TA

Blogging for two

2011-03-15T23:46:00.001-04:00

While laziness plays its part, another main reason why I haven't posted anything since November (!) is that I'm in a family way! Knocked up! Great with child! In trouble! So of course I want to spend my spare time meditating and speaking softly to my child, not staring at a screen.

KIDDING! Christ. But I did decide that I didn't want to post on Facebook about it. I guess it felt like announcing "I had sex, and I have heartburn!" So by extension I didn't blog about it, because that's the Interwebs too.

But now I have progressed well beyond the just-had-sex-and-heartburn phase. Now it's much more like there is is a tiny alien visibly trying to poke its little tentacles out of my stomach. So that's a fairly public situation. Plus, the time seems to have flown by, and the alien is scheduled to actually emerge into the world in ... 3 months! I feel like I can now barely remember what the earlier stages of the gestation thing were like, which is a shame I suspect. So, here I am back again to intermittently document the experience.

Speaking of Alien, I have actually not seen that movie, but I HAVE seen that other classic in creature-emerging-from-human, Rosemary's Baby. My dear A will surely recall that when she was pregnant with her older son, I could not go 30 seconds without making a Rosemary's Baby allusion. Satan is his father! Those food cravings are because the baby is Satan! Etc. That was super tactful of me. Sorry, A!

But anyway, now that I am the one with the bun in the oven, I am happy to say that Rosemary's Baby does not seem relevant. I don't have any suspicion that Mr. TA pimped me out to the devil. Or that people who offer unsolicited advice are in league with the devil. Or that my doctor (actually, midwife) is either buddies with the devil or is super sexist. Or that Mr. TA is going to be pissed if I cut my hair short. Or that I'm going to want to eat raw beef. I think these are all good signs. :)

WTF, Glee

2010-11-24T08:06:00.001-05:00

I have just recently watched the last two episodes of Glee. In addition to my usual complaints (stomach-churning mood swings between self-aware humor and gooey saccharine forced emotion, nonsensical plotlines), this most recent bullying arc is leaving me befuddled to the point of wanting to throw something at the TV. Surely I did not just miss the part where Mr. Schuester tried to do ANYTHING about one of his students being constantly bullied? I mean, other than tell him that he should not let it get to him? If they're saving it for next week, and Mr. Schuester has some big musical Come to Jesus moment when he realizes he should have done something and apologizes, I guess that will be consistent with the consistencly level of the normal plotlines, but still. So. Annoying.

The Kurt actor has done a good job with the whole thing, though. Good job, dude.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Blogger month, oh my

2010-11-10T10:17:00.000-05:00

Andrea has been all over the blogging-every-day-in November thing, and now even M, who had previously been letting her blog die a natural death, is back on the train. Thus inspired, here I am! I've already missed 1/3 of the days in November, but even if I only post 4 times this month it will be more than any other month this year.

M's post about the Erica Jong article in the WSJ got me to actually read the article, and the companion piece/rebuttal by Erica's daughter, Molly. I agreed with Erica's "attachment parenting is a trap for women" thing--how can you have an adult life if you think you have to spend 24-7 focused entirely on your child? And it seems to be 98% women who do this (Mothering magazine--whatever it is, it's not gender neutral.) But she lost me when she started to ramble about celebrity adoption and Sarah Palin. It seemed almost like the WSJ had told her "we'd like to use pictures of Angelina Jolie and Madonna along with your piece, can you work in some mentions of them?" Also, whereas "attachment parenting is a trap" is a critique of a societal pattern, the Angelina/Sarah stuff is very blame-individual-women-for-the-world's problems. Retro stuff, Erica.

But what was really interesting was Molly's passive-aggressive gem of a response. She's basically like "My mom didn't pay any attention to me because she was traveling all over the country carrying on with various men and trying to stay famous, and I needed a lot of therapy, and I would never do that so I'm a stay-at-home attachment parenting guru. But I totally appreciate that my mom made enough money to allow me to do that." WOW.

But most of all, the juxtaposition of the two articles was annoying because it made the whole discussion into a women-blaming-each-other fest. Neither Erica nor Molly mentions where Molly's dad was while she was getting raised by nannies, or where Molly's kids' dad is doing while she helicopter parents and resents her mom all day.

Directions: an ethical dilemma

2010-10-28T08:00:00.001-04:00

I have a dilemma.

On the one hand: I hate asking for directions. For instance: this
summer when Mr. TA and I were on vacation in Vienna, at one point we
were walking around the same block multiple times, gawking at the map
and at the street signs, totally unable to find the architecturally
significant building we were looking for. A man came up and asked, in
English, "Do you need help finding something?" And I said "No,
thanks." Without even thinking about it. I think it's some kind of
desire to seem in control of things, and to avoid getting emmeshed in
a discussion with a stranger. Both very stupid reasons, I know!

On the other hand: when I see lost tourists in DC, I have a strong
urge to offer them directions. I like the idea that they will have a
positive interaction with somebody in DC.

BUT, is that really it? If I were them, I would not want me to offer
me directions. So by doing it, am I really just engaging in a power
trip, making myself feel superior to the dumb tourists?

I thought of this the other day and felt chagrined. So, the next time
I saw lost tourists I ignored them. This became harder and harder as
they walked around Dupont Circle in the same direction as me,
squinting at the street signs and asking each other, "Does this one
say New Hampshire Avenue? Does the next one say New Hampshire?"

Arghh! I could easily have told them which one was New Hampshire.
But then, they would eventually find it if they kept walking around
the circle. What do you think--should I offer tourists directions?
Or should I perhaps take this as a sign that I should not be so
stubborn about asking for them myself?

"Fetal origins" headline FAIL

2010-10-04T12:14:00.001-04:00

"At Risk From the Womb"? Really, Nicholas Kristof/New York Times? I bet you a million bucks that the embryo/fetus would be at much bigger risk without a womb. And, a womb is not really a decision-making entity, so when you say "at risk from the womb" you are implying "at risk from the woman in charge of the womb, so wouldn't it would be better if somebody else were in charge because she might make bad decisions or be stressed out or something." And, the actual information in the story makes it clear that, in fact, it's stuff outside the womb that there is evidence affects "fetal outcomes"--floods, war, environmental pollutants. So I think your headline writers need to step away from the blaming-the-lady-with-the-womb party.

Deep thoughts re traveling

2010-09-19T23:48:00.001-04:00

I have been traveling for work today. Here are some related insights:

1. I know I should boycott Arizona, but I had a layover in Phoenix and my custom of getting a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza (or whatever they're called these days) while killing time in an airport won out. The moral outrage, she is weak compared to the tummy.

2. The language that airline employees use when making announcements is really odd: "We DO ask that you store your smaller personal item underneath the seat in front of you," "We DO appreciate your patience during the boarding process," "We WILL ask that you pay with a major credit card." Normally you would only use that kind of emphasis if someone had questioned whether you really meant what you were saying: "You don't really appreciate my patience!" "Yes, I DO!" So I guess that's apt, then.

3. The hotel I am staying in has Guest Laundry Rooms, for which I am grateful. I am even more psyched that the washers and dryers are the EXACT SAME ones as we had in the dorms in college. Speed Queen Commercial Washers and Dryers! With the coin slots and everything! It takes me back. There was some way to rig them so the quarters (or something that substituted for quarters?) stayed in the slots and you didn't have to pay, but I don't remember what it was and probably wouldn't try it even if I did.

4. There is something nice about having a rental car and your own hotel room and being able to set up your little world however you want, and to watch TV in bed. I am not going all George Clooney in Up in the Air, though, and I will see if I still agree with this in 13 days, when I am still at the Executive Inn and Suites by the freeway in Oakland. (In case you want to look me up.)

5. The time zones got away from me and I forgot to call before it got unreasonably late, Mom and Dad. Sorry. Talk to you sometime this week.

Cubicle/Walt Disney paper dream

2010-09-17T12:08:00.002-04:00

I had a really weird, vivid dream last night. I was working on a big paper that I had to finish in order to graduate from law school or college, not sure which. I had rented a hotel room to work on the paper, but the room was actually a cubicle with a fold-out bed in it. There were several other people in adjoining cubicles, also working on papers. At some point in the dream I was telling someone what my paper was going to be about, and I said with excitement that I had decided to write about Walt Disney because I had already written about him before. (I wrote an autobiography about Walt Disney for a Gifted and Talented class assignment in 5th grade.) I said I was going to focus on both art history and math as they related to Disney films. The person I was talking to said that was a bad idea and maybe I should rethink it. I then realized that it was, in fact, a bad idea and went back to my cubicle/hotel. The cubicle was so full of paper that I couldn't fold the bed down.

And I am not even feeling stressed out about work, and my office is pretty clean! What does this mean? I woke up feeling grateful that I don't have to come up with topics to write papers about anymore, so I guess that's a good insight.

No back to school, thank God

2010-09-10T10:54:00.000-04:00

Last night I had my only "back-to-school"-type experience of the year,
and holy crizzap did it make me relieved that I don't actually have to
go back to school.

The tutoring program I volunteer at restarted after summer break, and
I got a new student since my last one graduated (sniff). It works
like this: the tutors sit on chairs pushed up against the wall of a
hallway, like we are waiting for a job interview or to get asked to
dance. The students who need tutors are in a room around the corner
with the coordinator. Every 5 minutes or so the coordinator comes out
with a student, calls out a tutor's name, and introduces them.

Last night I sat there for about half an hour until I got my student,
and by the end of this period it dawned on me that I was REALLY
nervous. Would we like each other? Would her parents like me? Would
I be able to help her? Would she have behavioral problems or a
learning disability? Would she get into college? Was there still
time to change my mind and leave?

And it occurred to me that this is only a tiny fraction of the
nervousness that I used to experience before a new school year.
Sometimes I have a hazy nostalgia for how the experience of going back
to school, how everything was new and it was like starting over, but
this was a helpful reminder that in fact many of those experiences
were SHEER TERROR and starting over SUCKED. Looking at the
back-to-school Ikea catalog is plenty of new excitement for me now,
thanks.

Luddite technie FAIL

2010-07-30T16:42:00.001-04:00

Last weekend at the fantatic wedding of my friends A and A, someone used my iPhone to take a picture of me wearing a strapless dress and a plastic Viking helmet. The dress was not visible in the picture, so as far as the picture was concerned, I may well have been wearing nothing but the Viking helmet. I thought the picture was fab, so I set it as my contact picture for myself in my phone.

I am not sure exactly what I thought that setting a contact picture meant, and then I forgot about it. Today while taking care of bizness in my work email, my cursor passed over my name in the Gchat thingie. (My work uses a Gmail-based email system.) To my horror, the Viking helmet picture popped up! Aghast, I clicked on "Edit picture" and then chose "No picture." Whew!

But no! A few hours later at work, I saw that the Viking picture was still there! Here began an insanely long process of repeatedly removing the picture from my Gchat thing, only to have it reappear immediately. Eventually I figured out that the picture was not assigned in my Gmail preferences, but on my phone, to my work email address as a "contact." Whatever. I finally got it to go away. But now I am not sure whether it was visible to everyone else at work for the last week. Shudder.

Ebooks and independent bookstores

2010-07-26T15:48:00.001-04:00

Today on my lunch break I went to Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle to buy a guidebook for an upcoming vacation. With vacay on the brain, I had been thinking about whether I should buy a Kindle or Nook or whatever those things are called. Even though I generally dislike the idea of reading a book on a computer-ish device, the idea of being able to fit a zillion books in one small space is appealing, packing-wise.

So I asked the woman working at the checkout counter whether Kramerbooks sells eBooks. She said (not unkindly) No, that's the antithesis of everything we stand for, and directed me to a cartoon on the subject posted on the wall. The cartoon made the point that the qualities eBooks are striving to accomplish--indestructability, lendability, ability to read "offline" without recharging--have already been achieved in actual books. Not untrue! But they left out "ability to pack 15 of them in my suitcase."

So now I feel like if I buy an eBook machine maybe I am screwing over independent booksellers. But surely they should be able to get in on the act? Is Kramerbooks' antipathy an ideologial thing, or do Amazon, etc. bar indepent booksellers from participating in the eBook market? (And does anybody have any recommendations for good vacation books--preferably in paperback?)

Hot in the Sitcom Kitchen

2010-07-01T08:16:00.001-04:00

OK, so I may need to somewhat walk back my statement that that Hot in Cleveland is not "dated." The other night I watched a double-header of Golden Girls and Hot in Cleveland, and goodness there are some striking parallels.

Such as: both shows use a kitchen set with a small table in the foreground. I can't think of a single other TV show that has used this setup. It seems so unique that it almost must be a shout-out to GG -- or is it just an attempt to be realistic about how an old house in Cleveland would be laid out?

There is also the more obvious Betty-White-and-three-other-women-over-the-age-of-40 parallel. Mr. TA (joining me in most of the double-header) pointed out that in HiC, Betty White has kind of taken over the Estelle Getty/Sophia role from GG. This led us to start trying to draw more parallels between the characters. Arguably:

Betty White = Sophia (old, curmudgeonly, cracks one-liners)

Valerie Bertinelli = Rose (happy/ditzy)

Jane Leeves = Blanche (slutty (arguably?), has an accent)

Wendy Malick = Dorothy (This one doesn't work as well. Tall?)

But then, you could sort of do the same thing with Sex and the City:

Charlotte = Rose (ditzy)

Samantha = Blanche (slutty)

Carrie = Dorothy (looking for love)

Miranda = Sophia (The practical one, I guess?)

Alternately, this might just mean that all these shows are using variations on some pretty old-school stereotypes--the virgin, the whore, the mother (and the other one, I guess). That's definitely dated.

Hot in my living room

2010-06-25T18:24:00.000-04:00

I watched the first episode of Hot in Cleveland, and that was some funny shit. Not just Betty White, although of course she was fabulous (and I am not just saying this in a recent-bandwagon-jumping SNL fan kind of way--I have loved Golden Girls and the Mary Tyler Moore show since Betty White just barely qualified for AARP membership). The other characters were funny too--I especially liked the bit where whatshername kept licking her arm because she'd eaten chili fries the night before--and they have a believable rapport with each other. Do not listen to the reviews that say it's "dated" because it's a sitcom with a laugh track--they really just mean the actresses are old. Which is the point! They're old in Hollywood, but in Cleveland they're hot. It's funny because it's true (and that is Hollywood's loss, not Cleveland's.)

Step away from the email!

2010-06-23T12:38:00.001-04:00

In the last couple of weeks I have had occasion to observe two different small email lists, a neigborhood one and a sports team one, devolve into bitchfests of fairly epic proportions. It is not that surprising when people post rude or cruel comments anonymously on the internet, but I was surprised to see a comparable level of asshattery on small lists (a few dozen people each) of people who actually know each other and/or live very near each other.

