dc's very own gulags!

Remember when I compared DC's gnarliest architecture to that of the former Soviet Union? Well, that was then. This is now:

DC police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that DC officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.

That sentence (from a June 4 Examiner article, which I found via Beyond DC) blows my previous comparison out of the proverbial water vodka. DC really is f*cking soviet! Now, in a rare full disclosure moment, I'll reveal that I'm not too keen on U.S. history, but I am aware of a little document called THE CONSTITUTION. And not to go all Ron Paul on you, but doesn't it seem a tad UNCONSTITUTIONAL to cordon off selected neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and control who comes in and out of public space?

"I’m not worried about the constitutionality of it," said DC's interim Attorney General Peter Nickles. "This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities."

Yeah. Other cities like Leningrad, Stalingrad and East Berlin. And while DC city officials have clearly lost their minds, some area citizens, such as Shelley Broderick, president of the DC-area American Civil Liberties Union and dean of the University of the District of Columbia's law school, are with me on my sensible analogy:

"I think they tried this in Russia and it failed," said Broderick.

Yeah. It did. Miserably. Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, shame on you. Or is it, live in a police state once, shame on me; live in a police state twice, shame on DC?

delicious hamburgers...and ice cream...and advil

Comparing New York City to Washington, DC, is a lot like comparing premiere men's figure skater Johnny Weir in his swan outfit to, say, cancer. One is sparkley, exciting and talented and the other is, well, cancer. Nothing good can come of that. So with that lovely analogy in mind, I usually try to stay away from the NYC-DC comparisons. Clearly, DC will always lose.

However, for this post, I'm breaking that rule and not simply to call DC some other chronic illness, mind you, but to commend it for being a little less lame than usual! See, I got word last night about a new-to-me business -- a business not unlike what can only be described as one of NYC's most magical phenomena, MaxDelivery. For those of you not in the know, MaxDelivery touts itself as the "ultimate convenience store," delivering everything from groceries to DVDs from noon till midnight daily. This service comes in especially handy after you smoked a bunch of weed when you're too busy working or doing something else productive to walk a block or two to fetch your own pint of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream, a bag of Funyuns, a DiGiorno four-cheese pizza, and, if you're in the mood to bake (and of course you are at midnight!), all the ingredients needed to bake a goddamn Duncan Hines Deluxe Dark Chocolate Fudge cake. Delicious. The best part (compared to other grocery-delivery services) is that MaxDelivery will deliver it to your door within the hour. Tight.

Predictably, when I first moved to DC last year, I went through MaxDelivery withdrawal. Even until this day, whenever I receive an e-coupon from MaxD in my Inbox, I get a bit nostaligiac, thinking, "Why doesn't DC have something like this?" Well, e-friends, it apparently does -- DCsnacks!

Although the variety of delivered items is considerably smaller than MaxDelivery's heavenly selection of artery-clogging munchies, DCsnacks is still a formidable operation, selling everything from frozen burritos to Advil to Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. And perhaps even one-upping NYC's MaxD, DCsnacks delivers when you need it most -- past midnight. Hallelujah! That's right! They're open until 3 a.m.! It's glorious! Glorious, I say!

So I say, tip of the proverbial hat to you, DCsnacks. May you continue to "be the ultimate late night delivery service constantly exceeding the expectations of each of your customers" for the rest of our days! Smooches. Stay gold delicious.

your flattop brings all the boys to the senate

As a professional reporter working in DC covering issues that pertain to the security of the so-called "homeland" [Sidebar: Why can't it be the Department of the Motherland Security? That's got so much more cachet.], I come across many a retardulous press release. Whether it be Customs and Border Protection confiscating some poor fool's "love potion", the Transportation Security Administration announcing its search for a laptop-sized Ziploc bag or the Federal Emergency Management Agency getting ill, I can always count on my Inbox for blog topics.

