Weeping For The Future

Let me start by saying I respect your right to smack the shit out of your kid. In fact, I support and advocate it. That's not to say you should actually beat him, or slap your 9 month old baby. But if you're six year old won't stop playing with matches, you need to go ahead and spank him. I don't see a lot of grey area here. I know a lot of people frown on that sort of thing these days, but we all somehow managed to survive with our parents laying into us once in a while. And let's be honest, sometimes we really deserved it when we were kids. So, discipline? You bet.

Nevertheless, there is a time and a place.

One of the things that amazes me about living in the city is how some people have a complete disregard for anything resembling civility. You see absolutely crazy shit on a fairly regular basis. It makes you wonder if they even care what other people think of them.

As I came around the corner at the entrance to my Metro station this morning, I saw a teenage girl screaming and yelling at what I guess was her daughter. She looked to be about three years old. It's sad how often you see things like that. The other day I was at the grocery store, and I saw a girl no older than about twenty with three little kids, none older than five. The woman was on her cell phone, yapping away, while the kids were wreaking havoc. After they finally got her attention, she put the phone down and unleashed a tirade of obscenities at the kids, in front of at least thirty people in the store. She then went straight back to the phone, once again oblivious to the kids. Now, I understand that mistakes happen. Lord knows we all do stupid shit when we're teenagers, and we all had close calls (and some of us got pregnant). So everybody deserves a get out of jail free card on the first one. But my god, if you can't be bothered with the kids then for christ's sake stop fucking! How hard could it be? Couldn't you have at least learned your lesson after the second one?

But anyway, the mom and the kid on the escalator.

They were standing on the metal platform at the top of the escalator, so they weren't actually going down yet. There are two down escalators at that stop, and I wanted nothing to do with that scene, so I tried for the one they weren't standing in front of. It was, of course, out of order. (As an aside, in almost two years I have seen all four escalators in that station working a total of two times) So I had no choice but to use the one they were using.

As I got closer, I noticed the kid was really crying. The entire front of her coat was wet with tears. I was listening to my ipod, so I didn't hear what was happening, but I imagine the kid was freaking out about actually getting on the escalator. And that's understandable. I see adults every single day who are absolutely terrified of them. The mom was trying to coax to kid on. And by coax, I mean shaking the shit out of her. As I got closer, I could hear over my headphones "get your motherfuckin ass on the goddamn escalator." Nice.

At this point I'm only a few feet away. Miraculously, the mother actually notices me. I've got no choice but to give the "kids will be kids" sheepish grin and try to pass them. But then the mother does something totally unexpected. She gets on the escalator alone, leaving the kid at the top, crying and blocking my path to the escalator.

I respect this move, it was one of my mom's favorites. My mom was the mom who actually did pull the car over to smack us. If I was at the playground and didn't want to leave, my mom would start walking towards the car. It's an effective last resort, and I can attest that it works. So, well played, ma'am.

But the kid wasn't buying it. The mom is rapidly moving away from us, and the kid hasn't budged. I have no idea what to do, but I know things are bound to get worse before they get better.

Exasperated, the mother looks at me and says, "Can you get her?"

WHAT?!

Look kid, I appreciate it's difficult to raise a kid who is only fourteen years younger than you. With my upbringing, I've got nothing but respect for what you're going through. But dear god, this is not my fucking problem. I don't want to be stuck in the middle of this, and I don't want to give you even a hint of complicity. This is your kid, not mine. Things like this are precisely the reason why people use birth control.

But at the same time, I feel for the little girl. If your mom treats you like this in public, imagine how bad things are at home. And escalators are scary, and your mom is lousy, and, let's be honest, you've got a long road ahead of you growing up. So it becomes, "Are you ready? 1, 2, 3!" and I lift her up.

Only she's not buying that either. She starts kicking her feet and flailing around. I try to set her down anyway, and she goes completely limp. She's not gonna stand up, and I can't put her down, and by now the mother is almost to the bottom of the escalator.

Out of ideas, I step onto the escalator and wait until it's taken off. Then I set her down next to me, and that seems to calm her down a bit. I help her put her hand on the railing, and ride down with her. Crisis averted.

I'm not saying I'm a hero or anything. I'd like to think any decent person would do the same thing in that situation. What kind of a monster leaves a three year old kid in distress? But I wasn't prepared for what happened next.

As we got to the bottom of the escalator, the mother doesn't even acknowledge me. She grabs the kid by the arm and drags her away. She doesn't even look at me, let alone say thank you.

Awesome.

You're Driving Me Crazy

I just can't explain it to you, and I don't even feel like I should have to.

I appreciate that you have emailed me, out of the blue, to offer me a new job. I understand that it's a great opportunity, that your company is prestigious, that it represents a nice jump in pay. I get all that.

But I'm not taking it, because taking it means I'd have to haul my ass all the way out into the suburbs every single day.

Oh, I see the irony. I was born and raised there, spent thirty years of my life there, so now I don't want to go back? How metrosexual of me, to have invented myself in this fancy new urban mold.

No, you douche. It's not about where you are (although dude, where you are sucks). It's about the getting there. The act of dragging my ass out of bed every day, and figuring out how to get way the fuck out there. I could:

1. Buy a car, deal with the DC DMV, spend an hour a day looking for parking, spend 3 hours a day wondering what day it is, hoping I'm parked on the non-street cleaning side, worry about gas, pay astronomical insurance rates, contribute to the destruction of the planet, fight traffic for hours every day on a highway full of people I want to die (but please pull over first), have to listen to the same nine records that have been playing on a loop on corporate controlled radio for the last 15 years as I sit in my car (honestly, Stone Temple Pilots weren't even good then, can you please add something new to the rotation, Clear Channel?), kill kill kill, die die die, everything everything everything, etc.

2. Use some combination of atlas and GPS to devise a way to take public transportation all the way out there, involving taking the Orange Line to the bitter end, then getting on some kind of bus or shuttle and sitting in traffic on the beltway for hours on end, which is supposed to somehow be better because I don't have to worry about the driving? If I'm not driving, I don't even get the benefit of fantasizing about standing on the gas and plowing my car into every fucker that cuts me off. Explain to me again how sitting on a bus with a bunch of whack jobs (have you ridden a fucking bus?) is better than sitting in your car by yourself?

Or I could just not take the job, which is what I'm gonna do.

You just don't understand, because you haven't tried it. My commute takes, at the very longest, a half hour. And that's if I walk from door to door and get stuck at every light. It takes about fifteen minutes if I take the Metro. Do you get that? I'm home and drinking a beer before you even pull out of the parking lot. Guess when the last time I scraped ice off my windshield was? Guess how much time I spend waiting in line at Jiffy Lube?

So spare me the condescending tone that suggests I'm a flake. There are more important things in life than salary. I value those extra hours I'm not sitting in my car every day, and I relish not having to worry about any of that car nonsense. Some people only care about money, and they're willing to commute four hours a day for every last dollar they can get their hands on. Some people value the piece of mind that comes with never having to worry about any of this shit. And fuck you if you can't see the difference. If you're going to be a cunt about this, why on earth would I ever want to work for you?

How To Be Cool, Chapter One

If you read this blog, you probably get the impression that I like to make fun of everyone. That's not really true. I prefer to pick on a particular type of person- the guy who thinks he's cool. If you're a nerd or just plain weird I'll definitely tease you, but it's a good natured kind of thing. If you think you're awesome, I probably hate you. I can spot that guy a million miles away. How? Because I'm him.

We celebrated my old man's (Daddy #2) birthday last weekend, so we had to drive way out to the sticks. That requires getting a car from Zipcar, and sitting on Route 66 for an hour. But I hadn't seen my dad in a while, and he does have a full bar and a ping pong table. So, you know, you take the good with the bad.

On the way out of town we stopped to pick him up a bottle of Maker's Mark, because he had specifically requested booze for his birthday. Lately I've taken to drinking Maker's straight, which I admit is probably not a good idea. Back when I was a kid, my friends had to ban me from drinking any hard liquor because I would become a complete trainwreck. I could sit down with you in a bar and drink 900 beers and get in my car and drive home (I'm not proud of this). But give me a few shots and dear god, there is no telling what will happen. The straw that broke the camel's back when we were younger happened at a party my friend threw at his parent's house when they went out of town one weekend. I had disappeared for a while, so my friends had to go looking for me. They found me in the basement, behind their little bar, open bottle of Crown Royal in one hand, book of matches in the other. I was trying to set things (bar, stools, etc) on fire. The next morning, when I came to, we had a little mini-intervention. We agreed to the ban, and I stuck to it for years and years.

But over the last couple of years I've branched out a bit. It started with gin, and it was harmless enough. But then I branched out to Maker's. It feels somehow more grownup to drink booze instead of beers, like it's somehow more sophisticated. I've been drinking Budweiser for like fifteen years, and I felt like I needed a change. I used to mix the Maker's with ginger ale, but it was always too sweet. So I started chasing it with Budweiser, and I felt pretty cool. I fancied myself the guy sitting at the bar with a beer and a shot in front of him, in some charmingly drunken Rat Pack moment. But lately I just drink that fucker straight. Good times.

We got out to my old man's house and started with the ping pong. In case you haven't heard, I'm kind of a big deal at table tennis. Such a big deal, in fact, that I've asked my mother if my long lost biological father might actually be Asian. No dice.

Somehow my brother managed to beat me the first game, which surprised everyone. Perplexed, I lost the rematch. So I opened a beer. Normalcy returned. I beat him three straight times to save face. He was devastated, and I loved it. I rubbed it in so much that my old man started speaking up in his defense. I was getting drunk from the beer, and carrying on a shit-talking contest against my old man and my kid brother. Even though I knew I would have to face my father, and my motorskills were declining by the second, I broke open the Maker's. My dad poured himself a thimble full, and I discovered yet another way to demonstrate my superiority over the other men in my family. I poured myself a glass (the amount I actually poured is subject to much family debate), and started drinking.

