we're not in DC anymore

so how do i explain this...after being released from the controls of my ex at the beginning of the year, i since reconnected with all my wild and crazy friends, several of which who were going through the same tough breakup process. so that was always the apparent reason for the endless nights with physical antics that got us kicked out of bars, throwing frisbees out of car windows, etc...
i figured our juvenile bordlerine public menace behaviour would die down sooner or later and our age would catch up with us. but quite frankly it hasn't. the changing seasons only seem to have made it even worse. and not only that, we have recruited my new boyfriend who fully condones, if not perpetuates our exploration of the truly disgusting undrinkable shot, smashing things into hair and face, throwing delicate objects, whathaveyou. thus, i fully prepared myself for a long, eventful night out in manhattan last friday with the new bf, bringing along only the bare minimum of accessories, wearing confortable shoes, mentally preparing myself for the next day text apology etc...
our night followed a logical stream of events, drinking within eye-shot of police officers, riding a tassled, pedalless, flat-tired purple toddler's bike which we rescued from a chinatown dumpster and parking it proudly next to a shiny vespa in front of our bar destination, breaking and/or stealing tall german beer glasses, mocking everyone in sight, and making utter fools of ourselves on the dance floor. typical really. so when i came across a roll of toilet paper left on a lounge couch (?), i thought it perfectly logical to ambush one of my high school friends and re-enact that eventful night when we wrapped every tree in his yard with charmin before the ghastly rains of prom night. on my haunches, standing on a coffee table, ready to pounce and mummify, to my utmost suprise, boyfriend calmly took the roll from my hands, held my wrists at my side, and said, "cherie, this is not DC. new york is not just ready for you yet." i locked eyes with the glaring 300 pound bouncer and realized he was right, so right. and that's only one of the reasons that makes dc so special; in the capital, it's almost like you're with family, whereas new york is a vast unfriendly jungle with so many rules. then someone knocked over a tall beer stein and as fluid dynamics would have it, a fierce stream of pilsner went straight up my nose.
luckily, i had a roll of toilet paper in my hands.

when you're sick, clean!

one thing i do when i'm sick, or feeling down, is clean. like a metaphor of my intestines, i scrubbed all the nastiness out of the tub this morning, the grit between the tiles and vacuumed the little spaces between the carpet and the walls. i think it helps both the brain and the body to do something physical to get better. i murphy's oiled the hardwood floors too, first time ever. so then, when you feel better you have this wonderful surprise of a clean, sparkling apartment waiting for your entrance into health.
same goes when you throw a party, always clean up as much as you can before you go to bed, because when you're drunk, it can even be fun, and since your senses are dulled, it doesn't feel as gross or as much of a chore. and heck, you often don't even remember doing it. after my last party, i stumbled up the stairs into the kitchen, and i noticed, wow, i can barely tell there was a party here, who cleaned up?
"you did."
and so when you get better after feeling like crap, you can look around at cleanliness, sense a good feeling in your body and think, wow, who helped me get over this?

who wants whale?

now this in interesting...why on earth would countries like Mongolia (land-locked!) and Dominica (self-proclaimed 'green' island?) vote to overturn the moratorium on commercial whaling? now, i did once think that perhaps a well-managed whale fishery might make sense given the current state of affairs, but recent shit has come to light, man. first of all, the japanese demand for whale meat is decreasing. so wtf? what is the point of a fishery at all? why are they obviously buying votes from other nations with no whaling interests?
secondly, it seems whales are far more valuable alive for their economic benefits from whale watching and tourism in the Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific, than chopped up and frozen, or killed under the guise of scientific research...even in Iceland, another active whaling country which defies the moratorium anyway. so WTF?
okay, so i guess people are concerned that whales eat a lot of fish, you know, they said that for seals too, somehow justifying a reason to club them. yeah, whales eat krill and fish, and so do a lot of other things, that's not a good enough reason for removing a species (especially in such a cruel manner) from the planet..they're there for a reason, like sharks and turtles, they might not be 'convenient' for our greedy desires, as we compete with them for resources, but dammit, it's not OUR ocean.
so it looks like the US might jump into the ring* for a little tag-team action. it's about friggin' time. embargos on pro-whaling countries might also be a good idea, like stopping cruise ships** from porting at grenada and saint kitts ..but in the end, maybe instead of chasing terrorists into their holes we should be concerned with the potential collapse of a major food and money source for the entire world- our oceans.

*btw, nice shout-out to my Duke professor - i recall one student's project looking at how whales avoid oil rigs...between that and deafening navy sonar, the poor bastards have nowhere to go!

