warning: contains highly concentrated doses of dorky musical theater stuff

People, the things that HAPPEN when you don't blog for a week!



Like, I found myself with a weekend of nothing to do and decide on a total whim to visit my high school best friend who is now a struggling actress in New York. It turns out she's not so much "struggling" as "doing really well and booking a lot of modeling and commercials," and we spent Saturday night having drinks with the current Broadway cast of Wicked and I found out all sorts of really awesome gossip about current Broadway actors which is of NO interest to nerds but myself, but it was really damn awesome.



Sunday morning we walked/ran an insane sixty-block trail around Riverside Park and Columbia, me constantly pausing to gasp for air as Lakisha zoomed ahead of me with the same ease of movement I display when crossing my apartment floor to pour another glass of cheap red wine. Hey, if my body was a critical component of my livelihood and I didn't have the distraction of a nine-to-five job, I'd be in that good shape, right? Right???



I added up the numbers, and I walked/ran over 250 blocks in 36 hours. Most of it in two-inch heel boots. Luckily, most of it was through scenery so beautiful I didn't notice the vile, throbbing pain south of my ankles. A big chunk of the walking was over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan at sunset, which is where a lot of the new photos in Flickr are from. Of course, I found out yesterday that because of my dad's illness I have to get an echocardiogram to make sure I don't have an englarged heart too, and by the way, probably shouldn't work out until this procedure. Um, I'll take "things that might have been helpful to know before walking the length of Manhattan" for a thousand, Alex.



As if New York wasn't enough, the bus ride home proved to have its own surprises. I finally had my Before Sunrise experience. Except for, it ended with exchanging phone numbers instead of promising to meet halfway around the world in six months. But real life can never be exactly like the movies, can it?

Oh, and last night I saw Anthony Rapp perform "What You Own" literally three feet in front of my face. And later, emboldended by Chardonnay, approach him to tell him how much I love him and how I enjoyed his work with Interlochen students. I thought about asking him to join me in a rousing chorus of "Sound The Call!" but couldn't qute muster enough nerve.

Sometimes I really wish I could go back in time to assure my 15-year-old self that life would someday be full of fantastically random and delicious moments like sparking with a stranger on a bus and talking for six hours nonstop and getting to tell the father of your favorite songwriter how much his son's music meant to you and watching the sun set over New York as your dad tells you that yes, he is going to be okay and will be around for another thirty or forty years to bug you and sing off-key. If I could have clued her in that life would be full of these, she probably would have been a lot more fun to be around.

cranky closet corn

I'm irrationally cranky tonight for reasons relating to the Education Corporation, one of which is entirely my fault and one of which I saw coming MONTHS ago and took every possible step to prevent, knowing all the while that it was like trying to stop a Metro car by planting a daisy in the trackwork.

I'm also cranky because all my shelving and racks in my closet just... fell off the wall. Last Wednesday. My landlord has not yet fixed them and so getting dressed in the morning has developed into something resembling an archaelogical expedition, as all my clothes have spread about every other available surface. Every surface except for Sadie's fur-coated section of the sofa, natch:



I'm also rather rationally cranky because, though he is not in any immediate danger and is getting great care, my dad is not doing well. He's still sick and he's still alone and when I last talked to him he did not sound good. Actually, cranky is not exactly the right word for my response to this. Usually when faced with a problem, even one that does not have a ready answer, I tackle it head-on and start looking for any element of it that I can contribute to resolving. With my dad's illness, I want to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and pretend the rest of the world has stopped existing. Except I can't, because I'd get fired if I stopped going to work and more importantly, that because of that whole closet thing this is what my bed has looked like for a week:



A bunch of us did a Corn Maze in Leesburg on Sunday. This sounded really good on paper, and began promisingly. Perfect weather and wholesome funtime:





However, nothing really quite captures the joy that is the reverse hangover (where you wake up feeling fine and gradually get worse and worse as the day goes on) quite like spending the afternoon getting lost in acres of corn. Especially when I spent the night before enjoying yet another chapter in the ongoing Tribute to Aaron Spelling that has been my recent love life.

Plus, we were the only people at the Maize (hahaha-- get it?!?!?!) who were over 18 and not dragging babies around with us. There were so many children running around the place, I felt really guilty waiting in line for onion rings and saying things like "Fuck, you guys, I'm sweating pure vodka." Not guilty enough to not swear, mind you, but just enough to politely cover my mouth when I burped to better emphasize my point.

But you know what they had that makes me feel better? Better about all the things that made me cranky?

The Corn Cannon.



Two days later and I'm still giggling at The Corn Cannon.

"see the man with the big gun? you go smack him with your trapper-keeper and tell him we don't stand for this in America!"

One of my favorite things about this country is how, when gripped in the clutches of fear, we calmly and rationally extract ourselves from that fear using clear-headed logic and entirely proportional repsonses to adversity.

Teaching kids to fight back against classroom invaders

"Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success," said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools. That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed.

But school officials in Burleson said they are drawing on the lessons learned from a string of disasters such as Columbine in 1999 and the Amish schoolhouse attack in Pennsylvania last week.

Browne recommends students and teachers "react immediately to the sight of a gun by picking up anything and everything and throwing it at the head and body of the attacker and making as much noise as possible. Go toward him as fast as we can and bring them down."

Response Options trains students and teachers to "lock onto the attacker's limbs and use their body weight," Browne said. Everyday classroom objects, such as paperbacks and pencils, can become weapons.

"We show them they can win," he said. "The fact that someone walks into
a classroom with a gun does not make them a god. Five or six seventh-grade kids
and a 95-pound art teacher can basically challenge, bring down and immobilize a
200-pound man with a gun."

Yup, completely rational and well-advised. Everyone knows that public schools in suburban Texas are even more dangerous than downtown Baghdad, and that armed gunmen burst into classrooms EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY. Therefore, the only way your children are not going to be murdered between morning recess and Ms. Pingleton's art class is if you teach them to gouge out a would-be gunman's eyes with their colored pencils. Yes, teaching kids how to punch and kick and attack is truly the ideal use of classroom time.

But of course completely random and unpredictable school shootings are teeny baby potatoes when compared to the long national nightmare that is: Terrorism in the Rural Midwest. Good thing the Coast Guard is now using Grand Haven, Michigan as a base for submachine gun practice.

U.S. Firing Plans for Great Lakes Raise Concerns

For the first time, Coast Guard officials want to mount machine guns routinely on their cutters and small boats here and around all five of the Great Lakes as part of a program addressing the threats of terrorism after Sept. 11.

“The Coast Guard has looked at an increased terrorist threat since 2001,” Rear Adm. John E. Crowley Jr., commander of the Coast Guard district that oversees the Great Lakes, said in a telephone interview. “I don’t know when or if something might happen on the Great Lakes, but I don’t want to learn the hard way.”

Some members of the Coast Guard assigned to law enforcement duties always carried weapons, but most of those were personal semiautomatic pistols. Since the arrival of the boat-mounted machine guns, the Coast Guard has conducted 24 training sessions on the lakes this year, although it has halted the exercises temporarily after news of the program seeped out last month and, with it, a barrage of objection.

“When I heard, I thought it was something from The Onion newspaper or an Internet hoax,” said Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, Ontario, which sits beside Lake Huron, where 6 of the 34 live fire zones are planned. “This whole thing was done way below the radar.”

You may think that there is a really high chance that soon an innocent family out sailing will suddenly find themselves under assault from friendly fire. You may then think "this is something that is generally not supposed to happen on Lake Michigan." You may think that it is completely absurb to use the Great Lakes as a repository both for spent machine gun rounds and our ever-crumbling faith in national leadership. Yes, you might think these things but you would be WRONG. This is:

1) highly necessary to our national security interests and if you have a problem with it THEN YOU HATE AMERICA, and

2) highly necessary because Grand Haven, Michigan is a well-known center for terrorist activity. Those terrorists are going to strike America right where it will hurt us the most: the whitefish industry.

*Sigh.* These days, you don't really have to read The Onion for absurdity. Just crack open the New York Times and get the hilarity begin.

My Dad is sick.

I knew he was sick, but didn't know how sick until yesterday. Before I thought it was "stop eating sausage pizza and try jogging and popping more Gaviscon" sick. Now he's going to the Mayo Clinic to be evaluated for potential surgery and we're having conversations about whether Jenny and I should undergo genetic testing.

I can't stop thinking of the Cottage Inn Pizza on Stadium Road in Ann Arbor. One time when I was maybe ten or eleven, Dad and I drove there to pick up a takeout order. Dad asked the pimply high-school kid behind the counter how he was doing and the kid jokingly replied "Fine, sir, but I could sure go for an ice-cream bar." Dad paid for our order and had me wait by the counter for the pizza while he went to the gas station next door. He walked back in a few minutes later and handed the surprised kid an ice cream sandwich.


He won't tell me how bad it is. After a day of Googling "hypertrophic cardiomyopthy," I can't tell what he's not sharing. Our family is spread out all over the country and he's alone.

I can't wrap my head around this. I'm not even sure where to begin.

