29 December 2009

Oh niner.

We were in New York for new year’s last year. I remember ice skating in Central Park under the falling snow, and I remember my filling my dad’s hotel suite with people playing Mario Party on Rafa’s Wii.

A few weeks later, it was hopey time.










Easy to mock, but it was a really fun long weekend. I had the Audacity of Hops brew (link), and I stood in the cold for hours, and I wish I could do it again.





People moved away in 2009. Too many people spread too thin over the crust of the earth.

For the third time in as many years, we went to Colorado. This time we saw the aspens turning, and I couldn’t help but think of Scooter Libby’s letter to Judith Miller. It’s oddly elegant, isn’t it? “Come back to work – and to life.”

That grad school thing started up.

I got onboard with facebook and twitter, and with the smartphone thing.

Pavement announced their reunion tour.

I heard the best song about the Bush years, but not until Bush had left office.

This year, we celebrate in the heat of Rio. Goodbye, aughts.

23 December 2009

Does god shower?

Dinner at Commonwealth, the return of DK, and scotch eggyness (and cask ales, and scotch-scotchyness) bring on a number of esoteric debate topics, such as whether dinosaurs go to heaven.

More important than discussion of gender construct (like this book or the fact that I was recently "no homo"'d) is the question of whether god showers.

My side: No, why would god shower? Cleanliness is by definition next to him. He doesn't need to shower - he can just, you know, wish himself clean, or wish himself the pleasure associated with a nice hot shower. ("Wish" isn't the right word, but, you know, pretend I used whatever theologian-esque word god would use to make something that is not actual into something actual.)

The other side: Forget about the utilitarian thing! SHOWERS ARE NICE! Not the feeling of being clean, not the feeling after the shower - the actual shower is nice. Why wouldn't god want to feel something nice?

I paused, harumphed. And then said, "But if god is after 'nice,' why wouldn't he just take a shvitz?"

And that, my friends, is how you invoke the ghost of Pussy Bonpensiero to win a debate about whether god showers or not.

22 December 2009

More "remember when?" talk

In the never-ending series of conversations about how people-of-a-certain-age-remember-a-certain-something, my entry for the week is:

Remember when "the crawl" on news coverage was not ubiquitous, but was rather reserved for time periods when there was a lot of stuff going on? I want to say that most news programs went to the 24/7 crawl as a result of 9/11. Am I right about that?

15 December 2009

Today in "Jesus, kids, what part of 'I went to college in the 1990s do you not understand?'"

[Before micro final tonight.]

Classmate KR: How long till we get tonight's grades? Shouldn't they be ready in a week or so?

Classmate ND: Maybe not till January, right?

Me: What are you guys basing this on?

KR: Well, at my college,there was a requirement that final exam results had to be posted on blackboard within 3 days of the final. How long was it at your school?

Me:...see, we didn't get our grades online back then. We had to wait for the mail.

(Predictably, this degenerates into me saying that final grades used to be delivered by pony, in a wax-sealed envelope, and that we rode said pony back to school.)

12 December 2009

It's pleasant...

...how life deteriorates (though that's the wrong word, of course)into a series of weeknight meals that are, more often than not, vegetarian, accompanied by sensible amounts of wine.

09 December 2009

how I communicate with my classmates

Email sent yesterday:

Dear Young 'Uns,

Back when I was in the prime of my youth - before Lauryn Hill went solo, but well after Naughty by Nature's heyday - we used to do this thing called "pre-gaming." Do you kids still have that?

See, during the heady days that opened Clinton's second term, you could buy a pack of cigarettes for less than two dollars, minimum wage was about $5.15 an hour, and everyone had to watch tv when their shows were on instead of after the fact because the Internet was barely useful. We would call each other on landlines, and then come together to listen to cassette tapes while we enjoyed a libation or two before the start of whatever function we were attending. When the song we liked was over, we had to REWIND THE TAPE, unless someone had had the foresight to put "Red red wine" by UB40 or "Once in a lifetime" by the Talking Heads twice on the same side of a tape. Sadly, few of us ever did have that foresight.

In anticipation of the merriment this coming Thursday evening (namely, the GPPI holiday party), I am suggesting that you kids stop myspacing your tweets and recording your auto-tuned albums for half a night and join in on some pre-gaming.

Suggested location is XXXX on P street because apparently they run a BOGO on cocktails during happy hour from 4 to 7 and I think they're always empty. If you're not sure where that is, please consult a PHONE BOOK like we used to do back in the day, and then find yourself a map or a knowledgeable person who can point you there.

Time...6 pm sound ok? You know, before the advent of cell phones, you never had conversations that consisted entirely of "Hey, it's me, I'll be there in ten minutes." No. If someone was late to meet you, you just had to shut up and wait. Which you did while smoking, because it was all the rage back then.

06 December 2009

The aughts: best of.

Besy new Dylan tunes of the 2000s: Workingman's blues and Mississippi.

Best concept/story album: The Sunset Tree, by the Mountain Goats. (Close second: Aimee Mann's The Forgotten Arm. Separation Sunday falls to third because of the band's descent into self-parody.)

Best new label: Soundway. Honorable mention: Numero.

Decade-defining career arc: Wilco. From stratospheric to afterthought. (also: Pixies? Also, Matt Drudge.)

SNL host of the decade: Justin Timberlake. Peyton Manning is a close second.

Footballer of the decade: Ronaldinho Gaucho? (I'm biased, of course, but here's my logic: it has to be someone who has achieved at the club/league, club/continent, and national side/world cup level. Zidane is unfortunately a decent vote, but he disqualifies himself by getting sent off in the final match of 2006. Plus, his crowning achievement was in 1998. The 2006 Italian team may be the least talented team ever to win a World Cup, so they have no one in the running. Kaka might be another vote, but his role in the 2002 title was minimal. And if you put him in there, well, why give someone like Didier Drogba the shaft?)

Quarterback of the decade: Peyton again. Brady won more rings, but we're talking individual accomplishments.

Baller of the decade: Kobe. Unfortunately.

Food of the decade: Sushi. Because you can get it in landlocked states, and in supermarkets. Not good things, necessarily, but unlikely, 10 years ago, to think that supermarkets in Indiana would sell sushi.

Beer of the decade: Unibroue's La Fin du Monde, followed closely by Dogfishhead's 90 Minute IPA.

Album I just don't get from this decade: SMiLE by Brian Wilson.

1980s movie of the decade: Robocop as a new critique of Haliburton. Dick Jones = Dick Cheney.

19 November 2009

loyalty, flawed.

Last night's Wizards game was as fun a game as I've seen at the Verizon Center. The house was packed, the Cleveland frontrunners were duly marginalized, and the Wizards got a semi-meaningful (but badly needed) win.

Because my vitriol for Cleveland frontrunners is severe, I couldn't shut up about it all night. Except that I never considered the company. I was there with a friend, JH, whose loyalties are decidedly fluid. While I deplore the kind of sports fan LeBron James is - he is a Chicago Bulls, New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys fan - JH would say that successful teams should be rewarded with additional fans.

In this framework, loyal fans who keep supporting losing teams are enablers - complicit in their own misery by not abandoning the teams they love. I have a hard time seeing that, seeing as how I view sports fandom as a grim and desperate battle against the possibility of happiness, but I'm willing to believe that I'm just wrong.

JH, to wit, has an overarchingly difficult set of sports loyalties. I do think that the freedarko attitude is legit - the idea that for some watchers of the game - basketball in this case, but you could say the same for most American sports and for European soccer - the compelling drama has nothing to do with the team name on the jersey, and everything to do with the battle gifted athletic individuals are waging against themselves in an effort to express their personalities through sport. Everything about that freedark perspective is interesting to me, and in the age of free agency, it's hard to think in manichean team-or-nothing terms. There are some guys I just like. Donovan McNabb - I just like the guy. The three guys who formed the core of the 1990 Dutch world cup side - Van Basten, Rijkaard, and Gullit. Chris Paul. Reggie Wayne. The list goes on and on.

So, maybe JH is right. Your team doesn't torture you - they just get boring, and you go with someone else. Nick Hornby alluded to this during the 2002 World Cup - his son not getting that he was supposed to support England, and instead taking an interest i the fates of all the players who played for his favorite club side (Arsenal, right?) There's something cosmpolitan about that. But it also seems like trading your family in, or something.