**then again, while cruise ships are $good$ they're also bad, a blessing and a curse...

sit down and shut up!

so i was going to write about this awesome chinese buffet i went to on friday with my office, where i scraped the ocean floor onto my plate, but instead, i'll tell you about my night spent in the hospital with food poisoning, an awful experience compounded by an atrocious hospital which made me question whether i was still in the states.

after violently puking up blood for about 2 and a half hours in front of stunned residents of the GWU waiting room outside the ER, i shuddered and collapsed onto the cold tile floor, which actually relaxed my back and soothed my spasming insides for a dream moment...when a security guard immediately towered over me and ordered me to sit in the uncomfortable chair with armrest with the tone one would talk to a disorderly drunk. as i slowly tried to figure out what was going, the way i was moving my mouth wasn't able to explain the misery of my situation, he ended my attempt at conversation with "sit down, and shut up!" my neighbor who brought me in stepped in, telling him she had asked for a reclining chair an hour earlier, which fell on deaf ears. i then darted, as fast i could to the ONLY bathroom as my insides felt ready to explode...it was occupied. i wandered and found a room with a couch and managed to zone out for a few minutes, forgetting the crushing pain and nausea when the same security guard came back and told i wasn't allowed to be here, that the room was for prayer only (i guess i had found the chapel) - i told him i was praying, praying that a doctor would see me soon, praying for the strength the endure when he scoffed, accused me of "fabricating" but not telling me why i couldn't stay when the room exploded with more security guards, nurses, secretaries, a scene which overflowed into the waiting room with ridiculous shouts and screams, i had never seen anything like it. really, i wasn't doing anybody any harm by quietly sitting...and everyone was angry, yelling. in the middle of this atrocious scene a feel a tap on my shoulder, a friend of the ex, whom i had ironically seen earlier in georgetown and ran away from, as i usually do, it was all a whirlwind, when a nurse finally came over with a laz-y-boy and then embarked on a guilt trip telling me she had a trauma patient that might not make it - and then proceeded to detail facts about his accident - right in front of his waiting girlfriend who had been hours without news. talk about professional!

the ordeal continued and when i was finally admitted, spent the night going in and out of sleep, or trying at least, while i got a back door fingerblast, oooh that was fun, blood tests...at one point they blocked my room with a stretcher with a passed out student on it, preventing me from getting to the bathroom to vomit some more...i had one of the homeless drunks move her, and when i was able to exit, i was in the middle of a sea of drunks. some guys in handcuffs, puking on themselves. after hours of wandering around in my buttless robe searching for some water to drink (the vending machine ate my dollar, leaving me parched and sobbing against the lghts of a mountain dew ad). on my way back, i came across my nurse on a computer checking email. did you get my blood tests back? oh right...you have food poisoning...you can go home, just drink lots of water. gee thanks!
is this really what our health care system has dissolved into? i've seen better attention to patients in france, canada (socialized health care sounds good to me), even panama...we're supposed to be the best in the world. but i saw nothing but disgruntled cranky overworked employees with little or no compassion. so here's to a weekend of gatorade, soccer and not being able to do any of the things i had planned, and wondering what kind of world we live in...

discount lunch plan

so this here advanced technology has found a flaw in my discount lunch plan at the Giant supermarket. (Giant refers to the brand name of the store, not it's actual size, btw). i bought a bunch of apples on sale for 99cents/lb and threw in a bunch of super fancy organic apricots ad plums as a treat. when i typed in the code for granny smith apples, the machine says "este articulo requiere ayuda!" (always choose spanish for the angry voice, and because no one will know what you're trying to do). but the machine knows about my fruit! and the light above my aisle started blinking and a big fat old Giant employee (actually, in this case, 'Giant' described her size as well) came and scolded me for mixing my fruit and stayed while i punched in different codes for everything. it call came out to over 15 bucks. but what i want to know is, how does the machine know that the items in my bag are different size and densities? does it see or feel varied shapes? is there a human inside there? technology such as this will never cease to amaze me.

**oh, and special thanks to the express for a shout-out yesterday...i love that paper. i would read it more if i didn't get the washington post delivered to my door everyday, for almost free (and express, you've got two crossword puzzles and a style section to compete with).if i start biking to work again, i'll be lost...lost...

bay bridge gotcha down?

so if you’re driving out to any of the beaches this summer, you lamentably have to take the bay bridge which is nice, but not so much when it’s hot and as always, full of traffic. but it’s a heck of a lot better when you have a super tasty sandwich to look forward to, along with gourmet treats and sodas! We came across the kent island depot last weekend when we were low on gas and as usual, i had to pee. It may look like a regular old citgo, but it definitely ain’t.