People on both lists have suggested that the problem is email itself, and I think that is probably right. When people talk In Real Life, even if they are really pissed off, most of the time the human conflict-avoidance instinct, combined with the urge to not look like an dickhead, kicks in to keep everybody vaguely civil. But when it's just you and your computer screen, you don't see anybody's surprised or hurt or bemused expressions when you start to talk like a crazy person. So it's easy to work yourself into a later of self-righteous anger and to make dramatic pronouncements that you just would not make in person. Then the problem becomes self-perpetuating, because once somebody has tossed some rude or email thought out there, other people get annoyed that somebody is clogging their inbox with nonsense or has destroyed their beloved email list, and they start to pile on too.

Anyway, this is all fairly depressing, especially since I conduct such a large portion of my life on email. I'm not sure if there's anything to be done other than to throw out the occasional "I think everybody on this list is great and we would all get along fine if we were talking in person!" But that kind of only goes so far.

SEQUELS Sequels sequels

2010-06-16T14:50:00.000-04:00

(Re blogging: I have gotten into a bad habit of almost never blogging, and then doing it only when someone comments about my lack of blogging. So, this one's for you, Sita!)

I saw both Sex & the City 2 and Iron Man 2 a couple of weeks ago and, in a case of seriously low expectations, found both of them a lot less objectionable than the originals. But I am worried that this is a bad sign.

To review: Iron Man 1 pissed me off greatly because the message was: In order to become a superhero who will usher in world peace, all the arms-deaing Robert Downey, Jr. character needs to do is invent a super advanced weapon system that is shiny and red and he can wear and lets him fly, like a man-shaped Corvette with guns and wings.

But in Iron Man 2, when Robert Downey, Jr. tells a Senate committee he is responsible for world peace, it's supposed to be obnoxious and over the top, not, like, totally true. Refreshing! And once that issue was addressed, I was able to just enjoy the rest of the huge-metal-things-colliding and Scarlett-Johanssen-as-a-ninja-who-moves-in-inexplicable-slow-motion elements of the movie. Escapist fun!

And Sex & the City 1 pissed me off in a less political, more personal way because Carrie ended up with Big even after he dumped her at the altar. (Ahh, but the personal is political! Like how Carrie marrying Big is relevant to ... well, who knows, but that's probably a separate blog post.)

But by SATC 2, the philandering, commitment-phobic Big had been replaced by a Bigbot homebody who wants to get takeout and watch TV in bed. Not believable, but I no longer despised him. And once that was clear, the rest was ... well, not good exactly, but it kept me amused. Sometimes unintentionally. And sometimes (as with Samantha's making out in public in Abu Dhabi and then getting arrested for it) in a horrified-giggling kind of way.

So it seems I prefer the sequels because they omit something I object to, even though they don't have anything else much going for them. That's not great -- it's like eating only chicken fingers and cheese quesadillas, or something. (And I do like a cheese quesadilla.) Not sure where I'm going with this. Should I perhaps watch fewer big-budget movies that are bound to be fairly mediocre? Or should I just not think too hard about why I like them or don't like them?

OMG CLE you're killing me

2010-05-20T13:39:00.001-04:00

I am watching a CLE (continuing legal education) webinar about the legal ethical implications of the interwebs. I'm sure if I watch more of it I will learn that I should not be blogging about the CLE class. But OMG, the person talking just said all of the following:

1. "I actually went on a Twitter page once."

2. "I don't know if those of you who are watching this on the web..i...sode can see this" (while holding up a newspaper).

3. "LinkedIn is for professional networking."
4. "Twitter is limited to 140 characters or less."

5. "Blogs now allow comments."

I feel super tech-savvy.

I care whether Elena Kagan's gay

2010-05-12T22:00:00.001-04:00

(Note re blogging: I almost didn't notice that I hadn't written anything for two months, but now I am inspired by Andrea's reinvigorated blogging, and, let's be frank, by her saying my last post was funny. I'll do ANYTHING to be called funny. ANYTHING. Warning: the following post is probably not funny.)

I am really annoyed by all this "Elena Kagan shouldn't have to disclose her sexual orientation" commentary. People who say this do not actually mean "disclosing her sexual orientation," they mean "disclosing that she is gay," and it only makes sense in a world in which people are punished for being gay. For instance, every married nominee brings their family to their confirmation hearings, to sit there behind them as huge blinking signs of heterosexuality, but nobody thinks that is TMI. If there were no homophobia, sexuality wouldn't be something to be "disclosed" or not; it would just be a fact that's out there about a person, like where they went to college.

And it does matter if she's gay. If she were gay and out, that would be excellent because the other Supreme Court justices would be forced to deal with the existence of at least one gay human being in their lives. (Not that "diversity" always makes them see straight--the two Jewish Justices were recently unable successfully to explain to 5 Christians that the cross is a symbol of Christianity.)

But if she were gay and closeted, that would be weird and disturbing. I mean, yes, there is homophobia in the nation at large which explains why many people do not come out, but girlfriend is from a pinko family in Manhattan, has moved exclusively in lefty East Coast circles her whole life, and is 50, not 20. If she had not found the courage to come out by now (or, put another way, she had decided to keep an important part of herself hidden all this time, maybe so as to limit the kinds of ammunition people could use if she were nominated for something someday) it would make me suspicious about her trustworthiness and priorities. Plus, closeted gay public figures tend to be totally delusional.

Of course, I am totally late with this post because this morning a good friend of hers gave an amazingly awkward interview to Politico to prove that Elena's straight. Sooooo very straight!! For instance, "Walzer recalled 'discussion about who she might be interested in – the usual girl talk stuff-- talk about how to get his attention.'" Ack! Maybe I want to modify my opinion here--the fact of your sexuality should not be "private"/hidden, but most of the details past that probably should be.

Sweatpants gratification

2010-05-10T17:48:00.002-04:00

My college boyfriend used to say, "If you wear sweatpants, you've given up on life." He said it not just as a general comment about the world, but rather to me when I was wearing sweatpants around the house. I'm pretty sure that at least once, he said it to my mom (when she was wearing sweatpants). This was not the only problem with that relationship, but it ranks up there.

Flash-forward 10+ years to last Friday. I met a friend of a friend at a happy hour, and he was wearing a suit, and green cotton socks. My friend and I were pointing out the folly of this, and I said, "There's nothing wrong with those socks, but you should wear them with sweatpants, not a suit." He said, "If you wear sweatpants, you've given up on life."

OMFG! My entire ill-fated college relationship flashed before my eyes. If more than one person held this view, was it possible my X was RIGHT? I do not currently own any sweatpants--they have been replaced by flannel PJs with Ralph Wiggum on them--but the thought still haunts.

Luckily, my friend J is much smarter than me, and when I told her this story she immediately said that they must both have gotten it from the same source. "It was probably a Seinfeld line or something," were her words. A quick Google showed she was exactly correct: in the pilot of Seinfeld, George wears sweatpants, and Jerry says:

You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, "I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable."

So not only are my ex and this other dude both just repeating a very old line that they probably don't even know is a line, but the sweatpants thing is referring specifically to wearing sweatpants outside the house. It's totally irrelevant to my life. I feel pretty awesome about this.

I am a highly accomplished individual

2010-03-16T10:53:00.001-04:00

In the last 3 days I have accomplished the following uber-impressive feats:

(1) Done the first 3 days of P90X. Yes, it's that ridiculous EXTREME workout system you may have seen advertised on infomercials and this disturbing website! It involves a dude in a man-tank, wearing a lot of bronzer, saying "BRING IT" a lot! The DVDs include lots of plugs for a company called Beach Body and a line of "recovery drinks"! But dude, if I stick to doing even the majority -- even the plurality, really -- of 90 days of vigorously exercising for an hour a day, I will be in about 1000% better shape than I have ever been. I can tell it's working already because it hurts when I stand up from my chair. BRING IT!

(2) I made a tablecloth! Mr. TA got me a sewing machine for Christmas (because I ASKED for it, not because he thinks I should engage in lady activities, of course), but then I got kind of lazy about it, i.e. I didn't even open the box for a few months. But I was re-inspired by Dr. Frankenbaby, my dear friend who has somehow managed to make the adorable Baby E and raise her to the point where she can already sit up, while at the same time starting an awesome mommy blog in which she reprises, among other things, her highly impressive sewing and other DIY projects. I am realistic about my abilities, so while Dr. Frankenbaby takes on turning her Lab Partner's old shirts into adorable baby dresses, I started with the more accessible project of hemming a flat piece of fabric. And I did it! I forgot to take pictures -- maybe I'll do it later -- but it is really big (it's for when we use the leaves to extend the table, such as if we have more than 4 people over to eat), basically rectangular, and has (more or less) mitred corners.

Tune in next week when I fix global warming and get Obama's agenda passed. BRING IT!

Godfather and the Pacino/De Niro switcheroo

2010-02-17T17:55:00.002-05:00

I have flipped by The Godfather Part II a couple of times in the last month or so, and it has helped me realized why I am always confusing Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. It's because somewhere along the way, possibly starting during this movie, they started to switch bodies. To wit:

Pacino (now): Frizzy-haired, craggy, gaunt, looks exhausted.
De Niro (now): Kind of pudgy face, looks amused.

But! In the Godfather II days, it was all bass-ackwards:

Pacino (then): Smooth-haired, smooth-faced, looks like he used to have inner peace but now it's under siege.
De Niro (then): Good cheekbones, attractive, looks like a moral man forced by circumstance into a life of crime.

If you were going to pick which young guy would grow up into which old guy, you would totally switch them around. See, I'm not just ignorant about classic actors (or Italian-Americans)--it's just that my understanding of them is deeper than everybody else's.

SNOW!!! BORED!!!

2010-02-09T19:30:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow will mark Day #6 that I have not gone in to work because of the Snow that Ate DC. Yes, it's true, DC is wussy about weather, but in its defense, it's only half just straight up warm-climate-dwellers' hysteria; the other half is a lack of plows, which I guess is a reasonable financial decision in a place that rarely gets much snow.

Anyway, I am very happy to report that I am close to achieving the thing I yearned for but did not accomplish during my month off between jobs in December: boredom. When I was little my brother and I got bored all the time and would follow my mom around, asking her what we should dooooooo. I hadn't felt that for about 25 years, so at first I wasn't sure it had returned. But in retrospect, it is clear that the first twinges set in today when Mr. TA and I walked to Target to buy toilet paper even though there are zillions of closer places to get it, just so we'd have a longer walk and more stuff to look at once we got there. It intensified this afternoon when we did our taxes--the first time ever they have gotten done before April. And just now we played a board game (they're not called that for nothing!) Yay, boredom!

The question is, what happens after you get bored? Do you watch dumb TV to prolong the experience, or try to end it quickly by taking on a bigger project (cleaning closets, reading a novel)? Mom, what should I doooooooo?

Pro-what?

2010-02-04T14:30:00.001-05:00

Here is what I don't get about the Superbowl ad with the football player and his mother talking about how she decided not to abort her pregnancy even though doctors told her she might die if she didn't: it seems off-message for "pro-lifers." Is their target audience really women whose lives are at risk? And is their goal really to convince those women that it would be immoral, and should be illegal, for them to have an abortion to save their own lives?

If not, then the message of the ad is: she was faced with a CHOICE and she made the CHOICE which others questioned but which was the right CHOICE for her. If that is the message they are cool with, then perhaps I have been misunderstanding things.

Supremely depressing

2010-01-15T00:25:00.002-05:00

I have a number of happy things I've been meaning to blog about--my new job is going well (I think), and I agree with Andrea that The Hangover was great even if arguably one should be offended, or whatever.

But the thing that has now gotten me off my butt to actually write something is my anger/disappointment at the Supreme Court's decision to ban cameras from the gay marriage trial in California. The majority opinion (by the 5 usual suspects) reads like this: The sweet people who advocated for Proposition 8 have already gotten picked on big-time by all the mean gays and their nefarious supporters. Now the gays have brought this big mean divisive lawsuit, and the Prop 8 suporters will get picked on way more if people can watch them testify. We don't like cameras in the courts anyway, and particularly not when the public is interested in what's going on in there. Oh, and in case there's any confusion, we think the district court judge is bending the rules for the plaintiffs, and he will probably continue to do so up to and including when he rules that there's a Constitutional right to gay marriage, and we will not hesitate to smack him down then either.

As Slate pointed out, it's totally reminiscent of Bush v. Gore--5/9 of the Court is sticking their hands into an issue they would normally never get involved in because they don't like the political outcome, and then pretending like they don't have any choice but to get involved (certiorari what?) and to call 'em as they see 'em, even if they've never called it this way before and never will again. It's aggravating that, as in that case, the dissent is super polite about it and doesn't just lay it out there that this is what's going on. Not that it would do any good, but it would be more satisfying to read.

Best/Worst of the '00s!

2009-12-30T17:00:00.001-05:00

The end of the decade feels much more salient for me right now than the end of the year. The end of 1999 seems, in that cliched way, like just yesterday--didn't we just fill up the tub with water in A&E's apartment in Inwood so we'd have drinking water when the world ended, then head out in our chunky heels and matte lipstick for Times Square, although we'd get sidetracked by some bar containing pool tables and questionable gentlemen? Ahh, good times. So here are some assorted Top 5 lists for the Zeros:

Personal Top 5

1. Meeting Mr. TA (aww)

2. Regular vacations with friends from college

3. Formation of cult/urban tribe (whatever you want to call it) in DC

4. Evolution from boring jobs to stressful jobs

5. Getting into law school (for law school itself, see below)

Top 5 Moving Pictures on Screen

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2. The Wire

3. The Big Lebowski

4. Bridget Jones' Diary

5. DVD commentary tracks (as a genre)

Top 5 Things I Hope I'll Never Have to do Again

1. Having random roommates

2. any Bush presidency (I'm looking at you, George P. and Jenna)

3. Moving without paid assistance

4. Going to Lubbock

5. Law school

See you in the Tens!

Twilight, a very bad movie

2009-12-15T11:17:00.000-05:00

I took everybody's advice and did not read the Twilight books, but my curiosity about the phenomenon got the better of me, so yesterday I watched the (first) movie.

Oh.My.God. it was bad. Luckily, I found it literally laugh-out-loud bad, rather than just annoying bad. Here is the movie: Bella, a shy, pretty girl, moves to small town in Washington state. She speaks only in monosyllables and generally looks surly or nauseous, but everybody immediately loves her, and she acquires a group of nice, funny friends. All the boys in her group of friends ask her to prom, and she acts irritated and says no. This does not upset the group dynamic, and instead the boys ask the other girls in the friend group. Bella goes prom dress shopping with the girls but makes it clear she is uninterested in their whole silly prom thing. She really only wanted to go so she could buy a book about Native American myths, because ...

Edward is a pale, cute boy who acts like he is going to vomit when Bella's in his vicinity. She stares back, also looking like she's going to throw up. They do not flirt; instead they act angry at each other. He does stuff like follow her around all the time, save her life repeatedly from various perils but act pissy about it, and have very cold fingers. She does some detective work using the aforementioned book, as follows: she opens it to a random page, reads one caption ("The Cold One"), then Googles that, and discovers--Edward's a vampire! She confronts him--angrily, nauseously--and he angrily and nauseously admits that he IS a vampire. Further, for several months he's been sneaking into her bedroom at night to watch her sleep, and he has a very strong urge to kill her because her hair (or her blood? unclear) smells delicious.