He's going to be fine, because he has to be. Because anything else is too scary to think about.

optional step four: slink away in mortified shame

How To Lose All Dignity In Front Of Your Shoe Repairman: A Three-Step Plan

1) Rummage through handbag for wallet, setting various items on the counter as you sift through the contents. Extract wallet from bag and begin to return items on counter to the bag. Only then, note that one of these items is a mini bottle of Wild Turkey.*



2) Hastily shove whiskey back into handbag, open wallet and hand repairman credit card. Continue returning items to handbag, then pause when you see repairman extending credit card back to you. Realize with horror that instead of your AmEx, you handed him a condom. From Brew at the Zoo. With "Wrap It Up, You Animals!" written on the packaging.

3) In an effort to make light of an awkward moment, burble "Well, that's one way to pay for re-heeling my boots!"


*It's for my voice. Seriously. It's also left over from the show I did last fall and I'd already embarassed myself with it in a similar scenario in the library. Perhaps it is time to consider cleaning out this particular bag.

the engine rattles my bum like berserk

A rainy day like today should mean sweatshirts and cabernet franc and cats on laps and pillar candles tonight. But since I have tickets to Jamie Cullum and will therefore be out dealing with the weather and actual people, I've had the video below playing on my office computer all afternoon to make feel all snuggly and nesting before slogging out. Watch it and then try to feel bad about the world. It's not possible!




Have a good weekend, friends.

bluegrass is the new black

Maybe it's the football or maybe it's because I no longer live in Michigan (a place where children have to incorporate snow suits into their Halloween costumes), but autumn in Washington tends to bring out my inner Southerner. Didn't know I had one, did you? Well, half of my family is from East Tennessee, and if given five minutes and a bourbon I can drawl along with the best of them. I think it's also because my own accent is Midwestern by way of Long Island, thanks to my choice of college, and this means that I have no affect and pronounce "orange" as "aaarhhh-ange." I really don't like this.

One of my lifelong bad habits has been to immediately slip into my Southern accent whenever I'm around people who normally speak one. They often think that I'm making fun of them, but 1) Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as I covet their beautiful drawls and the way it doesn't at all sound fake when they say "all y'alls" instead of "you guys" and 2) I legitimately can't help it. It's not just my family background and personal distaste for my normal voice; I have pretty extensive accent training from my acting years and just naturally absorb the accents of other English-speakers. I do the same thing with English accents, and please be assured that after the summer of 1998, the entire population of London hated my guts.

I caught of whiff of this after having lunch with Law-Rah and Betty Joan last week. These two Dixie gals have their own slightly assimilated yet fully gorgeous accents, whereas my East Tennessee twang sounds most appropriate when hollerin' for Pa to git in, the vittles are ready! Since our lunch I've caught myself inserting more "y'all"s into my speech patterns and saying "whut?" instead of "could you please clarify that?" and "raht" instead of "yes, I concur" at work.

Last night I reached the apex of my faux-Dixie identity when K and I went for soul food at Oohhs and Aahhs on 10th and U (cannot recommend this highly enough; try the beef short ribs, green beans and cornbread if you want to know what heaven tastes like) and then caught Old Crow Medicine Show at the 9:30 Club. We'd seen OCMS at Prairie Home Companion earlier this summer, and were looking forward to a mellow night of hardcore bluegrass played by really cute 20something white boys. Imagine our surprise when we got inside to find out that the venue had sold out and was filled with people who looked exactly like us. I'd been expecting more of the NPR set, perhaps some Baby Boomers in tweed blazers with frayed elbow patches. But no, we were parked right behind the entire Ole Miss Sig Ep DC-area alumni association, and lordy honey, they were whoopin' it up. They even brought their own beer cozies (from Bass Pro Outdoors-- because if you're going to BYOBC to a bluegrass concert, of course they're going to be from Bass Pro Outdoors).

Our bellies filled with soul food (I named my soul food baby Jamal) and surrounded by congenial Southerners, K and I lapsed into hardcore twanging. K is originally from Oklahoma and has a more legitimate claim to her accent than I do, and was soon shouting things like "Euyh-muh-lee! Did y'all want uh Haaah-nuh-kyn or uh Milluh Laaaht this tahm?!" It was around the second of my Haaah-nuh-kyns and the band closing their first set with "Johnny Get Your Gun," that the crowd shifted from Congenial Southerner to Drunken Redneck. There was much ill-advised square dancing on the beer-soaked floor, and the faster they fiddled the more the crowd whooped like we were at an SEC tailgate. K and I sang along "Tell it to me, tell it to me, drink the corn liquor, let the cocaine be, cocaaaaaaaine done killed my honey dead!" and whooped with the best of them.

As we stumbled pack to the car, ankles twisted from do-si-do-ing and sides hurting from the dual effects of hollerin' and fried chicken, K and I were still twangin' away. "Eyuhm," K said as I unlocked the door, "I am so puh-raoooowd of uhs fuh doing sumthayn diif'reeeent."

I nodded. "Honey, we haaayve to do this agayn."

"Don't y'all wi-yush that we sahnded lahk this awl the tahm?"

I thought about the beer cozies, Jamal straining my pants waistband, and the look on the indie snob bartender's face when I'd ordered my Haaah-nuh-kyn.

"Honey child, no. I do nawht."

the lesbian feminists with their abortions made him do it

I cannot WAIT to see how much more dirt the press can get on Foley, because there is no way that even these revolting IMs are the end of it. Keep digging. Trust me on this.

Although, it's really nice to know that Republican congressmen have such strong, decisive opinions on the whole "bare-handed versus lotion" debate. No flip-flopping there! No siree, this here is DECISIVE LEADERSHIP. Those wishy-washy liberals would probably equivocate their way into no cybersex at all!

Watching Foley, Hastert, the NRCC and the White House attempt to rein this in, I wonder if perhaps the Republican party has turned over their damage control operations to a freshman Political Communication seminar as a "Welcome to Washington" project. Since there's no way to spin the Republican leadership covering up one of their congressman soliciting sex from teenage boys whom he supervised in a professional capacity while holding up a floor vote, they're just try throwing out random phrases from the culture wars to try to distract from the incredible perviness of it all. It was the booze! The liberal atmosphere perpetuated by queer-loving Democrats! The priest touched him forty years ago and we're only going to hear about it now, and yes he accepts total responsibility DID I MENTION THAT A PRIEST TOUCHED HIM FORTY YEARS AGO?!?!?!?!?!! LOOOOOK, it's SHIIIIIIINY!

Ahem.

And exactly when is the FBI going to be done "examining the messages they've obtained so far?" Because from what ABC has posted online, I wouldn't exactly take "Mark has absolutely agreed on his own and with our counsel not to do anything with any computer, not to delete any messages, not to obliterate or attempt to obliterate any IMs, e-mails, Internet communications," and wrap myself in it to stay warm at night.

not enough

He said he might want to come back, but wasn't sure.

He said he didn't think he would hurt me again, but couldn't promise that he wouldn't.

He said it was perfect right now, and I buried my head in that familiar spot on his shoulder and nodded. For that moment on my couch, both of us slightly tipsy on cheap Chianti and possibility, with no one else-- no friends rolling their eyes, no parents drawing deep breaths, no expectations beyond the night, beyond the moment-- yes, it was perfect.

And when I hand you my heart, would you like the silver platter to be plain or filigreed?

If only it could have started now. If only he hadn't already broken my heart once, I might give it to him. If only I hadn't spent the last year telling everyone how much I hated his guts while watching him be happy with other girls. If only it could just be him and me then maybe it could be something.

Maybe it even could have been Something. You know, That Thing. That Thing that twenty-something girls in urban centers don't talk about because we're supposed to be chill and fun and enjoy being slightly slutty and watching football and not get all commitment-crazy because, like, ew, commitment. We're not, like, old.

I don't know if it was that, or could have been. But I can't think about what could be when there's already too much what was.

I told him it wasn't going to happen. That I couldn't be sure of him and I couldn't make the leap. When I talked to X about it, she tooted "Never trust a dumper!" Blunt, but good advice nonetheless.

It's miserable to turn down something that makes me happy now because there is a chance that it will hurt me in the future. At this age, I'm not supposed to be so cautious and thinking about the future. And if it was anyone else making me feel this way, I'd be over the moon and annoying everyone I came across with bragging about how happy I was.

Maybe if he'd said "I promise not to mess it up this time" Maybe if he'd made declarative statements for once, if he'd said "this is what I want" instead of mumbling "I don't knoooow." To be fair, I didn't know either. But his not knowing told me all I needed to know.

If he'd asked, maybe. But suggesting... suggesting is not enough. I only get one of these heart things in a lifetime, and in the end, I'm the only one around to protect it.

So, no.

the nail in the coffin of childhood

Not long ago, we lived in a simpler, more innocent time when the phrases "Screech from Saved by the Bell" and "Dirty Sanchez" lived far, far away from one another.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/456179p-383834c.html

God, I miss that time.