The sandwich menu is dazzling with beef and brie on baguette, hummus and feta on ciabatta, reubens and tuna melts – all on fresh baked breads. REAL baguette people, none of this sourdough crap! I heard a lot of people in there speaking french, though a funny sort of francais that I couldn’t exactly pinpoint – their twang wasn’t signature Quebec, so it’s possible they have immigrated from the mainland so long ago that their language has absorbed some mid-atlantic swagger? Can’t say for sure, but I could sense something unamerican (i.e. non 7-11) about the way the manager gently scolded an employee for not changing the coffee – which had only been out for 35 minutes. Head over to the awesome wine section, or the array of italian sodas and natural juices. I'm really sorry i may have sneezed on the salad bar, but i would have eaten its contents anyway.

Maybe a little over the top for a gas station, (though there’s a little sitting area inside) but it’s worth a stop even if you tank is full, this place is deeeeelish!

and now for shameless self promotion

shopping is good for you, and the economy, right? stupid?

my cat hates me

my cat still isn't speaking to me. i walk up to her kindly, softly, whispering her name, dangling fresh smoked salmon and offering to scratch her in her favorite spots under her chin or behind her ears but she just runs and hides. meanwhile, the 17 year old mangy bag of bones excuse for a cat that my friend is taking care of...well it just loves me. sure it smells like a barn animal, has lumpy crusty patchy fur, oozes liquid out of every orifice - be it eyes, nose, ears, mouth, ass or its last injection site...thus the nickname "leaky." it's sad to even look at, its eyes barely focused, sitting and shaking on its haunches because any other position is too painful. i know it's just asking the world to put it out of its misery. the inuit die with dignity, but this thing...ok maybe the making neck snapping, noose off the balcony, kitty car in a garage jokes was taking it a bit too far but seriously tho, the thing is miserable. and it stinks.

al gore is boring, but makes good movie

so during our last dinner in seattle, the topic of global warming, which has been increasingly on the people's mindwaves came up and my host said, "fuckit, let's go see what al gore has to say." and we walked to the theater to check it out. dubbed "one of the best powerpoint presentations you'll ever see" it was not without its charm: simpson's references (greehouse gwasses?), a few pokes at the current administration and some decent science for the masses. however, i could have done without the 45 minutes of footage of al's profile and his imac, approximating some sort of political apple commercial. the ending with his tall manish outline in a spotlight was a bit too egotastical, though the overarching theme i felt was "damn, why couldn't this guy be our president??" we would be so much better off in so many more ways than climate change awareness.
i truly hope the right people go see this though, as there are still plenty of folks who just don't believe there is any evidence of climate change - even though it's overwhelming. and yes, even me as a scientician, i'll admit that i still have some reservations as to the real connection between human-produced CO2 and quickly warming temperatures, however, the facts are crystal clear: the earth is indeed warming and it's quickly going to be a sad, sad state of affairs around here in the very near future. and there are many things we can do about it. to start, reduce your footprint (carbon and ecological), if not for an overall improvement in quality of life for all of us on this overcrowded planet, but for your own conscience.

one for my fallen homies

Just got back from a day long haul around Vancouver island with some colleagues...we probably only covered a mere 15% of what’s here. When the car rental guy hooked me up with an SUV I crinkled my nose at the gas prices, but it saved us today, when I got us lost on logging roads for about 4 hours, my passengers silent, praying for us to make it back to civilization. We were at lake Cowachan, the largest lake on the island and wanted to see it in all its glory. We headed around the south side, I was eager to explore some dirt roads when suddenly, we were amidst the wilderness…a beautiful clear blue wavy lake on one side, breathtaking mountains all around, snow-capped peaks…only the landscape was scarred by giant slabs of forest that sheared off into clear cuts. Giant wounds, covered by dirt, stumps and branch piles. It was breathtaking…breathtakingly sad. We sped along, speechless at the simoultaneous natural beauty and anthropogenic disease, periodically blinded by the dust and deafened by the sound 18-wheelers speeding by at a warp speed with loads of trees, trunks as wide as our puny ford escape. I could barely keep the car on the road at 40 mph, and these guys were blowing by at twice our speed in an endless convoy. The cute young girl at the tourist office had warned us about these trucks, subcontracted drivers who have no regard for local traffic, the growing resentment towards these large faceless corporations who rule the lands around town like midievel kings.
And then my mind shuffled back to grad school, when I studied the socio-economics of British Columbia, with literacy, poverty, unemployment and environmental disregard alarmingly similar to developing nations who clear their forests faster than they can replant them. Over 70% of B.C.’s old growth forests are leased for logging. The province’s main natural resource, home to the few remaining temperate rainforests and all its associated species (we saw a confused black bear crossing the road at one point, seemingly oblivious to us – cars are nothing new to these animals) is rented to international firms for logging, these companies who have no stake in local communities or economics simply clear the land as they please and move on when there’s nothing left. Unlike in the U.S., where we have regulations on riparian buffers, slope, and replanting that limit where and how we clear and manage forests, in Canada it appears to be a free-for-all. An antiquated perspective of an unlimited resource. Simply frightening. And so we sped along miles and miles of these roads that sliced beautiful forests into pieces. Every panorama I wanted to capture on camera was marred by this overwhelming evidence of human abuse. And it went on and on and on until finally I just decided to keep heading west and we finally reached the sea, with the amazing ridge line of Washington state across the water, not so far away.
And then it’s back to the conference tomorrow…to learn of crashing salmon stocks, decreasing water quality, warming oceans…Canada, just like the US, no matter where you go, just isn’t so natural and pristine anymore. boo.

