It’s sad, but it’s true: the rotten banana does always spoil the bunch. Go into a retail store and the only clerk you encounter is rude, and even if everyone else who works there is nice and pleasant and willing to help, you’re going to leave with a bad impression of that place. Sadly, most people’s encounters with police aren’t enjoyable: you’re getting a ticket, or you’re being written a warning, or you’re watching someone being arrested. So it’s easy to imagine that they’ve all got tiny penises and inferiority complexes and want to be dictators.

And that’s too bad, because most cops are pretty cool people who really just want to enforce the laws and help people. I’ve had the fortune to befriend a few: I had a couple college classes with a PG County Officer, and worked a part-time job with a Baltimore County cop, through which I did a rather memorable ride-along. In my time working at the Bookstore in downtown DC, the police are great: whether they’re just in browsing some magazines, or are arriving to arrest a shoplifter, or evict a psychotic homeless guy screaming obscenities and kicking over displays. In addition, I used to be a regular participant on Cops.com, a LEO-interest bulletin board, and I think a few of the regular readers of this blog are cops. I think it’s without question that a.) it’s your own damn fault you got a traffic ticket, and b.) most cops are pretty neat, cool people.

Unfortunately, stuff like this doesn’t care who the good cops and the bad cops are, it only serves to reinforce the negative perception people have of police officers.

BART police were called to respond to a fight between two groups of men onboard a train traveling from San Francisco to the East Bay, spokesman Jim Allison said this afternoon during a news conference at BART headquarters in Oakland.

Five officers had gathered at the Fruitvale BART Station platform when the train arrived shortly after 2 a.m., Allison said.

Officers worked to separate the men, who were dispersed inside the train and outside on the platform, according to Allison. BART police did not say how many people were involved in the fight or what spurred the confrontation.

At some point during the effort to bring the men under control, a BART police officer’s gun fired one bullet, hitting 22-year-old Oscar Grant, according to Allison.

Nice phrasing, but the gun didn’t fire the bullet: the officer did. The video is pretty tame by the standards of modern cinema: there’s no blood splash, no writhing, just a police officer drawing his firearm, aiming, and then a loud pop.

I realize I’m not in the best place to judge this shooting. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t in that officer’s shoes. There’s apparently a question of whether or not Grant was restrained, or whether the officer meant to use his taser and drew his gun by mistake, and there’s always the question of whether lethal force was an appropriate response (generally, I feel lethal force is only justified against someone capable of exercising lethal force on someone else), in addition to all that, I don’t know what the officer’s perception of the situation was. In a large way, I think all of that is crucial to what went into his split-second decision to draw and fire. So admitting that I’m an armchair quarterback with no first-hand knowledge of the situation …

… what I see is a person who appears to be laying down, surrounded by several police officers, get shot in the back by an officer who takes the time to steady himself, draw his weapon, and take deliberate aim. That’s so far beyond the realm of acceptable conduct from our law enforcement that it just sort of takes my breath away.

Now, let’s consider the ramifications of this shooting, and I don’t just mean beyond the officer in question being fired, charged, and jailed (manslaughter, at a minimum). Let’s say you’ve got a combatant guy you’re trying to take into custody — if the guy has seen this video, do you think for a minute he’s going to believe it when the police tell him, “We won’t hurt you”? Certainly, this incident has almost certainly made it more difficult for the BART and San Francisco police departments to do their jobs.

I have no idea what Oscar Grant did to get himself arrested, but I do know that it was nothing so grievous that it deserved to get him a bullet fired into the back. Hopefully an investigation will determine just what happened to cause such a response, and the appropriate response will come quickly.

Is taking six months to realize that the CAB ASS’N I keep seeing on taxis all over the city more likely stands for “Cab Associations” than it does for “Cab Assassin.”

The DC Examiner:

Emergency regulations issued by the commission allow gun stores to open along most commercial corridors not zoned for neighborhood retail, throughout much of downtown and in a handful of industrial zones. But because each store must be at least 300 feet away from the nearest school, library, home, playground and church, the number of specific possible locations is very limited.

