Planet of the Bloodthirsty Chimps

Chimps have been observed making spears out of sticks and then using them to kill bushbabies.

Let me repeat that: CHIMPS! MAKING! SPEARS! KILLING! BUSHBABIES!

Wait, and let me explain in more detail. First, a female chimpanzee (apparently the females are more "innovative") finds a deep hollow of a tree of the type where bush babies--"small, monkeylike mammals"--sleep during the day. Then she finds a long, straight stick, and uses her hands and teeth to tear off the side branches. She peels off the bark, and makes one end into a point. Then, holding the spear in a "power grip," she jabs the spear into the hollow repeatedly "at a rate of about one or two jabs per second." After every few jabs she "sniffs or licks" the end of the stick to see if she's jabbing a bush baby or not. Then she smashes the hollow tree branch, exposing the dead (or possibly just horribly injured) bush baby, and eats it.

One of the researchers who observed this said that it reminded her of the shower scene in "Psycho."

So, OK, we're doomed. The chimpanzees are going to organize, surprise us with the ferocity of their spear-jabbing warmongering, and take over the world. We'll become the subjugated species, kept around as pets, zoo exhibits, or pack animals for the ruling ape class, and by the time Charleton Heston comes from the future to find the Statute of Liberty crumbling in the ocean, we will have become mute and forgotten the time before the chimps ruled.

Looking on the bright side, though, maybe that's not such a bad way to go, given the other options. A year ago I thought the world was going to end in a dramatic firey apocalyptic nightmare initiated by TomKat and its army of Scientologist alien minions. A few months ago I was thinking more along the lines of drowning or slow dehydration caused by global warming. Planet of the Apes is actually fairly fun and campy, and the loincloths are more flattering than you might suspect.

OK, I'm in! Chimps, if you need me, I'll be under my desk.

I curse thee, o poet blouse

I know from poet blouses. I owned one in 1993. It was teal, and made of very shiny silk, and I got it at the Limited. Because it was silk, it was my fancy shirt--I wore it to important events such as varsity basketball games. Many other girls in my high school had the same shirt (albeit in other colors, like hot pink, eggplant, or forest green), so sometimes when I wore it I would feel slightly disappointed because I was predictable, although also somewhat reassured, for the same reason.

But eventually I realized: the poet blouse is a blight on all human clothing. Something called a "poet blouse" should be romantic and lovely, but in fact it is large and baggy and made to be tucked in, creating the look of a muumuu crammed into bike shorts. The rest of the world must have come to a similar realization at around the same time, because the poet blouse disappeared from civilized life (or at least from malls).

Apparently everybody except Banana Republic, because this is currently featured on their website:


Apparently 14 years is long enough for us to forget what history has taught us. Based on this, I'm calling it now: by 2009 we will see the return of the kilt-with-long-wool-vest combo that I wore to my senior high school Homecoming.

Democratic Rule: Bennett Barrington III slums it at Potbelly's

I went to Potbelly's for lunch today. If you haven't been there, Potbelly's is this chain sandwich place that has the type of "quirkly" atmosphere that is signified by mass-produced kitschy decor and enforced by uniform corporate policies, like Chotchkie’s in Office Space. Instead of a 19-pieces-of-flair requirement, though, Potbelly's has musicians sitting on platforms above your heads singing Dylan songs. (See image at left.) The musicians are always slightly grungy-looking dudes, generally with white-person dreadlocks, which all seems in keeping with the natural order of things.

Today, though, the Potbelly's musician was an extremely preppy-looking guy in blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt, khaki pants, and--I kid you not--a braided brown leather belt.

Could it be that this guy was my first real live sighting of that rumored species, the umemployed former Republican staffer? I read about this phenomenon in this article, which contained this priceless quote from a 23-year-old about why he didn't want to take a job at the Department of Labor, even though it paid more than his erstwhile phone-answering gig on the Hill:

"It's simply that I don't want to have labor issues stamped on my resume."

Awesome. I may go again tomorrow.

Sickness on a plane

Hello, chickadees! I apologize for my long absence, and offer the following excuses: First, I was in Brazil for a friend's wedding, which was awesome and which I highly recommend.

Then, I had a stomach virus, which I do not recommend, especially the kind that starts at the beginning of an 11-hour flight back from Brazil. Try as I did to convince myself that being sick at that particular moment was good timing--after all, I wasn't missing my vacation time, and what else was I going to do on the plane?--the reality is that, as my friend Iron Seth recently noted, there are few worse places to get sick. In addition to the regular sickness unpleasantries experienced in a teeny, airless, non-stationary bathroom, you have the embarrassment/shame of walking by the same people multiple times an hour on the way to said bathroom; the anxiety about the possibility that there could be a line and you could thus did not make it to the bathroom at the necessary time, which anxiety is only partly assuaged by carrying around those little vomit baggies (especially given that the airlines seem to have shrunk the baggies along with the seats and the meals); the guilty suspicion that you may be making hundreds of other fellow air-travellers sick; and, during the night rendered sleepless due to your having ralphed your Lunesta, the acute malaise/misanthropy caused by watching the hideous Zach Braff vehicle The Last Kiss, whose point seemed to be either that all relationships are miserable or that awkward 30-something men are understandably prone to freaking out when their lovely, kind, funny girlfriends get pregnant, because men need their freedom, dude, and that the best cure for this poignant situation is a fling with a 20-year-old stereotype of perky, innocent femininity.