From what I gather, the following things happened next. At least, that's what they tell me. Because I don't remember any of it.

1. My father beat the ever living shit out of me at Ping Pong. It was like it was 1981 all over again, and I could barely see over the table. By all accounts, the asswhipping was truly legendary. My dad actually called the next day to apologize, and suggest I don't drink so much.

2. I somehow convinced my kid brother that I was not that drunk, and he should let me hold his one month old son. My brother has never had a drop to drink in his entire life, and because he is stupid, he let me hold the baby. Apparently at this point I was still fooling my family, because nobody objected to this. In fact, there are reportedly pictures of me doing this, but I've yet to see them.

3. We had to have the car back, so Baby urged me to go get my coat. She found me in the den, face down in the giant chair where all the coats were piled up. This sounds plausible, as I have a vague memory of falling at some point. I also have an unexplained bruise on my shin. Is this why?

4. I told Baby I needed to use the bathroom before we left, apparently to pee. She obliged, and waited by the door. After several minutes passed and I didn't come out, she came in looking for me, certain I was throwing up. I was not. I was, in fact, just standing there, in a daze. She ushered me out.

5. Somehow I said goodbye to my family. The consensus is that I appeared drunk, but not nearly drunk enough to explain what happened next.

6. I got into the passenger seat of the Zipcar, and we hit the road. We were on the highway for about nine seconds before I realized I was going to be sick. Baby then asked if she should pull over, and I told her no. (?) My explanation was that I didn't want her to have to merge back onto the highway. So instead, I just rolled down the window and started heaving.

7. At first Baby didn't know if I was actually throwing up, because we were probably doing seventy and the windows were rolled down. But then she was hit with the smell of whisky and birthday cake, and the mystery was solved.

8. This went on for thirty five miles.

9. According to Baby, only one car full of people pulled alongside us to taunt me. I don't believe this, and I think she's just telling me that to be nice. She was probably actually flagging people down to witness it.

10. We got the car home with about two minutes to spare. They track the time you return your Zipcar by the last time you use your card to lock the doors, so we were up against the clock. We pulled into the parking lot, and Baby asked me if I needed help getting out. I assured her I did not, and I opened my door. I fell, face first, out the door, but was held in place by my seat belt. I began a slow descent toward the ground until Baby made it around to my side of the car to save me, with my face just inches from the asphalt.

11. She dragged my drunk, staggering, vomit-smelling pathetic ass two blocks from the Zipcar lot to our apartment. We thought we had managed to make it home without running into anyone we knew, but the gay couple in the apartment upstairs were coming out of their place right as we got to the front door of our building. At that point I was still in my coat and scarf, which were literally covered in used whisky and birthday cake. What's going on, guys?

12. She opened the door to our place, and dropped me in the bathroom. She then went back outside in the freezing cold, to the dark, scary, inner-city Zipcar lot to clean my puke off the side of the car.

13. She came home to find me passed out in the bathroom on a pile of dirty clothes. She tried to get me to go to bed, but I refused. So she cleaned me up as best she could. I was shaking like a leaf, so she got me a blanket. We have many in the house, but she chose a special one. My ex, the dreaded Osama bin Megan, used to hand-sew quilts (yeah, I don't know either). I have a small, nice one she made years ago that I never managed to give back to her. I've held on to it, because it really is nice and I just don't have the heart to toss it. Baby gave me that to cover up with. How awesome is that? Sweet revenge.

14. At some point in the middle of the night I awoke and crawled into bed. I don't remember this.

15. I do remember waking up at 6am, in the bed, confused. I got up to pee, and found my clothes strewn all over our bedroom. When I got back to the bed, Baby was awake. I asked what happened. She told me. "Really?" I says. "Really" she says. "That's funny, I don't feel sick now" I says. Duh, I was still drunk.

16. I woke up at around 9am, as sick as I have ever felt. I could not get out of bed literally all day. Although it was a Sunday, Baby got up, made me breakfast, and put in twelve hours at the office. Shen she got home at 10 o'clock she found me where she left me, in bed.

17. My hangover lasted through Monday, and was so bad on Monday evening, nearly 48 hours after I stopped drinking, that I could not work out after work.

The entire episode is utterly humiliating. Just complete amateur night. And to have put Baby through everything just makes me feel horrible. She took every single thing in stride though, never got mad or bitched or even complained. Until yesterday, when we got this email from Zipcar:

"After your reservation in [deleted] on Dec. 1st it was reported to us that the interior of the vehicle was left in poor condition with vomit inside the vehicle."

Honestly, could I be any more cool? The asshole guy I make fun of in my blog, the guy who puts his fiance through hell, endangers infants, throws up on himself, forces his some poor bastard at Zipcar to have to clean up after him, the guy with no regard for what an asshole he is, and how he fucks it up for everyone else? Yeah, that guy is me.

Salad Days

I went to the gym last night after work, and really pushed myself. I was exhausted when I finally finished, but I needed to pick up something for dinner because Baby was working late. The original plan was just to order a pizza, but that seemed counterproductive to all that working out. So I decided I check out the new salad chain place that just opened in Chinatown. First mistake.

I didn't know too much about the place, but it seemed pretty cool. All sorts of fresh salad stuff, made to order for you. When I first walked in, I was a bit overwhelmed by the number of choices and the entire ordering process. But they had someone standing at the back of the line explaining how everything worked, so soon enough I had picked out what I wanted and was waiting to order. I'm not one to be adventurous when it comes to food, so I ordered a very basic salad with just a few vegetables. I noticed, however, that everything looked very fresh and very good, so I was excited about coming back with Baby sometime and trying something new.

As I stood at the counter, watching them assemble my salad, something dawned on me. The woman immediately in front of me and the man immediately behind me both ordered shrimp on their salad. If you're a regular reader, you know that shrimp = poison for me. I noticed that the bin with the shrimp in it was precipitously close to the other ingredients, but that wasn't the worst part. After they mix all the ingredients, they dump everything out and chop it all up and toss it again. They do this on cutting boards, and there is plenty of chaos happening with so many salads being prepared in such a small space. I realized that it was almost impossible to avoid getting shrimp bits and juice and poison in my salad, and I felt deflated. But at that point I was already at the register, so I just paid and planned to give the salad to Baby when she got home.

It's a bit of a walk to our place from Chinatown, so I called Baby on the way and told her what happened. More than anything, I was disappointed that I wouldn't be able to eat at a place that otherwise looked pretty good. But in talking about it, we realized that maybe I had overreacted. Surely I'm not the only one of their customers with a shellfish allergy. And plenty of vegetarians don't want any meat in their salad, and my Muslim grandmother damn sure wouldn't want pork in hers. I still had a few blocks to go on my walk home, so I got the phone number for the place from my receipt and gave them a call. I asked to speak to the manager, and he assured me over and over again that everything is sanitized after every single salad. They wash everything thoroughly, including all of the utensils and cutting boards, to protect against just this sort of thing. And although I didn't notice them changing anything while I was there, I had no reason not to believe the guy. He really did seem very nice. Second mistake.

I wanted to wait til Baby came home to actually eat it, because I'd be in trouble if I had an adverse reaction and I was all alone. While I waited for her, I did some more research on the company, to see if anyone else had blogged about this kind of thing. I couldn't find anything. In fact, all I could find were comments from the owners about their commitment to quality ingredients and sanitary preparation. I even found one blog where someone had complained of catching the stomach flu, and he went down the list of everywhere he had eaten that day, including the very same location in Chinatown. One of the owners actually commented on his blog, talking about their commitment to providing healthy food and hoping it wasn't anything he might have picked up in their restaurant. They seem like nice folks, right? By the way, the fact that they're scouring blogs is precisely why I'm not mentioning their name here, although I imagine they'll probably show up anyway.

By the time Baby finally made it home, I was ravenous. I already had everything planned out. I was going to take my basic salad and add some of the leftover turkey we're still working our way through. It was gonna hit the spot. So I was pretty bitter when I opened up the container and found chicken in my salad, especially when you consider I didn't order any fucking chicken. If there was chicken in there, there was bound to be shrimp as well. I was furious, but I tried not to go through the roof. Mistakes happen, the place is brand new, the staff are probably still in training, blah blah blah. Nevertheless, the manager swore up and down it was safe. Had the chicken not been there to tip me off, I might still be in the hospital or even worse. I wasn't happy.

But rather than do what you'd think I would do- blog about it and mention their name and threaten to burn the place down and put them out of business and other acts of comic hysteria- I decided to try to be constructive. I wrote a nice, calm email to them through their website. I expressed my disappointment with not only the preparation, but the manager's story as well. I explained that I understood the growing pains associated with opening a new business, but I also voiced my frustration. I did not say fuck one single time. In fact, I was almost trying to be helpful by alerting them to a breakdown in the way they do business. I was fortunate that I didn't get sick, and the next person might not be so lucky. Third mistake.

About a half hour later, I got a call from a number in New York. It was one of the owners, calling to apologize. I didn't even know what to say, but I thanked him for calling. He offered to buy me lunch to make it up to me, and promised to speak to the staff to make sure they follow protocol in the future. It was a nice touch, and my faith in humanity was restored. The company obviously cares, right? Would McDonald's do that?

A little while later, I got an email from someone in their company, and this morning I got another. Then another. Then one from the regional manager, or something, explaining that he had tried to call me to offer me my free salad, and hoped I could stop by soon. At this point I'm freaking out. Who are these crazy salad guys? You have a business to run, stop worrying about me so much! I emailed him back to thank him, and praise his company for taking customer service so seriously (it's almost scary). But I told him I had to decline his offer, as I just can't see how they can safely do what they do and not end up getting poison in my food. It's nobody's fault that shrimp is made of poison- certainly not the guys working in or running this restaurant. I've seen the guys in Cosi make a shrimp salad, not wash their hands, and then make my turkey sandwich. As a result, I don't eat at Cosi anymore. I'm going to do the same with the salad place, because honestly it's just not worth the risk. And I can chalk up the lost six dollar salad as a lesson in how much shellfish ruin everything for everyone.