sasquatch has good taste

i wanted to steal this sign and put it in front of the babyGap downtown but didn't...

that's a houseboat for ya

so the funny thing about victoria, canada is that at the super market (called the country grocer, which is having huge specials for "bucaneer days" btw), well, the produce sucks. merely rotten tomatoes, peaches that are more expensive than 20 gallons of gas (tho they call it petrol here), wilted spinach, nasty legumes in general...but then you go to the fish aisle and it's just nutty: fresh halibut, snapper, five types of salmon you would give an eye for at the whole foods...so i decded to make some fish tacos, which, according to my guests were "the best fish tacos i've ever tasted, in my life, REALLY" (patting myself on the back). i made some fruity mango/expensive peach salsa, served it with some french salad, cheap red wine and it was a party. now the halibut had some fierce bones in it, and the snapper still had the skin and as i was carving out all the inedible pieces, grouping them into a stinky pile and looking at the sink drain which i had assumed was equipped with a garbage disposal...which was stinking this place to high heaven...when i thought, duh, aurelgrooves, you're on a houseboat silly - there's tons of animal life just begging for your scraps, and i slid open the window, tossed out some bits of fish and veggies to the little waves where a seal head was just poking out minutes before...and within seconds, there was a full on massacre between gulls, marine mammals, fish...it was amazing. really, the most efficient garbage disposal i have ever encountered.

lefties!

ok, it's about time i wrote about this.
i've met six new lefties in as many days (uzbeki is one of them).
interesting facts about lefties:

-People who are left-handed are technically said to be sinistral, and left-handedness is sometimes referred to as sinistrality. Both words derive from sinister, the Latin word for “left”. This word in turn derives from sinus, the Latin word for “pocket” referring to the fact that the pocket in a Roman toga was on the left side, for the convenience of a right-handed wearer.

-about 10% of the human population is left-handed...

-more males are lefty than females (i'm even more rare!)

-left handed people are better at fighting without weapons because of the "surprise" factor. (i love it!)

-in many parts of the world, such as Indonesia, it is considered impolite to eat and accept gifts with the left hand. Romans also frowned upon lefties. (bastards!)

-Ciotog is an Irish language word used to describe left-handed people. It derives from the Irish word Ciotog which means 'Strange Person'. (awesome)

-there's a theory that lefties are more intelligent and creative (toldja so)

-Studies have shown that there is a correlation between committing sexual crimes against children and being left-handed (boo)

famous lefties:
-George W. H. Bush AND Bill Clinton AND Ross Perot! all three 1992 candidates!
-Ben Franklin
-Napoleon
-Julius Caesar (ha, even tho it was frowned upon!)
-Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden (really, do we know that for sure?)
-Da Vinci and Escher and Michaelangelo
-50 cent! Bob Dylan, Art Garfunkel, Isaac Hayes (just to name a few, there are many, many more)
-Woody Allen, Matthew Broderick AND Sarah Jessica Parker, Charlie Chaplan, Robert DeNiro (i knew that, actually), Freddie Prinze Jr., Keanu Reeves, Jerry Seinfeld, Sylvester Stallone, Hillary Swank, Alan Thicke (i know his banker), Marky Mark, Oprah
-John McEnroe, Bill Gates, JFK, Jay Leno, Ken Jennings (jeopardy man)

so now you have something to talk about next time you see them. As for me, i'll be inviting them over for the biggest lefty bash ever. wow.

bob dole is a lefty

so i partied it up with the honorable senator bob dole the other night, and his chauffeur, wilber.

don't they look so super psyched for this picture? (in reality, i said something very stupid and inappropriate).
so yeah, i guess he's pretty much the biggest celebrity i've actually had a chance to talk to, is that sad? though i did meet andy rooney when i was 12, and when i asked if i could get a picture with him he replied, "do i have a choice?" and i answered, "no." and that was that.

anyway, most of the stuff you've heard about bob dole is true. he's got a quick dry wit, he really does have a booming monotone voice, occasionally refers to himself in the third person, and clutches a pen in his right hand. except at the end of the night he was clutching a very large wad of cash. (?)

but in the brief time we hung out i found out that:

bob dole likes: vodka, sinatra
bob dole dislikes: cross-dressers, jay-z

but the moral of the story is that he's a lefty...sorta not by choice, but a lefty nonetheless.

you know you're in north virginia when...

