That's just wrong

Those Post reporters have no idea how to behave on a message board. There's, like, not even any cursing, or racism.

Metreaux

Toby writes the Metro post I would have if I'd had more time.

Deal of the Century

Well, I did it. For the first time in my life, I refused to be interviewed for a job. Partially because I appeared to be overqualified, but mostly because it would have been working on a military project that develops weapons systems for a new fighter jet coming down the pipeline, thus violating my whole "Future's So Bright I've Gotta Wear Shades" principle.

Yes, I'm an idealistic twit. I don't want to work for the Washington war machine any more. A lot of the conspiracy theorists assumed the super-fun marathon Iraq occupation we now find ourselves in was an effort to control the region's oil; my fear is that it was actually about keeping the war machine turning.

More than $200 billion has been spent on Iraq. As long as we're fighting a war of some kind, it's a huge windfall for the Lockheed Martin/Raytheon/Northrop Grummans of the world. More is spent on weapons systems and combat gear and other high-tech crap... and a lot of it is a huge waste, like the shelfware I worked on briefly for the Navy (i.e., software that sits on a shelf and doesn't even see the light of day). And these contractors are obviously huge campaign donors to members of Congress and the executive branch, no matter what the party. So this stupid, destructive machine keeps turning and turning. And people keep getting needlessly blown up by our innovation.

Inadvertantly we have backed into Reason #854 why I need out of Washington... as a software engineer who doesn't want to work on military projects, I probably just eliminated like 95% of the available local jobs by adding that qualifier. Part of the reason I like working in software is the creative aspect. It's the same reason I like blogging... I like making things that people can enjoy. When I write software, I like it when people can use it and say, "Hey, that's pretty neat/useful/interesting." And not, "Hey, is that a missile heading towards the orphanage?" (Oops, could have sworn that was a missile silo.)

Put simply: I want to use my powers for good, and not for evil. And I don't think I can do it here. Let's face it: we're going to be in Iraq forever. Forever and ever and fuckingever. The crazy people who still think we're somehow getting our revenge for 9/11 by being in Iraq won't be happy until "the enemy has been defeated," and of course that's not even a definable goal (since there appears to be an endless supply of "the enemy").

Every time someone calls for an end to the madness, you get protests from powerful people who don't know how to shut down the machine. They can't comprehend of the U.S. being able to say: "We've made a huge mistake."

"Saddam is gone. It's a good thing, but I don't agree with what was done," Clinton told students at a forum at the American University of Dubai.

"It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors ... one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country."

[...]

"The mistake that they made is that when they kicked out Saddam, they decided to dismantle the whole authority structure of Iraq. ... We never sent enough troops and didn't have enough troops to control or seal the borders," Clinton said.

As the borders were unsealed, "the terrorists came in," he said.

Clinton said it would have been better if the United States had left Iraq's "fundamental military and social and police structure intact."

Oh my God... I sort of remember what it was like to have a president who wasn't completely and functionally retarded. It's a little bit hazy. But I sort of remember. And, honestly, at this point I think we can forgive the whole "blow jobs" thing. I'm pretty sure there are a number of us who would personally give Clinton blow jobs, if it meant he could take over for a few years and get us out of this shitstorm.

Alas, such a provision is not in the Constitution. Yet. So, in the meantime, I will remain an idealistic fool with no job. And a blog. There's nothing I can do to stop the machine... all I can do is not be a part of it.

It's called a break-up because it's broken

Out of 23,547 complaints the FCC received in July, all but five came from Alexandria's own Parents Television Council. Yes. That's ALL BUT FIVE. I always wanted to try to infiltrate the PTC as an employee, but it looks like they don't have any openings right now. Maybe I can get an internship, though. I would really like to manipulate their e-mail system and try to get Arrested Development back on the air.

A GMU student was arrested for passing out literature counter to the efforts of nearby military recruiters. Proving again that we tend to like the idea of defending freedom, but when it comes to actual freedom, that's really more of a you-have-to-agree-with-us thing. Funny, it doesn't feel like the 1960s in here... but I guess it must be.

And the rest... median households can't afford over 80 percent of homes in D.C., the oil companies set our energy policies that set up their stupidly huge profits, and the media and the government keep their little secret club going so they can feel like the cool kids. Boom, boom, boom.

