good lord, i hate this movie

look, i don't really have a lot of love for the troglodytes over at aicn. more often than not, their breathless fanboyism makes me want to punch myself in the face for liking some of the same things they do.

however, there's a special place in my heart for hating on eragon. perhaps it's the residual self-loathing of a former (very former, asshole) dragonlance reader, or maybe it's just that this kind of shitstorm of a novel makes anybody who actually enjoys fantasy of any stripe feel like a total schmuck. quality, original, amazing, fantastic fiction does exist out there, but every book of sword-and-sorcery cookie cutter tripe that comes out just encourages people to write off the whole genre. so, thanks, homeschooled dipshit, for tying your cinderblock of a brainfart around the necks of actual fantasy fans everywhere. enjoy your millions of dollars.

p.s. your dragon looks completely retarded.

finals, no posting til i recover (unless i'm drunk)

that about says it. see all those links over there on the right? under 'blogroll'? go read 'em if you're bored.

meet lordi

they're just living the monsterican dream, nothing to do but wait for the arockalypse and fucking shred! they're way hard, but way loveable under all the fangs and goo.

is this the reason american music sucks? not enough monsters? maybe. who fucking cares, just pump your fist and lead your zombie cheerleaders to rawk salvation.

who knew tv journalists could actually do their jobs?

i don't really like tv news. i've watched the local broadcasts a few times and they're pretty pathetic. the national stuff's even worse most of the time. at least the local news is still relevant to the people who watch it--the cable news channels are completely ridiculous. cnn's preaching the coming armageddon, fox news is winning the market share for old white people (news viewers) and polemicizing as if most of its audience didn't just get kicked out of washington. but out of nowhere comes msnbc. despite having chris matthews and tucker carlson on their own shows, the peacock became the first network to have the balls to call iraq a civil war on the air. i don't even mind joe scarborough some of the time, since he actually uses his brain and not just his mouth.

but man oh man, do i love me some keith olbermann.

i liked him on espn (i think that was the last time i watched espn on purpose, actually) and i really, really like countdown. olbermann is everything you could want of a media personality cum journalist: avowedly nonpartisan, viciously protective of social, civil, and human rights, striking without being strident, clever without being smug, pointed without being shrill, and possessing the kind of gravitas (and eyebrows) that peter jennings would be proud of. he has real experts from both sides come on every night and even provides political, historical, and philosophical context for the issues he's covering. context! issues! not empty blather and shouted character assassinations. can they even do that on television? i swear, it's like an incredible one-hour dream every weeknight.

i've been studying political media personalities all semester, and if they were all a little more like olbermann, maybe tv news wouldn't be the spite-filled, useless wasteland it's become. on the show tonight, in one of his 'special comment' segments, olbermann tore into newt gingrich's proposed dismantling of the first amendment. it's a good read, but it was absolutely stunning television. i don't even mind that he borrowed edward murrow's closing line. i've never seen politics on tv that impressed me as much (not counting the west wing. and 24).

on the move

i love to travel, even if i don't do it nearly often enough (no $$$) and even if i'm just traveling to places i've already been to a hundred times. it's just the act of uprooting myself (temporarily. semi-permanently, maybe. i'm not sure i could ever leave boston for good) and all the little acts that go along with it. right down to requesting time off from work and watering the plants. i can't even describe what it is, but it thrills me to no end. which makes me pretty awesomely lame, i guess.

i really like the weird things about it, too. train station kiosk coffee, getting gold dollar coins from ticket vending machines, that good-stiff-shoulders feeling that only seems to come from a duffel bag full of dirty laundry, uninterrupted ipod time, texting from the train, trying to figure out where strangers are going. this stuff just makes me happy. i always stay up late the night before a trip too. it's not even on purpose (mostly), but i'm sure being tired helps to coat the whole experience in that gauzy transient drifting haze that i find so endearing.

anyway, turkey-day-week is here and with it, lots of opportunity for me to be (more) tired and move around the eastern seaboard. i just got off a series of trains and there are going to be plenty of automobiles in my near future. which is good, because i miss driving! and i have a metric assload of cds to rock out to. so happy thanksgiving to whoever reads this and try to enjoy the traveling, because anybody trying to get anywhere between now and sunday is in for a grand old time.

holy hostility, batman!

that last post was full of bitter invective, which is not my usual style, i swear. i don't even really mind working at starbucks so much this time (unlike before, when going to work was like walking through acid in flip-flops). the kids who work there are awesome, i get to basically say and do whatever i want, and my bosses are just glad to have me back!

still, most customers are vacuous and forgettable and i long for intellectual stimulation that can't be found in retail. questions like "do you have a restroom?" and "where are the straws?" don't quite get my motor running. luckily, the current crew at my store is very much in the too-smart-for-retail-but-saddled-with-an-unmarketable-degree mold, to which i proudly belong, and which i vastly prefer to either the dumb-enough-for-retail or the i-will-make-starbucks-my-god-and-sacrifice-fun-to-its-insatiable-otherworldly-hunger varieties.

speaking of stimulation, last week i came in at the end of the night to help my bosses roll out the holiday decorations for the store (a hugely ridiculous process, but $$$ talks as usual) and it happened to take place on the new (to me) open mic night at the store! this was my first time (which, unlike in some clubs, did not mean that i had to participate. lucky them) though i'd been warned by a coworker to expect the worst. and, as much as i think people with talent should devote themselves to cultivating it and enriching their lives and the lives of those around them, i just couldn't fucking stop laughing. oh god, the earnestness! that night, i glimpsed a world without irony, and it was goddamn hilarious!

p.s. i'm cracking up just thinking about it!

all i ask is that you stop kidding yourselves

alright, listen up morons. (smart people, you can go read a book or something) i know it's hard to wrap your gucci-obsessed reptile brains around the concept, but calories equal fat and starbucks drinks are fucking loaded with the little buggers. a venti nonfat caramel macchiato is packing something like 350, so good job sticking to your no-diet diet, suckas.

i found this in a fast food nation-inspired quiz about your favorite retail food joints (cosi, dunkin, da bux). how well did you pay attention to the previous paragraph?

4. Which grande (16 oz.) Starbucks drink has the fewest calories?

a. Frappuccino Blended Coffee with whipped cream

b. Frappuccino Blended Crème

c. Chai Tea Latte

d. Caramel Macchiato

e. Cappuccino

(answer at the bottom, i'm sure you're fairly tingly with anticipation)

on another, but equally annoying, note: starbucks customers, i'm not your damn mother. pick up after yourselves. word on the street is that you jerks are supposed to be adults.




and now, for the grand(e) reveal:

a. Frappuccino Blended Coffee with whipped cream
(420 to 550 calories)
b. Frappuccino Blended Crème
(490 to 580 calories)
c. Chai Tea Latte
(290 calories)
d. Caramel Macchiato
(310 calories)
the winner! e. Cappuccino even, if made with whole milk
(150 calories)

there, now quit bothering me (and stop talking about how "tall" is a "small". i fucking know).

dear britt daniel,

i know you probably get a lot of letters like this, but i just wanted to say that you pretty much rock. just the other day, i saw bono (in 7/11! eating a roller-dog!!) and i gave him a nod and thought that though he's done a fairly good job of publicizing the plight of the impoverished and hungry and whatnot in africa, there must be somebody who could do those things who wasn't involved in the production of 'how to dismantle an atomic bomb.'

and that's when i thought of you, britt! you're compassionate, friendly, outgoing, you have awesome hair, and i bet you smell pretty good most of the time (unlike bono. also, nitrates, dude! seriously.) and what more do you need to be an international davos-fixture like lord bono?

this is getting a little off topic, but really britt, i just wanted you to know that i was thinking about you and listening to some of your fantastic music, and it made me a little sad that you're not beloved by more people. if you're ever in boston, look me up, ok? talk to you later!

love,
dan

happy halloween

i don't like being one of those bloggers who doesn't post very often. i figure if i can't do every other day, why am i even in this business (besides the women and the adulation of my peers, i mean)? anyway, it turns out i can't. not now anyway. with midterms over, and nanowrimo starting tomorrow (and tons of other shit that's even less interesting), i'm pretty sure this space is going to be seriously on the back burner for a while. i guess i'll see if i can keep up with it, but i'm not making any promises.

maybe check back once a week, ok? i'll try my best to make it worth your while (with funny pictures, maybe). word, have an awesome holiday (i'm wearing a sexy dress), wish me luck with the book, and i'll see y'all on the other side (december? after finals? when i finally have something interesting to say? who knows?)!

nanowrimo, take five-ish

it's that magical time of year again, when my eyes are too big for my...talent, i guess. november equals national novel writing month, which for me usually equals grandiose ambitions followed by very little in the way of follow-through. the idea is to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

i've been trying since my junior year of college, and the best i ever did was 10,000 (actually 9,874--huzzah for rounding!) and that was two years ago. last year, being back in school, i was quickly distracted by things like papers and other unimportant things (thanksgiving? whatever). but not this time! no sir, i have a secret weapon this year, and it's called: cheating.