In Ward 8, thanks to the 300-foot buffer, the only viable locations for gun stores are near Blue Plains deep in Southwest, at Suitland Parkway and Interstate 295, and in historic Anacostia off Shannon Place, according to a report from the D.C. planning office. A large chunk of Southwest between Independence Avenue and Interstate 395 is fair game, as is the New York Avenue corridor from Florida Avenue almost to the Maryland line.

There’s also a tiny plot along Connecticut Avenue NW in Van Ness, a cluster of parcels off Wisconsin Avenue just north of McLean Gardens, another plot off Wisconsin near Observatory Circle, and a small piece of M Street in Georgetown, again near Wisconsin Avenue. Downtown, between Pennsylvania Avenue and M Street as far west as 20th Street also is available for potential gun store business — though either side of 16th Street is off-limits.

The image of gun stores on major commercial corridors is “deeply distressing to me,” said Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh.

“I’m just greatly saddened to think of the specter of gun stores popping up along Wisconsin Avenue and Connecticut Avenue,” Cheh said. “But I assume they’ll have to comply with all laws and regulations to maintain the guns in a safe manner.”

Y’know what I hate about gun stores? The tendency to look like a pawn shop with all sorts of advertisements plastered up on the window. I think the majority of the complaints like Mary Cheh’s have as much to do with the stores’ aesthetic appeal as they do with any legitimate-concern regarding the potential misuse of the stores’ products: tint the windows, and come up with a name that doesn’t include any form of “gun” or “shooter” (Continental Arms, in Baltimore County, is an example of a classy gun-store name, while Christian Soldier*, also in Baltimore County, is a good example of a creepy gun-store name).

Also: I’m just wondering if the District still is going to make you bring your purchase to police HQ for registration, and since this is a city where many residents are dependent on mass-transit, will there be opportunities to transport said firearm on city buses and the Metro? Or would one have to shell out for a taxi? Is there an authoritative resource anywhere regarding gun laws in DC? (I haven’t found one!)

*Admittedly, I did buy a shotgun from them, and a transfer through them, but that’s way more to do with the owner being the neighbor of my boss at the time.

If Al Gore’s defeat in Florida in 2000 didn’t convince you of that, Al Franken’s projected win over Norm Coleman should. It’s a narrow gap, and I don’t think Coleman has much of a chance (but kudos to him for not giving up, although his refusal to is starting to reek of the desperate).

I’ve got mixed feelings on Franken, on one hand I think he’s a bit of a show-off jerk, on the other hand, I tend to agree with some of his politics. As for Coleman, I think he’s a jerk, too, but I do agree with some of his politics (I’m sure).

This hasn’t been a good year to be a Republican, and if Coleman’s ultimate defeat can be attributed to President Bush’s declining popularity and the lousy reputation the Republicans have accrued over the last couple of years, he can still console himself by knowing that he lost by a lot less than a lot of his former colleagues, and also that now that the Democrats are in power, they will soon dominate the scandals.

Saved By The Bell, that iconic TV show from my high school days, is a horrible TV show. I say this with great residual affection. Here’s my first confession of this post: I used to love this show. As in, I would tape episodes on Saturday morning. I think at one point I had three or four tapes full of nothing but Saved By The Bell episodes, but I think they made for awkward marathons because I hadn’t figured out how to use the pause feature on the VCR remote to edit out the commercials.

My refamiliarization with Saved By The Bell came during a slow hour at the Bookstore, when I picked up a book of essays on pop culture and read about the show. A few minutes on Amazon and I found out the DVD sets were, seriously, dirt cheap, so I ordered a couple. They arrived New Year’s Eve, and I spent the night watching the show and drinking myself into a rather incredible stupor (er, which is my second confession of this post: namely, that I’m a loser who spent New Year’s alone!)

When I say Saved By The Bell is a horrible show … I do in fact mean that with great affection. It’s campy, and silly, and the plots are ridiculous. I’m pretty much the most style-blind guy in the world, but I look at what the cast is wearing, and I think to myself, “Seriously, what the heck?” Zack breaks the 4th wall with impunity, and it seems the characters only hang out at school, at The Max (and where’d that guy go, anyway?), and in their respective bedrooms.