The other interesting issue JH raised is whether a sport is better when the best team wins or not. He was happy about the Yankees winning the World Series - they were the best team all season, and the playoffs actually, for once, benefitted the best team in the league. This is of course the opposite of the "any given Sunday" ethic of the NFL, or the thrilling fact that soccer is cruel and unfair. I'm totally agnostic about the right answer here, but part of me thinks that if the point of a sport is to be predictable, then...well, I'm not sure there is a point then. That, as the sports bloviators love to say, is why you actually have to play the game: because the better team doesn't always win. Right?

09 November 2009

Scattered things

1. My dad just got the international kindle.This doesn't sound very impressive, until he pointed out to me that this was the first gadget he has pre-ordered and received, in Rio, on the day of its release. He half expected it not to work as advertised. But it does. And people in Italy, Portugal, Australia and so on all report the same. Think of what this takes, logistically. Amazon had to negotiate contracts with cellular carriers in all of those countries. They negotiated subscriptions with newspapers in those countries. They worked with customs officials to get the devices delivered on the right day. And these are not countries with low entry barriers for new technology. These are places with entrenched bureacracies, and yet - Amazon pulled it off. Impressive.

2. With TARP and with health insurance reform, I don't understand the objection to oversight. I hear conservatives saying the money shouldn't have been spent, but then there's all this indignation about the oversight.

3. I've said it before and I will say it again: conservatives equate government intervention with lack of freedom. But a society where people are reluctant to take new jobs or follow their dreams for fear of loss of health insurance is a less free society too.

4. Wizards are off to a bad start, but I can live with it. It would be easier to swallow had opening night not been so great. In any case, in the world of things that I hate, a friend not too long ago asked me with whom I would rather get stuck on a deserted island for the rest of my days: Maradona or LeBron James. Sigh. LeBron didn't go to college; he probably hasn't read a book. Maradona may be a greasy turd, but he would at least have interesting (though shallow and predictably old-guard Latin American leftist) opinions.

5. Unibroue / La Fin du Monde.

02 November 2009

Halloween on the 42

We roll through Dupont Circle, past a tall patrician-looking white guy dressed as a sheik in an outfit that could have come out of a Tintin book.

Me: Isn't that kind of racist?
Ms. AC: Why?

Just then, the bus rides past a group of well-dressed middle-eastern men standing outside of a restaurant.

Ms. AC: See, that guy's wearing a turban too.

20 October 2009

God bless our little civil war*

* see Joe Henry.



I haven't had much to say about the 2016 Olympics being awarded to Rio because like any natural-born Carioca, I'm filled with pessimistic trepidation. Tell anyone from Rio that you know someone who just visited there, and the first reaction you get will be, "Oh god - please tell me they weren't mugged or worse."

As a kid, I remember going out one night - somewhat rebelliously - with my friend Julio. We wanted to get something to eat, there was nothing in my dad's apartment, and so we just went out. This was not often done at our age for some reason. We didn't know why. It was 9:30 on a Sunday or something. And we were a certain age and a certain size: the street kids who could have mugged us a few years back were 3, 4 inches shorter than us now. We did pull-ups and some lifting. We felt pretty bad-ass, even knowing that in Rio, the concept of a good neighborhood or good street is awfully fluid. But going out was a statement of normalcy, I guess, or something like that.

So out we went. And no, this story doesn't end in a mugging or a robbery. It ends with us - two skinny teenagers wearing t-shirts and flip-flops, feeling invincibly middle class - scaring two older women. They heard us walking, heard us talking tough like characters in Rio's version of a Bruce Springsteen song or something, and turned, frightened to death, convinced that we were the very bad guys that our posturing was meant to hold off. As we passed them, Julio sighed and said, "This is what I hate about Rio. You hear someone behind you, in flip flops, when it's late at night, and you're afraid."

There was a recent New Yorker article about the gangs of Rio. I can't link to it, but the author has a pretty captivating two-minute audio slide show here. The keeper line in the article to me was a quote from Alfredo Sirkis about the disparity between rhetoric and actions:
It's all Scandinavian talk in an Iraqi reality.


I thought about the line as I read part of an email from my dad:
I'm not much for giving advice advice these days because I am completely disappointed with life in Riode Janeiro. Everything seems wrong. This civil war is developing an unpleasant momentum as the confrontations escalate. And I find that life is ever more restricted, as we have to choose carefully where to go, and at what time to go out. But this has been more pertinent for me than for Laila. She leaves anytime, to go anywhere, even very late at night. Me, I need a few months away next year.


And that is as good a reminder I can summon as to why life in Rio is beautiful and impossibly difficult. The news continues to be bad. Helicopter shot down, more-dead-than-a-bad-month-in-Gaza bad. The city that, goes the song lyric, greets you with open arms in postcards, but with clenched fists in real life is waiting for its time to shine. Brazilians also like to say that Brazil is the country of the future - and it always will be. Here's hoping that the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games are what helps Rio finally turn the corner.

12 October 2009

Best comment I've heard about the Nobel thing so far

KF: I mean, this is like giving me a PhD even before I’ve written a dissertation. You know, sure, the thing isn’t done, but I have a really good abstract!

M: But remember that the student who went right before you stabbed all the professors.  

08 October 2009

When I was a little lothario

Sometime back in 1990 or 1991, my parents sent me to spent to the States to spend a month with a family friend and her son, who was about my age. They thought this would be a positive experience or some such thing. Me, I saw it in terms of having an entire month where I would have access to things like stores that sold Stephen King novels in English, American candy, and most importantly, Nintendo games. Buying these things as imports in Rio was prohibitively expensive, and typically when you knew someone going to the States, you considered yourself really lucky if you could put in an order for, say, Whatchamacallit chocolate bar, or your own copy of Contra (so you didn’t have to hang out with that annoying kid who lived two buildings over just to play it, and that kid always got surly when you were better than him anyway, so you couldn’t ever make it past the third or so level without him throwing a tantrum.)

 

To be sure, the perks of the trip were many. I read a ton of Stephen King novels during that month. I drank a ton of apple cider (a product that for some reason you couldn’t get in Brazil and which I absolutely loved.) I ate donuts and I became acquainted with American tv shows like “The Wonder Years.” But the apple cider…seriously, I drank it until I realized that it wreaks havoc with the digestive process, and then I stopped completely. I bought games like Super Dodge Ball, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Gradius, and so forth. This was also my first taste of an East coast winter, being that the family friend lived in Columbia, MD. It was colder than anything I had ever experienced. I remember my first heavy snowfall. I had to buy boots, gloves, a hat. I was so cold at first that we had to go get long johns, and I didn’t even understand what they were at the time. I was like, “But I already have pants…what do I need these for? And why are they so tight?”  

 

I had left summer in Rio behind, and I was shocked to find out that American kids only got two weeks off at the end of the calendar year. Kidsitting arrangements being what they were, I actually had to go to a junior high school for a few weeks during my vacation. (Interestingly – I was here on a tourist visa, and I went to a public school for three weeks. I’m not sure how that worked out, now that I think about it.) I discovered that I was way ahead of the class in math – we spent weeks learning stuff I had learned the previous year. I knew very little about American history, of course, but I did fine in most of the other classes. I didn’t do so well navigating the social setting of an American junior high, but I have relatively few emotional scars to show from that time, so I guess it wasn’t too traumatic. I remember spending an unseemly amount of time picking out a Trapper Keeper. “This is going to be very important, you want to pick something cool,” my friend told me. “Grown-up. Something with sports cars on it, probably.” “But,” I would reply, “this one’s got a tiger on it.” “No,” he would say, “that might as well be one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You need the one with the sports car.” 

 

What I remember most about this trip isn’t really the month I spent in Columbia, Maryland. It’s the flight from Rio to Columbia. See, my parents and my grandmother in particular subscribed to the notion that you get dressed up for flights. I had to wear my finest clothing, lest I appear to be some sort of slovenly indigent. This meant dress pants, dress shoes, and a belt. For a twelve year old male, wearing dress shoes and a belt is a fate worse than death, basically. It also meant, however, that I had to wear my “finest” dress shirt. The shirt that was reserved for baptisms and weddings and Christmas. And the shirt in question was a gold silk shirt.

 

What I remember about the shirt is not how repellent it must have looked, but rather the fact that I learned a valuable lesson about how good of a conductor silk is. Stepping outside of the airport when I arrived – setting foot in 0 C temperatures for the first time since I was a baby living in Chicago – the entire shirt basically turned to ice on my body. One second my body temperature was normal, and the next I was gasping for air as if I’d been plunged into Arctic waters. It sucked.