that's right. this summer, i started writing a story and got about half of a notebook into it before school started again and robbed me of my mojo/free time/will to live. so, since i still have all that other junk to do this november (trip to see cecilia, turkeyday, homework, real work, trivia night, etc.), i've decided that it's not really unethical to use a story i've already started. since i have to type it anyway, it's practically like writing it (take that, ethics!). anyway, shut up, it's my story and my month!

p.s. write your own novel! go to the website and check it out. the more the merrier!

sweet jesus in a smoking birchbark canoe!

this is just reprehensible.

i personally think celebrities getting mixed up with politics is all kinds of messed up. voters in this country are easily confused as it is, they don't need goddamn sean penn fighting crocodiles in the flooded streets of new orleans to distract them from the fact that their senator is a raving dingbat.

but michael j. fox isn't tying himself to a bridge to legalize pot, he's fighting for his life (or at least his mobility) against a terrible disease and if rush doesn't like it maybe he should cure fucking parkinson's. if he's not too busy popping viagra and dragging down the collective iq of the entire country, i mean.

man, i hope mccaskill wins and legalizes stem cell research and they cure parkinson's but the cure actually gives michael j. fox superpowers and he has to stop the evil rushzilla (he was mutated into a slobbering lizard-man by a heretofore undiscovered combination of cialis and johnnie walker green) by throwing him into the sun. twice. fucking lizards hate the sun.

so much for that whole 'indie god' thing

heard regina spektor on vmars tonight. found the song ("fidelity" i would link it, but there are laws. also, buy it, cheap-o!) on los internets. it is awesome, she is awesome (also, she's apparently some sort of twee pixie/wet dream on a piano), and while i am still pretty ok in most people's view, i've turned in my street cred and cursed the name of time warner-aol for a second time. all of the cool kids knew about her ages ago, and i am appropriately humbled. thank you veronica mars, for opening up my eyes (ears)!

master of mixology

no, not booze for once (though i'm pretty unstoppable with that too; see: green crush). music actually. to me, crafting mixtapes (or ipod playlists, if you're into that whole thing) is like the fine art of collage. or scrapbooking. or fanfiction. it's all about rearranging other people's hard work into kick-ass arrangements that say something about you, not those sell-outs who actually produced the stuff.

i like to make mixes that fit my attitude towards my own life. one of the downsides of this approach is that they don't always stay relevant since, well, things change. still, if the mix really works, it should come together to form a solid, delicious whole that is more than the sum of its parts (not unlike jell-o), and the timeliness issue shouldn't be a problem. that being said, some songs really (really) don't age well, and it can be hard to figure out if "jenny was a friend of mine" is still going to be rock-tacular when i'm an adult (p.s. i'm not yet).

so, if you're like me (you're probably not) and you love a good cliche (you probably don't), then you think making a mix cd/playlist/tape for your significant whatever is good old fashioned fun (and you probably already left my blog). for reals though: it's mostly personal, it takes a not-insignificant amount of time, and it can--if done properly--give her important relationship information. what info you provide, however, depends on the mix. you can tell her about yourself, your influences and tastes, what you're listening to at the moment, or what songs you want to have sex to the next time she's in town. on the other hand, you can show her that you've been paying attention every time she says she loves a song (to really step it up, find other songs by the same band, or similar bands. but oh man, stay away from covers), or that you remember what songs she played during sex the last time. or you can do themes. they're kind of cheesy, but as in most things, the line between romance and cheese is a very fine one. and it takes practice to stay on the right side of it.

caveat mixtor: you can very easily ruin a song you love by putting in a mix for a girl who dumps your cheesy ass. especially if you really dug her. shit, music is wicked evocative, that's the whole point of it, and when you go and associate it with some painful happenings, kiss it goodbye. for a while anyway. what's the getting-over-a-breakup rule? half the length of the relationship? yeah, that sounds good. don't listen to tainted music until half the length of the relationship has passed since the breakup. got it?

p.s. mixes are fun for other things too, like working out ("rump shaker," etc.) and parties ("rump shaker," etc.) and getting blazed ("the ocean," etc.)! haha, yeah right, loser. they're also awesome for a night alone with a bottle of makers' mark and singing along/dancing on the bed. not that i would know. my only playlists are titled "kicking ass" and "making it with chicks".

finally, some fucking validation

"Too cool for school: You are a certifiable indie god. You know which bands are breaking up before the rest of us simpletons have to read about it in Filter or on Pitchfork."

this just in, cnn says i kick total ass, which i guess means that my indie cred has already been sacrificed to the gaping maw of time warner-aol. nuts. maybe they'll pay me if i use my indie superpowers (goofy hair! cool t-shirts! pointless knowledge!) for the benefit of mankind. sadly, when the troglodytes at cnn are telling you you're cool, it's time to burn your closet and donate your ipod to charity (doctors without borders, not tunes!). seriously, it's worse than when your mom says it. fucking miles o'brien.

why.i.hate.we

so, six weeks ago, i started a new job, full of hope and promise and unbridled enthusiasm (as i am most every day, natch) and an eagerness to explore new aspects of retail merchandising and customer service!

so much for that. they gave us the standard retail pep talk: "a different kind of retail," "people first," "blah blah blah, i'm a giant tool." it went over about as well as you would expect. every morning there was a call and response "good morning, giant tool!" that was supposed to get us ready to sell our guts out to the obnoxious morons who came into the store. this is the kind of utter nonsense that made me nostalgic for starbucks. at least there, we all knew that the higher-ups didn't give a shit about us, but we could be sure that our manager (who was often a friend on top of being a boss) cared at least a little. not so at we. i'm not going to talk shit about him (because i don't know him that well, and trash talk is reserved for close friends), but basically he's a fantastic salesman and a piss-poor manager.

i've never made claims to being good at much (just writing, loving, and kung fu), but i don't think there's any doubt that i'd be a better manager than the douche i've been dealing with (ignore that parenthetical in the last paragraph, please). he seems to have the hiring part down pretty well--almost everybody i met there was both cool and good at their jobs. but he has no idea how to manage an effective team. there are two sides to managing: the people side and the business side, and to be a good manager you have to do both. that's not a hard concept to grasp, but time after time, i run into managers who can push profits to the limits but can't run their staffs to save their stupid miserable lives.

i know what you're thinking "dan, you're probably just a huge pain in the ass and managers don't want to deal with your bullshit!" and i'd be lying if i said i didn't think so too. but it can't be that simple, because other people say the same things about the same people (just with less profanity).

anyway, i'm quitting and going back to the bucks. at least i can afford to buy the things i sell there.

slight site changes, insights to excite!

blogger's new layout gizmo is giving me issues, so i'm calling it a night. no more 'what hits' bar, as i got the feeling it only mattered to me and was a pain in the ass to update (there was typing involved, gah). trying to give you guys a new picture to swoon over (it shows off my eyes!) and a new blogroll. the labels are awesome, and i'm having a blast with 'em. in case you couldn't tell.

by the by, did anybody hear about that nutbar down in georgia? yeah, she wants to ban harry potter books because they're too witchy! i know! the nerve of some people. not only are witches smoking hot (sabrina, samantha, tara, willow, blair witch, hermione), but they teach kids to read before they eat them. sometimes. also a few of those witches i mentioned saved the world! what have you done lately, nutbar?

oh, right, you made sure your library didn't have any spanish-language fiction so the immigrants wouldn't come in there and make it smelly and mexican. fantastic job. really, way to fucking go. i almost wish witches were real so they could eat your children and keep them from spreading your lunacy to more innocent people!

first of all, many immigrants (legal or not) are not spanish speakers at all. they're from other parts of the world that probably scare nutbar just as badly. secondly, a fair amount of illegal immigrants (the scarier kind) are fucking illiterate! and i bet they're still smarter than you! sweet fucking christ, lady. i can't decide whether to tear my hair out or curl up in a ball and weep.

p.s. the harry potter series are the most banned books of all time. as banned books week was last week, we can safely assume that nutbar is ignorant about pretty much everything yet was blessed with a deliciously ironic sense of timing.

bad blogger! do more blogging!

as someone once said: "not blogging is the new blogging." unfortunately, they said it in a blog, thus condemning the comment to a terrifying vortex of irony and cynicism that can only end in the utter destruction of the interwebs. it was nice knowing...well, joe, i guess, since i'm pretty sure nobody else reads this thing.

and if they did, my deafening silence probably dissuaded them in no time flat. in the interests of proving to...well, joe, i guess, that his time here is well spent, here are some links.

why i'm terrified
why i'm depressed (because it will probably work)
why i'm ecstatic
why i'm laughing
why i'm saving my money

there, now go do something productive.

finally

some good news about the space elevator!

dogs think i'm awesome

i was riding home after work. it was a beautiful evening in boston, cool and windy; the whole city smelled like the ocean. i like riding at night, as long as i have my lights on so i don't have to fear for my life around the worst drivers in america. on a night like tonight, i just feel bad for the poor suckers in their cars. with good music on the 'pod and the wind in my face, it's the only way to get around.