Take, for instance, a press release I received today from "Friends of Conley" entitled Democrat Looks to Oust Graham. First of all, who the f*ck is Conley? Second of all, who the f*ck is Graham? Well, upon scanning the subtitle, I began to find out: "'FlatTop' Bob Conley Wants to Shake Up Washington." Whoa. This Conley, Bob Conley, has a nickname and that nickname is FlatTop -- one word, two capital letters. Hardcore.

Naturally, I was intrigued. How does this "FlatTop" plan on shakin' things up? Let's find out:

Bob Conley of North Myrtle Beach [of course] is running a race for the U.S. Senate that focuses on the issues of everyday folks [like me?!]. Running on the Democratic ticket, Mr. Conley is making a name for himself both for hard-hitting proposals and his signature look: a flattop. [YES! But shouldn't the flattop be listed first, you know, before the "hard-hitting proposals" that Americans clearly don't care about?]

As Senator, Mr. Conley plans to help people with their most basic needs: gas prices, jobs, and peace. [Hmm...a hippie with a flattop?! Whodda thunk it!] With everyone feeling the pinch at the gas pump, Conley sets energy policy as his top priority. ...An engineer, he understands the great potential in developing the alternatives from sun and wind to water and biodiesel. [Well those are certainly groundbreaking ideas that could shake up Washington! Next thing you know, FlatTop will be parroting every other reasonable politician blowing everyone's minds by calling on the United States to draw down its forces in Iraq!]...

Mr. Conley feels it is important to support the troops and offers a simple solution: end the occupation and bring our soldiers safely home. [By jove, he said it! He really said it!]

Putting Conley's "hard-hitting" proposals aside, let's move on to how he'd really shake up the Hill...with his fabulous flattop! "I plan on joining Jon Tester (D-Mont.) up there to form the flattop caucus," said FlatTop. EFF YES! If ever a Congressional caucus should be willed into existence, it is the "Flattop Caucus." Not only would this lend Conley and Tester a serious amount of street cred, but it would appropriate on them a clout of epic coiffure proporations, which undoubtedly would culminate in Christopher "Kid" Reid being nominated for President and Duke Nukem for Vice President by the Flattop Party in 2012. May this blog post be the start of a fruitful campaign!

And sorry, Barack, that means you're only going to get one term. Unless you grow a flattop. Think about it.

a plea for more reasonable delinquents

Happy Tuesday everyone! What's everyone doing? Me? Well, I'm just TRYING NOT TO GET SHOT.

Yep. Living in DC sucks. Not only is it hellishly humid this time of year, but, um, DC is the kind of place where SEVENTY-TWO people have been murdered in the first FIVE months of 2008, including SEVEN on Saturday night through early Sunday morning. That sh*t is neither tight nor normal.

"This can only be described as an unbelievably high level of violent crime to take place in a short time," Mayor Adrian Fentry told reporters, according to the Washington Post. "We've had some crime sprees, but this has got to be one of the most violent days in recent memory, if not ever."

Included in the macabre tally? One man is dead after a drive-by shooting (two others were wounded); three men are dead after an argument on the street turned to semi-automatics being whipped out and fired 35 times; one man shot after a dice game gone wrong; one man shot by police when he wouldn't drop his weapon (a knife); and, perhaps most gruesome of all, one 66-year-old man found dead in his car with his throat slit.

This sh*t is no joke. It's disgusting, sad and, really, kind of pathetic. I don't get why people find no other way of solving their problems than by whipping out some sort of weapon they're clearly not responsible enough to wield in the first place and then proceding to commit murder. Perhaps it's a wild idea, but what about, say, I don't know, TALKING? And if conversing with another human being is too hard, I suppose, and your stupidity forces you to choose violence, at least be a man (or woman, as the case may be) about it and knock some sense into your victim the good old-fashioned way with your fists. The "rumble" method seemed to work for the Greasers and the Socs in The Outsiders, well, that is, until Bob the Soc asshole tried to drown Ponyboy and Johnny was forced to defend his friend by shanking the aggressor. See, that's the problem with violence. It always escalates.

