This....This Isn't Appropriate

When I was a senior at AU, I took a Journalism and Ethics class with Toby. The teacher, Professor "Hotson" Watson, would often ask his students what we thought would be appropriate to print in a newspaper.

There was one girl in the class who was unbearable. Anytime we were shown a photograph of a dude on fire or of a starving child, anything the least bit controversial, she would argue to the point of tears that it didn't belong in a paper. She would squeal about how she didn't want her six-year-old sister to be corrupted.

Of course, I disagreed with her constantly. I believe that it's a newspaper's responsibility to give the reader as much information as possible. I've given the Post a hard time in the past for refusing to use the words "nigger" and "fag" when the actual words were the crux of a major story. I hope tomorrow's Post features some gruesome photos of the monks being shot down in Burma so that its readers get the full scope of the atrocities happening in Southeast Asia. When it's in the best interest of the story, I want my media to pull no punches.

I'm boring you with this because I want it known that I'm no prude.

That being said, what the Hell was the Washington Post Express thinking when it printed the word "pussy" in an interview with Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine? Did they really need to print Dave Mustaine saying "I'm not a pussy"?

Printing that was unnecessary and bizarre. I think most people would agree that the word "pussy" is offensive. I certainly don't use it in mixed company. Or, to be more specific (and accurate), I used that word in mixed company and I got yelled at. I've never seen it published in a mainstream news media outlet unless it was proceeded with the word "cat" or "willow." Wouldn't "I'm not a [wuss]" have worked just as well?

Of course I can't find a link. Stupid Express.

Through the Fire and the Flames

After a long, hard day at the office, I was real excited to go home and grill me some pork loins. My mouth was practically salivating by the time I got to the Farragut North platform at 5:30. I had just missed a train and in typical Metro fashion, the next "rush hour" train wouldn't be arriving for another six minutes.

In those six minutes, people continued to pack themselves like sardines. My thoughts had switched from anticipating sweet pork tastiness to fearing how packed the next train would be. That's when I noticed the smell. Something was burning.

I wasn't the only one who noticed it. My fellow commuters were all looking around anxiously, sniffing the air to detect more sulfur. Then smoke started coming out of one of the tunnels. Great.

Here's where this gets interesting. No one reported the smoke. The station, especially my side towards L Street, was still filling with smoke and all people would do was hope and pray that our train came before there was a crippling Metro delay. Our safety had taken a back seat to our impatience. We would have rather sped through a fireball in the tunnel then wait around for twenty minutes underground. I suppose years of Metro delays will do that.

The story has a happy ending. Our train came and my car had enough room for me to stand comfortably. The doors remained open for a few minutes, presumably a delay tactic to fix whatever was wrong. In those few minutes, commuters kept nervously making eye contact with each other. These silent urges to get the train moving aroused feelings of shock and empathy. Shock because people are finally at the point where we're willing to take risks to get home a few minutes earlier. That's kind of crazy. Empathy because, despite all logic and reason, I'm one of those people.

Ads on a Bus Go Round and Round

So I spotted this ad on a bus. It was paid for by DC's Department of Health. I think it was for the DC Cancer Control Registry. I, of course, have no beef with an organization dedicated to helping people with cancer. In my experience, cancer has extremely limited humor potential. So I have no need for it.

But the ad bothered me. It was a picture of two older black people. One male, one female. The text read something along the lines of:

"Did you know: Cancer kills more African-Americans than any other ethnic group in DC?"

Now, I'm all for preventing cancer and giving the best treatment to those who have it. However, I am also against bus advertisements treating me like I'm an idiot.

DC's population: 581,530
Demographics: 58% Black, 39% White, 3% everything else.
So, approximately: 337,300 blacks, 226,800 whites.

Can you imagine how statistically significant it would be if cancer, or anything else for that matter, were killing less blacks than whites? Of course cancer is killing more blacks than anyone else. The city is majority black! That's why it's called Chocolate City, sillies.