anyway, i was about halfway over the charles, with all of cambridge spread about in front of me, and a car pulls up alongside me. we're going exactly the same speed, and i find myself face to face with a big brown dog who has his head stuck out the window about 2 feet away. he's got a big dog grin on his big dog face and he looks at me and i look at him. yeah, i think we shared a moment, i'm not ashamed to admit it. he knew what was up.

last weekend, completely randomly, we ended up in the nyc dog fair in madison sq. park. they had a booth for just about every breed and there were maybe 200 people and 400 dogs of all sizes roaming around the park. it was pretty damn awesome. i'm not sure what brought on this whole pet love-in, maybe the long distance relationship thing is making me lonely, but someday pretty soon (when i sell my first novel, duh) i'm gonna get a dog. i grew up with cats, and my sister has cats, and my roommate has cats, but good goddamn, am i ever sick of cats. can you picture what a cat fair would be like? crazy people and snobby cats looking at each other across the park. plus hairballs everywhere. fucking cats.

my semi-annual* report on election results

yes, the nights are getting cooler and the leaves are starting to change colors. pumpkins and squash are everywhere you look. as of today, it's officially my favorite season! and politicians across this great nation are amping up the rhetoric, making outlandish claims of competence and professionalism, and calling each other dirty words (hack! ideologue! liberal!) in an effort to transform themselves into the lesser of two/three/six evils.

sadly, even i get a little cynical about elections these days. especially primaries. i tried to vote on tuesday, to make sure my boy deval got the nomination for governor. the emphasis there was on tried, by the way. i went back to my old address in somerville to vote--technically illegal, as i'm a resident of cambridge now, but whatever--only to find out that the somerville elections people had me listed as an inactive voter at my prior address (which was also in somerville, but in another ward). so i asked the nice staff lady if i could just go over there and vote. she said that because i was inactive, in order to vote, i had to sign an affadavit saying that i was who i said i was and that i lived where they said i lived. wouldn't that be (even more) illegal (than what i'm doing now)? i asked. yes, she answered, way more fucking illegal. and the penalty for perjuring myself in such a way is like jail time and possible sexual trespassing. now, i'm pretty sure i can take fisty mcrapesalot in a fight, as i routinely kick the crap out of shaolin monks possessed by demons with my kung fu on the way to work. nevertheless, i didn't want to bike across town because i had homework to do and i wanted a muffin pretty badly. i'll just make sure to reregister for the general, i told her with a steely glint in my eye. i think she got the message.

anyway, voting is harder than it should be. and that's not even counting having to fight my way through the horde of republicans keeping good democrats like me away from the polls. if i didn't have the ninja skills to blend into the shadows they might have stopped me with their burning effigies and 'liberalism killed jesus' signs.

and speaking of republicans being batshit crazy...

the reactionary, torture-loving house passed a new--and wicked unconstitutional--law saying that people will need to present valid photo ids in order to vote in 08. this is to cut down on voter fraud, so that people can't claim to be other people when they vote. this is a stupid law because nobody even does that shit, and if they did, simply having to show id probably wouldn't stop them, just like it hasn't stopped billions of college kids from buying beer despite being 18. also, it's to stop illegal aliens from enacting their master plan of voting in politicians who will approve their communist amnesty idea and make them legal. this is also stupid, as most illegal aliens are goddamned terrified of being found out and that plan i just made up might as well have been drafted by pixies riding on a unicorn. it's pure fantasy, baby.

no, what this stupid law is all about is making sure that the poor and elderly--who are less likely to own cars and thus driver's licenses, and are mostly democratic voters, coincidentally--have a harder time voting. by the way, it's also unconstitutional. and stupid.


* whenever i the hell feel like it

a long-ass time

it's good to be back, albeit temporarily. the local cable internets monopoly has me by the short and curlies and i'll be sans connecion until next monday. well, free internet is what i'm paying school for, i suppose. that, and the privilege of getting gouged for textbooks. what a racket.

today is september 11, which means two things to me. first, happy 30th anniversary mom and dad! second, it's been five years since that day, and i'm sure everybody in america is dreading the onslaught of evocation that anniversaries ending in '5' seem to bring about. what's so damn special about half a decade? are thoughts of the world trade center and the pentagon more poignant in 2006 than they were in 2005? highly dubious. no, the cynic in me says that five years is just long enough to pretend we won't reduce the earth-shattering events of that day to petty attempts at making money. sorry united 93, world trade center, and the flight that fought back, you guys almost made it. instead you could only wait four and a half years. that's just crass.

over the summer, i took a tour of the pentagon and the highlight, by far--not counting the ground zero hot dog stand*--was their memorial for 9/11. built into the section that was actually hit by flight 77, it houses a memorial with inscriptions of the names of everybody killed in the impact, including the names of the terrorists. that fact jarred me when i first heard it, and not only because it seemed out of character for a bush-led administration. it jarred me because i found humanization when i expected villification. i say this not as an excuse for the actions of the terrorists, but as a reminder of the fact that they are human and shouldn't be demonized. it's too easy to say they're just fucking evil and leave it at that. and while i find jihadic eradication of the west to be goddamned terrifying, i think that righteous eradication of the east is just as hideously stupid of an idea.

i went back and read the blog entry i wrote for september 13th, 2001. (i had a blog back then, and it was just as much of a self-indulgent screed as this one is. some things never change) besides the obnoxious $.25 vocab words--"zeitgeist"!--and tragicomic poetry--"gaping whole"--i think i made a good point about community. i've never really felt like a part of community simply because of where i live, and i think that's a distinctly american feeling. instead, the times i've felt most like a member of a community is when i'm with my friends--a community i helped to bring together and in which i play an important part. i don't know if that kind of feeling is possible in wider american society. the ability to cross social barriers like class, race, and ideology--which should have been stronger after 9/11!--seems to have left us completely. on the other hand, maybe i just isolate myself with semi-rich white urbanites possessed of an ironical worldview because i'm a big sissy mary on the inside. in any case, here's my old post, if you're interested.

i'll talk about school, west elm, moving, the wedding, and maybe football, politics, and how much i hate marmaduke in a little bit.

please stand by

temporary hiatus due to lots of things. will resume after labor day-ish. ta-ta for now.

heading for the hills

off to the lake house (somebody else's of course, i don't even have a non-lake house) for saturday to do some navel-gazing/writing/drinking and watch mike compete at something or other. for whatever reason, the stress of earlier in the week has faded with my head cold, and even though i still have nowhere to live and a relatively meager job, i'm in high spirits.

and it's about goddamn time, too. i hate being stressed and i deal with it pretty badly. i get really pissed off at nothing and easily frustrated and bored. it's awful and all it really takes to snap me out of it is nice weather, a little mental distance, and maybe a drink or two. the trouble is that i sometimes have difficulties recognizing when the stress is getting to me. luckily, i have a pretty good monitoring system in the form of cecilia. she's perfected the ability of telling me to grow up and get over myself.

anyway, this little working vacation of mine will be over soon enough. i've been staying away from newspapers, political blogs, and pretty much anything newsworthy (not counting the colbert report, of course) all week and it feels just fine. when school starts, i'm sure i'll be ranting and raving like old times, but in the meanwhile it's a more contemplative dan, a mellow dan. fuck, i wish i had some drugs.

hi-ho, hi-ho

yesterday, i earned money for the first time since mid-may. i went to a new hire orientation for a certain fancy furniture concern that will soon open its doors in boston. i was conflicted about this job before i said yes. on the one hand, i'm not sure i want to work in retail anymore, the pay is less than slinging latte, and it's a much longer commute. but on the other hand, i won't stink of old milk, it's a new environment with new people, there's the possibility of making commissions, and a whopping discount on pretentious urban furniture. like most jobs, it's a mixed bag.

retail continues to hold sway over my life, but i'm just grateful it's not foodservice (sorry, dad). i like the idea of walking 5 miles during a shift instead of sitting at a desk and seeing how long it takes for my ass to assume the shape of my chair. i like meeting people (some of the time) and being able to talk to them--it's like acting class all over again. it's not fulfilling work, but i don't need it to be. i fulfill myself in my spare time by writing. i just want a way to pay the bills that won't fill me with black despair (or leave me reeking of dairy). and retail fits the bill. if only it fucking paid more, i'd be the happiest boy in town.



p.s. i rode on a scooter for the first time and it was awesome. the only other time i've gone that fast without a seatbelt is on a ski slope. and that time i got a concussion. scooters are sweet.

homecoming, indeed

i'm back in boston for 24 hours and i'm already sick. also, i have no job and nowhere to live as of september first. this sucks.