So, what about eliminating the needless (read: non-self-defense) violence altogether? In my ideal world, all disputes would be settled through various combinations of jazz hands, grapevines and fan kicks like the Jets and the Sharks in West Side Story. And I don't even like musicals! But honestly, anything is better than f*cking killing someone over something as silly as a random argument on the street or a dispute over a dice game. Come on. Can't we all just get along act like grown-ups? For reals.

On another note, Ralph Macchio sure did have a sweet ass back in the day.

i'm not e-dead!

There are several things that irritate the steely cold hell out of The Anti DC: herds of tourists; DC buses; the idea of "commuter shoes"; when broadcast anchorwomen pronounce "scombridae" as "scomberidae" (how could she?!); low-pressure showerheads; morning; and, today's particular irritant, the part of my day job that requires me to talk about "science."

See, I'm a fan of weird science (uh, not the movie, mind you, but things like theoretical physics), but when it comes to applied science I get bored so easily.

As you should well know by now, I'm functionally retarded, so keeping up with these "scientists" as they "speak" is as hard for me as it is for an insomniac to fall asleep. In fact, while these so-called "scientists" are talking about all of their magical gizmos and gadgets, it actually erases the adverb off of my aforementioned self-descriptive and I become simply retarded. So retarded, in fact, that I can barely form sentences (especially the pithy little kernels of wisdom plastered on your screen right now), let alone come up with some overall ridiculous idea to blog about.

Also, my iBook (circa 2005) finally gave out and blogging is much, much more difficult without a computer. Who knew!?

Anyway, since my brain is still reeling from this morning's "science," I can't write very many more words without it turning into some made up language in my mind, so allow me to illustrate just how exactly I'm feeling about technology right now through the image of none other than a sweatervest (natch) ffffound! via my friend BAD. It's genius and I need to own it.

Is there any feeling or emotion a sweatervest can't convey? (And, of course, that's rhetorical.)

p-a-r-t-y? 'cuz we got to!

Friday nights present perfect times to participate in several clichés, including letting one's hair down, kicking off one's heels, and of course, partying like a rock star. However, if you're in DC, Friday night allows you to do something slightly less debauched and a little more d-o-r-k-y. I'm typing about spelling!

Yay! Spelling! For those of you not as cool as me who didn't spend their Friday night watching two-plus hours of quality spelling on television, allow me to recap: A bunch of super-awkward junior-high kids traveled to DC to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. These spelling phenoms asked for definitions; they asked for word origins; they asked for alternate pronunciations; they asked for words to be used in sentences; they asked for definitions again; and, ultimately, they spelled and spelled and spelled some more.

Thirteen-year-old wunderkind Sameer Mishra outspelled everyone, finally winning in Round 16 to take home the pimp cup trophy.

• s-u-d-a-t-i-o-n
• d-e-m-i-t-a-s-s-e
• q-u-a-d-r-a-t
• d-i-e-n-e-r
• h-y-s-s-o-p
• m-a-c-é-d-o-i-n-e
• b-a-s-e-n-j-i
• n-u-m-n-a-h
• c-h-o-r-i-o-n
• n-a-c-a-r-a-t
• s-i-n-i-c-i-z-e
• h-y-p-h-a-e-r-e-s-i-s
• t-a-l-e-g-g-i-o
• e-s-c-l-a-n-d-r-e
• g-u-e-r-d-o-n
  

Yowza! I'm a moron! I knew the definition and the correct spelling of just two of Mishra's words -- demitasse and basenji (and the only reason I knew that one is because, next to the Siberian Husky, it just so happens that the Basenji is my favorite breed of dog).

But alas, despite my lack of spelling-bee knowledge, I will demonstrate that I am still just as big of a nerd as Mishra and the other spelling bee kids by using every single one of Mishra's winning words in a short story. And so without further ado, allow me to present to you the following:

A diener, a basenji and a Taleggio villager walk into a bar. The diener ordered a demitasse and complained of the basenji’s heavy sudation, which began after he tried to smoke a macédoine of hyssop that he found on the quadrat they came from.