What Saved By The Bell is great for is getting drunk. With each episode break, you pop the cap on another cheap beer, hoping that this will be the drink that gets your alcohol content high enough to the point that you remember what it was you loved about this show seventeen years ago. Eventually, all that this accomplishes is that you fall asleep before midnight and wake up the next morning wondering where all your aspirin went and why you didn’t turn off your TV to avoid an all-night DVD-replay Saved By The Bell marathon.

Now, how did I spend my New Year’s Day? In addition to cleaning the hell out of my apartment, I indulged a secret favorite: Cutthroat Island, the atrociously awful pirate movie that boasts lines like “Bad Dog!” and “I’ve got your balls!” and torpedoed Gina Davis’ career to boot.

Wikipedia defines “the race card” as “the act of bringing the issue of race or racism into a debate, perhaps to obfuscate the matter.” Stick with me for awhile, you’ll see where I’m going here.

So some of the big news out of Illinois is that under-scandal-governor Rod Blagojevich nominated Roland Burris, Illinois’ former AG, to Obama’s vacated Senate seat. Blagojevich you’ll recall is the guy who was arrested for the Eff-Bee-Eye for trying to see how he could pad his bank account by selling said senate seat. Immediately following the arrest came a bunch of “I’m innocent, I’m innocent!” from Blagojevich, a bunch of “Grrr, we will stop you!” from the Illinois state government, and a lot of, “If you fail, Illinois State Government, we will stop him!” from Democrats in the Senate.

Well, clearly, the Illinois State Government failed — all that talk of stripping the governor of his power, or, I dunno, impeaching him or whatever their options were to remove him from office — because Blagojevich nominated Burris for the seat.

(Let me say this about the nomination: I think it’s probably pretty righteous. I think Blagojevich actually figured out who would be the best candidate for the job, sort of like when you’re a kid and you try to steal something from a store but get caught, and you make a show of taking it to the register and paying for it. “See? I wasn’ going to steal it NO HOW!”)

And then of course you’ve got all these Democrats — including our President Elect — who’ve been very public about stating that whoever was nominated by Blagojevich wouldn’t be seated. Perception is everything in politics: I got that line from The American President, and it’s absolutely true. This is one of those situations where even though every bit of me tells me that Burris didn’t buy his seat, and that Blagojevich actually did his job properly and honestly, but I still don’t see how I could ever read a CNN article or watch a CPSAN broadcast speech about Burris and not think “Oh, yeah, he’s a total fraud.” In that sense, Democrats have no choice but to refuse to admit Burris: he’s unfortunately tainted his whole self, because no one will ever be able to view his accomplishments outside of the “Blagojevich” lens.

As for Burris, I think the guy’s got some issues: you’d have to, to build a monument to yourself on your tomb with your resume on it. And it’s either an indication of just how silver Blagojevich’s tongue is, or how desperate Burris is to get into national politics, that he said “Sure thing!” when Blagojevich asked him to be Illinois’ senator. You’d think that if Burris wasn’t smart enough, someone his staff would’ve had the brains to suggest that being tainted by the Blagojevich brush might be tantamount to political suicide. On the other hand, if Burris is convinced that his nomination is righteous (and he must be!) he’s probably hoping that Reid and other Senate Democrats will recognize this and allow him to take his seat, and that in the time between now and election day, he can put enough space between himself and Blagojevich to be elected.

Also, I couldn’t help but read Ruben Navarrette’s commentary. He compliments Blagojevich for asserting his “right” to the 17th Amendment, claiming that “under [it], governors alone have the power to appoint a replacement to complete the term of senators who are expelled, resign or die.” Except, of course, that the 17th Amendment actually says “the executive authority [read: governor] of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided [italics mine], That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.”

Now, I’m no Constitutional lawyer (or any sort of lawyer whatsoever), but it seems to me that the Constitution itself gives the state legislature the power to give the governor power to appoint a Senator. I wonder why the state legislature didn’t move faster (or at all) to limit or strip Blagojevich’s appointment power, but what’s done is done. (I’ll never understand why Navarrette didn’t at least wiki-search “17th Amendment.”)

The most hilarious thing about Navarrette’s column, though (and, yes, here I’m making some generalizations of political views which he might not share), is how he plays the race card, a tactic usually reviled by conservatives. How much do you want to bet that if Burris is able to take his position in the Senate, that by the time he’s up for election, Navarrette will have found some reason to question his integrity or honesty as a result of the “Blagojevich taint”?