There's a Violet Bickerstaff/Lisa Turtle joke in here somewhere, but I'm too queasy to flesh it out right now. Maybe once I stop clawing at my own face from SHEER TERROR. Right now I feel a lot like I did when I heard that Jonathan Brandis, my very first adolescent crush, had committed suicide. I was in New York on a business trip and was wearing a suit and watching C-SPAN when my roommate called to tell me. In that moment, I felt that childhood was officially, finally over.



"Nope, EJ-- it takes my own special brand of Perv to finish off the innocence of youth!

listening to you, i get the music

Yesterday at V Festival I heard The Who play "Baba O'Riley" and a 20-minute medley from Tommy. I don't know how to explain this to someone who was not raised on The Who, for whom Live at Leeds (along with Sweet Baby James and the theme music to "All Things Considered") was not the soundtrack to childhood, but it was monumental. As soon as Roger Daltrey began singing "See me, feel me" I whipped out my cell phone, called my dad and held up the receiver to the air as soon as the call connected without even saying hello first. When The Who were done and we raced over to the second stage to catch the end of Scissor Sisters set, I called him back to make sure he'd be able to hear it. I could hear the grin in his voice as he told me he could, and that he and my mom had sung along with Daltrey as they listened from Indiana, and thank you for thinking of them at such a moment.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I am a fucking awesome daughter.

step away from the pre-packaged salad and no one gets hurt

Apparently, today is sorority Bid Day at the Education Corporation that I work for.

I say "apparently" because all of the clustering, squealing and hugging made it kind of difficult to understand exactly what was going on. Still, when the teeny brunette girl with the Long Island accent spilled chicken soup all over my arm in Au Bon Pain, she was shrieking about SDTs. It sounded like happy shrieking, so I'm going to assume that she's a new sorority pledge and not afflicted with both dyslexia and syphilis.

I will however, have to ask all undergraduates to restrict their celebrating to the entrances of restaurants that I don't frequent for lunch. Acceptable places they may block the entrances of are: Chick Fil-A, the sketchy pizza place by the World Bank, any Quizno's in the metro-DC area and Jamba Juice. I'm an old fart now, so I would like to get in, get my lunch and quickly get back to the office without being trapped behind endless blocks of clustered gossiping youth.

And yo, Long Island, it's swell that you're so happy, but if you burn my arm with your food again we are totally going to rumble. Since you're you're a lowly pledge, your sisters are totally going to see my expression and ditch you to go buy big sunglasses while you face my wrath alone.

Luv ya! Bye!

oops

After the happy hour on Friday (nice to see you all, forgive me for not individually linking back to you; am even more wrapped in myself than usual today), Hey Pretty and I went to our friend's birthday party at Peyote. The drinks were flowing, the people were good, the karaoke was... not. I'm told that at one point the birthday boy and I performed "Poison." There are many things I should never attempt, and rapping in public is one of them. However, I am a good singer and do remember doing a pretty fierce cover of "Oops, I Did It Again."

If an English teacher was discussing this, now would be when she would write "Foreshadowing" on the chalkboard.

I'm not too eager to get into the details of what followed, mostly because I've been trying to wrap my head around them ever since. You think you're done with someone, that even though it was really, really bad for a while there, you're cool now. You've made peace with the fact that you're supposed to Just Be Friends and are even genuinely not minding seeing him happy with other people because hey, friends are happy when their friends are happy. You've moved on. You've had other relationships. You've figured out what you wanted from love and life, and been through the wringer enough to understand that getting it doesn't always come easy.

In short, you have your shit together.

And then a drunken text message turns into yelling in an alley in Adams Morgan, which ends in a hang-up line so biting that nearby strangers applaud you. And then somehow it turns into IMing, which turns into the phone again, which turns into coming over, which turns into a completely out-of-nowhere suggestion that no one can quite bring themselves to really ask in the form of a question.

Oops, indeed.

But to do it again?

*Sigh.* Who even knows anymore?

i have forgot why i did call thee back again

Well. Huh.

I did not see that coming.

on certainty and gratitude

Appropriation of memory for gain is nothing new. As a student of history, I have to acknowledge that there is nothing particularly unique about the way the current administration has co-opted tragedy for its own agenda.
American history is full of the powerful co-opting public fear for an unrelated agenda. Massachusets farmers cried out their neighbors for witchery so that they might take their land. The lesser-known second half of "Remember the Maine!" was "To Hell with Spain!" The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that expanded Johnson's powers and led to the Vietnam War was based on faulty intelligence, but was enabled by a popular knowledge that fully believed in the Domino Theory and was convinced of its moral imperative to stop Communism before it took over the world. There is nothing new under the sun.

As a historian in training, I also have an obligation to put aside my own feelings and look for motivations for their decisions that are more sophisticated than a mere Machivellian lust for power. I am obligated to approach their choices from their vantage point, in an attempt to make sense of the course we are now on.

Luckily, I don't have to agree with it. Having fulfilled an obligation to examine a situation from a variety of viewpoints, I am also free to speak against both those viewpoints and the situation itself. Because there is a tradition and a pattern does not mean that I, as a historian or as an American, have to subscribe to it.

Tonight we saw Ken Burns speak on September 11th and the meeting of memory, history and film at the National Press Club. He's a terrific public speaker, quite the opposite of the film nerd who hides behind a camera, and I jotted down several of his comments. The one that hit me the most, though, was when he quoted this speech by Lincoln entirely from memory:

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

After more discussion, Burns was asked to elaborate on this quote- what did he think would be our downfall? He responded "The only thing that will destory us is our certainty. That will be our suicide."

To be so convinced of a moral imperative that we will destroy ourselves in pursuit of it. To be so set in our ways, to fear change even for the sake of progress, because the devil we know is better than the one we don't. To be one hundred percent certain of our moral superiority so that we alienate those who would be our friends. To be unable to defeat those who would hurt us because we are too busy demonizing them to get inside their heads and figure out why they hate us. To trade in absolutes. To reduce someone who is willing to die for a cause, to calculate and plan such levels of cold-blooded terror as to inspire fear far beyond the tangible damage they inflict, to someone who merely "hates freedom."

To use Biblical language of Good and Evil. Of You're With Us or Against Us. Of Lover or Hater of Freedom. Of black and white.

To leave no room for flexibility. For mistakes. For learning. For healing. For that which makes America unique in the world-- the ability to improvise and quest for self-betterment.

Bush spoke tonight of the moral imperative to stay the course in Iraq, that we are in a "struggle to preserve civilization." I don't doubt that a struggle exists, but I do doubt the wisdom of importing democracy at the riflepoint of a Marine. I deeply doubt a leader who tells us that we have no choice but to stay the floundering course and beat the drums of war, though we have no indication that we know how to fix what we have already done or even know where that course leads us. There are always choices, however unpalatable some may find them. That ability to pursue choice is what I cling to as others co-opt tragedy for their own agenda. It boils my blood that there are people who have won elections on a platform of protecting people like me, only to use their office to attack the very beliefs I hold most dear.

But I don't have to agree with them.

Walking home from the Metro tonight, I paused in the boulevard on Pennslyvania Avenue and stared down the street at the Capitol dome lit up against the inky sky over the Mall. I feel squeamish about using the word "patriotic," because it too has been co-opted for uses I don't agree with, but I felt a profound wave of gratitude. I felt grateful it was still there.

I felt grateful that I had just come from an event where I was able to ask one of the greatest historians in the country what he thought of this day. I felt grateful that tomorrow I will use a voting machine for the first time in my life. Grateful that I am a woman allowed to pursue an education, have a career, live alone and enjoy an incredible amount of personal freedom. Grateful, even, for this little corner of the Internet where I have complete control to write whatever I want and am bound by nothing but my own sense of propriety and responsibility.

And above all, grateful that I was free to disagree with it all.

catching up on my correspondence

Dear Guy I Went to College With Who Is Really Bad at Life and so We Ignore One Another Whenever We Happen To Be In The Same Place, Especially When There Is Alcohol Involved Because I Just Know That One Of These Days I'm Going To Drunkenly Call Him "PT Cruiser" To His Face,

Nice to not talk to you at Snow Patrol last night! I really dug how you spent the entire set squirting in drops in your eye. Granted, the smoke machine operator was somewhat over-enthusiastic, but seriously. Visine? That's like, the opposite of rock and roll. Why not just slap on some Dentu-Grip and call it a day?

Love, EJ

PS: You're still funny-looking. Normally I'd feel bad about telling the Internet, but you're also not a very nice person.



Dear Gary Lightbody,

So, how's about you and me have a lot of sex and then talk marriage and babies? How does that sound?

Thanks for smiling while playing your awesome set last night. I like it when my bands look like they're enjoying themselves onstage, as opposed to having bamboo stalks driven under their toenails. "Rock star" is a fun job, after all.

But really, you're hot. And you should know, I didn't think that "Chasing Cars" was that great until I saw you play it live last night, and am now pretty sure that last night was the only time I've ever been moved to tears at a concert.

I am so going to regret this entry in about two years when you've ascended to the Brandon Flowers Pantheon of Musicians Who Are Both Sellouts and Pretentious Jerks, but you know what? I love you. I don't care.