 

And what set me off on these memories was Ms. Abstract Citizen, the other day, watching someone being interviewed on Good Morning America – he had saved someone from a fire, or something? And he was wearing a shiny silk shirt. She paused the show so we could admire his shirt, and I suddenly flashed back to that month, and more importantly, to the moment where I thought my lungs had frozen, all because of my gold pink shirt.

 

 

 

07 October 2009

When musicians devalue their own back catalog

Phish, Pavement, Pixies. All “P” bands, all extremely important to me through the last decade and this decade, and all are currently reunited in some capacity.

 

Phish’s reunion is clearly not a nostalgia act – rather, it seems as though the post-hiatus dreck from the early 2000’s will be the asterisk for an otherwise pretty consistent career. I say “consistent” because if you liked them before, you probably like them now. If you didn’t like them before, you probably still don’t like them.

 

The question of value with Phish comes into play with how most fans heard the band in the 1990s: we had a few precious soundboard recordings that gave us arbitrary snapshots of performances that we probably overvalued because it was simply harder to get your hands on good concert recordings before the Internet. The NYT did a great piece on the Grateful Dead’s legendary 1977 shows, and meekly suggested that it’s possible that so many people like those shows so much because there was an abundance of high quality recordings from that time period (not that the band wasn’t also playing at a really high level at this point – this has been pretty well established.)

 

Two things happened since many of us started collecting Phish shows on Maxell XL-II cassettes: one, the aforementioned Series of Tubes known as the Internet brought us bittorrent. The other is that the band opted to begin recording every new performance through LivePhish.com. Since I have a basket full of cassette tapes in the trunk of my car, this creates a strange situation where I almost certainly overvalue some cassettes (Eugene, 4/22/92, for example) simply because of the format. Curiously, though, the new shows tend to be good enough that they make older shows sound less…remarkable. Part of this is a function of the fact that the band is proving they are “back” by over-playing some of their big-show tunes (Harry Hood, Mike’s->Groove, etc.) On the one hand, the move is necessary to win back skeptical fans like me who hated most of the post-hiatus pablum from 2003 to 2004. On the other hand, how do I value a “Mound” from 2009 as compared to a mound from 1994? I have no idea.

 

Pavement’s reunion is promising: it’s a one-off, they say. There’s no plan to attend to the band’s catalog. It will be a straightforward, “hey, everyone’s still alive, we can still play our songs, these are good songs, why not do it?” sort of reunion. It’ll stand completely apart from the band’s previous body of work, I hope, though it will (I also hope) remain in the glorious shambolic tradition that characterized Pavement shows.

 

Now, the Pixies…a tough one. They are venturing ever closer to wedding band territory. They pretended they were going to record new material, but instead, the nostalgia act has been chugging along since 2004, like a loveless marriage that lives on out of habit. Now they are playing an all-Doolittle show – hey, that sounds great to me, considering that Doolittle may be the finest single recording from the 1990s – but it’s a little desperate. It’s a little too clearly backward-looking. And the end result is somewhat cheapening, to me, the original output. It was tons of fun to see the band in 2004 – the crowd was old, eclectic, free, everything I expected from a Pixies crowd (having been too young to see them the first time around). But now? Like I said, it seems desperate, in a “do you still like us?” kind of way.

 

In this manner they sort of resemble Liz Phair, whose insistence on putting out records after “WhiteCholateSpaceEgg” is just absurd. I am less likely to listen to “Exile in Guyville” as a result of this fact. I hate that, I really do, because “Mesmerizing” came up on my ipod today and I remembered how much I love that album.

 

Of course, the only person who defies analysis in this respect is Bob Dylan, whose body of work increases in relevance as a result of his complete lack of interest in it. It’s not mindful, on his part: you get the sense he has fully digested his past and is just happy not to look back. To use a baseball analogy, Liz Phair and the Pixies seem, in hindsight, like minor league call-ups who got really hot for a couple of months. Mackowiak, Chris Shelton…the list is long. Maybe they love baseball, maybe they don’t. They just happened to be pretty good at this one thing for a stretch of time, so naturally, they milked it. Dylan, on the other hand, had peaks and valleys. But there’s no doubt the man was born to swing a bat.

 

01 October 2009

General immigration: things to remember for whenever The Great Debate happens

The U.S. is definitely tightening the screws on H1-B employers, though this really just amounts to doing a better job of enforcing existing laws. It's consistent with what Obama promised during the campaign, and what's more attractive about it, it goes after the employer rather than the employee. We'll know in the coming months whether companies targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are known to be repeated violators, or whether they'll spend their time seemingly harassing companies that happen to hire someone who's not American.

This in the aftermath of some interesting recession-type news: immigration (legal immigration, that is), seems to be down across the board, which means filing fees are going up. There's a bit of Gov 2.0 window-dressing to help petitioners, but transparency sometimes only helps reveal the extent of your dysfunction. (By the way, funny to note the comment about how it might be "several weeks" before you find out that your fingerprints didn't take. Try six months.)

Amidst these developments, some truly touching stories: a sad story about a greencard scam ending in murder; and an uplifting tale about a doctor whose emotionally devastating volunteer work includes evaluating the survivors of torture who are applying for refugee status.

29 September 2009

facebook, blogs, twitter

I had a thought the other day that I couldn’t fit into a facebook status update, so I thought, “Oh, right, that’s what a blog is for. Also, to be read by fewer people, that’s also what a blog is for.” I’m signing up for a twitter account at some point because it seems like a great way to consolidate breaking news into a single area. Google reader is sort of cumbersome for that, and I don’t want to clutter up my gmail with all these alerts (you should see the metro feed – 8 emails a day about some track maintenance at Fort Totten.) So, a twitter feed seems like a good way to go. But I really can’t imagine re-calibrating my communication needs down to the point where the decision tree begins with “will it fit into a tweet?”  The point is, I guess I can’t imagine myself using twitter as a two-way street. But maybe this is just some limitation on my part.

 

The funny thing is that at one point in my life, I was definitely an early adopter. Since cell phones became de rigueur, I’ve become a bit of a luddite for some reason. Late on cell phones, late on SMS, late on ipods, late on bittorrent, late on facebook, late on blogging, late on tivo, late on smartphone…and inevitably, I find that the new technology invariably confers upon me some degree of freedom withoutwhich life would be a lot less convenient or fun. (Valeu, Babo - good catch.) So, what is this curmudgeonly need to disparage, belatedly adopt, and then lavish with praise?

 

In other news, it’s been an active few weeks in immigration news. Not personal immigration news, but like, immigration matters in the news. Post to follow later this week.

 

 

28 September 2009

The microeconomics of "Me and Bobby McGee"

The other night in our micro class, the professor rendered the line “I’d trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday” in mathematical notation - that is, expressed as a consumer preference, where the sum total of all days numbered little t + 1 (today + 1) up until the death of the speaker (big T) would not be preferable to any element from the data set t – 1 (because the line doesn’t specify a yesterday, it suggests that any yesterday would fit the criteria.)

 

The professor averred that this line made sense in the context of Janis Joplin’s life, particularly considering that number of tomorrows would probably be severely limited by her extracurriculars. But as I kept whispering, under my breath, the line was written by Kris Kristofferson, who maybe didn’t necessarily expect to have a whole lot more tomorrows than Janis – but who nonetheless did.

 

This changes the value proposition significantly. The consumer is now trading a much greater number of tomorrows for one single yesterday. I believe this would put the consumer at one of the extreme ends of the indifference chart, where a large number of goods must be given up one axis in order to realize a very small gain on the other axis.

 

As with race dialogue, remember: when applying microeconomics to popular songs, the speaker matters.

25 September 2009

how long does it take to invent a civil right?

Around twenty years, apparently. The whole article is worth a read, as it gives a nice historical perspective of the relationship between both parties and the courts. But the next time you hear that canard about “judicial activism” being the provenance of the left, remember this quote:

For many decades, into the nineteen-eighties, it was widely agreed among judges and scholars that the right to bear arms belonged only to militias, and thus the Second Amendment imposed no limits on the ability of states and localities to enact gun-control laws. Warren E. Burger, the former Chief Justice (and no liberal), said that any other view of the law was a “fraud,” and Robert Bork (ed. note: !!!!!), the conservative hero, said much the same thing. But Meese and his allies in the National Rifle Association were indefatigable in pushing an opposing interpretation, and their position became widely adopted, first in the Republican Party and then among many Democrats. Finally, in 2008, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Antonin Scalia (who was appointed while Meese was attorney general), struck down a District of Columba gun-control law as a violation of the Second Amendment. A fringe position – a “fraud” – two decades earlier had become the law of the land.

