I’ll be enroute to Scranton this morning: hopefully, driving duties will be light. As much as I love my family, I’m not going to be sad to get back to DC on Friday. Be well.

Ah, Christmas Eve. I used to spend my Christmas Eves alone: it was time to drink a few beers, wrap presents, and turn on those stupid Christmas lights I hung from the ceiling of my old apartment while playing Christmas music all night. Of course, that was when I lived in Timonium, and my parents had to drive past my apartment enroute to grandmother’s. Now I live south, and I’m not quite so “on the way”, so my sister drove down and gave me a ride up to my parents’ place this evening.

I actually had plans this afternoon that extended beyond just wrapping presents. I think I’ve mentioned a few times that I grew up in the DC area, Adelphi, to be exact, and I attended a Catholic school for first through sixth grades in Montgomery County. When my parents moved to Columbia, I, obviously, went with them, and began attending public school. As for my fellow students at Catholic School, I ran into one a few years later when I was working at Blockbuster, and a second when we both attended Towson at the same time. Years passed, and I found a few more here and there on MySpace and Facebook.

One of those, A.S., is in sort of the same professional field as I am. “Sort of” in the sense that we’re both interested in people who work in Information Technology, albeit for completely different reasons. Last week, he messaged me over Facebook asking if I knew anyone who knew Ruby, a programming language. As far as I knew, I didn’t, but I know my employer had let a developer of some sort go the previous week so I passed along his information, and we agreed that it had been way too long (seventeen years) and made plans for lunch on Christmas Eve (today).

Slight digression: as evidenced by the above paragraphs, I’m not one of those bloggers who is absolutely paranoid about my identity — hell, the previous post has my photograph. I do try to be sensible so that a casual Google search won’t reveal my identity to all those searching (my name is common enough that it would be difficult to do so).

For example, while I don’t directly name my employers, I think careful reading (and an understanding of geography), can help people figure out at least where my part-time Bookstore gig is (my Office job is probably considerably harder to pin down, especially since it’s a start-up you won’t have heard of unless you work in IT or sell IT related products*).

So, having met up with A.S. for lunch at Mackey’s, and having consumed, oh, four beers (exactly three more than I’d planned on, I was way early, he was a little late), I sort of wobbled over to the Bookstore, located conveniently right across the street (this is where DC geography comes in). Sadly, the store was all out of wrapping paper (I got some from CVS), but I picked up a paperback for the road trip tomorrow (and even though I made the selection intoxicated, I started reading it tonight and am greatly enjoying it), and a copy of Sink the Bismarck.

The checkout line was well back to the cafe when I entered it, and although this might be the alcohol talking, it didn’t seem too long before I was at the registers and handing over my debit card. There was no one at the front door doing bag checks (employees have to have a manager look over their bags to make sure we’re not stealing anything), but I saw our GM (that’s “Top Dog Boss” in retail speak) over by the Information Desk and we spoke for a minute or two about, I dunno, something (recall: I was sort of, oh, ten sheets to the wind).

So there was this gentleman standing between the Information desk and the BOGO table. He stepped over, extended his hand, and asked, “Are you Snay?”

And, indeed, I was! So we spoke for a few minutes. Mind, this was about eight hours ago, and as mentioned, I’d been drinking (to that kind person, let me just say, “I’m sorry!” I think I was a bit rude with you, which wasn’t my intention, I’m usually at least a bit more charming when, well, both when I’m sober and drunk), but he seemed particularly familiar with the Baltimore Blogger Scene — he commented on bloggers who’d stopped posting (Anonymous Coworker), those who’d just announced their departure (Broadsheet), and those who’d just sort of dropped off the face of the planet (eebmore). He mentioned — and I hate to be so general, but I completely forgot your name — that when I’d blogged about getting a job at the Bookstore, that he knew exactly where it was. It was a really cool encounter.

*And even then, probably not.

Back in high school, I used to work at a Blockbuster Video up in Columbia, MD. I think I started there in my junior year, and worked through until my first semester of college. Back then, I could go, literally, two weeks without shaving and to notice I had any facial hair, you would literally have to stop and seriously examine my face. It came in very light, and quantity wasn’t its strong suit. Meanwhile, I worked with a guy a year or two older than me who could literally grow a noticeable beard in about a day. I remember remarking to him once that I was a little jealous of his ability to grow facial hair, and he remarked that he spent a small fortune on razor blades.