We need to break up, Washington. We had a nice run, but I think it's time to move on. It's not you... it's me.

Wait, actually it is you. Sorry.

Damn you, Billy Gates

I did not get the job at Mister Softee.

Came very close, I think. They have a very rigorous interview process. It's kind of like a videogame; you interview with three or four different people, and if they like you enough, you get to talk to the "big boss". Which is usually a good sign. In my case, I got to the big boss, and they said they would move quickly on a decision, but instead took two agonizing weeks to let me know they didn't want me.

Which is disheartening only because I prepared so hard for that interview, and they would have covered the costs and hazards of relocation. There were a lot of red flags going up with working there, not the least of which was this recent Business Week article. But I thought it would have at least been a good learning experience and short-term opportunity for me.

Unfortunately, the non-challengingness of my previous job is making the interview process difficult. Since moving here, I haven't worked in the new technologies that everyone wants you to have experience in, and I haven't really pushed myself either, so I've forgotten a lot of things being asked of me... and they always ask little technical quizzes at these interviews, just to make them more stressful. (Although I didn't get the job, I'm sure I nailed all the pop quiz questions at Microsoft, so at least the studying I've been doing (instead of blogging) has paid off.)

C'est la vie. Top that off with Arrested Development getting cancelled, and it's been a pretty shitty week.

One good thing that came out of my Seattle trip is: I'm 100% sure I want to move there. That place FUCKING ROCKS. Seriously. If you're there, have dinner at Wild Ginger. Walk around Pike Place Market. Go to a Sonics game. I did all those things and fell in love with Seattle all over again. If worse comes to worse and I don't get any offers, maybe I should just up and move out there anyway... it's a scary prospect, but it might be easier to get hired.

Sorry, just thinking out loud. Oh hey, you know what's funny about Washington (D.C. I mean, not state, in order to stay on-topic)? It's a little easier to stomach when you don't have to work at a boring, mindless, completely non-challenging job and drive around in the awful traffic. On the other hand, a salary of some kind would be nice.

My to-do list has actually stayed pretty full. I've been doing the usual football officiating (enjoy my work tomorrow night, Leesburg), and writing up an article related to that (not that anyone hired me to write it... I'll have to pitch it when I'm done and see if anyone's interested). Funny "Virginia sucks" side note: I couldn't draw unemployment insurance even if I wanted to, because the $200/week or so I make officiating would be deducted from that, and potentially even outstrip it. Even though I won't get paid for the work I'm doing until late December. Hilarious.

The job hunting and other various chores keep me busy. Maybe I'll even get to check out the Native American museum one of these days. It does kind of suck being apartment-bound almost all day, but at least I'm working down my Netflix queue. I'll keep you posted, Internet. In the meantime, enjoy a few laughs at my expense.

The essence of Washington

He really did do a heck of a job.

OK, so not as much time for blogging as I had hoped

Yeah, I forgot that the original reason I blogged so much was because I had so much dead time at work. Unfortunately, that (all the dead time) maybe also led to being laid off. Because Congress can spend a bazillion dollars building a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, but cuts the funding for air traffic control prototype software (which is what I was working on).

I've actually been busier without a job. I've got a to-do list a mile long, and I've barely made a dent in it. Of course, finding a job is like a full-time job in itself, and finding a job in another city is 10 times as difficult. A lot of potential employers won't even talk to you if you're not in town. But I'm taking the layoff as a chance to finally escape Washington.

I had a good interview at "Mister Softee" out in Seattle last week, but I'm still waiting to hear an offer. Seattle... is like... THE BEST. Every time I go there, I wished I lived there. Maybe now I can. Other than that, I've been trying to keep busy and not spend too much money. Right now I'm confined to the couch with a sprained ankle... so at least that's free.

If there was one thing I would have liked to have blogged about in the past few months, it would have been... THE DAY THE BULLSHIT ENDED.

Of course, the bullshit never ends. But in one shining moment... I really thought we had had a breakthrough. And it was all courtesy... Anderson Cooper?

Senator, I’m sorry… for the last four days, I have been seeing dead bodies here in the streets of Mississippi and to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other — I have to tell you, there are people here who are very upset and angry, and when they hear politicians thanking one another, it just, you know, it cuts them the wrong way right now, because there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman has been laying in the street for 48 hours, and there is not enough facilities to get her up. Do you understand that anger?