In lust,

EJ


Dear Ben Affleck,

Wow. I did not see that coming. You were amazing. Seriously, you gave a truly great performance in Hollywoodland. I think we may be ready to move past that whole Surviving Christmas debacle. You seem to have learned that getting thwacked on the head by James Gandolfini's snow shovel does not a decent motion picture make. I applaud your progress.

With renewed admiration,

EJ


Dear Every Single Newspaper, Movie Studio, Television News Program, Magazine, Online Magazine, Political Blog and Talking Head,

Of course we can Never Forget. You won't let us. You keep showing us planes running into the towers and FLOOD the TV with your "edited for dramatic license" re-enactments and movies of the week that no one wants to see because my God, people, we are doing exactly what you told us we should be doing and getting on with our lives.

Here's what. Today is a big deal because it happens to be five years after 9/11. That is it. No more, no less. So could you please stop coordinating your commercials for the new fall series around 8:46 AM or promoting your films that aren't technically insensitive war-profiteering because they just show the shadow of the plane, not the actual plane, and therefore it's artistic interpretation, to coincide with the morning newscasts, so that I can get up and shower and drink a cup of coffee without seeing your artistic interpretations of mass murder?

Yours in frustration,

EJ

rub me the right way

I've never been a big beauty treatment person. It's the midwesterner in me; there is something about paying another person to rub, polish, wax or otherwise alter my body that is somehow off-putting. We are big on boundaries and personal space. On appearances, but not on making public the indignities that go into maintaining them. Michiganders, especially the ones from elitist hippie enclaves, are not supposed to indulge themselves in such a frivolous way. I do recall buying a lot of artisinal soaps and lotions as a teenager, but the were usually purchased from the sustainable development shop at my church, were made by Nicaraguan peasants, smelled funky and made my skin both gungy and squeaky.

Also, I can never justify the cost of fancy beauty crap. I'll glady spend hundreds of dollars on a Kenneth Cole handbag that I can carry for five years, and do plop eighty bucks plus tip on a haircut once every two months. But those things, they last! They are investments. Spending a chunk of that money on a pedicure that will be ruined in two weeks or giving a stranger the equivalent of a DirecTV bill to rip hair from my ladybits when I can do it myself, thankyouverymuch, just rubs me the wrong way. So to speak.

I do ascribe this approach to beauty to my upbringing, but not to my family. My sister has been a nailbiter since childhood and took a decidedly laissez-faire approach to dental care, but still has a flawless smile and a bank account bruised by the purchase of insane amounts of eyeshadow and toning cleaners. My mother, who just moved to another state for her new job, cried twice during her last week: once when she said goodbye to my father, and once when she said goodbye to Vi, her manicurist. Seriously.

But while a pre-puberty Jenny purchased body-hair minimizing lotion and our mother littered the house with her Mary Kay samples, I did my own hair for prom and got my first manicure the week of college graduation. I learned how to apply makeup when I was eight, but only because I did a lot of community theater. There was a very unfortunate period of perms in the early nineties, but I blame the influence of the Baby-Sitters Club books for that (remember Stacey McGill? She was cool! She had a perm! She was from New York! I always said Kristy Thomas was my favorite because she was a loud brunette like me, but I secretly wanted to be Stacey McGill). Even as I finally accepted that Kool-Aid was not an acceptable hair dye and even embraced the Zen art of plucking one's eyebrows, I always found better ways to spend my money than on beauty services. Like, say, purses. Or vodka.

This last week was just brutal at work, and the stress of the big event I was in charge of plus the cruddiness of my third-hand mattress had taken a nasty toll on my back. As a reward for getting through the week (plus, I was waking up in the middle of the night with lower back pain), I booked myself a massage for Saturday. Like most things that are designed to make one's life better-- email, huge grocery stores, the demand for equal orgasms-- it only stressed me out even more. First I gave myself a guilt trip for spending fifty-five dollars on someone rubbing my shoulders. Then I overslept and was rushing around, eventually leaving the house wearing the ancient, cat-hair-covered gaucho pants that I vowed never to sport in public because it was suddenly cold and rainy and I'd not unpacked any winter clothes. THEN, I wound up having a driveway moment listening to This American Life and was ten minutes late. I was apologizing to the massuese as I was signing in, as I got changed and as I lay down on the table. As she oiled up her hands and asked me if I had any problems spots or medical conditions, I replied "My neck, no medical conditions, and again, I'm so sorry."

She smiled and told me not to worry and got to work on my poor aching back. And may I just say MLAAAAAAAH. An hour later when I managed to lift myself off of the table, I reached up and felt my shoulder and my finger just kept going. It wasn't instantly stopped by a hard knot of muscle! Incredible. I felt lighter, more able to hold my head up. Better yet, for the first time in weeks, my head wasn't filled with millions of little details of visas and certifications and nametags and catering. I felt cleansed and wrung out, like my body could be poured into a glass.

I may never be the kind of girl who bonds with her manicurist, or who has opinions about brands of mascara. I can almost promise that I will never get plastic surgery or inject my face with poison to halt the aging process. But finally taking my mind off of work AND fixing my aching back? THAT is beautiful.

someone who

Hard as it is to get a boyfriend in Washington, it may be harder to get a girlfriend.

No, not the kind you have sex with, but someone who, when you meet her, makes you think "Oh my GOD this woman is awesome. I hope we are friends forever." Someone who just GETS you, because your minds work at the same ridiculous speed and for once you've met somene else who knows that conversations can, under the right circumstances, become a competitive sport. Someone who is incredibly smart yet also brings out your silly girly side, the kind who you don't feel embarrased drinking fruity cocktails or watching two different DVD versions of Pride and Prejudice with in the same weekend, because, after all, Matthew MacFayden and Colin Firth made some very different character choices that warrant discussion (and swooning). Someone who is really good at mixing circles of friends and gets genuinely excited, instead of intimidated or jealous, when they become friends independent of the original link. Someone who you know you can call when you are celebrating, need a shoulder to cry on or because you just heard "Poison" on the radio and it reminded you of that episode of Scrubs that you guys all dance along to.

We all know that girls can be just awful to one another, and age often only sugarcoats any inherent bitterness. We compete with the other women we call friends, comparing ourselves to them or bitching about them silently or behind their backs, not telling them the truth even when they ask for it out of what we call politeness but what is really cowardice. Even when that nastiness is absent, it's still tough to find another girl who you click with. After all, we look for that je nes se quois in our romantic partners-- to find it in a woman friend after mucking through all the other stuff is rare, and, when it happens, so great.

Libby and I met almost two years ago through a Senate race our bosses consulted for. I had drive out to meet her on the corner outside her downtown office to give her a video camera for a prep session. I Google Image searched her before the hand-off because hey, better to recognize her quickly and not hold up a motorcade or something. The photo that came up was of her in the Michigan Daily, meaning she was obviously good people. The oft-mentioned R had already told me that we should meet and that I should take care of her because she was new to the city and had just been through an awful breakup.

HA. Little did he know what was about to ensue.

Since that equipment hand-off, the subsequent football game and Lord only knows how many toes stubbed doing the aforementioned dance, Libs has been an amazing friend. I seriously cannot imagine the last two years without everything she's brought into my life. I wouldn't have met my many amazing friends, I may never have found the guts to go backpacking and I certainly wouldn't have gotten into nearly as much trouble. There would have been a lot fewer hangovers and a lot less laughter. In short, it would have been a very different life.

Tonight I and a bunch of our girlfriends went over to watch her pack, mourn and toast her with a bottle of Michigan's finest. Most of the other girls left before me, and most of them cried as they said their goodbyes. When it was my turn, I couldn't work up the tears. I mean, I'm sad, but I'm also in total denial. It absolutely hasn't hit me that she's leaving for a year and won't be in close contact. It probably won't until the first time I reach for the phone to tell her something ridiculous or bitch about the fact that stupid people are still allowed to work and walk among us that it will sock me in the gut that "What? Libby doesn't live in America anymore? Who the hell let that happen?!" You will not want to be around when this all finally clicks into place.

So ladies, if you have these kinds of girlfriends in your lives, go and tell them how much you love them. Because one of these days, they'll pack up an go to graduate school in a whole other damn country and be all "Dude, you should have come with me," and you'll have to be the girl who says "Well, you just have to kick enough ass for both of us while you're there."


Libs, it a testament to our friendship that I am sharing a picture of my shiny-ass club face with the Internet.

television for women

I emerged from my apartment exactly twice this weekend-- once, to take out the trash and kitty litter (see, I'm at least germ-free, if otherwise slovenly) and once to get margaritas on Saturday night. The rest of the weekend was spent watching not writing the paper that I probably should have submitted in July, making a million lists for things I have to do at work this week (the busiest week of the year for my job), and watching bad TV.

And friends, when I say bad TV, I mean BAD TV. In no particular order, this weekend I watched:

- at least three hours of wedding programming on WE! (say it like "wheeee! Women's Entertainment! Wheeeee!"), ranging from PWT bridezillas to this girl who spent $80,000 on her gown. I can think of lots of good ways to spend $80,000, and almost none of them involve Swarovski crystals.

