Put a penny in the slot

Not that I would know anything about it at all, but a popular file-sharing network was shut down last week. Of course, the world record industry chooses to continue to try in vain to shoehorn digital music into their old business model instead of learning a lesson and taking away valuable insight into what these file-sharing networks are telling them about demand.

So here are my suggestions for how the music industry can improve in their digital delivery for people like me (and most of the people I know) who have gone all-digital. Conveniently, this doubles as a list of things that the music industry will never do.

1. Put the albums out AS SOON AS THEY'RE DONE!!
I can't web-yell this enough. I know that the delayed releases usually have to do with picking out a marketing-friendly release date, but it's obvious even to the brain-dead (a step up from music industry folks) that so much of the popularity of file-sharing is because music fans are sick of waiting until a precise date before we get to hear it, and if they can't get it through normal channels, they'll look to other places for it. I'm going to use a word I don't often use, but it's too appropriate here: DUH!

A sub-point of this point directed at the online digital music stores like emusic and Amazon: there is NO REASON that you shouldn't have the files available to download at 12:01 AM on the day of its release. Especially you, emusic. It's ridiculous to not find an album on your site until a week or two after it's been released. Ever heard the expression "strike while the iron's hot"? Apparently not.

2. Give users a variety of file types and quality.
I'm sure that the (shitty) counter-argument to this would be that the record companies and artists don't want the music so easy to pass around; that if people can get lossless files, it'll just be that much easier to share perfect-quality audio. Well, news flash: the easiest way for a person to make perfect-quality, sharable audio is to buy the CD. In other words, the ability to do that already exists. Go ahead and offer people 192, 256 and FLAC. Hell, you could even charge more while you're at it.

3. Globalize.
I know that there's all sorts of wacky, nutty, cuckoo-bananas copyright laws around the world that prevent record companies from spreading their releases over borders without hassle. But logically speaking (which is, of course, the opposite of legally speaking), there's no reason that every album shouldn't be released in every country on the same day. And now that we can go to any website in the world and hear what that country has to offer, it's endless amounts of frustrating that we still have albums being released in the US as long as a year after their home country release. Idiotic.

So of course, the international music industry won't do these things, instead letting the music fans of the world innovate ways to get around whatever barriers they try to put in place. The time when music makers around the world could have created a new business model is running out fast, and soon, record labels and companies will collapse, and it will take another decade or so before someone figures out a way to make recorded music profitable again. In the meantime, music will go local again, and we'll have lots of free music, so really, we win.

Parishioners may add their views in the comments.

Would you like some product?

As I was hacking my way through the impenetrable (and dry-heave ugly) jungle of MySpace last night, it occurred to me that there are two ways to be successful that can be summed up by the MySpace way of doing things and the Google way of doing things.

Far too many people do things the way MySpace has done it. They've gotten incredibly successful with a highly useful but flawed product. This is fine to some extent. They can pat themselves on the back for creating a successful and desirable product. And through both habit and necessity (in a manner of speaking) they'll continue to be successful even if they just sit in their Herman Miller chairs with cigar in their mouths and their feet on their desks.

But eventually, the sheer suck of the product is going to do them in. And instead of correcting the problems, they become inwardly focused and put emphasis on new campaigns and new features, while their customers are getting increasingly frustrated with the product as a whole.

Eventually, businesses in the MySpace model will collapse. A competitor who does it better will come along, both fixing and improving upon the first big success story.

I'm afraid this is what's in store for emusic, and they haven't even gotten to be hugely successful. I'm getting more frustrated with the fact that new releases still don't show up very quickly, their search stinks and there seems to be no institutional concern with making the product better.

This is why, as my good friend Lindsay always says, I welcome our future Google overlords. It's amazing to me that so few people have figured out what makes Google so great: they fix their flaws. And what's better, they don't make the mistake of bundling these fixes in major product releases, which only inevitably disappoint the customers waiting for it. They improve every product they buy.

It's so simple: build a quality product. It seems so obvious, but people forget it in their insularity. Marketing campaigns are important, but only when you have a quality product. And you can thrive and succeed wildly on a crap product, but only temporarily.

I could make another parallel here, but I won't.

In between days

Where I lack luck in love, I more than make up for in other parts of my life. I've been blessed with a great family, amazing friends, really good health and the fortune to be living in a time and country of easy access to great music and increased comforts.