“That shit tasted like chorion that had been trapped under my numnah for six onths,” the basenji said, forgetting to pronounce the “m” in the last word.

“Whoa. Don’t you mean months? Hyphaeresis much?” joked the diener. “Seriously, can’t we go anywhere without you causing such an esclandre?”

“You better watch it, or your guerdon will be a nacarat ass!” the basenji snapped back.

Having had enough of the antics of his companions, the Taleggio visitor stood up and walked toward the exit. “Ah, f*ck all y’all," he said waving his arms. "I’m gonna go sinicize some sh*t. Peace.”

I know. I'm a regular Tolstoy. Yet while my sh*t is tight (clearly) and Mishra's sh*t is tight (no doubt), no one's sh*t is tighter than last year's winner, Evan "Bitch, say my name!" O'Dorney. Can you spell smack down? O'Dorney can!

google time filler post heyyy!

I think it’s safe to say that after the wheel, fire, the written language, the bicycle, the airplane, the burrito, spandex-infused denim, face control, dice games, the Kir Royale, the La-Z-Boy chair, the sweatervest and the word “tight,” the single most important invention in the history of ever is the Google machine.

Google really is the nautical telescope of the 21st century. However, instead of allowing you to tell land from an off-shore casino or whatever else might be floating around in the great blue yonder (humpback whales?), Google allows you to find much more useful and enlightening items like Transformer shoes, bedside gun racks, "Ken Lee" and, of course, this little blog.

And while I’d love for you to believe it’s phrases like “best blog ever,” “Marissa f*cking rules” or “The Anti DC is a daily must-read and Marissa should totally get a writing job at The New Yorker” that are the most commonly Googled words lucky e-passersby use to reach this here Web log, unfortunately -- I’m sure to your great surprise -- they’re not.

Nope. The selection of Googled phrases that have led several fortunate souls to The Anti DC are much less flattering than that. But they’re also much more entertaining! For instance, in the past week alone, phrases containing the word “hooker” seemed to have increased tenfold. Yowza!

But hookers aside, there are several other bizarre, but lovely phrases that have led random Googlers to ma'blog including (and I've linked each search phrase to the post it led to):

• blaze orange sweatpants


• oh god damn this is my jam keep it rockin until the am


• signs someone is a narcissistic jackass


• 9 new circles of hell people


• my hairy back


• dibbs doll head


• when you will see hell


• homosexual unicorns (Heyyy!)


• bitch i'm from cleveland

However, the most retardulous of Googled phrases that landed some perv on this blog is -- brace yourselves -- barbeque douching.

I don't even want to know.

But regardless of the reason anyone finds him- or herself here, I want to extend my e-arms out in a warm e-hug and say, "You're welcome." And I love you. And nice ass. Yeah.

UPDATE: OK, now someone is toying with my tiny mind: "looking for a pair of skants." I do not, nay, I cannot believe someone is actually looking for a pair of skants. Touché, sir or madam, touché.

the long and shorts of it (*ba-dum-ching!*)

This weekend's heat and humidity have me thinking that it's time I shed my pants....again. I've already professed and documented my love for the summer dress, but I have yet to pontificate on my love of shorts, which I recently rediscovered and decided to incorporate into my everyday wardrobe.

Until I moved to Moscow in 2001, shorts were a staple in my warm-weather wardrobe. However, after living for a time in a city where the air literally turned your snot gray (um, sorry for the grotesque body fluid reference, but that statement is sickly true), I decided I'd rather keep my mid- and upper-thighs mostly covered. I mean, if the air is that dirty, I don't even want to know the strains of gnarly sh*t found on the public benches, the metro or the street, onto which I may have once tucked and rolled after jumping out of some random Russian's BMW as it slowed down to turn a corner at 4 a.m. in the dead of winter (um, but we'll save the more sordid details of that story for another time...).