-you are immersed in a sea of upturned collars
-you are deafened by the noise of FLIP FLOP FLIP FLOP
-manicured sidewalks punctuated by sod and flowers
-the trees that line the street are all skinny
-you have to park in a garage or a mall
-it looks like a brochure from an airplane magazine - like when they showcase some new town
-drinks are never an integer dollar value, it's always $5.73, $4.49 - evidence that you're drinking at a franchise, where they can't expect their employees or customers to be good at math
-guys think it's perfectly normal to ask about/guess the color of a woman's panties.

congratulations

so in my office, every thursday we sit around 5 pints of ben and jerry's and talk shit during something known as "the contractor meeting." every few meetings or so, larry, the contractor meeting organizer/ice cream purchaser brings in a cake for a special cake party. just like in that seinfeld episode, we celebrate someone's achievement: a new dog, an engagement, publishing a paper or a successful conference call. well in the five years i've been here, there's never been a single cake party for me, while some people are on their second or third cake celebration and so finally, larry comes over to my cube and says, tapping his chin, looking at the ceiling, "you know, i don't think we've ever had a cake party for you [aurelgrooves]"
(no shit, i'm thinking)
"and i'm sure you've had....some sort of achievement this fiscal year...haven't you?"
(2005 totally sucked ass, is that what you're getting at?)
"so go ahead and pick out a cake"
and he drops a cakelove pamphlet on my desk (they have a store in silver spring, btw).

now i've been waiting five years for this, i'm not going to get some overpriced, calorie-fileld repeat of jenny's summer vacation picture cake party. no way.

i will so show them.

so i summoned my team of chefs to chief ike's and asked what the turn around could be on a special cake order. it just so happens my brother has a spongebob squarepants cake mold, and my other chef friend has an ice cream maker at the restaurant. we proceeded to devise the weirdest, strangest cake and ice cream combination we could come up with that people will just have to eat...and here it is: root beer and pomegranate ice cream (pom is still all the rage, yknow - then again rhubarb was all over the food section today), served with some sort of savory cheese tart, and my crowning achievement whatever it is, written in none other than bacon bits on spongebob's square tummy. the only question that remains however, is, what is my big achievement? yeah, i did in fact release a data cd, lead a big workshop and published some papers but come on, that's boring. i want something both funny, uncomfortable and little unnerving for these geek i work with. so i polled my friends and here are the results:

congratulations aurelgrooves! for:

-finally dumping that lying cheating sleazeball boyfriend!
-you're NOT pregnant!
-4 months being cavity free!
-having such sublime joobs!
-dancing better than 100% of chief ike's patrons!
-seeing your roommate's boyfriend naked!
-doing that really good pterodactyl imitation!
-that your rash has stopped spreading!

or maybe just: congrats for getting your officemates to throw you a lame cake party!

heehee. the brainstorming will continue through memorial day.

who needs glaciers anyway

i received this email from the people upstairs the other day:

"SILVER SPRING, Md (5/12/06) -- hundreds of concerned citizens and leaders from across the nation will join Hurricane Katrina survivors May 31st just outside of Washington, D.C. to denounce the Bush Administration's cover up of the growing scientific link between monstrous hurricanes and human-induced global warming. Despite a flurry of peer-reviewed scientific studies linking planetary warming to storms like Katrina, leaders at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Hurricane Center (a subset of NOAA) continue to claim with no supporting data -- that the recent hurricane devastation is part of a "natural cycle." Protesters will condemn these responses as an abdication of government responsibility when millions of Americans are increasingly vulnerable to violent storms in a warmer world.
Meanwhile, just since August 2005, no fewer than four major scientific studies; one conducted by NOAA itself have shown that warmer sea-surface temperatures created by atmospheric warming are increasing the frequency, power, and lifespan of major hurricanes. Yet there is no mention of these studies at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) web site despite the agency's official mission to save lives, mitigate property loss, and improve economic efficiency by issuing the best watches, warnings, forecasts and analyses of hazardous tropical weather, and by increasing understanding of these hazards. And NHC director Max Mayfield denied any substantive connection between global warming and hurricanes before a US Senate panel last fall. Meanwhile at NOAA, The Washington Post and other media have documented the ongoing campaign to cover up global warming data. Under the directorship of Bush's friend and political appointee, Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., NOAA climate scientists are being intimidated from talking to the press and their papers are being withheld from publication. These actions at NOAA and the NHC are part of an obvious political campaign orchestrated by the White House to avoid the serious cuts in fossil fuel use scientists say are needed to fight global warming. But by ignoring the science and denying the warming on behalf of Exxon Mobil, the Bush Administration is condemning millions more Americans to the suffering and loss seen throughout the Gulf Coast in 2005. The cover up must stop now! Please make plans to join the May 31st protest and vigil."