So if you're reading this, please stop offering me a free salad. Just make sure the people who work for you follow the rules, and try to come up with a way to keep the poisonous stuff away from the stuff that's not poisonous. I'm not gonna try to sue you or put you out of business. I respect what you're trying to do, and I think it works just fine for people who don't mind having their stuff all mashed up. But it's not for me, because it might kill me.

Thanks.

Don't Be That Guy

When Baby and I are angrily talking about which people we are better than (everyone does that, right?), the conversation often turns to people who lack self-awareness. These are our favorite targets. See if you can think of people who fit these descriptions-

"Make It Up As I Go Along Driver"- The rules of the road are merely suggestions. My SUV with the Virginia Pentagon Memorial plates and Support Our Troops yellow ribbon stickers affords me the opportunity to create my own set of driving guidelines as the situation dictates. Make a U Turn across traffic from the far right lane? No problem. Right turn on red when people are in the crosswalk? Go for it. It's not like there are other people out here sharing the road with me, right?

"Don't Hold The Door"- Look, I'm in a hurry. Glancing behind me to see if someone else might be standing there will waste valuable nanoseconds. I simply can't be bothered. Manners be damned, I am late for shit!

"Stop Somewhere You Shouldn't On The Metro"- Some tourists get a pass on this one, because I understand how the Metro can be confusing (if you can't read, listen, or even understand basic symbols on signs). But how completely unaware of your surroundings do you have to be if you feel compelled to stop at the the top or bottom of an escalator to get your bearings? How do you not notice the wave of human beings standing right behind you? And did it ever occur to you to fish through your pockets for your farecard BEFORE you got to the turnstile?

"Waiting In Line Talking On Your Cell Phone"- Hang up the goddamn phone. If you were really that important, you wouldn't be standing in line in Subway, would you?

I've recently added a new person to the list, and he/she is climbing the charts with a bullet.

"Fucking Wheelie Briefcase Douchebag"- The wheelie suitcase is very helpful. Makes you wonder how you ever got along without one. But how fat and lazy do you have to be if you have to get wheels for your goddamn briefcase? For starters, consider not carrying so much crap with you wherever you go. I regularly bring books, my gym stuff, and my lunch with me to and from work. It makes my bag pretty big. But I certainly don't need goddamn wheels to lug it around. And please miss me with the 'my back hurts' argument. My back is in goddamn shambles, to the point where I sometimes can barely walk, even with a cane. And yet I somehow manage to carry my stuff without wheels. Get rid of some of your material possessions, man, or they will only end up owning you, man. Why on earth do you need to carry them all with you, anyway? Is this some sort of hobo training program? Harden the fuck up and invest in a good, sturdy bindle. Your dignity will thank you for it.

If you absolutely have to have the wheelie suitcase, because your combination of abject laziness and utter apathy has rendered your muscles useless, can you consider trying to remember that the bag you're trailing behind you leaves a twisted path of stumbling commuters in its wake? Every second of the day, things are occurring outside of your meager little mind. And not just things directly in your line of sight! Look around, including behind you. You'd be amazed at what you might find back there. We're tired and just want to go home, too. And we're actually carrying our shit, so give us a break, k?

And I'm just gonna say this last part once, people. This is your only warning. You know that backpack you bought for your kid with the wheels on it? You've got one chance to go get it at this instant and set it on fire. Do you honestly believe you can raise your child to be anything other than the World's Biggest Pussy if he can't even carry his own books home from school? If he has that many books, have you considered that maybe he should start doing things other than homework for a change? Give him a football or a slingshot or a book of matches and let him be a real boy for once. Tell him to go outside and climb something. Set him free. Because if I see him standing on the Metro platform lugging that thing around one more time, I'm pushing both of you in front of the next train. The future of the human race is at stake, god damn it!

Tell That God Damn Baby To Shut The Fuck Up

I had this big fight with my mom once, where I tried to convince her we were white trash. She denied it vehemently, it was almost frightening. My mom, true to her psychopath nature and bless her heart, is in complete denial. If you ever want proof that we have it good in America, you need only remember that my family doesn't live in a trailer park. If we can make it, anyone can. Just to win this argument again, I present our credentials.

-I have never met my daddy +15 points.

-I refer to my daddy as "my daddy" +25 points.

-My mom dropped out of high school when she was 17 to have me. +15 points

-My mom was on her third attempt at 9th grade when she 'decided' to drop out. +25 points

-My mom, very pregnant with my sister, married my stepfather (daddy #2) in our apartment. In the pictures, I am 2 years old and featured prominently. +10 points

-Also featured in those photos is my cousin Shawn, daddy #2's sister's son. Shawn is 14 months older than me, even though his mother is 2 years younger than daddy #2. That means she was 15 when he was born. +20 points

-Shawn is black, his mother (and daddy #2) is/are Turkish, and I am white. We don't, ahem, look very much alike. +50 points

-When I was about 7, I learned that daddy #2 was not my real daddy. My mom's sister's daughters (my cousins) told me. Their mother had both of them before she turned 20. Their dad, although not completely missing, wasn't exactly "around." +25 points

-Both of those cousins had children out of wedlock before they turned 20. One of them was arrested for trying to stab the father of two of her three children. She has since lost custody. +50 points

-My brother is named after both of his grandfathers. My mother, to get even with daddy #2 (his father), called him by yet a third name well into his childhood, leaving many to wonder what ever happened to that kid Ryan who used to be my brother. +25 points

-My sister decided to finally marry her high school sweetheart, in between the birth of her second and third daughters. They now have a total of four little girls, and they appear to be the perfect little family. Of course, you have to ignore that she dropped out of high school to have the first one (at age 16), and that her husband, by lying on his resume, was able to land a job as a marketing executive for a tobacco company, where he makes more money in a year than I make in a decade. +100 points

-My mom's father lives in a double-wide rambler in Woodbridge, VA. A 'renovation' to the house has allowed it to stretch from one end of the chain link fence to the other, to match the empty swimming pool in the backyard. The car in the driveway is a Lincoln, and has not run in at least 20 years, if ever. +50 points

-His wife (my grandmother), rest her soul, was named Jo Ed. That is not an abbreviation, that's the whole name. But it could be worse. Her mother was named Gay, and my grandmother liked that so much she named my aunt (the mother of the detectives who uncovered my birth secret and shared it with me) Gay as well. I'd tell you my mother's name, but honestly I'm just too embarrassed. +50 points

So I win, right? I mean, it's not even worth arguing about, is it? Let's call a spade a spade (just kidding, Shawn!). It's a miracle, not to mention a testament to the greatness of the United States of America, that we're firmly planted in the middle class. And my god, it scares the shit out of me to wonder about the people who haven't been able to make it. I mean, really.

I would like to think that I have some great gift, because I seem to be the first person in the family with the self-awareness to realize we're a couple of bad decisions away from dragging our knuckles and having to divide the family up into hunters and gathers. I'd like to believe that I can take these lessons learned and pave the way for a brighter future for my family. And maybe that does happen in the movies.

But in reality, this is where I am. I'm calling my brother, frantic, at 1 o'clock on a Friday, scrambling to get advice for this weekend's football picks. And he, clearly in his element, takes the time to pontificate about the point spreads and interesting matchups. It should be perfect- a bonding moment between two brothers. Only I'm distracted, because he's holding his newborn son in his lap and he won't stop fussing. And my brother is distracted, because it's hard as hell to play online poker, talk on the phone, and juggle your fussing newborn son in your lap. As we both grow ever more exasperated, I finally shout, "Jesus, will you tell that god damn baby to shut the fuck up!?" And when we both laugh, I realize daddy would be proud.

"Because It Is, You Know, Black People"

Blog-

You may have noticed I messed with the format a bit. I wanted to create an index, so that people could find posts on a particular topic. I started to go back through the posts and categorize them last week, but I ran out of time. I do hope I can finish that project though. It has the added benefit of allowing me to quickly find out if I have written about something before. Things tend to run together in my mind, and the drinking doesn't help. To that end-

Drinking-

My god, I was trashed on Friday at happy hour. I have recently shown this blog to some of my co-workers (welcome)- a group of people I regularly go to happy your with. We had a happy hour scheduled for Friday, but I woke up that morning with an incredibly sore back. It happens to me sometimes. I'm not sure if it's a complication from my car accident a few years ago, or a recurrence of the herniated disk I got as a result, or even the surgery I had to fix the disk. But whatever it is, it hurts like hell every few months or so. And there isn't a whole lot I can do except whine and take drugs for it. So I loaded up on Vicodin all day on Friday (at work- good times), then we went out drinking. Could you guys tell? I can't believe I found my way home.

Housekeeper-

And speaking of home, our housekeeper is batshit crazy. I know what you're thinking- "A housekeeper, how decadent!" You couldn't be more right, and you can suck it, bitches. I don't have a big fancy TV, and I don't own a car, but I don't clean my fucking toilet, either, and that means I'm living on easy street. I don't need a lot of material possessions. I'd trade them all for never having to even know where we keep the broom anymore. Normally I'd probably feel bad about having someone else clean my house, like I'm too good to do it. But we pay her a king's ransom for it, and she's nothing less than an artist. She cleans things we didn't even know were dirty. I actually admire her for the absolute dedication she has to her craft. You can tell she is one of these people who just can't handle things being dirty, and she has channeled into a crusade against eliminating dirt. She is a treasure, except for this one little problem.

She is not so into the black people. She's Brazilian, and old (sixty one!), so maybe that excuses it somehow? I don't know. But on maybe her third or fourth visit to our house, she was explaining to us how happy she was to have found another client (she was recommended to us by blog readers K+N, you racist bastards). In her broken English, she told us how relieved she was when she came by to give us the estimate and saw we weren't black. Baby and I were honestly dumbstruck. What do you even say? In our housekeeper's bizarre little mind, there is a fundamental difference between cleaning up after black people and white people. We've tried to wrap our minds around this, to come up with some way in which that's an objective statement to make. But it's impossible. She's a racist, and that is wrong wrong wrong. But my god, can this woman clean! So we sold out and kept her, I'm ashamed to say. And thankfully it didn't come up again, until...