Anyhoo, I got so used to not wearing shorts in Russia that even after returning stateside almost four years ago now (has it really been that long?!), I remained shorts-less. It just so happens also that 2004-2005 was the year during which I began my love affair with ultra-tight pants. And for those of you new to the nonsense that is this blog, my bond with tight pants is a tough one to break, even in the heat.

However, heat is one thing; energy-sucking humidity is quite another, meaning DC's hellish weather has really left me with no other choice. It's either short pants or no pants and since I decided long ago that if I ever get put in the clink I want it to be for something cool and sexy like an Ocean's 11-style casino heist and not something creepy and pervy like indecent exposure, short pants it shall be.

And so here we are -- my re-discovered style du jour, shorts. But since I'm born-again to the shorts game, I find that I need to ease my way back into it. Strangely, going from showing no leg to whole leg can be a hard transition to make, even for an attention hooker like myself. And so, I came up with this:

Unfortunately, you don't have to adjust your screen, my unsteady hand and lack of photog flashbulb skills really do yield that low quality of stuff lately.

Boots'n'shorts'n'sweatervests, oh my! It's got a bit of a "if Pocahontas was a stripper" style about it, n'est-ce pas? And while I love the idea of risque historical figures, that's not what I love most about this outfit. Nope, what I love most about this combo is the screwy proportions. Everything's just a little off-kilter -- the oatmeal-colored sweatervest (made by Jamison and bought at Shopbop.com on sale) is a little too long; the brown shorts (made by some brand called "Department of Peace" and bought at Off 5th in Leesburg for $12, marked down from $96!) are a little too short; and, the gray suede just-over-the-knee boots (made by Penny Loves Kenny and bought at Endless.com) are a little too high. In other words, I think all of this ensemble's not right-ness makes it all just right.

So not-right right is this combo, in fact, that I decided to display it in several different lights, er, pixel formulatons. (OK, and I also just serendipitously discovered Photobucket's ridiculously awesome fun photo effects, including the Andy Warhol effect that I posted above.)

Outfit amour-propre now in neon, fresco and old-time film!

And sh*t just gets tighter in heatmap, sketch and nightvision!

Yeah...get ready for The Anti DC 2.0, the even more annoying version! Oh, you're lucky it's a short week...ciao!

movies really are like real life...in europe

As some of you are aware, Eurovision, the premiere song contest of all the universe...or at least of all of Europe...and Russia...and Eurasia...took place this weekend. This sh*t is foreign to the max. And of course by "foreign," I mean "extremely awesome." It's like the Lord of Sh*tty music opened up the heavens and let his sh*tty music-infused bile cover an entire continent plus some. Then, after the heavenly sh*tty music storm, the special brand of sh*tty music seeds that only flourish in Europe and its immediate surroundings sprouted and became ripe with bad synthesizers, broken English and non-ironic This Is Spinal Tap-esque showmanship. It is all very, very epic -- Stonehenge epic. And to give you an idea of just how non-sarcastically I just used the word "epic," please take a look-see at a few selections from this year's contest.

Among 2008's finest entrants, which hailed from sea to shining barren tundra, was a Latvian group called Pirate's of the Sea. Please enjoy their appropriately named ditty, "Wolves of the Sea," which not only made it to the final round, but placed 11th overall out of 25 finalists.



Even more ridiculous (and yes, it is possible) was Azerbaijan's entry, a duo called "Elner & Samir," who sang screeched and grunted respectively a little song called "Day After Day." They placed 8th. I'm not kidding.



But most epic of all the entrants, of course, was Mr. Dima Bilan, the contestant from southern Russia who took home this year's top prize for his English-language masterpiece, "Believe."



Did you tear up? Were you crying like a baby? I was. I love that Dima Bilan, regardless of how heavily and ridiculously accented his English is. Not only is he objectively one of the hottest men in Russia, but that bitch cajoled the "White Comet" himself, Olympic gold-medalist Evgeny Plushenko, into flailing around like a graceful little spaz on a slice of ice about the size of my apartment! One word: TIGHT. Wait, no, two words: ULTRA TIGHT.