Where I've been retchingly lucky is with jobs. Not only have I never been without salary through four jobs in the last ten years (even having been laid off twice), but I've always gotten the first job I've looked for. Both times I got laid off, I got job leads without even looking the very next day.

What I've been bad at is spending my off time in between jobs. In my last two in-between times, I had two weeks off and a month off respectively, and did absolutely nothing. Like those lazy Sundays, it feels good to do nothing while you're doing it, but then you look back on it and think of all the things you could have done but didn't and feel a powerful regret. Well, I feel that, but then, crippling regret is something of a hobby for me.

So before I start my new job on the 15th, I have a week and a half off. The 14th is taken up with what I now consider a tradition: the day before I start a new job, I go to King's Dominion with Hans. I have to. It's tradition. And I'm hoping to go home to NC for a few days. But what else should I do? Visit Civil War battlefields? Go visit the Bladensburg Quik-E-Mart before it's taken down? Just watch a ton of movies? What, readers? What?!

Damnation

Popular depictions of Hell would lead you to believe that the worst things in the world are endless repetition and lack of accomplishment. You're trying to push a rock up a hill and have to start over again and again, you're trying to drink water but you can't quite make it, you have to sit in an airplane seat between two really fat people. We've read all these things in Greek mythology, and I think we can all agree that they'd be pretty bad.

But they miss the worst part of any bad thing: loss. It's having something wonderful in the first place, only to have it taken away from you. This is why things like heartbreak and bankruptcy are hell.

The worst in the world, though? Getting to sit on a beach and do absolutely nothing, only to have to come back into work. I've just found my own personal hell.

Chance over chores

On Sunday night, my phone rang, which it always does when someone's calling me. I mean, always. Every...single...time. It's really spooky.

On the other end of the line was Hans (or at least someone claiming to be Hans. You never can be too sure these days) with an incredible offer: skip work on Tuesday and go ride roller coasters at Six Flags America.

My mind whirred. I'm already taking next week off of work, and we're working on a huge deadline that arrives in early July. I wanted nothing more than to play hooky and ride coasters with Hans, but that voice in my head kept repeating the list of responsibilities and to-dos. I couldn't make it. Not this month. Not right now.

I knew I had made the right decision, but it still hurt to make it. It wasn't just because I was missing a chance at coaster riding with one of my best friends, but because I had made a promise to myself years ago that I wouldn't talk myself out of time with friends and family.

It was when I was laid off from my job in Alexandria in the spring of 2001 that fun-over-work became clear. It was an underpaid job, but feelings of responsibility kept me at the office late hours, and I passed up a lot. Losing that job made me realize that the company will always do what's right for it, so dammit, I was going to do what was right for me. When I started my next job, I almost talked myself out of going to a friend's wedding in Oregon because I was too busy and it was too expensive, but I shrugged it off and went. And had an amazing time. And was laid off again 7 months later.

It's so easy to tell ourselves that we're too busy or too tired or don't have enough money or it's too complicated to take a trip, spend time with family, date someone, go out to dinner. Just about anything can be justified against. And inevitably, we regret it. Yes, we're busy, but it's worth it taking the time off for a unique opportunity. It's still worth pulling yourself up to go out. It's worth cobbling together some money for a unique opportunity. It's always worth it.

All that stuff went through my mind on Sunday—that I should shrug off a single day of work for some coaster time—but it was just too much. I'm still not entirely sure that I made the right decision, but in that moment, the responsible world was just looming too large to ignore. But I still need to remind myself that it has to be huge to ever make this kind of decision again. The work world is a lot more forgiving than we think.

Hans: I swear, man. It really is the problem with June. Later this summer: hooky for coasters. I want to see you sleep on Superman again.

Said

I'm inconsistent on Life Lessons. Even the ones that seem most obvious and helpful—Don't Email Mad, or Stop Drinking When You're Drunk, or Don't Go Just To See The Opening Band, Because Opening Bands Almost Always Sound Terrible—eventually slip, and I'm left with the frustration of not only making a bad mistake, but a mistake that I once swore I would never make again.

