Taxi Driver(s)

Recently I've had the (subsidized) opportunity to take a number of taxis from downtown DC to Georgetown *shudder* and back again. I've observed that Defensive Driving is not a required subject in whatever coursework is necessary to earn a taxi license. Maybe it's just me getting old, but 60mph heading down K Street in the middle of the afternoon seems a bit much.

I know some of you out there are saying: "But Oh Mighty Caesar, when you were seventeen you wound up in a ditch crawling through broken glass to get away from the torn wreckage that was your motor vehicle...Are you really qualified to be casting stones when it comes to this particular subject?" The answer is probably not, but that has certainly never stopped me before.

And if you ever speak to Our Imperial Majesty like that again I swear to Me that it will be the last thing you ever do.

There also tend to be two types of cabbies: gregarious or taciturn. The gregarious ones can be quite informative: I was told that someone like me (read: as white as the day is long) probably shouldn't wander around Kingston, Jamaica, by myself, but if I know a Jamaican and went with him/her, there'd be no problems. So now you know.

And knowing is half the battle.



Have you ever been sitting at your computer doing whatever it is you do and suddenly you were hit with the intense craving for a smokily delicious combustible confection provided to you by the wonderful people at the R. J. Reynolds Tobbaco Co.? There it was, in your hand, ready to deliver the stimulant of the gods immediately upon ignition...

But there was one problem. The Zippo was allllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way over there, and you were occupied alllllllllllllllllllll the way over here.

Well, friend, never let that happen again with this easy fixit for your personal computer. (Link via hackaday) It's cheap, it's easy to install, and boy-howdy will you impress the deuce/deuce-and-a-half fellas in their mid-30s passing themselves off as very excitable 17-year-old manga-loving girls in the cosplay chatrooms.

Aren't you worth it?

This is a song,

a song about Santa Claus triumphing over the evil that is Dave Matthews.

This song is by the Monolators (link via die puny humans).

My favorite verse, as far as I can make out:

Gates of Hell have opened wide
Santa pushed Dave Matthews back inside
Now there will be no more tears
Santa's bringing back our toys and beer

I don't have the money to do anything interesting, so here I am

Saturday night and I'm sitting at home, writing on ye olde blogge. Poverty, the Bitch Goddess.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm so debt-averse. I have a credit card. Debtors' prison isn't a concern. Must be how I was raised, I suppose.

Right now I'm listening to a mashup of the Hives and the Monkees by Thriftshop XL (which I found on Get Your Bootleg On), if you're interested. It is good.

If you'll direct your attention to the sidebar to your left, you'll notice that some additions have been made. (And right now I'm listening to "Go Motherfucker Go" by Nashville Pussy.) I'm not going to link to the new stuff here because the links are over there <----. If you're too lazy to the move the mouse yonder about half an inch, then there's precious little I can do to help you. William Gibson, author extraordinaire, is blogging again. There's also a link to East Village Radio. They livestream some of the kind of things that I like to listen to, but not all. So far I haven't heard any Motorhead, it's mostly been post-punk and obscure 80s new wave and underground hiphop and an Ella Fitzgerald song. Should I hear the dulcet tones of Lemmy Kilmister's voice, I swear with both hands on The Good Book that I will listen to nothing else.
(Lemmy Kilmister)

The other new links are mostly DC-centric. It's only fitting, since I've lived here for three years now.

"Fun Things to Do in DC" is extremely well written. The subject matter is self-evident, I hope. I have several complaints about this city, but on its worst day, DC can at least say to me: "I'm not Fort Smith Fucking Arkansas." The one instance where Fort Smith trumps DC, and Jackie can testify, is that the parties in the Fort don't suck baLLz. Admittedly, this is informed by my own very particular experience, but where I'm from, the object of a party is to fuck shit up and have a lot of fun while doing it. A party is not for networking or trying to act sophisticated.

Links to the Black Cat and the 9:30 Club blah blah music blah can't afford blah

And finally, Loosely Couple Activities (not DC) and DCeiver (probably DC). Both of these fine folks have shown Our Imperial Majesty the link love. How long this has been the case, I don't know, as I'm not terribly perceptive, but I've noticed now. I didn't even have to pay them anything.

Gentlemen, for your initiative and good taste, you are hereby awarded the Order of the Snoop Dogg Diamond Shocker.

Anybody Remember the "Busey or Nolte?" Game

from this post?

Well, Nolte has a blog.

******************************************************

Are you there, God? It's me, Chulius...