This morning, she was gossiping with us about K+N's new house. She was telling us that she needed to clean it before they moved in, and it was a bastard because, of course, black people had lived there before. She said it so matter of factly- "Because, you know, it is black people." Baby and I just squirmed. Should I feel so guilty about this? Because I really do. Of course, I'll feel much better when I come home to a sparkling clean apartment.

Embracing Failure

Well, I should have seen that coming.

I had this giant test last week, to test my project management acumen. It's a made up discipline (sort of like business school), where they assign incredibly specific definitions to everyday words that make no sense in the context in which the words are normally used. For example, here's the definition of Activity Attributes:

"Multiple attributes associated with each schedule activity that can be included within the activity list."

Got that? And no, I'm not citing my sources. Go ahead, lock me up.

Like any of the management theories, it's 10% useful and 90% crap. People at a place called the Project Management Institute don't want to get real jobs, so they've made up an entire discipline and several credentials, and they've convinced people that these credentials are important. So important, in fact, that you have to pass a test to get them! Ignoring the convenient fact that there is a shit ton of money to be made in the credentialing process. You're charged to join the Project Management Institute society (I'm not making that up), you're charged to take the test itself, and you're charged to buy the study guides and books and classes to help take the test. An entire industry created around something that is completely made up. Fucking brilliant. And your Government is spending money hand over fist to pay its employees and contractors to get the credentials.

But I'm buying into the process, because I want to get ahead. The getting leukemia in my twenties thing really fucked up my whole Alex P. Keaton career track, and I need to catch up. I've decided to take the process seriously, to use the buzzwords religiously, to demonstrate that I'm the very embodiment of the project management discipline. I am drinking the Kool Aid.

I've decided to apply for the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) credential. The goal would be the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential, but I don't have enough experience to qualify for that one yet. Actually, that's not entirely true. I could demonstrate work experience that would more than qualify me, but it would require me to get into contact with bosses at old jobs and do tons of paperwork. They seem to audit almost everyone who applies for these credentials, and I just can't be bothered with dealing with all of that. The CAPM is treated like a lite version of the PMP, with less stringent experience requirements. Plus the test is easier. Bonus. I figure next year (when I have enough continuous experience at the firm I'm at) I'll upgrade to the PMP. You don't care, do you?

I signed up to take a three day seminar in August, on the company dime (cost: $1,500). It was grueling- classes ran from 8am to 5pm, covering the most boring material imaginable. But I was committed to taking it seriously and learning the concepts. The course was offered from a third party, but it came with the usual guarantees about passing the exam and learning the discipline. It seemed like a good idea, and I did very well on all of the practice exams in the classes. I consistently scored in the 80's, when I only needed a 60 on the pass/fail actual exam to receive the credential. I left the class feeling good, like I was prepared for the real exam.

Getting registered was a nightmare. It took forever to join the society (cost: $129), then get cleared for the exam (cost: $225). I ended up being audited, so I had to document that I was qualified to take the test. Weeks passed before I was finally able to schedule, and I chose last Friday to allow myself ample time to study.

I hit the books hard. I made flash cards, I took and re-took the practice exams. My class had an optional online component with additional practice exams, and I took all of those as well. By the time I finished studying, I was consistently scoring near 90%. I never had to apply myself in college or grad school, because I'm one of those people who excels at taking tests. And the practice exams were full of easy questions, the kind where common sense is usually all you need. Hypothetical example:

You are a project manager in charge of evaluating several sales proposals. On the eve of the day you're scheduled to make your decision, a sales manager from one of the bidding firms calls you to offer front row seats to the Super Bowl, and use of the corporate jet. You should:

A) Take the bribe. Football is awesome!

B) Take the bribe, but murder the sales manager to cover your tracks. The perfect crime!

C) Take the bribe, but have the sales manager give the tickets to your wife so as to not arouse suspicion. You clever bastard!

D) Do not accept the bribe. Integrity is awesome!

I'm not a rocket scientist, and my IQ is only 147, but I figured I had a pretty good chance of passing the test.

I got to the testing center, and they sat me down in front of the computer. I took the tutorial that taught me how to use a mouse (seriously), and clicked through for my first question:

您是项目负责人负责评估几个销售提案。在天的前夕您预定做出您的决定, 一个销售主任从出价的企业的当中一个叫对公司喷气机的您为超级杯提供前排位子, 和用途。您应该:

A) 采取贿款。橄榄球是令人敬畏的!
B) 采取贿款, 但谋杀销售主任盖您的轨道。完善的罪行!
C) 采取贿款, 但让销售主任给到您的妻子的票以便不激起怀疑。您聪明的坏蛋!
D) 不要收受贿赂。正直是令人敬畏的!

Okay not really, but close enough. I had no fucking idea what I was doing. For several minutes I thought I was taking the wrong test. But there were enough vaguely familiar terms that I realized I was, in fact, just screwed. I fumbled my way through 150 questions, feeling dumber than I've ever felt in my life. I guessed wildly, but I knew I was getting at least some right. The math questions, at the very least, were like the ones in my book. The rest, however, were full of terms and concepts I had never seen before. My class and study guide were completely useless. I was on my own. But hey, I only needed to get 90 out of 150 right, right? This just might work...

No chance, I failed. I walked out of the test center with my tail between my legs. The test is divided into 14 "Knowledge Areas" and each area gets a random number of questions. The test results don't tell you how many questions you actually got right or wrong, but they do give you a percentage correct for each area. In the places with the equations, I got scores as high as 92%. In places with the unfamiliar terms, I got scores as low as 40%. To add insult to injury, if you take the average score of my percentages and weight them evenly, I would have passed with a 66%. But, of course, the exam was randomly weighted toward the shit I didn't know, and I failed. Wonderful. Did I mention it was raining when I left the test center? Of course it was, for the first time in months.

为什么坏事总发生在我身上?

Live Strong, Die Like A Pussy

For years I wore one of those yellow, LIVESTRONG cancer bracelets that you think went out of fashion in 2005. Not because I look good in yellow, and not because I want to draw attention to my freakishly small wrists. No, I wore it despite your snickers, Johnny Fashion Ass, because I've got a case of the cancer, and I was too afraid I'd die if I took it off. If you live your life at the mercy of symbolism, there are certain commitments you just don't want to break.

The details of how I received the bracelet are inconsequential. Well, I'm making them inconsequential. Because if I told the story about the girl who gave it to me, and how we used to be friends, except one night we all got really drunk at Townhouse Tavern, and they pulled some kid out of one of those terrible clubs next door on a stretcher, and my friend and I were laughing at the pathetic thought of the kid ODing on some horrible club drug at one of the most horrible dance clubs in the city, and the girl who gave me the bracelet started giving me shit, and I explained that we were just kidding, but she was drunk and she wouldn't let it go, because that's what she does- she gets drunk and doesn't let it go, and I just couldn't stand it anymore, so I shouted "Becky, shut up you fucking cunt!" in front of all of our friends, all of the onlookers watching shirtless club boy getting put in the stretcher, the paramedics, and half of the Dupont Circle neighborhood, and that pretty much ended our friendship- if I told that story, I'd look like a real asshole. So instead, let's just say I got it from a friend.

Because I'm a slave to both superstition and symbolism, I never wanted to take it off. Unfortunately, I'm also occasionally batshit crazy about germs, too, so there were times when I did actually have to take it off. The bright yellow would fade to a sort of fake butter color, the little engraved letters would fill in with some class of schmutz. If you play videogames (and of course you fucking do, you're reading this), I'm talking precisely about the kind of shit that gathers in the nooks and crannies of a controller. I would ignore it until I couldn't stand it anymore, and I would dunk it in bleach for a few hours. Problem solved. But other than that, I never took it off.

Only a couple of weeks ago, I was playing with it while I was talking on the phone at work, sort of stretching it out while it was still on my wrist, when the damn thing snapped. It didn't go easily- there was a loud crack and it flew across my office. It scared the life out of me, but I quickly realized I had much bigger problems at hand. The signs were clear, and the end was nigh. I IM'd Baby to break the bad news, and she had some ridiculous story about how it was actually a good sign, because that meant I'd survived long enough to outlive the bracelet, or some such nonsense. Whatever, I told her she'd be sorry when I actually did die. She said, "lol." Women.

But it's actually happening! First, I was afflicted with the Dreaded Handpox. Then just this weekend I received the Curse of 1,000 Unpleasantly Urgent Trips to the Bathroom. That one is particularly ironic, because I've recently cut all caffeine and almost all chocolate and saturated fat from my diet because I think it's been upsetting my stomach (that and, you know, 32 years of rampant anxiety and a daily handful of god knows what in the medicine that I hope is keeping my leukemia at bay). I had actually been feeling pretty good, like maybe I was onto something with this whole healthy food crazy fucking person thing, when this gastrointestinal disaster struck. We went out on Friday night, had a few beers, and spent Saturday laying around. I felt progressively worse all day Saturday, managed to fall asleep around midnight, and then woke up around 3am and immediately ejected every morsel of food I'd eaten in the last 48 hours, along with what looked like considerable portions of a lot of really important looking internal organs. I was in hell. I dropped at least five and probably ten pounds in the next two days. I became a human sieve. It wasn't awesome.

(Two additional things I learned that proved women make no sense: 1) For some reason, they don't like it when you call them into the bedroom to demonstrate how much weight you've lost, and how loose your clothes that used to be tight now fit with room to spare. 2) When the man is lying in bed, dying from some disgusting parasite thing, the woman is actually hoping she will catch whatever it is, so she can loose weight. Seriously.)

There you have it. Two horrible plagues unmistakeably brought about by the broken pact I made with LUCAMIA. At this point I'm just waiting for the bout of whatever that horrible staph infection thing (do you think I'm dumb enough to actually read those articles?) that's in the news today to finish me off.