But I'm all better now! Thanks for asking. :)

America: Freaks to Freakazoids

I was on a plane the other day and these two guys across the aisle from me started talking to the guy behind them about how the Illuminati and the world bankers want to enslave us all, which you can tell because currency is not backed by gold anymore. Then they started telling the flight attendant about how those in the know don't pay income taxes, and this is legally fine because there isn't actually any law requiring individuals to pay taxes.

The only explanation for what happened next is that I lived in D.C. for too long and have become one of those annoying wide-eyed East Coasters who can't really believe that there really, really crazy right-wingers out there, and vaguely believes that such people will see the error of their ways if presented with rational arguments. What happened is, I started talking to them. I told them that they could do whatever they wanted themselves, but it's really irresponsible of them to go around telling innocent strangers that they don't have to pay taxes, since people go to jail for tax evasion.

Oh good God. I spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out whether it would be easier to jump out the window or hide under the little toy airplane seat, as these two guys tripped over themselves to tell me how the 16th amendment, which gives Congress the power to collect taxes, isn't really part of the Constitution because it wasn't ratified by the right number of states, and there are laws that say they require the payment of income taxes but they aren't really laws, or they only apply to corporations and not individual income, and did I know anything about horses? because they are farriers, which means they put horseshoes on horses. In fact, what they're doing now is going to Cincinnati for a farriers' conference, which is part practical applications and part theory and business. Also, I should really see a documentary called America: Freedom to Fascism, which is about the history of the Federal Reserve and how it's a big plot by corporate interests and lawyers to control the world, and they'd be happy to write it down for me, in case I might not remember the title.

I eventually told them I didn't really want to talk about politics and anyway, I had work to do, but I hoped they enjoyed their farriers' conference. Was this my inner polite Midwesterner taking over, or was it just a rational instinct for self-preservation? I don't know, but I came away with a strong impulse to spend some quality time with TurboTax.

Meet my fella

As previously mentioned, I'm happy to be married, but I think I may start boycotting the word "husband." At first I thought I just wasn't used to it yet, but the other day I realized that the real issue is that when you use it, you sound like a Republican "values" voter, or an unreasonably demanding dissatisfied customer in a restaurant. (Which, if you drew a Venn diagram of those two groups, the overlap would be quite significant.)

I had a revelation about this recently because I purposefully evoked the Husband connotation in an angry letter to Verizon demanding that they give me money back. I was totally justified in asking (Verizon DSL is the Iraq War of the internet-service world--they got you into it by telling huge lies about how fast and easy it will be, and once you're in there it doesn't work at all, and it takes years and billions of dollars to extricate yourself), but in order to strengthen my position, I dropped several mentions of how inconvenienced "my husband and I" had been by their crappy service.

Was that really relevant to the point of the letter? No, but it carried the implication that I had really important Married People business to be attending to, and thus that my time was not to be trifled with like that of some slutty, tragic, unlovable single girl who probably doesn't own property or vote, and has nothing better to do with her evenings than eat ice cream and chug vodka while waiting for 15 minutes for Television Without Pity to load. I was portraying myself as a self-righteous suburbanite who expects to be catered to by customer service representatives just as she is by politicians.

Ick. So now I need to find a new title for Mr. T&A. Boyfriend, partner, and spouse are all out--inaccurate, confusing, and clinical, respectively--so for now I think I'm gonna go for "Fella," or, you know, "Mr. T&A." Let me know if you have any better suggestions.

Pick a dynasty!

Some might say it's scary that Hilary Clinton might be the next president, because then the U.S. will have been run by one or the other of a set of dueling dynasties for over 20 years.

Yeah, it's true that dynastic leadership is fundamentally incompatible with democracy, and all. BUT. If Clinton doesn't win, we will not have dueling dynasties; we will have only one. That would be depressing as a comment on our present choices, but more importantly it would seal the fate of humanity for generations. This election is not just about the next 4 or 8 years, it's about who you would rather have as President in 2028: George P. "Yeah, There's a Third One; You May Remember Me For Such Things as Nearly Getting Arrested for Breaking Into My Ex-Girlfriend's House" Bush, or Chelsea "I Endured Rush Limbaugh Calling Me a Dog When I Was 13 And Yet I Grew Up To Be a Smart and Classy Woman" Clinton? You decide, America.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

I didn't really make any New Year's resolutions. OK, I made them, but they're already broken, so let's not speak of that again.

But today I'm feeling inspired (or shamed, or something) by Martin Luther King, Jr. day, so I'm making one and putting it on the internets so as to hold myself to it: This year I will volunteer, both for political causes and local needs. That's it! Shouldn't be so hard, right? I am not saying I'll stop talking the cynical talk, but that doesn't mean I have to walk the apathetic walk. That was not a good slogan, but it's what I mean.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Follow-up haiku for car

Old Geo lives still
With nice new struts and hoses
Cheaper than ZipCar

Haiku to my car in the shop

'95 Geo
Is repair cost-effective?
Or is your time up?

