Melting.

I know it's a wonderful cliche, but the New Yorker is my favorite magazine. I started reading it a few years ago, but it wasn't until I was on an island in the middle of nowhere that I really started to read them cover to cover. Every week there is at least one story that's fascinating or strange or simply contains a bit of trivia that I can dredge up for later.

This last week in particular had a great piece by one of the staff writers, Nick Paumgarten. He wrote an incredible 16 page article called The Death of Kings about the recent financial crisis. It contained this quote,

"...there must be an endorphin that's triggered by the call-and-response recapitulation of a giant variegated clusterfuck,"

and this one,

"...he welcomes a ritual repricing with the relish of Colonel Kilgore smelling napalm at dawn."

Even if you don't happen to like economics as much as I do you have to admit; that is a fairly entertaining way to discuss a modern economic meltdown.

Boardin'

We were walking down the street when a guy walked out of his house carrying a surfboard under his arm. Not more than 30 seconds later a different guy walked out of the same house carrying a snowboard.

My first reaction was confusion followed immediately by this thought: I really want to go wherever they're going.

Crowded.

I was walking down towards Union Station the other day and as I approached the Heritage Foundation building I saw a big crowd of people out front. I was really excited because I thought they were protesting Heritage for some reason and I love to see a good protest, especially as I strongly dislike the Heritage Foundation.

As I got closer I realized that the crowd of people out front weren't protesting anything, rather they were all waiting in line for pizza next door at Armand's.

For Miles and Miles.

While on the Metro today:

A young guy, probably a teenager, sitting by himself. His headphones are turned up so loud that everyone on the train can hear the music he is listening too. He closes his eyes and raps along out loud to the song.

I really feel that if we tune it, it just might get picked on
Or will it give a fuck about what others say and get gone
The alienators cause we different keep your hands to the sky
Like Sounds of Blackness when I practice what a preach ain't no lie
I'll be the baker and the maker of the piece of my pie
Now breaker, breaker 10-4 can I get some reply?

Strapped to his chest in a BabyBjorn carrier is a small infant dressed in a pink fleece jacket. As he raps, she giggles and they both smile at each other.

I see all this on the Metro today and I know that it will make me smile every time I think about it for the rest of the week.

In the Desert.

Just a few pictures from the hotel we stayed at last weekend while in Palm Springs for a really fun wedding.

The weather was perfect, the wedding was beautiful and the hotel was hip and fun without being too overly obnoxious. (Although you should have seen the beards, tattoos, vintage cameras, weird sunglasses and dogs out at the pool.)

And even when the airlines threatened to complicate things by canceling our return flight to DC while we sat on the runway, we turned bad luck around and made it a chance to meet up with friends in the area for dinner.

A very nice weekend away.

Unsure.

It it seemed like an ominous start to the day. While walking from the Metro to my office I looked up and saw a man wearing only a towel, standing in his hotel window and staring straight down at me. I stopped and stared back at him, unsure of whether this was a good or bad omen.

Clouds swept in and rain started to fall. Still the man stood there staring at me and I stood on the street, my head tilted back with crowds of people walking around me, staring back at him.

Then, the man in the towel waved at me. I waved back. I turned away from the hotel and continued walking down the street.

Maybe today was going to be a good day after all.

They're Just Like Us.

While walking by a group of TSA officers in the Chicago airport on Monday:

"Well you know what, she had better watch her back if she thinks she's gonna tell me to shut up in the break room again."

...and Take Your Money.

When I told friends that I was going shooting at the range in Virginia they would always ask where the range was. It's Virginia I would say, don't they have gun ranges on every block?

Of course this is not exactly true but we did end up in a very strange industrial park that housed our shooting range along with a messianic Jewish synagogue, a tire repair place and a church. I guess it's sort of one stop shopping for the impending apocalypse.

As usual for me, half of the fun of the experience was simply getting to see all of the other people that came out to shoot on a beautiful Saturday. There was the father and son wearing military style gear and speaking in Polish, there was the middle aged woman wearing a We are Virginia Tech shirt, and there was the tall muscular guy who unloaded a full clip of perfect head shots in about 30 seconds the very first time he stepped up to the line.

I can't wait to get to go again.

Guardin' the Garden.

I think it's important to have someone who keeps an eye on your home while you're away, even if that someone is made of plastic and planted in a big ceramic pot in your yard.

Go Caps?

His tuba was painted like a cobra and they were playing Van Halen and Kanye West songs. I stood on the street in my work clothes holding my briefcase while staring at them for the better part of a half-hour.

Fun in the Sun.

It was beautiful this weekend and Lydia and I walked along the Potomac down towards Mount Vernon. Along the way we saw a bald eagle carrying a fish in its talons and I got to perform a non-stop monologue of non sequiturs about whatever the hell popped into my head. Fortunately for me Lydia is very tolerant of my mental illness.

Anyway, we also watched this fat little man pop out from the ground and sun himself on a rock for a while. He didn't seem particularly frightened of people at all. I guess he's never been to a Chuck E. Cheese and seen the children wielding mallets.

Making Believe.

I was at Safeway looking through the neverending aisle of chips when a small boy started walking towards me. He was probably eight or nine and he was walking down the aisle while pretending to shoot at the bags of chips in the top row.

He would take three steps forward and stop, turn his shoulders and pretend to rack a round into a shotgun that he imagined holding in his two hands. After taking careful aim at a bag of chips he would pull the imaginary trigger and let out a low “boom.” He even made the proper motion for recoil in his hands with each trigger pull.

After destroying four sets of chips and progressing down the aisle the boy stopped in front of me. He leveled his make-believe gun at me and took careful aim by closing one eye and looking down what would be the sight. I stood there and stared at him with a blank look, not sure what to think about what I had been observing. We stood there for a moment until I asked the boy what kind of gun he was firing.

“It's a shotgun. A 12 gauge,” he said while still pointing what had become a very real seeming weapon directly at my head.

“Oh,” I replied.

And with that the boy turned his aim from my face to a bag of Dorito's Cool Ranch chips a foot away. He pulled back his finger and nothing happened, no boom and no recoil. I looked at the boy confused. “Must have gotten jammed,” he shrugged and walked on down the aisle towards the salsa.

Teamworking.

Get in Here Quick.

I don't know what goes on in this place, but I want to find out. And in a hurry.

Surplus Defense.

The thing about the guy that works at the Army Surplus store is that you're not quite sure at first if he's actually crazy. You walk in and he has a sign on the door about the pending rapture and you think that maybe he just has a good sense of humor about working in a store filled with camouflaged everything and machetes.

But then, after wandering around the store for a bit you hear the manager have this conversation with a customer:

Customer: "What's that?"

Manager: "Oh, that's called the Sharpie Knife. It's a knife disguised as a Sharpie magic marker."

Customer, looking confused and scared: "Why would you want something like that?"

Manager, a bit upset because he is being asked such a stupid question: "Well, you'd want it if someone attacked you and you needed a knife to defend yourself. That's why."