This Time I Might Mean It

I'll try, really I will.

It makes me very happy to hear that people read this blog and enjoy it. I've come to grips with the fact that you're not going to leave many comments though. I'm not sure if that's because I attract shadowy, lurking figures to my blog, or if maybe it's just so awkward and uncomfortable that nobody really knows what to say after reading it.

I hate nearly all of the blogs on the internets. I would say categorically that I hate each one, but I can't accurately make that statement because I don't have the patience to slog through them to find out if they're bad or not. I'm willing to bet they're sucky, though.

And because I hate blogs (and myself, frankly), I have this fear of my own blog becoming lame and boring. So I sit down to try to write in it, and I get five paragraphs in and hit delete. Or I come up with something I think is halfway decent and show some poor sap over IM, and they explain to me that, after all these years, I should probably just stop fucking bitching about Osama bin Megan already. Point taken.

I want this to be funny. And I absolutely don't want this to become a journal where I thrill you with the details of everything I watched on TV, read in the paper, and viewed on the internet in the past few hours. My life is actually extraordinarily boring. Lately it involves playing the same videogame on two different computers at the same time for hours and hours each day. The only quality time I spend with Baby is when she sits on the couch next to me and flails about with the Wii remote. Do you really want to read about that? Of course not. Although, if I put that shit on youtube it would be a smash. And why god why can't girls keep their mouth closed when they're playing videogames, anyway?

So yeah, I'll try harder. And does anyone know of any fancy technology where people could receive updates whenever I post? I looked around a bit, but all I saw were subscription things where you had to use your email address. I'm sure some of you would have no problem with that, but you lurkers would probably never use it. Isn't that right, Osama?

A Pox On Both Your Hands

I went out drinking with an old work buddy (well, he's young and I'm old, as he reminded me) on Friday night, and I had a good time. But I made sure I came home early, because I had important, civic-minded things to do. Baby and I were planning to participate in the AIDS Walk bright and early on Saturday morning, and I felt it very important that I only get somewhat drunk so as not to be too hungover. We also had a long trip out to the distant suburbs on Saturday afternoon for my brother's wife's (sister-in-law still seems weird) baby shower. I knew I'd be seeing a lot of family, so I didn't want to look like the disheveled wreck they usually see when I happen to visit with them. So, see? I was trying to be good.

We got up early, only a little bit hungover, and met the rest of our 'team' (made up of co-workers) for the walk. We were short on time with our long drive ahead of us, but we stuck it out and walked the whole thing, hangover and all, because we wanted to show solidarity and all that good stuff. Plus we felt like we needed to earn our tshirts, which are scratchy and way too big. Make a mental note about the tshirts, they may or may not be important later.

On our way home we stopped by the new Au Bon Pain on the corner. We're thrilled that it's there, because most of downtown DC becomes a ghost town on the weekends. It's a blessing to be able to get my sausage croissant on since Sparky's closed to make way for the wine bar (omfg rite?!) and Breakwell's nearly burned down. So we ate there for the first time, and it was marvelous. (make another mental note, this time about the food)

After lunch we took showers, and started packing up the Zipcar. We went to the beach a couple of weeks ago, and we borrowed things like beach chairs and towels from my mother that we planned to give back to her at the baby shower. The chairs were all sandy from the beach, and they were crappy to begin with, so I left them on our back patio in the alley. Miraculously, no one had stolen them, or used them for illicit sex acts. As I was carrying them into the house to set them by the front door, a prehistorically large bug flew out of one, whizzed by our heads, and out the open back door. It was so big my first instinct was to take cover, so I didn't really see what happened. Baby was visibly shaken, but she assured me that whatever it was (dragonfly from the beach? pigeon? pterosaur?), it was certainly gone. We were relieved. (Mental note: soap; shampoo; used items; alley in large, downtown American city used almost exclusively to exchange sex for money; potentially disease-ridden predator)

We were checking all the stuff we had to return, to make sure we remembered everything, and I noticed my right hand was itching, just below my thumb. And I mean really itching. So I put some Cortisone on it, because of course I'm the guy who has that kind of thing in his medicine cabinet. (Mental note: first onset of symptoms)

The drive sucked. We love Zipcars, but this one had a problem with the air conditioning. Air was coming out of the vents, but it wasn't cooled at all. And since it's 90 degrees in the fall in DC these days, that was problematic. The traffic was miserable as well. It was 1pm on a Saturday, and it took an hour to drive 30 miles on the highway, with stop and go traffic almost the whole time. Where the fuck are all of you people going? And do you really need a giant SUV to get there? When we finally arrived at our destination, beautiful Prince William County, Virginia (motto: latinos are the new poor/gay/black people) I was literally stunned. I can remember when Fairfax was the distant suburbs to DC, and anything beyond that was straight up country. And that wasn't that long ago. But by the time we finally pulled into the cul-de-sac (directions: it's the 209,328,916th McMansion on the left-hand side, can't miss it), I felt like the fucking Lorax. As an aside, I hate all of you people. You laugh at me when I explain how great living in the city is, and you tell me how you feel so much safer living in the suburbs where your kids can go outside and play. I buy that, because I was raised in the suburbs and practically lived outdoors. But each time I drive to one of these neighborhoods, there is never a kid in sight. They've got mile-wide streets, impossibly green lawns and skateparks, (SKATEPARKS!) in the suburbs these days, and the kids are either wiped out from their exhaustive schedule of playdates, or glued to their PS3's in the den. (Mental notes: poor air quality (suspicious airborne car bacteria?); road rage; SUVs; racism; deforestation; Dr. Seuss; hypocrisy; conservation; fat children; suburbs)

The baby shower was fine. It was good to see my family, and easy to ignore the people we didn't know. We'd bought cheesy but cute tshirts for my nieces at the beach, and they even seemed happy when we gave them to them. I drank a beer and thought about getting something to eat. As I'm reaching for a "quesadilla," someone mentions how delicious the "shrimp quesadillas" are. Alarm bells. Shellfish are poisonous, and they make me die. What kind of sadistic bastard puts shellfish in quesadillas? Remind me to give peanut-and-milk lollipops to the pasty, allergic to everything children my unborn nephew will undoubtedly have to have playdates with. In a rage, I go outside and call my brother. He was boycotting the baby shower because "they're like, I don't know, fucking gay and stuff," so I was gonna stop by his house and check it out. He just bought a townhouse out there, and you wouldn't believe the place. It's beautiful inside, of course. Gigantic, really, when you consider what small people he and his wife are. He showed me his enormous new TV, and we played some videogames. He told me about his neighborhood, and it sounds like typical Prince William County: he bought his place for 20% less than the places across the street were selling for a year ago; several of the houses on the street are in various stages of foreclosure; the builder has closed up shop, either bankrupt or close to it, and much of the neighborhood is unfinished, including the roads; the commute is a bastard, but hey he's got hardwood floors and marble countertops, right?; and the neighbors are okay, well, except for maybe that guy with the Confederate flag in the back window of his pickup truck. Sounds grand. (Mental notes: presence of unidentified strangers; close proximity to small children; genuine pleasure; beer; POISON!; misplaced rage; ridiculous logic; mini-McMansions; diminutive siblings; television envy; videogames as a viable hobby for thirtysomethings; falling property values; did you really think you could afford a half million dollar house on your Applebees salary?; unsound business practices; commuting; superfluous luxury; neighbors; rednecks)

My dad calls eight times, begging us to come back to the shower. He's the only man there (besides my sister's husband, whose own parents and children don't even consider a man), and he's getting antsy. I convince my brother to come with me. It's about 4 o'clock by now, and he's on his way to his wife's baby shower, full of her friends and our families. He has not showered, nor shaved, and he's wearing sweatpants. (Mental notes: nagging dad; pathetic brother-in-law; clueless brother) (Note to self: more posts about brother, untapped comic gold)

In the car on the way home, my hands are starting to itch. And by itch, I mean ITCH. I'm sweaty because the air conditioning doesn't work, and I'm starting to feel funny. We get out of the car, and I take a good look at my hands. They're swollen, and they've covered in dozens if not hundreds of tiny, hard, red bumps. Fucking everywhere. Not good. Thank God I don't tend to overreact about these things, especially the ones involving my health and the uncertain status but obviously bleak outlook of it. And phew, wouldn't it be terrible if I was one of those people who has those things, what are they called again? Oh yeah, FUCKING PANIC FUCKING ATTACKS FUCKING I'VE FUCKING GOT FUCKING TO FUCKING GET FUCKING OUT FUCKING OF FUCKING HERE. (Mental note: itching; POX! POX! POX!; Caps Lock is cruise control for cool)

I run inside and grab Baby. I say maybe two words to my family, and bolt for the door. She knows the crazed "How the fuck have you NOT NOTICED that the goddamn SKY IS FALLING!?" look in my eye, and she does not ask questions. She knows that to show concern is to validate, no verify, my worst fears. She pretends that all of this is very normal, and she tells me about the baby shower. She knows I'm not listening, knows that all I need right now is for everyone to not notice that I'm losing it. She pretends not to notice. She's the most amazing woman I have ever known. She should win an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize. She goes on and on, but finally she breaks character. "Does this mean we're going to miss Chick-Fil-A?"

Baby is a connoisseur of fast food, and she understands that Chick-Fil-A is a delicacy. They do not have any franchises in DC, so she only gets to eat it once or twice a year. She will put up with this maniac of a future-husband, his alcoholic white trash family and a gorgeous 95% humidity, 90 degree October day in the suburbs, just so long as she can get her chicken sandwich with extra mayonnaise and pickles, please. How can I say no to that? We go through the drive through, and she feeds me waffle fries all the way home while I drive. My hands are a wreck, but who cares? Have you fucking seen this woman sitting next to me?

I still don't know what brought on the mysterious handpox though. I took a shower and a handful of Benadryl when I got home, and it didn't do a thing. They finally started to subside a few days later, but even today the skin is still a bit rough and bumpy. Now that I think about it, I may have encountered a few things during the day that could trigger some kind of allergy. Probably shouldn't have much trouble singling out the actual cause.