WP claims Bush twins dress like crap

Reliable Source, the Washington Post's gossip column (yes! such a thing does exist) has this scoop on the Bush twins' recent visit to DC:

[B]oth twins [were] at Town Hall on Saturday night with a well-heeled entourage-- crushed-velvet sport coats for the men, trendy leggings, silk dresses and platform heels for the women.

Brain . . hurts . . . outfits . . . do . . . not . . . compute. Just try it: visualize a group of people whose attire involves crushed-velvet sport coats--COATS, plural!--, "trendy" leggings, silk dresses, AND platform heels all at the same time. Your brain is turning into neon-pink goo and dripping out your ears onto your computer, causing it to let off confused, fashion-challenged sparks, no?

The only image I am able to muster is Prince hanging out with early Stevie Nicks and some early-90s high schooler whose Friday Night Outfit involves shiny silk items from the Limited and huge, plasticky platform Mary Janes from Payless, combining to create a 90210-wannabe vibe:













(As it turns out, Prince and Stevie Nicks hung out in 1983, until, in Stevie's recounting, they were torn apart by "all the drugs," but as far as Google knows, neither of them ever appeared on 90210, and they definitely didn't come to my high school.)

One must assume that Jenna and Barbara did not, in fact, go out looking like the video for a Purple Rain/Rumours/Peach Pit mash-up. Are the Reliable Source writers just reporting the news as they hear it from people who hang out in obscure neighborhood bars in Glover Park (where's Glover Park?) and write to the WP when they see famous-for-DC people (instead of Wonkette, like a normal person)? Or, as I would prefer to think, are they actively frakking with us and seeing if anybody notices? If so, ladies, well played, but consider yourselves called out.

End times and Commies

Yesterday--January 6--it was in the mid-70s in D.C., so Mr. T&A and I went for a bike ride around the mall. Here is a picture we took of a cherry tree at the Tidal Basin:

Needless to say, cherry blossoms should not be blooming in January. It's obvious that Al Gore was totally right and the end is nigh, but it was all very lovely.

Later in our excursion, we saw the following poster in front of the National Gallery of Art:

It says "Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych." Very tricky use of words that nobody knows, but I see through the ruse: clearly the Netherlandish Diptych is the international world leader who will appear to be the world's savior but will then institute the one world government that will clear the way for Satan's rule. However, as eschatological signs go, it was not unpleasant (certainly better than an earthquake); I might even go see the exhibit.

Since it was shaping up to be an apocryphal kind of day, and I suspected that we should prepare ourselves for the future, less enjoyable aspects of the apocalypse, we decided to go see Children of Men last night. Alas, when we got to Gallery Place, both parking lots were full, and street parking was nowhere to be found. I was crestfallen, but realized that it was kind of poetic justice: here we were, driving to see a movie to educate ourselves about how the earth will destroy itself. Chastened, we came home and watched Talladega Nights, which is not nearly as good as most Will Ferrell movies. (Another sign, perhaps?)

In order to bolster our spirits, we made ourselves festive beverages: White Russians, in a liquid homage to The Big Lebowski. However, because of my lactose intolerance we have switched to soy milk, so it didn't really seem right to call them White Russians. What do you call a soy-milk drinking hippie who wishes he were a Russian? A Commie*! We've got ourselves a delicious new signature drink.

So, altogether, I am feeling pretty good about the beginning of the end. Welcome, 2007!

*An after-the-fact Google revealed that others have already named the White Russian made with soy milk a "White Vegan," but I would rather accept the mark of the beast and condemn myself to an eternity of hellfire than throw in my lot with vegans, so I am going to make like an oil executive at a climate change conference and willfully ignore this new information.

Who's going to be the primary source of archaic assumptions?

I read the NYT article "Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying" to reassure myself that it was OK that Mr. T&A and I got hitched after only making it about 1/3 of the way through our "1001 Questions to Answer Before You Get Married" book. The article only has 15 questions, which is a much more reasonable number than 1001, for which I give them props.

However, the questions drove me absolutely batshit, and have been bugging me for weeks now because of the article's seemingly permanent spot on the list of Most Emailed Articles, which is normally a nice source of work-avoidance for me. Check out #1:

Have we discussed whether or not to have children, and if the answer is yes, who is going to be the primary care giver?

You may say I'm a dreamer, but isn't it possible for two people to share caregiving responsibilities? Even if not, why do you have to decide years in advance who the main baby-raiser is going to be? Wouldn't it be reasonable to decide that, for instance, the person for whom it makes the most sense to take time off from work given their job situation at the time the aforementioned children arrive will do it?

And then we have # 3:

Have we discussed our expectations for how the household will be maintained, and are we in agreement on who will manage the chores?

"Manage the chores"? Unless they mean "who will berate the gardener if he trims the shrubbery in a less than symmetrical fashion," I can only think this means "Who will end up doing the huge majority of the chores and will end up thanking the other partner for 'helping' if he sometimes does the dishes?"

In the interest of winnowing the number of questions yet farther, I propose they could replace these two with the following:

Woman, have you discarded your starry-eyed college-feminist visions of an equal partnership and accepted your inescapable fate as the primary caregiver and chore-doer?