Now--ta da!--they're totally in love!

Uh oh, now another vampire wants to follow Bella around and has a strong urge to kill her, but this is not OK because Bella is already Edward's special tasty ladyfriend. Then more peril for Bella ensues, Edward saves her again, and Bella and Edward go to prom. Ta da!

I may spend the rest of my leisure period rewatching Buffy, to get Twilight out of my system.

Beaucoup vacation haiku

2009-12-10T17:02:00.002-05:00

Toolstein commented on my two-day absence, and flattery will get you everywhere, so here I am. I am on Day 2 of my Lady of Leisure interlude, and so far it's pretty great. Let me tell you about it in haiku, shall I?

Getting up at ten
Is better than getting up
At seven, no doubt

Daytime yoga class
Do these people not have jobs?
Who knows. Must be nice.

DVD player
Died during first Mad Men show
It is a cruel world

Researching Blu-Ray
Is not what I want to do
But I am selfless

Maybe I should clean
Whoa, where'd the afternoon go?
It gets dark early

Tomorrow I will
Make dessert for a party
And watch Gossip Girl

Want to play hooky?
We could drink Bloody Marys
Let me know, I'm free!

Last day of work!

2009-12-08T11:39:00.001-05:00

Today is my last day of my current job! Which I have been at longer than I was in high school! So far it's like any other day, except with less work to do and more papercuts from packing up boxes. Cleaning out my office has been a little disconcerting. I like to think of myself as an organized person--so being faced with incontrovertible evidence that, in actuality, I am a person who leaves an invoice sitting in my in-box unopened for months because I assumed it was just a copy of something I'd gotten by email, and who has dirty socks I dont even remember owning in my filing cabinet, is making me reassess my self-image a bit.

In other news, if you are in charge of organizing an office holiday party to which you are inviting the new employees who have not yet started, please do not send an email to everyone in the department, including the new people, suggesting that the new people "reply all" with information about their favorite books, movies, etc. so that whoever has them in the "Secret Santa" exchange will know what to get for them. Holy god.

Bad tipping will out

2009-12-03T11:10:00.000-05:00

Many years ago I read someplace that Tiger Woods was a bad tipper. There is a special place in hell reserved for rich people who tip poorly. It could be that that place looks something like the inside of a fancy house in a gated community where you watch your reputation slip through your fingers on TV while you wait for the the mysterious scratches on your face heal and hope no more of your girlfriends leak voicemails to the press, and that your wife doesn't decide to use your golf clubs to "rescue" you again anytime soon.

Math would help you win The Amazing Race

2009-12-01T13:29:00.000-05:00

SPOILER ALERT: In The Amazing Race this week, the only team in which the players are always kind to each other -- Harlem Globetrotters "Flight Time" and "Big Easy" -- got eliminated because Big Easy didn't know math. Here's why you should pay attention in math class, kids!

Technically he did not need to know math--he needed to figure out how to unscramble the letters N, A, R, F, Z in a "Kafkaesque" challenge involving a bureaucratic nightmare in Prague (dozens of ringing phones, repeated filling out of forms, etc.) (So, absent math, you could have figured it out if you'd recognized that "Franz" is a word, but I could see not noticing that because of the whole it-might-be-in-a-different-language thing.) The more annoying brother in the Evil Gay Brothers team told Big Easy they'd work together, but when Annoying One figured it out, he would only tell Big that the word started with an F.

What a douchebag! But, OK, a word that starts with an F, and has four other unique letters. Combinatorics, my favorite branch of math from my olden days as a math major, teaches us if there are 4 options for the second letter, then there are 3 for the third letter, 2 for the fourth letter, and only 1 for the last letter, the number of possible words is 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24. Twenty-four words! Even if it took 2 minutes to fill out the rest of the Kafkaesque bureaucratic form, it would only take 48 minutes to go through all the possibilities. Instead, Big Easy got totally flustered and the Globe Trotters took the 4-hour penalty rather than complete the challenge. The HUMANITY! The LACK OF MATH SKILLS!

Now The Amazing Race is left with the aforementioned Evil Gay Brothers, the Whiny Miss America and her Excessively Patient Husband (accompanied by their unofficial sidekick, Their Interracial Relationship), and the Two Boring Blond Ones. I guess I am rooting for the boring blondes out of a lack of options. So sad! Globe Trotters, I hated to see you go.

Thanksgiving! (and Star Wars)

2009-11-30T09:55:00.000-05:00

Looks like my "posting every day in November" thing has fallen apart a bit. I blame it on the sleepy chemicals in turkey. And, the anticipatory laziness that gripped me before actually eating any turkey in the days before Thanksgiving. In fact, I was so anticipatorially lazy that I did not help AT ALL on Thanksgiving, either with cooking or cleaning up. Instead I busied myself by "entertaining" my 9- and 11-year-old cousins by watching Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back back-to-back. Great babysitting, self!

I was surprised to find that I didn't remember the plot of the Star Wars movies in that much detail, or the amount of cheesy acting and technical nonsense dialogue. As the Phantom Menace and those other Whiny Anakin movies demonstrated by way of contrast, George Lucas was lucky Harrison Ford et al were so good in the first few. Also: the version we were watching was the "remastered" one released 5 or 10 years ago, and the stuff that was changed from the original was HIDEOUS. In the scene when Han Solo shoots the bounty hunter in the bar, they've changed it so the bounty hunter shoots first. The whole point is that Han is a badass and not particularly burdened by moral considerations! Also, why would the bounty hunter miss at nearly point-blank range? Then in the very next scene, when Han goes to get his ship to take Luke and Obi Wan to Alderan, who shows up but Jabba the Hut, looking shiny, computer-generated, and nonthreatening, to tell him "oh, ok, you can pay me later." This totally dilutes the threat of the unseen, offscreen Jabba who sends bounty hunters after Han.

So George Lucas produced awesome movies despite himself. Good lesson for us all. Happy Thanksgiving!

Fact-free breast cancer discussion

2009-11-23T23:08:00.000-05:00

The kerfluffle over the new mammogram and pap smear guidelines has emphasized for me the remarkable lack of facts in the public discussion about most things. Before deciding whether to be pissed off about these guidelines, I think there are lots of things you'd have to know: Is there some kind of standard way for assessing whether a screening test is worthwhile? Was that used here? Are there actual health risks to getting a biopsy that turns out to be a false positive? It seems weird that they would say unnecessary "anxiety" was a reason not to screen people, because in weighing anxiety vs. death, anxiety seems like not a biggie; does "anxiety" always factor into recommendations about health screenings? How is it weighed? (1000 anxious people > 1 dead person?) There was a lot of attention paid to the fact that these new guidelines didn't consider cost; but (while they're at it with considering anxiety) shouldn't they throw in money too?

Admittedly I did not spend all weekend looking for the answers to these questions, but I didn't see the answers to ANY of them in anything I read. Instead there were hours of Sunday talk shows with people yelling crap at each other about rationing, their family members who got breast cancer, and the general idea of "science," but nothing about what that means.

Of course, when I have to make a decision about something like at what age I will start getting mammograms, I will probably make the decision in a totally impressionistic way, and will actually limit the amount of information I try to find out because the more information, the more confusing it will be. But I would like to think that somebody would know that information. Perhaps this is one of those disillusioning things about becoming a grownup. :(

Glee problem

2009-11-20T16:24:00.000-05:00

I have been watching Glee faithfully, like any lover of musicals, high school dramas, and gayness is obliged to.

But lately I gotta say my dedication is slipping a bit. Recent episodes have displayed tell-tale symptoms of both After School Special-itis and Dialogue and Action Inconsistent With Previously Established Character Trait-iosis. Both were strongly evident two weeks ago in "The One About How You Should Be Understanding Towards People With Disabilities."

Of course a TV show can convey a message about how society discriminates against people with disabilities and that is wrong, see Friday Night Lights, but I not enjoy being pummeled over the head with that message to the point that humor and consistency suffer. Like, I absolutely do not buy that Sue, whose character is the best one on the show because she is so hilariously amoral and without human feeling, all of a sudden has a disabled sister who turns her into a soft-focus, patiently reading-aloud person.

And frequently, the show seems to have the problem of knowing what emotional arc it wanted the characters to go on -- these two should have a touching moment but then have a tiff and break up, etc. -- but not bother to think of a way to get them to that place that is believable within the context of the show. For instance, just a few weeks ago Curt did the Beyonce Single Ladies dance on the football field in front of the whole school. But now he's worried that his dad won't be able to handle the homophobic backlash that would result from him singing a girl's part at a glee club competition? Umm, no.

Tragically, this problem reminded me of that seemingly promising but now dead-to-me show, Heroes. At the end of season 1, SPOILER ALERT IF YOU ARE REALLY BEHIND they had the idea that the one brother should sacrifice himself by flying up into outer space, carrying his brother who was about to explode like a nuclear bomb, thereby saving the world. Good idea! Except it made NO SENSE because the nuclear-bomb brother could fly all by himself. God help me, Glee, if you go that way I am going to ... be sad. Very sad. :(

Direct democracy, OMG

2009-11-19T08:26:00.003-05:00

Last night Mr. TA and I attended a meeting for residents who live on our block and the few surrounding blocks, to discuss a proposed Mt. Pleasant "day parking pass" pilot program. My feeling on the issue: Sure! Our mini-area of the 'hood is mostly residential and there's lots of parking during the day. Until recently anybody could park on the street at any time on our block, so employees of the nearby elementary school and nursing home used to park there when they were at work.

Six months ago or so some residents circulated a petition to change our street from "anybody can park here" to "you can only park here for two hours unless you have a residential parking pass." I signed it so people on our block would be able to park on nearby blocks without getting ticketed, and also based on the understanding that they were going to start this "day pass" program, so the school and nursing home employees could buy a daily parking pass for $2.50 or so a day (approximately the cost of a round-trip bus trip).

Well, they started the residential parking pass thing but somehow the day parking pass thing went to shit, so now the school and nursing home employees get ticketed if they park on the street. I had vaguely understood that the going-to-shit was due to the employees having shot themselves in the foot by complaining about the fact the passes were going to cost anything at all.

But this community meeting suggested that, in fact, what has bolluxed up the day parking pass plan may be an smallish contingent of people who are going all NIMBY ape-shit about ... nurses and teachers parking in front of their houses during the day? Or, being pissed off at the idea of other people parking for cheapish while they have to pay a lot to park where they work. Or, having a self-righteous environmental reaction of wanting to deter other people from driving (although presumably most of these people wouldn't care about parking at all if they didn't have a car, plus they can afford to live in our lovely, fairly central D.C. neighborhood from where it is easy to get downtown, whereas if you live in a cheaper outlying suburb, getting to Mt. Pleasant on public transportation would be a major PIA.) (I of course did not mention at the meeting that we don't have a car, figuring that might invalidate my opinion.) Or, they were against it for some other reason I could not entirely discern even after they talked about it in a pissed-off-but-not-very-coherent way for several minutes.

The upshot was that the general idea of the day parking pass program was "approved" on a straw poll vote of 8-7. It would have been 7-6 against if Mr. TA and I had not randomly decided to go to the meeting. Direct democracy, dude, I don't know.

Curate this

2009-11-17T18:30:00.001-05:00

In general I think pet peeves are not a good thing to have. Sure, lots of shit is annoying, but when you elevate an annoyance into a pet peeve, you really are making it into your pet--it becomes a pampered little possession which you have to nurture and protect from the outside world, i.e., from any attack on your maintaining it as a pet peeve. So I have tried to, as they hippy-dippily say in yoga class, "let go" of various pet peeves I once possessed, including ... look, I let them go so successfully I can't even remember them!*

But there is an annoyance so significant, and on such a horrifyingly dramatic uptick in popularity, that it has entirely taken over the previously depopulated pet peeve center in my brain: the word "curated." On Apartment Therapy, which I generally lurve, "curated" has become this hideous all-purpose word meaning "picked out or decorated, but by people with really good minimalist taste, so, like, on a totally different plane from the tacky type of picking out or decorating done by ordinary people." As in: A Carefully Curated Chelsea Duplex. Or: The Pink Project, curated by Brad Pitt. I don't even think "curated" should really be a verb, except in the narrow meaning of "to act as a curator," where "curator" is somebody in charge of a museum exhibit, not just a person with a nice apartment. Otherwise anybody could take any word that describes a skill or profession they do not possess or practice, and make it into a verb to try to make their own everyday activities sound fancy. As in, I cheffed some dinner. Or, I need to accountant these bills. Annoying!

Maybe I can just keep this one pet peeve. It's such a good one.

*I can probably remember if I try. Oh yes: the incorrect use of "myself" instead of "me," braided leather belts, people who are proud of their ignorance of all things Midwestern, unleashed large dogs.

A TomKat Education

2009-11-16T22:47:00.001-05:00

I saw An Education this weekend, and it did the schoolgirl-with-older-man thing in a non-cliched way, which is quite an accomplishment. It even manages to make you at least somewhat sympathize with all the characters, including the very smart 16-year-old who falls in love with a much older man, her normally overprotective parents who let themselves get conned into letting their school-aged daughter go to Paris with a grown man, and even the man himself, who seems to con himself into falling in love with a 16-year-old. Also, Emma Thompson is delicious as a cold, stern school headmistress.

However, that the 16-year-old character, Jenny, looked so much like a young Katie Holmes -- the round face, cute nose, surprisingly intense stare -- that watching her be seduced by a dashing older man I felt I was watching a documentary about TomKat's romance. Viewed in that way, ewwww.

Prejan 2040

2009-11-12T23:46:00.003-05:00

Carrie Prejean -- former Miss California, anti-gay marriage hero, and solo sex tape star -- just recently put in a weirdo but, I think, freakishly savvy performance on Larry King. Larry asked her why she decided to settle her religious discrimination lawsuit against the pageant after they fired her for missing appearances.

Carrie responded, in the tone a kindergarten teacher might use with a kid who's eating the fingerpaint again, that Larry was being "inappropriate" and that she couldn't talk about the settlement. She said "inappropriate" about 5 times. Larry backed down and took a phone call. As the caller started to identify himself as a gay man, Carrie took off her microphone and seemed to be talking to someone offstage, but then continued to sit there, giving her beauty-pageant smile to the camera. She didn't answer the caller's question (what would you tell a gay friend who wanted to get married) because, she said, she couldn't hear. (Because she'd taken her microphone off.)

An ability to get affronted by reasonable questions, combined with a plastic perma-smile and homophobia expressed ungrammatically ... just add a persecution complex and you've got the next Sarah Palin! And what do you know, right before the weird outburst, Carrie had been talking about how the liberal media is so unfair to women like Palin (a personal hero of hers) and Michelle Bachman. You heard it here first, she is totally running for office.

Water cooler triumph

2009-11-12T10:38:00.001-05:00

Crap on a log, it appears I forgot to post yesterday. (Actually, I realized this at about 12:15 last night, but it was already today, so what was the point in getting out of bed?)