Pouring Syrup On Shit Don't Make It Pancakes

It's dawned on me that I just don't post as often as I should anymore. The problem is that I rarely feel the rage and anxiety I used to feel. Don't get me wrong, I still get pissed sometimes. And I'll have a well-publicized breakdown from time to time. But the general "I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler!" mentality has waned lately.

It's back today.

I had a meeting this morning at our client site, and I needed to read up a bit first. So I left home early, and I made my way to the site. I arrived even earlier than I had planned, so I decided to sit down outside and do my reading there, because it was early enough in the morning that it was still kinda nice outside.

As an aside, my client site is near the DC courthouse. I find it equal parts hilarious and sad what I see coming in and out of there each time I pass by. Inside, rich old white people are deciding what happens to poor, young black people. Of course, I'm generalizing, but not to a ridiculous extent. Unfortunately, this is the way our justice system is set up. So everyday these young kids go to appear before the court, where a series of important decisions are going to be made. Call me crazy, but if I was in these kids' shoes, I might pull my pants up. Or not wear a Deion Sanders jersey or a gigantic, plain white T-shirt. I appreciate freedom of expression, and I hate getting dressed up as much as the next guy. But for fuck's sakes, there are people in there who can send you to jail! Tuck something in already. Play along. If I could figure out a way to take the pictures without getting my ass kicked, I could run a blog called "You Wore That To Court?" and make a million dollars. Anyway.

I'm sitting outside and I get a call that the meeting is canceled. Awesome. I didn't bring my lunch today because I had a meeting first thing, and I skipped breakfast to get there early. So now I have nothing to eat all day. Even better, I have no cash on me so I can't afford cab fare. I have no choice but to walk all the way back across the mall to my office. When I get there, work just starts piling up and I keep getting more and more grumpy. Finally, I manage to get a break for lunch and head to Subway.

Let's get this out of the way right off the bat: Subway is not good. No one ever thinks, "Yum! Subway!" You eat it because it's there. It's across the street from your office, or it's open late, or you're on a diet, or some other combination of sub-optimal conditions. This isn't up for debate, right? They don't charge four dollars for a sandwich because they care about helping you save money. They charge four bucks because if they charged five, you'd probably go somewhere else.

So why, why God why, is there always someone in line who treats ordering their sandwich like picking out the coffin they want to be buried in, and why must I always be standing behind them?

I'm hungry, and I want to eat, and so does everyone standing behind us. We have the common sense to understand that no matter much thoughtful customization we apply to our six inch turkey sub, it's still going to taste pretty much the same. If you put five different vegetables on your sandwich, can you really tell the difference between them? Does it even matter? Just fucking eat it already! Or are you so completely lacking in self-awareness that you don't hear the line groaning behind you? Have you noticed us shifting our feet impatiently, as you grow ever more frustrated with the minimum-wage earning poor bastard in charge of creating the World's Most Important Tuna Wrap? When you finally stop yelling at him for making mistakes, and you turn to us with that "Can you believe how incompetent the service is here?" look, can you feel our group, as a whole, desperately, silently, wishing you and everyone you care about was dead? We're not nodding our heads in silent approval. We're trying different head angles in hopes of killing you with our minds.

$80?! You Have Got To Be (Blanking) Kidding Me!

Andray Blatche is a young kid who plays for the Wizards. He's long on potential, but apparently short on judgment. In the summer before his rookie season, when he was drafted right out of high school, he was shot in a carjack attempt gone wrong. You'd think he was the victim there, except it happened at 6am in Alexandria. I'm no detective, but something tells me that if you're getting carjacked at 6am in Alexandria, you're up to no good.

Now he is 20 years old, and he's a free agent. He's entertaining offers from teams, trying to convince them to give him millions of dollars. Last week, the Wizards offered him about $12 million but he's reportedly holding out for something better. Well, he was... until he made a trip to my neighborhood Thursday, where he was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover cop.

I was out of town all weekend, so I missed this when it first happened. Forgive me for being a few days late. But I find the whole thing fascinating for a million reasons. For starters, it happened close to my house. And by close, I mean next. Literally. Mapquest puts the distance from the arrest to my house at "<.1 miles." Had we been home, we would have heard the sirens.

Here is a rundown of the episode as quoted in the Washington Post blog written by Ivan Carter, the beat writer for the Wizards:

According to the document titled: "United States vs. Andray Blatche (sic), the event occured on 8/2/07 at approximately 12:11 at 10 Thomas Circle NW in Washington DC. Blatche and Palmer were both accused of solicting an undercover officer working in the prostitution unit.

From the document, here is how it went down: Blatche and Palmer were in a vehicle when they pulled up at Thomas Circle.

Defendant 1 (identified by police as Blatche) : "Hey, what's up with you?"
Undercover cop: "You tell me."
AB: I'm trying to see what you're doing."
UC: "Do you want (Blank) or (Blank)?"
AB: "Well, I want both."
UC: "And what about you?"
D-2 (identified as Palmer) : "I want the same."
UC: "I charge $80 but I do two at the same time."
AB: "Yeah, I'm good with it."
UC to Palmer: "And what about you?"
GP: "Yeah, $80 is good."
UC: Aight, you want to pull right?"
AB: "Naw."
UC: "I have a room right here."
AB: "Uh, ok?"

I want to get one thing out of the way right now: the hookers in Thomas Circle are banged up. So banged up, in fact, that you wouldn't let them pay you $80 to blank you. But that's neither here nor there.

What I want to know is, what is she talking about? I'm gonna assume that "blank" and "blank" mean oral and regular, if you know what I mean. Seems logical, right?

But what does "UC: "I charge $80 but I do two at the same time."" mean? She does two dudes at once? Or both blanks at once? Is she gonna finish one guy then move on to the next? I just gotta know.

And how that hell can that only cost $80? I honestly had no idea the hookers in my neighborhood charged that little. And I have no clever way to introduce this, but it's funny enough to include. I sent the link above to Baby, asking a question along the lines of "Did you know you can get all this for $80 in our neighborhood?!" Her response: "Why the fuck am I giving it to you for free?"

I'm Rich! And I Didn't Even Have To Let A Man In My Porch!

Good news, my money worries are over. For a while there I was having trouble, trying to figure out how to pay for a wedding and a new condo. But lady luck visited my inbox this morning, and it's easy street from here on out, I tell you. Check out my ticket to the good life:

Dearest Beloved One,I am Mrs. Anita Adams Johnson from Ivory Coast. I was married to Late Cheif Adams Johnson who was a contractor with the government of Cote D'Ivoire before he died after few days in the hospital. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $8.700 Million with a Bank in Cote D lvoire. Presently this money is still in the custody of the Bank here in Cote DIvoire.My Doctor told me that it is very likely i will die within the next 3 months due to A Blood cancer {LUCAMIA}. I have decided to donate the money for charity to you since i do not have a child to inherit it and it better i do not die leaving the money here without it reaching the poor and the lessprivilaged ones in the society. As soon as I receive your reply I shall tell my bank to transfer themoney to you.
EMAIL ME ON : kkkanitaadams200@yahoo.co.uk
Mrs. Anita Adams Johnson.

Pretty fucking sweet, am I right? I mean, I'm no expert on Cote D'Ivoire, but this all does sound pretty promising, doesn't it? Intrigued, I spent the morning investigating and I picked up a slew of facts about the good old Ivory Coast:

1. Government contractors and their spouses have adopted several spellings for their homeland, including: Cote D'Ivoire, Cote D Ivoire, and Cote DIvoire. Note that the correct spelling is actually Cote d'Ivoire. Man, I thought us government contractors in the United States were creative when we made up terms like Earned Value Management and Business Processing Engineering. But we've got nothing on the guys in Africa, who make up new names for the places they live!

2. Despite living in a French-speaking country, the people of Ivory Coast have recently begun the very hip trend of giving their children American names. Anita Adams Johnson- doesn't get any more American than that. Oddly, boys are often named for their distant Icelandic relatives, including the late Cheif Adams Johnson, obviously a modern take on the name of his ancestor, Leif Ericson, of Ivory Coast-founding, possible America-discovering (don't tell the Sopranos) fame. Finally, it's good to see the ancient Ivory Coastian tradition of wives adopting the middle and last names of their husbands is still intact.

3. Poor Anita, stricken with such a terrible disease. When I got the cancer the diagnosis was pretty bleak, but not so goddamn bleak that they called it A Blood cancer. That sounds terrible! When your disease is capitalized I think you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye. And I confess I was unfamiliar with {LUCAMIA}. Are the brackets a part of the word? Or is that the worst spelling of leukemia in history? Maybe it's like Mad Libs for doctors with poor spelling? I google'd it, and this is troubling and funny enough to warrant posting here. Someone posted the following on a translation request website (Proz- who knew such a thing existed?), asking for help figuring out the meaning of:

"That man in your porch is like lucamia on your face."

The response he got:

"that man is as welcome as leukemia (skin lesions) on your face"

Dude wtf? I have leukemia, and I ain't got no skin lesions of my face. But then again I've never had a man in my porch. Doesn't that sound kind of dirty, actually? I honestly don't know what to make of this entire exchange, and this post is getting derailed, but for some reason the whole thing makes me laugh. Where was I?

4. Oh right, Anita is gonna die, and she wants to leave the money to the "the poor and the lessprivilaged." Look, I'm not rich by any means. But if you're picking me out as lessprivilaged than your fellow Ivory Coastians, then a lot of fucking people have been telling me a lot of fucking lies about the standard of living in Africa. Oh well, at least I don't feel so bad about Baby's engagement ring. Next time I see that Leonard DiCaprio I'm gonna tell him to piss up a rope. Blood Diamond my ass.

5. Best part- Anita's email address: kkkanitaadams200@yahoo.co.uk. If I had any doubts about your charitable intent Anita, they melted away the minute I saw you were a member of the Brotherhood. The KKK in Africa. Really, who knew?