And, end rant. Tune in next week when I explain why the Pussycat Dolls are not good role models for little girls.

2006 Best and Worst!

I like year-end lists, so here's mine.

Worst

Worst actress about whose life direction to care: Katie Holmes. I held out hope there for longer than was even vaguely reasonable, grasping at the breakup rumors and conspiracy theories like so many promises to train the Iraqi police, but it was all in vain.

Worst Media Trend: YouTube. I realize I'm in a tiny, cave-dwelling minority here, but when I'm reading a blog entry discussing how, say, Clay Aiken put his hand over Kelly Ripa's mouth and then Rosie O'Donnell called Kelly homophobic, I don't wanna have to watch a dozen (OK, one) YouTube videos to see what happened. Those things are MINUTES long! Since when does the MTV generation attention span accommodate that? I want SCREEN CLIPS, people! (Plus, the sound tends to blow one's cover at work.)

Worst fashion trend: Obvs, no underpants. Britney, whatev, but Linds, you're breaking my heart.

Worst speech trend: Unnecessary shortening of words. This one is even more pernicious than the vortex that was "izzle," because it actually saves time and thus could accidentally become perm. Anent.

Worst Presidential Candidate Launch: It pains me to say this, being from Iowa and all, but Governor Vilsack's appearance on The Daily Show. His takeaway line: We're creating a "culture of dependency" in Iraq. Are we giving them excessively generous welfare benefits? And shouldn't you be criticizing, oh, say, the President whose deeply unpopular policies you are presumably running against rather than the victims of his geopolitical folly?

Worst switcheroo in Blogland: Above the Law replaces Underneath Their Robes. Probably AtL is more lucrative and David Lat doesn't have time to do both, but wahhhhh. Where UtR was so snarky and bitchy that I was able to nearly ignore its raging Federalist Society undertones, Above the Law has a fairly boring, lawyery voice and is all about how big the bonuses are going to be at various big firms. Bring back Article III Groupie!

Worst movie: X-Men 3. OK, possibly not the absolute worst--I didn't see Lady in the Water--but the most disappointing. It didn't even know what its overarching metaphor was: is the cure for mutation the Holocaust, abortion, or the ex-gay movement? Because, nooooot the same things. Also, SPOILER ALERT the ending is a blatant rip-off of the Buffy-has-to-kill-Angel-even-though-she-loves-him-in-order-to-save-the-world thing, except not touching and with a thick overlay of misogyny.



Best

Best Top 10 Lists of 2006: Best Week Ever's lists o' Movie Cliches, Reasons to Hate Singing and Dancing, and, most of all, Celebrity Body Parts. 100% awesome.
Best movie: The Departed. This surprises me, because Cops, Gangsters, Boston, and Father Issues are not normally my movie topics of choice, but it approached The Godfather (Part 1) levels of greatness. I haven't been as impressed with Leonardo DiCaprio since he was a child, and Matt Damon convinced me he's really an actor. Also, Martin Sheen just broke my heart. Also, Marky Mark. Mmmmmm.

Best sign for the future of mankind: The election. :) :) :) :)

Best new (to me) blog: ApartmentTherapy. It inspires me to want to paint! wallpaper! un-clutter! entertain! Not to say that I have actually done any of those things, but hope springs eternal, and looks very attractive in the meantime.

Now I will cop a tactic from Scrubs, and swerve disjointedly into Very Sincere Mode. Cue the strings.

Best personal development: Getting married! Awwww. Not that I've become a big booster for heterosexual hegemony! But it was just unparalleledly great to have so many of our friends and family all in the same place being happy for us. So, thanks, guys. :) Also, married life is pretty much the same as living in sin life, which is as I had hoped, EXCEPT! It seems to have turned our BoyKitty into . . . a lapcat! At first when Mr. T&A advanced the hypothesis that BoyKitty felt more secure knowing he was in a stable home, I told him he was batshit crazy. But. The cat who previously spent most of his time skulking, sneaking, lurking, and glowering has, since October, become an actual cuddler. Of course I know that correlation is not the same as causation, thank you very much. But. He sits in your lap! Awwwww.

Reminder: Bill Frist Kills Kittens

As former Senate Majority Leader Frist puts Congress back on the shelf, looks around to see if anybody noticed what he did to it, and slowly backs away, I think it's important that we take the time to remember who Bill Frist was before he became a heart surgeon and presidential hopeful.

A kitten murderer! I am not exaggerating in any fashion. As you can read in his 1989 book Transplant (discussed in this Wikpedia entry, and here, and here), when he was in medical school Frist did research using cats. OK, yuck, but that's what scientists do, and I can get behind science. However, when Frist ran out of his supply of lab cats, he visited multiple animal shelters near Boston, told them he wanted to adopt cats as pets, and then killed the cats as part of his experiments.

Again: he told the animal shelter he was going to adopt the cats as pets, and then took them to his lab and cut their hearts out. I've adopted a cat from an animal shelter, and it's a fairly involved process; you have to fill out a bunch of forms, provide proof that your landlord has given you permission to have the cat, promise that you're going to get it fixed when it's old enough, and discuss how much you're going to feed it and what kind of cat litter you're going to use. It's not just a Madonna-goes-to-Africa drive-by adoption situation. Frist did this multiple times.