24 September 2009

about the census worker found dead in Kentucky

Regarding this sad story - given the incoherence and idiocy that permeate the current strain of anti-guv’mint talk, is it any surprise that the heinous act was committed in a national park? You know, on federally protected land?

ugh, john phillips.

For a while now, I’ve really enjoyed John Philips’ album “The Wolf King Of L.A.” – I’d even taken to using the opening track, “April Ann,” to wrap up singer songwriter-y mixes. But what the hell am I supposed to do with the allegations (none of which I’m inclined to disbelieve) that he raped his own daughter and forced her into a decade-long sexual relationship, even impregnating her? Ugh. Gifted artists that are flawed humans are fine with me, but I tend to draw the line at truly evil.

 

 

 

22 September 2009

"Land of Many Uses"

From 20090921 colorado


The Abstract Citizen household feels really lucky about having been out to Colorado three times in the past three years. It’s one of those places that is simultaneously way overhyped and completely underrated. We’ve been to the northwest corner (Steamboat Springs), the southwest (Mancos), through the Kansas-like southern plains, and into the craggly center of the state. We saw that Focus on the Family (aka, worst organization known to man) gets a brown highway sign in Colorado Springs, indicating that it’s a place of interest or of cultural importance. We’ve thrown snowballs in June and sat in steamy hot springs surrounded by old creepy men too happy to embrace the “clothing optional” rules. We’ve had chimichangas in Gunnison – well, everyone should have chimichangas at the Blue Iguana in Gunnison – and we’ve had deep-fried soft-boiled eggs at Kim and Garren’s.

One of the stark reminders you get that the West is not like the East is the fact that you’re basically free to die in any number of ways out West. A simple scenic overlook on the east coast would have tall tamper-proof child-safe fences and reduced speed limits. Out west, if you want to drive off a cliff, that’s your call. “Addition by subtraction,” said Mike. There’s something refreshing about a bunch of policy-makers trusting basic human instincts rather than trying to create barriers that dull self-preservation.

From 20090921 colorado


And I’m very aware of the fact that this is all totally cliché. It’s a big state, it’s less developed. This has tremendous upside, sure, but what about all the chain restaurants? The sprawl?

From 20090921 colorado


I don’t really know what to make of the state. It seems perfectly rorschachian, as the signs proclaim. “Land of Many Uses.” Overdeveloped neighborhoods, mountains, statues of Saint Mary, children named after Grateful Dead songs, culs de sac in suburbs named after parts of the wilderness, brewers, meth, dogs, mountains that never look as impressive in pictures, and peril in spades. It was not so long ago, Colorado.

From 20090921 colorado

12 September 2009

Is it precocity or precociousness?

Either way, after many years of always being among the youngest to do ______, it's somewhat of a relief to be among the oldest people in my class now. I did find one person, so far, who is older than me. On hearing us discuss our ages, a much younger guy across the table from us rolled his eyes and said, "Christ. Why don't you guys go watch The Breakfast Club or something?"

And maybe it's just because I'm wearing a backpack now, but I keep getting carded! Ok, maybe it's because we were at (ugh) The Tombs, but still - I'll take it.

31 August 2009

"She."

I'm finding that a number of books that discuss the role of policy analysts default to referring to this person as "she." This seems elegant to me for some reason, though I can't quite say why, nor do I want to hazard a guess that would find me knee-deep in discussions of gender roles. But for the record, I like it.

26 August 2009

Believing I had supernatural powers...

Indeed, I slammed into a brick wall, at least in terms of having time on my hands. More than previous summers, this one just flew by, and I have very little to show for it. We undertook some massive home improvement projects at Abstract Citizen HQ, and we expect that work to be completed no later than Labor Day weekend. I went to see Phish for the first time in over 5 years, and determined that the band is indeed Phish (and not the dreck I saw at Coventry.) I, uh, am in grad school? Orientation is under way, and I have to go to "math camp" a few nights next week.

So, life has been busy, and I fell into one of those ruts where I didnt' post here, and I started to think that I needed a really momentous post to break the silence when, in fact, all I have to do is come here and write something.

And here's my something: I will really miss a pair of shoes I recently took to Goodwill. I bought them in 2003, and have re-soled them a number of times. They were my go-to shoes, and now, they are gone. Sadly.

Ooh, and here's another something: this health care "debate" is ludicrous. Chuck Grassley, you know better than this. More thoughts on that later, perhaps.

24 July 2009

Is Whitlock really this much of a bastard?

Far be it from me to want to keep the Erin Andrews story on people's minds any longer than it needs to be, but why would Jason Whitlock labor to find a silly race angle to this story? Not only does he directly blame Deadspin for the awful incident - despite the fact that Will Leitch wrote one of the more insightful pieces wondering whether the male sports blogosphere created an atmosphere where this horrific act might have been condoned - but he seems to somehow suggest that Pacman Jones, of all people, is the real victim here:

The Pacman Jones stripclub video served no journalistic purpose. It was aired on ESPN and everywhere else solely to titillate and entertain. The raw footage didn't help us understand the crime. There was no interaction between Jones, his entourage and the club's bouncers.

There were black asses shaking and black entertainers demonstrating how fools depart from their money. It was a reality version of Spike Lee's underrated movie Bamboozled.

America couldn't get enough of the Pacman video until Erin Andrews was caught dropping it like it was hot in front of a hotel mirror.

ESPN won't cover that story. It's climbed up on some high horse and is passing judgment on the New York Post for running pictures of ESPN's sideline Barbie.


I haven't read enough of his work to know, but he sounds disturbed or something. Is he really saying being caught undressed, unaware, by some pervert, amounts to "dropping it like it's hot"? And that Pacman Jones has the same expectation of privacy when he's throwing money around in a stripclub as anyone else should have IN THEIR HOTEL ROOM?

Sadly, had his column been about ESPN's sanctimonious silence in reference to the accusations against Ben Roethlisberger, he might have had a legitimate point about race and sports. What a jerk.

22 July 2009

The five worst songs a major league player could use as their batting song

1. Anything by Joanna Newsom, Tori Amos, or Bjork. Imagine Newsom screeching Saaaaaaaaaaaadie over the PA as children burst into tears and dads wearing blackberry holsters cover their ears. Bjork – bonus if you get to play the video for Human Behavior, with its oversized animals running around, or that weird one where she’s in love with her cat. Terrifying and avant-garde at the same time! (And if you haven’t see the cat video, stop whatever you’re doing and watch it right now.)

2. Christmas music in general, but in particular a sad, resigned version of “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” or something by Nat King Cole. This will be particularly dissonant on a hot August afternoon.

3. Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails. (Alternate, from the same album: Cash’s cover of Will Oldham’s I see a darkness.)

4. Any version of Space by the Grateful Dead.

5. Trois Gymnopedies by Erik Satie.

10 July 2009

Summer in America: A couple of baseball notes

The first game of the Nats-Astros double-header in Houston last night featured a number of interesting things. The game was the continuation of a game that started in Washington last May, but was interrupted by rain. The Nats won the continued game last night – technically a home game for the Washington – in Houston.

The winning pitcher was Joel Hanrahan, who has since been traded to Pittsburgh. So, he picked up a win for a team that he no longer plays for. (His first win of the season, no less! Godspeed, Hanrahan!)

And the winning run was scored by…? Nyjer Morgan, who was acquired by the Nationals recently in the trade that sent Hanrahan to Pittsburgh. So, the game was won on a run by a baserunner who wasn’t on the team back in May, and the pitcher who won the game no longer plays for the winning team. And, again, the Nats pick up a home win, but in Houston.

Reminds me of the time last basketball season that Miami and Atlanta were playing in ATL. With about a minute to go, if memory serves, Shaq – who then played for the Heat – was ejected for committing his sixth foul. Except it was really his fifth,
because the refs screwed up. The game ended, Atlanta won.

And then Miami protested. The NBA, rightly, decided that the last minute of the game should be re-played, because Miami was unfairly deprived of Shaq’s presence in the game. For months, if you looked at the NBA scoreboard, you would see that this game still hadn’t ended. Kind of fun and bizarre. When they were able to re-schedule the game, both teams did ready to do battle, except that Shaq was no longer a Miami Heat player. They had traded him to Phoenix between the original and the re-scheduled date. So, the wrong being righted – Shaq’s absence – was, uh, not really righted.
If an American sports fan can accept these absurd scenarios – why are ties in soccer so hard to understand?