next wednesday will be an interesting workday indeed. now i'm not really privied to say if there has been a total 'cover-up' or not at NOAA - global warming climate change has always been a contentious issue in climate research, even before Dubya came to NOAA headquarters to trash the Kyoto protocol and deny our role in global CO2 emissions in front of the very people who struggle daily to prove the tenuous link between americans and the global environment with science. but i will say, hurricanes - all the crazy shit we saw last year - backed up highways, toppled houses, people hiding in astrodomes, stranded on rooftops - it all speaks a hell of a lot more to people than say, coral bleaching or the extinction of polar bears - both of which are pretty friggin' serious but it won't get Geraldo on-site live! or make the headlones for weeks.

i don't know really know what a protest at NOAA can achieve (to be frank, most people in my office are dems, speak ill of the repubs anyway, like how you see so many cartoons in the hallways, poking fun at the dubya and his cronies, always sorta odd to see in a government building), as i think many people within the administration (look at christie todd whitman and her resignation) have already been battling this issue politically for a long time.

so i guess i'll just say this: it's pretty important to scream this issue out loud, it's pretty timely, given the recent press and yeah! al gore's new movie! (the music is scary enough) but let's also decry that we're pretty far from having any significant action to prevent climate change or hurricanes for that matter, for obvious reasons - we can't just change the climate from year to year, and $$$$$. and greed. just look at the inside page of the post today - we are some greedy, fucked up people!).

because in the end, despite all the news and publications, political struggle, what the repubs say in the end about climate change and all that - they spew what seems to come from some pamphlet written by karl rove, or even worse, the frightening, undeniably insane complete lunatics that take the other side:
"Carbon Dioxide - they call it pollution, we call it life" who are these people?

i'll tell you what tho, my softball team cum environmental aggressors wish more than anything that those nutso's had a team we could smash an ozone hole though:
"Cheap Beer, they call it pollution, we call it life"

how to be late to work

last night i had 8 drinks. all of them different:

corona
sparks
stoli and soda (with a cherry that i threw at some guy and might have stained his white shirt. Sorry!)
bourbon and ginger
cabernet
pilsner urquell
stella

then i went and got some falafel, which i vaguely recall paying with a 100 dollar bill and making a woppoooosh! sound effect. so this morning i realize it's 9:21 am and my roommate/alarm clock, hasn't come down and showered. no, she's still in her bed, wearing last night's clothes. And this dude is on the couch, in his suit, tie which is still knotted in a double windsor, and these crazy shinycowboy boots.

so my strategy, when i'm late to work, is to dress nice. makes you feel good, makes you look good, makes it seem like you have a real, legitimate reason for being late. i'm telling my roommate this as she's all "fuck!fuck! fuck, i'm so fucked! i work on a construction site, I can’t dress nice – hey wait, you're wearing jeans!"
"yes, but these are my hot jeans*"
"hey aurelgrooves, you're hot!" yells the dude from the couch.

dude from the couch then rises, looking like he just got home from the office, and asks for toothpaste. he is disappointed when i tell him that at the pussy palace, we use our fingers to brush our teeth with chili. meanwhile, i'm sifting through the mess on the coffee table for my keys, trying to piece together what sortof weird these two were making this morning, at 4am.
apparently, guinness and flat champagne. as of nowunnamed, but that would makes nine, completely different drinks I drank last night. which now makes me late, drunk, hungover and HOT at work.

*oh and my jeans as it turns out are the same ones i wore last night, which totally smell like bar.

loathing the text message

It's not that I don't like text messages, I just hate the way they are replacing the quick phone call. I mean who has the time to type "do you need me to pick up anything at the store" while they are at the store and somehow expects you to read and respond before they get to the register...

People, text messages are for short bursts of information, perhaps conveying a useful tidbit such as an address, or its real purpose: sarcastic humor you just can't pull off in person. like say, the one i got last week that read:

"ariel sharon is the second cewlest jew i know."

is it implying that i'm the first cewlest? because Ariel Sharon isn't that cool...you see, it's funny, it makes you think.

here are those that have been lingering, avoiding deletion:

"love is thorny"
"work da nooch!"
"I HAVE ISSUES SEE YOU AT 2AM"
"toilet of glory! halelujah!"
"he's hot - you left - he's mine - tequila!"