He later apologized for his little Jack the Ripper phase, saying he'd been "a little crazy." Which is really nice, and all. In closing, I leave you with this thought:

Please be OK, Sen. Johnson, but if not . . .

These guys said it best: South Dakota Governor Rounds, don't be a dick.

Derek Jeter, Man of Mystery

I understand baseball about as much as I understand gay Republicans, but usually I can spot me a hottie. However, the supposed allure of Derek Jeter alludes me. First of all, what I do know about sports is what my mama taught me: the Yankees are evil. (Please don't kill me, Amy Blair.) Also, and I realize the contradiction here, but I often confuse Jeter with that supposedly gay guy from the Mets with the terrible facial hair.

But apparently a number of people disagree with my assessment. Word on the street is Jeter's dating Jessica Biel, who according to some is the Sexiest Woman Alive. (I don't think I'd go that far, but I'd give her Top Two Hottest Jessicas, and Hottest Former Seventh Heaven cast member, for sure.)


Jessica isn't Derek's first brush with massive hotness, either. According to this, he's also dated Mariah "Crazy But Hot" Carey, Lara "Miss Universe, Need I Say More" Dutta, Jordanna "C-List, But Yale-Educated" Brewster, Vanessa "My Appeal Is Also Somewhat Mysterious" Minnillo, Jessica "Yeooooowww" Alba, and Scarlett "Even Younger And Bigger-Lipped Than You Might Think" Johansson.

My explanation: groupthink. Jeter is the Bay of Pigs and the WMDs in Iraq all rolled up in one pudgy, oval-headed package, and these women are a bunch of scared foreign policy advisors working with doctored intelligence. Somebody get an outside expert in here, stat!

DC's Seamy Underbelly and My Close Encounter Therewith

Wonkette has been running an awesome series Last Week's Shots about this "closed social networking site" called Late Night Shots. Late Night Shots is a kind of exclusive MySpace for the boat-shoes-wearing, Confederate-bikini-flashing, foreigner-hating crowd. It holds happy hours at establishments like Smith's Point, in Georgetown (which you may remember as the site of some of Jenna Bush's underage drinking antics) and also hosts a message board on which members discuss such matters as . . . well, I really couldn't do it justice. Courtesy of LNS via Wonkette:

Lying about Greek affiliationPosted By: very concerned on 10-19-2006 11:20 At age 29 if you’re dating a chick, how big of a problem is it if you’re digging through her desk and you find out that she was lying about what sorority she was in. This happened to a friend of mine.

RE: change of pacePosted By: Anti on 10-20-2006 2:38 pm If I have said it once I have said it 1000 times. DO NOT EVER, EVER even go near Adams Morgan. That place is Ghetto.

RE: change of pacePosted By: Boat Shoes on 10-20-2006 2:49 pm Everytime I’m in Adams Morgan, I take on at least 3-4 Ethiopans. Skinny little bastards are feisty.

RE: what are acceptable handouts from parentsPosted By: taxman on 10-25-2006 6:23 pmSomeone should receive absolutely no more than 30 k/yr and car payments from parents. If you’re above that, you really have problems. Girls may be entitled to a bit more than that with shopping and everything, but I feel like 30k is pretty reasonable.

Most Diverse Thanksgiving EverPosted By: PBP on 11-23-2006 10:07 pm Report as shockingly offensive Wow, that is all I have to say. This Thanksgiving goes down in the history books as the most diverse-liberal one ever. Let me describe the dinner table: First there was there was the Haitian ex-con and his white girlfriend from California, a gay Republican from Alabama, a Paki from GA, a crazy lib from MS and an idealistic Jew teacher/grad student from CO…lets just say that my flowing locks and pink Lacoste did not fit in. In between bizarre conversations about how much Bush sucks and bong hits, I learned more about the fucked up idealogy of left wing libs. It was rather amusing, but it being Thanksgiving and all, I was tolerant and had a good time. Luckily the copious amounts of wine I consumed made up for the twilight zone atmosphere. Whoever thought that a Haitian turkey could be so damn good…

In DC's defense, these people live in an entirely different city than I do. (Literally, they almost certainly live in Virginia.) I don't work with them, I don't hang out with them, I don't frequent the same restaurants, bars, or stores as they do, they don't ride my bus (they don't ride the bus at all, natch). Sometimes I probably see them on the street on my way to work, but what with the homogeneity of business casual clothing, one can never be sure.

But . . . this world is not entirely unfamiliar to me. Many moons ago, last century in fact, I moved to DC after college, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, knowing basically no-one, and without the ability to handle being alone. This unfortunate characteristic led to my ill-advised decision to agree to look for an apartment with a girl I had never met; let's call her Cassie. Cassie and I ended up living in Georgetown, which is basically an outdoor mall with historic architecture, no public transportation, and a history of racial exclusion. I later realized this was because Cassie did not like neighborhoods which contained non-white people (she called them "Browntown.")

As I said, I knew very few people in DC, and in my loneliness was prone to take desperate measures to socialize with other human beings. Thus, on several occasions I went out with Cassie and her friend Crystal, whom Cassie had met because they had been in the same sorority. Crystal was an interesting character, if you viewed her as a kind of performance-art piece; she had a penchant for telling elaborate lies about herself (she was a gymnast, a spy, an escaped mental patient, etc.) and for removing her top in public. She later became a Redskins cheerleader.