Condos at The Whitman: Getting Cheaper, Staying Sucky

We're in the condo market, but it's a goddamn minefield. In case you hadn't noticed, there are 2,308,729,571 units for sale in Northwest DC, and they're all nearly identical. Five or six sell each week. Now I've never taken one of those real estate seminars advertised in infomercials, but it looks like we've got more condos than buyers. And I seem to remember something from Econ classes in college about supply and demand, so I think we're in the driver's seat. I imagine there are deals to be had.

So we've been waiting for the proverbial bubble to burst, and it looks like it's about to. Over the Winter, there was a steady supply of condos coming on to the market as new developments opened. But when Spring arrived, the number for sale skyrocketed. People are bailing out, selling existing units and backing out of contracts on ones under construction, but the developers continue to flood the market with new units. In the meantime, sales agents have grown desperate.

Exhibit A is The Whitman, a gigantic new condo building adjacent to the Convention Center. I've been walking by this building every day for two years now, and I have to admit it's impressive. It does appear to have a bit of character, unlike so many of the cookie-cutter places going up. And you can't beat the location. Unfortunately, that's about all it has going for it.

When it was under construction we were actually pretty excited, and we contacted the sales office to get more information. We weren't surprised- $500,000+, minimum, for a one bedroom loft unit with a den. Plus another $35,000 for parking (not that we need it). What a deal, right? Sadly, that's been the going rate in the neighborhood for a few years, and we've decided we like the area enough that we want to stay within these few blocks. So I contacted them again to get more specifics.

They started flooding me with emails and phone calls for open houses, private showings, special events, and everything else imaginable. The message was always the same: Get them while they're hot! These condos won't last forever! Ignoring the bullshit, I asked pointed questions.

bryc3: "Where are the loft units located in the building?"

The Whitman: "On the ground floor, so you'll have your own private entrance!"

bryc3: "You mean those ones in the front? Those are condos and not retail or something?"

The Whitman: "That's right! You're just steps from all the neighborhood has to offer!"

bryc3: "There are no bars on the windows, they're just french doors."

The Whitman: "Rest assured, the neighborhood is perfectly safe. Shall I send over a contract?"

bryc3: "Safe, sure, got it. Where do you live?"

The Whitman: "Alexandria. Why?"

bryc3: click

Shaw is, to put it delicately, a neighborhood in transition. It certainly isn't Southeast, but it ain't Reston, either. And you would have to be a certified fucking idiot to move into one of those places without bars on the windows. People can, and do, walk right up to those windows from the sidewalk and peer inside. You could rob each of them blind by merely breaking one pane of glass and turning the door handle. You'd be gone with some metrosexual's plasma TV and the keys to his Jetta before he even woke up. And lord only knows how dangerous it would be for a woman in one those places. But in order to keep the prices high, and to project the air of safety, they've refrained from putting bars on the windows. Nice. That's crossing some ethical line in my book. There have been several murders in the immediate neighborhood this year, and there is a long-standing (although hopefully cooling) gang war happening just a few blocks away.

Thankfully, other people seem to have noticed, too. Those units are generally empty, although a few brave souls (read: idiots) have moved in. That hasn't stopped The Whitman's marketing campaign though. They're plowing ahead, continuing to pledge that the units are going fast, and you need to act now! I got this email yesterday:

"The time is at hand when The Whitman will be sold out. Thanks to the overwhelming response to The Whitman's unconventional elegance, this summer is the final opportunity to purchase a one-bedroom/den/two-bath or two-bedroom/two-bath condominium - parking included.

$15,000 Incentive! For a limited time, The Whitman is offering a closeout incentive of $15,000 any way you want it: toward closing costs, toward condo fees, as a discount on the purchase price - whatever (except cash - sorry!)."

Hang on a second, I wanna make sure I've got this straight. The "overwhelming" response you've received (not to mention the "elegance" that comes with broken beer bottles and cigarette butts on the roof) has created a buying frenzy, and you just can't manage the demand. To compensate, you're now throwing in parking that used to cost $35,000, and you're offering to give me $15,000 if I move in? Man, those things must be flying off the shelves!

Why even both lying to me? Why not be honest, and admit you've slashed prices by 10% in attempt to move units that are unsafe and sitting on the market? Oh, right, the whole panic thing. Sorry.

Thanks LeBron, Thanks A Lot

So I hate that LeBron James. Something about him rubs me the wrong way, and I assure you it has nothing to do with his team knocking my Wizards out of the playoffs the last two years. I just think he's a dorknob.

My feelings are unlikely to change soon, as I've just read that he's fathered a baby delivered this morning named:

Bryce Maximus James

I don't know where to begin. A childhood of torture for having a sissy name has left me scarred and bitter. Why couldn't my mother have thought to name me Maximus? Think how much more masculine I would have become! I'm willing to bet that Maximus will never be taunted with the name Bryciepooh. Although to be honest, Maxiwuss has potential.

Bryce is cursed name. On the one hand, you meet women who say, "Oh, I love that name!" Let's face it, you're not going to hear a woman say, "His name is Mike/John/Dave, isn't that just the coolest name ever?!" So that's pretty cool. But those women become the mothers who name their kids Adrian or Perry or Brantley, and then the poor bastard gets the shit kicked out of him every day until he mercifully graduates from high school, assuming he doesn't Columbine first.

That *ahem* benefit doesn't begin to counter the most pressing problem. Every single man who meets a guy named Bryce will immediately think he's a douche. I could extend the blood-stained hand I've just used to bludgeon the dead deer I'm carrying home to feed my wolves, and the guy is still going to think I'm a fairy.

And finally, we all know that Bryce is absolutely a gay name. LeBron's take on homosexuality is remarkably mature, so that probably shouldn't be a big deal, right?

"You take showers together, you're on the bus, you talk about things. With teammates, you have to be trustworthy. If you're gay and you're not admitting that you are, you're not trustworthy. It's the locker room code; it's a trust factor.'' -Akron Beacon Journal

Uh oh.

Today Show: "Webkinz Carry Smallpox"

Unfortunately that's not true.

So I'm watching the Today Show this morning because it's my personal Two Minutes Hate. They were running a segment on something called Webkinz- the latest kids toy in the vein of Cabbage Patch Kids and Beanie Babies. Ignore, for a moment, that as is the case with nearly all of these crazes, the people who are most excited are poorly adjusted adults. Webkinz are different from typical stuffed animals, because somehow the internet is involved. Apparently kids go online and take care of the pets, decorate their houses, and attract sexual predators. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but the segment featured a lot of pasty little seven-year-old kids clicking their mouses on the computers in their bedrooms.

Kids are going batshit crazy for these things, and what's a parent to do? You just can't find them anywhere, the stores sell out too fast! The segment focuses on young girls who have dozens of them in their bedroom, and they love them all ever so much. And if you're into the Children of the Corn, you can't help but feel for these poor little girls who want, nay, FUCKING NEED, more Webkinz. For God's sake, won't someone think of the children!?

So, like:

1) We're on the verge of any number of world wars, and the entire earth is turning to shit by the second. If your biggest concern is that you can't find Webkinz for your spoiled children, you need to re-evaulate your priorities. If you feel compelled to save the children from this tragedy, and you believe the correct avenue for doing this is bitching about Webkinz on the Today Show, then you simply have to kill yourself.

2) We only have a 'shortage' of Webkinz because you bought ninety of them for your rotten children the last time they were in stock. As you drove your SUV from toy store to toy store throughout the suburbs, did you ever once consider the poor kids who would go without as you snapped up every one you could find, all along knowing it still wouldn't be enough to satiate your own materialistic children?

3) Your seven year old son (Cole, Maddox, Banana Republic, whatever his name is) who loves Webkinz? Gay.

4) Tomorrow's Today Show will almost certainly contain a segment on childhood obesity. Parents and researchers will wag their fingers and blame Oreos and commercials. They'll petition the school board and get cookies removed from the cafeteria. And the kids who actually, I dunno, go outside and run around sometimes will be punished while your kids become fatties as they sit in front of computers playing with their virtual pets.

5) Everyone at Ganz, the company who makes Webkinz, should be fired today. The company has stated that demand has been crushing, and they've been unable to come up with a strategy to manufacture what has become the hottest toy for American girls, ages 4 to 8. You're lying or retarded. What idiot doesn't know that the best way to make toys for American girls, ages 4 to 8, is to pay Vietnamese girls, ages 4 to 8, to make them?

"She's Going To Ruin My Life Again, Just Like She Did When She Was Born"

We had a pretty eventful weekend. A very us kind of weekend.

First a short story about me. I went to play cards with my brother and his friends in the suburbs on Saturday night, which afforded me the opportunity to get stinking drunk. At some point later in the evening I decided to bum cigarettes from one of the guys there, even though I've decided several times over the last few months that I'm never going to smoke again. I've never been much of a habitual smoker anyway- I'm the annoying guy who never gets truly addicted but still smokes when he goes out. But I don't even do that any more, as nearly everyone I know has quit. Still, once I get drunk and someone is smoking, all bets are off. We smoked a couple of cigarettes before we ran out of matches. No biggie, as the place we were at had a gas stove. I've probably lit a thousand cigarettes in just this way over the course of my life, but through some miracle of misfortune I manged to singe both eyelashes in my right eye this time around. Awesome. How I didn't just go ahead and melt my contact lens onto my cornea will remain a mystery until the end of time.

But the big news of the weekend actually came the night before, on Friday. Baby's middle sister lives in LA, and she's been living with this guy for years. She had been getting frustrated that he'd yet to ask her to marry him, and she told us over Christmas that she was fixing to give him the ultimatum. To his credit, he's a nice guy and he lives for her. But he's not exactly the most romantic guy, and I get the feeling he's not so in tune with the ladies. He may have just even realized that it was high time for him to shit or get off the pot, as my scholarly mother always says.