I hope they do more signs like this. Did you know that old age kills more African-Americans than any other ethnic group in DC?

Again with the DC Voting Rights

*UPDATE BELOW*

I can't believe I'm writing about the DC Vote legislation again. This is, like, my fifth time wasting time on this? Ugh. Sorry, guys. Yet whenever the issue comes up, you have the Post editorial staff, Marc Fisher, and Martin Austermuhle rallying the troops in support of this bill. I can't let that stand.

For new readers, here's the quick and dirty basics. The legislation, which has passed the House, would give DC a vote in the House of Representatives. It would also give Utah an extra at-large House member to offset the very liberal leanings of the District. This legislation appears to have the support of most everyone in Washington and Utah.

There is some question to the constitutionality of the legislation. Some believe that Congress does not have the ability to grant the District a vote. Naturally, others think this part of the legislation is all kosher. I lean towards the former, but, hey, I'm no legal scholar. I could be wrong.

However, I'm pretty sure that giving Utah an extra at-large House member is wildly, stupidly unconstitutional. It violates everything that is good about representative democracy by giving citizens of one state two voices in the House. This would make Utah more politically potent than any state in the country. That should strike all of you, whether you're from Virginia, Maryland, DC, or Massachusetts (Hi Mom!) as incredibly dangerous.

Of course, Utah's extra vote isn't as important to me as the civil rights of my fellow District residents. Hey, I'm selfish like that. Everyone can agree that our total lack of representation on the Hill is an embarrassment to the very concept of democracy. We pay taxes, fight wars, and we get absolutely no say in how to manage either. This legislation will make things worse.

If you truly believe this is an issue of civil rights (and if you don't, you're a moron), then this legislation is a bitter pill to swallow. Civil rights isn't something you can just cancel out. When women were given the right to vote in 1920, men weren't given two votes to cancel the women out. That would be preposterous. But that is exactly what's happening here. What's the point of representative democracy if your representation can be cancelled out with extra legislators?

Marc Fisher described this Utah vote, the political neutrality, as the "beauty" of the bill. Shame on him. What exactly is the point of having a House vote if it doesn't matter? Since when do our rights as human beings have anything to do with politically neutral? The 1865 black community voted overwhelmingly Republican. Yet Congress didn't pass any legislation giving Democratic states extra representation because it was politically neutral. This is civil rights! What does politics have to do with it!?

Even if the Utah part of the bill is scrapped, the legislation still leaves District residents fundamentally and unacceptably underrepresented. Our hypothetical one voice in the House doesn't come close to matching up the three representatives (one House member, two Senators) that every other American citizen has.

Why must we accept this compromise? In issues of civil rights, there can be no room for compromise. We can't have it both ways when our rights are being trampled. Civil rights compromises are doomed to fail. As long as we are on unequal ground with our fellow Americans, we can not rest. And this legislation is a slap in the face to anyone who truly cares about District residents. We only get a voice if someone else gets the ability to shout you down? We only get one voice, neutered by Utah, in one chamber of Congress? How can this possibly be acceptable?

Hear that Marc Fisher and Martin Austermuhle? Are you for our civil rights or are you for a useless compromise that does nothing but let people pat themselves on the back? Your positions on this matter have been totally unacceptable. I greatly admire your writing on other issues, but your wrongheadedness in such an important matter to DC residents is, frankly, embarrassing. No compromise could be made on slavery. No compromise could be made on segregation. And no compromise can be made here. (And, yes, this is a racial matter. If this city were over 60% white instead of over 60% black, there is no way we're having this conversation.) I hope you do the right thing and come out against this legislation. We need to start from scratch and fight for what we, and every American, deserve: democratic representation and equality. This bill grants us neither.