Going Out with these people resembled normal going out in exactly the same way that The Real World: Season 3759 resembles the real world. Rather than sitting down, ordering a drink, and talking to the people with whom you had come to the bar, as sane persons would, in this post-apocalyptic version of Going Out the girls would stand near the bar alone, coerce a strange man to buy them drinks, listen to said stranger talk about his Job On The Hill, which might more accurately be described as an unpaid stint as a receptionist for the junior Congressman from Idaho, and then ditch the stranger, generally after giving him an inaccurate version of their phone number.

My pronouns are vague because even now it is difficult for me to believe that this was my life for maybe two months. Apart from the amusement of some of Crystal's more fanciful stories and top-removal escapades, the only redeeming thing about this portion of my life is the eternal gratitude I experience when I read Last Week's Shots and thank the fates for sparing me from it. So, a late Thanksgiving shout-out to you, Wonkette, for reminding me of my good fortune.

George Will's "Journalism" is worse than my "cooking"

George Will had a column today about how Jim Webb is an asshole who's disrespectful to the President. His main evidence is this account of an encounter between Webb and Bush:

When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy."

So, Webb does sound a little curt. But here's how the original Post article, which Will cited as his source, described the encounter:

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq. "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme. "That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?" "That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly.

"That's not what I asked you"! Snap, Mr. President! You tell that man with a son whose life is put in danger every day by your policy decisions how he's allowed to feel about about it!

Kind of embarassing for George Will, though, that the actual facts screw up the point he was trying to make. You'd hope that after this snafu, the Washington Post will start to supply its writers with computers on which the cut-and-paste functions work, so they wouldn't be forced to resort to paraphrasing earlier news stories to themselves via smoke signals.

TomKat gets married--in 1987

What in God's name is going on with Katie Holmes here? The very short spiky bangs, the odd clumps of hair by the ear, and the somewhat square shape of her head all point to one thing: a bridal mullet, which is either insanely '80s or (one hopes) never actually existed in the world before today.

And the dress! The eye is so distracted by the irregular tufts of tulle jutting out from her shoulder area that you might at first not notice the off-the-shoulder-dress-PLUS-bra-strap combination that has not even been manufactured since before the invention of cellular telephones.

(For instance, the stunner to the left will set you back $44.95 if you Buy It Now!, because it's vintage, you see.)

The only explanation, I think, is that an actual friend of Katie's talked her into this getup in a desperate attempt to jolt her into realizing that she's lost her mind. The friend thought that maybe, just maybe, Katie would look in the mirror and think, "Who is that girl with hair like a wrestler wearing a costume from a Molly Ringwald movie preparing to marry an alien disguised as an over-the-hill movie star in a Scientology ceremony ending with a three-minute kiss? Omigod, it's ME!! NOOOO!"

Well, apparently it didn't work, but was a valiant effort, Anonymous Friend of Katie's. If someday Katie thanks you for it, I think that will make the opening of the Pandora's Box of Bridal Mullets worth it for us all.

New stylist, same electorate

I don't want to call myself The Biggest Genius Since Einstein, or anything, but may I humbly point out that I totally, 100% called it: Britney's filing for divorce was a sign that the electorate was going to kick the bums to the curb. Go BritneyMerica!

Now that Britney is officially the oracle of our national consciousness, though, I must admit that I am having a little trouble sleeping at night. For one thing, we can tell ourselves 'til we're blue in the face that Britney's a legal genius for filing for divorce before she owed K.Fed a year's worth of alimony at "Britney's touring" rates rather than "Britney's reproducing, eating Cheetos, and walking into public restrooms without shoes on" levels. But if she's so insightful, why did she marry her slack-jawed backup dancer to begin with? And what's to stop her from doing it again? The possibilities are non-encouraging:

1. She finds white-boy cornrows dreamy.
2. She's a traditional girl who believes in "staying the course" despite all evidence that the enterprise is doomed, at least for a couple of years.
3. She thought Iraq had something to do with September 11.

And then there are the ta-tas. The soon-to-be-former Mrs. Federline hired a stylist to give her an "I'm back" makeover, to which I say, smart move, doll . . . but then why, in every public appearance she's made since her big announcement, do her ladyparts appear to be engaged in a desperate, primal struggle to escape from her clothing, from one another, from this gravitational plane? To wit:


















Britney's breasts clearly have something to say about our nation. "You may think your electoral system is bouncing along nicely now, nurturing other fledgling democracies and all," they say, "but if you don't address the structural inequalities here, your hopeful-young-nation bubble is gonna start to deflate, and you're going to be left with a sagging, wrinkled husk of a republic."

Britney has convinced me: in 2008 I won't be hiding under the couch with a bottle of wine when the election results come in. I'll be out in some actual state, volunteering for a get-out-the-vote drive: The support bra for the electoral college!

As Britney does, so does the nation?

After many long years Britney Spears is finally throwing her moronic, self-congratulatory, incompetent bum of a husband out. Surely voters will be as smart as Britney and do the same on a national scale?