snootchie-bootchies

once in a great while--not nearly as often as i'd like--i just want to get blazed out of my mind. i haven't smoked weed in a while now, but i've been watching weeds on dvd for about 3 hours now, and i think it's actually killing me. the jonesing, that is. the show is fucking great. season 2 starts on monday, but i'll be sadly out of premium television range at that point (and possibly out on the street--welfare state, my ass, massachusetts). i don't have a dealer anyway, so even if i had cash, all i could do is stare at it and pray for a miracle. good thing chris died for my sins.

a blogger is joe

check him out, ya'll. except for the festering conservatism and an exceptional talent for bloviating, he's a stand-up kind of guy and i wish him the best. and if you don't agree with him, tell him so, he loves a good debate. just don't take it personally when he impugns your ancestors and starts hurling ritual quebecois hexes at you.

when the planets align

thoughts on social networking

i guess i'm part of the facebook generation, as these things are understood. i'm probably on the cusp of being too old for it actually, and if not for a youthful girlfriend, i likely wouldn't have bothered. that being said, i'm kind of a sucker for this stuff. if i was anywhere close to single, i could have a lot of fun with match.com and its loneliness-defeating ilk. as it stands, i guess i'm more of a voyeur(/exhibitionist?), using various networks (i'm on friendster and myspace too, i'm pretty sure) to check in on far-away friends and find out what those losers from high school are up to.

i'm not one of those addicts you hear about who posts new pictures every day or exhaustively comments on everybody's walls. for seriously, who has the time? i'm getting pretty tired just writing this shit. and i have better things to do, like finding a home and a paycheck.

oh yeah, and myspace, for christ's sake get over yourself. as much as i (may or may not) like you, i probably don't want to hear your band unless somebody i trust can vouch for it. my listening time is too damn valuable to me (i use it to listen to stuff i already like, ok? sue me, i'm human). myspace band pages are like blogs. if i read one i like, and they recommend somebody else's, i'll check it out and decide for myself. but if you just start asking me to be your friend and check out your "awesome band" i'm probably going to report you by saying you solicited me for underage sex. yes, it's vindictive, but at least you'll get to be on dateline! think of the exposure!

rupert murdoch probably doesn't like you anyway.

the great thing about these social networks is that they're not really social at all. i can completely ignore virtually every one of my "friends" if i want to. if i did it in real life, then i would be forced to drink alone (more than i already do) but in the vast uncharted internets, i can pretend to be too busy with meetings and power lunches to care about what your summer plans are, weird girl who i met sophomore year! i just wish there was some way to combine all three of my profiles into one place so i wouldn't have to check multiple sites just to cyberstalk people. what a hassle!

last week in dc

and i'm having a bit of hard time with it. i guess i should've expected it...i've been tempted to look for jobs around here instead of in boston, and to contact school and see how hard it would be to transfer for my final year. it's a weird feeling, i've always considered myself to be a pretty independent person, and the last year of long-distance relationshipping (ldr-ing) was hard but not nearly as hard as i had been afraid it would turn out to be. so why am i worried now?

because i'm also excited to leave. part of that is the things i have hanging over my head. looking for a job and an apartment at the same time is hell no matter how you slice it, but to be in the wrong city while cheap studios get taken and interviews get postponed is downright torturous. and despite my mom's conviction that i'm a member of the wait-and-see tribe (thanks, jd!), i actually prefer to go out and get shit done rather than let it get all sword of damocles on me (ok, that was gratuitous, i'm sorry). unless it's a paper for school. those are best left until the last minute, because that's when all the good ideas come out and play.

right, so i was going to use this post-work week to get out there and do a whole bunch of touristy things (climb the monument, go to the zoo, stand in the middle of the city and ask the cool looking people how to get to the jefferson memorial, take pictures of every building i see, eat signature dc foods (coffee and steak? every day? i feel like a lobbyist!), etc.) but now i'm gonna be guilty if i don't actually look for jobs/apartments. there's probably some way to equitably divide these things among the hours of the girlfriend-deprived portion of my day--there are far better ways to spend the hours when she's around, snap!--but all i really want to do is work on my latest story. since i'm basically trapped here with lots of free time, i should take advantage and really try to work through a chapter or three. with nanowrimo coming up fast, it's best to get into practice for 2000 words a day.

on top of all that, there's a very real sense that we've already started saying goodbye. shared glances heavy with significance, more hand-holding, lots of um...intimacy. none of which is bad, mind you. but it's hard to start saying goodbye with a week to go. i almost prefer to ignore it until the day i'm leaving, and then be sad for a day or two (or week, or until the phone sex starts) than to feel it dragging out through every minute we have together. she tries very hard not to be sad when we're apart though, more than i do, so i feel like she deserves a little indulgence. i'm perfectly ok with her sadness schedule. when i get sad and we're apart, i'll almost welcome it. i like a little melancholy now and then to spice things up--have a glass of bourbon, put on some mournful, beautiful music, light a few candles and stare at the cieling. i try to revel in the maudlin fun of it all. she's a stiff upper lip kind though. lacking in the "artistic temperament" (that's ok with me, i've got some to spare, after all). she bottles it up when we're apart, so it's almost good for her to be a little sad all week. a small price to pay for me anyway. my job is to cheer her up, and i think i'm damn good at it.

this is a little more personal than i usually get, so let me know if it's too much. not that i would stop. i do what i want, alright? quit trying to change me, jeez.

the cool kids

the day is fast approaching for my return to boston—land of cold winds, cold hearts, and cold harpoon!  sadly, beantown is also lacking in the type of interesting, hilarious, friendly, engaging, welcoming, thought provoking, thoroughly enjoyable, readable, and loveable (and lustable) blog scene that i’ve discovered in just my few short weeks here.  i’ve really enjoyed getting to know all the dc bloggers i’ve mentioned, and i’ve posted a few comments here and there on your various sites.  needless to say, i’ll still be a regular reader up in boston.

which brings me to point #2.  i want to invite any readers i have (i think there’s like 2 of you.  what’s up?  you should probably introduce yourselves to each other) to send me some links to any bloggers you know/read/met once/slept with in boston in the interests of making some connections.

my days of interning (and having both internets and the free time to make the most of them) are over as of 6pm today, so posts are going to be more sporadic over the next few weeks.  sorry, but that’s the way it goes.

it's outrage o'clock

i know, i know.  it’s completely uncool to post about politics in washington, but i’ve resisted as long as is humanly (or humanely) possible.  now let me get this off my chest.

once upon a time, i--unlike many of my contemporary yippie friends--worked for the minimum wage, which was a paltry $5.15/hr at the time.  it basically sucked and as soon as i could, i got a better job.  being a white, upper-middle class male, this was easy for me to do.  it is very, very hard for other people, mostly because they lack one or all of the traits listed above.  also because the man keeps them down.  anyway, that long-ago thankless toil came rushing back to me when I found out that the great state of massachusetts had overridden mitt’s veto and raised the state minimum wage. (and speaking of the mittster, he’s still a rampaging jackass)

as for the federal wage (because not all states are as cool as massachusetts, hell yeah!) it’s still only $5.15/hr.  gadzooks!  somebody call the fucking government, they’ll know what to do!

of course, because it’s congress, and congress is controlled by hulking soulless reptile-men (republicans!), what they did was vote down the minimum wage hike proposed by my good buddy ted kennedy earlier this summer.  shortly thereafter, they voted for a congressional pay raise.  the hypocrisy and gall that these men exhibit on a daily basis is simply mind-blowing.  seriously, if your mind is still in one piece, go back and reread the last three sentences.  i’ll wait.

see what I mean?  blown like a high school quarterback on prom night.  but it doesn’t end there, unfortunately.  just this week, they put together a “compromise” bill that slapped a minimum wage hike together with the repeal of the estate tax.  in case you’re not familiar with the estate tax, it is a tax levied on estates valued at $5 million or more (double for couples).  it is a tax that only affects the super-mega wealthy.  and repealing it is a republican wet dream.  unfortunately for the rest of us americans, it will cost our government almost a trillion dollars (with a tr-) in revenue by 2021.  that’s money that probably would go to programs to help the poor.  is it any wonder that republicans want to eliminate this revenue stream?  it lets them pour money on the rich and oppress the poor at the same time!  praise jesus!

anyway, attaching this ass-rape of a policy to the minimum wage hike is a blatant attempt to lure dems across the aisle and make them vote to repeal the estate tax.  if it works, it might just go down as the worst law of the 108th congress.  i’d say ever, but i think the USA PATRIOT act still wins that one.

ok, politics over.  go back about your business.  there’s a post about debauchery coming up soon, i promise.

i (don't) need a roommate (at the moment)!

anybody have any friends in the greater boston area who (might) need a room for the next year (or part of the year) (assuming i can find an apartment that requires me to have another roommate)? i (might) have a room i need to fill for $550/month plus utilities (or some completely different amount). leave a note in comments and i’ll get (purely hypothetical) details to you somehow.

it's a long story. suffice it to say that landlords are a demented subspecies of human (distantly related to the greedius ceo-us that terrorizes american boardrooms. they exist solely to wring every last cent from us tenants by raising rents, making empty promises, and doing their damnedest to stamp out all that is good and decent in this world.