But anyway, how could any text message replace the operatic (seriously, it sounded like pavarotti) voicemail I received at 4:29 am this morning: cello cello cello cello cellooooooo. Cellooooooo! Cellooo cello cello cello! cello! cello! and so on for nearly 2 and a half minutes.
It can't. so stick to the rules, don't let the text become your only voice. thank you.

man vs. nature: easter edition

so, not sure if you have been to rockville lately, but there's these crazy canadian geese everywhere. living on top of buildings, in parking lots. they seem rather oblivious to the fact that their natural environment has been paved, developed, invaded. and they have this very "fuck you we were here first" mentality. but i wonder, do the instincts in their little pea sized brains tell them to set up shop on a rooftop or in an industrial planter, or is this them taking a stand in the war against humans?

today, someone i work with was attacked by one of these fuckers. a couple has taken residency at the office entrance. mom is sitting on 4 eggs while dad hisses, with his little vibrating pink tongue, at everyone who comes within a 15 foot radius, which is everyone who has to come into the building. and like me, they are all in awe of these guys, there's something about seeing a wild animal up close...

still, the relationship is not peaceful. today a woman dropped her newspaper and it was immediately hopped on by crazy dad. when a gentleman tried to get it back for her, the thing literally landed on his head and pecked at him and hovered in front of his face, flapping his wings and skwawking until he swatted it with his briefcase. can you imagine swatting a giant 10 pound flying bird? on your way to work? it's crazy. but he was walking around the office being all, dude, i fought off a giant goose this morning, and i won. i conquered nature. the security guard turned amateur ornithologist has been regaling us with fascinating details about the daily habits of this duo - crazy dad left her for two hours yesterday to go frolick with his girlfriend in the puddle across the street! and the story of how he scared away a sneaky fox who came for eggs late night. man, even in this sprawling suburbia, we aren't completely isolated from nature.

i once worked in the office with a window on the building next door. the rains would leave deep puddles which rarely dried up, and even froze to a perfect ice rink in winter. the geese found these puddles to be a little piece of paradise. about 3 or 4 times an hour i would hear the typety clicks of my office mate stall to silence, and i'd find him staring out the window at our neighbors, so much more fascinating than our processing tasks. hours would go by as we each narrated,

"ooh looks like plumpy is having a little tiff with skinny legs."
"check out baldy, he's standing on one leg"
"stubbs is licking fat neck's butt"

every day attracted more and more geese and then one spring day, the roof was covered with adorable baby goslings. we got very little work done in those weeks, watching the little yellow babies grow and waddle around, like litte baby toys.

and then came the crows.

the crows sat creepily, perched high in the neighboring trees cackawing crescendos while their little beady black eyes glowing with eager hungry excitement. my office mate and i banged against the windows screaming noooooooo! to warn our friends of the surprise attack...swooping in like precision military airplanes, striking and dive bombing and taking away the very tender center of our daily entertainment. the geese, seeing no where else to flee, pushed their little malleable babies off the roof: plop! plop! 2 stories down! plop! they landed in the bushes, some missed the soft grass and splattered onto a stoop, occupied by secret smokers only minutes before. plop!

i couldn't look anymore, i shut the blinds, and our office was dark and quiet. it was excruciatingly real nature at its most violent darwinist moment, a feeling that doesn't convey on the discovery channel.

so i can now really appreciate that fluffy and hissy have moved their nest closer to us, hissing at us daily, the humans who have covered their habitat in cement, cut up their homes into little city blocks and cook their brothers and sisters in woks...but why? further from their natural predators, but close to their unnatural enemies? is it not a better life in Canada?

greek easter!

So how come no one told me about Greek easter?

I would have marked that big fat greek holiday on my calendar long ago, if only I had known there would have been whole carcasses of meat roasting in a very nearby adams morgan alley...I would have arrived on time! My roommate and i dragged a case of miller high life to an alley party and was not fully prepared for what we came upon. There were perplexed eyes on our group, neighbors who were parking their cars or bringing out their garbage, stalling, staring, wondering what kind of animal was slowly rotating and smoldering, inches beyond their back fences. I didn’t know you could get away with that these days.
But it was a festive event, children running around, people shouting "hopa!" eating grape leaves, baklava, and we made it complete with alley frisbee, sparks and chardonnay, miller high life mixed with sparks....I really do love traditions though, such as the red egg smashing, the singing, the tzatsiki! oh, and the MEAT. My stomach is still relishing the bits of skin and gristle I picked off of this guy, who looked more like a greyhound than a lamb:
the caption to this photo should read "blllwwwweeeaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhh"

I heard one kid mutter: “poor santa’s little helper.”