Ohhh, that was so the best. We had to endure days of "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" and the rest of the usual political fellatio. While people were starving and dying on my TV. And finally, someone called bullshit. It was brilliant.

Of course it didn't last... even though the federal response was clearly clueless, they found a way to spin it and place the blame on someone that wasn't Bush or FEMA. Things returned more or less to status quo. Still, a lot of people got pissed off, and the president's approval rating took a tumble. So that was nice for a while. (If only Iraq was televised.)

So anyway... sorry I've been quiet and not responding to e-mails. Hopefully soon I can nail down a job and bid farewell... PERMANENTLY.

Being laid off sucks

Yes, it happened again.

ARGGGHHH. It's my own fault, really. This is the second time I've been laid off from this job. I should have known they'd do it again. Fortunately, I was already looking for jobs in other cities... now I'm just looking a little HAHRRDERRRR. I mean, harder.

The upside for you: this might leave slightly more time for blogging.

(I haven't even looked at my e-mails for a couple weeks, either, so sorry about that.)

Cartoon

Kickin' back

Hey guys,

I'm on hiatus, enjoying my vacation(s), drafting fantasy football teams, trying to do some writing on the side, searching for a new job somewhere else, etc.

I'll return when you probably least expect it.

It just gets better

"Redskins Owner Tried to Buy Permission to Cut Down Trees."

Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder offered to pay the National Park Service $25,000 nearly four years ago in exchange for permission to remove trees behind his Potomac estate, according to Interior Department documents released this week.

Park Service officials denied the offer, explaining that cutting down trees in an environmentally protected area was not up for financial negotiation, the documents show.

Of course. No word on how Snyder's purchase of Richard Pryor to be his son's playmate is coming along.

The best antidote for Washington

As I've said, is vacations. Lots and lots of vacations.

Coming later this month: my regular trip to Vegas. Which is actually a lot like Washington, except they're totally up front about all the corruption and evil. They don't pretend to be all virtuous and important to the world in Vegas; they're content to just take your money and give you a lap dance. So at least the honesty is refreshing.

But perhaps we could adopt their tourism slogan, with a little tweaking. "What happens in Washington, everybody finds out about and you get really embarrased."

The Big Redskins post

August in Washington, D.C. It's the suck.

Congress leaves town, with good reason. A great stench rises up from the former swampland. Air conditioning tries nobly to offset the heat, and fails. The city becomes a veritable ghost town until school starts.

But there is one good thing about August: it's football time.

And that means it's time to make fun of Washington's entry in the National Football League: the Redskins.



Ahh, if only the team were also built by Home Depot.

First of all, the team had to deal a disgruntled Laveranues Coles. (More about that later.) They struck a straight-up deal with the Jets for Santana Moss; although the receivers are similar, most people consider this to be a bit of a downgrade for the Redskins.

By itself, that's not a disaster. But instead of the usual flurry of free agent signings, the team lost a bunch of players it wanted to keep. Cornerback Fred Smoot decided to move to Minnesota... for only $500,000 more than the Redskins were apparently offering. Coupled with the loss of linebacker Antonio Pierce to the Giants, the team lost two of its most important defensive cogs.

Certainly poor salary cap management is a factor. Bad signings from years past restricted the amount the team could spend. It's a state of being I like to call "Salary Cap Hades." Remarkably, the Redskins, a 6-10 team, had the highest payroll in the league last year at $117.4 million (perennial champion New England spent $77 million).

A lot of people questioned the team's draft strategy. It seemed like wide receiver was the biggest need, and a good one (Mike Williams) was available when the Redskins' turn came; but the team drafted a cornerback with its top pick, and followed that up by trading three of its picks to... reach for yet another quarterback. As part of that deal, the team traded its first-round pick next year, plus this year's third- and fourth-round picks, for this year's 25th overall (a late first round pick). Sooo... this is what happens when you can't pay for players, I guess. Give away all the draft picks.

Meanwhile, among the remaining defensive players, there were other problems: Lavar Arrington complained the team had hung him out to dry during his recovery from surgery; rookie safety Sean Taylor, whose selection in last year's draft was described by Gibbs as one of the "most researched things in the history of sports," never showed up for offseason workouts, and then briefly traded his burguny-and-gold for prison grays.