If you have any love in your cold, capricious heart, you will move your child Busey to blog as well. And a real blog, not a fake blog. I'm not some pussy Job who's gonna take a whole truckload of bullshit just for your fucking amusement. Mess with me and I assure you there will be consequences. You're not the only deity in town.

*****************************************************

Nolte blog (blolte?) from defamer

Arriving Late to the Musical Party

First off, I've just said goodbye to the Pater Familiae Caesaris. It was really nice for him to visit, me not having seen him since March or so. Today we made the Gumbo That Conquered A Thousand Nations With Its Awesomenousity. I now have my stockpile ready so that I may survive the bitterly cold Yankee winter.

Onto the subject at hand...

I just got Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes by TV on the Radio. This is a group that Hokmayen was telling me about back when Roscoe the FM was knee-high to a mitochondrion. I finally got around to procuring it, and man-oh-man is it good. As the Diner points out, TVotR tells you up front: "Cover your balls, cause we swing kung fu." It doesn't balls-out rock like I require most of my music to, it's more of a think piece, but don't let that scare you. I seem to recall, but can't for the life of me remember where I saw, someone remark that TVotR is what happens when Williamsburg retro-rockers are weened on Otis Redding. Maybe I didn't see that somewhere and I made it up all by myself. I doubt that, but then again, stranger things have happened. I did call the breakout success of the brazilian cut tanga months before it happened.

Something I've had for a while is Madvillainy by Madvillain, which is itself a collaboration of MF Doom and Madlib. I remember seeing (once again I forget where) this album described as a combination of Jay Z and Pharrell Williams soaked in psychedelic drugs filtered through mud. Let me tell you, this description is total shit. First of all, Jay Z is an absolutely crap MC. Secondly, Pharrell Williams is a sellout bitch. There's a word for people who produce tracks for Britney Spears. That word is "whore." Someone needs to give Pharrell a good choking so he won't forget what happens when Wayne Brady doesn't get what Wayne Brady's due.

Madvillainy is a really good, really weird hiphop album. Madlib is a dj who makes mixing an instrtument capable of complete expression, and MF Doom is a rhymesmyth of the highest caliber. To wit:

"Shots of the scotch from out the square shot glasses
And he won't stop `til he got the masses
And show `em what they know not through flows of hot molasses
Do it like the robot to head spin to boogaloo
Took a few minutes to convince the average bugaboo"

And so on.

Good business.

A couple of things:

Topic A:

That 70's Show has completely, irrevocably jumped the shark. They could've called it quits: Donna and Eric get married and move away; Hyde shanks Jackie in a drunken rage inspired by the Manson Family and gets 20 to life; Kelso is the first documented case of HIV/AIDS in the continental United States; Fez joins the Jonestown cult and is first in the refreshments line. Done and done. Everything wrapped up in a nice little bow.

But no.

They got greedy.

Eric ditches Donna on the wedding day, but she forgives him and they're patching things back together. Donna's mom, Boobsie or Midge or whatever, returns to the show and gets back together with Bob. Hyde finds his really real father and he's black! Kelso fathers a child with Shannon Elizabeth. The arrivals of new characters and/or the arrival of a baby are the most clear-cut symptoms of shark-jumpdom. Damn you Rupert Murdoch. Damn you all to hell.

(That last bit was done in Chuck Heston's Planet of the Apes voice.)

That being said, Laura Prepon is fucking hot with the blonde hair. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer maybe, certainly an atrocious interior decorator, but damn. Eight ways to Sunday, that's all I'm sayin'.

Topic B:

A few of you may remember way back on the chu_rock xanga blog that I expressed puzzlement regarding the issue of online personal ads. The fact that apparently attractive women felt it necessary to take out ads on the internet made me ask questions. What's wrong with the conventional drunken hookup? Is she alone because she's crazy? These, along with a whole slew of chauvinistic thoughts rifled through my brain. Despite the periodic curiousity, I never explored the issue much further.

However, I'm reasonably certain I can spot one that is doomed to be totally unsuccessful. Case in point:

This guy

"Stresspuppy," as he apparently wants to be called. He's today's featured personal on DCist. A "man" looking for a "woman." For "Friendship, Dating, Serious Relationship." Age 31. So far, not too bad. The "Serious Relationship" I think is a little strong for a personal ad of any sort, but not an error that would necessarily cost him the game.