The lastest life lesson to slip is one that can have some really harsh consequences: Make People Say Exactly What They Mean. Just because it might seem really, really obvious what someone's saying to you in an emotional conversation, it may not be. So, for instance, if you're trying to beat me to death, I may stop for a second and make you say clearly whether you're actually trying to kill me or just give me a severe beating. Or if you're standing by my desk, nervously explaining the correct procedure for evacuating the building, please don't be offended if I said, "Shut up and just tell me this: is the building currently on fire?"

More to the point, if you seem—no matter how clearly—to either be breaking up with me or expressing romantic feelings for me, I'm going to ask you to say it outright, in clean, simple, clear language. I have a embarrassingly large collection of vague feelings delivered to me as both casual asides and emotional crying jags that seem very clear what they're saying, even without saying it. This is not true. I need clarification, because apparently, I've been getting all of you wrong.

So today, I swear to myself, to you, and whoever else is listening as you slowly ready this post out loud to yourself, that I will NEVER make that mistake again until the next time I make it.

Oh, and if any of you leave the "when you assume" bit in the comments, you will regret it for the rest of your life, which you will not have much more of.

...and every bit of it is Frankenstein

Last week, I watched Eddie Izzard's Definite Article. At one point, he was talking about stupid sayings; about expressions that didn't seem to make any sense. Later in his show, he said, "Let bygones be bygones", then stopped and in his conversational style, said, "See?! What does that mean?! What's a bygone?!" He thought for a second and said, "Oh. Right. It's something that's gone by. Well. That makes sense, then."

It's this kind of thinking that doesn't exist in too many places. English is a language that seems full of words, grammar and expressions that don't seem to make logical sense, but it's pretty incredible how many people don't seem to ever really understand what they're saying. It sounds good, but if they stopped and thought about the words they've put together for five seconds (or less), they might realize that it doesn't actually make sense.

All this is an unnecessarily long-winded way of saying that, this weekend, the Today show had a feature on an environmentally-friendly car show, and one woman interviewed there claimed that if she had her way, she would have a car that's "100% hybrid".

Our new personalities at the end of the world

Lisa and I went out last night for the occasion of her visiting the East Coast, and our conversation took on the topics that are usually reserved for dinnertime: chaos, panic and genocide. We're so typical!

Actually, the conversation went more along the lines of human reactions to those things: what people do when they're taken out of their average lives and suddenly have to find ways to survive on their own. And specifically, what kind of people would we be? Even the worst lives of the people we know aren't lived in a primal mode of simple survival. We asked ourselves: If society suddenly collapsed, would I be...

• The clear leader, who calms people down and gets them to work together, eventually heading the reformation of society.
  
• The panic-stricken hysteric, running off in whatever direction is away from the alien spacecraft and the human-vaporizing ray that just did off with our best friend and that person from the office that we were more less indifferent to before the crisis (of whom our last image would be frozen with an expression of helpless horror as they vanished into nothing)
• The chaos vigilante, who would immediately find a gun and do whatever it took to survive: shooting, stealing and shoving whoever got in our way of that last piece of bread or the almost-forgotten thrill of the last Twix on earth
• The quiet, pragmatic survivor, who calmly looks around while others are running in circles and shooting each other and finds the tools and means to survive

Are there other anarchy archetypes that I missed? What would you be?

Read this post NOW, jerks!

If you ever want demonstrations of Why People Do What They Do, just look around. Just about every human impulse and action is demonstrated on a daily basis in small, analogous ways. There's enough examples in the world to fill a book, something that I intend to do someday. Not today, though.

One of my favorites is at work in the small kitchen in my work area. There's a dishwasher, but dirty dishes pile up in the sink every day, to disgusting levels. It's a mini-example in inconsiderateness (inconsideracy?), but the real story is in the signs that are taped above the sink by anonymous, fed-up people. When the sign's writing is polite and calm—something like, "Please take a few moments and put your dishes in the dishwasher"—the mountain of dirty dishes piles as high as usual. But when someone gets really fed up and makes a sign that says something like, "Be civilized! Don't expect others to clean up your mess!", everyone around the office complains about how obnoxious and snobby it is, but guess what? The sink stays clean.

There is, of course, not a single person in the world who thinks that they require humiliation and insults to do what they should have had done in the first place, and that people are either considerate or they're not, and it's manners and breeding that separate the two. But in reality, it's pretty incredible what you can get people to do and believe with some belittling.