Flash forward a decade. For some reason, a bunch of guys in my office started growing beards. I think it would be more fair to say they got tired of shaving. That’s pretty much what did me in — after a week of not shaving, I noticed that I could actually tell I hadn’t shaved for awhile. So I figured, why don’t I grow this sucker out for a couple of weeks and see where it gets me?

I honestly can’t remember when I stopped shaving. I know I had somewhat noticeable facial hair by my first DC blogger happy hour, back in late November, so I can assume it was sometime before then. I’ve already decided I’m going to keep it until the end of February. Although I’ve already made public my decision to cut my face free … the truth is, I like having a beard. First, I think it gets rid of my “baby face.” Second, coupling a beard with a shaved head apparently makes me look like a bad-ass, and, despite my earlier post, I’m sort of getting a kick out of people thinking I’m some sort of bad-ass.

The beard takes a little getting used to. Sometimes I jump when I feel the hairs touch my upper lip: is that a spider? Oh, no, it’s just my beard! I’m constantly paranoid that my chin hairs are soaked in visible hot chocolate or crumbs, and that I didn’t get all the snot out of the hairs over my lip from my last sneeze. On the other hand, at 6am, trudging down Connecticut Avenue, my face is fairly damn warm.

One of the guys I work with at the Office told me I looked horrible with a beard and I should shave it. I was downstairs in the cafe with one of our account managers at the time, and I turned to her for a second opinion. She said she liked it, and although I don’t know that I believed her, if a cute girl tells me she likes something about me, I’m likely to keep it. And as time progresses, I think she was telling the truth: I posted a new profile photo of myself to Facebook, and several of the comments (all ladies), have said something to the effect of “Woah, good looking beard!” Another coworker told me she liked my bearded-face, shaved head combination.

I was, though, surprised by comments I began to receive as my facial grew longer and darker: people commented on how red my beard is. On one hand, I shouldn’t be surprised: my hair color has tended to change over my life, I was born blond, then went very dark, then came out with nice brown hair. My sister was a red head when we were in high school, but she’s now a brunette (no, she doesn’t dye it). However, when I look in a mirror, or a photograph, I don’t see myself as having a red beard (admittedly, we’re talking reddish-brown here, not flaming Irish orange), but I wonder if that’s because I perceive myself as being brown-haired, so I expect that to be my beard color and see that reflected.

This is ridiculous. I’m going to keep it short and sweet: taxpayers want, and are entitled to, transparency in those institutions funded by taxbucks. Primarily, I’m speaking of the government. But when the government lends out money to big institutions (that, frankly, should’ve known better than to engage in risky business practices), than the taxpayers want transparency from them, too.

If the banks choose not to, y’know, be transparent, I’ve got a suggestion: pay that money back. Now.

There’s a water-main break in Bethesda that’s making national headlines, but as I’m affected by the lack of water, I won’t make light of the fact that there’s a flood on River Road.

Rather, instead of staying until 4pm in a building with no water (i.e., the bathrooms are closed and the cafe downstairs can’t possibly be open), I’m leaving early. It’ll probably mean a few extra hours of PTO I’ve got to use, but it also means I get to relax this afternoon. I e-mailed a coworker to see if she can cover my night shift at the Bookstore tonight: I don’t think I’d mind an evening spent with a book and Christmas music. (And a beer).

We’ve been working holiday hours at the Bookstore — basically, that means we stay open really really late, even though we usually don’t have any customers after 9pm. There was actually a lady browsing the DVD section around 10:30, and we had a conversation about Christmas music. It’s all we are allowed to play over the speakers until December 26th. Per her request — she’s sick of the stuff — I turned down the speaker and made some fake sympathy with her.

Really, though, I love Christmas music. I had to physically restrain myself from buying more Christmas albums this year (I have, four? Including Twisted Sister’s).

Now, understand, I went to Catholic school until 6th grade. So when I say I like Christmas music, I’m not talking about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer or that stupid Chipmunks song. Basically, I’m an atheist who loves actual religious Christmas music (although I am partial to some old crooners). Here, courtesy of YouTube, a selection of my favorites:

(more…)

For three months, I woke up at 5am and was on the road from Timonium (north of Baltimore) no later than 5:30am so that I could be at my northern Bethesda job by 7 (most days, I was in considerably earlier). For many, many years before that, I fought traffic while trying to deliver pizzas to ungrateful cheap assholes. So, let me just say, first, that I have tremendous sympathy with people who suffer from road rage (I used to be one).