So here's yesterday's post:

I would like to announce that in the last two weeks, i.e. my last month and a half at this job, I have reversed my long-standing policy of not changing the water jug thing on the water cooler machine in the kitchen. My reasoning for this stance was that I was likely to drop the thing on the floor and spill water everywhere, so I might as well just leave it empty and wait for somebody stronger to do it. But one day I was gripped with the knowledge that I would not spill it. And I have not! I feel good about this. Maybe not as good as I would if I had run the NYC Marathon (way to go, Amy and Arie!) but still pretty good.

Ack!

2009-11-10T20:09:00.001-05:00

It's 8:04 pm and I have not posted yet today, and have no plan for a topic, so I am just writing this off the top of my head. It's funny how you can talk (or type) something before you know what you're going to say--presumably your brain actually does know what you're going to say, because it can think faster than you can talk or type, but the other part of your brain that reports to you on what your brain is doing has not yet transcribed the thought, or is doing so in real time. Like the bad instant closed captioning on live events. I wonder if being a translator requires you to disengage that "reporting" part of your brain and just let your lizard comprehending brain hook up directly to your talking/signing/communicating part. Maybe that's what I'm doing now.

OK, that counts as a post! Wow. (That is what Carolyn Hax suggests saying when someone says something really offensive or inappropriate: Wow. I wish I had said that in response to the douchey email I got from some douchey lawyer today.) Tomorrow I will try to plan ahead more.

Should I read the Twilight books?

2009-11-09T18:24:00.002-05:00

I am spending a lot of mental energy planning for the few weeks in which I will be between jobs and thus a lady of leisure. One big dilemma is: should I read the Twilight books, or not?

Apparently they are very hot right now, which leads me to feel left out of a big pop culture phenomenon, and also I understand they are a big guilty pleasure. (A 13-year-old girl who went to the Inauguration with us was reading one of them the ENTIRE DAY, and she seemed quite engrossed, which was a good ad for them.)

On the other hand, I kind of think I will not like them as much as all the teen girls do, because, hey! I am 32. Also, the book series I get obsessed with tend to be the younger children, whole-fantasy-world variety (Harry Potter, obvs.; His Dark Materials; The Dark is Rising; Narnia) and not the young luv type. And what I understand to be the concept -- that this high school girl falls in lurve with a vampire but they have a very chaste relationship because METAPHOR ALERT he might kill her if they messed around -- sounds fairly heinous.

On the other hand, maybe I am sort of patting myself on the back for not liking the books even though I haven't read them, so I don't know if I would actually not like them, and so avoiding reading them is kind of a cowardly way to make myself feel superior, based on no information. So I should just read them and deal with it if I do like them.

On the other hand, as my friend Amy said, I would be contributing to the dumb-ification of the world if I read them. But I already watch a whole lotta reality TV, so it's pretty much too late for that.

What think you, reader(s)? (And, if you have them already, can I borrow them?)

Bench-sitting/fashion resolution

2009-11-08T23:03:00.001-05:00

It was a beautiful day out today, and I went and sat in Dupont Circle, enjoying the sun, eating pizza and drinking Diet Coke, and people-watching. It was just lovely, and I resolved that I would like to spend a lot of time like that when I'm old. It really seemed a classic old-person bench-sitting opportunity, and I felt bad for the old people of DC that they were not there (with the exception of a few older gentlemen who were shirtless, which, not a good look.)

I will begin practicing for being an old person bench-sitter people-watcher now by feeling alienated by the clothing the young people are wearing these days. Specifically, leggings. Now, I have worn me some leggings, yes indeed. In about 4th grade, I had a pair of stirrup leggings that I used to wear with, I believe, a large grey sweatshirt, for a vaguely Flashdance kind of moment. Then in 9th grade, I had several leggings-based outfits: a pair of light blue fake-denim ones that came with a striped kind of trapeze sleeveless shirt, and a black pair that I wore with rugby shirts and, I am pretty sure, flats. So I can't really begrudge the youngsters their leggings, but it is very apparent to me that that is a merry-go-round one can only ride once, and I've already had my turn.

Bring me another diet Coke and my cane, please, Missy.

Blogging for the third day in a row, non-chart edition

2009-11-07T17:36:00.002-05:00

As Andrea noted, blogging is hard. My mom is participating in that write-a-novel-in-one-month thing this month, so it's pretty embarassing that I am having a hard time writing a blog post on this, my third straight day of blogging. But that's why the glib chart form was invented:

In: The health care floor debate

Five Minutes Ago: Election coverage

Out: People sawing their own limbs off

In: Preachy vegan yoga instructors

Five Minutes Ago: Doctors who specialize in "spirituality and health"

Out: Evangelicals

In: Blogging every day

Five Minutes Ago: Watching less TV

Out: Regular exercise

Whence cometh the popularity of "douchebag"?

2009-11-06T17:46:00.001-05:00

A few years ago I met my friend T's husband, G, who is a good guy and who uses the word "douchebag" a lot. That was a word I had not heard since middle school, but I thought G pulled it off quite well; it sounded so dated it was fresh again--like babies named Sadie or Otis.

G's use of "douchebag" was immortalized in a fictionalized version of G who appeared in a book written by a friend of G's from college. While I think the fictional portrayal was supposed to be kind of negative, the G character was my favorite one in the book. "Douchebag" set him apart from the angsty self-absorption of the other characters.

I started using "douchebag" and its variants now and again after meeting G and reading about Fictional G, but I thought of it as a quirk I was stealing from him. (I figured he wouldn't know because he lives elsewhere.) It has a lot of good applications: you can use it in the way you once would have used other middle-school insults, like "gay" or "retarded," which themselves should not come back into circulation. It's less harsh than "dumbass" or "dickhead," and can be used as an adjective ("douchey.") I think of it as connoting the culture of the dumb, pretentious but not evil, probably drunk, aging frat boy.

Now all of a sudden it's everywhere. There's a video about douchebags reclaiming the word on BoingBoing, and a response on DoubleX critiquing the imprecise use of the term in the video. Can I give credit to G? Fictional G? Me and others who stole it from G and Fictional G? Or is this one of those things, like the popularity of names like Sadie and Otis, that everybody thinks up together and then is annoyed that other people thought of it too?

Big news!

2009-11-05T13:18:00.001-05:00

Since I missed Nov. 1-4, might as well make up for it now. I am squeaking in under the wire on accomplishing my major New Year's Resolution for this year: I got a new job! Aww, yeah. Here are the highlights of the new job, phrased vaguely:

1. I will not have to bill my time anymore. (FREEDOM!)
2. It's new! (YAY!)
3. I already know at least some of the people I will work with, and like them. (Can't beat that, right?)
4. I BELIEVE the hours will be fairly reasonable. (JOY!)
5. I think the organizational culture and the types of work will be more to my liking. (INTERESTING!)
6. Better lunch options in that 'hood. (LUNCH!)

Where the Wild Things Are: Liked it!

2009-11-05T13:13:00.002-05:00

St. Scobie's Mock Whiskey has alerted me to the fact that November is, apparently, Blog Posting Month. It seems apt that I should start a month of posting every day by not posting for 4 days, so here I am! Gonna post every day!

Might as well start with my follow-up to my last post, nearly two weeks ago, in which I optimistically said I would post again after I had seen Where the Wild Things Are.

Happily, my nervousness about the potential for book ruination was for naught: I thought Where the Wild Things Are was awesome. It's certainly quite different from the book, but that was true to such an extent that it almost seemed like an entirely different story, which sometimes reminded me of Where the Wild Things Are (the book). The movie captured the nearly bipolar feeling of being a pre-teen: one moment running around like a joyful maniac, the next moment collapsing in world-ending tears. Many of the negative reviews I've read have said it was too psychoanalysis-ish, but I didn't find that jarring. Maybe it's just me, but I spent a lot of time as a kid thinking about my relationships with people--maybe more so than I do now, even, because when you're younger, other peoples' motivations are more mysterious. (Like the motivations of monsters, maybe.)

I don't know if this is another compliment or a caveat, but I think watching the movie made me regress a bit. After it was over I had a near tantrum about the prospect of, like, biking home. Which is not really that bad. Consider yourself warned.

Where the Wild Things Are pre-review

2009-10-23T17:59:00.002-04:00

I'm going to see Where the Wild Things Are tonight and I'm NERVOUS. This is an unusual feeling to have before a movie (normally I'm just psyched to get to eat candy), but the stakes here are high: I fear that if I don't like the movie it might ruin one of the greatest children's books of all time for me. In fact, when I first saw previews for the movie I swore I would not see it for this very reason. But the other week I went to see The September Issue (worthwhile, btw) and got there insanely early, and watched the programming they put on for people who get there insanely early. It was an interview with Maurice Sendak about how much he liked the movie, maybe even MORE than the book, he said. So, I felt like, if Maurice Sendak likes it then I should give it a try. But still ... nervous. Will report back later.

Dear DoubleX, Hire me as your advice columnist

2009-10-19T12:47:00.001-04:00

Friend or Foe, the advice column on Slate's lady-centric spinoff, DoubleX, is the worst advice column I can recall reading. This is saying something, because I am a junkie; I consume advice columns in bulk. (In case you were wondering, thet best ones are, in this order: Carolyn Hax, Miss Manners, Cary Tennis (Since You Asked on Salon), Dear Prudence, Savage Love, The Name Lady (ParentDish), and Dear Amy).

The idea behind the column, focusing on friendships rather than romantic relationships, is great--it fills a niche that I dont think any other column focuses on, and it makes sense on a website for chicks. But there are two major problems, one surmountable, one not.

The fixable: the author (Lucinda Rosenfeld) bases her answers on HUGE unstated assumptions about the letters she's responding to. Recently she got into a kerfluffle with commenters after she insinuated that a woman who said she'd been roofied at a bar had screwed up somehow, and said that she should not have expected her friends to come pick her up from the hospital. She admitted in a response to the pissed-off readers that she had assumed, based on the fact that the letter-writer said her friends were "angry" at her the next day, that the woman must have asked unreasonable favors of them before. But in the answer itself she didn't say that; instead she said that the friends "must think you're lying" about having been drugged, and snidely commented "Only you know the truth."

If the author thought maybe the woman was lying, presumably that would be an important fact to note and discuss in the column. Relegating it to a parenthetical snark is just bizarre, unless the point is to sound a edgily bitchy, in which case I think that's just a deranged approach to advice column-writing. (For an excellent example of how to write a column that points out the holes in the letter-writer's story and talks about them intelligently, see this recent Carolyn Hax masterpiece.)

Which brings me to the problem I dont think can be solved: the answer the author gives to "Friend or Foe?" is basically always "Foe." (Or maybe "Friend, but keep in mind that men are more important than your female friends.") In the roofie column, she said that it would be a boyfriend's responsibility to come get the drugged woman from the hospital, but not a friend's. This makes me quite sad for Ms. Rosenfeld (and her friends). Why write a column about friendship if you think it's basically a bankrupt institution?

DoubleX editors: If you decide to flip the script, I would be overjoyed to write an advice column about friendship that does not assume friendship is a big farce.

Modern-day dilemma

2009-10-14T11:28:00.002-04:00

Should I "hide" updates from my few conservative Facebook "friends" because it raises my blood pressure to have the parade of baby pictures interrupted by "Why would I want the Government to take over healthcare? What will we do when they bankrupt it? Oh, that's right, just print more Obama bucks!"? Or should I keep responding with half-snarky-half-trying-to-convince-them-of-the-error-of-their-ways comments because I live in an insular little bubble of lefties and Facebook is one of my few connections to those Sarah Palin would call "real Americans"?

I am not a cool biker so I might as well get a kickstand

2009-10-07T13:46:00.008-04:00

I never really tried to be a cool biker, anyway. My commuter bike (both versions, pre- and post-Bike Theft of 2009) has thickish tires, a very upright stance, and a rack on the back to which I affix my purse or grocery bags or whatever. And I bike in my work clothes, or a skirt, and flip-flops, not form-fitting spandex. So, biking, I look basically like Elmira Gulch, the mean neighbor/Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz (except less intimidating).

But when I bought my new commuter bike, post-theft, I made one little gesture towards coolness--I didn't get a kickstand. NOBODY except tiny children has a kickstand as far as I can tell, so I figured I could hack it without one, and get one or two cool points while I was at it.

Well, not having a kickstand blows. As far as I'm concerned the people who don't have them (i.e., everybody) are doing the equivalent of that crazy "diaper-free baby" movement. The no-diaper people apparently pay so much intense, constant attention to their babies that they can read their "tells" for when they need to go, and they go hold them over the toilet, or their compost pile or something, at those key moments.

Likewise, apparently everybody else is able to get in tune with their bike enough to know whether they have leaned it up against something in a secure fashion, or whether it is about to fall down.

Great for them, but I am the bad parent/biker who forgets to pay close enough attention, or has has not bonded with the baby/bike enough to understand its moods. Hence, my bike is constantly falling over, causing me to curse at it and probably stunt its emotional growth for life. (At least it does not poop on me.) Well no more! Kickstand it is. And, while I'm at it, I may also get a basket with which to steal small dogs.

John and Kate plus the end of the world

2009-10-05T16:12:00.002-04:00

The "people.com latest news" thing on my Google homepage has been totally overrun by John and Kate--he threatened to sue TLC if they keep filming the show, she took off her wedding ring, he withdrew $200,000 from their account without telling her, he says she's stealing money, she says their kids are miserable and it's his fault. Ick, meh, good lord, yuck, depressing.

Many moons ago I thought the world was ending because Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were breeding, but I now think that was probably wishful thinking, in terms of the excitement level we can expect from eschatological events. (Watch me use my thesaurus!) It will probably be not so much one big exciting occurrence as a long downward slide of individually discouraging events which, taken collectively, will add up to the doom of civilization. Congrats, John & Kate, you're my new Signs of the End Times!

I have decided what I think about the Roman Polanski situation

2009-09-30T17:35:00.002-04:00

I went back and forth on this one because there are so many angles. He raped a 13-year-old! But--he had a plea deal for no jail time, but then the judge had an ex parte communication with a prosecutor and decided to throw him in the hoosgaw anyway! But--that doesn't justify fleeing the jurisdiction! But--his wife was murdered when she was pregnant! But--he thinks he can get away with anything just because he's famous! But--his mother died in the Holocaust! But--he raped a child! But--the now grown-up victim doesn't want him to go to jail!

I decided that I think the last thing is the most important: the woman who was the 13-year-old victim has forgiven him and moved on with her life, thinks he understands that what he did was wrong, and doesn't want him to go to jail. The response to this is that crimes are committed not just against the victim but against society/the state, and that it's up to society/the state, not the victim, to decide the appropriate punishment. But the criminal justice system does, at least sometimes, take victims' positions into account--that's the point of the "victims' rights movement," which allows victims of crimes (or their families) to speak at sentencings and parole hearings. It's true that there is also a movement towards prosecuting domestic violence even when the victim does not cooperate. I think that's a generally good development, because it makes the statement that domestic violence is wrong and will be punished regardless of whether the abuser is able to pressure the victim into recanting or changing her story.