I have always advocated that you can really only appreciate your meal if you watch it slow roast over a fire, dousing it intermittently with liquid to keep it nice and moist, smelling the fat sizzle onto hot coals...And if it still has eyeballs, tongue and teeth, well even better.

USB lava lamp

so for chanukkah my aunt gave me this mini lava lamp with glitter in it that plugs into a USB port.


like many useless chanukkah gift one receives, it might end up in a box in a closet somewhere. but this morning i found it and plugged it into my computer at work. even though i get error messages every few minutes that says WARNING! USB port power surge detected! i have to say, it rocks. it's reflecting little geometric designs on my cublicle walls and ceiling and from the hallway looks like i am doing some sort of hogwart's experiment.

DCelebrity

a DC celebrity came into the bar i was working at last night. it felt sorta weird knowing so much about her (anal) sex life. she seemed kinda subdued. maybe she knew the entire staff recognized her. (well, she did give us her credit card so what wouldyou expect?)...maybe she was on drugs. she wasn't as slutty as i would have expected though.

fun with wikipedia part I

fun with wikipedia - part I
The Golden Girls is considered the direct ancestor of Sex and the City. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Girls

neil patrick harris is gay??!!!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Patrick_Harris

another day another hangover

so where is one supposed to find good late night eats in adams morgan these days? and i mean when you're wasted because you didn't have dinner and went straight to the bar from work, so you were there when the place opened, and my the time you hit your second glass of merlot, the world is spinning and even though you keep misplacing your phone, you text random people and try to meet up and basically turn your wednesday into a friggin saturday. and so when you have no proper hand eye coordination to be able to put together your own falafel sandwich (which i'm usually an expert at, btw. the key: put some garlic/tahini sauce in FIRST - it messes up the fixins bar when you go backwarsd but it's worth it), where do you go? huge pizza slice, no thank you. ever since i dropped one on the ground my first night in DC and it landed cheese-side down (of course) and...i ate it anyway (five second rule) i vowed never to go back. and i have to say, julia's empenadas kindof suck. and don't get me wrong, i'm a big empenada fan - i make awesome empenadas - but how does julia's stay in business with the dry crap that's been sitting under a heat lamp all day? and they don't even have soup at the one on 18th street. and the burrito joint closes early. burritos. that's exactly what i want at 2 am.

happy valentine's day

So last night, i went to tryst for their valentine’s day party, tho it wasn’t really much of a party, just a typical night with people sitting around with faces lit up in blue by their laptop screens. Though I do recall giving some guy who was coding javascript behind me a really good idea for a million dollar website.
But a good time was had by all. I saw this guy there. My Most Recently Single Friend (as of 7:55 pm EST on 2/14) and the Friend I Want To Be Roommates With (spring 2006 brings you - the pussy palace. 2 ladies and 3 cats)discussed the finer points of specialised internet dating sites, like for farmers and midgets, jacuzzis vs. bathtubs with jets, men who work with their hands, and how shitty boyfriends learn to outsource certain boyfriend duties to gay guys, like, "baby, I really don’t feel like going out to brunch and then shopping the outlet mall, why don’t you go with roberto instead?", and how whenever you go out drinking with a bunch of people, you should always buy the first round because then for the rest of the night people remember you bought the first round and you never have to buy another one again. Though I’ve had that backfire when it’s 2:17 am and you want to go home and someone makes you buy 6 cans of pbr that end up stacked and undrunk on the bar.So then we broke the cardinal rule of champagne which is: never drink champagne unless you want to get wasted and hungover.
We had three bottles, and since there were three of us, I guess we had a bottle each. Our waiter was super nice, I think we should have tipped him more. When I’m drunk I usually don’t tip well. Then we went to cheese spikes, but by then I was very slurry, which my handsome indian friend pointed out: “it’s so great to see you out and wasted on a tuesday!” I found $5 in my pocket, which let us pick 40 songs on the jukebox, but only 13 of them got played. Someone slow tackled me. I went home and ate couscous and showed up 2 hours late for work and missed a phone interview, but now I have lots of funny stories to tell. Yay valentine’s day.

things i learned from my stupid friends

1. Happiness floats.
2. The torpedoes won't launch if the cloaking device is on.
3. Republicans eat chicken feet.
4. Ski lift tickets are expensive because of Bill Clinton.
5. "EIEIO" is not an acceptable Scrabble word
6. Stroh 80 rum and ginger ale makes a tasty butterscotch drink
7. Slut Puddle would be a good name for a band.