Monday, February 26, 2007
Wasting my time
Not much to say right now. But I thought I'd share a couple of the youtube videos that I've been looking at lately (as part of my "creative process"). They are in a "Six Degrees" order, the first one led to the next one and so on. Except I only made it up to three videos. You think I have time to look at more than that?
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Rage Against the Federline
Another shirt for you folks. This one is for anyone who has ever wanted to take an umbrella to the window of their ex's SUV because he wouldn't let you see your kids, before you were spotted by a photographer who broke your umbrella with his skull.Show whose side you're on by sporting this lovely Che Guevera inspired emblem on your chest. If this doesn't symbolize the true angst of someone who been done wrong I don't know what does.
Find it in the buy some stuff section.
He writes at 500 wpm with that thing
Little girl: Mommy, how did that boy get such a big pen?Mother: Some people are just born that way, dear.
Come up with your own caption for this odd photo published on the Washington Post Metro section homepage and chuckle to yourself.
Labels: big, pen, post, school, washington
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Dear God...
As you probably know by now, I'm a huge fan of the Perry Bible Fellowship comics. Nicholas Gurewitch comes out with one new comic every week, each of them in a very unique style, each one taking a little bit of reading and re-reading to fully enjoy. Here's what he put together this week:
It's an unhealthy obsession for me. He often uses a comic character he created that's just a bland white figure with no nose or mouth, but he frequently emulates other artists' styles, like Edward Gorey, or in one case Nintendo's "Mike Tyson's Punch Out" game. He says it's like playing dress up.
But what I found most interesting was his creative process: "A strip concept could require several months of consideration and revision, or it could be hatched in a single moment. It could take 2 days to render, or it could be executed over the course of 2 months. It's a very difficult thing to measure, especially when you factor in power naps and research time."
I like to think that that legitimizes my frequent napping and 'research time' (aka procrastinating on the internet) not as time wasted, but time invested, bracing my body and mind for the ingenious idea that is soon to come washing over me like a tidal wave of creativity. Of course, in order for that to actually be true I'd have to act on one of those ingenious ideas...
It's an unhealthy obsession for me. He often uses a comic character he created that's just a bland white figure with no nose or mouth, but he frequently emulates other artists' styles, like Edward Gorey, or in one case Nintendo's "Mike Tyson's Punch Out" game. He says it's like playing dress up.But what I found most interesting was his creative process: "A strip concept could require several months of consideration and revision, or it could be hatched in a single moment. It could take 2 days to render, or it could be executed over the course of 2 months. It's a very difficult thing to measure, especially when you factor in power naps and research time."
I like to think that that legitimizes my frequent napping and 'research time' (aka procrastinating on the internet) not as time wasted, but time invested, bracing my body and mind for the ingenious idea that is soon to come washing over me like a tidal wave of creativity. Of course, in order for that to actually be true I'd have to act on one of those ingenious ideas...
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Capitol Cabbie Confirms: DC Has the WORST Drivers!!!
This week I was taking a cab and the cabbie confirmed for me that DC drivers were terrible!! I was like, "Bad weather we're having," and he replied, "Yeah. It makes the drivers even worse since they're not used to snow!" I pressed him on it and asked if it's true that DC drivers are the worst in the world. He said, "Oh yeah, they don't know what they're doing." I'll take that as testimony from an expert witness, since he was both a professional driver and also from abroad.Speaking of the snow, what kind of town is this that it shuts down because of a little precipitation? I lived in Michigan for half my life and the only times we were excused from school were when the ice literally froze around our legs so we couldn't walk. When I lived in NYC the town closed down only two times: the day a category 2 hurricane hit us, and the day after 9/11. And even then the pizza places, movie theaters, and bars stayed open. DC gets a few flaks and every place draws the blinds. You'd think a feared gunslinger had just pranced into town to exact revenge.
Snow here is like a mouse running through a kitchen. The city is the 1950s housewife, jumping up on a chair and batting at the mouse pointlessly with a broom. In this case the broom is the four or five salt trucks the city has at its disposal, dumping an Atlantic Ocean's worth of salt onto the road right outside my apartment; since the government doesn't know how to plow the snow, they figure salt will draw deer out from the woods into the street where, with the power of their tongues, they will slowly lick the snow away. Way to put those deer to work!
Next year the plan is to pour alcohol, cigarettes, and dignity onto the street so the city's 5,000+ homeless population can replace the deer.
Labels: bad drivers, cabbie, cars, DC, deer, homeless, housewife, snow
Friday, February 16, 2007
Killing a Cat - or - How I Spent My Valentine's Day
DC shut down early on Tuesday so I decided to use the time to my advantage to prepare for Valentine's Day. I bought a really nice candle at Carbon and then went next door to the florist to get some nice flowers. When I got home I hid them in my closet so Amy wouldn't find them. How nice would it be, I thought, for her to wake up in the morning to fresh (well, not so fresh, since they were in my closet) flowers, and think "How on earth did he go out to get these without waking me up?"So we woke up - I got her a cute card (it had this on it - we're morbid like that) - and I put the flowers on her desk next to the candle and card, a batch of some weird lookin' ones, a little grass lookin' stuff, and what I would soon find out were Asiatic Lilies.
Check this page for a picture of the cute flowers I got. And then scroll up to that headline. The big bold one with the three exclamation points after it. The one that says
Lilies can be deadly for your cat!!!
I didn't know that. At all. I'm sure it was mentioned to me at some point, but at this time my mind was occupied with the need to impress. It took Amy, however, about twelve seconds to recover from how impressed she was with me to asking, "Are these lilies?" I was like, "uh, yeah!" wanting her to think "wow, he actually knows what flowers he got me!"