my current (soon to be ex-) landlord rented my apartment out from under my roommate and i back in boston, an event i only recently heard about. now i'm scrambling from many miles away to find a replacement place that is agreeable. my roommate and our tentative third roommate are doing their best as well--resulting in yesterday's aborted lease-signing/celebration/sigh of relief--and i have no doubt we'll find something sooner or later. it's still stressful though, especially so given the fact that i don't really want to live with either of them.

my dream is to have my own place, a studio or a one-bedroom apartment, all to myself. don't get me wrong, i'm a fine roommate and i have no real complaints about the people i've lived with. i just don't want to do it anymore. i'm sick of other people's dishes, other people's friends, other people's furniture, and having to ride herd on people to pay their damn share of the cable bill. but sky-high boston rents and crippling unemployment seem to indicate that i have no real choice in the matter. keep your fingers crossed though, august is a long month, and something good might still happen.

the big mo

check it out!  the real-life version of ari from entourage thinks boycotting mad max’s ass is a grand idea!  thanks ari, with you and me in this together, there’s no telling how far we can take it.  just make sure that adrian grenier plays me in the movie.  he looks like a mensch.

taking a stand!

things i won’t do:

• as outlined below, watch cnn ever again, due to their reporting on the coming armageddon as if it were news.  good job, guys.  as a news source, you’ve achieved the level of trust and journalistic acumen that i usually expect from x-men comics and those larouche pamphlets that the straight-edge kids hand out in harvard square.

• you may have heard of this guy mel gibson.  way back when, he filled out a pair of tights real nicely and once he even went against his mercenary ways and helped a band of post-apocalyptic survivors fend off roving marauders.  those were the days.  now he denies the holocaust and blames the jews for making him drink and drive.  and for starting all those wars.  that were actually started by evangelical christians.  just like mel (catholic, whatever).  anyway, i’m done with this clown—no more mel gibson movies.  in fact, the first thing i’m doing when i get back to boston is microwaving my road warrior dvd!  now, that’s consumer retribution!

• drink miller high life.  also explained below, this piss was vile even back when it was all i could afford.  now, i may be broker than ever, but my standards continue to rise (like inflation!) and at the ripe old age of 25, i can confidently proclaim that i will never force this swill down my craw again!  bring on the miller lite!

that’s it.  everything else is fair game.

good move, give the crazies a megaphone

fuck! i’m never watching cnn ever again.
you hear me, time warner? never! i’m an msnbc viewer from here on out, no matter how cute anderson cooper is or how many times he has angelina jolie on his show, or how many times soledad o’brien says she thinks I’m hot. fucking forget it! you can’t put shit like this on the air!

that's just how soledad shows her love --->

there goes my screenplay idea

the someday café really is closing this time.  and sooner rather than later.  that’s kinda sad, despite what i said before.  i don’t even like mr. crêpe, and it sounds like they were steamrolled by developmentophiles and a cocksucker landlord.

not that there’s anything surprising about that.  if there’s a single landlord in boston who isn’t a cocksucker*, i’d be glad to shake his/her hand.

when i first wrote about it, i figured it would be like in empire records, and through a very watchable combination of pluck and short skirts they’d turn it all around, possibly by baking brownies or inviting scul over to shake down the fatcats or waging guerilla war on artbeat.  so much for life imitating art.  at least i can still go to diesel to play pool/get sneered at for my hopeless corporatism.

now i’m just depressed.

*quick disclaimer about cocksucking.  i’m all for it--i don’t care who you are or whose cock you’re sucking, i think it’s fan-fucking-tastic.  really, knock yourself out.  i just think it’s a completely, awesomely useful word.  james lipton, if you’re reading this, one question down, nine to go!

come to dc, you'll be in bed by midnight!

i guess it’s true what they say, as long as what they say is “miller high life tastes like old paint.”  on saturday, cecilia’s brother was in town to visit and we did all the usual touristy things: walk around, go to urban outfitters, grab a cheap haircut at the hair cuttery in dupont, and last but not least, head to asylum for quarter beer night!

every week, at 5pm sharp, asylum, the vegan biker bar, fills up with the poor and the very poor and the alcoholic for a night of bargain basement debauchery.  12-oz plastic cups of high life start at just $.25 and go up $.50 every hour afterwards until they reach their market price or everybody drinks themselves blind, whichever comes first.

in my case, absolute disgust with the corn-syrupy-sweet, utterly bland taste of high life led me to instigate a revolt (ok, cecilia’s comic inability to down the stuff didn’t hurt either) and order a round of delirium tremens for the table.  and it was a damn good thing too, because after finding a chip of glass in one of them, we got all four for free!  huzzah for potential injury!

needless to say, the good beer revived our spirits immensely and when waitress andrea (wasn’t she on a reality show? we wondered.  although not me, because the only reality tv i watch is project runway, 30 days (it’s back!), and the food network.  i don’t think andrea was heidi klum in disguise…) asked out of the blue if we wanted to do some carbombs.  yes, andrea.  we do.

i barely remember stumbling down 18th st. to dupont, though i do recall landing heavily in a booth in the big hunt.  this is all around 9-ish, so the place is pretty dead.  we order a greased-out pizza and proceed to watch cecilia’s brother get more and more out-of-it.  and he’s the only one still in college!  why, back in my day, collegians could hold their liquor, damn it.  he rebounds enough to sing along with the cabby on the ride back to the hill, but when we get there we find that every fucking bar has gone and closed up by ten on a saturday!  what the fuck, dc?  isn’t getting bombed at cap lounge worth a little rain?  honestly, i’m a little ashamed for you guys.

and that’s not all we have to be ashamed about, because a few minutes later we forced the closing crew at some mexican place down on pennsylvania to let us in for one last drink.  i don’t know about you, but to me, 5 sodden, boozy twenty-somethings miserably cutching coronas in an empty, over-air-conditioned taqueria spells p-a-r-t-y!  hells yeah.  let’s just say we were happy to get home and forget it ever happened.

busy, bored, bolshevik?

You are a Social Liberal (78% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (20% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

not dead again

i'm actually busy at work, if you can believe it, and my sister came to visit today so i haven't been much on the blogging tip. running out of money here in dc, so i've been on the lookout for extra cheap happy hours and the like. heading out to the billy goat tavern for an end-of-work celebration (somebody else's, i still have two weeks left), probably worth it to drop the cashish on a good beer. who am i kidding, it's always worth it to spend on good beer!

more convenient than ever

last night, cecilia and i went to see an inconvenient truth, the culmination of 40 years of work by mr. al gore, the man who “used to be the next president of the united states.”

no lie, it’s an extraordinary and powerful movie.  if you know anything at all about climate change, then you probably are familiar with the kind of information that he talks about, but the magnitude of it, and the simple, clear, and effective way that he gets it across will still leave you impressed.  no doubt about it, mr. gore looks and feels far more presidential as the narrator than he ever did on the campaign trail.  he’s a virgillian figure, leading us down an ever steepening spiral to an inescapable conclusion: climate change is real, and it has already begun.  all that we can hope to do is mute its effects.  and i’m gonna start right now.

first and foremost, as always, is getting the word out.  so, if you haven’t seen it yet, go see it this weekend, and bring a friend along.  if you have already seen it, then by all means tell everybody you know to go see it.  tell them that it doesn’t matter if you love gore or hate him, or whether you’re progressive or conservative, we all live on the same planet (unfortunately, if they’ve read that insipid crichton book, they’re probably beyond reaching).  And most importantly, tell them it’s free!

to help spread the word, two organizations have stepped up, offering—through partnerships with fandango—free tickets to anyone who signs up.

first, inconvenientchristians.org, a website run by an environmental stewardship church called recovering eden.  there’s a bunch of biblical quotes on their homepage, and when you sign up for the free tickets, they make you click one box that affirms your faith, and another that says you will come back and submit a review to them.  fair enough, but i don’t really like to encourage hypocrisy or lying even on the internets, so…

we have targetglobalwarming.org, which is the same basic thing, except it’s run by the national wildlife fund (partnered with cabela’s, a hunting/fishing/outdoors equipment store) and they don’t make you pledge a damn thing.  this is who i went through, and the process is virtually painless.  in both cases, you get a coupon code that you enter into fandango’s site after you select a showtime.  the codes are good for $20, but with the surcharges, the cost for 2 tickets in georgetown was $21.  a small price to pay, i’m sure you’ll agree.

lastly, if you’re an internet 2.0 kind of person, eric pan, a regular-joe type from santa cruz, saw the movie and set up share the truth, a sort of community clearinghouse for people to either buy tickets for strangers, find tickets offered by strangers, or put together a group of like-mminded strangers to go see it together.

there, now you have absolutely no reason at all not to see this movie.  it’s even pretty short, about an hour and forty-five minutes!  if you can’t spare that, then there’s really nothing i can do for you.  As for everybody else, pass those links on to whoever you can.  tell them to see the movie and make up their own minds.

playing catch up

i just wanted to say that i’m alive and well.  it’s been a busy week, with lots of running around and whatnot.  quick updates are go!