Final Thought One: Honestly? Say what you will about Eliot Spitzer, it took him less than two days to resign.

Final Thought Two: Given the timing of both the Blagojevich scandal, and the possibility that Caroline Kennedy will be appointed to the Senate, I think it’s time to re-examine the 17th Amendment. Since it seems to be common thought (possibly backed up by numbers, anyone know of any?) that the nomination of a person to a position provides them a leg-up at election time, this strikes me as a way for a state’s political apparatus to thwart the will of their voters.

Y’know how in pirate movies when the ship is being chased, they just start dumping everything overboard so that they can go faster? I think this is the plan with the Bookstore: close under performing locations in the hope that the chain itself can stay afloat.

Following my thorough Thursday cleaning and organizing, I decided to document my apartment in photos so as people would believe me when I claim that I do, in fact, sometimes clean my apartment.

This is the view from my foyer — yes, my 400 square foot studio has a foyer — into my living room. Whereas in most residences a “living room” has some sort of vague gathering-of-sofas connotation, in my apartment, it’s an office + library + media room + bedroom.

My kitchen is ridiculously tiny and long. I moved the refrigerator from under the cabinets to the window and in doing so found room for a table. I do, in fact, have a second chair for that table … I just don’t have any place to put it!

It’d be just as easy to have the foyer completely empty, but I’ve made it fit my “style”. Those are Lego patents framed over the door, and what you can’t see is the Baltimore Street sign from Ohio, and a Spock groks Heineken ad over the kitchen’s entry.

I spent yesterday cleaning and organizing my apartment — as in, I pulled every book off every bookshelf, and cleaned and dusted every surface, vacuumed all. Such cleaning and vacuuming kept my cats running all over and alert all day (I don’t have a large apartment). So tired were they that they didn’t have the energy to chase themselves around my apartment as they usually do, and Tippy was quite sound asleep.

So there’s been some media attention surrounding Facebook’s purging of any photos having anything to do with a woman’s nipple.

The sides have been distinct: breast-feeding advocates insist that women should be able to nurse anytime, anyplace, while opponents use words like discretion and discomfort. But the latest battle apparently has nothing to do with the best way to nourish a baby or the boundaries between private and public. It’s about the nipples, stupid.

Facebook has drawn a line in the sand by removing any photos it deems obscene, including those containing a fully exposed breast, which the site defines as “showing the nipple or areola.” In other words, plunging necklines or string bikinis are fine — just no nips. The purging of bare-boob pics began last summer and has swept up, alongside any girls gone wild, a growing number of proud — and very ticked-off — breast feeders. (Read about giving birth at home.)

On Dec. 27, some 11,000 protesters held a virtual nurse-in by uploading breast-feeding photos onto their Facebook profiles, and 20 or so women showed up at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., to breast-feed there. By Dec. 30, more than 85,000 members had joined a Facebook group called “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”

The group, founded by San Diego mom Kelli Roman, urges Facebook to change its obscenity policy. “We expect you to realize that nursing moms everywhere have a right to show pictures of their babies eating, just like bottle-fed babies have a right to be seen,” their petition reads. “In an effort to appease the closed-minded, you are only serving to be detrimental to babies, women, and society.”

Personally? On one hand, I’d really not watch a kid nurse in public. On the other hand, I can always look away. Further, I think it’d be great if beautiful women walked around topless all the time, so it is at least somewhat hypocritical for me to oppose nursing in public.

Frankly, I think women’s breasts and nipples are far more attractive than a man’s. You might say, “But, Snay, that’s because a.) you’re not a gay male, and/or b.) you’re not a straight woman.” True enough, but even from an objective standpoint, hairy guy nipples are disgusting. And since we’re speaking of hairy man nipples — and at this point I should warn you that clicking on “more” might make this post very much NSFW — please click more: (more…)

Last New Year’s, I bundled myself up and drove north from Timonium, and utilized back roads to cut across the Loch Raven Reservoir and celebrate the New Year with some formerly lost friends in White Marsh. Even though I didn’t know many people there, it was nice to reconnect. I had a shitty job — I was delivering pizzas at two different places — and my job search was pretty fruitless.