Of course, reading the article, it’s hard to determine if the shooter was actually suffering from road rage. But I’m assuming that shootings at rush-hour in dense areas with horrible traffic are usually going to be as a result of sort of road rage.

So, I sympathize with the shooter. Doesn’t make what he did right, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t spend a nice long rest of his life in jail or that I’ll feel anyway that he received a miscarriage of justice if the police shoot him to death while apprehending him, just that I can understand where he’s coming from, because, really, road rage really is the suck.

This is also part of the reason I remain in undying love with the best reason to live in the DC Area.

These both sort of sum up my feelings on blogging political discourse:

But I will … write about it because it is something about which I feel very strongly. I will not, as many liberals do, berate those of you who disagree with me. This is a matter of conscience. Each of us must examine our own beliefs, our own mind, and come to our own conclusions in this matter. –Rick Moran

It’s a larger piece of his, on American sponsored torture, but this fragment of a larger paragraph really struck me. Spot on, Rick.

In the above clip, Michael Douglas, as President Andrew Shepherd, uses flag-burning as his illustration, and I completely agree with him … but go further. Throw in Klan marches and parents who have the legal right to name their kid Adolf Hitler, and while I find those acts just as despicable as some find burning an American flag, they’re proof that despite the problems we’ve got, exercising our most basic right is — so far — not yet one of them.

Now that I’ve been corrupted by living in the capitol, and I’m writing about politics far more regularly than before, these are both emblematic of the tone I want to set. I don’t want to preach to the choir.

The children who cry? Know “Santa” wants nothing more than to bite their little ears off.

Resign already, you blow hard.

I’m not a resident of the fine State of New York, so I don’t have a proverbial dog in this proverbial fight, but for some reason, I just can’t keep my fingers silent, and here they are, tap-tapping across my keyboard. Someone: stop me.

I’ve remarked a couple of times that I think the overwhelming reason why George W. Bush received the Republican nomination in 2000 was because of plain old simple name recognition: the Republicans were sick and tired of Bill Clinton, and they wanted a return to the Ronald Reagan era. They found their golden boy in the Texas governor, a man with an extremely similar name to his father, former President, and Reagan’s second. I think this trumped all considerations of capability: on the merits, at least, choosing your nomination from the Bush family, I still think Jeb would’ve been a better choice.

I oppose political family dynasties. The Republicans have the Bushes, and the Democrats have the Kennedys. When I say “oppose”, I don’t mean that they should be dragged into the streets and shot, or even that their descendants be forbidden from running from office, but I do believe it creates a feeling of entitlement. In her book “American Wife”, Curtis Sittenfeld’s George W. Bush stand-in character tells his future wife he’s going to lose his run for Congress, but that’s okay: he’s only laying the ground work for a potential run for something bigger later on.

So it’s no secret by now that Carolina Kennedy, daughter of John F., wants to be nominated by New York’s governor to Clinton’s soon-to-be-vacated (if not already) Senate seat.

I have nothing against Caroline Kennedy. By all accounts, she’s an admirable woman who involves herself as an advocate for social causes. By all accounts, she would indeed be a fighter for New York, and a good candidate for that seat. Considering that Kennedy’s administration was seen as “Camelot”, it’s really not unfair to suggest that Caroline was — is — America’s Princess.

But would she even be considered if her last name wasn’t Kennedy?

I find myself in a morally tricky place. I want to oppose her because of her last name, and also because of advantages she’s gotten that haven’t actually been her fault: certainly, a child doesn’t determine what family they’re born into.

At the same time, those advantages are ones that she’s not afraid to, y’know, take advantage of: would Caroline Smith be front page news on CNN.com for asking to be considered for the seat? Probably not. On the other hand, she’d probably be a good senator, using her position to help the guy I voted for President, and helping the citizens of New York. If not nominated, she’s probably capable of winning the seat in an election, and if that be the case, what quarrel could I possibly have with those voters?

So: I’m stuck.

And I’m really glad I’m not David A. Paterson.

Majel Barrett’s association with Star Trek began pretty early on: she was Captain Pike’s second-in-command for the show’s original pilot, “The Cage”, and later played Dr. McCoy’s Vulcan-loving nurse/sidekick Christine Chapel when the show was picked up.

On The Next Generation, she played Deanna Troi’s mother, the horndog Lwaxanna Troi, “daughter of the Fifth House of Betazed, the Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, and Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed”, plus Federation Ambassador-at-Large and general pain-in-the-ass (she also made appearances on Deep Space Nine in that role). In addition, Majel “played” the voice of the Starfleet computer on TNG, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. With all that, she was also wife to Gene Roddenberry, the Great Bird of the Galaxy and, y’know, the guy who created Star Trek.

