Better Than Paris

As the number 42 bus lumbered down Columbia Road this morning, six squad cars slowed traffic at 19th street, a pretty, tree-lined residential street that is usually fairly quiet. Suddenly I blurted out, "Oh my God!"

A scramble for Blackberries ensued as people chimed in.

"Was that..."

"A dead body, yeah."

"Wow, there's so much blood!"

"Hey, let's just give everyone the constitutional right to carry handguns!"

"They could have at least covered the person's feet."

"I know, that's so tacky."

"That's just the flavor of the city."

"Who says DC isn't romantic in the springtime?"

A woman looked up from her magazine, finally realizing the fracas around her. "What's going on? Did something happen?"

"Yeah there were a bunch of squad cars back there and a dead body lying in the driveway."

"Are you telling me I missed a dead body because of Time magazine? Dammit!"

Pneumania!

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahgcoughcoughcough. Cough! COUGH! Coughcoughcough.

As Meghan pointed out yesterday, now that I have a pneumonia diagnosis, I'm an expert in the disease and am qualified to dispense medical advice via the internet. And so without further ado, I present the signs you might have pneumonia:

• You spike a fever of 103 degrees and the only reason you wake is to search for sources of hydration. You find yourself thinking that for this much thirst, there ought to be some much harder drugs involved.
• In your febrile state, you tweak a bit, which causes you to wake your significant other up in the middle of the night panicked that the covers are trying to eat you, and then accuse him of letting "stream shapes" in the room.
• After cajoling you into going to the new Target the weekend it opens, the Object of Your Affection looks at the shiny new condos with lust in his eye, and then exclaims, "Oh sweet! They're bringing a gastropub in here?!" Oh wait, sorry, that's one of the signs you're dating the whitest person in all of existence.
  
• You start ending all of your conversations, "NyQuil - out!"
• During a coughing fit, you pull a muscle in your abs, increasing your worries that maybe it's not pneumonia, but rather, the Stigmata. It certainly lends credence to those suspicious "freckles" on your hands and feet.
• You get really distraught after seeing those commercials with the pseudo-folk singer tweedling on about CVS creating ordinary miracles and wonder, if they're such miracle workers, then why can't they tell me how much Robitussin costs?
  
• You would give a tidy sum of money to the person who could produce this cough syrup:

Snarf Snarf Snarf

I have pneumatic breasts. Or pneumonia. It was hard to hear the doctor through the coughing fit, but it's definitely one or the other. I'm miserable, but there's definitely an upside: I now have an answer when people ask me what celebrity I most resemble.

OK, I'm gonna go pass out again, snarf snarf.

The Goo Report: Bloggering Like It's My Job

Oh what a week it's been; it feels like three weeks have been crammed into the time that has elapsed since Monday. My supervisor was on vacation all week, which meant I had to step up and do the quotidian stuff she normally does. I'm pretty she takes vacations less for her own relaxation and enjoyment and more for the empathy she gets from me when she comes back and I beg her never to leave again ever for the love of all that is good and true in the universe. It's like going from regular Oreos to DoubleStuf; I like my job, but cram too much in there and I just feel kind of sick and bloated.

That might be from an overdose of thin mints, though, another hazard of working with a lot of women.

Either way, it seems appropriate to feature some other people having a rough time at work in this week's Goo report:

• First lesson to learn while working as a giant pint of Guinness: don't get drunk and try and drink yourself. Second lesson: don't leave your green, pint-glass-shaped Guinness costume lying around in your garage.
• It's not easy being a police dog, whatwith all the sheep out there trying to kick your ass.
  
• The Object was on the "host committee" for his PRIG PIRG alumni happy hour at Gazuza, a trendy bar in Dupont Circle. I tagged along for (what I thought would be) free drinks and d a chance to criticize the Object's work. I was thwarted on the former, but came through like a champ on the latter: "Sooooo, you brought a bunch of poor environmentalists to a hookah bar where the cheapest drink is $9? Why don't you guys just sodomize the polar bears while you're killing them?" Just as I suspected, while the environmentalists were busy schmoozing, the whales were suffering and needed saving. Fortunately, the dolphins stepped up to the task.
  
• As those $9 drinking enviros can attest, being broke is a shitty set of circumstances, so I feel bad for a Chinese plastic surgeon who declared bankruptcy. I feel a lot worse for his patient who is stuck between genders as a result.
• I don't imagine it's terribly difficult to be the Prime Minister of Australia. You drink some beahs, throw a few shrimp on the barbie, wrastle some wily marsupials, administer national sunblock programs, drink some more beahs, and call it a day. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke even "held a Guinness World Record for speed beer drinking during his days as a Rhodes Scholar." What would make the job challenging would be possessing "bookish and church-going" qualities. And then going on a drinking binge at a New York strip club. And then starting a campaign against binge drinking. It's remarkable reminiscent of a different New Yorker in the news who likes naked ladies. The only major difference is the chronology. Oh, and the public reaction: "[M]ost Australians believed [Prime Minister Kevin Rudd] when he said it was the second time in his life that he was drunk.
  