• i saw a hawk swoop off of a building and snatch up a pigeon right out of a fountain!  huzzah for nature!


• i also saw chuck hagel (r)-ne give what can only be described as the foundation of his stump speech.  i can only hope that the q&a—wherein a college sophomore grilled him about his voting record and anwar—will be imitated on meet the press in two years.


• i can chalk up another two successes in my personal proselytizing of the joy that is veronica mars.


• i was wicked disappointed by the final of the cup.  now i get to count down the weeks until real football season begins.  time to start scouting my fantasy team…


• i saw pirates 2 and enron: the smartest guys in the room over the weekend and was thoroughly impressed by each of them for entirely different reasons.  needless to say, my sympathies lie far more with actual pirates than with corporate ones.


• and lastly, after a night of debauchery to be proud of on saturday—i came home wearing somebody else’s pants—i can safely say i will never drink again.  until 6pm.

a paean to my liquid masters

alright, listen up coffee gods!  i did your damn dirty work for far too long to have to put up with this shit!  make the someday café into a crepe place?  you might as well make it a chipotle, asshats!

ok, ok, i don’t even like the place very much (sorry, jen).  but i do recognize that a lot people think it rocks their socks off, and that it’s not populated exclusively by anti-establishment zealots with nothing better to do than look down on me for having a real (i.e. horrible) job just for the health insurance.  after all, coffee shops cannot be (entirely) blamed for the cockbites who have nowhere else to go because they had to choose between paying rent on their apartments and rent on the practice space for their band (that is this close to being signed, dude, seriously).  there might be a few someday patrons who aren’t like that.  of course, they would never stick up for me, because they’re craven, hipster, myspace riffraff and too dependent on approval from their poorly coiffed pack leaders.  not that i’m bitter or anything.

i don’t even mind the rampant antistarbucksism.  it’s the evolution from there to antidanbecauseheworksatstarbucksism that gets my dander up.  it’s like i always say, “don’t hate the playa, hate the game!”  Asshats.



p.s. gus, i know you don’t remember me, but one time i got stoned in the basement of the toscanini’s i worked at.  it was my first day.

p.p.s. someday café, get some new goddamn couches already.

p.p.p.s. coffee gods, praise and glory be to your wonderful *cough*addictive*cough* gifts!  this loyal acolyte will have your ritual sacrifice ready no matter what you do to destroy my beloved davis square!  caffelujah!*





*until i can discover how to usurp your power and take my place among you mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

forefathers be proud

happy birthday america!

the 4th of july is an odd duck of a holiday.  not so much in the reasons for its existence, but more in the way it’s celebrated.  is bbq-ing american?  sure it is, unless you count all of the other cultures—africans, arabs, asians—who beat us to it.  there’s also the pesky fact that holding raw meat over open fire may very well be the oldest form of cooking there is.  it’s so easy, a caveman could do it.  sure, they didn’t have frozen burger patties and individually wrapped cheese slices back then (it took america to individually wrap its cheese, by gum!), so i guess we can lay our claim to the experience if not the method.  but is grilling really any more american than frying things?  kfc and paula deen probably don’t think so.  we can probably call the fish-fry an authentic american experience, and it’s even appropriately summery, but i don’t think it’ll ever catch on as a 4th staple.

also, when the temperature rises, there’s a certain segment of the population (myself included) that will always reach for one specific beer—la corona!  That’s just an inviolable fact of summer.  and despite the overall (and also inviolable) blandness of the corona, i have yet to find an american lager that a) combines as well with limes and b) refreshes quite so perfectly.  sure if push came to shove, i would sell my cervezas down the river for a pint of harpoon summer, but sadly, that miracle beer hasn’t made to my little corner of the swamp that is dc.  anyway, the point is that our nation’s birthday is doomed by its own summer date to be celebrated with mexican beer. (don’t worry, america, my coronas were in celebration of their election, not your birthday!)

lastly, fireworks.  we all know blowing things up is as american as apple pie.  but the chinese invented fireworks!  and yes, i suppose if there’s one thing america does better than any other country, it’s appropriate culture and assimilate people.  all things considered though, there’s not one thing about this holiday that’s actually american (not counting mike’s supersnack)!  we even had tortilla chips (mexico again) and pretzels (dutch or german, i don’t know).

i guess what I’m trying to say is, good job america!  this holiday has actually shown me that we can thank the various immigrants we’ve had over the centuries, because i’m pretty sure that without them we’d be eating deep-fried cheetos and setting off real bombs every year.

a day of reckoning

tomorrow morning, whether you like it or not, the quarterfinals of the world cup begin!  now, in my last copa post, I endorsed a few teams, based on my own deep-seated prejudices.  and, they all lost except for argentina.

sweden – lost to germany
ecuador – lost to england
mexico - lost to argentina
australia – lost to italy (which was bullshit!)
ghana – lost to brazil

i prefer to think of this less as my own failure to pick good teams, then as divine provenance for cecilia’s countrymen to, yes, go all the way!  viva argentina!  boo, deutschland!  i don’t care if you got past the whole fascist thing way before the argentines did, you’re gonna eat it come 11am.

it's my precious money

and these clowns aren't getting any of it. i got an email today that i'm sure everybody over the age of 22 is quite familiar with.

You should take pride in knowing that the ***** Class of 2003 has an impeccable reputation for setting new ***** Fund participation records each year.

say what? i should take pride? in what? i seriously can't believe these guys--they didn't do much for me when i went to college, let alone now that i'm done with them. whatever happened to that fabled alumni network? it's no wonder i'm out of touch with reality when my dear old alma mater can't even remember that they told me i couldn't graduate! thanks a million, guys! you're not getting a cent, see you in hell!

meanwhile, in far more worthwhile college news, we'll all be in debt until we die. i mean it, so let's all stop kidding ourselves. for our parents--yes, i assume everybody is my age, shut up about it--debt was something that they could actually afford to be without. and while i know a few people who manage their debt obsessively, for me it has never been realistic to be debt-free. working for starbucks (or similarly wage slaving retail outlets), you never have the opportunity to build a cushion of savings. so, when for whatever reason--flying to see your girlfriend, stolen bike--you fall just behind on your cell phone bill or don't quite have the funds to cover your expenses, you reach for that magic little rectangle of plastic. i'm not talking about shopping addiction, i'm talking about necessary--for food, shelter, and sanity--spending.

anyway, now that i'm back in school, my debt has ballooned back into the tens of thousands of dollars even as my day-to-day finances are far less precarious (thanks to loans). it's a tricky situation that can very easily fade into the background of more pressing issues.

and the truth is that the conservative movement has been working tirelessly for decades to shift the burdens of financial risk away from the government, the banks, and businesses and onto the individual. the amount of available scholarships and grants has decreased dramatically even as more people are applying to college than ever before. that means more loans, and as the above article tells us, those are getting riskier too. my mom--a former director of sallie mae--used to warn me every day about going into default. the worst thing i could do for myself, she said, pounding home not only that these loans could ruin my life, but that they sure as hell weren't going anywhere. fifteen years is pretty standard, and by then i should have mountains of new debt--car loans, maybe a mortgage, a home equity loan, a small business loan--to make my current figure look like chump change.

oh hell

here i've been in washington for a month now, and i can't help but feel that i have astonishingly little to show for it. not that that's anything new, mind you. i have very little to show for all of my 25(!) years on this funktified orb i call home. sometimes (not often, i admit) it's enough to actually get me down--much like spending hours complaining about the rain and then, when the sun finally decides to shine, i am forced (by my sense of responsiblity! thanks mom.) to spend 8 hours at work and 3 at class. this 9-5 stuff is for the birds.

quick aside about class, then back to whingeing:
so, i think it's pretty clear that i am young at heart. but in my wednesday night class, i am the oldest person in the room (not counting ms. marjorie "i met alexandra pelosi once...once!" kline). also, i am the only one in grad school, where i learned how to "contribute to class discussion" and "talk out of my ass about things like tim russert's eyebrows" still, despite my prodigious verbalizin' skillz, i don't know how long i can go on carrying the damn class. speak up, undergrads! i'm not even getting a grade and i'm kicking your early-twenties asses up and down the aisles in class participation. while solving the crossword. and looking mighty fine. and composing haiku in my head.

here's one:
longest summer days
in class, a waste of beer time
maybe bratwursts too

whingeing:
that actually cheered me up quite a bit. i also realized that the creative parts of my brain are working overtime (two novel ideas in a month? unprecedented!) and what really has me down is my lack of actually getting writing done.

and i was all set to complain about having nothing to blog about except the oh-so-uninteresting life of an off-the-hill intern. i have to "work on the website" this week since our legislative agenda is on hold til after the 4th recess. and nobody told me that the newsletter deadline was monday this week (dude, i had a lecture. i can't be held responsible). also the website just got hacked by a teletubby, so there goes any hope of being productive today. i didn't get a picture of the teletubby itself (it had some good news about noo noo) but a little while later, they hacked us again. this time to endorse firefox (my favorite browser!) and decry microsoft.