06 July 2009

A "habitual" drunkard? What if you're more of an "inadvertent" drunkard?

Check out question 22 on page 8.

The mind races with possible follow-up statements:

"Yes, that was a bad night, but I stopped doing shots after that."

"I was HAPPY! I was a HAPPY drunk!"

"Sure, but then again...if alcohol weren't so delicious, we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?"

And so on. (But for the record, USCIS, in case you're reading, the answer is no. Not a nazi, not a drunkard. Ok?)

30 June 2009

The interview: part three

(This is part three; it makes a lot more sense after you've read parts one and two.)


"Well, that's a relief," says Agent G on his way back into his office.

We look back - snap back, really - looking to see if his face is screaming "green card" yet. And quickly I wonder, "With whom did he just meet? Is there a protocol, or does he go talk to someone and say something like, 'So, I've got this couple in here - I think they're for real, everything seems right, but I can't find his OPT stuff. Do we think we screwed this up? Or is he probably ok? I could just tell them to come back another time if we need to see it...'"

And somewhere it hits me that this guy - he's not giving us a hard time. This is by far the nicest and most congenial interaction I've had with anyone in the USCIS or State department apparatus. The tension - the conflict - is entirely on our side of the table.

This guy isn't at all like that jerk at the US Consulate in Brasilia (which bears the name of the Secretary of State, Robert Dulles, of Dulles Airport fame!) who went off on me - all because my dad's secretary in Rio had booked my interview appointment for me. You should know, to share in my complete fury, that you had to use an arcane phone system to book the interview, that the phone system didn't have an international access number, and that once in Brazil, I would have been stuck there until the interview took place (4-6 weeks after it is scheduled, depending on the season.)

"You are old enough to book your own appointments, aren't you?" he asked me in broken Portuguese, but using borderline baby-phrasing (you'w'a' big boy, awen't you?). "The text on the site doesn't give an option for scheduling from abroad," I answered in perfect English. "Well, that's not possible, because I wrote that copy," he answered, in slightly accented English. Suddenly becoming aware of the power structure, I answered, simply, "I'm sure I misread it, then, and I assure you, it will not happen again. I don't enjoy visiting Brasilia anyway."

No, our guy was nothing like that jerk. He wasn't trying to keep me out - and there was no ego on display. He simply wanted to help an American citizen and her spouse settle into their life together here in her country of origin. Suddenly, we understood that we were getting the green card, that all would be fine. "Now," he added pleasantly, nodding toward our wedding album. "Do you guys have some pictures you'd like to show me?"

All of a sudden, it was more like a dinner party than a federal office. We told stories, named people in pictures (I got Sasha's grandmother's name wrong!), and generally had a great time for the next twenty or so minutes. At some point he let it slip that he'd be stamping my passport and that we'd be ok, and we took it in stride, just trying to keep the interview moving forward.

When it came for him to stamp my passport, he showed a completely different side. We had already noticed that this guy was like us - he probably chuckles over "Stuff White People" like and watches "Top Chef" - but now it really came out. "Ok, so, I'm gonna stamp it, but...oh, I'm so bad at this part. I don't think I do this often enough. Ok, so, where's my calendar? The stamp is good for exactly 365 days, so...that means the day BEFORE today's date next year, right? So, June 3 of...2010. Right?"

We smile and try to seem agreeable. He returns the passport to us.

"Wait, can I see that again? I'm just...not used to this or something. I just don't want you to get into trouble if you use that to travel before you get the green card..."

We hand it back over. Then, he tries to ask a few closing questions, but his mind is clearly...unfocused. "Ok, so, I'm going to ask for your passport just ONE MORE TIME, and then if I ask for it again, tell me 'no,' ok? I just want to be super sure that it's right."

He glances at it, and then again at this calendar. Rising suddenly, he says, "Well, that's it. Let's get you out of here before I find an excuse to look at it again." He walks us to the door, and stops. "I was lying. Let me just look at it one more time, ok?"

By this point, we really don't care. I doubt we'll be leaving the country in the next sixty days, and we're just eager to get on with our day - our day in which, as it turns out, I became a lawful permanent resident after years of legal wrangling and forms and fees and lawyers and detours. We get back in the smart car, draw our usual share of glances, and head out, back into a world that was unlargely unchanged by that morning's events.

28 June 2009

so, video-chatting?

I'm liking this 21st century thing. Having participated in a video chat for the first time ever - and only about 8 years or so after the rest of the humanity! - I strongly encourage everyone I know to get a webcam.

25 June 2009

RIP.

Michael Jackson is in the hospital.

I admit that I have had long internal debates about how to prepare for the inevitable deaths of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and other such sad-bastard types. I have no idea what Michael Jackson tune would be playing if I were to sit down for a melancholy memorial glass of scotch in his name, though.

22 June 2009

"To your point" and "it is what it is"

Over the past four months or so, I think I have heard the phrase “to your point” or “to so-and-so’s point” as an introductory clause more than at any other point in my life. I even heard Alexi Lalas use it on ESPN in discussing soccer. When did this phrase become a standard-issue conversational crutch?

I dislike it because it seems that if we are having a conversation, and if you plan to depart from a point I just made, the burden is on you to indicate that we are switching gears. Otherwise, I will assume that whatever you say is “to my point.”   

As for “it is what it is”…didn’t this begin as a malapropism, a phrase uttered by a coach or by Scott McClellan in a presser, and which subsequently underwent a makeover from idiotic statement to zen-like aphorism (like “they are who we thought they were” or Rumsfeld’s “known unknowns”)?

Damn skippy it is what it is. How about you tell me when it starts being what it’s NOT?

Is there something secretly elegant or insightful about this statement that I’m not getting?  

 

18 June 2009

Owen! Paul!

Drove through this on my way home. Well, through the trailers and teamsters and street closures. No sign of Owen or Paul in the flesh, though.

The funny thing about Owen Wilson playing a Nationals middle relief pitcher is that he probably is better than what passes for the Nationals' bullpen these days.

Wait, that's not funny.

17 June 2009

add this to the list!

Avenue Q clearly dates itself during the “I wish I could go back to college” number, I just realized. The Princeton character murmurs, as an aside, “I wish I’d taken more pictures…” The line comes at the end of the song, which makes me think it’s a pretty personal statement that the authors wanting to tuck in there. Well, since I have about 40 pictures or so to show for my four years in college, I can definitely relate. Especially considering that a night out or a weekend trip can easily yield twice that many pictures.

Something about it is nice – the half-remembered past, barely documented. It gives some room for your memory to exaggerate, to downplay, to romanticize things. That’s great, and there’s something about my experience now – going through old journals, looking at frayed pictures – that is very comforting to me, while there’s something about my sister’s equivalent – facebook, picasa – that’s a bit disquieting, though I can’t say why.

Well, along with not being able to get ahold of a friend you’re meeting up with (in the post-cellphone age), getting lost and needing to ask for directions (in the post-GPS age) and not having access to vast archives of all sorts of media in a matter of minutes (in the post-internet age), this “I wish I had taken more pictures” bit is clearly dated.

For fun, try watching tv shows from the 1990s and figuring out what would be different today. George leaves Jerry a voicemail and sends him a text message, for insurance: “J – please ansr ph as Vandalay Industries. If they ask, I sell latex. Will explain l8r. Thx.” Or how about getting lost in that mall parking lot, not being able to find the car? Well, there’s an app for that. And as my brother has pointed out, the one time a Seinfeld episode did feature a cell phone – in the first half of the finale – they completely fail to anticipate the fact that we all “walk and talk” these days. (Jerry admonishes Elaine for making a phone call while walking.)

The other problem I have with the song is the “f___ my T.A.” bit. As a student, I never had attractive T.A.’s. And as a T.A., I never had hot freshmen coming on to me. And because this was not part of my immediate experience, I therefore reject it as false or dated. You lie, Avenue Q!

15 June 2009

The interview: part two

[This is part two of a (likely) three-part series. Part one is here.]

“Hello, I’m Officer G____.” And into the hallways we go, into what should have felt epic and labyrinthine but which was instead sorta…sterile and office-y.

I take an instant liking to him, but don’t really know how to make small talk. Are we together in this? Do I assume he’s having a bad day because they’re obviously running behind? Or is running late par for the course, and would any suggestion that he must be having a bad day sound like I’m making a passive-aggressive comment about how much I think my time is worth?