So it’s a year later, and I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. I found a great, well paying full time Office job, and a cool part-time job with great benefits for voracious readers like myself. For the first time in my life, I moved into a city — Washington, DC. I was able to get rid of my car, and my cats are both alive and in great shape: Tippy’s staring out the window restlessly, Guy is cleaning himself in the foyer.

For the first time in my life, I’ve actually been able to grow a beard. Nothing’s perfect: I’m still single. That may never change, I may in fact be a confirmed bachelor. But maybe tomorrow I’ll meet my soul mate. A coworker (who I had lunch with twice this week, actually) told me I looked like I’ve been losing weight, and she is, by the way, smoking gorgeous. Sadly, I’m far too clueless to know if she’s trying to get me to ask her out (because I’m clueless).

I didn’t actually write any sort of a “Where Will I Be Next Year?” post, possibly because I was a little depressed and generally bummed out.

Where do I see myself in a year? Still in this apartment, possibly with an additional bookshelf or two (where I put them is anyone’s guess). The job front is uncertain — I really have no idea what’s going on with the part time gig, but I do need to start making some serious decisions regarding those options. Maybe I’ll be involved with someone, I won’t be. Hopefully I’ll have some money in my savings account, and food in the pantry. I can make one fairly reasonable prediction: I’ll probably still be blogging (although perhaps on a new computer).

Tonight I’m taking it easy. Being broke made this an easy decision. I’ve got beer in the fridge, and hot dogs, chili, and cheese for dinner, unopened Netflix envelopes stacked next to the TV for entertainment and an overwhelmed basket of laundry to occupy my waking hours in the morning. I might go up to the roof at midnight to see if there are fireworks (and I might not).

This is, I think, the most beautiful version of Auld Lang Syne I’ve ever heard. It’s somber, reflective, optimistic. Happy New Year. (Even if it has been postponed!)

Sunday morning, some corporate weenie sent out an e-mail alert to members of the Bookstore’s Rewards program. It was only supposed to be sent to those customers who shopped at a particular store in California, which is being closed this week. Instead, it went to everyone. The subject line: BOOKSTORE CLOSING: 40% CLEARANCE SALE! They later sent out a correction e-mail, but it’s probably not going to be long before they’re sending out another one, to everyone, regarding each and every store of the chain: BOOKSTORES CLOSING!

Now that Christmas season is over, and we’ve finally been able to pull all the Christmas CDs out of the players, I really think we need to start playing only stuff by blues artists.

The Bookstore I work at is in trouble, financial trouble. Not just the individual location, but the entire company. When you look back to see where the trouble began, it’s got two big sources: unnecessary company-wide store remodels, and a long-term (now ended) partnership with Amazon.com.

The reality is that last March, the Bookstore’s parent took out a very large loan to cover operating expenses for the fiscal year … and that loan is just about due. Couple that with an economy in the toilet, and a lousy Christmas season — it was very busy in our store, but we did not a single day where our sales were over $100,000, which one manager told me was the worst year she’d ever seen (and she’s been with the Bookstore for several years).

The same manager, who a month ago was full of optimism and reassurance, now just sort of nodded her head in agreement when I mentioned I might start looking elsewhere as January rolls to an end.

Now, things might turn out okay — the collateral for the loan is, I understand, our “Cards” specialty section — cards, nick-nacks, Jesus coin banks, stuff like that. I wouldn’t mind losing all that stuff, even though I’ve been told it’s the most profitable part of the store’s operation (which is kind of funny, since it always all seems to end up heavily discounted on bargain tables). Anyway.

Here’s my dilemma: first, I really like working at the Bookstore. I like the people, and I like my hours. I like the location, and the shopping demographic which means that my long Sunday shifts are considerably calmer than they’d be at a different location. On the other hand, if the store closes, than all my co-workers would probably gravitate towards the few remaining bookstores in DC, and I could find myself without a part-time job. And even though it is a part-time job, this is not discretionary income: I do, in fact, need the cash.

I really hate being an adult. Why did I ever want to grow up?

I need a table - and I’m hoping you can help me with it. See, I’m a bit of a hobbyist, and I’m setting up a little workshop in my closet — which sounds ridiculous, but I do have a very tiny apartment, and a comparatively gigantic closet.