So on Friday night he finally asked her. Well, that's not entirely true. He never actually asked her, he just gave her the ring. What can I say, the dude has game. Of course she said yes. Well, I guess she said yes. She took the ring, so that probably signifies yes. Anyway, they're getting married.

You would think, if you're a man and you're not retarded, that Baby would have been thrilled that her younger sister, who has so desperately wanted to get married for so long, was finally going to be a bride. I expected Baby to hang up the phone and tell me how excited she was that she was going to get to plan their weddings together and exchange 476 emails a day while they conduct research to find ice sculptors who can capture the essence of what they feel THE! MOST! SPECIAL! DAY! of their lives is truly all about.

No, not so much. Turns out Baby was bitter, and I'm a lot more retarded than I originally thought.

She nearly burst into tears, and she said, "She's going to ruin my life again, just like she did when she was born!" Because now Middle Baby is going to get all the attention, all the affection, all the focus. Baby has always resented this about Middle Baby- she's very much the "me too" sister to Baby's very grown up, mature example. Baby remembers actual conversations from nearly 30 years ago where Middle Baby was begging for attention, and she still holds grudges about them. That's not to say that Baby doesn't heart Middle Baby, because they're BFF. But she's definitely not stoked that she's had all her thunder stolen.

I've replayed that scene in my mind a million times, and as much as I love Baby there is no way I ever could have guessed that she'd react that way. Oh well though, it's probably just an isolated incident. And the chances of some strange reaction to the wedding planning process happening again in the TWENTY MONTHS between now and the actual day we get hitched are slim, right?

The Bad Touch

I'm a consultant. My company has a lucrative contract with a large Federal agency. We're helping them design a large IT system. We're not actually building the system, mind you. We're just helping them figure out how to pay for it and then build it. The Federal government is awash with many of the most grossly incompetent, unmotivated idiots you'll ever meet, so there are lots of opportunities for companies like mine to help them figure things out. And let me tell you, business is booming.

Most of my coworkers have some specialty. Some are programmers and some are accountants. I, however, have no specialty. I'm a generalist. They hired me by design, I believe. They need someone to talk to the client, and that someone is me. I have people skills, damn it, and I often find myself in the role of shaking hands and making promises and telling Government people that everything is going to be okay if they'll just butt out for a while.

So my job is to make friends with everyone, and I'm pretty good at it.

Today I was on site, getting ready for a status meeting with Joe, one of my favorite Government people. He's a self-proclaimed Maryland redneck. He drives a Mustang, and he recently told me how excited he was to be taking his wife to see Rascal Flats for her birthday. The guy really couldn't be less like me, but I'm actually very fond of him. Joe is one of the few Government people I've met who takes the idea of civil service seriously, and he works his ass off. You see that a lot in the Government- a phenomenon my boss calls work magnets. If 90% of the Federal workforce is a waste of oxygen, the other 10% must be doing all the work. Joe just attracts everyone else's assignments like a magnet, and he does the work of ten bureaucrats. Plus he drops the F bomb a lot and calls Asian people Orientals. That always makes me laugh.

I was standing outside Joe's cube, organizing the materials for the meeting. He walks up and stands next to me and puts his hand on my back, between my shoulder blades. That's a little inappropriate, but I'm willing to overlook it because he's Joe and that's just kinda how he do. He's standing way too close, and I'm easing back ever so slightly, probably imperceptibly. But because Joe is a close talker, he's got a sub-conscious awareness of that kind of thing so he presses more firmly on my back and leans closer to me. He's just making small talk at this point, asking how I'm doing and kidding me around a bit. I realize I'm probably being silly, so I just loosen up and let him violate my personal space. I like Joe, and having Joe like me is integral to not only my personal success but, to a smaller extent, the success of the company. I can take one for the team and let him grope me for a while.

But then it gets much, much worse. He slowly starts to slide his hand down my back, til it comes to rest on my belt. He's got his hand open, so half his fingers are below my belt, dangerously close to my buttcrack. The rest of his hand is on the small of my back. It's exactly where you put your hand when you're slow dancing with your girl. It's also exactly where you touch a 31 year old consultant to make him feel like a whore.

There is nothing I can do at that point. I have to finish the conversation and let him cop his feel. Mercifully he doesn't get any closer to my no no parts, but I'm afraid my lack of action implies complicity. This is bound to happen again, and I probably won't say anything next time, either. My review is coming up in July, and I have a wedding to pay for. The things I'll do for love.

Everyone Is Talking About The Ban, But They Should Be Talking About Race

Background: Seventeen year old Taleshia Ford was shot and killed at 1919 nightclub (also known as Smarta) early last Saturday in Northwest Washington, DC. The media jumped on the story, wondering what, exactly, was an underage girl doing at a nightclub in the first place? Opportunistic DC Council member Jim Graham of Ward 2, home of the nightclub, pledged to introduce legislation that would ban minors from nightclubs serving alcohol.

On the night Ford was killed we were at a club called DC9, located directly across the street from 1919. On our way there, around 11 or so, we passed a number of groups of young black men who were very intimidating. The minute I noticed I was alarmed I was immediately mad at myself. I felt terrible because I knew that had these kids been white, I probably would have felt differently. But at the same time I knew that the color of their skin probably had little to do with why I felt uncomfortable. These weren't my neighbors, or the people I ride the Green line with every day. These kids were thugs, or were at the very least trying to look like thugs. I forgave myself. If I passed a group of white kids in soccer uniforms at 3am I probably wouldn't worry about it. If I passed a group of skinheads at 3am I'd probably be nervous. It's got nothing to do with the color of their skin, and everything to do with the image people try to project. Later that night, someone from outside the club, perhaps one of the people we passed, would get into a scuffle with a bouncer at 1919 and Ford, an innocent bystander, would be killed when a gun went off by mistake.

People like Jim Graham have every right to wonder what on earth a seventeen year old girl is doing in a nightclub where adults are drinking alcohol. Although there is no evidence to suggest that minors or alcohol had anything to do with the shooting, you can certainly see why concerned citizens would want to stop the potentially volatile mix of adults, alcohol, and underage kids. That makes perfect sense. Ford was there that night to see a go-go band perform, and she was there with older family members and had the blessing of her parents. They knew she was there, she wasn't misbehaving. And now she's dead. So shouldn't we make a law keeping kids out of bars, for Christ's sake?

Just a few days before Ford was killed, a thousand or so kids were at a Fall Out Boy show at the 9:30 club, just around the corner from 1919. I was there, too. Although the crowd was overwhelmingly underage, there were a sizable number of us ordering drinks at the bar. No one was shot. In fact, in the hundreds of all ages shows I've seen at places like the Black Cat or the 9:30, I can't remember a single incident that can possibly compare with what happened at 1919 last weekend. Plenty of fist fights, a fair share of broken bones and bloody noses, but certainly no dead bodies. These shows are safe, these clubs are safe, these kids are safe.

The music community is up in arms about the possible ban. The usual local music luminaries (people I've admired for years for not just their musical ability, but their dedicate to the scene and the politics that affect our community) are speaking out. People are writing letters, signing petitions, calling for sanity. I've even written Jack Evans, my council member. The ban is just bad policy- it's a knee jerk reaction that will do almost nothing to help protect our kids, and it will certainly hurt local businesses if they're forced to kick kids out of their clubs.

But I can't help thinking about race, the elephant in the room in this discussion. One thousand screaming teenage kids from the suburbs hardly presents a security risk for the veteran, trained staff at the 9:30 club. It's their bread and butter. But can the same be said for a club that, say, caters to go-go fans in Southeast? It's taboo to raise that question, it's probably racist to even consider it, but shouldn't we?

Southeast is the capital of go go music in DC, but it's also the murder capital of the city. The music, of course, has nothing to do with it. The violence that plagues that area of the city is the product of dozens of social problems, ranging from lousy schools to inferior policing to an almost complete lack of opportunities for the young people in the poorest neighborhoods. Generations of kids from Southeast have embraced go go music, and they've brought their other problems with them. Go go has long been synonymous with violence, at least in the eyes of the local media, because the biggest fans of the genre are so often mired in the other problems facing kids from Southeast.

I'm conflicted on this issue, and I can't help but see the role of race in the discussion. If you'd been at the Fall Out Boy show at the 9:30 last week, you'd see the obvious errors in the ban. But if you'd been outside 1919 that night, you'd understand why folks might want these kids off the streets and out of bars. I was in both places, and frankly I don't know what to make of it. If a bar opened two blocks from me that featured all ages punk shows and swarms of suburban punk rock kids I'd be thrilled. If a bar opened two blocks in the other direction that featured all ages go go shows and swarms of tough looking kids like the ones outside 1919 last week, I might move. Does that make me a racist? And why aren't we discussing the obvious racial differences here?

Brief Updates: Now With More Fiancé

The people who read this blog who are most likely to care about the details of the weekend were probably there to witness it, so I won't bore anyone with sappy romance. But Baby and I got engaged over the weekend. She was completely surprised and, from what I can tell, very happy. I owe a lot to you guys for helping me out. Thank you all.

To make a long story short, I asked her to marry me just outside our apartment, after running errands on Friday evening. When we opened the door to our place, Baby found her closest girlfriends there to surprise her. It was very sweet.

People have been asking about a date for the wedding, and we haven't set one yet. We're almost positive it will be Fall 2008, but I guess there is an outside possibility it will be Spring 2008. We have to buy an overpriced condo first. I need to remind myself to blog about that search. Hilarity abounds.

We went out to DC9 after our little engagement party on Friday. When we left at 1am everything was still calm, but soon afterward a seventeen-year-old girl was shot and killed in the go-go club across the street. That can't be a good omen. Idiots on the DC Council are considering a ban on underage kids at nightclubs serving alcohol. I'm furious about that, and I'll definitely blog about it soon.

But perhaps my favorite part of the weekend came on Saturday. We were sitting around, working off hangovers. I was reading some internets about the snow, and I turned to Baby and said, "Looks like we're going to get one to two inches in DC."

She deadpans, with perfect timing, "Big deal, I get that all the time in DC."

I love this woman.