O My God

I'm just going to say it. There's a topic of conversation that's just hanging out there, creating a whole lot of tension between us. It's time to tackle it. It's time to talk about how The Police have aged.

Exhibit #1 (of one):

Let's start with Stewart Copeland. Being a total badass for his entire life, it was inevitable that he chose to go with the natural, flowing gray look. For badasses such as Stewart, there's no covering up. He was a galldanged rock star—an actual punk, you punks—and now he's going to show you unappreciative, snotty whippersnappers what a real man does when he hits 50: he flaunts his gray with pride and not a little bit of elitism. Then he whips you with a french-gripped 5A drumstick, just to teach you a lesson. God bless the man.

Andy Summers looks great. I think he's pretty clearly coloring, and maybe he's had a little bit of work down, but it's allowed. He spent the late '70's and early '80's as the dorkiest rock star in the world, a guy who made more than a people think, "why do they have that old guy filling in on guitar?", a guy who must have been relieved when Huey Lewis came along. The world's caught up with him, and now we live in a world of peace and love where people in their thirties and forties are welcome into the rock star club without a batted eye. And he looks the same. I'm a little confused as to what my point is here, so if you figure it out, leave a comment.

Sting: there is justice in the world. For decades, we've had to watch Mr. Tantric Exotic Music Man effortlessly fight off the ravages of years as though he was someone who did yoga for hours a day. Well, looks like age is starting to escape his yoga-sculpted exterior. He used to be going bald with dignity, but it looks like he's suddenly trying to spike it to cover up the thinning, as though we wouldn't notice and would instead want him to talk about tantric sex again. And look at that smug face, like he's saying, "I don't need the money like Stewie and Andy". It's the kind of look that even makes me want to write "fuck off you cunt"* on my drumset.

In sum, I can't decide if I'm going to see them or not.

* The rumor goes that he wrote that as a message to Sting. Such anger. That these guys made five albums together is nothing short of a miracle.

What's in a word?

I have this odd fascination with marketing. I don't do much in the way of marketing (directly) in my job, so it's really just a personal interest. But I think it's really amazing to see how people who do this for a living can be either so clever or, more interestingly, so terrible at it. There were a couple of examples today of marketing language that made me think of it.

The clever
Walking by a McDonalds a few minutes ago, I saw a sign that offered their new snack wrap, and advertised that you had the choice of getting the wrap either "grilled" or "crispy". This is totally brilliant. We all know that "crispy" means "fried", but it's like advertising something for $2.99 instead of $3.00. It doesn't matter that you know the real truth; the slight twist will always work on you subconsciously.

The bad
There's a meat and seafood delivery service whose trucks I see around town pretty often whose motto is "just a little bit better". Now, they of course mean it in a folksy, friendly way; said in a warm tone of voice that says, "we could have stopped here, but we took an extra step...just for you." But I don't get how it escaped the marketers that it all depends on how it's said, and you can't count on that when people only see it written. To me it comes across with a shrug of the shoulders and a "Meh. It's a little bit better, I guess. Depends on what you're comparing it to."

Nice while it lasted...

Day two (non-consecutive) of being on to something at a young age starts here: at five years old in the English house (I call it an English house because it was in England) of my friend Stuart. He had a science book that I happened to be looking at while over for tea that mentioned something about how the Earth was slowly moving towards the Sun, and would one day get close enough that it would explode or boil or something. Point is, the Earth would cease to exist.

Being a five-year-old with an irrational fear of pretty much everything, I went downstairs to talk this over with my Mom (because she also was over there for afternoon tea, in spite of her American accent). She calmed me down by explaining that while this might happen, it wouldn't be for billions of years, by which time we would all be long gone. While the prospect of ever being "gone" scared me almost as much, I decided to accept this explanation, if only because my mom had both of the qualifications that I looked for in truth speakers those days: being a grownup and being my mom. I took her word, even though the worry of the world coming to an end in my lifetime still stuck with me a tiny bit.

Turns out, she should have said something to me along the lines of, "Yup. World's gonna blow. Now go drink your tea, you angelic, perfectly-behaved child."