- The Notebook. Twice.

- The Oklahoma State Sugar Art show, as broadcast over the Food Network. It's actually not a bad show-- think Project Runway, but with cake decorating and mullets-- but still shameful because this is the second time I've watched it. The first time was the Sunday after my Bat Mitzvah, where B padded over through two feet of snow and we gnawed on Dominos and draped ourselves all over the couch whining about our hangovers and laughing at the female judge's hairpiece. And yes boys, we are both single.

- Degrassi. You already know I have a weakness for the BBC, but Saturday night centered on Canadian teen soap operas on The N! (why must all these networks have exclamation points?). They happened to be holding a marathon of every Degrassi episode ever, which for me is the equivalent of the heavens opening and the sky ringing with the trumpets of seraphim sounding the coming of Our Lord. After drinks and greasy Mexican food I dragged my friend K back to her house and made her watch four consecutive episodes. It is to her credit that she not only didn't walk out of the room, but that by the end of the two hours she developed very strong opinions on Paige's nose and repeatedly asked for clarification as to the Kevin Smith story arc. Way to drink the Koolaid, K. I am so proud.

- The entire Emmy preshow and the Emmys. Observations recorded during these: 1) Ryan Seacrest, just by pretending to not know who Zac Posen is, is STILL NOT FOOLING ANYONE, and 2) Katherine Heigl looked unbelievably gorgeous, but her look took me straight back to her performance in my all-time favorite Disney TV movie Wish Upon a Star. I have not the words for how much I love this movie, and the gleeful squeal I emit when I catch it on TV is matched only by that I also issue for when Death of A Cheerleader is on Lifetime Television for Women. It's basically Freaky Friday with sisters, and was made in that great post-Clueless period of fashion where every girl was wearing sheer knee-high white stockings and clunky platform shoes, preferably topped off by a teeny drawstring-closure backpack. I also loved it because the older sister's boyfriend is way hot and the whole movie is actually rather risque for a Disney flick (they make out with TONGUE and get HICKEYS) (and there's a whole subplot involving the little sister in a dominatrix outfit). If I ever met Katherine Heigl, I'd totally gush about this movie to her face and she'd probably be all "the hell is that bitch talking about? I'm on Grey's Anatomy, damnit!"

Delicious, sweet, gluttonous weekend television, how I love thee so.

Ugh, and now I have to go pretend to be an adult all week. Eat me, real world.

working women cause of cancer, conflict in Lebanon, the unsatisfying amount of blowjobs in your life

Another day, another intentionally irksome article saying that educated, professional women are the reason everything in your life sucks.

Did we all agree to teleport back to 1954? Was I in a meeting when that memo was handed out?

Oh, wait, no, I was busy finishing a paper for grad school after working a twelve hour day and NOT VACUUMING MY CARPET, LO THE EVIL MAN-HATING HORROR OF IT ALL.

I'm particularly charmed by the development of this "point-counterpoint" format, which was slapped on yesterday after Forbes.com posted the initial "Don't Marry a Ho With a Life" article solo, without the forces of reason, logic and rationality to counterbalance the fucktardness of Michael Noer (who, BTW, is not around to repsond to the furor over said fucktardness because he's at a wedding. His next article "How To Salt Your Own Game; or, Why Not To Publish The Most Mysogynistic Article on the Internet Right Before Attending an Event Filled With Desperate Women and an Open Bar" is expected in next week's edition of Forbes Online).

My first instinct upon reading this article was to get all screamy and respond to every point-- "Of course women get less attractive over the years, they pop out your children! And why is it solely the woman's job to take care of the house? Maybe you could do a load of laundry, you lazy bastard--" but I quickly settled down and chuckled to myself. It's not so much the existence of guys like this that annoys me. We're pretty used to men who are threatened by girls who have their shit together and go after what we want. These guys are a pain but they generally reveal their true colors pretty quickly, allowing us to dispose of them with relative ease and a roll of the eyes. You don't need a PhD in psychology to see that men who think like this are freaked out because they know they can't live up to the increased responsibility (ie. you split the chores and it's not okay to fuck your assistant) that stems from an equal partnership. Guys with these kinds of expectations for marriage tend to partner up with really vapid women and learn very quickly that just because she picks up your socks and makes your dinner does not mean your marriage or life is happy. Ahhh... knowing that stupid, obnoxious people will end up miserable feels so good. It feels all warm in my stomach like a nice glass of single-malt scotch.

But Forbes, really. Is August that slow a news month that you feel the need to print this drivel? I'd rather hear all about the ex-child brides of JonBenet Ramsey's accused killer than read one more article on why working women are the cause of everything from child serial killers to stubborn bathroom mildew. Besides, you all have been trying to make us the scapegoat for the suckiness of life for sixty years now! If you have to keep trying this hard, it's time to give up and find something new. May I suggest bedbugs? They seem to be the Hot Scourge for the New Millennium.

new and improved EJ: now with twenty percent more riboflavin

I reached a point where some of the most pathetic words ever known to womankind were constantly buzzing in my head, much like the mosquitoes that gleefully attack my shins every time I walk down the steps to my front door. I think they lie in wait for me every evening, rubbing their little translucent pinchers together in glee as they anticipate swarming my uncovered legs in a bloodthirsty mob. "They're back!" they squeak (if mosquitoes spoke, they would speak English, because that's what everyone in America should do, right?). "Those long things that feed us are back!" They swoop and suck as I fumble for first the gate key, then the door key, then kick in the door because the wood has inevitably swollen in the swampy humidity that is Washington, these moments ensuring that by the time I lurch indoors, slam the door and set down the Utah-sized Kenneth Cole bag I stubbornly lug everywhere, my legs will be on fire. Last week I complained about my mosquito bites for a good five minutes to a coworker, who informed me that her Serbian sister-in-law suggested dabbing rocket fuel-grade alcohol on the bites before scratching as to lessen the torment. When I got home I used the strongest booze in my over-crowded kitchen, but it turns out that Jose Cuervo Gold does not an effective astringent make.

I'm sorry, where was I? The itching is a tad distracting.

Ah yes, the words. The words that were buzzing.

The words that were buzzing were "how will this look on my blog?"

I know. EW. But hear me out.

People I knew "in real life" were starting to introduce me as a blogger. I'd see someone after a few weeks of no contact and he'd already know what I'd been up to. That's not how people who live within five blocks of one another are supposed to interact.

The stories got harder to tell, both because of the content and the crapass writing. News wasn't shared, it was issued, like the moronic press releases on steel dumping I wrote as a 19-year-old intern. Blogging opens doors, but it also shuts windows. You witness something, experience something, long to reflect on its significance and someone else specifically tells you "don't write about this on your blog." So you look at it through a plate glass window, unable to touch it and hold it and share it, and you write about a news headline that ticked you off or post pretty pictures, because, hey, who gets ticked about pretty pictures? Who, unless they work in politics, gets fired over stating that the Bush administration couldn't find the clitoris with a flashlight and a copy of Gray's Anatomy, much less find a way out of Iraq?

And let's face it: at the end of the day, does the world really need another blog about how hard it is to be a upwardly mobile single white girl in the city?

Well, fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. I gotta navel-gaze. It's what I do. If the unexamined life is not worth living, then the life of a narcissistic blogger must be the Cadillac of lives, worth more than those other unblogged lives that fill its days and make it fascinating, entertaining, painful and full. Patently false logic, I know, but compelling nonetheless.

So over the last few months, my writing deteriorated. And a lot of crap happened. Crap that I couldn't write about, crap that for once I actually didn't have to stop myself from writing about because really, spewing it back to the universe didn't make me feel better and wasn't doing the universe any favors. If you're not going to contribute anything productive or inspiring or at least new, then why write?

So I stopped for a while. And I'm not saying that blogging is a bad luck jinx; that the mere act of keeping a blog attracts negative and/or hostile elements into one's life, but damn. I quit blogging, and life felt easier. Lighter. More fun. I kicked a lot of ass at work. I started running again, traveled on weekends, ate really really well, spent a lot of time with friends old and new and thought I Met Someone (it turns out I Did Not, but that is a story for another entry, one that explores how eating raw cookie dough by the pound while watching Project Runway is actually lots better than bad sex).

But I found I really missed it. I did manage to kick the habit of approaching a situation thinking "how will I write about this on my blog?" but some situations triggered it in a positive way. The trick, I think, is to be very conscious of what goes in here. I used to write something and then instantly post it, maybe going back to edit after posting after noting a particularly egregious typo. No more.

So what did I learn on my summer vacation? Patience is our friend and protector from emotions and crappy writing alike. Blogs are in no way a substitute for human interaction. And despite all of the above, I will forgive myself the occasional lapse into trite prose and story and remind myself that, as I am a single 20-something girl in the city, it is okay to write like one.

Because, as the estimable Mimi reminds us, it's hard being a motherfucking white bitch.

Nice to be back, y'all.

I'm briefly resurfacing from my hiatus (coming along swimmingly; so far I've cured cancer and stolen David Beckham from Posh Spice) to note this:

World Trade Center has a MySpace page.