Ahh, I recall when we used to call it "it"

Massage--is that what the kids are calling it these days?

An Open Letter to Anna Nicole

Dear Anna Nicole Smith,

I will admit that our relationship began by accident. I was very excited when I was invited to join a Fafarazzi Celebrity Fantasy League, and I will admit I immediately began entertaining grandiose visions of a "Shock and Awe" type victory.

But as Donald Rumseld would tell you if he weren't such a dickhead, sometimes pride prevents you from planning carefully enough. My fatal misstep was failng to fully grasp the "ranking" element of the "draft pick" system. Thus I squandered my first-round pick on you, rather than a higher-point-scoring celebrity like Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton.

But as disappointed as I was, you have really stepped up to the plate, undergoing tragedy after bizarre tragedy in order to score points for me. Of course, that hasn't stopped me from being dead last in my league. (As inspiring as your efforts were, they couldn't rally the rest of my bedraggled team--Brandon Davis, Mary-Kate Olsen, Nick Carter, and it just gets worse from there--to do anything more exciting than your standard getting-caught-peeing-on-someone's lawn kind of thing, and that only gets you one point.

Plus, how could you have forseen the heights to which other celebrities would climb in the last few weeks? How were you to know that Nicole Richie would commit herself to an undisclosed "it's sure not for an eating disorder though" treatment clinic, collapse at a bar, and discharge herself from treatment all in a single weekend? Or that Madonna would catapault herself back to her circa 1989 banned-from-MTV levels of fame via constant blathering about her sketchy poor man's Angelina-type adoption? Or, God save us all, that Kevin Federline would be all over the gossip blogs like flies on the carcas of our culture's self-regard?

But anyway, Anna Nicole, yesterday you really outdid yourself. You were hospitalized for pneumonia on the very same day that one of your possible baby daddies accused you of dyeing your infant's hair in order to disguise its paternity. Shakespearian, my dear.

And so I know you must have been as crushed as I was when Fafarazzi failed to give you ANY POINTS AT ALL for that ingenious double-whammy. They're all, You can have one point for something Patrick Dempsey's ex-wife said about him, but baby-hair-dyeing . . . meh?

Anyway, ANS, I just wanted to let you know that it's not the points that matter to me anymore. I know that you've given me your all, and there's nothing more I could ask of you. (You, on the other hand, Tori Spelling--WHERE is the drama?) Please just know that I appreciate your efforts. Now go get some rest.

Love,

T&A Lady

Out of the mouths of K Feds

You might have read about Kevin Federline's proclamations to Entertainment Weekly that he's the most underrated artist in his field, and that he used to be embarassed to buy tampons, but now that's "all past tense," and "once you make it through that, you're good."

Miraculously, those actually aren't the most earth-shattering thing Mr. Britney says in the interview (which isn't actually an interview, it's a "pop culture personality test" consisting of 11 questions, all along the lines of "The A-Team member I most relate to is ____," and none of which have wrong answers . . . or so it seemed until Kevin answered them.)

Here is the highlight of K Fed's quiz:

Q: Diaper genie or diaper champ?

A: I don't know which one we have. All
it says is genie on top.

Words fail.

Armaweddin

My wedding anxiety dreams, previously confined to your standard I-forgot-to-get-my-hair-done-and-the-caterer-didn't-show-up kind of thing, this week took a turn for the freaky. I dreamed that North Korea blew up a big nuclear bomb, and everybody in the world either died or was going to die imminently. Mr. T&A and I did not die right away, so we decided to go ahead with the wedding, since if the world is ending you might as well have a party. However, what with most people in the world being dead, very few people came to the wedding (like, 5 or so) and everyone who was there looked like a ghoul from the Thriller video--tattered clothing, skin falling off in chunks, that kind of thing--and the whole thing was very depressing.

If you're coming to our wedding, don't say I didn't warn you.

All the King's Men: A Redo

I'm a little late on this now, since the movie version of All the King's Men has been out for weeks, but as a wise man once said, "Justice delayed is justice that gets there a little bit later."

So, All the King's Men, which is a fictionalization of the reign of Huey Long, the nearly dictatorial 1930s Governor of Louisiana, is one of my favorite books. This is perhaps weird, since its kind of florrid, over-the-top Gothic prose and college-sophomore philosophizing is kind of contrary to my previously discussed tendency to get embarassed by sincerity, but I read it at an impressionable age, so as far as I'm concerned it will always be the bee's knees.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I learned that the casting director for the new movie version had done her job by drunkenly throwing darts at a list of Prestige British Actors, and, when a couple of reasonable choices slipped in there, cheekily switching them to the wrong role. In case you have not re-read the book dozens of times since high school, I provide you with the following re-casting in order that you should re-imagine it as it should have been:

Jack Burden: Average-looking, aristocratic, arguably alcoholic newspaperman who digs up dirt on political enemies for Governor Stark, and meditates gothically on history and his unrequited love for Anne Stanton. Theirs: Jude Law. Could not be more wrong for this part if he were a tall, cold, blond British man . . oh wait. Redo: Mark Ruffolo

Adam Stanton: Tall, cold, blond, driven, accomplished surgeon with a "mouth like a clean knife wound"; childhood friend of Jack, brother of Anne. Theirs: Mark Ruffolo. WTF! Redo: Jude Law.