Donations!

This just in from the neighborhoodly people-in-the-know about donations for the fire:

The building is devastated, and 800+ residents have lost their homes and possessions. Neighbors' Consejo is taking food and clothing donations at 3118 16th St., NW. You can reach Evar Sandoval at (202) 234-6855 for more details. Apparently tonight they'll be accepting donations until midnight. They indicated that baby and children's clothes, shoes, food, toys, etc. are most needed.

I cannot imagine how much that would supremely suck, but I'm sure I'll spend the next few nights wide-eyed and worrying about it. If you're anything like me, while you're loathe to admit it, you have more than you need. I mean, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word, I suppose one only needs so much silver lamé. Consider donating something of yours that you weren't going to give away otherwise - a classy work shirt, a pair of your favorite shoes, a non-tattered pair of jeans.

Maybe not the silver lamé, though.

On a related note, who knows anything about renter's insurance? What makes a good policy? How much should we expect to pay? What are the scams out there? Where do I begin? Is there anything special about renter's insurance in DC that I should be aware of?

Things Were Not Dark Before Dawn

One of the Object's most endearing qualities is that he will wake up for almost anything I deem important and immediately recognize its importance. Case in point, a few weeks ago at 3 in the morning a belligerent drunk guy was trying to get out of being arrested by acting insane, which made the cops really angry. I shook the Object gently, saying, "Psst! Wake up; there's a drunk guy getting arrested!" Instead of whinging that it was time for sleeping, he sat bolt upright. Holding hands, we watched the show as Nutty McGee danced for the coppers. Watching people beg for a tasering is about as close to romantic as we get.

In any case, last night I'm pretty sure the whole neighborhood, not just the Object and I, were watching the events of the inky night hours unfold, since there's no WAY anyone within a 12 block radius of 3145 Mount Pleasant Street was sleeping. After an evening watching amateur soccer, I flopped into bed pretty early last night. Just as I was drifting off, I smelled something familiar, a cozy smell that reminded me of fall, crunching leaves, burning firewood, ahhhhhh.

Then my brain kicked it into overdrive. IT IS NOT FALL! IT IS SPRING! BURNING SMELL BAD! BURNING SMELL BAD! DO NOT SLEEP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP! NOT OK TO SLEEEEEEEEP! Usually I just ignore my brain when it's telling me not to sleep, but I couldn't help noticing an odd strip of clouds drifted southwest through the sky, not east. And since when do clouds travel in strips? "Psssst, wake up! Do clouds move southwest?"

"I don't think so. Maybe?"

"Is that smoke?"

"Maybe."

"There's so much of it!"

As I was dialing 911, the sirens started. More sirens than I thought actually existed in the District of Columbia; I was duly impressed. Not long after, groups of people started coming down Columbia Road. While that's not a terribly unusual thing for a Wednesday at 1 in the morning, two things made the exodus suspect. First, people were walking west on Columbia Road, rather than stumbling east from 18th street where all the bars are, and second and even more odd, they didn't sound or look completely shitfaced. If that's not cause for concern, I don't know what is.

I popped on my robe, went outside the back of my building and saw a scene straight out of Rebecca. A few blocks away huge flames licked the sky - I couldn't even see the building. I've never seen anything like it in my whole life. It turns out the conflagration was a five-alarm apartment fire, the first in the District since the 70's; four surrounding buildings were evacuated. The building is apparently cashed, and from early reports, it sounds like complaints about fire code violations were ignored for quite some time. Two hundred people are sans home this morning; keep your thoughts with them.

I was terrified last night that we'd be hearing some pretty grim numbers this morning, since I'm extremely suspicious of DC fire-fighting system. In a four-alarm blaze last fall just a few blocks away, the hydrants didn't work, and a few weeks ago, I saw some firefighters on Euclid Street left several meters of firehose attached to a hydrant after a house call (which was apparently a false alarm). They left the scene and about three minutes later, came back down the street to fetch the hose, a few firemen jogging alongside the engine like a bunch of clowns. The bumbling scene would have been hilarious had it not been literally so close to home- just one block away.

Here's the cool part about last night: NO ONE WAS HURT. Well, one firefighter was treated for smoke inhalation, and he's evidently doing well this morning; everyone else was uninjured. The only ones are the loss of home, property, and memories - not life. It's not an ideal situation, but it's somewhat restored my faith in the ability of DC firefighters to fight fire.