UPDATE: It looks like the bill failed to receive the 60 votes necessary to open up debate. The bill is dead, for now. It'll probably come back in the next few years. Hopefully, before we have to go through this madness again, we can move pas this farce of a civil rights bill and actually work to get the District's 600,000 residents the Representative and Senators they deserve with no strings attached.

Blog Whoring

Ok, there's this guy who goes by the handle "HRH King Friday XIII." He is basically Commenter #1 on this blog. His comments are so excellent that I asked him to be my guest blogger when I took a vacation in April. He was quite good. I still owe him beers.

He mentioned that he would be starting his own blog. I totally forgot. I am a bad Internet friend.

Here it is:
http://kingfridayxiii.blogspot.com/

He is funnier than me. And he updates more. Win-win for all you readers out there.

Writing to Fill Space

1. The University of Maryland is, supposedly, a school filled with smarties who had to pull 3.7s in their (ugh) public high school to earn admittance. And yet, UMD students and alumni are consistently the stupidest people in the room.

"Stupid" might be a bit harsh. I admit to pre-judging anyone who went to UMD. Why? Because of shit like this.

At Thursday's football game between Maryland and West Virginia, a Maryland student, Thomas Agbonyitor, surely upset at his team getting hosed by the superior UWV squad, tackled a West Virginia fan. Why?

"I saw this fan standing around all cocky," Agbonyitor said. "So I did my best Shawne Merriman impression and took him out; everyone cheered. I hate when opposing fans come to our stadium and act like that."

Oh, well, if he was standing around all cocky, of course he deserved to be assaulted.

If anyone wants to have a good laugh at this moron's expense, here's a link to his totally indecipherable Myspace page. Go Terps!

2. I usually don't write about my dining experiences. That's more Tweaks's thing. But I have to make an exception for the worst brunch spot in DC.

Never, ever, ever go to Bardia's New Orleans Cafe. This place is a disaster. Our iced coffees came with foam and cream, but without ice. Apparently "iced coffee" is actually Cajun-speak for "lukewarm latte." My date's Eggs Hollandaise was so overcooked that the poached eggs were actually hard-boiled. Think about how disgusting that is. And instead of English muffins, the eggs were served on a thin, disgusting slice of deli ham. The potatoes were cold. My sausage omelette tasted like dish soap. I have never been more disgusted at a restaurant in my entire life. I left with a tummyache.

Good thing I have this here blog so I can spread the word. Avoid that place like the plague.

I Feel Dead Inside

So the Wall Street Journal is doing a series that "looks at real estate and career prospects for young professionals starting out in their careers." I presumed that this series would be condescending. It isn't. The word I'd use is "horrifying."

In case you missed this, the Wall Street Journal's article on DC young professionals is all 'bout bloggers. Seriously. This is the wave of the future in DC. Bloggers. Ugh.

Look, I'm happy for the bloggers WSJ profiled. It's not like I would turn someone down if they offered me a salary and appearances on Hardball just for writing this shitty blog. These people are all talented and deserve the praise. (Full disclosure: I got quite drunk with two of the profiled bloggers last night. I wish I read this article before seeing them so I could have had something more entertaining to say than "Yeah, um, DC sucks.") It's just, I don't know, isn't the "blogosphere" self-congratulatory enough without the Wall Street Journal getting involved?

Anyone who thinks they can make a living off blogging is hopelessly optimistic and sadly deluded. For almost all of them, that big break from Gothamist or Gawker Media will never happen. And this is a gift from heaven since most people are terrible, terrible writers. There are millions of blogs out there and most of them don't deserve a second look. As Toby's shirt says, "No one cares about your blog."

And the fact that DC young professionals, a label which obviously applies to me, are being noted for getting paid to blog is some the stupidest shit I've ever read. The DC population between 20 and 34 is 131,504. Something tells me that only a few dozen, at most, are paid to blog out of that group. So, thanks for the insipid article, WSJ. Aren't there some summer associates at Steptoe you could be bothering? I bet they outnumber all the hip bloggers.