if the movie hackers taught me anything, it's that every wired-in misanthrope either looks like jonny lee miller or angelina jolie and they fly through the internets on virtual skateboards. also, they're probably jerks who dress like they're on acid. so, thanks, hacker, for pointing out our vulnerability. now run along, you're probably late to algebra class.

dogs and cats, living together...

we had some epic rainfall in washington this weekend, practically biblical. as much as i love a good rainstorm (and who doesn't?) it was all a bit too much. especially when i woke up to discover that the subway tunnels had flooded on the orange/blue and green/yellow lines!

i mean, what the hell? this is a city built on a swamp, in the middle of a floodplain! shouldn't they be prepared for a little rain? i'm not a big fan of riding in the rain, mostly because my tires suck and i don't have fenders, so wet pavement equals wet accident waiting to happen. but when i discovered that the damn subway had flooded i figured i had to go for it.

big mistake. it turns out the bible allusion earlier was dead on because the situation on dc's roads this morning was straight out of the end of days. a few stoplights lose power and mass anarchy descends on the nation's capitol. i genuinely (sort of) feared for my life on the morning commute.

sudden death

yes, more world cup posts. for now, it's on my mind. more diverse material this weekend probably, if i can find the time between games to post.

the first round is ending even as i type this up. sixteen teams have been eliminated, including the once-proud usa. maybe being utterly embarrassed to the tune of 0-2-1 will engender a little humility on the world stage. but probably not. anyway, i'm not in this business to make predictions, just to revel in being a biased fan. i'm rooting for argentina (for cecilia), australia (for kate), ghana (go africa!), mexico (go concacaf!), sweden (vodka and blondes), and ecuador (because they're scrappy).

do you have it? is it catching?

it's world cup fever (also known as soccerhea, the futbolic plague, and antibrazilitis). cases have been reported worldwide in only the past week. medical experts are at a loss as to the methodolgy of this new pathogen, but leading theories suggest it may be passed on by chanting, singing, dancing, and flag-waving in large groups. dr. gupta has been studying the effects of soccerhea since the first cases were reported in the united states in 1991, after the women's national team won their first world cup.

"we are heartened to see that even as the number of cases has increased in recent months," he told us here at the bean, "the number of fatalities has dropped to almost zero. with continued hard work, and a little luck, we can turn soccerhea from a deadly scourge to a mild, but permanent, annoyance. like herpes."

symptoms include (but are not limited to):
face-painting
sweaty palms
jersey buying
score checking
nausea (before games, during tied matches)
play-by-play addiction
hoarse voice
registering with recreational soccer team

web sites with more info:
stage 2 chart
who should i cheer for?
new york times world cup blog

there's always somebody better

(or at least more established)

yes, matt yglesias at tpmcafe has distilled what i was saying last week about political blogs and the mainstream media into a far more cogent analysis (he also uses the word "technoutopianism" which is awesome). isn't he dreamy? someday yglesias, someday...

p.s. i was going to post my eloquent plea to rep. capuano about taking the moveon.org oil-free pledge, but i forgot to copy it before i sent it. stupid! still imagine a few pithy yet poignant paragraphs of persuasion and that's pretty much what it was. oh, and send one yourself, slacker.

i love that dirty water

driving up to boston for the weekend, for the be-all-and-end-all of summer fun--the american beer fest! i've been to a few of these in my time (four in two years, i'm something of a lush) and they are truly spectacular events. there's nothing like walking up those stairs and being confronted with 75 or so tables stocked with coolers and kegs, piles of hops, free coasters, and everywhere you look, gallons of the country's best beers.

have a good weekend, i know i will.

nothing to do? there's always more politics!

it's like i always say: when in doubt, wonk it out!

bush goes to iraq! country yawns, wonders what's in the fridge
like the adolescent we always suspected he was, the president snuck out of the country for the afternoon to go joyriding around baghdad, shaking hands, smiling prettily, and infuriating insurgents, who unfortunately ran out of ieds just a few hours before the president arrived. "the great satan himself!" remarked one bemused militia member ruefully, "i knew we shouldn't have blown up that last bus full of schoolchildren. what a waste!" americans, when reached for comment, were confused.

but seriously, he's looking for a bump after the zarqawi/iraqi cabinet mojo wears off, and this might be his last chance to really get some good iraq news rolling before the 9/11 5-year and the beginning of the midterm primaries. in any case, it seems like the american people are finally tired of his nonstop posturing and actually want clear answers. welcome back, the american people! i promise to go easy on the 'i told you so's.

congress unhappy with constitution, sticks head up ass to look for answers
the republican leadership in the senate, led by evil cheer-tator frist, tried to pass another ill-considered constitutional amendment this week: the defend the flag from liberals amendment aka flag-burning. now, i'm no joe brassard-style jingoist, but i do love/have feelings for/like in that way my country and its flag. and that's precisely why i would never want to restrict my right to burn that flag. especially if my country didn't feel the same way about me as i did about it. burning everything that reminds you of your crush is the only way to heal. even oprah says so.

what if they threw a convention and nobody blogged?
fat chance. the first ever yearlykos convention was last weekend in vegas. if you don't know, dailykos is one of the biggest progressive blogs out there, boasting a ginormous readership and gads of influence. markos and friends set out to bring all of the progressive netroots together and succeeded handily, drawing such democratic luminaries as harry reid (who got booed), hillary clinton (who got booed), and wunderkind mark warner (who got crowned).

i have a lot of thoughts on the netroots, most of them good, but i still haven't sorted out my entire position. i think kos, mydd-chris, atrios, digby, et al. are probably on the right track. they have great ideas on how to undercut the consolidation of the mainstream media, play to a wider audience than the msm's homogenized content can affect, and keep the whole thing incredibly, brilliantly, small 'd' democratic. they've already had proven successes: paul hackett, tim kaine, jon tester, ned lamont, and now this guy webb. they're a force to be reckoned with in political commentary, fundraising, grassroots organizing, and now conventioning, i guess. they really do seem to have a fighting chance of forcing the direction of the party away from the dlc, the tammany-style bosses, and the frothy maw of consultancy. all of which is fantastic news, not just for the democrats, but for the entire country. and a few people are listening hard: howard dean, rahm emmanuel, and mark warner.

there's a few things that don't sit right with me though. first, the kneejerk disdain and condescension to the mainstream media. i don't like this for a couple of reasons. the msm should be a resource for the netroots, not an enemy. don't get me wrong, were these people to fall under the auspices of corporate management, the whole operation would be in trouble. but some of the nation's journalists are not patsies for the status quo and they don't kowtow and bootlick nearly as often as rabid msm-haters like kos and atrios attest. with that said, i think there has to be some way to get the msm to do it's job and actually start confronting the government like they used to. the fact is that the netroots' overt bias and partisanship is just as damaging to them as it is to everybody else. and while i also don't defend the msm as being paragons of objectivity, they deserve credit for the few times they go out and try to present all sides of the story. i guess what i'm saying is this. rather than attempt to sabotage or make irrelevant the msm, the netroots should be promoting various methods of media reform across the board.

good news for my starbucks stock

not one, but two pieces of fantastic news for coffee drinkers out there this week. as a regular drinker of multiple coffee-based beverages every day, i've always kinda hoped that there was a silver lining to the whole stained teeth, high blood pressure thing. it turns out that i've been both saving my life and broadening my horizons all this time! huzzah for coffee! all hail the mighty bean!

first, via every single news source out there, drinking coffee may reduce the damage you all are doing to your livers by drinking all the time. a high coffee intake, 3-4 cups per day, seems to have reduced the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by as much as 80%! hot damn. and i always thought my liver hated me. turns out i was doing as much good as harm! in your face, liver, i'm off to the liquor store.

and second, not only does coffee cure what ails you, (yes, you specifically, you dirty lush), but it can literally make you a better person. the latimes tells us that aussie scientists have determined that caffeine will open your mind. coffee will make you more open to new ideas, even if they contradict the ideas you already have. somebody call lakoff, cause this is gonna crack that whole framing problem wide open. all we have to do is take the conservatives out for coffee! it's so damn simple! i guess there's no hope for the mormons though, with their whole "no drugs" thing. poor bastards.

reality bites

ah, covering the phones for a lunchbreak. is there any other single experience that defines the intern so completely? i submit that there is not. oh sure, filing and collating are intern-favoring tasks, but the one-hour shift on the phones is the be all and end all of unpaid drudgery.

the office assitant or--dare i say it?--secretary gets paid a decent salary to do this job. not great, of course, but when you apply for a job called 'office assistant' you know precisely what you're getting into. for the intern, though, (especially the intern in the glamorous world of progressive policy) covering the phones has the same feel as going home to live with your parents after graduation. it's a coming down to earth sort of feeling. not really bad, in fact it's a vital component of running an office. nevertheless, i feel a little demeaned by it. i have a bachelor's degree...and printed instructions for how to forward a call to voicemail. cognitive dissonance and i are going to be good friends this summer.