And we wonder why the rest of the world hates America.

it's not goodbye forever, it's just goodbye for now

252 posts. 16 months. Eleventy jillion unsolicited opinions. Entirely too much living in my head.

I'm going on hiatus, friends.

Momma needs a break from all this navel-gazing.

No, I didn't get dooced or anything. I just need to get back to a place where my first reaction to a situation is not "And how will I frame this on my blog?"

So, I might be a while.

We'll see.

putting the "errrrr" in "spinster"

Wow. I didn't know the meaning of "low point" until my little sister pointed out a typo in my online dating profile.

Oh, wait. Then I blogged about it.

Maybe there's a D&D message board I could go inform. Y'know, right after I get ten more cats and tack this up on my bedroom wall.

CLUNKetyCLUNKetySHIT

My friend Adam, who was Phi Beta Kappa and currently in law school, genuinely believes that aliens built the pyramids. "There is no way that humans could have lifted all those stones!" he'll holler, usually after a few margaritas. "But they had pulleys," someone will inevitably respond, naively thinking that an appeal to reason and logic will work magic. Then he'll get really red-faced and cantankerous and start ranting that it's simply not feasible, that there is no way that even hundreds of people working together like ants could heave a single block into place, much less create giant pyramids over decades.

I once babysat for a little boy who knew, without a doubt, that the neighbor's dog was trying to kill him. This despite the fact that their most violent encounter involved an unprovoked licking of the face of one of the involved parties.

I know several people who insist that George W. Bush is the greatest president America has ever had.

Look, we all have our things. Many people adhere to a belief that is so irrational, so completely contrary to all logic that it somehow goes beyond a mere phobia or display of faith. Everyone has them. But I am the exception to the rule, because my crazy-sounding thing happens to be TRUE.

I give off a force field that destroys electronic equipment.

After a lifetime of damaged consumer goods, mysteriously deleted files and subpar performance by all mechanical goods designed to make my life easier, there is no other explanation left. Something that I emanate literally sucks the will to live from my electronics. In the last six years I have gone through two desktops, three laptops, seven iPods, two TiVos, two DirecTV units and one car with a damaged OBD II monitor, the latter of which no one can tell me why is so important or even what it DOES, but by Golly it IS important and listen missy, you will not drive that car until you get it fixed, even though we're not sure it's broken!

Anyhoo.

This latest rant was sparked when , after I finished a big chunk of my scary paper this Saturday, my hard drive suddenly decided it was tired of holding my papers and MP3 files and, with a violent "CLUNKetyCLUNKetyCLUNK" noise, went to that big scrapheap in the sky. Total system failure. New hard drive needs to be installed. All my photos, all my music... Phhhht, gone.

This has happened before, and so I do have a backup system. Everything-- and I mean everything-- was on my iPod. What's that? you ask. The iPod that is currently being held hostage by the warlords at Best Buy, who have wiped it so they can "repair" it?

The very same.

So you see?! I give off a force field that destroys electronic equipment! There is no other explanation for the sudden shitstorm of failure that is my apartment, littered with corpses of machines gone by.

Surprisingly, this is my "acceptance" stage of grief.

not optimistic

As I'm sure you're aware, there's been a lot of chatter about DC crime over the last few days. The tragic murder of Alan Senitt in Georgetown has gotten the most attention locally and nationally, but as as of this posting there have been fourteen murders in the last twelve days. Let me repeat that: fourteen people murdered in twelve days. Ten men, two women and a child.

I don't know how much attention would have been paid to this statistic if one of them had not been the murder of a white man by black people in a ritzy neighborhood. Frankly, I don't care. It's a damned waste of time to fret over hypothetical racism when people are being stabbed in the streets. I'm sure there are some who would say that as a white, middle-class person I don't get to make that judgement call. To them I say "Can we talk about this later? Someone is breaking into my neighbor's house and there's a body in the street a block down."

Having recently been on the periphery of a violent crime, I haven't felt safe in my home and my city for several weeks now. This latest spate of violence may bring attention to DC's violent crime problem, but who knows if any tangible results will come from it. In the situation I've referenced before in this blog, I was deeply disturbed with reaction of the police involved. It's hard to explain without getting into specifics, which is not appropriate for this forum, but they behaved in a supremely unconcerned manner, sauntering around the crime scene and not bothering to interview witnesses or, that I saw, even write anything down. At one point I pointed out a car across the street that had been recently broken into-- there was still glass on the backseat and the weapon-- a rock wrapped in a scarf-- was hanging out the window. When I pointed this out to an officer, thinking they might find it of note that a robbery had taken place across the street and on the same night as the incident they were presently investigating, he responded "we can't do anything until the owner calls it in." He didn't even bother to write down the license plate number. I wrote it down, along with as many notes on the scene and the officer's reaction to it as I could recall, along with his squad car number and my contact information, and sent it to police headquarters. I'm sure they'll never do anything with it. It's probably sitting in a box somewhere in Anacostia, or more likely, is resting in pieces at the bottom of a shredder. From what I've been told, the continued investigation of this particular crime has been more of the same: apathy, dropped calls and general callousness towards the victim.

I don't have a lot of faith in the DCPD. After reading a lot of the comment threads and blog entires about this issue, I'm losing a lot of faith in the power of DC citizens. Events like these should push us to measurable action, not a round of race-baiting and finger-pointing. Everyone is too scared of the very large and ill-defined task of reducing violent crime, and so they play the blame game. It's the yuppies' fault for being stupid and living in bad neighborhoods. It's the parents' fault for letting their kids run wild. It's the schools' fault. It's the cops' fault. It's because of racist condo developers; Congress; gangs; crystal meth.

One thing I'm particularly losing patience with is the gentrification blame game. People like me are damned if we do, damned if we don't. Yuppies who live in Northwest and the suburbs get all kinds of crap for fleeing and taking their resources and influence with them, yet are told that because they don't live in the rougher parts of town they don't get to comment on what goes on there. If they, as I do, live in "transitioning" neighborhoods and something bad happens, they get a reaction of "what did you expect? This is a city. If you can't deal, get out." It's a vicious cycle that doesn't go anywhere or help anyone, and I'm sick of it.

I fully expect that this latest surge of violence will, in the end, change nothing about the way DC law enforcement is run or tangibly address any of the underlying causes of the rise in violent crime. What it will do is stir a simmering kettle of tangential crap. People will use the violence as a further reason to attack one another's lifestyles and choices. They will get up in arms about perceptions of racism, and quibble over how much attention to race and socioeconomic status is appropriate. Little will be different and people will still get hurt.

It'd be nice if I'm wrong, but I'm not optimistic.

unconditional, with occasional exceptions

My mother hung up on me.

She hung up on me. Right when I was in the middle of confessing something really unpleasant, something that casts me in so bad a light that I haven't and will not tell any of my friends. The kind of thing you can only tell parents because animal instinct mandates unconditional love of a child who confesses something so deeply unflattering. Animal instinct, or at least stubborn hope that their twenty-five years of moral instruction have gone the way of the carrier pigeon and dodo.

She was in her hotel room in Hawaii. Yes, my mother is on vacation in Hawaii and is too busy to talk to her daughter, or even to listen. She was trying to figure out why their hotel room's DSL connection had suddenly broken and called the customer service line on the room phone.

Then the customer help line finally clicked over to an actual human being ready to help her solve her computer issue, and she hung up on me.

Look, she's very busy and important. She works hard. She needs that email access so that she can keep up on work and receive her well-deserved accolades. She also deserves what little relaxation she can get. I don't begrudge her that. And for the record, I'm really good at not minding when she can't talk because she's tired and frustrated and rushing from one city to another. She's got lots of balls in the air, and I don't mind that, now that her kids are grown, we're not on the top of her to-do list. I'm an adult. I know this whole "grownup" thing sucks the life out of one, and, well, generally just sucks.

But some days, this grownup just needs someone to unconditionally listen and sympathize and love. Somtimes, after a bout of unpleasantness, I want my mommy. The bratty child in me wants someone who, by genetic pull or at least the forces of guilt, does not, at the very effing least, hang up on her upset daughter to talk to the Dell service rep.

I had a great little monologue in my head for when she called back, basically consisting of the text of this entry. Something to let her that even thought I respect her time and the many demands on it, I was hurt.

She hasn't called back.

I've stopped holding my breath.

And because I'm too stubborn/wary of appearing needy to my own mother, I shall instead bitch about her on the Internet.

Yes, that whole maturity thing is coming along smashingly.

Chess. With Sex.

And now the DirecTV is not working.

Some people might choose to call the customer service line and wait for a technician, whilst working on their final paper for class like the good responsible souls they are.

I chose vodka. And a DVD of The Thomas Crown Affair. Original version, of course.

Steve McQueen may not fix my life, but he plays the sexiest game of chess known to frazzled, neurotic womankind.

frustration, or, how to wreck the relaxation incurred in a just-finished vacation

I returned home from vacation in full-on bliss mode. Look at these:

I mean, right? How can you not be relaxed when you're looking at views like that all day long?