Missed Connection, m4m

Hi! We made eye contact while you were working last night at around 10:30pm. You were driving a 34 bus and I was waiting at my local bus stop on Wisconsin Avenue. The eye contact was electric!

So why did you keep driving? There I was at the stop, there you were on the bus...what part of bus etiquette did I miss? Should I have waved my arms frantically? Or is there some kind of WMATA tradition where you only pick up people after 10pm if you feel like it?

You: Black male, mid-to-late 20s, medium build, shaved head, wearing a WMATA uniform.
Me: White male, mid 20s, 6'2", 220lbs, brown hair, pissed as Hell.

Maybe we can meet sometime so I can tell you to go fuck yourself in person?

Paper Wrappers!? Really!?

This story would piss me off a lot more if DC had some kind of AIDS epidemic or something.

So You Propose What?

Every now and then The Washington Post will produce an editorial that is so stupid and perplexing that it makes me long for the days of the Yarmouth Register or Cape Cod Times. My all-time favorite was an editorial lamenting the death of an eagle that lived by the Wilson Bridge. That was just silly. An editorial published today is much more troublesome.

The Post frets that the city could get ripped off when it sells off Greater Southeast Community Hospital to the highest bidder. Unfortunately for the city, there is only one bidder, Specialty Hospitals of America. That doesn't put us on great negotiating ground. Since the city doesn't want the only hospital in the city east of the Anacostia to close its doors, Fenty and the Council don't have a lot of options. So it should come as no surprise that Specialty Hospitals is asking for quite a bit to take the hopsital off of the city's hands. Here, "quite a bit" is a 59 million dollar loan. Interest free of course.

The Post feels like this is a bad deal. "But it's important that as Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) negotiates this deal, he protect the city's interests. A deal born of desperation is no good deal," says the Post.

Let's review. The city wants to keep the hospital open. The city has mismanaged hospitals so poorly in the past that a city takeover, in the words of the Post, "should not even be considered." There's only one company willing to take over the hospital's operations. Hmmm. I'd say the loan is pretty much a foregone conclusion. Do you have any suggestions, Post Editorial Board? Oh, you don't? Then I guess it's settled.

The problem with your "a deal born of desperation is no good deal" argument is that there are no other viable alternatives. I'll be psyched if some other companies fall out of the sky to bid on taking over Greater Southeast. But the status quo is what it is. There's a difference between "no good deal" and "the only deal that's available."

And a double fuck you to the Post Editorial Board for supporting the baseball stadium giveaway. How can one support paying $611,000,000 for a playground while opposing keeping open a motherfucking hospital at less than a tenth of the price!? And that "tenth of a price" is a FUCKING LOAN. If the hopsital suceeds, which everyone wants, we get the money back! Try cutting a better deal with the Lerners.

D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), chair of the committee on health, is right when he points to the millions of dollars the city has paid to help out developers, not to mention rich owners of sports teams. Ensuring access to high-quality health care for vulnerable people is no less a priority.

"No less a priority" implies that there could be equal priorities at play here. That's not the case. Keeping a hospital open in one of the poorest areas of the city is considerably more important than a new stadium. What I would give to live in a city where the newspaper's priorities are "hospitals > stadiums" instead of the other way around.

Four Alarm Blaze...In My Pants!

Sorry this here blog has been so quiet. I've been a busy, busy boy.

The big story in the news since the beginning of my two day sabbatical is without a doubt the revelation that Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) is the type of dude that knows bathroom solicitation code and probably trolls on Craigslist's casual encounters page. Frankly, I could care less. That doofus is Idaho's problem, not mine.

I'm much more offended by the allegation that DC firemen and EMTs are running prostitution rings out of firehouses. These people are employed to protect us. Running a criminal enterprise is, correct me if I'm wrong, counter-intuitive to protection.