plenty of time for blogging, though. and the nytimes coverage of france v. switzerland!

tuesday? again?

okay fine, a quick weekend (+ monday) recap:

at the world cup
argentina won, cecilia very happy
- not that anybody was surprised. even though they were only 9th in the world rankings going into the tournament, they're highly favored to give brazil a run for their money. this is good for me, mostly because cecilia is crazy about argentina. and you know what they say about crazy superfan girlfriends when their team wins? well, it's all true. when she found out that the final is going to be held on argentina's version of independence day (july 9th), she predicted that the entire country would simply implode in a burst of nationalism like nothing the world had ever seen.

usa embarrassed by czech republic, dan drinks heavily
- on the other hand, it didn't take long for most people to realize that the world rankings have no bearing whatsoever on the cup. we were ranked 5th out of the world going into monday's travesty. what kind of experts would rank us ahead of argentina, you ask? mythical ones, that's who. after some investigative reporting (mostly crying into my coffee and grumbling hungover anti-czech epithets) i've uncovered that the world rankings were in fact drafted by tiny, glittering pixies with mystical ink that raises the hopes of all who read it.

in other news
dan 2, dc parking laws 0!
- in a fit of pique, the dc dmv decided not to let cecilia renew my visitor's permit. instead, they used their bureaucratic superpowers to force me to undertake a dangerous quest: the search for the unzoned block! you see, dc's streets are zoned resident only, block by block. so in order to park legally, one would have to register oneself and one's car in dc and obtain a residential permit. now, dc residents are allowed to apply for visitor's passes, but then the guy was mean to cecilia and told her she was in violation of dc code (if they only knew). so, long story short, she told me to check the street that goes through the park, arguing that, since there are no residents on that block, then nobody could petition to have it zoned residents-only. lo and behold, she's a genius, and bureaucracy is thwarted again!

take pride in your nuts
- went to the dc pride week street festival on sunday after watching mexico savage iran and saying something snarky about the west winning out after all (conveniently ignoring mexico's impending flirtation with oh-so-trendy latin american populism. conformists). anyway, never having been to a pride event before, i was somewhat surprised to find that it resembles a cross between a crappy job fair and college orientation, but with fewer free keychains and more svelte young men looking for donations to human rights campaign. needless to say, the high point (like at most events ending in 'fair') was the cinnamon roasted nuts!

and i thought it was just american politicians who were monosyllabic
- on monday afternoon, i left work early to go to a resume-writing workshop, even though i was told that my resume was "awesome" when i got down to this malarial swamp of a city. i guess the greatness of my resume is moot anyway, because i went to a bar to watch the usa game instead. two beers and a large cup of dejection later, i made my way to the department of the interior (thanks to my infallible department-of-the-interior sense!) to listen to his excellency, ambassador sen of india give a little speech. a very little speech! this guy made the president look gregarious, loquacious even. seriously, i know you're a bigshot ambassador, representing over a billion people, but would it kill you to prepare a few index cards first? apparently it would. good luck with the nuclear non-proliferation.

a sporting event for the people...

...30 billion people! hells yes, i am ready for some futbol! i don't even know why i'm so into the world cup. maybe it's mi novia internacional, maybe it's my emergence as a citizen of the world (look it up!), maybe it's the fact that my combined interest in the nhl finals, nba finals, and midseason baseball is roughly the same as my interest in america's got talent (that's none, smartass). whatever the reason, this tournament is gonna rock me sooo hard.

i just wish i could watch the games at work. usa's first match is on monday afternoon, and the odds that i can duck out and go down some frosty american beer in celebration are pretty slim. the bbc is streaming them on the interwebs, but slashdot sez that the sheer number of people trying to watch might cause the whole thing to come crashing down around our ears, bringing death and destruction, and the end of civilization. if that happens, then the terrorists have already won.

tuesday long over, armageddon still pending

yeah, i can't leave the 6/6/06 thing alone...numerology ranking only slightly above 'symbology' on dan's scale of ridiculous things to point and laugh at. tuesday wasn't particularly memorable, it seems, even though it was actually a day we should've been remembering: the sixty-something-th anniversary of d-day! ahh, i remember back when wars meant something and men were men. now those were some gosh-darned evildoers, by gum.

but enough nostalgia, how about that devil-child movie? worth watching if only to watch julia stiles die. and to find out how long liev schriber can keep a straight face. man, the original omen wasn't so great that it merited remaking, was it? maybe hollywood forgot they already made it once. also, is it me, or does damien look less like the antichrist and more like the kid that nobody likes and gets pushed in puddles a lot? man, i hate bullies.

a dose of politics

it's good for you, so shut up and swallow.

first, the news everybody's talking about. abu musab al-zarqawi was killed in an air strike last night. this is good news. even though the violence in iraq won't stop and the massive cost in lives and dollars won't be reduced, it's still good news.

second, just a little while ago, we won a vote on the estate tax! huzzah! seeing as senate procedures are only slightly less complicated than rocket surgery, i'm still a little fuzzy on what exactly we accomplished, but the guys on the budget team here are totally jazzed! repeal would cost us $1 trillion over ten years they told me in full gravitas mode. factcheck.org told a different story, but i didn't have the heart to tell them that. spin, budget team, spin like the wind!

third, tuesday (more on that later) was one of the many pre-election day elections that keep the wonks salivating and fill the lonely hours of the news cycle. and it was a pretty good day for the forces of justice. that ten commandments guy lost, old man burns is in trouble, and the rncc spent a whopping one fifth of its warchest on ca-50 only to win by a paltry 5000 votes. that's not what i would call a stellar roi. then again, i got most of my economics knowledge from playing simcity.

oh yeah, and the fma went down in flames again, picking up one more vote (49) than it had in 2004. at this rate, homosexuals won't have anything to worry about until 2042--except for hatred, fear, oppression, pesky state marriage bans, aids, the bird flu, evildoers, immigrants, flag burners, suvs, and mary cheney. and this was supposed to be uplifting. sorry.

bycadelic

alright, i fully admit that i may not be the most accomplished cyclist in the world. my ride is a police auction special (courtesy of the ithaca pd, thanks guys!), i can't afford clip-in pedals, and i've never even been to france. however, i do have some small experience with the clusterfuck-on-wheels that is urban bike commuting.

in the ways that matter--traffic laws, number of cars on the road, stupid pedestrians--dc is a lot like boston. while the roads are wider, bike lanes are nonexistent and may in fact be mythical. however, there are two very big differences that i've noticed so far. first, cars seem to be possessed of an almost third-world-esque desire to take up every inch of pavement on the road. three cars across two lanes seems to be a fun game for dc drivers, as is driving as close to the curb as possible.

secondly, dc bikers are a lot stupider than their new england counterparts. maybe it's because i read that dig article that one time, but the rules of biking (to say nothing of the laws) are pretty clear. stay on the right side of the road, obey traffic lights, stay off the sidewalks, use hand signals. pretty simple stuff, really, and yet during my 30 minute ride, i had to twice dodge oncoming bikers in my way and use my disapproving face at riders who were barreling down the sidewalk next to me. i wouldn't normally be upset by little things, but when bikers act stupidly, it makes it less safe for all of us. douchebags.

in the interests of full disclosure, i have on occasion ridden through a (deserted!) red light and used (empty!) sidewalks to get around stupid traffic problems. i do these things knowing full well that they are wrong and the inevitable crushing guilt is punishment enough. i'm pretty sure this morning's crop of morons aren't smart enough to even comprehend guilt, let alone the bike laws.

speaking of gawker

two unbelievably minor pieces of celebrity-dan intersection to report.

1. i'm pretty sure i saw the third-place finisher of last week's scripp's national spelling bee walking in front of the capitol on saturday. this wouldn't be all that interesting except she was, in the words of tim (one of the guys i watched it with), "like, the hottest 13-year-old ever!"

1a. yes, i watched the spelling bee with other guys. but in my defense: it was supposed to be a non-spelling-related party that fell through, my girlfriend was there too, and we flipped to so you think you can dance on the commercials. so there.

1b. for the record, the hottest 13-year-old ever was hermione in the third 'harry potter' movie. and that was determined by judges, people! judges!

2. this one's way better, if by 'better' i mean 'completely obscure and ridiculous', which i do. it turns out that henry gale--the evil guy on lost dated cecilia's friend's mom for a while way back in another decade! how crazy is that? i mean, sweet jesus, i wouldn't date anyone with bugeyes like his.

hmm. maybe whatever it is gawker does is harder than it looks. ahahahaha. no way, if those invertibrates can score serious celebrity scoops, it's only because the streets of manhattan are literally paved with 'stars' just waiting for some slobs with camera phones and blackberries to get used to the daylight and notice them.