheld evidence against a court order. After the facts were known B&D had to recall the killer toasters. But this administration doesn't want to punish companies that play illegal hardball.

So far, so normal. Administration bad. Government (in theory) good. Then I read this opinion piece by Michelle Malkin. Yes, the same Michelle Malkin who seemed to imply we should invade Canada because they are harboring terrorists. Or when she blasted Helen Thomas for daring to ask the administration if they were violating the Geneva Convention. I guess if you put a thousand conservative monkeys at a thousand typewriters, and give them enough time, they might occasionally churn out some quality Shakespeare works instead of the regular Ayn Rand novels they normally produce.

For a better look, simply follow JMM's ongoing tirade against the left's silence. Read the last couple pieces. Then wonder why he and Michelle can agree on something, yet no one else cares.

According to the bottom of the chipotle bag I just trashed, 48 avocados go into each guacamole batch. Now, unless you subscribe to the buckaroo banzai school of physics, I'm not sure how you'd need that many to fill up a tiny cup of guac sauce. Maybe I'm missing something. Either way, it's a slow day.

It wasn't my boss or the girl. Instead, it was a recorded phone conversation between someone of asian descent with a thick accent and a poor grasp of the English language and our receptionist. I deleted it after the third or fourth time our receptionist made the guy sound like a fool. It was only mildly amusing at best and downright offensive at worst.

It's Friday, which means that the office is a little low on staff. My boss is away on travel, as are several other folks, so the place is quiet. Let's go through the day.

9:30 am: arrive at work, realize there's a voicemail message from boss asking him to call him back. call back, leave message. no response. remember that girl who blew off previous date is supposed to call today as well.

10:00 am: after having perused later political news sites for information for website, begin attempting to setup remote access server in advance of possible boss request to setup remote access server.

11:00 am: giant police demonstration in the street next door. possible funeral.

11:30 am: convince other person to go to chipotle, on the way there we learn that the demonstration is for "police memorial week". bagpipers in street seem nervous about impending storm.

12:00 pm: return just as rain begins. deluge is impressive. chipotle food consumption begins.

12:30 pm: tacos consumed. sit down to check more information. begin to consume hot salsa and chips.

1:00 pm: visit crazy website. kind of like elftor only without pictures and without elves.

1:05 pm: body begins to slowly disintegrate into pile of goo as salsa eats through living tissue. restroom visited to wash face. several napkins sacrificed due to excessive sweat. still no word from boss or date girl.

1:30 pm: journal time.

1:35 pm: realize that voicemail light is blinking. hopefully girl not boss.

I'm still recovering from my illness, but I'm about up to 80%, so I'm definitely feeling better than before. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be back on top of the world.

Meanwhile, check out this interesting piece over at the new republic. At its heart is the conundrum that those of us fighting the good fight face every day: whether to fight fire with fire or to stand on principle. And I think that Beinart is wrong in this case: unlike public figures, Bennett wasn't elected to office. And he isn't being scolded by a taxpayer funded investigation. Instead, casinos voluntarily gave up information to news sources. Imagine if Ken Starr has never wasted millions of dollars searching for clues, but if all the relevant figures had simply offered up the story to the press. Would there have been such a firestorm?

And the central thesis of JMM and others is simply this: Bill Bennett made millions of dollars espousing a worldview which was deeply flawed. If President Clinton had written a series of books decrying the negative effects of gambling and the decay of civilized life in America before he was elected to office, then people would rightly have been outraged over his behavior. Instead, they were not. Lying about oral sex is one thing. Lying to steal millions of dollars from unsuspecting consumers is another.

No, the other GM, you know? The guys who make cereal. As I'm walking to work on Monday morning, unaware that an annoying virus is infecting my body as I ambulate down 11th street, I notice a lady carrying a container of generic ritz crackers. She walks up to a tree enclosure, of which there are many on 11th street, and pours cracker crumbs onto the dirt therein. It seemed somewhat odd, but I reasoned (falsely) that some of the crackers must have been damaged and that she was merely getting the crumbs out.

A couple sidewalk slabs later, I notice that there's another pile of cracker crumbs in another tree area. Instantly I realize that the lady in question must have simply been dumping food on the ground. A curious occurrence, to be sure. You can imagine my surprise when, several feet later, I notice about 1/3 of a box of cheerios has been poured onto the sidewalk. I cross a street, and sure enough, on the next one, another 1/3 of the little Os have been dumped onto the ground. By this point I'm completely at a loss. Who would be dumping food. Just as I'm about to cross another street I notice the final third of the box of cheerios strewn on the pavement. Their original container is nowhere in sight.

If one lady was responsible, she must have been crazy. But two different people? Perhaps I simply haven't learned of the vast GM conspiracy to dump popular food products and increase the price for consumers here in DC. Or maybe the local rat population has started to swell so much that frightened homeowners are trying to lure them to other areas with promises of free breakfast foods. Either way, I'm baffled.

In what can only be described as a "shocking" manipulation of the facts, check out this story involving the AP manipulating a banner. The funny part is...the banner was written in English. Let's go to the image itself:

Nice, eh? The AP "translated" the banner to say "Sooner or later US Killers We'll Kill You". Think I'm joking? Go to ABC's website to see the story in its original form.