Instead, I got "Can't lilies be deadly for your cat?" And a quick internet search confirmed that, yes, if our cats, Moesha and Anyang, had been playing around the lilies at any point, when they were in the closet, or when I had them beautifully arranged on Amy's desk, if one or both of them had ingested even the tiniest leaf from the lily, they could DIE of renal failure within three days.
So we did what any reasonable parents would do. We freaked out. Anyang had thrown up about half an hour before - could that be a sign he ate some? Moesha was behaving a bit listless - is she dying? Not knowing quite what to do, we threw them in a cab and dragged them to the animal clinic in Dupont Circle. Presenting the vet with our specious evidence of the cats' imminent mortality, she promptly stuck thermometers up both of them and then recommended that we give them each a $500 procedure that would involve inducing vomiting, feeding them charcoal, and then keeping them on IV drips for two days and nights.
Now, I've never been that attached to the cats. Moesha is okay, though she likes to put her butt in my face. Anyang likes to chew on my chin while I sleep, and eats like an aspiring sumo wrestler. But I didn't want to appear callous so I suppressed the instinct to say "Hell no!" and said, "well can we do a buffet style treatment?" The doctor said we could induce vomiting and do the charcoal treatment for less than a hundred dollars combined, and skip the IV. So I was like "Why not? "
Of course, after they were whisked away we were starting to ask why we bothered with it. "Why are we putting them through this torture?" Amy said. "It'll only make them more obnoxious."
"Better safe than sorry," I said.
"But we didn't even see them chew on the lily. We could be doing this for no reason."
"There's a reason," I thought to myself. "I like to put the fear of God into them every now and then. Just like I will with my real kids someday."
"What?"
"Did I just say that out loud?"
Well, everything turned out fine. But it is true that they are developing a healthy anxiety complex. Take a look at this photo of Anyang, who got mauled when we took them home to my parents house for the holidays:
Yes, that's a cone around his head. It's to keep him from ripping out the stitches on that shaved part of his side. The same thing happened to Moesha when I took her home last Christmas. She was smart enough not to get a cone.So that's how we spent Valentine's Day. Let this be a lesson to you. Don't try to impress your catowning girlfriend with Asiatic Lilies.
She wasn't perfect either though. Trying romantically to indulge my Matt Damon man-crush, she got me Ocean's 11, Ocean's 12, and The Departed - but she also got me The Talented Mr. Ripley and Syriana, which I already own. So I guess we're even for the whole cat thing.
Labels: Anyang, cat, dead, die, kill, lily, Moesha, poison, Valentine, vet
Saturday, February 10, 2007
DC has the Worst Drivers, Exhibit B
In my ongoing quest to document the horribleness that is driving in DC, I now present an Exhibit B. Kip and I were driving from my apt in Woodley Park down to Chinatown. We had just crossed the Thomas Circle underpass on Massachusetts Ave. (or the "Masshole" as I like to call it) and we started to look for parking. Yes, the big 100th anniversary Georgetown game was going on, so you wouldn't be surprised to find no open spots on the street. However, there were plenty of spots that would legally be considered "open". Unfortunately the drivers of Washington consider it more socially acceptable to take up two spots if they have the opportunity.Let me suggest something: when you try to park in front of a two pronged meter (this is what one looks like) make sure that the meter is adjacent to either one of your bumpers, and NOT to the center of your door. Not only will this make it easier for your guests to exit the car (by not being blocked in by the meter itself), it will also offer another driver a parking spot.
If you do not do this out of sheer courtesy, consider doing it to help boost city revenue. If the 18 jankety parked cars I saw today had allowed another car to park at the meter in front of or behind them, that would mean 36 extra dollars in meter fees. This could provide for 36 extra school lunches for poor kids, or one extra braille copy of "The Da Vinci Code" for our libraries so that the blind, too, could follow the adventures in demystifying the Catholic church.
Think about it, DC.
Labels: cars, da vinci code, DC, driving, Georgetown, jankety, masshole, meters, parking
Friday, February 2, 2007
Worst Drivers
I've traversed this great world of ours, and DC drivers have to be some of the worst drivers I've ever seen. Ever.Earlier this week I borrowed a car from my friend Sam to run an errand for work. It was a short trip, about 1.5 miles round trip, but I had a huge package I had to send. On the way back from FedEx I came to a driveway and there were two cars lined up to exit into the street. So, being the courteous driver I am, I paused and let the first driver through. I used the customary "wave" to let them know that I wasn't just tricking them and planning on plowing them down as soon as they exit.
After going to the trouble of stopping to let her through the driver, on her cell phone, didn't even stop to wave at me. So desiring that validation of having done something good for my fellow man I waved the second car into the intersection. No waving! And this guy wasn't even on his cell phone!
Okay, so that doesn't prove how terrible DC's drivers are. Here's another piece of evidence: last night it was about 12:30AM and I was leaving work late. The metro shuts down at midnight here for some asinine reason, so I figured I would start walking and grab a cab. No big deal, right? I live about three miles from school, in Woodley Park, so it shouldn't be too hard. The streets were fairly empty, but every five minutes or so a cab would pass by and I would run to the curb to try and hail them down. After the first five or six cabs passed me by I did all but run into the street and lay in front of them. But still, no one stopped! So I walked down Massachusetts, past the National Cathedral, through a dense swamp of residential area and Dick Cheney's house, and onto Connecticut Ave. Did I mention it was snowing? And three blocks from my apartment, no fewer than two cabs pulled over to see if I wanted a ride.
Stay tuned for more evidence of how terrible DC drivers are.