Bringing charges when the victim doesn't want them brought is, in some ways, paternalistic--it's basically premised on the idea that the victim is not able to decide what's in her best interests. But I think that is an ickiness worth dealing with, in fairly limited circumstances. It is reasonable to say that domestic violence should be prosecuted without victim cooperation because domestic violence victims are likely to systematically support underprosecution of their abusers, and that underprosecution is bad for society as a whole.

I do not think this same rationale applies to Roman Polanski's rape victim. She is not in some kind of long-term abusive relationship with Polanski such that he is able to pressure her into blaming herself rather than him. She's a well-adjusted grown-up with 3 kids of her own who hasn't seen Polanski in 30+ years. If she doesn't want him to go to jail, I dont think everybody else should second-guess her.

Committing to living life in the present by watching TV

2009-09-27T19:51:00.006-04:00

You know that magical-thinking sensation you sometimes get when cleaning the house that once you finish you will be done with for good and won't ever have to do it again? When I read Entertainment Weekly's Fall TV Preview a few weeks ago, I had that feeling, about work--I was looking forward to the time when I would be done with work and could really focus on other things, like TV, exercise, and blogging.

In the real world, I probably won't be done with work until at least 2042, and by then TV and the internet will be obsolete. Exercise will probably still be around, so I can hold off on that for now, but I should probably get on the TV and blogging while there's still time.

In that vein, I watched the new episodes of Gossip Girl, Dollhouse, and Bored to Death this weekend. Scripted TV, how I have missed you!

Of the three, I surprisngly found Gossip Girl to be the most affecting. The kids all headed off to college, and as difficult as you might think it would be to create convincing First Day of School nervous excitement for characters who act like alcoholic 37-year-olds, they basically pulled it off. Blair moved into the dorms at NYU (instead of her gajillionaire boyfriend Chuck's love nest) so that she could establish herself as the Queen Bee of the freshmen. But the plan backfired when B's Upper East Side culture clashed with college-kid crunchiness: nobody came to her sushi and saketini party because they were watching Vanessa's documentary about her organic community garden. And, Dan (Dan! the one from Brooklyn!) vetoed her signature accessory, telling her, "No headbands in college." Ow! The pain of being the reject is not dulled by having a catered cocktail party all to yourself.

Dollhouse was full of sexy mysteriousness, as usual, but I found that I could barely keep up with the ongoing plot arcs because I hadn't thought about them since last year. I do love Joss Whedon's refusal to dumb down his plots for people who aren't paying attention, but it sure does make you feel dumb then you are not paying attention.

Bored to Death, which stars Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson, and Zach Galifianakis (the cousin of my idol Carolyn Hax's ex-husband Nick, if you were wondering), is about a writer (Schwartzman) who poses as a private detective in order to combat his ennui, or something. It was funny, but the most impressive thing about it was that it was the only show set in New York I've ever seen that really felt like it was in New York. New York kind of freaks me out, so that may not be a good thing in the end, but it was impressive nonetheless.

So that was a productive weekend! I am now going to direct my newfound energies towards watching The Amazing Race.

Thanks, Julie/Julia

2009-08-11T22:12:00.002-04:00

If you are a loyal reader (Mom), you may recall that several that a few months ago I discovered that The Devil Wears Prada is a terrible movie to watch if you are experiencing job angst. Well, Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci heard my cry, and made Julie & Julia to soothe me.

Background (WHINE ALERT! ): I have not had a great week. I found out that I didn't get a job that I really wanted and kind of thought I might get. They said they liked me, which was nice, but that they got applications from many people with way more experience, on account of the economy apparently. So. Also, I turned 32, which is not 95 and I would way rather be 32 than dead, or 22, for that matter, and I had a great birthday (thanks, ladies!). BUT, 32 is the age Sally is in When Harry Met Sally when she says "I'm going to be 40" and Harry says "In 8 years," and in my youthful folly I always thought of Sally at that point in the movie as being Pretty Old. In any case the combination of things was Not.Great.

So I went to see Julie & Julia, and It.Was.Great! Notwithstanding all the cooking, it is about two ladies in their 30s who are floundering about, trying to figure out what to do with themselves. Meryl Streep's Julia Child is a crazy tall, crazy-talking American who loves Paris but sludges through hat-making and bridge lessons before discovering her true calling at cooking school (at 36!) Amy Adams, as Julie Powell, is totally relatable as a lost 30ish cubicle dweller with a half-written novel and a sense she might never amount to anything, who starts a blog about cooking her way through The Art of French Cooking to give herself a project to complete. The movie makes you empathize (so slap me, Justice Sotomayor!) with them both so much that you want to applaud when Julia's cookbook finally gets a publisher, and don't resent Julie at all when her blog becomes a huge success and she gets a book and movie deal.

So I feel fortified. I have several more years in which to figure out how to turn my passion for eating Tombstone pizza on the couch and talking back to the television into a resoundingly successful career. Bon apetit!

Freaky message from Congressman Gohmert

2009-07-29T11:22:00.002-04:00

Once in a fit of pique I sent Congressman Louie Gohmert an email as a "constituent" after he was quoted saying DC residents didnt need representation because all the members of Congress represented them. (Of course his online comment-submission form did not accept DC zip codes, so I had to find a Texas one to use.) So I sometimes get these messages from him. This one is especially bizarre format-wise--it comes from an unknown email address and has no subject line. More freaky is its content, which seems to have been written by a tin-foil-hat-wearing staffer who pounded it out after an exhausting all-night stint reading birther websites and stockpiling fuel for the coming invasion of the UN black helicopters:

"Furthermore, once the government controls, rations, and pays for healthcare, it will then have the right to monitor everything you purchase, eat, and physically do to see if it approves or if you should be punished for causing additional health risks."

Good Christ, this country is doomed.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <>
Date: Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:52 AM
Subject:
To:

If you are having trouble viewing this E-newsletter, please visit [http://gohmert.congressnewsletter.net/mail/util.cfm?gpiv=2100044173.1842.265&gen=1] for the Web Version.
US Congressman Louie Gohmert, Proudly Serving the First District of Texas

Dear [REDACTED BECAUSE OF MY FAKE ANONYMITY],

The Administration and liberal leadership in Congress are ramming through nation-ending, liberty-usurping, and economically-bankrupting policies that violate the fundamental values on which this country was built. Now, they are at it again with their plan for government takeover of healthcare, which is nothing less than a declaration of war on American families, seniors, businesses, and taxpayers.

*Government takeover of healthcare will require rationing services, denying lifesaving treatments, wait-lists for necessary care spanning months and even years, a loss in medical specialization, and stifling the innovation that makes our healthcare the best in the world.* This takeover is estimated to cost our country more than $1 TRILLION, and even the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Douglas Elmendorf stated that rather than curbing expenses, the Majority's health care proposal "significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs." Additionally, an independent study conducted by the Lewin Group predicts that 114 million Americans will be forced out of their current healthcare coverage, and more than 4.7 million jobs could be lost as a result of taxes on businesses that cannot afford to provide health insurance coverage.

Furthermore, once the government controls, rations, and pays for healthcare, it will then have the right to monitor everything you purchase, eat, and physically do to see if it approves or if you should be punished for causing additional health risks. For the sake of this country's future and progress, we cannot afford to go down this road. *It is imperative that we seek true healthcare reform that re-establishes and protects the vital patient-doctor relationship,* *leaving healthcare decisions up to YOU and YOUR physician*, *and lets you keep the money you need to pay for it.*

Please be assured that as you fight to make the voice of reason heard, I will continue to fight to preserve the liberty and free enterprise in Washington, D.C. *Here are just a few ways that I am making known in our nation's capital the common sense of East Texas residents like yourself:*

· *Cosponsor of H.R. 615 [link 1] -* If Congress insists on forcing this healthcare abomination onto American citizens, then those who vote in favor of it should be required to step up and become the first customers of the disastrous government program they have created.

· *Signer of Let Freedom Ring's *Responsible Healthcare Reform Pledge* [link 2]* - I refuse to vote in favor of a health care reform bill that has not been given an appropriate amount of time for personal review by both Members of Congress and American citizens. I will oppose any legislation that lets the federal government snatch power and control away from patients and their doctors.

· *Promoting Better Solutions through my *Patient-controlled Healthcare Protection* Plan: *The healthcare plan that I recently unveiled empowers patients and gives you access to quality, timely, and affordable healthcare coverage you need, deserve, and control. It also ensures that seniors have complete control over their healthcare decisions and the costs are covered.

· *Speaking Out in Congress and on National TV: *Here are videos of just a few statements I've made on the House floor and to national audiences via CSPAN:

- *VIDEO: Gohmert: Government Takeover of Health Care is War on Small Businesses and Workers* [link 3]

- *VIDEO: Gohmert: Let Patients Control Health Care, Not Government [link 4]*

If you'd like to make sure Washington gets the message that you don't want government bureaucrats and insurance companies taking over your healthcare, you can:

· *Call Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid through the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 *or *call President Obama at (202) 456-1111 *to tell them you want the government to stay out of decisions that should be made between you and your doctor. You can also send emails, letters, and faxes.

· *Get friends, family, and your local community involved *by encouraging them to contact their Representatives and Senators. Organize local events or petitions to raise public awareness.

· *Contact media outlets, like talk radio, newspapers, or TV stations,* and pressure them to talk about the threat government-takeover poses to individual control of healthcare.

· *Encourage support for opponents of elected officials who vote for socialized healthcare. *

We must persevere and stand up against this threat that quite literally affects the lives of every American. Keep the faith, and keep fighting, writing, and calling until all of Washington gets the message, and a majority there, once again, represents the principles on which this great nation was founded.

May God bless you, and may God continue to bless America.

With Kindest Regards,

[image = http://gohmert.congressnewsletter.net/images/user_images/bluelouie2.jpg]

10 years later

2009-07-08T20:16:00.001-04:00

I first moved to DC 10 years ago this week. (I did not remain here for the entire intervening 10 years, but still.) When I realized this today I did not feel surprised, in a "how time flies" kind of way: it does seem like it's been a long time. And really, despite my current dissatisfaction with some things in my life (my seemingly neverending job search), I feel pretty good about my situation compared to my 21-year-old self's situation. I'll put it in a quasi-chart form!

Then: Boyfriend who made me feel bad about myself. Not necessarily on purpose, but in lurve there is a heightened standard of care. (Yeah I made a law joke. So sue me. That was another one! HiLAWrious! Will stop.)

Now: Mr. TA--makes me happy to be around him. (Aww.)

Then: Knew nobody in DC; would go to coffee shops and look wistfully at other young people, wondering if it would be weird if I just introduced myself. (Answer: Yes.)

Now: Have lots of lovely friends. Would like more time to see them, but that is a much better problem to have.

Then: Lived with near-stranger who turned out to be a bigot and kind of an asshole, and who got a new roommate to replace me a month before I moved out, I mean not just found a roommate but let the new roommate stay in my bed when I was out of town with the plan that the new roommate would crash on the couch for the next month, all without asking or telling me, and then turned against the new roommate and kicked her out, leaving me in the middle because the new roommate was actually nice. And also, she ate only protein, and our apartment had no windows that opened, so it always smelled like meat, mixed with the fumes from the nail salon downstairs. (Also with Josie the cat, who sometimes went to the bathroom inappropriately outside the litter box, annoying my roommate to no end.)

Now: Live with Mr. TA! Who is great! (And with Josie, who has kept up the inappropriate bathroom thing.)

Then: Gotta say, DC, you were non-ideal. I mean there is something to be said for a combination of gritty/dangerous and frumpy, but. Actually, is there?

Now: OK gentrification is bad, and all, but there are way better food options now, and people dress better, which is nice on the eyeballs. But people still do not look as nice as in NY, which I appreciate because it makes me feel cuter.

Then: Mind-numbingly boring 9 to 5 job. Applied to law school basically to have something with which to occupy myself.

Now: Stressful job with long hours. Obviously there must be a balance there somewhere, still working on that.

Then: Clinton

Now: Obama

So one can feel pretty good about most of that.

The Devil Wears Pin-Striped Suits

2009-06-22T09:33:00.002-04:00

Note to self: after working all weekend in a haze of work-related angst, do not try to unwind by watching The Devil Wears Prada. From that perspective, instead of being about pretty clothes and a hilarious/terrifying performance by Meryl Streep, it is an hour and a half of awful messages about work/life balance, such as: You must choose between being good at your job and having outside relationships. If you are really dedicated to being successful and impressive at work, you will always wear highly fashionable, very expensive clothes, and also will not eat very much so you can fit into them. You can quit your job, but only once you have proven to your asshole boss that you are awesome at it and that you are quitting because you are too good for it, not just because you want to live a reasonable life outside of work. Wahh.

Post Hunt VICTORY! (Atonement for Peeps Diorama travesty)

2009-05-17T22:21:00.002-04:00

MY TEAM WON THE POST HUNT!* Mr. TA and I only decided to participate in this scavenger hunt/brainteaser game last night. I thought I would be useless because I'm crappy at crosswords. But the stars aligned, (and one of our team members had done a similar puzzle race in Miami 6 or 7 times), and we came in first! I even contributed on several of the legs (by knowing that you can send a text message to a 5-digit number, and noticing that R2D2 and C3PO are map coordinates.)

This is now my third major life victory, following the Care Bears coloring contest in 2nd grade (prize: a large Pizza Hut pizza), and the quasi-militaristic drill competition at dance team camp (prize: a ribbon, and Tiger Paws glory). The award here was definitely better ($2000 split six ways!), and it was also probably the only time I will be photographed with one of those huge checks. Yayyyy!! I now officially forgive the Washington Post for the miscarriage of justice that was the Peeps Diorama contest.

*This news is much too awesome to worry about destroying what remains of my moth-eaten fake anonymity.

I am happy to buy you a going-away beer at a non-glittery DC location, Justice Souter

2009-05-05T19:02:00.001-04:00

I am happy for Justice Souter that he's retiring so he can go hiking. I would not mind doing that myself. But why must the articles about him always say how he dislikes DC's "glittery social scene" as though it's self-evident that that is what DC is all about? It is certainly possible to live here without constantly going to cocktail parties, appearing on Sunday talk shows, and schmoozing with elected officials. For example, I have managed to avoid all those things for the last 6 years without even trying very hard. (Without trying at all.) (If anybody wants to drag me to a fancy cocktail party, or have me appear on a Sunday talk show, I would probably not object.) In fact, you can even go hiking in DC. I have gotten lost in the woods behind my house on more than one occasion. There are even deer back there!

Indeed, I have been having a resurgence of DC pride lately. This is partly because our house has probably lost so much value that we can never leave so we might as well look on the bright side, and partly because we saw State of Play last weekend. Yes, that's the movie more widely known as The Movie In Which Russell Crowe Lives In Mount Pleasant! And while parts of the movie had very sketchy DC geography--a girl walks down the street in Adams Morgan and then gets on the metro in Virginia, come now--the Mt. Pleasant parts were right on. Russell lives above Pfeiffer's Hardware and Heller's Bakery, and they really filmed in that apartment, so you can see the Heller's sign both in the establishing shots and from the inside-the-apartment shots. And, he meets a shadowy Blackwater-type informant in the bus stop across the street, and it's really the bus stop!