I'm currently reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything (a more accurate title would be A Short History of the Study of Nearly Everything), and, while I know that Bryson is doing everything he can to sensationalize what he learned, it's still some scary stuff. Huge meteors pass near earth all the time, and one could hit us at any moment. And don't think you'll get some grave "I have some bad news for you" announcement from Morgan Freeman. It'll just hit and wipe us all out. Also, cute little Yellowstone park is a massive underground volcano that's due to explode and kill us. "What?! In America?! No!" you say. Yup. Fun!

Justifying My Fears Of The World's End Week continued as I put in An Inconvenient Truth. I have to admit that I didn't have high expectations for this. Most of the people I had gotten reviews from were part of the choir being preached to, and even they said it was self-serving (which it was) and often boring (also true). But my God, those statistics. I was expecting numbers of the "well...I guess if you put it that way it might be true" variety, but what was there was much more simple and shocking. Climate change critics love framing this as a natural change in weather, but if it's not global warming/climate change, it's the apocalypse.

Point being: if you're making a list of things to do on President's Day, you might want to add "curl up in the corner and cry quietly at the futility of it all" to your list.

A head in the clouds is a head on the ground

Sorry to harp on the dizziness yet again, but it's what's on my mind. Har har? Bear with me until next week, when I get back to the usual inanity.

So I'm here in my room (cue: Beach Boys, "In My Room") with my parents who are around making sure that I don't collapse again, and if I do, I don't go careening through a window or--God forbid--the TV. Then again, I was looking for a good excuse to get a new TV, so maybe I'll stand by the old one and hyperventilate.

What a strange new life I have for myself. Among the changes I've made due to the swooning (not the good kind of swooning) that I'll have to make in my life until further notice:

• No alcohol
• More vegetables and fruit
• Not walking on the Metro escalator
• No driving for 6 months on doctor's orders (not too hard, since I don't have a car, but potentially a pain)
• No dancing (ow!)
• No shaking my head really hard, which would include...I don't know...not disagreeing violently with anyone? All I know is that moving my head too fast makes me a little woozy.

In other words, my new life is not much fun. But all these changes are endless fun compared to three days in the hospital.

Anything else I should watch out for?

Being older has not made me more concise

This post would have started with "last night", but to paraphrase Gloria Estefan, the work gets in the way, so it will start with "earlier this week".

Earlier this week, Christian, Nicole and I had dinner with Steve, an old college friend of Christian's and mine. He's a family man now, with a baby, and we haven't seen each other in a while and we're all in our 30's, so inevitably, the conversation turns to what's changed with age. At one point, Steve made the following observation (paraphrased, since I don't tape record my dinner conversations, unlike you):

You know how you used to think MTV was the really cool and VH1 was for old people, but now, we love VH1 and think MTV is really stupid! It's true! Admit it!

I didn't admit it, partly because I watch as much VH1 now as I did when I was in high school, which is slightly more than none. And I think those "Best Week Ever" shows are about as dumb as anything on MTV, which is a little more than a lot.

But I think that the main reason that I busted up our nice dinner to disagree is that I haven't found those sorts of changes in the aging of me (or most of the people I know). Sure, there have been plenty of surprises, like just how much I do care that I'm losing my hair, or that seeing the lines in my cheeks growing deeper and longer does bother me more than I thought it would, or just how odd it is to think of my aging.

What I don't accept is that growing older somehow means letting go of things that are considering "young" in favor of things that are "old". Most of my changes of emotion and opinion are simply a matter of living more. I could have the same body and hair and ability to eat a large pizza without gaining weight that I had when I was 18, but the simple act of seeing more and learning more is going to bring about changes. I don't listen to more jazz and Pet Sounds and quiet guitar music like Sufjan Stevens and read non-fiction because I'm old and I need quiet music that rescues me from that loud rock 'n' roll and rap that the kids listen to; I listen to it because I learned to like it and because after a while, regardless of the changes to your body, you're going to look for changes and challenges.

Maybe what I'm saying is not far off from what Steve is saying. And maybe this is all a product of being nerdy and quiet for even my teen and college years. I just always get a little rankled by suggestions that our age forces us to stop making new choices and to continue to see the world in "old people like this, young people like this" black and white.

To me, the glory of age is getting a greater sense of sincerity. I like what I've always liked: exactly what I like, and now I'm more sure and aware of what I like. If I could talk with my 50-year-old self and find that he loves new age music and just wants to watch TV murder mysteries, I won't think that he's a doddering, lame old man; I'll ask him why he likes that crap. Because I know he'll have a damn good reason.