Sure, these are only allegations. But would it really surprise anyone if they turned out to be true? DC city officials are a joke. Firefighters running sex rings, a policeman forcing a motorist to perform sex acts, and let's not forget the EMTs who doomed David Rosenbaum. The police, fire department, and hospitals are all useless. If this were a game of Sim City we'd all have been destroyed by a disaster by now.

Of course, in Sim City 3000, the stadiums aren't funded with taxes and the schools are easy to fix.

Fire in the Metro!

So, Sunday the Metro totally went to shit. I spent the entire day shopping for new chinos and playing poker. All are within walking distance. The Metro was not a top priority. I didn't even know there was a problem until 11am Monday morning. I would have posted something, but I had to have my little freak-out at Laura Sessions Stepp and her promotion of "gray rape."

(Incidentally, the term "gray rape" was coined by GW students, not by LSS. And I'm not saying that anyone isn't condemning "gray rape." But the very term is offensive and anyone who promotes it must really hate the victims of sexual assault. "Gray," that mitigating adjective, makes it seem like the rape was partially the victim's fault. And that is totally fucked up. I don't care if a naked lady is passed out in some frat boy's bed. There is never an excuse or a mitigating factor in rape.)

So, the Metro went to Hell and I missed my opportunity. Ha ha, just kidding. The "unprecedented" is now quite precedented. The Metro fucked up again yesterday evening. This time, I was on the Green Line and was caught in the middle of it. Admittedly, the inconvenience was minor. But I guess the Blue Line was shut down between Braddock Road and the Pentagon. That inconvenience is not minor. Quite major.

Thank you, Metro, for giving me a mulligan the first time around.

What a terrible fucking system of transportation. Here we are in a Southern city and this thing shuts down over "heat." Now it's an electrical surge that has completely fucked our system. And the response to the problem was so inept, God help us all if there's ever a situation where our lives are in peril and we need to get out of the tunnels. The Metro will be the end of us all.

LSS, You Fucking Cunt

I am sorry for the blue language, but this woman is doing more to undermine feminism than every episode of Ally McBeal combined. Good fucking Christ on the Cross.

It's not enough that she writes pointless drivel about women not being able to handle their own sexuality. Her stupid hypothesis that women can't handle the pressures of being equal with men in the workplace while simultaneously having sexual relationships is already a low fucking blow. The fact that its intellectually dishonest I can handle. It makes her ideas that much easier to ignore. But why won't she fucking quit?

LSS wrote an article for Cosmo about something she, or maybe some editor, has coined "gray rape." Gray rape is when you're really drunk and you say "no," but it doesn't really matter since you're so fucking wasted.

Gray rape? I don't know. THAT SOUNDS AN AWFUL LIKE "RAPE RAPE" TO ME. HOW CAN A FUCKING WOMAN, OR A FUCKING HUMAN BEING FOR THAT MATTER, ACT LIKE THERE IS SOME GRAY AREA IN THE WORD "NO"!?!?!?!?

LSS used to amuse me. Her stupid "the kids aren't alright" alarmist bullshit stories were asinine as Hell, but, come on, we all got our kicks from them. But her invention of the term "gray rape" is so fucking disgusting that I as soon as I read this, the first thing I did was jump over to Blogger so I could freak out over the Internet. I mean, there were like a dozen Metro fires yesterday, and I honestly couldn't give a shit. So, thank you, LSS for making me tolerate the city a little bit more. I can tolerate everything right now except for you and your bullshit and your disrespect towards women.

Women can fuck around without becoming emotional wrecks. Women can handle grad school, boyfriends, vacations in Greece*, teabagging* and whatever without becoming wrecks. Hell, they can even hook up with boys and still get good grades and still have fulfilling lives.

AND THEY CAN SAY "NO" AND HAVE IT MEAN "NO" WITHOUT SOME JUDAS CUNT TRYING TO MAKE IT SEEM LIKE IT WAS THEIR FAULT FOR DRINKING TOO MUCH.