We go into his office, and sit down across a desk from him. He plops our file in front of him, and this is the first time we’ve gotten a clear look at just how bad the pile looks.

“I know it looks like these have been sitting out in the rain for the past few weeks,” he offers by way of an apology. Actually, it looks like it was rained on and then dragged through the mud. It looks like the file was stepped on repeatedly before being buried in a mausoleum with a deceased emperor a few thousand years ago, and like it was only recently recovered by a team of intrepid National Geographic explorers. The yellowed corners are peeling upward, and we’re both a little disappointed that something we put so much into – making it look crisp and approval-worthy – has been negated by administrative indifference.

“No problem at all,” we reassure him, almost simultaneously. “No worries whatsoever,” I add, and I realize that our cadence – the fact that both Ms. AC and I say almost the same thing, with almost the same beat, should already be a dead giveaway that we have been together for a long time.

“First things first, then. Can you tell me her name and place of birth?”
“Ms. Abstract Citizen, born in Randomtown, New York, on xx/xx/xx.”
“Great. And his?”
“Mr. Abstract Citizen, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on xx/xx/xx.”
Except that her xx/xx is off by a day. I want to lead her, but I’m afraid of looking like I’m coaching her. He raises an eyebrow. We sit in silence for a second.
“XX/XX! I mean XX/XX! I always get it wrong.”
Whew. No harm, no, foul.

Turning to me, he says, “Ok, let’s start with your arrival. When did you arrive here?”

I purse my lips at an angle. “Which, um, time? On which visa?”
He turns back to my thick stack of correspondence from USCIS. I’ve arranged it chronologically, starting with H1B visa in February 2000. I’m sure most of the cases he sees are much simpler than mine, but I’m used to that feeling by now. “On the J-2. When did you arrive on a J-2?”

I dig around for my old passport, the one with a picture of a 12-year old me, back when I was a little brown boy wearing a shirt commemorating the 1988 Seoul Olympics. “Early 1990s. 1992, I want to say. But note that I have a waiver on the two-year home residency requirement for J visas – a copy of the letter is in the correspondence in that pile.”

Relieved, he looks through his stack and finds the letter letting my mom off the hook for her two-year residency in Brazil following the Fulbright.
“I see that – she got a waiver. But did you get one?” he asks, somewhat nervously. He’s not good at being bad cop.

“Well, I was her dependent when I came in, right? So the waiver should apply to me as well?”

We go back and forth, and he ultimately determines that this is not a big deal. That being disposed of, I’m sure we’re about to move to, you know, this decade, when he says, instead, “Ok, then, let’s jump to 1996. You became an F? Did you bring your college diploma, by any chance?”

Sigh. This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid of. I want to say, “No, goddamnit, I don’t have my college diploma. Why is that relevant to the fact that I’m married to a U.S. citizen? I would think my international certificate of vaccination – necessary to re-enter the U.S. after travel to certain African countries – would be more germane to the question of whether I ought to remain here than my major in college.” But I just shake my head. I tell him I saw it just that morning – which is true – but didn’t think to grab it.

He doesn’t push it, and so we move on. I’m relieved until I realize that he’s moving on to…something else for which I have no documentation. As he begins to ask me about my first year after college – the crucial transition from F to H visa status – I get that familiar awful feeling, the kind you have in those dreams where you show up for class only to find it’s exam day. (Amusingly, my version of that dream – about not being prepared for something – always takes place at an airport. I am showing up for a flight with no ticket, passport, luggage, and no idea of my destination.)

He is asking me about 1999, the year when I had an optional practical training (OPT) visa that you apply for to work in the field you’ve studied. In my case, part of the reason I applied for my job was because it was the only one in the mega-employment issue of the Washington Post in January of 1999 that said “English or journalism major preferred.” The thinking is that you will work in your field of study, and if your employer likes you enough, they will sponsor you for a work visa – the H1 visa – which you can have for up to 7 years. The move to the H was not simple for me, partly due to the aforementioned Fulbright/2-year-residency rule. You also have to demonstrate that you have unique expertise (like, you wouldn’t be a pure administrative assistant and be able to get an H1 visa), and to go from there to an employer-sponsored permanent resident status can include the requirement that your job be advertised in newspapers and in your workplace.

I can tell you from experience that having your salary posted in the kitchen at work to demonstrate a “recruitment effort” is terrifying and oddly liberating. In any case, that first year – the transition from OPT to the H1 visa - was a pretty traumatic year, now that I think about it. And to think that I cannot remember getting any documentation from USCIS, nor did I have any in the correspondence I’d been saving for years. Ai ai ai.

As a quick sidenote, just imagine how daunting the steps outlined above are for a foreign national graduating from a US college today – into an economy with close to double-digit unemployment, where employers are feeling very pinched. Does anyone think a 21-year old stands a chance of convincing an employer in one year that they are worth an investment of time and money (slightly over $1000 before attorney’s fees) and getting on a track toward a work visa and, possibly, toward citizenship? It seems improbable, doesn’t it, especially as the number of unemployed Americans grows? I wonder whether this will have any measurable effect on the number of people who cobble a life together out of many different visa status classifications the way I did.

But still, I am eager to move on. Except that we don’t. “Well, I’m not seeing how you go from being an F to an H. We really need some of that OPT paperwork. I think,” he says. We are silent. “Maybe,” he goes on, “I should talk to someone. To figure out whether we need to go down this path or not. Because if we do, things will get a little complicated. So, tell you what. I’ll be right back, ok? Would you guys mind waiting for me here?”

He leaves, and I nervously tap the arm of my chair. I look over at Ms. AC. Eyebrows raised. I want to ask if I should freak out, or if she is, or if I’m the only one who thought the guy’s statement was incredibly ominous. But we say nothing, choosing instead to sit nervously for what must have been the most interminable five minutes of my life, and maybe of hers too.

12 June 2009

Ex. Tinc. Tion.

From this great New Yorker article about the search for a general theory of extinctions (hint: we may be contributing to the current one – shocking, I know…)

It is difficult to say when, exactly, the current extinction event – sometimes called the sixth extinction – began. What might be thought of as its opening phase appears to have started about fifty thousand years ago. At that time, Australia was home to a fantastic assortment of enormous animals; these included a wombatlike creature the size of a hippo, a land tortoise nearly as big as a VW beetle, and the giant short-faced kangaroo, which grew to be ten feet tall. Then all of the continent’s largest animals disappeared. Every species of marsupial weighing more than two hundred pounds – and there were nineteen of the – vanished….This die-off roughly coincided with the arrival of the first people on the continent, probably from Southeast Asia.

11 June 2009

Do you like feeling smart?

Sure you do! We all do! That's why I recommend that you sit around and repeatedly answer sample questions from the naturalization test that I will have to take in a few years. And before you know it, you'll feel pretty darn smart.

09 June 2009

It only takes a few seconds...

I’ve been around a lot of babies and small children recently, and let me just say this: holy shit. I had forgotten how a short distraction – a momentary lapse of attention – can lead to horrifying morbidity and even death. It’s nice to be around young and innocent life, but man is it taxing when you know that you’re always only a few seconds away from something terrible and irrevocable happening. Scary stuff. Especially near swimming pools. And in kitchens. And living rooms. And where there are objects, cords, chairs, objects of varying heights that can serve as platforms, and near anything made of glass.

 

 

 

 

05 June 2009

The interview: part one

Every American should spend time here, in this line – at the gates of admission into the country. The gates of administrative admission, in any case, since we’re all undeniably here, physically.

All government waiting rooms are sort of similar, I think, like all DMVs and all doctor’s offices. This is a large rectangular room, with an informal welcome desk and long rows of seats. Everywhere there are people caught up in the seriousness of their own situation: families, couples, none-of-the-above’s. Seriously, is that a gay couple? Is the new America that cool? Or are they siblings? I know for a fact that sibling-based petitions are pretty low on the administrative totem pole, and that today they would be hearing petitions submitted at least fifteen years ago, based on processing times published on the USCIS site. If they are siblings, my imaginary hat was tipped to them. “That thar is a long wait,” I think in my fake Southern drawl.

Some, like us, have backpacks, totebags, luggage, 20 lbs of documents “attesting to a shared life,” as the interview notice describes it. Other have single folders, sleeping babies, or just attorneys. With apologies to Tom Waits, no one brings anything small into this type of waiting room.