Anyway, I think Justice Souter might have liked DC better if he'd lived in Mt. Pleasant, is all. If you are a secret self-Googler and are reading this, Justice, I am happy to have you over for a beer, or meet you at Wonderland or something.

Rage, rage against the announcement of the Peep Diorama semifinalists

2009-04-11T10:37:00.004-04:00

The Washington Post has announced the semifinalists of the Peep Diorama contest, and our Peeple Tunnel of Doom is nowhere to be found.

Did they not get the reference? Apparently they did, because a Purple Tunnel of Peeps is semifinalist # 34. Which, no offense to Sarah Cochran of College Park and Peter Rothschild of Washington, but ours has dozens of individual peeps with googly eyeballs, tiny purple tickets, and hand-crotched peep scarves and hats. And tunnel lighting. And a peep on a ladder posting a "PEEP" poster with Obama's Face on a Peep Body. And an entirely separate inauguration scene above the tunnel, featuring a peep-bodied Roberts flubbing the oath for a peep-bodied Obama on a Peepbotron. And the image of the Capitol which they sent to actual purple ticket holders in their consolation package.

Both my belief in journalistic integrity and my dream of abandoning the law for a career in peep art are shattered. At least we still have the diorama.

Yoga

2009-03-25T17:50:00.001-04:00

I went to yoga at lunch today. This is a bigger operation than you would think. Getting ready to go and leaving the office made me feel like one of the guys in this article (which is about solitary confinement, which I could NOT handle and would definitely turn psychotic, as many do apparently). Not the solitary part, though (my office may not be very social but that comparison would be a touch overboard)--I felt like the guy who escaped from prison, thus precipitating his stay in solitary. He successfully implemented a very elaborate escape plan: he stole a manual about the prison's "microwave-detection" security system, studied it for months and then returned it, got someone else to create a diversion in the yard, turned a picnic table on its side to scale the fence, cut through razor wire using a tool he'd fashioned, used his research about the security system to follow an "invisible path" through the lasers or whatever, and presto! got out, and called a cab. (Someone turned him in a month later.) Likewise, I changed clothes in the corner of my office, resulting in an outfit of yoga pants, boots with no socks (forgot to bring any), a tank top and my wool turtleneck (forgot a sweatshirt), a helmet and a yoga bag, then left rapidly, trying to look normal so no-one would think, Why is she leaving in the middle of the day with a helmet and yoga bag? (Upon reflection, I was less prepared than the escape guy.)

Then when I got to yoga I switched drastically into feeling like one of the blank "dolls" in Joss Whedon's new show Dollhouse (which is improving, you should give it a chance). The "dolls" get implanted with other peoples' personalities for "engagements" like being hot dates or infiltrating religious cults, but when they're not working they live in a blank, personality-less, very Duh state in a kind of spa-like environment, and what do they do all day? Yoga. Constant yoga. They wear yoga clothes, too. It totally makes sense, that is what you would do if your brain had been wiped clean--in fact, that is the state yoga is sort of supposed to help you achieve, I think.

Peeple Tunnel of Doom (aka the best frakking peep diorama ever)

2009-03-16T20:47:00.004-04:00

My friends and I created a masterpiece for the Washington Post's Peep Diorama contest. It's called the Peeple Tunnel of Doom, after the peeps (ha!) who never got to the inauguration because they were stuck in line in the I-395 tunnel under the Capitol. We made the tunnel with the crazy-eyed peeps wearing hand-crotched scarves and hats, and holding peeple tickets; the trampled peep on the left side; the ceiling lights that actually light up; the exit signs (I made those!); and the peep on a ladder putting up a PEEP poster. Then we went crazy and also made an inauguration scene on the top of the shoebox, complete with a packed Silver Ticket area, a nearly-empty Peeple Ticket area, a Peepbotron with images of Obama and Roberts (and closed-captioning of the flubbed oath), and a picture of the Capitol which is one of the ones they sent to the (human) purple ticketholders to apologize for the whole tunnel of doom thing. The above-ground scene is not meant to be an accurate rendering, but rather the inauguration as the peeps in the tunnel imagined it, in their desperate fever-dream state.

Do you think there's an untapped market for disgruntled lawyers who make DRASTICALLY AWESOME peep dioramas?

This Movie Is Just Not That Into Having a Point

2009-03-07T09:55:00.003-05:00

He's Just Not That Into You has the structure of an dialectic between passionate, but very drunk, people: the Realist and the Cynic.

The Realist starts out with a heartfelt tirade about how women are so willing to make excuses for men when they act like assholes, when in fact men are dogs who all just want to sleep with Scarlett Johannsen. The movie demonstrates this point by having its main female characters make cringe-inducing excuses for the assholes in their lives. The adorable GiGi (Ginnifer Goodwin) becomes an adorable quasi-stalker after going out on a single date with a blah real estate agent named Colin (Matt Dillon's brother, I think) who actually likes Scarlett Johannsen, while Beth (Jennifer Anniston), who wants to get married, stays with her boyfriend Neil (Ben Affleck) even though he's made totally clear that he's going to marry her, and Janine (Jennifer Connolly) obsesses over her home renovations while the college boyfriend she forced into marrying her, Ben (Bradley Cooper) lusts after, of course, Scarlett Johnansen. The Realist belches loudly and rests her case.

The Romantic cannot bear this, however; she feels that the Realist is being not only one-sided, but fairly sexist. Swaying slightly, she stands up, forgets to mention the sexism issue, and gives a rousing, if incoherent, speech about how if women are fooling themselves into thinking there's a chance with some asshole, at least they're maintaining hope rather than being cynical and treating the opposite sex like objects, man. On the movie plane, Gigi delivers this speech to Alex (not sure who this actor is), the bartender who had been channeling the Realist by explaining how if a man wants to see a woman he'll make it happen and is thus rejecting Gigi.

The Realist cracks another beer and counters that, yeah, but still men are definitely dogs because they definitely all want to sleep with Scarlett Johannsen, because she has boobs the size of planets and acts so vapid she seems to be sedated. Whaddaya say to that, huh, Romantic? Ben sleeps with Scarlett. Then, in order to really make the Realist's point, he tells his wife that he slept with someone but that he doesn't want to get a divorce, but then he starts to get it on with Scarlett again, in his office, then sticks her in the closet when his wife arrives to try to save their marriage, and then gets it on with his wife instead while Scarlett hides. Scarlett wears Little Bo Peep-type dresses and undergarmets in order to emphasize her planet-boobs, and acts vapid to the point of being sexily comatose.

The Romantic makes huge dismissive gestures with her arms and raises her voice to make her point: Yeah, planet-boobs, etc., OK but Scarlett is hurt in this scenario too, what with the hiding in the closet! And, it's just not realistic to think that women will stand for this kind of crap forever! Whereupon Scarlett huffs out of the closet, Beth breaks up with Neil because he won't marry her, Janine throws out Ben for being a lying sack of shit, and Gigi moves on from Alex.

The Romantic isn't done yet, though. Pounding her fist on the table and knocking her drink over for emphasis, she says that true love really does exist! Sometimes men who have seemed like assholes really just needed that one special woman to unlock their inner teddy bear, just like in the movies! The Realist tries to interrupt--Scarlett Johannsen! Perpetuating unrealistic--but she is no match for the Romantic's sheer volume. In a whirlwind, Beth and Neil get back together and he reverses course on his heretofore consistently held no-marriage philosophy; Janine kicks Ben out but she still believes in love and is starting to date again; and Alex, the cool cynic, realizes that he's head-over-heels in lurve with Gigi. Swept up in it all, some peripheral characters--Connor the real-estate agent and Drew Barrymore, who has been hanging out around the edges of the movie, get together, and Scarlett Johnannsen goes to India on a yoga retreat (good riddance)!

The Realist gives up and goes to the bathroom, and the Romantic declares victory, ends the movie, and passes out on the couch.

Late-breaking revelation re: The Real World

2009-02-23T21:51:00.001-05:00

I was watching The Real World this week, and had a mind-blowing revelation. They haven't changed the tagline since the show aired in 1992 (either that or they've come back around to it because now it has retro charm):

This is the true story
of seven strangers
picked to live in a house
and have their lives taped
Find out what happens
when people stop being polite
and start getting real

"Stop being polite and start getting real"?* Let's diagram it:

Real = not polite
Not polite = rude
Thus, Rude = Real

I only just realized that The Real World may have originated the false dichotomy that has turned society* into a bunch of assholes.

*Also weird because nobody has started off by being polite on that show since Season 1--now they get to the house, strip naked and get in the hot tub, and introduce themselves to the other roommates with racial epithets.

**By "society" I mean "the people who are cast in reality TV shows."

You should really watch Battlestar Galactica

2009-02-17T11:09:00.001-05:00

I am mulling over the reasons for the infrequency of my blogging, and when I come to any conclusions I will share them with you. (I'm sure the problem is contained in that very sentence, actually, but I still can't put my finger on it.)

But in the meantime, a public service announcement: You absolutely must watch Battlestar Galactica. In case you haven't seen it, it's a post-apocolyptic outer-space show about the remnant of humanity left over after humanoid-looking robots, the Cylons, nuke their planets. So it's not super cheerful, but it's got some of the best storytelling and acting out there, especially Mary McDonnell (the mom in Donnie Darko), as the totally relatable and also terrifyingly unitary-executivish President, who may also be the prophesied "dying leader" fated to bring her people to a new home, and Edward James Olmos as the gruff, possibly alcoholic Admiral-with-a-heart-of-gold. Right now the last half-dozen or so episodes are airing, and I'm pretty sure they're going to reveal the actual fate of humanity. Which, again, I'm not promising it will be cheerful, but at least we'll know what we're in for.

Resolutions

2008-12-31T11:59:00.001-05:00

2008

Last year my only publicly-announced New Year's resolution was to be better at Scrabble. I think I did pretty well at that--I played Scrabbulous on Facebook avidly for awhile, and transitioned from the basic "try to find a place for this cool word" system into the more advanced "look at where the high-letter squares are and see what I can play there" approach. My passion for the game dwindled a little after a few months, at which time I switched to Scramble (Facebook's version of Boggle), which is less time-consuming because each round only lasts 3 minutes. I think I'm improving on that, too, and it's a word game so it's close enough. So, I will check this one off.

I know I made some other resolutions last year, but I recall only vaguely what they were. Well, one was to be more confident and speak up more at work, and I think I accomplished that in one fell swoop the other week when I quasi-yelled back at the senior partner when he was yelling and swearing at me. (That is a story for a work-related blog, which this definitely is not. I don't like my job but I don't want to be one of those lame "I got fired for blogging" news items.)

2009

So, to introduce a higher level of accountability, this year I will set forth my resolutions so that I remember what they are. Drum roll...

1. New job. Need need need new job. Must get new job. New job!!
2. More regular exercise. This may entail joining a gym, I gather.
3. Clean out my filing cabinets, and the storage areas in the basement.
4. Get stuff around the house fixed. (This one is almost done already--we have hired someone to start doing stuff starting possibly Friday. 25% done!)

Not particularly exciting or original, but whaddareyagonnado. Happy New Year!

Tripp

2008-12-30T11:31:00.001-05:00

Why is Bristol Palin, new mama to baby Tripp, sticking with her mom's pattern of naming boy babies one-syllable words starting with "Tr" that are English words but not traditional human-being names? Unlike Track and Trig, whose meanings (running fast, triangle-related math) are positive, or at least tough, "Tripp" connotes falling down because you forgot to tie your shoelaces. However, overall I think it's not a bad name--it's unique without being annoying to pronounce, and in a world where Aidan and Jayden are the #1 and #2 baby boy names, that is saying a lot. Congrats, Bristol.

My hometown, swank-ified

2008-12-29T11:31:00.002-05:00

For Christmas I went back to Grinnell, where nothing ever changes that much.

But it had changed! And I'm not talking about the old Wal-Mart closing and a bigger Wal-Mart opening (which also happened). The heart (or maybe the liver, or the appendix) of the town had changed: the bar went upscale. It wasn't actually called The Bar, it was The Pub (The Bar was the old name of the other bar a few blocks away.) The Pub was a basement with a concrete floor, and the bathrooms had plywood doors that didn't really latch. My ex-boyfriend almost got beat up there because he ignored the nuances of the rules about reserving the pool table by putting quarters on the edge. I hadn't been there for awhile, but never considered the possibility that it wasn't still there.

But the last night we were in town, we went out to eat at the fancy new restaurant--a New Orleans-themed one, with attractive lighting and some over-$20-entrees. After dinner we went downstairs to have a drink at the adjunct bar. It had low, leather-esque sofas and a martini menu. I don't think I ever would have realized that it was the former Pub unless someone had told me. In fact, the layout was exactly the same. (More to the point, it was in the same location.) It wasn't just the carpet, the paint, and the non-plywood bathroom doors that threw me--I just would never have considered the possibility that The Pub would have gotten all pimped out.

I'm a little confused as to what this all means. Is it a sign that Grinnell's self-conscious attempt to reposition its downtown as a tourist attraction is going well? An example of the general fancy-fication of the United States? (You can also get stinky cheeses in Grinnell now.) A reminder that nothing stays exactly the same? Has getting rusty at blogging made me start to write like Carrie Bradshaw?

Inauguration anxiety

2008-11-21T11:18:00.001-05:00

I am worried that inauguration weekend = New Year's Eve, in the following ways:

1. It will be cold.
2. There will be huge crowds everywhere.
3. There will be big parties, but I will not go to them, as they will be really expensive and, I suspect, possibly lame/depressing, like the New Year's Eve party Sally is at at the end of When Harry Met Sally, before Harry arrives, but still I may feel left out because I am not going to them.
4. Bars will probably charge a cover, and will be very crowded.
5. Everybody knows it is supposed to be festive and celebratory, but all those expectations may collapse in on themselves, as happens to Gary Sinise's character in Forrest Gump, when he's sitting at the bar at New Year's Eve with confetti falling on him looking like he might cry. I suppose in this case what one would be crying about would be, How long until I get disillusioned with Obama? What if he can't fix the economy after all? Gulp.

But! On the other hand, as my friends who may come to DC for inauguration* pointed out, we did spend New Year's Eve 2001-2002 in Chicago, with sub-zero temperatures, with about 15 people, many of whom got the flu, sleeping in 2 rooms in a Day's Inn, which had insane heaters we could not turn off, forcing us to open the window to counteract the heaters, resulting in alternating gale-force hot-and-cold drafts wafting across all the feverish, testy people. And we're still friends!

*I hope you guys do come! I'm sure it will be fun!

Sigh, Joe Jonas

2008-11-14T16:01:00.001-05:00

Over the last 3 years (!) of this blog's existence, I have noticed myself slowly moving away from writing about celebrity "news." This is largely because the celebrities in whom I am interested are getting older (sigh!) and their antics are thus either less antic-y and more boring (Katie Holmes, Angelina Jolie), or juts as antic-y but more depressing (Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan). There are younger celebrities whose antics still hit that sweet spot of preposterous and amusing, but! I increasingly have no idea who they are.