So I was sad to read that she passed away this morning.

Roddenberry succumbed to a short battle with Leukemia at 12:27 AM on December 18 in her Bel-Air home. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by her son Rod Roddenberry and family friends. She is survived by her only son Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry Jr. The family has asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in her name to the CARE Organization or Precious Paws both of which share Roddenberry’s love for animals and dedication to animal rescue.

Rest in peace, Majel.

I get drunk off happiness.

Here’s what I mean: home, alone, drinking, I can drink four or five Bass Ales while watching a longish movie, and not feel drunk. Put me in a social setting, where I’m relaxed, and even one beer is enough to get me red-faced stumbling about, a natural extrovert (which I’m not) hugging everyone who doesn’t dodge me fast enough.

I get drunk off happiness. I think this is really, truly, the case.

Office Holiday Party was tonight. I just got home. Not many people showed up, and it’s a good thing: we arranged for a club-room in a Rockville apartment building our recruiter lives in. Pool table, bar, many drinks — including a delicious hot cider-mix thing — and a short stumble from the Metro.

If you were on a Silver Spring-bound Metro train late Thursday night with a group of loud white drunk idiots, well, that was us, and, uh, sorry. Topics of discussion ranged from assassination, to how little work we do, to why my team leader showed up five minutes before everyone left.

I’m a little drunk as I write this. I’m sleeping in tomorrow and going in late.

Also, a big kick: got a link from an NPR blog. Sweet.

Big Stupid Guy thinks Al-Zeidi should be punished for committing “the gravest insult one of his culture could launch at another human being.” Now, perhaps I’m reading this wrong (I don’t think I am), but what I’m getting at this is that Big Stupid Guy thinks Al-Zeidi should be punished for his expression of his anger towards Bush.

Let me clarify: I didn’t vote for George W. Bush either time he ran for President. I didn’t think the Iraq War was at any point a good idea, and I do think Al-Zeidi should be punished: but not for expressing his feelings towards President Bush.

What Al-Zeidi should be punished for is for an attempted assault on a human being with two pair of shoes. I’m not going to make a joke about “assault with a deadly shoe”, but, clearly, the only thing that got in the way of one of those items of footwear giving Bush a black eye or a broken nose was our President’s ninja like reflexes (I also won’t make make any jokes about the Secret Service failing to take a shoe for the President). While there have been light hearted jokes about this incident, I know that if someone threw a shoe at me, I’d like to think they’d be getting the cuffs slapped on them too.

So, in the sense that Big Stupid Guy thinks Al-Zeidi shouldn’t be getting a pardon, I agree. But I cannot disagree more with his reasoning behind his decision than I do.

Big Stupid Guy details the shoe throwing as “an insult he hurled in public, no less, and one that went beyond insulting the head of state. What’s more, it wasn’t the president of any random Western nation: it was the president of the nation that liberated an entire people, people of a land in which he felt free enough to throw shoes at a head of state without fear of death by, or shortly after, torture, which, by many accounts, he likely would have suffered under Saddam.”

Well, except, the United States has been engaging in torture, under that same President, and by the authority of that same President, that Al-Zeidi threw a shoe at, so I don’t quite buy his argument. Furthermore, “insulting” a politician should never EVER be grounds for an arrest and/or punishment, and I question the logic at doing so. Al-Zeidi wasn’t tackled to the ground for “insulting” Bush, he was tackled for committing an assault, but I’m very disturbed by the notion that it is the “insult” that he should be punished for.

Now, I realize that Iraq is not America, and Iraqis don’t enjoy our Constitution. But I would expect an American to recognize that arresting a protester for an insult is inherently un-American. Forget the shoes for a second, what if this was a Young Republican standing up in an audience and giving Barack Obama a single-finger salute and a hearty “Fuck you?” What if this was an aging hippy reeking of weed mooning Dick Cheney? In neither case would there be a physical assault, but in both there’d be quite a mighty insult. And while, certainly, arresting the hippy for indecent exposure would be appropriate, I would hope neither would be arrested simply for expressing their beliefs.

Would Big Stupid Guy be demanding they be punished for this insult? I hope no one would.

It’s like this: even though I tend to be a liberal, or at least, liberally minded, I tend to dislike “hate crime” legislation because they punish people for the real or perceived motivation behind a violent act. I don’t think people should be punished for their intentions, merely for their actual conduct. I feel this way for a variety of reasons, but primarily because I believe that when you punish people for how they feel, it’s the first step on a slippery slope towards the destruction of the right of this country’s citizens to express themselves without fear of repercussion.