Still, I'm buying rental insurance.

Eliot Mess

Whoa, so karma does work!

Oh, Love Client #9, how wonderfully far you have fallen off your sparkling ivory pedestal into a heaping pile of condoms you didn't want to wear to screw your pricey prostitute. So much for being Mr. Clean! Don't worry, I went to Catholic school too, so I understand what it's like to learn morals instead of 10th-grade sex ed. Even so, I'll bet your wife appreciates that hooker with a heart of gold - and more importantly, a protective pussy¹.

The whole Eliot Spitzer prostitution ring business simply tickles me pink. Not only do we get the fun of speculating the turnover time from news story to episode of Law and Order², but the story broke just in time to save us from the monotony of another Tuesday primary that's already been won by Spitzer's BFFs, the Clintons.

Wait, whaaaa...?
Oh, hadn't you heard? According to Hillary, she's the nominee. She's all over the headlines graciously offering Barack a position as Jim to her Huck³. You see, she's the most electable, a trait that is not decided by what which gets one elected - namely the number of votes in one's favor - but by a feeling. It's all very Mamas and the Papas, and how can that be bad for America? I heard one Sunday morning pundit blathering on about how Hillary's wins in New York and California make her more electable. The conclusion is a pretty big leap outside the land o' logic, implying that because Hillary won these blue strongholds in the primary, McCain would beat Obama in these general election. By that logic, since Obama won the District and Maryland in the primary, McCain would beat Hillary in these states in the general election. But since one's electability has little to do with how one is elected, the original point stands. See how this works?

But what about the delegate count? I thought Obama was ahead?
Pshaw, if math didn't need to work for Huckabee⁴, it certainly doesn't need to work for Hillary. See, while Barack was still but a moppet learning math, Hillary was busy engaging in her thirty-five years of experience and didn't have time to learn math⁵. That said, she's probably lost any chance at the American Mathematical Society's endorsement, which is really a shame, since National Mathematics Awareness month is fast approaching, and this year's theme is "Math and Voting".

So wait, what does this all have to do with Spitzer's jimmy?
It's safe to say Spitzer's support of Hillary will now clinch the Nascar Dad/ it's-ok-unprotected-sex-with-prostitutes constituency, a.k.a the all-important white male voters. Let's just savor the fact that they'll be voting for the woman with an iron snatch.



1. From a political strategy standpoint, the only thing that could save Spitzer's career right now would be some kind of "family values reaffirmation" break in the story, like announcing his wife was preggers. I would love it because it would finally present an apropos occasion for my dream of children named after venereal diseases. I think Clappy Spitzer has quite a snappy ring to it.

2. 3 weeks, tops. Thank GAWD the writers' strike is over.

3. After Bill, natch.

4. How did that turn out again?

5. I can relate to Hillary; I, too, refuse to acknowledge math as legitimate. I also claim thirty-five years of experience despite only being twenty-seven years old.

Of Rally Cars and Downy Balls

My darling Object and I have - for a variety of reasons, most of which have to do with Barbara Boxer and/or Project Runway- not spent a ton of time together in the past month, as can be evidenced by the fact that I'm referring to him as my darling. Over the weekend, we took a roadtrip up to Philly to celebrate his dad's 60th birthday gala. We got a chance to reconnect, have some laughs, but most of all, the Object got a chance to showcase his driving skills, which are stell-aaaaah.

Scene: Interstate 95 - spitting rain, howling wind, and rolling fog almost completly obscure the road. The Object does something that in a desultory moment of prudishness, the Goo does not 100% approve of.
Goo: You can't do that, you redneck!
Object: How is this solely a redneck thing? Lots of people do it.
Goo: Fine, you're a stinky hippie.
Object: I'm not a hippie; name one thing about me that is hippie-like.
Goo: The car you are currently driving.
Object: My car's not hippie, it's opinionated. I took all the hippie shit off.
Goo: Then how do you explain your Roots Power sticker still back there?!
Object: Because there is roots power.

************************

ZoomZoom (the car): CLUNK! CLINK CLUNKEDY CLINK CLINK CLUNK!
Goo: What was that?
Object: It was not the sound of something good.
ZoomZoom: VAH-ROOOOOOOM!
Goo: Did your muffler fall off?
Object: It sounds like it. Listen to that baby purr; it sounds like a syphilitic prostitute from the slums of Calcutta.
Goo: On the bright side, now it kinda feels like we're driving a rally car!

*************************

Scene: Interstate 95 - bright sunshine, howling wind, the Goo is starting to think about drifting into a nice Sunday afternoon nap when the car swerves almost completely off the road.
Object: Whoa, we must have hit a huge rut or something there. The car just completely lost control!
Goo: Do you think it was a rut, or the fact that you took both hands off the steering wheel? I've heard using the steering wheel is another way to control the car.