So the offseason was like a Perfect Storm. Of Crap. And, if you're into schadenfreude... and I think you know that I am... it was hilarious at every turn.

Meanwhile, the parallels between the Redskins and the culture of Washington continue to astound me. The team introduced a plan to charge fans $7,500 to join the "Touchdown Club", and vault over the thousands of people on the season ticket waiting list... because rich people shouldn't have to wait in line, dammit. This happened about the same time Virginia introduced a proposal for high-occupancy-toll lanes on the Beltway, derisively nicknamed "Lexus Lanes" by certain bitter people. (I choose not to do that; I prefer to simply call the non-toll lanes "Hispanic Lanes.")

There's a chance the salary cap, which enforces league parity and a fair playing field, will go away for a year, in 2007, while the NFL's collective bargaining agreement is renegotiated. The Redskins, being completely unable to control their spending, are, of course, actively rooting for this situation, in which they would be able to outspend all the other teams at a geometric rate.

"Sure, if only we didn't have play by these pesky RULES, we'd be doing great!" You might recongnize this as the competitive strategy trademarked by George Steinbrenner. Or, like, every lobbyist in town.

Meanwhile, the team's relationship with the press seems to mirror that of a certain white house in town. In retaliation for printing an (accurate) article about the team misleading fans by selling them obstructed-view seats without telling them, the team cut off the Post's long-time season ticket supply. Then, the team starting promoting its website, redskins.com, as the place to get the "unfiltered" story on the Redskins, instead of that anti-Redskin bias apparently rampant in the media (sounds... so... familiar!).

And for a while, all was good in Redskinland. The website published exclusives you couldn't get from the Post, like "Patrick Ramsey Gives Back to the Community" and "Fans Enjoy Staring at Concrete Pillars." That is, until the team posted video of its voluntary offseason workouts, which included "live blocking" drills, something that's prohibited by rule.

"Do you know how we caught them?" NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw said. "We saw it on their Web site."

Hi, larious. The team was stripped of some of its practice days as a result.

And really, the schadenfreude is fun, even though I don't have anything specifically against the team. Really, the only reason all the mistakes and problems are so much fun is the owner, Daniel Snyder.

Mr. Snyder is best described as an Evil Rich Guy. He somehow manages to represent everything I hate about humanity in one bite-size package. He's clearly the kind of person who assumes that succeeding in business will translate into success at anything else, which has delightfully been proven untrue over the past five years. The team has steamrolled through big-name coaches but failed to reach the playoffs each time. Danny continues to make plenty of money off the franchise, all the better to fuel his helicopter; but a steady stream of high-profile free agent signings have failed to improve the team.

The Danny's last coach, one Mr. Steve Spurrier, recently vented some sour grapes about Mr. Snyder:

[Spurrier] says he realized his NFL career was a mistake at the beginning of his second season. That's when Redskins owner Daniel Snyder made several personnel decisions without consulting him.

This conflicted with a big interview that Snyder granted the Washington Times (another obvious slap at the Post):

I've never told anyone who to draft. There's a false impression out there that I'm watching film, that I'm grading players. That's silly. I've never watched film and graded players. I don't want to be a coach. I just want to be the owner.

Ahhh, who to believe?

Well, that's only Exhibit A in People v. The Danny. When Coles made his desire to leave the team known, Snyder was apparently less than accomodating:

[Coles] described every week of last season as a "miserable" experience and added that the most important lesson he learned while in Washington was "trust nobody."

If you want to know how badly Coles and the Redskins needed a divorce, consider this: Redskins owner Daniel Snyder threatened Coles when the receiver's refusal to accept [a trade to the Jets] without a contract extension thwarted the deal last month. "He said that if I stayed in Washington, he would turn me into another Terry Glenn," Coles said. (Glenn, now with the Cowboys, missed most of the 2001 season with New England as his public feud with head coach Bill Belichick resulted in various fines, suspensions and ultimately Glenn's benching). "He said he would send a flat-screen television to my home because I'd be better off watching the games there. That was his way of saying I'd be sitting for the next couple years until they cut me."

The "flat-screen" quote has become somewhat infamous. Granted, Laveranues was being more than a bit immature, but having this quote out there is not the kind of pub you want for your team, if your team typically is a heavy player in the free-agent market, as the Redskins usually are.