The bad news, however, is that now we have to wait an entire year to see these types of non-ironic retardulous performances again. Here's to hoping someone gets stuck in a giant pod. Or uses miniature props.



Oh wait, nevermind. Spain took care of the miniature props front. And Lord of Sh*tty Music only knows what the hell happened here, ahem, France. Although on second thought (which I do indeed have from time to time), I actually think I kind of loved that last one: "He'll be coming on in a golf cart!" And I will be damned if that French man did not come on in a golf cart. C'est épique! C'est très, très épique!

we're letting the annoying tourists win

I visited DC for the third time in my life in August 2004 with a friend of mine from Dagestan, Russia, a rugged little oblast' next to war-torn Chechnya. My friend, who came to be known as Salty due to his ornery yet endearing personality (and not due to anything unmentionable, sickos), had come here to take the cushy position of "Russian Language Assistant" at my alma mater in Grinnell, Iowa, a town of 10,000 that rests on a methy little section of Interstate-80 equidistant from Iowa City and Des Moines. But before jetting off to Iowa, where Salty would eventually ruin my reputation (not angry, not angry, not angry...), we decided to travel up the East Coast on an epic little road trip adventure (you know, before gas was $100 per gallon).

Our first stop was Virginia Beach, where I was temporarily living with my mom (ahem, and before you judge, I'll let you know that I had just gotten back from three years in hell Moscow and was readying myself to move to Boston the next month). Salty loved it. Compared to Dagestan, which is, um, kinda ridiculously gnarly (no offense, D-friends!), and compared to Moscow, which is, um, kinda ridiculously gnarly (albeit in a much different way than Dagestan, where my paleface friends and I actually had to fear being kidnapped by Wahhabists and held for ransom), southern Virginia was the cleanest, sunniest, safest, most heavenly place on Earth. It also helped that we frolicked around in the Atlantic Ocean, rather than the Caspian Sea where all things go to die.

Our next stop was DC. We spent the day walking around downtown before grabbing a meal of food and a couple of libations at some place in Dupont, where my friend revealed his true feelings about the Capital of the Free World. "I don't like it here," I distinctly remember him, the guy from the Kidnap Capital of the Unfree World, telling me. "Everyone's labeled with their nametags and they all dress the same and they all seem really unfriendly." We were going to spend the night there, but after a full day of government, douches and tools (oh my!), we left. We ended up in Philadelphia and then New York for the rest of the week, where my friend got a much better impression of this quaint little nation of ours.

As I look back at the past year I've spent in DC, Salty's first impressions of this city as a total outsider (both figuratively and literally speaking) continue to haunt me. It's impossible to walk down the street on a weekday and not see at least a dozen people in the course of a few minutes with their names and titles on display. (Why people can't simply wait until they get to their offices to don their nametags, I will never understand.) There are a few more dozen wearing DC's fashion pièce de résistance, the unavoidable pleated khaki, and even a few dozen more who can't walk a block without checking their Blackberrys (I admit, I've even been guilty of that last one a couple of times, but unlike most DCers, I am ashamed...). To put it bluntly, the District is hard to crack as an individual visitor.

Perhaps because of that, as well as the overall closed nature of this city, tourists travel in such large, obnoxious packs with their matching T-shirts and umbrella-wielding guides. Perhaps it is our fault that these schools of oblivious out-of-towners stand on the left side of the escalators or take 15 minutes to buy a Metro card at the one machine that can be used to fill your SmartTrip card. Perhaps it is us and our rabid self-absorbtion that allows these gaggles of hapless assholes to walk five-across, arms-linked on the sidewalk when you're running 10 minutes late to an appointment. Perhaps it is because of us that these ginormous groups of tourists take over our city in the summer. Perhaps there's no other way to visit this city.