Should Al-Zeidi be punished? Absolutely. But not for giving an insult. He should be punished strictly for the assault, and not for the expression of his feelings. Doing so would be absolutely un-American.

If you don’t know who Alexandra Penney is, you probably will soon enough: this is one of those blog stories — like the one about poor Adolf Hitler Campbell — that spreads across the news media and blogs like wildfire. Penney is a successful writer and editor who got royally screwed by Bernard Madoff. I came across her article on The Daily Beast via Princess Sparkle Pony who sarcastically asks readers to “Please Shed a Tear for Inconvenienced Rich Lady.”

Tracking back the link from that blog, I came across commentary on Gawker, which apparently thought it was a parody.

I’m all for poking fun at people with way too much money who don’t even know how many houses they own.

But I just couldn’t find it in me to mock Penney for her loss. I’ll be the first to admit that part of this reaction probably has to do with her description of life as a young-twenty-something, when she worked three jobs to support her kid, “including [a job] cashiering at the fish market, where my new style included rubber boots, overalls and a wrap-around aprons.”

Probably she should’ve been a bit more careful with whom she decided to invest her life’s savings. But this isn’t someone who was handed everything on a silver platter: she had to work for it, and as sometimes happens in this country, when you work hard, sometimes you reap financial rewards (her line of sex books probably didn’t hurt, either). So now she’s enjoying the excesses she’s won for herself, the excesses she didn’t inherit or sue for, and it’s all gone.

I’m thirty years old. I work forty hours a week in a cubicle, and while it’s a cube with a window, my view is of a parking lot in northern Bethesda. Three weeknights I take the train past my apartment and work nights at a Bookstore, I also work there on Sundays, and have been known to agree to the occasional extra shift when someone calls out or doesn’t show up. I probably work about sixty-five hours a week, and it’s honestly not much: there are people who work two or more jobs, for a hell of a lot more hours than I do, and who are scraping by with considerably less than I have. I’m grateful for both of my jobs, I’m grateful for what hours I work, but by no means do I want to be working this schedule for the rest of my life. I hope that if I work hard, and if I cover my ass, maybe, someday, many years from now, I’ll be able to afford to quit the Bookstore. Maybe, if I’m lucky, someday I’ll be financially secure enough to actually take vacations that involve traveling somewhere farther than the National Mall.

My point is, I hope for the better for myself in the future. And, when and if that future comes, to have everything I’ve worked for obliterated in such a manner, would be a completely crushing blow. It’s easy to mock her for selling her cottage, but is it really that easy to mock her for being devastated about having to fire her maid, Yolanda? I don’t mean for the problems it’ll cause Ms. Penney, I’m sure she’ll figure out how to do laundry and dust, but rather: for what it means for Yolanda?

Right now, my Bookstore part-time job is in jeopardy. It’s not in jeopardy because of anything I did. It’s in jeopardy as a result of a series of bad business decisions which resulted in a nearly forty-million dollar loan taken out as a high rate of interest and due to be paid back in three months. It’s the result of a plummeting economy that might just prove too much for the Corporate Parent to overcome. I’m contemplating jumping ship after the holidays, I’d be stupid to wait until the water is lapping the poop deck before finding a flotation device. My Office job, at a small technology start-up, is more secure: we’re still getting sales, but they’ve been slowing down. I could survive, for a short while, the loss of the Bookstore job: if the Office job goes, I’m fucked.

I know this post seems a little disjointed. We’re all vulnerable to actions that we can’t control. Losing my part-time job might not seem like much, but far too often, that paycheck covers my utility bills and my Smartrip card and my groceries. Even losing that income for a couple of weeks could be devastating to me, wiping out my meager savings account in a small fraction of the time it’s taken me to build it up.

Ms. Penney is in a far better financial position than I am, even after her loss. At the same time, her loss was far larger in scale than anything I could experience right now. I may become a victim of the economy, something far too large to blame on any one person, but she was victimized by one man on, and I find it hard to find more damming words than her own, “a sociopath” with a desire for “self aggrandizement.” I’m not going to blame her for something out of control, and I’m not going to mock what I feel is a genuine statement of remorse for Yolanda’s situation. One might be formerly-rich, and one might be a maid, but I sympathize with both of them right now, and I’m far too glad to be in either’s shoes (knock on wood).