I am too nervous to read Bowling Alone, so I fidget nervously and run down my mental checklist of documentation that I might have forgotten. I look around furiously at the groups of people who didn’t bring reading material and are chatting nervously, or distractedly. I am always more perplexed by this behavior than any other. Who are these people who happily ride trains, who wait for buses, who sit in waiting rooms, without reading material? The new thing of course is fidgeting with some phone-type gadget, but in a situation like this, cell phone use is strictly forbidden. And of course, maybe these people already know what I pretend not to – that this isn’t a time for reading anyway. I go over the same paragraph in my book three times, indifferent to the impact of replacing social capital with financial capital in professional politics. I snap the book shut again.

Ms. Abstract Citizen has her organic chemistry textbook open, and we eventually reckon that it’s a better use of our nervous energy if I quiz her on some new compounds. Asking her about alkenes, halides, and other things I don’t understand, it occurs to me that someone might think I am quizzing her on our life, doing some last minute cramming for our greencard exam.

Some stories in the waiting room are clear. He is in his late 40s, white, cell phone clipped to belt. The belt is that thatchy kind with no holes, his dockers are pleated. He is a weekend golfer who spends a lot of time thinking about real estate. She looks Laotian, late 20s. In fantastic shape, Puma sneakers, holding her baby more carefully than her Vuitton. They have been waiting for a long time, he gets up to pace. He picks up brochures that read (no joke), “Are you a refugee or an asylee?” She gets up and stands near him. They speak quietly, intimately, and she lets out a hushed laugh. He touches the side of her head, strokes her hair once before she turns away.

With the families, it’s harder to tell. A family that looks Irish or Scandinavian walks in. They have long hair, and wear shirts that are somewhere between wolf-fashion and high school metal garb. Who is the anchor there, I wonder. An Asian family is led by us, led by the matriarch. She is the go-getter, quick to approach staff and lobby to move up in line. When she speaks, the others in her family listen.

In our case, we think it’s hard for the others to tell what’s what. And truly, it’s so gratifying to see couples where the answer isn’t clear at all. He could be African-American or Bahamian, and she could be Texan or Persian. Not everything boils down to a version of him-dark, she-fair. Every few minutes, Immigration officers come out through one of the four sets of doors and call out names. We instantly figure out the officer we don’t want: she looks pissed, barking out names and not greeting people as they walk in. I pick my guy: he is skinny, with short hair. He seems nice. He greets people by their first name and shakes their hands before leading them into a hallway, into we-don’t-know-where. I hope we get him.

Occasionally, half of a couple returns. The American, we figure. They are holding the other half, asking more questions, not buying their story. I nod to Ms. AC. “That might be you.” She does a good job of projecting calm, and shrugs. It’s over an hour after our interview time. Children and lawyers are getting antsy, but the rest of us are fine. Every now and then the doors spit out a whole set of people, looking happy, relieved. Hands are shook, congratulations proffered. Lives are changing, irrevocably, all around us.

Sitting on a long bench with bags strewn, Ms. AC is working out mnemonic devices for hydrocarbons, and I am remembering how hard it was to learn about alkanes and alkenes from a Scotsman at the British School in Rio, the distinction between those two words disappearing under the knotty turns of his speech. Alkens and alkens. And then, we get called. Or I do, but we both rise and scurry over to meet the nice-looking fellow who is holding the door open and who is carrying the thick stack of papers we mailed to Mesquite, Texas almost two years ago. He isn’t my pick, but he will have to do.

For further reading: part two.

02 June 2009

What the hell is going on at this store?

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations!

First of all, did you know that is the real name of the state? I think I did, but then I forgot about it.

 

In my macroecon class the other night, the professor made a point of saying that 49 out of the 50 U.S. states had a legal requirement – either in the form of an amendment to the state constitution or via popular vote/referendum – for a balanced budget. Right before class let out, I asked what state didn’t have such a requirement. “Rhode Island,” came the answer.

 

I turned to my chatty tablemate, and raised my eyebrows.

 

“Wow,” he said. “That was the least interesting answer he could have given.”

 

Indeed, it was. On a walk to the metro, he pointed out that people from Rhode Island are really from a plantation, which is sort of amusing. And then we agreed that there was really nothing to say about this tiny non-island state that is, confusingly enough, named after an island.

 

01 June 2009

Keeping Current(s)

The beach is still the beach, even when the weather isn’t beachy. When it’s cold and foggy and the flip flops you stubbornly hold on to start cutting up your foot – the flip-flops you hold on to even though they aren’t a good fit, and they aren’t that comfortable  - you still get the beat of the sea, and the wonderful unvoweled whisper of the foam reaching out, spread thinly on the heavy sand.

We like the beach when it’s like that – empty of beachgoers. We may have gotten a bit more than we bargained for in that respect though, considering the soupy fog and chilly evenings. Everyone was waiting for the weekend, and so were we – to get home. Where the sun was, as it turns out.

Thursday is my interview, and I am in official panic mode. There won’t be much sleeping the next few days.

On the drive back, a right-wing nobody blathers on about “homo-promo.”

We finished “The Wire” on Friday night. Happy with the lack of excessive speechifying, save for a few moments. When your drop-off in quality has you going from an A+ to a B+, I’d say you’re in pretty rare televisual company. I’m pretty hard-pressed to think of a show that, pound for pound, was as good for as long as “The Wire.”

I can’t tell if the summer will be really long or really short. But I am enjoying “A message to you, Rudy,” by the Specials. This may be my new favorite summer song.

 This missing plane…I’ve done the other leg of that flight – DeGaulle to Rio. Security at CDG broke my bottle of scotch, purchased earlier that day at Spirits of the World in Heathrow airport. This was a flight where passengers were split into 5 groups. The way this goes for flights to Brazil is as follows:

1. The first group gets called. 95% of passengers board.

2. The second group gets called. Virtually all of the remaining passengers board.

3. The third group gets called. I am the only one standing at the gate at this point.

4. The fourth group gets called. Reluctantly – even though I’m group 5 – I board.

 The heir to the Brazilian throne, were the country still a monarchy, was on the flight. Supposedly I have a relative who was involved in planning one of his family’s weddings. The family name is Orleans e Braganca.  Something about this seems anachronistic: monarchs shouldn’t die in plane crashes. “The prince died in a plane crash” just doesn’t sound right.  

And with that, I’ll probably take my leave till after the interview. Hoping for good news.

20 May 2009

Smartcar ownership: 6 months in...

Obviously, parking this car = the business. Ms. AC routinely has to park at 10 pm on weeknights, which – with an ordinary car – would require at least 10-15 minutes of time spent hunting for a spot (and often more than that.) With the smartcar, she can almost always find a spot within half a block of our building on her first pass. What this is worth to us – in terms of peace of mind (her safety, the lack of hassle and anticipatory fretting during the drive home about whether she’ll find a spot or not) – is almost impossible to tabulate.

The drawback is that we are, unfortunately, still a two-car household. The other car is an old Toyota Echo on which we pay a mere pittance for insurance. The Echo gets used maybe once a week, if that. So, the smartcar is a somewhat selfish car, in a sense. Like, it’s incredibly practical, and we feel like we have all this freedom to come and go as we please, but no one else benefits from it – because, by definition, we can’t drive anyone else around. But since the Echo isn’t exactly a burden, we haven’t found that we have any incentive to get rid of it. Which makes us feel selfish, I guess.

Back to smarty: it’s cool that the engine is in the back. The car is very stable and fun to drive, and it handles really well. We’re due for some sort of transmission upgrade, which I hope will get rid of a weird lilt when the car shifts into second gear. The car has a hybrid manual transmission – you can actually disable the automatic transmission and do a weird kind of clutch-less shifting using tabs on the steering wheel. I suppose if we dealt with more hills, we might actually use that…? As it is, I’ve used the fake manual transmission for novelty purposes but never for any meaningful activity.

It’s a light car. It can get rocked a bit by heavy winds, but so can, you know, the Echo.

People definitely stare, though. This is not a good car for people who like to pick their noses when stopped at a light, for example.

Also, parallel parking is weird when you don’t have a back.

The sound system is meh, though I like the auxiliary input and the fact that it has a built-in ipod charger. The GPS that comes with it actually runs off of the dvd player (I know, right? It has a dvd player…), and the stock GPS is definitely alright, but again, not great. Mileage? Can’t complain – easily in the mid-30s per gallon, could easily crack 40 if we spent more time on the highway – good since the the tank is just under 8 gallons, which isn’t much.