Despite Michigan's best efforts to calm my frazzled, East Coast urban nerves, the relaxing simply wouldn't stick. I returned to DC to find a million little broken things and un-run errands that were placed in my path by some masochistic higher power who delights in seeing yuppies twitch with accumulated rage.

Scene One: I arrive home to find the following items broken: my iPod, my DSL connection and my bathroom light fixture. Individually these would have been annoying, but their combined suckage in one short night instantly drew me back from the beach into a world of automated telephone help lines and quiet showers in the dark. Due to a past encounter with Verizon customer service that was straight out of The Devil Wears Prada (boss made me order device that was not yet available to general public, the Mumbai-based service rep was rather unenthusiastic about my dilemma and I spent all of Thanksgiving evening screaming at various managers, convinced I would be fired by my Anna Wintour-esque boss because I wasn't able to purchase a model of Treo that had not yet been manufactured for sale), I approached the DSL issue with a wary hostility. My worst expectations were naturally fulfilled, and culminated with me yelling at the automated operator "No, I did NOT say BILLING ISSUE. GET ME TO CUSTOMER SERVICE, YOU STUPID BITCH!"

Shockingly, this did not get my DSL fixed. That took three human operators, one of whom spoke English, one repairman who arrived a day early (appreciated) at 8:45 AM (not appreciated) and one repairman's supervisor who examined the tangle of wires that is my setup and said "well, fuck if don't know what's wrong here."

Scene Two: I've been trying to get my car registered in DC for months. MONTHS. You can't get your car registered until you get it inspected at a station in Southeast. My car has twice failed inspection because something called the OBD II is not scanning. To fix this problem, the District of Columbia presented me with a charming piece of paper containing a seventeen-point driving course regimen that would make the Duke brothers shudder with fear. For example:

"Step Seven: Drive 5 mph for 30 seconds and accelerate to 35 mph for 10 seconds. Brake hard to a dead stop and accelerate to 55 mph in under 12 seconds. Drive at 55 mph for two minutes and decelerate to 8 mph for 20 seconds."

What this lovely document does not share with the driver is where, exactly, one is supposed to perform this seventeen-step stunt driving course. Am I to get up at 3 AM and peel up and down East Capitol, praying all the while that the Capitol Police are too distracted by a Kennedy to notice that the city is making me drive like a madwoman?

And what's more, I'll be doing this illegally, because it's taken so long to try to get the car registered that the original registration on it has expired.

ARGH.

Scene Three: I take my iPod to the Apple store. They have no appointments for five hours. I make an appointment for five hours later. I return, they inspect my iPod and pronounce it dead. "When did you buy it?" they ask. "June of last year," I respond. "Oh that's too bad," they say, "because the automatic warranty only lasts for a year." "Let me get this straight," I said, "if it had broken two weeks ago, or if I had punted it down a football field two weeks ago, you would have given me a new model for free? But there is nothing you can do for me now?" "Well," they said, "it's a year old! That's ancient! We've had, like, six new models since you bought it."

Right. How very naive of me to expect that something that costs three hundred dollars would still be functional a year after purchase! Silly, silly, EJ!

"Or," they continue, "you could test all of your files. Try playing each of your songs one at a time and see if the iPod freezes."

I have 4,434 songs on my iPod.

I leave, giving the surreptitious finger to the smug, be-tattooed "Genius" at the checkout counter.

Scene Four: I suddenly remember that I purchased this iPod at a Best Buy. Normally this is a terrible idea, but I had also purchased a three-year warranty with it. SCORE.

I go to Best Buy, present my situation and proudly cut off the bored-looking clerk who starts to drone that they can do nothing for me because the thirty-day waiting period has passed by smacking the warranty card on the counter with a satisfying THWAP. Being a packrat does come in handy. Not expecting his customer to be prepared and responsible, the Best Buy rep must find another way to inconvenience and anger me. "So are you going to replace it?" I ask. "No, we can't do that," he says, looking even more smug than the Apple guy. "We'll send it out for service. You get it back August 18."

I am literally speechless for a moment, then start practically spitting. "First of all, Apple told me it could not be fixed. They don't know what the problem is, but it's an old model that they don't even make any more. And if you somehow do fix it, it's just going to break again, because it's an old model, and I'll have to bring it back here and you'll keep it for another six weeks, is that right?"

I'm pretty sure I have steam coming out of my ears at this point. He stares at me for a second, raises his eyebrows and says "You're probably right. But that's all I'm going to do for you."

Scene Five: I take a shower. In the dark.

Actually, that part was pretty okay.


There's probably a moral in all this. Something like "acquiring stuff can't make you happy," or "material possessions end up owning you."

That's beautiful. You know what else is beautiful? My IPOD. And DRIVING LEGALLY. And BEING ABLE TO SEE WHETHER I'M ABOUT TO STEP ON MY BATHMAT OR IN THE CAT'S LITTERBOX.

At least the DSL is working.

home again, home again

Hey kids! Did you miss me? I missed you!

Well, I missed you when I wasn't spending time with family whose company I actually enjoy. Or visiting wineries. Or on the beach. Or shopping. Or biking Mackinac Island. Or stuffing my face with cherries, fudge and whitefish pate. Did I mention the wine? And the champagne?

You know how it is outside right now? All 78 degrees and sunny and no humidity? Yeah, I brought that back with me. The good people at Northwest Airlines let me carry it on, even though I also had a shopping bag full of food and wine and champagne and a bathrobe (new purchase, hot pink and furry and makes me look like a Fraggle, and the best thing I've ever had wrapped around me, including Jan the Flying Dutchman). The weather was this perfect all. Week. Long.

You know there's been some not-so-good stuff going on lately. This vacation was all about trying to purge the negativity and not think about stuff I can't control for a little bit. This plan worked better than I'd ever thought because something really big happened in my family this weekend. For the sake of preserving my semi-anonymity I can't really get specific, but let's say you happened to wander to the Purdue website and happened to click on the news section and happened to read a press release from today, and... well, you might get an idea of what all is going on. Bottom line: it's good, it's a big change, and it has absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with someone I love. And dealing with it and celebrating it all weekend took the focus off of all my crap, which was exactly what I needed.

*Exhale*

Pictures are coming, as soon as Verizon decides to remove their collective thumbs from their nether regions and fix my DSL. Really, it was gorgeous. That part of the country just restores my soul.

Hope you all had a great 4th!

vacation, all i ever wanted

See you kids next week. Maybe I'll even bring you a bottle of Chateau Chantal, if you're nice.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'll bring you some cherries; I'm keeping the wine for my bad self.








Michigan is pretty, isn't she?

and now for something completely different

In a lovely departure from moping/jumping at every creak, here's a fun DCist post on my favorite local band The Roosevelt:

http://www.dcist.com/archives/2006/06/27/three_stars_the_8.php

Their bass player is a hottie, but I'm pretty sure he likes the bois.

it's not me, it's you

Washington and I are totally in a fight right now and I don't know how it started.

I know why I'M mad. The events of the last ten days have certainly been cause enough to be mad. Even with the most amazingly supportive boss, friends and family, I've felt bruised and totally helpless.

You know that adorable swill I spouted about the Pinot Grigio and the French rap? Suffice it to say that what really happened that night was that I totally lost my shit on the corner of 14th and C Southeast. What possessed me to walk to that party by myself at 11:00 PM I can't quite pinpoint, but I think I had a justification resembling "they can't make me afraid of my own neighborhood. I won't let them." That, of course, is bollocks.

That night, I became the girl I swore I never would be. I became the girl who cringes when a strange man walks by her at night. He actually leered at me "heeeeeey, white girl, what you doin' all the way out here," as if I'd been pushed out of a plane and parachuted into enemy territory. He sauntered past and just ahead of me, walking too slowly and close to my path for my shredded comfort level.

Having never hyperventilated (to my knowledge), I can't identify the feeling-- but this was the closest I ever hope to come. I grabbed my cell phone from my purse, flipped it open and started jabbering to no one, hoping he'd think I was on the phone with someone very fierce and strong and very close by.

"Hi honey, I'm almost there... no I said I'm almost there... just a couple of blocks over... no, I'm almost there."

Did I mention I flunked Improv at theater camp?

He was still sloooowwwwly sauntering and I was dangerously close to a full-on freakout. The idea of stopping in the middle of the steamy, hostile block was awful, but not as awful as being at his heels, waiting for him to turn around. I stopped on the corner and called everyone I could think of, but people seemed to have other Saturday night plans besides comforting a terrified EJ.

Finally I did the unthinkable. I called my mother. I called her and asked her to talk to me, to tell me a story, until I could walk to this house and get behind walls and doors. And she somehow didn't yell at me for being so stupid, which any other time would have made me feel worse except I was too busy being scared of every raindrop. And so, from central Michigan, she walked me to that house.