Gotta love the rich-guy hubris. It continued into last month, when the National Park Service started re-scrutinizing a deal that allowed Danny to clear-cut a goodly number of trees adjacent to the C&O Canal National Historical Park. You see, it seems that... hee... it seems that... heh, hold on...

!!! RICH PEOPLE CLICHE ALERT !!!

...Snyder wanted a better view of the river.

And so, to achieve said view, he went ahead and cleared 50,000 square feet of trees. Without permission from the county, which claimed the trees provide erosion protection on that particular slope.

Wow. I abso-fucking-lutely LOVE THIS. You couldn't make this shit up. Could the man be anymore hateworthy?

Well, yeah, he could. I mean, the deceiving people into obstructed-view seat thing alone should tell you something about the man.

I don't think you can appreciate exactly how obstructed the seats are, until you've seen photographic evidence.



Yeah. That's not Photoshopped, people. The fan who bought this season ticket last year was apparently told by the team that "the corner of the end zone would be obstructed by a pillar." Cost for the season: $690/seat. (This year, the seats have been discounted to a mere $440/seat.)

So, yeah... as much as I hate to fall back on an old standby:

Reason #818 why I can't live here anymore

I can't live in a city where The 50 Most Beautiful (People on Capitol Hill) is presented in a completely non-ironic fashion, and I'm expected to take it seriously. It's like living in some kind of parallel universe where the Key Club from my high school went back in time and took over the world.

Wow, who has the unfortunate task of having to put this thing together? "Oooh, this is going to be a tough one. Get me Glamour Shots on the phone, STAT! Okay, we're going to need soft focus here... softer... softer........ softer...."

This dude's my favorite:



"Oh, hey! Didn't see you there. How ya doin'? I'm good, just... just, uh, hanging out, by this... uh... pillar here. Yup. We sure have some great examples of Greek, and/or Roman, architecture, here at the Capitol. Where I work."

I still can't believe they cancelled "Wind on Water"

It is a joyous time throughout the land, for Bolero has been released on DVD.

Bolero was basically a soft-core vehicle for Bo Derek, directed by her husband John, who apparently wanted to exhibit her naked body to the world (obviously, this was before the advent of the Internet). It's also widely considered to be one of the worst films of all time. It easily took the Worst Picture Razzie in 1984, and currently is stationed at #59 on IMDb's Bottom 100 list, one spot ahead of/behind Cool As Ice, a movie... I own... um... on laserdisc.

But don't worry about that! The point is: Bo, as an actress, was, shall we say... problematic. Sure, she's famous for being Dudley Moore's perfect 10, but if you've seen that, you know the illusion is shattered as soon as she opens her mouth. Her awfulness was further exhibited in John Derek's Tarzan, the Ape Man, another pseudo-soft-core job.

But it was Bolero where our vapid heroine proved she couldn't even act her way out of a wet paper bag. As one IMDb commenter says:

Having worked in a theater that exhibited "Bolero" on its first run in 1984, I can attest to the fact that, during most showings, at least a third of the audience walked out before the half-way mark. A lot of people demanded their money back on this one. To be frank, a fair number of them were disappointed because they expected explicit pornography and instead only got soft-core.

Bo is in search of ecstasy--"E-X-T-A-S-Y," as her character says early in the story. Later in the movie, during a fantasy sequence, Bo sees a neon sign that reads, "Extasy." She says, "See? I was right - 'X'," then makes an "X" in front of her face with her two index fingers.

Utterly hilarious. You could definitely make an bonafide argument for Bo as "Worst Actress Ever."

So, yeah.

Bo Derek.

Right now, you're probably thinking: "What does this have to do with anything? This is not related to D.C. in any way. James is totally wasting my time. I could be downloading baby panda porn right now."

Well, let me put it this way (you pervert). Let's say it was your job to pick someone to fill out the board of trustees at the Kennedy Center. Would you pick the worst actress ever? That's what Bush did, apparently as a reward for Derek putting her unique charms toward the 2000 campaign fundraising effort.

I'm sorry... this just seems so backwards. We're talking the preeminent performing arts body in the country... and Ms. "E-X-T-A-S-Y" is on the board? That's like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame deciding that, from now on, Dokken chooses all potential inductees. Completely nonsensical. Or it's like putting Exxon in charge of the EPA. (Wait, did that already happen? I'm so confused.)