And for the record: I got more annoyed with teenagers when I was one than I do now. Now I just feel kind of sorry for them.

Hypnotize with a tie

It's amazing. I can wear the same gray pants I wear to work regularly. I can combine it with a light blue button-down that I wear almost as often. No one says a word.

But in those same clothes combined with spending all of 45 seconds tying a tie around my fool neck and I spend the rest of the day hearing, "You look nice!" and "Wow! I didn't even recognize you!" and "Where's your interview?" It's a tie! Between that and buttoning the top button, you'd think I was wearing a solid gold cummerbund and top hat!

Note: I was not wearing a solid gold cummerbund and top hat.

Plotting out '07

My boss has an interesting take on New Year's resolutions: he's resolved to make his resolutions only be positive. Instead of saying that he's going to stop doing something, he's resolves to do something that's beyond fixing things that are broken and concentrates on adding actions that make life happier. Last year, his New Year's resolution was to celebrate something every month with a bottle of champagne. Even in the most routine months, he found something in his life to celebrate, and making that effort helps him find those little gems in his life that he wouldn't otherwise stop to appreciate. It's a pretty great gesture.

In the spirit of that, I decided to make three resolutions this year. Not always being a particularly optimistic person, I can't really hold fast to the "only be positive" approach, but I'll get as close as I can.

Resolution #1: Steal my boss' "celebrate something every month" resolution.
Self-explanatory. Though, not being married, I'll need people to help me with the champagne. Volunteers?

Resolution #2: Buy Street Sense and give money to street performers.
I often find myself walking by musicians performing on the street and think, "That guy's good. I should give him some money." And I walk by guys selling Street Sense, and think, "I should buy a copy." But for some reason, my arms never get the message that my brain's sending out, and I just don't. It's stupid, really, so from now on, when I think to buy or give, I will.

Resolution #3: Do things.
I'm restless. I really want to see more of life and experience more, but I talk myself out of doing anything. So once a month, I'm going to force myself to do something I've never done before. That's putting a fine point on it, but there's general sub-resolutions: to not second-guess calling up an old friend out of the blue. To not let "I'm tired" be a valid excuse. But that's going a little negative, so let's keep it clean at: do things that are more of an experience.

In the spirit of giving, and to make your New Year's Eve/Day a little smoother, go listen to the same three songs I posted last year: "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve" by Nancy Wilson, "Auld Lang Syne" by Guy Lombardo and "Happy New Year" by Camera Obscura. Happy new year!

What was that? You're wondering where my 2006 mix is? That I promised it this week? Oh, readers. You should've known better than to believe that.

Eleanor Rigby's Second Life avatar

It's a point-counterpoint that goes on both in my head as well as with other people: are the lonely people of the world better off with the alternate reality that the online world gives them more and more each day, or were they better off with lives that they had to work to improve; a reality where they had to seek social satisfaction and didn't have the easy out of the internet?

I tend to side with the former. Before the internet age, the lonely had to figure out a way to make friends. Some of the more socially able people were able to find like-minded people to share their hobbies and interests with, but where did that leave the socially awkward and the painfully shy? Going online and creating alterate personalities or spending hours playing games with others may seem somewhat sad, but for a lot of people, it's a way to cobble together an interactive life where they would otherwise have little to nothing. It's easy for the rest of us to look down on it as pathetic, to give these people that are no more than theoretical to us the near-meaningless kiss-off to "get a life", but what's the alternative? Do we really think that people spending hours in Second Life or World of Warcraft would otherwise have had rich, meaningful lives? That it's only the internet that keeps them from even trying?

Look at it this way: we'll all have extremely enriching golden years. Whether our spouses are gone and left us lonely or we've just found ourselves 75 years old and living in a home with only 2 or 3 hours of tired social interaction a day, we'll still be able to find communities of similar-thinking 75-year-olds somewhere online. We won't be left to the daily visits from the pigeons. We'll have it all virtual. Lucky us.

To all the grills I've loved before

In a few weeks, the office that I work in is moving from the culturally exciting streets of Dupont/Foggy Bottom/Golden Triangle to the concrete tumbleweed landscape of Crystal City. This doesn't affect me in the work area. Either way, I'm sitting in front of a monitor. But it does have a big affect in two daily areas of my life: 1) my commute, which is going from a 15 minute walk to a 35 minute metro ride, and 2) and more importantly: my daily lunch options will change entirely.