I hate being that girl. I've been in this city for six years and have NEVER been that girl. I've never been scared of my own or anyone else's shadow. I like to think I haven't been too cavalier, though God knows I've made poor judgement calls and walked alone more than I should. But I have never been that white girl who is scared of her own "transitioning neighborhood." I did everything right! Look at all the valentines I've written to this neighborhood and this city. He didn't so anything bad or threatening besides leer, and I'm used to leering by now. Leering usually doesn't bother me.

But leering on a steamy street in Southeast, alone and in the middle of the night...

So yes, Washington and I are in a fight right now. And the apocalyptic rain is NOT helping. I've already showed emotion in public this weekend; could we please refrain from keeping the sky from sobbing along?

I think we need to take some time away from one another.

No, we're not splitting up. But we are definitely on a break.

exhaling

Thank you all so much for your kind words and offers of hugs. It's been a rough week.

What happened is not my story to tell, and so I won't be telling it here. What I can tell you is that things are being done about it, and that even though it was awful and scary, I am going to try to not talk about it here because it is not a story that is meant for public consumption.

Last night I sat with good friends and let them distract me from the events of the last week, and it was exactly what I needed. Today I went to the market and bought basil, lemons, a baguette, a Pinot Grigio and this amazing cheese that was marinated in olive oil. I'm going to go consume it all outside while Sadie curls up at my feet and French rap music wafts through the window onto my front yard.

Because, cliche though it's become, we here in Washington don't let them make us scared of our own streets. That is, after all, when the bad guys win.

pain

What do you do when something awful happens?

You feel as though you have suddenly sprouted extra arms from your torso, that they are flailing in every direction while your legs remain planted and immobile. Your new hands grasp at empty air, all reaching for different invisible items that remain tantalizingly, torturingly out of reach.

You ache. You physically ache for those who are in much worse pain than you. You feel guilty for induldging your own emotion at a time like this. You feel guilty because you weren't always so good to those who now need you.

You get scared. You get deeply, core-strokingly terrified that worst fears can and do come true. You become afraid of your own front door because of what is just beyond it. Scared because you have no ability to protect the people you care about from what wants to hurt them.

You get angry. Angry that something has so deeply violated the boundaries of right and wrong. Who thinks that they have the right to destroy like this? How can something this brutal be allowed to exist? Who the hell let this happen?

You marvel at your own capacity to hate, and understand with new clarity how inextricably hate and fear are mixed.

You walk with hunched shoulders and a stony face washed in that hate and fear. Not too long ago you trip-hopped down these streets. Now they seem filled with threats, and your feet race to get you home, behind bars and locks and into a bed where there is an open Swiss Army knife under your pillow but no sleep to be found.

You look for answers, for any speck of silver lining. There is no great loss without some small gain, right? Ma Ingalls said so, and she was a tough prairie wife who knew from struggle that life, dear friends, is full of pain.

You look and you look and you stretch at all boundaries of reason looking for a lesson, a reason, an explanation, anything substantive and hopeful that can be extracted from a pit filled with the filth of the world.

And it's only when someone else you love, someone who you reach out to for comfort, finally says "there is nothing good in this" that you finally allow yourself to understand that there is no lesson. Only hurt.

pity and envy

Someone taps my shoulder, and I start. More specifically, I choke on the sip of iced tea I'd just taken. The tip of the straw scratches the roof of my mouth.

I turn to see a strange man's grinning face, somewhere between a smile and a leer. He stares at me for a second too long, holding my gaze.

"I'm sorry?" I half-ask, half-apologize. Women do this. Apologize when there's nothing to apologize for. Once I apologized to a closet door when I bumped into it.

He's not unattractive, this man. In fact, he's pretty good-looking. Perhaps a bit north of my current age ceiling (31), but he has an intriguing grin and fierce eye contact. I'm a sucker for men who aren't afraid to meet my eyes.

"Will you join me?" he asks.

"Join you?"

"Join me."

It's a cafe at 4 PM on a Sunday. I wonder to myself, "join me for what?"

"Join me for a drink." The man actually answers the question I haven't voiced. Still kneeling on the floor behind the sofa, at my shoulder, he gestures to the bar behind us. "I saw you reading and you looked fascinated. Would you tell me what you are so interested by?"

I gesture to my book and say "I'm sorry, but I have to finish this for class tomorrow. Thank you anyways."

A total lie. If I were in fact reading The Black Atlantic, as I should be, then it would be true. Instead I'm reading The Man of My Dreams, the newest book by Curtis Sittenfeld, and have been having a three-hour-long panic attack because it is essentially the novelized account of my entire romantic history. He smiles ruefully and pats me on the shoulder. "Next time." Five minutes later he's bought some other girl a very fruity looking drink in a martini glass.

If I had a fairy godmother, this is the point at which she would flit into Tryst and smack me around a little. "EJ," she would say, "is not this this reason you tried on, like, five different shirts before you came here? Do you not want exactly this to happen-- a cute, slightly dangerous stranger showing interest in you?" She'd gesture to my top, which admittedly is both new and makes my boobs look really excellent and my hair, which I actually did in preparation for the unknown but possible. She's be spot-on, that nonexistent fairy godmother of mine. Not that I'd ever give her the satisfaction of ever telling her so.

I'm not sure why I felt the need to lie to him.
I'm not sure why I didn't join him for a drink.
I'm not sure why I'm thinking about this so much.

I pass up opportunities like this more than I should admit. If the moment isn't right, if I don't feel a tug of something new, provacative, I just can't muster the energy. I'm too busy treading the fine line between idealistic and all dead inside.

It's Sunday and it's hot and I can't stop listening to my "room chill" playlist, a playlist that includes songs like "Evaporated" by Ben Folds and "Gorecki" by Lamb and "Nobody Knows Me Like My Baby" by Lyle effing Lovett.

And I'm caught between pity and envy for those people who have it all figured out.

and in the end, balls are kicked all around

I wish I could get into the World Cup. It seems like people are enjoying themselves. Not being a soccer fan this month is like staying home to clean your closet knowing everyone else is at a big party.

But the sudden interest is mystifying to me. With a few exceptions, I don't know a lot of soccer fans. Soccer is notoriously not a big sport in America. Every few months, a sports magazine will publish a thinkpiece trying to explain why Americans play it as kids but lose interest by adulthood.

Plus-- and this pains me, because I know how passionately many of you feel about this-- televised soccer matches are boring. There. I said it. It's a lot of running around and very little scoring action. I'm sorry, but I'm an American. I want lots of points and quick plays and spectacular saves and, if at all possible, some injuries. To be fair, I did enjoy watching soccer matches on TV when I was backpacking in Europe, but there were large crowds and lots of enthusastic swearing in unfamiliar languages. Scheisskerl, indeed! In DC, World Cup games tend to bring out lot of 20 and 30-something white guys who are often most giddy about having a reason to leave their cubicles for a 90 minute lunch.

What most mystifies me, however, is that with the World Cup in full swing people are suddenly full of passionate opinions regarding the goaltending abilities of Croatia and can recite the most obscure stats of the team from Trinidad and Tobago. I'm so confused here. Have you had this extensive knowledge of Norweigan sports teams all along, and it's merely been lying dormant so that you could focus on your fantasy baseball teams? Did you spend a few intense days reading espn.com, as one might frantically try to cram for the final in a class they skipped all semester? Or is there a secret Man Code that forbids you from saying out loud: "I actually don't care much about this big international sporting event. I find its matches dull and my nation's team will not play well. Let's watch something else."

But it seems like you guys are having fun with it, so that's nice. And I do like the idea of a matchup like the Portugal-Angola game on Sunday. Even though Portugal won, it's nice to know that a former colony had the chance to athletically humiliate the imperial forces that devastated their nation and people. It's a swell idea. And actually, now that I think about it, much easier for a history nerd like me to get behind than, say, a rivalry between Los Angeles and Miami:

"Our clubs are hotter!"

"Our women have bigger tits!"

"Yeah, well, one time our guy was somewhat abraisive to your guy on AND off the court while he was still YOUR guy!"

"You're going down, bitch!"

Plus, soccer has brought us the deliciousness that is Footballers' Wive$, and for that I will always be grateful to the sport. While soccer fans gather at Lucky Bar and Dukem for games this weekend, I will be marking the World Cup by watching Jason impregnate Jackie with what will ultimately become Kyle and Chardonnay's hermaphrodite baby, whilst Salvatore Biagi moves in with Ian and Donna only to steal Donna's heart, which was weakened by both by losing the custody fight for the child she gave up for adoption when she was thirteen and by Ian's threesome with the hookers that wound up on the front page of the Daily Mirror.

Hey, everyone has their own way of celebrating. The important thing is that we ultimately agree to celebrate.

dear liver, i'm sorry, love EJ

PHEW.

I need another weekend to recover from my weekend.

Really, it was the most highbrow of times and the most lowbrow of times. We've covered the highbrow in great detail, but let me note for the record that the lowbrow included Phillies Blunts, the Ellipse and some truly pimping fielding. Basically, I fear that I've used up all my Cool Points for the month of June. The next three weeks will no doubt be filled with showtunes, high-waisted pants and maybe some prunes, if I'm feeling particularly kicky.

What was that about wanting to not be so good all the time?

Mission accomplished.