A few months ago, I read a quick Democracy Arsenal post written by Heather Hurlburt while she sat at an airport, waiting for her flight to leave. I thought to myself, "I want to write a post like that." And now I have.

Coming soon: photos from the Seattle trip, and I'll bitch about Vladmir Putin's growing resemblance to Tony Soprano. Also, sure, now they're interested in who leaked classified information.

Google Image Search the shiznit, my good readers. It has been officially designated by Her Majesty the Queen as "The Official Shiznit of Empire."

Anyhoodles, I'm off for a nice long walk down to the Office of Civil Rights in the Reporters Building near L'Enfant Plaza. Got a package to deliver, nice brisk weather, and a new BBC4 interview with the Blair-a-tron 2000 on my iPod. I wouldn't do it for free, but as jobs go, it's not bad at all.

So: I'm in a coffee-shop called Warehouse, which holds is the only coffee-shop in the entire District of Columbia I know of that has the dual distinction of being a) not Starbucks™ and b) not Starbucks™. I know that, technically, that's one distinction, but it's such an important one I thought it was worth saying twice.

Two distinctions Warehouse holds that relate to this story: they a) serve beer and b) are right across the street from the District's convention center. And this is what I overhear after I get to the counter: "So I said, 'What are you talking about? There aren't any bars next to the convention center!' Then when he brought me in here, I said, 'Oh, you mean the coffee place! They serve drinks?'"

He doesn't think a sandwich and coffee joint would server beer? Must be from Utah or something.

I take a look: three standard-issue yuppies in suits listening to Santa Claus. He's a jolly, big guy with a bushy white beard, long white hair (in a neat pony tail) wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a Blackberry and a beer in front of him. That's what I've always pictured Santa looking like, anyway.

The yuppies are on their way out while I wait for my turkey wrap. I say hello to Santa and we get to chatting. He's an outgoing fella, and half sloshed already. Turns out Santa is your stereotypical O.C. conservative.

• He's glad California executed Stanley "Tookie" Williams.

  "Fuck him. Fuck him. He started a gang that's gotten more people killed, more innocent people killed—I mean, they say he's fucking converted or something, but I have been standing on the roof of the L.A. convention center, putting up some signs, I see two cars pull up, zig-zagging, this one pulls up next to the other, forces it off onto the sidewalk, three guys get out, thugged out, with guns, go up to the driver's window of the other car and just start blasting away. Killed the guy. That's what 'Tookie' started. So fuck him. Fuck him."

• He's into extreme sports, of course.

  "I've met them all. I've met Mark [the guy who invented snowboards]. They come to me to set up conventions, and I tell them what I really think of their stuff. I mean, as soon as I have their business, as soon as they pay me, I tell them what I really think. I told Mark, 'those X23 boots you make, they suck. They don't fit on the arch, they don't turn, they suck ass, Mark.' He said to me, 'I don't like them either.'"

• He doesn't like James Dobson:

  "You know what I think of religious fanatics? Fuck them. Fuck them. They're absolutely insane, they don't have a fucking clue what they're doing. I mean, they can believe what they want, buts they get up talking all this bullshit and they expect us to just go right along with it because they think it's what Jesus would do. So fuck them. Fuck them.

• Or homos:

  "Fuck them. They keep shoving this stuff down our throat, they keep putting these movies out. I mean, they can do what they want on their own, but they want everyone to be gay. They really do. Well, fuck them. Fuck them.

So I did something that wouldn't have scored me many points with Elizabeth Birch: I just smiled and nodded and let him keep talking. A couple minutes later, Santa had gotten on to some other subject, and we talked about Utah and pollution and stuff for a while. But I kept thinking about how Ang Lee wants everybody to be gay.

In this particular situation, it seems pretty clear to me that it would have been useless to argue with the guy. Having some stranger call you out on your ingrained bigotry when your half-drunk at some coffee-shop isn't going to change anybodies mind. But it made me wish I knew Santa better. Because what can change your mind about something is what the people you know and respect think.

I've been thinking back to high school and I can remember at least a couple of my friends who, if they hadn't known any gay guys, turning out just like Santa: nice guys, cool guys, who just don't really get the homos. But because they knew a couple gay guys—in one or two cases, specifically because they knew me—they are nice guys, cool guys, who do get the homos, who aren't scared of gay people or threatened by gay people, and everybody's better off. I don't mean to sound self-congratulatory...okay, maybe I do. Among the mistakes of my life are scattered the occasional good action, and coming out so soon was definitely one of them.

But then you sit and listen to Santa, and you think, "could I be more open, maybe? Would he have been more understanding if I had said, 'dude, I'm gay'?" Maybe not. Probably not. Like I said: it's usually useless to yell at a drunk stranger. But not always. And any time you take the cautious path, you look back and say, maybe I should have done things differently.

It's good to have these doubts. You can't be sure if you haven't made a mistake, every time you make a decision. It's ever so easy for people who are absolutely sure they've made the right choices to delude themselves into causing a lot of suffering. Or, more often, just making fools of themselves in public.

It's a beach party on Sydney's happening gay scene!