I've never been much for bringing my lunch. I love the daily ritual of deciding on a place to go, getting together an arsenal of regular haunts and having the variety of lunch options. I know it's not very cost-effective or healthy, but it's a lot more enjoyable, and unlike most other people, I enjoy enjoyable things.

So as I spend my last few weeks in Dupont hitting all the lunch places that I won't be able to go to once the office moves (most of them are closed at night and on the weekends), I'm going to take a few minutes to reflect on all the places that made up my lunch routines in the jobs that I've had, and which ones I sorely miss. Join me, won't you? Won't you?! Why not? Well, tough shit. You're coming anyway. Put your shoes on.

Greensboro, Battleground Ave., 1995-1996
I hate to think of the number of years I wiped off my lifespan to Cook Out's hush puppies, sweet tea and burgers at this place. But it was so worth it. The hush puppies alone would be worth dying at 40.

Chapel Hill, Franklin Street, 1997-1999
I didn't think I would miss Pepper's Pizza when I was there. The pizza's good, but I've had better. But it was the atmosphere and the punk rock history of the place that makes me miss having it as a regular stop. Plus, they had two specialty pizza slices that I still dream about and drool: the Chicken Soup (chicken, onions, tiny bit of olive oil) and the ball park (andouille sausage, onions, tabasco).

I can always freak out a UNC grad by telling them I used to go to Hectors for lunch. The grads response will ALWAYS be, "Really?! I never went there before 11 pm!" It's a greasy burger spot that was famous for their burgers served in a pita (aka "the brick") and their newspaper ads which featured a map showing the route from Hectors to the UNC hospital's cardiac wing.

Though my nostalgia trip back there revealed it to be not nearly as tasty as I remembered, it was kind of a turning point. Before I started going to Hectors, I went to McDonalds pretty often to lunch before I realized that I wanted rid my life of the kinds of homogenous habits that chains encourage. Switching my heart attack meals to a local place made a huge difference in my life, and I've only eaten at McDonalds about 4 times since.

Alexandria, VA, 1999-2001
In spite of two years in Alexandria, there's really no place that I miss; no meals that I wish were a little bit closer to me. Old Town had some decent places, and Canal Center had about three places, but none of them really stick out to me. Which makes a terrible story.

Reston, VA, 2001-2002
Reston was so bland and so full of chains that I can't even remember the name of the one place that I liked. It was in a massive shopping center that had a huge parking lot and it took me 10-15 minutes to drive there, but the calzones and Italian sandwiches were well worth it. I was more than happy to leave Reston for DC, but I wish I could have taken that place with me.

Dupont, 2002-present
Oh, the massive meals at the Greek Deli, and the number of local sandwich places that aren't open on the weekends or past 3 pm. Unless I work from home every now and then, I won't be able to go to them anymore after December. I'll try to stay local in Crystal City, but it may not be easy. Oh, the delicious treats I'm leaving behind...

The moral of the story? Lord, I eat badly.

Paranoia

They're out to get me, you know. They've been very patient, and now their plan is really starting to move.

They're unlike any other assassins. Others will just take a sniper rifle or a well-placed bomb. The easy ways out; the proven methods. But creativity is a priority for the people who are out to off me. And patience.

I don't know how they somehow got my sister to buy that particular kind of coffee table, the one whose sharp outer edges would hit just below my knees. But she bought it. And I don't know how they could be so confident that, when she moved, she would give the coffee table to me. But that exactly what she did. And I don't know how they knew that I would put the coffee table in exactly the right spot so that the highest spot on my shin would slam directly into this coffee table every time I was so much as within 5 feet of it. But I did, and I do.

I've been hacking my shins to bits for the last three weeks. Soon, I will be in a wheelchair, unable to move fast enough to escape. And that's when they'll strike.

They've been very patient.

Modern Art 101: Drawing a blank

In looking around the world wide web for inspiration on something to write about today, I came to the conclusion that absolutely nothing has happened to anyone in the last 12 hours or so. Nothing. To anyone. Anywhere. Everything at this time is exactly the same as it was 12 hours ago, only more so.

This in itself is absolutely fascinating.