Seriously, Fuck You, LSS. FUCK YOU.

*Two specific examples from her book. And yes I still have my autogrpahed copy.
**And a hat tip to Becky for sending me the Jezebel link. I just noticed a few readers e-mailed me the same link. Thanks to all of you for not letting me mmiss this bullshit.
***Third edit is so I can type "Laura Sessions Stepp" out so she'll read this if she Googles herself.

Silly Washington Post Chat

This is old, but a friend, Agatha, just sent it to me today:

Downtown Washington: Because you (or at least your 15th and L brethren) work right near there, perhaps you have some sort of dirt on that sketched-out bar on L Street at 15th, right next to Ollie's Trolley and down the street from the Post Pub. It only seems to be open late at night, has a hand-written sign in the window that says "Smoking Allowed Here" and always seems to have about 10-15 shady-looking people hanging out front. Any ideas? I work near there at night, and always have been curious.

Fritz: That's the bar attached to Ollie's Trolley, which does -- somehow -- have one of the few permits allowing indoor smoking in Washington. It does feel kind of sketchy inside, but if you need a smoke with a bottle of beer ...

Well, it should feel sketchy because it's a fucking brothel. Agatha, Toby, and I stumbled across it after The Green Lantern got a little too touchy-feely-cruisy for my tastes. This was back in July, 2005.

Agatha and I walked in and knew immediately that we were in the company of prostitutes. That area is known for prostitution, so, whatever. We were further skeeved out by the bar's refusal to take credit cards. And there was a TV playing HBO's Real Sex.

My favorite touch was the upstairs. It consisted of two locked doors and a smoke machine. How someone can mistake this for anything but a brothel is amazing.

Toby and Ag pretended to make out because they figured, correctly, that seeing me navigate this awkward situation without a safety net would be hilarious. Sure enough, a prostitute asked me if I was looking for a good time. I was not. She wouldn't really take "no" for an answer. The bartender pulled me aside and asked her to leave me alone.

Thanks, Mr. Bartender!

Haha, just kidding. The bartender takes me to the cash register where he shows me a bunch of photos of that same woman naked and finger-blasting herself.

I made a quick exit.

So, yeah. No matter how much you love smoking indoors, do not go to the bar above Ollie's Trolley.

But if you love hookers, go nuts.

Killing Dogs: Bad, Killing Eagles: Hilarious

On the same day the Post features a story on dogfighting, the Metro section has a fun little story about two numbnuts being fined for killing bald eagles. One numbnut made what appears to be a legitimate oopsie. Foxes were eating his chickens so he poisoned some chicken eggs. Fox eats eggs. Fox dies. Mission accomplished until eagle eats dead fox. The circle of life cost this poor sap over a thousand bucks.

The other numbnut, Francis G. Long, Jr., is absolutely glorious.

On a drizzling evening in March, hunting enthusiast Francis G. Long Jr. was shooting small game from the back porch of his apartment in Southern Maryland, as he had many times.

There's nothing quite as thrilling as shooting animals from your apartment. In no way is this dangerous.

Long had shot and killed other wildlife from the porch of his St. Mary's County home, including turkey vultures, a skunk and a woodchuck..."

So it's not just birds! He's aiming at things on the ground. Let's all take a moment and thank our Higher Power, whoever that may be, for sparing the lives of any children that may have wandered past Long's back porch.

Anyways, here's where this gets good.

"I feel terrible, especially now that we're at war," Long said. "There's a lot of patriotic sentiment out there. Some people might look at this like burning a flag.

He added: "I was just messing around and wanted to shoot a vulture one day and thought it was funny. So much for that. No more shooting in the back yard, I guess."

I get the feeling that Long may not be very bright. However I totally understand his need to own a gun. He works in Waldorf. And we all know that Waldorf is "pretty ghetto."

Someone needs to explain to me why hunting small game from an apartment building for sport is considered more humane than killing dogs. I would really appreciate it.