So, I need a table. Ideally, one of those fake-wood-top tables with the folding legs (because I need to store stuff underneath it). The only other requirement is that it be no more than five feet long, and no less than four feet.

I know I can just pick one up brand new (and expensive!) at Office Depot or Staples, but these tables seem to be those articles of furniture everyone has abandoned somewhere. So, if you’ve got one of those lying unused in your basement or closet or backyard, and you have no need for it, please send me an e-mail (malnurturedsnay AT gmail). I’m willing to negotiate price and pickup/delivery (I’m, er, car free).

Following up on the whole “They lied to us about how clean the Chesapeake is” thing, there’s an article in yesterday’s WaPo about a change in the culture of the community’s around the Chesapeake:

Fewer women know the intricate signals of a blue crab’s molt, that a red-sign crab is two days away from “busting” and becoming a valuable soft-shell. Fewer men know how to find oyster bars, underwater landmarks such as Snake Rip, Turkey Leg or Old Woman.

Fewer people know their neighbors in a place where neighbors used to be all you had.

“It used to be when you saw a boat go by, you’d say, ‘There goes Cap’n Anthony. He’s going out to fish his crabs.’ ‘There’s A-Boy,’ headed to collect fish from a pound net,” recalled Ken Smith, president of the Virginia State Waterman’s Association. “Now, it’s like, ‘Who in the hell’s on that jet ski?’ ”

The water is still there, but The Bay — the old, bountiful estuary — is not. As the old industries have declined, they have been replaced by tourism, where the look of the water is all that matters. Or by trucking, or work in prisons, where the water doesn’t matter at all.

This is the real cost of the cleanup’s failure: People learning to live with broken promises.

Believe it or not, but this post ties back into my promise to discuss the present I gave my Dad. When I first began working at The Bookstore, he e-mailed me asking me to find a book for him. Dad grew up on the Eastern Shore, on a farm just south of Princess Anne, and the book in question was written by a guy a year ahead of him in high school.

I’d like to claim that I found the book right away, and got it right away, but the truth is, I sort of forgot about it until I got a few more hints, and finally tracked it down — we had to special order it — and received it in time to wrap and give for Christmas: Terry Noble’s Starting at Sea Level.

Here’s what the publisher has to say:

It was the 1950’s, and the violent one-hundred-year struggle for control of Chesapeake Bay’s oysters was still raging. Terry Noble was growing up idyllically in the fishing village of Oriole, Maryland, while his father battled poachers to protect the Bay’s last oyster beds. A gun shot, piercing the river darkness, changed the family forever.

The pages of this book are rich with the natural history of crabs, oysters and the men who caught them. Interwoven are delightful stories of boyhood scrapes, high school life, big fish and a host of watery escapades.

Having read it on Christmas Day, Dad was particularly taken with trying to identify certain characters who’d been given pseudonyms. “I’m pretty sure she dated my brother,” he said about one girl.

On the ride back from Scranton, I picked it up and started to read. It’s pretty well written, solidly structured, and suffering only from some minor layout goofs. What struck me most about the book was Terry, as a kid, in the late 50s and early 60s considering a career on the water, and being advised by people — forty-plus years ago! — that it had no future.

I mean, it just sort of gets me that The Washington Post is writing an article about the dying culture — woah, it’s a huge deal! — when the people immersed in that culture knew it was a gone thing almost fifty years ago!

Anyway, it’s actually a pretty good book. Check it out. I’m not being paid for this. (For shame!)

Since I’m never on time for cultural events, I just watched The Simpsons movie. I’ll say this: it was a heck of a lot funnier than I expected, and considerably funnier than the show has been. I stopped watching The Simpsons regularly back in high school (and I graduated in ‘97), but I’ve seen nothing that would convince me The Simpsons hasn’t sucked for the last decade or so. And then there’s this movie, and maybe it’s the time I’ve been away from the series, or maybe it’s just that everyone involved really put on their “A” games and put out a fantastic movie (actually, possibly only by comparison and not objectively). Anyway, wholeheartedly enjoyable.

Also: I really got a kick out of the movie’s opening sequence, especially Homer’s line. You know the one I mean.