Of course, pretty much everything goes downhill from there. Places he'd rather be? Vegas or Hawaii. This very well could be the elitist in me, but Christ, man, a little imagination couldn't hurt. "I like strippers and drinks with umbrellas!" probably isn't the message most ladies want to read about in potential hookups. He mentions shoulder rubs and back massages in the "why you should get to know me" section. Yes, those are popular things. In my experience though, that's the kind of thing you want to spring on someone in order to awe them with your mad manual technique. Saying "I'm gonna rub yo stank-ass feet" upfront proclaims your sensitivity to the heavens, which is the very reason why it doesn't (and shouldn't) work.

The kicker, the reason I said to myself "Oh no, this can't possibly really be what this guy said in his profile" and made me look in the first place, is this:

Location: "In my bedroom, you'll find" section

He said: "A blanket my mother just made..."

A calamity of this proportion probably hasn't been seen since the firebombing of Dresden in 1945.

When a man is looking for a woman for friendship, dating, or a serious relationship, outside observers should assume that said man wants to see said woman with her clothes off. This is a fact that has been empirically proven many times over the centuries.

I assure you, Stresspuppy, this will
NEVER
EVER
HAPPEN
if you persist in mentioning your mother and your bedroom in even remotely close proximity to one another.

I have a feeling that whatever code the gothamist empire uses to pull its daily personal for its sites is programmed so that once every ten days it will find the single most embarrassing-slash-horrifying thing available and put it front and center for the whole world to see.

Stresspuppy, you poor, dumb bastard.

I welcome my readers' thoughts on this particular subject. I especially welcome the comments of the two or three ladies who are frequent readers floating about out there in the aether, since my outlook on this topic is by nature quite phallocentric. (However, I must ask the ladies to remember that given their gender, their opinions are worth exactly 1/4 those of real people.)

In the unlikely event anyone actually comes to visit me in DC...

please heed these guidelines governing the use of our underfunded and unreliable system of mass transit, courtesy of the Rock Creek Rambler. He also has helpful tips on dealing with DC's taxis, which is more useful than it should be.

Thank you for your attention.

Happy Sniperversary, Everybody!!!

The DCeiver points out that, two years ago today, the great Washington Sniper era began. Oh, what heady, heady times. To quote: "The world was exciting and full of possibilities, not the least of which was the possibility that hot, screaming death was on its way to your skull from across the Applebee's parking lot."

Everyone's eyes were peeled for the enraged Arab guy in the white van who hated Jesus or something, not the two black guys in the red Corolla or Buick or whatever it was. Now, I live in the District proper, not in the suburbs where all of the take-downs went-downs. So, to be perfectly honest, I was never all that concerned. The issue of the standard everyday DC armed-robbery-potentially-escalating-to-homicide was much more immediate for me personally. The whole Sniper thing, while tragic for the victims, always struck me as more of a massive scale middle-class suburban mother reading about the gangs and the "hip-hop" coming from the city to her pristine neighborhood and reacting out of all proportion to what is actually happening around her. I say this because, yes, my mother did the very same thing in many, many different contexts.

And despite me being thirteen years older and a nineteen hour drive away, she did not disappoint. "Don't you go outside!" she'd say when she called. I know she had other prepared remarks, but that's the only one I remember, having zoned out of our conversation until I sensed the topic had changed. My friends in Virginia were only slightly better, although that I will admit was somewhat justified. The admonition to only wear dark clothes when I came to visit was said in a half-joking manner.

In summation, I finish with another (long) quote:

"In our opinion, Mohammed clearly used the October 8 release date of Bon Jovi's latest record "Bounce" as a precipitating event. Muhammed was clearly "halfway there" and "living on a prayer." For "love" he gave it a "shot". Repeatedly. It wasn't going to "make a difference if [he] made it or not." He was a "social disease"-one you could "read about in the papers, in some places it [came] in thirty-two flavors." As many innocent people discovered, "you could call 911, but you can't stop the fun." Muhammed was "wanted-dead or alive." Sometimes "he slept", but sometimes "not for days". He "played for keeps" knowing he "might not make it back." He had "a loaded gun." And there was "nowhere to run." It was his life, it's now or never. Nothing was going to last forever. Shit, dude. In the end, he saw about thirteen faces through has scope. And he rocked them all. Finally, when he was arrested, where did his license plate indicate it was from? Jersey. Rest my case."

After work, I will definitely be wearing my Headshot! t-shirt from Child Labor Graphics to commemorate this august day.

Happy Sniperversary

Oh, and happy bday to Furious Mama, too.