Take Joe Jonas. People.com tells me that he wrote a masterpiece of a public, passive-aggressive, confessional missive, sort of to his fans, but really to his ex-girlfriend, Taylor Swift:

Several things I will state with all my heart ... I never cheated on a girlfriend. It might make someone feel better to assume or imply I have been unfaithful but it is simply not true. Maybe there were reasons for a breakup. Maybe the heart moved on. Perhaps feelings changed. I am truly saddened that anything would potentially cause you to think less of me.

Ahhh, the lack of proper nouns! The "maybe"s! The vague, veiled barbs stated with "all my heart!" It's a masterpiece . . . but who the hell are Joe Jonas and Taylor Swift? My lizard brain tells me they are singers of some sort, but that pretty minimal information to get excited about.

Yo

2008-11-11T11:28:00.001-05:00

I apparently did not post on my blog a single time in October. Christ! So as to get the juices flowing, here is an eclectic assortment of updates:

1. Obama won! Which you probably know. At first I felt like perhaps we were in the last season of Roseanne, where they win the lottery, and then in the finale it is revealed that this was all the daydream of a depressed and still poor Roseanne. But it seems to be lasting! So I am very happy about that!

2. We went to Italy in October, and that was really awesome. Italy, among other things, has a lot more ads for tourist destinations than we do here--or at least the BBC and CNN International do. Based on those ads alone, I would like to go to India ("Incredible India"), Greece (no slogan, just smiling people), Malaysia ("Truly Asia"), and Croatia ("The Mediterranean as it Once Was"). The ads for Macedonia were kind of janky, so it's not at the top of my list, but if the recession continues maybe it would be a good cheap option.

3. Speaking of the recession, I am happy to see that the fashion world seems to have foreshadowed it by making the big new look for fall . . . patterned tights. About the cheapest thing you can possibly buy. I got some cute ones at Target for $12 this weekend.

4. I saw Role Models last weekend and it was GREAT. Yes, it's another "men will be boys until forced to grow up on pain of incarceration" kind of tale, but it's a well-done version of that. Also, the kid who I found annoying as McLovin' in Superbad was awesome as a very sincere, painfully awkward and younger-seeming kid into Life Action Role Play (LAIRE, I think) in this movie.

That is all.

thirtysomething

2008-09-25T22:54:00.001-04:00

It was last Saturday afternoon. I thought to myself, I've gotten a lot done today: I went to yoga, got some stuff at Whole Foods, got a pedicure, met with a financial planner, and saw our friend A's baby.

Holy. Crap. Would it be humanly possible for me to fit more yuppie activities into one 24-hour period? Only if I had done some recreational drugs or renovated something. So, yes. I am a yuppie. Not that they use that word anymore, but there it is.

Which got me thinking, now that we've finished the Wire, maybe our next TV-on-DVD obsession should be thirtysomething. Watching other yuppies navigate this decade might give me a heads-up, I think. Only to find out that thirtysomething is NOT AVAILABLE on DVD! Talk about a market breakdown. How are we to learn from history if we can't easily watch fictionalized versions of it on the boob tube?

Sarah Palin's accent

2008-09-22T12:34:00.001-04:00

Among all the other fears I have about what will happen to the world if the bad guys win the election, I must now add the risk that Minnesota accents will begin to seem sinister rather than adorable. Please god no! I love me some MinnesOtans and their cute-talking ways! But I feel it happening already--Tina Fey's "I can see Alaska from my hOuse" echos in my brain like a harbinger of the end times.

Sarah Palin

2008-09-09T11:59:00.001-04:00

I can't believe I haven't posted anything about Sarah Palin, since I think about her approximately 22 hours a day. Of course, I can't remember most of those ingeniously clever and biting insights right this second, so I will just share with you the few that are floating about at the top of my brain right now:

1. According to the NYT, the woman did not tell her own children or parents that she was pregnant with Trig until her third trimester, and even then she told her aides a week before she told her own kids, and then she didn't tell them he had Down Syndrome ever--Willow, the 14-year-old, noticed for herself after he was born. Who hides information like this from their own children? A crazy person, is who.

2. So far she is playing both sides of the woman angle to great effect--talking about her kids/PTA/hockey-mom self as though that qualifies her to be VP, and then also accusing anyone who criticizes her (and the media in general, because they might criticize her) of being sexist and/or mean for picking on her poor girlish self. This is a sticky minefield of quicksand for a man to wade into, so WHERE IS HILLARY to call her out on this crap? WHERE OH WHERE?

3. I had better donate some money to Obama now.

Brokeback biker

2008-09-02T22:39:00.001-04:00

As I may have told you via a somewhat hysterical email last week, Mr. T&A got into a bad bike accident the weekend before last and broke three vertebrae in his back. He's going to be fine, but it was a very terrifying (for me) and painful (for him) experience. I should probably write a longer account of the whole thing at some point if only because he can't remember anything for a period of several days and would like to hear the whole story, but that won't be much fun. So, I will just note a couple of things that have occurred since the accident which I find both funny and heartening, in that they involve Mr. T&A acting very much like himself:

Act I

In the hospital, the day after the accident

Mr. T&A: I need to go to the bathroom.

Nurse: OK, but you can't stand up yet, you'll have to use a bedpan.

Mr. T&A: That's OK, I don't have to go to the bathroom.

Act II

In the hospital, two days after the accident

Mr. T&A (on his Blackberry, which was the second thing he requested after underpants, to coworker): Hey, i'm not at work because i had a big accident on my bike and am in the hospital. How're things?

Act III

At home, after returning from hospital, middle of the night

Mr. T&A: Mike Tyson really beat me up.

Me (thinking this is a good joke): Hehe, yeah he did.

Mr. T&A: Wasn't I sleeping in the other room?

Me: No, your mom's in there.

Mr. T&A: But didn't I first encounter Mike Tyson in there?

Me: You didn't really get into a fight with Mike Tyson, you had a bike accident.

Mr. T&A: But didn't I at least have a Mike Tyson action figure at some point?

Glad you're doing OK, sweetpea.

Non-chart: August edition

2008-08-05T18:09:00.001-04:00

In: Lesbian love liberating Lindsay
Five Minutes Ago: Shady shenanigans shaming Shia
Out: Crazy Cruise controlling Katie

In: Side tables
Five Minutes Ago: Shelving
Out: Cupboards

In: Political irony
Five Minutes Ago: Humorous irony
Out: The death of irony

The Hill's 50 Most Beautiful is baaaaack! And it's hot.

2008-07-31T16:17:00.016-04:00

Yahh, The Hill 50 Most Beautiful People issue is out!

As per usual, it's a awesome smorgasbord of (L to R) legitimately beautiful people (helloooo, Elizabeth Kucinich!), that special class of politically enthusiastic youngsters known as "skinterns," and totally unintentional hilarity (Otto Mucklo, Republican, 34, single, likes that women find his motorcycle "dangerous"? You don't say.)

But this year I noticed a strange similarity among many of the subjects. The 50 Most Beautiful are converging towards two ideals of Hot for DC which, unfortunately, are Paris Hilton and the Terminator.
The classic Paris Hilton: the fake blonde hair, the body turned at a three-quarters angle, the boob stuck out, one foot in front of the other, the hand on hip. And the 50 Most Beautiful:
The women afflicted by The Paris are either a relatively diverse lot or indistinguishable, depending on your point of view. Here we have (L to R): The second most beautiful person, Brecke "The Girl Next Door" Latham, 28, Republican, who says she'd date a Democrat. Briana Bilbray, 25, who is on the Republican Central Committee of San Diego County. Kristina "The Southern Belle" Spiegel, 27, Democrat, who says she might like to run for office, or maybe be a diplomat, and can't remember what her favorite movies are. Kristie Muchnok, 26, Democrat, a member of the Washington Wizards dance team, who lists her dating status as "ready to mingle." Jenny Harp, 23, Democrat, who lives with 6 other sorority girls in Columbia Heights in a house they call "The Mantionette." Elizabeth Murray, 23, Republican, who (bringing the Paris thing full circle) allegedly looks like Nicole Richie.

(I also note that whereas last year I thought I could tell the political party from the picture, this year either my GOP-dar is off or everybody on the Hill has started to look Republican. Godspeed, Obama.)

And the men! The model:

Terminators: The square jaw, the direct stare, the blank/angry/vaguely constipated affect. And the 50 Most Beautiful:
Our little Ts are as follows: Aaron Gardner, 26, Republican, lurves his cat, looking for a "career-driven" woman. Andrew Noyes, 28, "Declined to specify" his party affiliation (!), lurves his dog. Rich Guerard, 23, Independent (works for Lieberman), former model. Steve Ellis, 38, lobbyist, no party listed, maried to a doctor.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and make a prediction of the future of the Beautiful for DC look. In an era of biracial presidential candidates and human/Cylon hybrids (on TV, yes--but in the future we will not distinguish between "reality" and "TV"), it's almost inevitable: a combination of Paris and the Terminator. Parisinator, if you will. Or Terminhilton. T.P.?
The future is here, and it has a three-quarters angle to the camera, a pronounced jaw, an intense gaze, and its hands on its hips. You heard it here first!

I love/hate Blame Monica Goodling Week

2008-07-29T20:56:00.006-04:00

My obsession with Monica Goodling, which had been in remission for the last year, has come roaring back with the release of the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General's report, which is even named after her: "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General."

It seems that when Monica told Congress she "crossed the line" by taking political considerations into account in hiring career employees, she meant, "I asked the line to give me five reasons why President Bush reminds it of Jesus, and it could only come up with two, plus I wasn't convinced the line was totally 'straight,' if you know what I mean, so I smashed it with a cross-shaped anvil, weighted it down with a filing cabinet containing the applications of experienced prosecutors whose spouses had made donations to Democratic candidates, and threw it in the Potomac."

The report reveals all kinds of deep, dark, delicious illegalities which were previously only hinted at by that crazy-eyed, feathered-haired exterior. She asked candidates "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him"! She made a note that an applicant was conservative on "god, guns + gays"! She got a woman fired because she heard she was a lesbian! She did the following search on LexisNexis!:

[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

Too awesome that "sex!" is in there twice.

But at the same time, I am a little disturbed by how much fun it is to pin this whole thing on La Goodling. The idea that it's all her fault means that either (1) the Justice Department and the White House agreed to put one 30ish-year-old lawyer with a J.D. from Jesus U in charge of hiring everybody in the DOJ, didn't give her any instructions, and then never checked to see how she was doing it, or (2) she was doing exactly what she was told to do. Neither one is all that heartening, but I fear that the joy of dissing her Lexis search (spotted owl or florida recount! hehe!) is going to prevent us all from figuring out that it's probably #2.

Where am I?

2008-07-22T22:12:00.007-04:00

The phenomenon of neighborhoods with existing names getting new, sexier (or less dangerously-connotated) names seems to have taken over DC to the extent that I have no idea where I am. Like, I was just trying to use Yelp to come up with places to eat lunch that were near a Blue/Orange line metro stop downtown. My theory was that I would search in the relevant neighborhoods--Downtown, Metro Center, Farragut, K Street. . . but none of those neighborhoods exist in Yelp. I tried to think of synonyms--Lafayette Square? White House? Nope. The neighborhood list is littered with names I am pretty sure are in other cities, or perhaps are retirement communities: West End, NoMa, Ivy City, Gateway. Can I rename my neighborhood WeTargetNoPark? (West of the Target, North of Park Road, of course.) (Just kidding, Mount Pleasant, I wouldn't do that to you. Even if you do sound totally like a retirement community.)

Dr. Horrible

2008-07-16T17:41:00.002-04:00

If you haven't watched Dr. Horrible, you must do so. It's a "sing-along blog"--basically a direct-to-internet musical written and directed by Joss Whedon, about an evil superhero, played by Neil Patrick Harris (aka Doogie H., aka Himself in Harold & Kumar), and his nemesis, Captain Hammer, played by Nathan Fillion (of Firefly, Serenity, and Buffy). Go, watch it now. Go!

The 8th Circuit shows us how to get out of anything

2008-07-16T17:23:00.002-04:00

This news is stale by now, but the insights flowing from it have just begun.

The other week the 8th Circuit ruled that a South Dakota law requiring doctors to tell women seeking an abortion that abortion "terminates the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," didn't require forced ideological speech, because the law also defined "human being" as "an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation."

So, once you factored in the definition, the "human being" statement was not ideological, but just a scientific fact (or a tautology): if you abort your fetus, you will be aborting a human fetus. What doctor could argue with that, right?

This reasoning can be applied to all kinds of situations in which the normal meanings of words present can leave you in a sticky spot. So:

-"I always finish my work on time." (True where "on time" is defined to mean "when I get it done.")
-"I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy." (Where "the sheriff" means "the sheriff and another guy, perhaps the deputy.")
-"No, I haven't read spoilers to find out who the 7th through 12th Cylons are." (Where "haven't" means "am not admitting to.")

Very handy. Thanks, wise judges.

Non-chart!

2008-06-18T18:13:00.002-04:00

It contains few words, and thus much wisdom. (Right?)

In: Dark and stormy

Five minutes ago: Blue Moon

Out: Tequila sunrise

In: Cylons

Five minutes ago: Blackberries

Out: Hal

In: Absentmindedness

Five minutes ago: Procrastination

Out: Incompetence

Best use of exclamation point in my in-box today

2008-06-11T16:47:00.003-04:00

Register Now for "What You Need to Know About Substance Abuse and Depression in the Legal Profession" and as a Member of a Co-Sponsoring Section, Receive Your Section Member Discount!

Self-pity party!

2008-06-10T17:04:00.002-04:00

I am holding a huge, blowout self-pity party. You're invited! But you might not want to come. I mean, so far nobody else has shown up--it's just been me, alone, in my office, for days and days, including most of the weekend. Unless somebody else stopped by while I was taking a break, like to go home and have anxiety dreams (seemingly about having forgotten to send invitations or decide where people should sit at my wedding, but really about not finishing my brief in time) and to apply for new jobs (which I am also behind on). The cab driver who took me home last night joined in my party for a bit--he guessed immediately that I was a lawyer, and said if I was leaving work at 12:30 I must be either that or a consultant. So that was nice, or something.

Appreciation

2008-06-06T16:23:00.001-04:00

When I have a cold, I often promise myself that when I can breathe normally again I will appreciate breathing more. But alas, when the cold goes away I just start to take my non-snot-filled nose for granted.

I am now thinking the same thing about the hourly billing system. If I got a job in which I didn't have to bill, would I take joy every day in the fact that I didn't have to write down "9:35-10:23--draft initial disclosures"? Or would I just quickly go back to taking the delicious freedom for granted?

One thing I do consistently appreciate, I think, is air conditioning--but that's because when you're all hot and you come into an air-conditioned place, the contrast makes you appreciate it. Does that mean I'd have to spend part of each day billing my time, or breathing through my mouth, in order to appreciate it when I got to stop? That doesn't seem like a reasonable plan.

Anyhoo, happy Friday, and if you don't have to bill your time, try to spend a few minutes (maybe up to 0.1 hours!) appreciating your good fortune.