All told? It’s cheaper and smaller than, say, a Yaris or a Honda Fit. We’ll see in 5 years what kinds of mechanical issues arise, but from our very limited experience, the car is well worth it. We’re taking it to Rehoboth for a few days and I can't wait to see what it feels like to be on vacation in this thing.

18 May 2009

I may have to buy a new laptop...

...but I'd really rather blow a chunk of change on this. Life just ain't fair sometimes.

15 May 2009

In which I maybe, soon, become the "abstract permanent resident."



June 4, people. I may be planning some sort of greencard party the following night. Stay tuned!

06 May 2009

singer-songwriter kind of mood.

Have really been enjoying Elvis Perkins.



His biography is plenty compelling. Knowing about his mom makes this song borderline unlistenable - it's almost too much to take. [Since many of you might not click through - his dad was Anthony Perkins, of "Psycho" fame. Anthony Perkins died ("complications related to AIDS") several years ago. Elvis Perkins' mom was on the ill-fated American Airlines flight 11, flying from Boston to LAX on the morning of September 11, 2001.]

Turning the corner, we've got Jenn Grant, who, I currently enjoy as a culmination of what Feist, Beth Orton, and, why not, Norah Jones aspire to be. I dare you not to want to hear this on a rainy day.

Woke up this morning...

...with a benadryl hangover and my fever wasn't gone. This doesn't happen all the time. (Detachable...something.)

But yeah, sick. Shivered the whole night through, in fact (as long as I'm copping lines from songs.)

Took my temperature and found it to be satisfactorily above 100 F. Two days of being sick with ominous "flu-like symptoms"? Yes, I say. Also, I say "FUCK." Because being of a certain age, and being less reckless at that certain age than I was when I was another, less certain age, I now know that one has to heed certain realities. Like, no matter how dumb I may consider the 24-hour news cycle, I still can't ignore the fact that the word "pandemic" is in the news every day.

And while I'm old enough to want to be prudent, I'm not so old that I fall into the group of people who can't be outside on code red days in the summer - so I think, who cares. Swine, no swine. I've had the flu before, and this sounds just like that. Except a little part of me is nagging me, asking what an epidemiologist would want me to do. And part of me thinks, "Hey, I can score one for the District! No more Maryland and Virginia getting all the press! I'll be a DC-based swine flu case!"

Driving up Reno, I notice all the landscaping going on. Surely David Byrne must have written a lyric about the importance of having a well-manicured lawn, even during a pandemic? When I get to the doctor's office, there's a sign taped to the door, urging all those experiencing "flu-like symptoms" - there it is again - to immediately self-report to the front desk upon check-in.

I think this must be over the top. These people are medical professionals, after all. This isn't Anderson Cooper, I tell myself. Facts matter more than emotions here. So, I hand over my insurance card, since they have a new computer system or something and need to re-key my info, and I patiently await my turn. In comes a woman, whose husband is waiting OUTSIDE. That's how freaked out these two are about his flu-like symptoms. "Can he come in," she inquires. The nurse shrugs. "If it makes him feel better, he can wear a mask." Now I feel guilted into self-declaring my own flu-like symptoms. "Should I, uh, be wearing a mask too?"

"Can't hurt," she says. On it goes. Now I'm reading the New Yorker and wearing a mask. Life is grand.

In I go, to get weighed and blood pressure'd and pulse'd. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to keep the mask on, or if it's like I'm among friends now, friends with whom I can make jokes about the silly swine flu mass hysteria. "It's not even THE FLU, people! The real flu is scary! This is just a bad cold."

When the doc comes in, she comes in - what I like about her is the directness, the machine gun-ness of her delivery - "What, have you been to Mexico? Hung out with people from Mexico? Your friends all go to Mexico?" Me: "Uh...none of the above. Listen, I think this is just as silly...[pause to lower mask]...I mean, this is idiotic. I don't want to be here. But..."

"But," she says, "you watch the news. And what they're not saying is, 'EVERYBODY STAY HOME.' End of story. Don't come out here, don't bring it out into the community, exposing our staff and others to it. Just stay home. You're not immune-compromised. You're healthy, you're young. Even if you have it, which I highly doubt, you'd be fine in a few days. Why didn't anyone tell you to just stay home and ride it out?"

Me: "I'm...sorry?"

"God, don't apologize, How is this your fault? Listen, you're fine. We'll run a flu test, and we'll take a swab to send out for swine flu testing. Here's the tamiflu scrip - not that it'll do much, because the virus does whatever it wants to do and then leaves - but I guess it slightly ameliorates the symptoms? That's what people say anyway. Take it, get it filled or don't. Just get home and stay home till you're healthy, ok?"

At this point I feel both great and diminutive. Great because of all the common sense on display. Diminutive because I bought into the great media con of swine flu. This sensation lasts for about two minutes, because when the nurse comes in to swab me...? You know, for the test...? What is she wearing?

What?

A fucking mask, that's what.

Mask or not, as far as I can tell, I will soon be ready to celebrate my continued streak of god-knows-how-many consecutive days of being swine flu-free.

29 April 2009

Great idea, but what if someone someday discovers a cure for being a sucker?

Indeed, what if they do? That would be the most cruel joke anyone could play on the customers of this company.

And yes, if you click around, it looks like all it costs to be indefinitely frozen is around $30,000 dollars. You know, if you're small-minded enough to want to put a price on IMMORTALITY.

23 April 2009

Another "Lost" post



Since I was right about my gut reaction the very first minute we saw Miles on “Lost” – that he was the son of Pierre Chang – here’s my prediction for his arc. I’m going for the win here.

Miles will get to see enough of Pierre Chang’s relationship with little Miles and his mom to believe that he needs to warn his dad about the impending genocide. He will feel that this is the only way to prevent the disaster and confusion of his childhood – having his dad with him as he grows up and being cheated out of that relationship by Ben’s cold-hearted mass-murdering ways. However, Dr. Chang will echo the silly mantra that “whatever happened, happened,” and will hope that he can bargain with destiny by sending his wife and son away, and offering himself up as a sacrificial lamb.

Miles will then come to understand three things:

(1) That he himself caused his own unhappy childhood. He will realize that Dr. Chang drove his wife and child away to save them, and that adult Miles was the catalyst for this action. The alternative to his miserable childhood would be lying dead in a ditch with the rest of the Dharma folks.

(2) That he was meant to have died on the Island and that whatever happened did not necessarily "happen." Or was not necessarily meant to have happened. This is why he can commune with the dead. (Because he is sort of un-dead himself, having cheated destiny.)

(3) That Widmore has brought him back to the island to fulfill his destiny (ie, die on it) because Widmore believes that he must give the Island what it wants in order to re-establish the pre-Linas state of equilibrium on the Island. So, Miles, having been temporarily saved by his father's sacrifice, will ultimately be consumed as Widmore's sacrificial lamb.

This presupposes, however, that not all the principals were brought to the Island for the same reason (similarities in daddy-issues notwithstanding.) But, I can already see that we’re going to grow incredibly fond of Miles like we did Charley, only to find that Miles must die.

And that, my friends, will suck.

20 April 2009

Unfixables?

Why, sometimes, will one of my feet not go where I tell it to? I intend to walk in a straight line, but every, say, fifth step is clearly not quite in the same continuum. This only happens every now and then, but it makes me wonder just how well I’ve figured out this whole “walking” thing.

When drinking a liquid, and it goes down the wrong way…of all the ways to ingest food/nutrients, drinking is the one we have practiced the most. Why do we still get it wrong?

We all rely on umbrellas, but they really don’t keep you dry below the waist. Our faith in them seems childish.

Our brains probably never stop working, and they process more information than any other device known to humans. But when asked, we usually say that “not much” has been up recently, even when we are eager for a conversation or a connection.
Leonard Cohen is 75, and he sounds happier about it and more at peace with it than anyone else on the planet is about anything else. I don’t want this fixed, by the way. I think it’s wonderful that it’s unfixable.

In spring, when the temperature hits 70 F for the first time, people take to the streets in what constitutes beach wear. In the fall, when the temperature finally drops to 70, people take out jackets and scarves. But both temperatures are identical.

I’m having a conversation over a meal. I know I want to say something. But I get flustered formulating the thoughts, and take a huge bite instead. Now, the natural pause in the conversation happens just as I’ve shoveled three bites’ worth of food into my mouth. I indicate through facial expressions and hand gestures that I have something to say and that I want to keep the subject going, but of course, I need 20 seconds to quickly chew the absurd amount of food. Three minutes later, I will do the exact same thing again.

Not enough people listen to Elvis Perkins. This one is very fixable though.