Anne Stanton: Beautiful, reserved, tragic aristocratic daughter of a former Governor, nearing spinsterhood, doomed never to find love because of epic failed childhood love for Jack--but wait, what's going on between her and Willie? Theirs: Kate Winslet. Too vivacious and young, not to mention British. Redo: Patricia Clarkson

Sadie Burke: Smart, tough, pockmarked, crazy-haired, jealous right hand woman to Governor Stark, in more ways than one. Theirs: Patricia "Gorgeous" Clarkson. Redo: Amy Sedaris.

Judge Irwin: Tall, handsome, good-postured, aristocratic, honorable--or is he?--judge, longtime friend of former Governor Stanton, sometime political supporter of Governor Stark, and father figure to Jack. Theirs: Anthony Hopkins. Can I get you a side of flabby with your order of slouch? Redo: Paul Newman

And finally . . .

Willie Stark: The hick, populist, charismatic, corrupt, Louisiana governor based on Huey Long. Theirs: Sean Penn. Good actor and all, but you wouldn't call him charming or charismatic, and his arms are short like a band nerd's. Redo: Bill Clinton. Mmmmmm.

When somebody remakes this again using my casting, I am going to totally demand a free ticket.

Project Foley

It seemed that Keith, the first-ever designer to get kicked off Project Runway for breaking the rules, got a crash course in crisis management before appearing on the reunion special last night. Unfortunately for him, he got it from the Republican leadership of Congress circa Mark Foley.

Keith got busted for having pattern books, which are banned by the rules of the show, or at least they're banned according to everybody but Keith. Keith was not about to concede this point. "I don't remember reading any rules against having design books"--it was Keith's version of the "Someone may have mentioned something about some dirty emails, but I averted my eyes when they showed them to me, so I don't really know what they said." I, will admit to also having tried this oldie but goodie: "Dear Police Department, Please find me innocent of this parking ticket, as I did not look at the signs by the side of the road before I parked." It might work for big-scale stuff like a failed war, but for mundane stuff kiddie-toucher-cover-ups, low-level cheaters, and illegal parkers, it just doesn't fly.

T&A Goes Sherlock

So, as you know, Mr. T&A and I got burgled the other week. While my initial thankfulness for my good fortune at having lost only stuff fairly quickly gave way to a low-level murderous rage at somebody for taking my stuff, I had ranked the possibility of the burglars getting caught up there with the chance that Suri Cruise would grow up to be well-adjusted.

Thus, at first I at first didn't notice the strange goings-on with my Netflix account. First, September 25, Netflix sent me an email saying I had returned a personal DVD. Huh, I vaguely thought, I wonder what that was? Then about a week later I noticed that we had 4 Netflixes, when we only pay for 3.

It wasn't until I got back the supposed personal DVD that I began to recognize the Netflix oddities as Possible Clues. It was a white DVD with "Debbie's Bridal Pics" written on it in purple marker, containing, what do you know, Debbie's bridal pictures.* It was not mine.

Now, I am getting married soon,** and I have spent my fair number of months being obsessed with wedding-related message boards. Thus, I know from hilariously freaky wedding pictures, and I can say with authority that Debbie's rank up there. The engagement shots in particular are exemplars of the genre: all 2 dozen of them show Mr. Debbie leaning sulkily against a weathered wall or other rugged object while while Debbie sort of humps his left leg, sticking out her left butt cheek for inspection, splaying her left hand avec ring on his chest, and turning her head around to growl at the camera in profile. We also got through most of the semi-pornographic "getting ready" shots of Debbie in her skivvies before we started to feel slightly dirty and switched to VH1.

Then, a few days later, I updated my Netflix cue and noticed that Netflix thought I had returned Gilmore Girls, Season 2, Disc 4, on September 25. In fact, this DVD was stolen in the burglary (along with the DVD player containing it), and while we had gotten a replacement copy from Netflix, we had not yet returned it.

Finally the elements started to come together. Someone returned our stolen DVD and Debbie's Bridal pics right at the same time! But, dear readers, this is where I get confused. Presumably it was the burglars, because how else would they get our Gilmore Girls? But why would they steal one of our return sleeves or envelopes? (I don't remember if any were missing.) Why would they bother to return the DVDs? Why did they return Debbie's wedding pics? Did Debbie and Mr. Debbie also get burlged, or (as I prefer to think) are Debbie and Mr. Debbie the burglars?

We ran these theories by the police, but they did not seem particularly enticed. If any of you crime-cracking people (or Netflix experts) have any ideas, please let me know!

*Yeah, I looked at a total stranger's wedding pictures that I got by accident, and now I'm making fun of them on the internet. You wanna take it outside?

**I have not mentioned the whole getting-married thing before partly in order to preserve my thin veneer of fake anonymity, and partly because I didn't want to seem like a lame-o who can't shut up about my wedding. However, now it seems relevant, plus there is really very little else going on in my brain right now. I am spending considerable time thinking about things like, "Which is a better organizing principle for seating charts, balance of talkativeness or similarity of interests?"

What's grosser than gross?

This dude who seduced and married his own daughter, is what.