Did I say beach party? I meant race riot.

...or at least, they would have made a wonderful odd couple. Two great men died this weekend.

Richard Pryor

Eugene McCarthy

I was on the bus coming back to my apartment just a few minutes ago when I realized that I was on the bus on the way to my apartment. Not in the sense of being insane. (I am not insane unless I find myself in a courtroom, and even then it would depend on the circumstances.) I mean in the sense that I suddenly noticed I had reached a major milestone in my life: I am now officially living on my own, paying rent and buying groceries.

This is done with the help of roommates, or at least the paying rent is. So far my roommate's contribution to the grocery-buying effort consists of one bag of Doritos™ Tony brought back from the airport and one bottle of coconut rum Kimesha smuggled back from the Virgin Islands. All they've done is make my two bottles of OJ and three cans of peaches look good—and isn't that enough, really?

In any case, they work at Dulles Airport; gate agents for an airline that is, for tax reasons, not officially part of United Airlines. The hours are shitty, from mid-afternoon until nearly midnight, and they can't leave until the last flight they're assigned to has pulled out, which means lots of mandatory overtime. On the plus side, all that mando adds up, and they get to fly. They've only had the job six weeks and Kimesha's already returned to the Virgin Islands, where she was born, just to spend her day off seeing friends, and also to smuggle us rum. Tony goes to Florida to see his family, and claims he can get me tickets to London for eighty-five bucks, so the two of us could fly out there for a few days just for shits and giggles.

"Why London?" I asked him.

"You've got an accent. They'll think you're English and be nice to us."

"They'll think I'm pretending to be British and say nasty things about us behind our backs."

Anyway, we're on air mattresses for now, but I have a futon coming in 3-7 business days, and we're checking with relatives, craigslist, and thrift stores for a table and a reading chair for the living room. I'm planning on having all my books still at my father's house shipped here. So at some point in the near future, I will have the following:

1. A futon.
2. A reading chair.
3. Books.

Ah, quiet satisfaction. A sense of smug contentment that comes from knowing you're better than the mall-zombie masses. The fulfillment that comes from not succumbing to materialism. I could have these things, if I hadn't bought an iPod.

Oh, well. I can listen to Car Talk and watch episodes of Lost on the bus now. To say nothing of all that music, and being able to show new people the pictures I keep with me.

So that's my life right at the moment. I know that if you're reading this blog, you're probably more interested in what's going on my life than the political stuff I usually put up. After all, you could get that stuff from CNN. Trouble is, I hate only posting once or twice a week, and my life simply isn't interesting enough to warrant daily posts. I can manage to be interesting maybe two, three times a week, and I'm pretty damn interesting. I mean, no living soul has gone their entire lives without being interesting at least once, now that Adlai Stevensen has, sadly, died. But who does it all the time?

I'll try and put more up about me and the things I do. But there will still be plenty of political crap. Maybe I'll do more jokes about Ted Kennedy drinking a lot, but those aren't much original either.

Oh, for crying out loud, what is this new crapulence? AP:

The administration also is trumpeting progress on the economic front in a 35-page booklet titled "Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" that it released a week ago when the president gave the first speech of the series at the U.S. Naval Academy. There, he highlighted progress in training Iraqi army and police forces...
Senate Democrats issued a report saying the U.S. faces a reconstruction gap. While the administration cites the number of new schools built, roads paved and businesses created, "the simple fact is that basic needs – jobs, essential services, health care – remain unmet," according to the report obtained by The Associated Press.

Amazing how the usual script can work for everything if you just change the names. They must grow their communications staffers in the same lab ABC grows it's sitcom writers.

I just listened to an NPR piece. Steve Unger's observations about holiday shopping. He lists a half dozen reports of people who have been hurt and even hospitalized by crowds of shoppers resembling stampeding herds of antelope or mad elephants. "It's a huge blow for proponents of intelligent design," Unger observes. "Proof that our DNA has barely mutated from that of our tusked cousin the elephant."

Far more developed than hyenas, we are monkey see, monkey buy. Advertisers compel us with sexy and cool images and soundtracks that create emptiness, promote need, and offer fulfillment all at the same time. In the "season of giving," these messages combine with tradition and religion to be so effective, so convincing, shoppers are willing to wrestle each other to the floor.

Now that's intelligent design.

That story was the first Podcast I listened to on my new iPod.

You know those times when someone neglects their blog and writes a post apologizing for it? Isn't that annoying as hell? If you're going to take the time to post on your blog, you should at least slap an internet quiz up there or do something else to take up space, the way E.R. has a train wreck on the weeks the writers couldn't come up with anything good.

You scored 59% sanguine, 53% phlegmatic, 39% melancholy, and 52% choleric!

You are the Thymus.

As you may know, the Thymus is a lymphatic organ where T-cells mature. It increases in size until adolescence, after which it atrophies.

My thoughts? I associated the Thymus with these humors because it's a childhood organ. You may be a wonderful impulsive and lively person, but eventually you're going to have to settle down. Or not. We all lose our Thymus, but at least we've still got you!

The What Organ Are You? Test