*****************************

Scene: Finally back home safely, the Object flops down on the couch only to realize he has a 9 p.m. deadline based on a bet we made earlier in the week.
Object: Wanna come with me to the new Target?
Goo: No way! You're on your own for this one. I'm telling you, they don't have Downy balls there; you won't be able to replace the ones you lost, and $25 will be mineallmine muhahahahahahahahahahah!
Object: Well, you should come to Target and fulfill your destiny as an American. We got a gift card in the mail and you can watch a cart escalator! Don't you worry about your Downy balls; I'll make sure you get some balls that are nice and downy by 9 p.m.
Goo: You are not allowed to shave your balls and put them on my face.
Object: Those were not the terms of our original negotiation! You ruin everything!
Goo: Never touch me again.

It's A Blumen Good Day!

I love Earl Blumenauer. I don't actually know that much about him, except that he likes bikes. And I only know that because the Object came home one day with an extremely nifty neon green bike pin, which I immediately sniked for my own fashion purposes. Who knew that not only does Blumenauer champion fashion on the cheap-as-free, but he also champions bikes?

It turns out that today begins Blumenauer's pilot for bike-sharing, a sah-weet program that'll allow House staffers to check out bikes around Capitol Hill. If all goes well, those of us who don't wear mini-skirt suits and five-inch stilettos to work can get a crack at the two-wheeled goodness, too. It's hard to see the downside - not only do you not have to plunk down the megabucks for a bike that's just going to get stolen anyways, but it's a hell of a lot more reliable than the cabbies and the Laziest Strike in the History of Labor Relations.

And that's not the only awesome thing going for white people today. It has come to my attention that there are not one, but TWO blogs dedicated to the interests of my oft-overlooked ethnic heritage, the white-bread suburbanites of America. FINALLY we can revel in the diversity of Americans with Stuff White People Like and White Whine.

My whitey whine? On the days taxi hacks are going to "strike", they should also have to refrain from honking at you to see if you want a ride. I don't want a cab; I just want to cross the damn street.

Goo Report: The Maja Edition

WOW. There's so much to talk about this morning I don't even know where to begin. Of course that means it's time for a new edition of the Goo Report, a listing of the latest and greatest news you didn't even know was late and/or great.

• Since we left off on Tuesday with Bill Murray movies, let's pick back up there, specifically, their relation to Tuesday's primaries. "Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today." I cannot believe we have to go through six more weeks of this. Seriously, it's getting to the point where I want to park a car in front of a train. I wouldn't be in it, of course, but I would certainly enjoy the wanton destruction. This might make the Object reconsider his decision to put me on the insurance policy, though.
  
• On the subject of Barak, Yes, Pecan.
  
• Let's dig up the dead for fun and prayer! "Church statement said the body [of Italian saint and mystic Padre Pio] was in 'fair condition', particularly the hands, which Archbishop Domenico D'Ambrosio, who witnessed the exhumation in the southern Italian town where Pio died, said 'looked like they had just undergone a manicure'." I have to wear sandals to a schmancy dinner on Sat. night, and I'm not looking forward to the requisite mani-pedi to slough off my winter goat hooves. Maybe I should just be buried until then?
• FINALLY, now I don't have to lie anymore about where that diamond ring hiding at the bottom of my jewelry box!
  
• No "cussing" week? Fuck that. First of all, cussing is a STUPID word - they're swear or curse words. Second, this is a thinly veiled attempt to make himself stand out by having something unique to write a college application about. I hope the little brownnoser gets his ass kicked by real teenagers.
• Christian is MAJA. So is trivia. And also, watching last night's Project Runway finale, I was very sad that guest judge Victoria Beckham clubbed the Dalai Lama and robbed his clothes. I'm sure someone could have stepped up if she needed something that badly.
  
• I love it that this photograph was found and Helen Keller is in the news, since now I have an excuse to recite my favorite joke at any and every social opportunity.
  
• My computer completely erased the last 7 pages of a report that I have spent the last month and a half working on. If you'll excuse me, I am going to find Bill Gates and rip his fucking pubic hairs out one by one and use them to fashion a long, thin string, which I will use to tear off his goddamn fingernails and toes. Then I'm going to find the little twerp who wants to take away my swear words and do the same thing.
  
• UPDATE: Tom, the IT guy who defies every IT guy stereotype and works more miracles than Annie Sullivan came and fixed EVERYTHING. Seriously, I want a national holiday for this man.

Looking on the Bright Side...

Sigh. I had a hard day yesterday. So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I’m a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald… striking. So, I’m on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga… gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, “Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.” And he says, “Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.” So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.