Sex and the City

2008-05-31T01:54:00.003-04:00

SPOILER ALERT I'M NOT KIDDING I'VE BEEN DRINKING VODKA AND LEMONADE THROUGHOUT THE MOVIE WHICH IS A LONG MOVIE SO THIS IS A REAL SPOILER, NOT THAT YOU COULDN'T SEE IT FROM THE PREVIEWS

I just came from watching Sex & the City the Movie, and while for the most part it was awesome, I HATED that Carrie ended up with Big in the end. Here is a man (fictional, I know, but whatevs) who runs away from his wedding to Carrie because he has some kind of metaphysical crisis about whether the whole marriage thing is really about their relationship or about the wedding, and this is not a 20-year old boy but a 50 something year old man who has been married twice before, and this is not soon after they have met but after they've been together 10 years, and the message she needs to learn is not that he is an overgrown manchild asshole who will never relate to her in an honest way, like her friends do, but that she can game him into marrying her if only she plays it cool and doesn't invite too many people to the wedding? And is not too excited about the wedding dress? WTF, dude, WTF.

90% of the movie is about the friendships among the women, and is awesome, because that is the real fairy-tale part of the whole series--the idea that you will always have lunch with your girlfriends--work, geography, children, and everything be damned. So the Happy Ending, the idea that Carrie has to end up with Big just because he has always been The Hard To Get One is Just.Stupid. and not necessary to the plot.

You should totally see the movie anyway, though. If one of my friends' hearts is (godforbid) broken it is my fondest hope that we will all be able to accompany her on a healing, margarita-filled trip to Mexico. Please to take notes, people.

Starbucks ignorance

2008-05-29T23:33:00.001-04:00

I have been a terrible blogger, so I will ease back into the habit with a poorly-developed thought: is it possible that my deliberate ignorance about how to order at Starbucks is actually obnoxious? I have long found it bizarre that people will order a "Venti skinny vanilla nonfat mocha latte, no water, extra foam" or something, all at once like it's one word they learned at Starbucks indoctrination camp. So, in what I have I think subconsciously considered an effort to show I am not a Starbucks cyborg, I tend to say "Tea," and then they ask, "What size?" and I say "Medium," and they say "What kind?" and I say "Green." But I realized the other day that this is just a PIA for the person who has to ask me all those questions, and I am probably smart enough to figure out what all the appropriate words are and say them at the same time.

Diet Coke breakup haiku

2008-05-13T16:29:00.002-04:00

I went to the dentist for a second opinion after my the last guy used an alleged "tooth-density measurer" (bearing a suspicious resemblance to the buzzing mechanism you use when playing Operation) to tell me I needed seven (7!) fillings.

Well, the new guy said I need seven (7) fillings. He looked at my X-rays (whose old-school technology I trust) and said, "You drink a lot of soda. It's rotting your teeth. You have to stop."

Yes, I drink a lot of soda. OK, Mr. Confident-Sounding Dentist, I will stop. But not without lamenting my loss with haiku:

Caffeinated fizz
Perfect bagel companion
Light of my morning

O Carbonation,
Why must you be acidic
And thus rot my teeth?

First candy, now this
I will not give up TV
So don't even ask

Unsweetened iced tea,
Maybe you could fill the void
Left by Diet Coke

Who am I kidding
Nothing compares to D.C.
Adieu, sweet beverage

Iron Man is too relevant to be escapist

2008-05-06T16:12:00.002-04:00

I found Iron Man really uncomfortable to watch, despite Robert Downey Jr., not because of the standard preposterous superhero-movie ridiculousness, but because of the war. Parts of the movie are set in Afghanistan, and it perfectly captured the American-movie portrayal of war, which, I think, means it also perfectly captured the American understanding of actual war.

Meaning: you can identify the bad guys because they are always glowering with narrowed eyes and half-shadowed faces, or else yelling angrily in foreign languages, and they have darker skin than the not-bad-guy foreigners.

Also: if the bad guys are in possession of a boatload of American-made weapons, it's not because the United States supplied them arms in the '80s when we considered them "freedom fighters"; instead it means that [SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT] some other bad guy sold them to them in a super-nefarious scheme whose revelation will be a shock, shock! to our hero, because even when he was just a soulless playboy millionaire weapons dealer he certainly never sold weapons to bad guys, because he loved his country.

And: if the bad guys are attacking innocent civilians in a village somewhere, it is all over the American news because this happens so rarely, and our hero will set it right.

And of course: our hero will be able to set it right because of advanced American military technology, which allows him to identify and take out the bad guys with pinpoint accuracy while leaving the innocent civilians unharmed and grateful.

I didn't even have enough energy leftover to get indignant about Gwyneth Paltrow being Robert Downey Jr.'s lovelorn, chaste, not-a-hottie-until-she-takes-her-hair-out-of-the-bun assistant. Sigh.

Ashley and Jamie-Lynn: abstinence not working out so good

2008-04-16T10:41:00.001-04:00

Ashlee Simpson is apparently joining Jamie-Lynn Spears in the exclusive club of Premaritally Pregnant Younger Siblings of Famous Pop Stars Who Were Formerly Famous Virgins. This should really be the last nail in the coffin of abstinence-only education.

DC is as cool as London circa 1990

2008-04-16T08:05:00.004-04:00

When I was 13 we went to London for a semester, and while I was very peeved that my parents were making me leave Iowa (such is the mysterious mind of a 13-year-old), I was extremely excited to visit a key London attraction, the Hard Rock Cafe. You had to wait in line for hours to get in, and a Coke cost about forty dollars, but it was worth it: as I sat there, marvelling at Led Zeppelin's guitar or Madonna's bra or some such like displayed over my table, cradling my new Hard Rock t-shirt (black, with the logo in pink, purple, and teal), I felt myself effortlessly morphing into a cosmopolitan, worldly individual.

So last night I was going to meet a friend in downtown DC, and what did I see but a HARD ROCK CAFE IN DC. It was as though I came home and found Skid Row in my living room: it requires a realignment of my understanding of the world. Is it possible that the things I thought were awesome in 1990 are now . . . not cool? Or did my life become ultra-glamorous when I wasn't paying attention?

More optimistic non-chart

2008-04-04T16:23:00.002-04:00

My last post was a smidge depressing. (Don't worry, Mom and Dad!) So people don't go taking away my belts and hiding the knives:

In: Sing for Obama!
Five Minutes Ago: Brief-writing for clients
Out: Talking to myself

In: Gardening
Five Minutes Ago: Decorating
Out: Makeovers

In: Relief
Five Minutes Ago: Anxiety
Out: Boredom

Tragic non-chart o' unreasonable work schedule

2008-04-03T15:32:00.003-04:00

In: Work taking over life
Five Minutes Ago: Looking for "life's work"
Out: School

In: Missing the daylight
Five Minutes Ago: Missing the cherry blossoms
Out: Missing TV

In: Take-out Taxi
Five Minutes Ago: Frozen pizza
Out: Eating dinner with other people

Sing for Obama!

2008-03-29T17:08:00.001-04:00

Next Sunday, April 6, my friends' band Northeast Corridor is throwing the first-ever live-band karaoke Obama fundraiser. It should be highly awesome. All you have to do to participate in this historic event is RSVP here, then show up at Solly's U Street Tavern (1942 11th St NW) at 7:30 with $20 and a desire to sing Blondie (or some such like--their repertoire is quite impressive) in front of a live band, or to mock others who are doing so, if that's more your thing. See yous there.

Hillary Bristow

2008-03-29T10:02:00.004-04:00

The first season of Alias was awesome. Jennifer Garner constantly went on dangerous spy missions while wearing preposterous outfits, and had touching emotional breakdowns in the presence of her hottie CIA handler, showing that living a double life was draining, but worth it because the fate of the world was at stake.

The early part of Hillary Clinton's campaign was also pretty great. Hillary constantly traveled while talking about about important policy issues, and once let her voice crack with emotion in front of some ladies from New Hampshire, showing that being a candidate was draining, but worth it because the fate of the world was at stake.

But now the Hillary campaign is on Season 5. The storylines that were compelling early on have been beaten to death to the point that they barely even make sense. Hillary landed in Bosnia with Sinbad while a big red ball designed by a 15th-century inventor threatened to explode in the air, ushering in Armageddon? Whatever. Hillary suspects that her opponent, who previously seemed like a good guy, has been replaced by an evil, bigoted clone? Snooooore.

Note to future TV shows/campaigns: get out while we still like you.

Final car haikus (sniff)

2008-03-17T23:24:00.003-04:00

It's all over between me and the Geo. This bittersweet occasion calls for a buttload of haiku:

Good night, sweet Geo!
We've had good years together.
This one, not so much.

Your alternator
Died in '99, '06,
And again now. Christ.

Also, your muffler:
Always about to fall off.
What's that all about?

But I always liked
Your distinctive growl, and the
Two missing hubcaps.

Out there in the street
Without your tapes, maps, bike rack
You look so lonely.

I hope you don't mind
Being donated, not sold
Hope they don't melt you.

"Linked to Prostitution Ring"

2008-03-10T17:17:00.000-04:00

Is being "linked" to a prostitution "ring" somehow less objectionable than just hiring a prostitute? Perhaps it's the new "experimenting with drugs."

In another random thought, PLEASE do not tell me how The Wire ended. As with Harry Potter, here I am making an exception to my general spoiled-rotten policy and trying to maintain my blissful ignorance until I watch it my own self (which will not be for many months, probably, as we're still on Season 4.)

Carolyn Hax loves me!

2008-03-06T12:54:00.001-05:00

Today I am enjoying a little anonymous fame (Oxymoron? Shouldn't that word mean "stupid pimple products"?)

I am an avid reader of Carolyn Hax's advice columns and chats, and the other week I wrote in to the chat--not with my own problem, because, of course, I don't have any problems,* but with advice for somebody else--and today it got published in the PAPER! The original guy-with-the-problem was awkward and didn't know how to talk to women, and I wrote:

It might also be helpful to try not thinking of himself as part of a group of "awkward guys" who are trying to approach a separate, mysterious group called "women." If he can think of women as people who might also feel awkward, it might help him get over his problems in knowing how to talk to them.

Carolyn responded: "Well said, and I'll nudge it further along by taking a few words away -- if he can just think of women as people. Female friends, male friends, old friends, young friends -- diversity of people and purpose can really help in this case."

So, I'm too wordy but I have basically sound ideas. Niiiiiiiice. I will bask in this for hours.

*Or rather, my problem--"I work too much"--is boring. I was once more interesting--8 years ago, I wrote to Carolyn about how my crazy roommate had gotten another roommate to replace me, months before I was planning to move out, without asking me, and let this stranger sleep in my bed while I was gone, without asking me, and then after a few weeks had turned on the other girl and kicked her out, putting me in the middle since I had become friendly with the other girl. I believe Carolyn said "Your roommate is crazy, get out ASAP" which was very affirming. Looking back on this, I am happy to have my current boring problems.

Reminder: Prince Harry is mine

2008-03-01T21:20:00.004-05:00

I totally called him back in October. Lord, I'm wise.

US Mint flips DC the bird

2008-02-27T14:45:00.003-05:00

For 10 years, DC did not have its own commemorative quarter, because we're this weird entity that is not really a state and which does not have Congressional representation, even though the residents do have to pay federal income taxes.

Congress finally passed a law allowing DC (and various US territories) to have their own quarters. But now, for the first time in the whole commemorative-quarter era, the US Mint has officially rejected all of DC's proposals for its quarter design. Why? Because they all involved the phrase "Taxation without Representation," which is too "controversial" because it refers to the fact that DC is a weird entity that is not really a state and does not have Congressional representation, even though the residents do have to pay federal income taxes.

ROGUE SPY SATELLITE ATTACKS EARTH!

2008-02-14T16:58:00.002-05:00

The headline "U.S. Plans to Shoot Down Broken Spy Satellite" is medium-interesting. The first half of the article--broken spy satellite carrying hazardous fuel will crash into earth soon, U.S. plans to shoot it down--sounds like it was pieced together from the same remnants of Cold War narrative they used to make Armageddon and Deep Impact. So, also medium-interesting.

But then you get to the end:

Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, said today that the "stated rationale for this shoot-down is simply not credible. "

"There has to be another reason behind this," he said. "In the history of the space age, there has not been a single human being who has been harmed by man-made objects falling from space."

Much larger spacecraft, including Skylab, have fallen to Earth without injuries to people on the ground.

Some other reason like IT'S A VIGILANTE SPY SATELLITE COMING TO KILL US ALL? Like the world is going to end early next month when this "school-bus-sized" machine which has decided it would rather be in Bladerunner than Armageddon, thank you very much, and which let us know about our doom on Valentine's Day because it doesn't like manufactured holidays, enters the atmosphere and "reprograms" us into its little spy-satellite minions?

Just remember that you heard it here first. Maybe the little guy will like me for getting him free publicity.

Don't get the Congressional steroid hearings

2008-02-14T09:51:00.002-05:00

These hearings about steroids and baseball are fairly enticing, what with the lying, bloody gauze, betrayal, somebody blaming his wife for taking the steroids (!), thick-necked men in suits--but I utterly fail to get why Congress is concerning itself with this. It seems like a Terri Schiavo kind of deal--surely there is some other forum for resolving these issues, no? Baseball is our national past-time, etc., but so is gawking at Britney Spears, and they're not holding hearings on that, are they? (Those I would definitely watch, though.)

Love and flying cars

2008-02-11T23:15:00.000-05:00

Let's say I refuse to buy a car because I'm waiting for a car that can fly.* If you advised me that this is not the Jetsons and that I should look for a car that actually exists, would you be telling me to give up my high ideals and "settle" for a less-than-perfect car? No, you would just be informing me of reality.

That is what is so irksome about this article in the Atlantic Monthly, "Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough." I've been obsessed with this "settling" idea for several months, since my intrepid friend Sara Lipka told me she was going to interivew Lori Gottlieb, the author. (Sara did a great job with the interview, and extracted such interesting and humanizing details as the fact that Lori, who is a 40something single mom, is worried her mother will tell her "I told you so.") The article's thesis is that single women--mostly women over 30--should "settle" for men who do not meet their "high expectations" because it's better to have a stable partner who can contribute money to your household and help you raise your children than to be alone when you're in your 30s or 40s, as Lori herself is.

Lori says she knows women are going to write in to accuse her of being part of the "feminist backlash," but it doesn't seem particularly feminist to me to call a desire for a Stepford man "high standards." The issue is that the whole "settling" paradigm addresses the wrong part of the problem: you're not lowering your standards by deciding to look for a partner amongst existing human beings rather than imaginary ones. As Carolyn Hax would tell you, if you're waiting for an all-encompassing, life-changing, spine-tingling, love-at-first-site soulmate kind of thing like Bush had with Putin with a person who's tall, athletic, environmentally aware, has straight teeth, loves Grey's Anatomy, hates Coldplay, and can hold a tune, you can join me on the Waiting for a Flying Car bench for an indefinite interval.

*My desire for a flying car is only partly why I have not yet gotten rid of my '95 Geo.