Cursed City

• It all started... As I was leaving for the airport, there was the contact lens incident. I'm convinced now that it was the Fates trying to intervene.
• Just call me Short Straw. My four housemates and I drew lots (very ancient Greece, wouldn't you agree?) to decide who would share a room. I knew the result before we even began. And so I share the hottest, brightest room with K. who now sleeps, as she likes to say, "Six inches from Stephanie's face."
• Kick her when she's down. I was trying to minimize future debt (too late) by consolidating my loans, when I discovered that my financial aid was totally screwed up. Two weeks, fifty phone calls and innumerable hours listening to muzak later, I was able to consolidate with ten hours to spare. Fingers crossed.
• Really? Never going to the doctor again. The bill for my annual exam: $500 I don't have.
• "I think it's just poor craftsmanship." This is the barbed insult I flung at the Apple Genius who told me it would cost $70 to fix Rococo, my less-than-one-year-old iPod Mini. My little pink friend, who had accompanied me everywhere in Chi, finally and unceremoniously died in this city where talk is cheap and yet nobody shuts up.
• If I were a bettin' woman... Whilst excitedly updating aforementioned iPod, my computer's hard drive crashed. 50/50 chance I'll be able to retrieve all my documents, photos and music. Guess where my money is?
• "World's Greatest Sunglasses." Mere hours after deciding on this epithet, which I frankly ranked right up there with "wine-dark sea" and "rosy-fingered dawn," the glasses, of course, broke. That's hubris for you.

Other highlights of our time here include: K. being escorted home by cop who said, "It's not safe to run here at night;" two housemates contracting pink eye; K.'s computer screen breaking (which led to a conversation with Dell tech support rep. Von Harper, who told her to "get a torch," to which she responded, "like a blowtorch?"); basement-dwelling dogs that howl in the wee hours and engender fantasies of double canine homicide (think I could stage a murder- suicide?); crazy landlady; no video stores; no laundromats; no nothing that would make this a convenient place to live.

I'm not even surprised anymore. It's this horrible, awful, horrendous dump-of-a-place, otherwise known as our nation's capital. It's only been six weeks, and I'm holding my breath for the next four.

Consider yourself warned.

Today's a 129, just so you know

Here's an interesting thought from Daniel Gross at Slate:

What if someone could develop a single number that shows just how freaked out the world is at any given time of day?

Of course, they already have. Gross's story "The Hell-in-a-Handbasket Index: How screwed is the world today?"

Ode to a Crabcake Sandwich

The ever-delicious crabcake sandwich at Eastern Market. The bun is homemade and the crabcake is all crab! I have mine with cole slaw and tartar sauce and preferably with a sweet tea to drink. The last two weeks, though, they have been out of sweet tea. The first time, I had a bit of a stand-off with the oversized preteen who took my drink order. He told me that they were out of sweet tea and were brewing more. I told him I would wait. He told me no. I asked him how long it would be. He just stared at me. I stared back. He stared some more. I ordered a freaking lemonade.

Today they weren't brewing any, they were just out. I ordered unsweetened tea and lemonade instead. No theatrics. I was put out, but what can you do? The crabcake is my favorite thing about this city, and I'm not about to get myself banned from the Market Lunch counter over a little tea and sugar water.

A Conservative Man's World

This just in from my Congressional Quarterly midday update:

The House Republican leadership plans to continue promoting its election-year “American values agenda” next week with floor votes on two more hot-button social issues — gay marriage and the “Under God” phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Senate last month killed a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. And the House Judiciary Committee deadlocked on the bill to strip federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of power to review constitutional challenges to the pledge.

Nonetheless, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., has vowed to bring the GOP “values” legislation to the floor for votes. This week, the House passed a measure to ban Internet gambling. Still to come, in addition to the gay marriages and pledge measures, are a bill requiring that women seeking late-term abortions be told that the fetus feels pain, a ban on human cloning and more votes on tax-cut extensions.

Hastert has said these items are aimed at protecting the “faith of our people, the sanctity of life and the value system on which America was built.”

I bet you can guess what my favorite part is.

Total. Bullshit.

Life in the District

How do you know that you live in the ghetto (or one block shy)?

When the nearest drug store is located in the hollow carcass of a dead mall (the nearest grocery store just on the other side).

When you encounter one security guard upon entering said carcass and another as you exit.

When the doors to the grocery store are protected by metal detectors and alas! more security personnel.

When you notice, on the way to aforementioned grocery store, that said carcass has not one, but two inactive escalators that lead to nothing but a single, solitary door.

It seems like a pretty accurate metaphor for our time here.

It's not just me. Everyone agrees.

P.S. Not to mention when you are scared to take a picture of the creepy escalator for your blog because you are frightened someone will see you with a digital camera and mug you on the way home.

Culture Shock

Overheard in the house today:

Roommate 1: Does anyone want a hushpuppy?

Roommate 2: I don't really know what that is.

Roommate 1: I don't really either. Something Southern.

Roommate 2: I know they're shoes.