The good news is that, while there is no proverbial silver bullet quick fix available, the problem of annoying groups of tourists can be ameliorated if we, DC's less douchey residents, take a moment to stop being so mean to those few visitors who come here solo. To be clear, I'm not advocating not being rude to the large groups of tourists that objectively need to be admonished for their collective stupidity -- hell, punch them all in their faces if necessary. (And, yes, like no panties with jeans,* it's so necessary.) No, what I'm talking about is being nicer to those few individual visitors, even the hippies, who might have stumbled upon our fair city by whim or chance.

If you see a guy holding a map and staring up and down the street, go up to him and help. Tell him you've got his back like the Jansport he's undoubtedly carrying. Even whip out the Blackberry and Google-map something for him if you want to give him a true DC experience. But whatever you do, don't scoff, roll your eyes or otherwise grumble at him for being lost, even if he is wearing a hemp necklace. He was nice enough to travel without 100 of his closest friends, so the least we can do is thank him for that by treating him like a real person. Let's start giving these individual practioners of wanderlust some good memories, instead of bad, and for the love of Charles L'Enfant, can we please stop letting the annoying tourists win. Especially on Memorial Day.

*Get your minds out of the gutters, e-friends, it's just a link to Jay-Z!

**Also, the photo posted above is of a sculpture (!) by an artist named Duane Hanson. Apparently, he specializes in "making startlingly lifelike sculptures of middle America accomplished through a complex process of casting from live models, recreated in bronze or fiberglass resin," according to a write-up by the Saatchi Gallery.

peanut butter jelly time

There is some bizarre sh*t going down on the streets of DC. Although if you think about it, that's not really anything new. I mean, last fall was the season of the wayward Band-Aids (gnarly, I know), which I thought for sure would be the strangest collection of street debris I'd see. However, today on my walk home from the office I noticed something else, something even more inexplicable -- a string of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I was literally following a bread-crumb trail home, as I walked over, around and, unfortunately in one case, on five PB&J on white bread sandwiches. I spotted the first one on Connecticut Ave. toward Van Ness, the second on Connecticut near Cleveland Park, two more on Klingle passing over Rock Creek Park and at last (at least that I saw) one on Park Road heading into Mt. Pleasant.

While squished sandwiches are definitely a step up from used bandages (yeah, it never stops being gnarly), it strikes me as slightly more strange. I mean, who would discard so many simple yet tasty sandwiches? Certainly, this couldn't have been an accident. No one is that careless to drop not one, but five scrumptious sandwiches. So, what is it? What kind of beast would just throw five sandwiches out on the street like...like, well, Band-Aids?!

Terrorists. They hate freedom and delicious sandwiches. Really, it's the only logical conclusion.

Yeah, I got nothin'! Have a lovely weekend, e-friends. I'm going to make a sandwich.

omfg. i'm old.

I've never really been scared to check my mail before. The Unabomber? Psshah. Anthrax? I could take it. But this?

AARP -- American Association of Retired Persons!

DC seriously hates me. (I'm only 28! I'm not retired!) Sure, it's true that I am getting my first permanent wrinkles around the eyes, but it's nothing a few quick injections of Botox can't fix! (I'm not ready for this! I don't like getting up when it's still dark! I don't even really like breakfast!) OK, I get it. I'm a bit of a curmudgeon already. And yes, I'll concede that I do sometimes have the fashion aesthetics of a Golden Girl. (But Blanche's sh*t was tight! They were young at heart!) And arguably, while I may be old (as hell) at heart, unlike that saucy bitch Sofia, I'm for all intents and purposes still physically young! (I swear!)

Ahh...but maybe aging isn't so bad. I mean, there's the early bird specials and discounted movie tickets. Also, it's pretty awesome that when you pass a certain age suddenly all of your offensive, off-color remarks become endearing or "full of wisdom." You can start mooching off your kids in retaliation. You can also start stealing silverware from restaurants (hi grandma!). Hmmm...maybe getting old isn't so bad after all, despite what all of American pop culture tells me. In fact, you know what? After several seconds of deep thought, I've decided that I'll take it. If I can start wearing a diaper and pee whenever I want, wherever I am, then all I have to say is, let's f*cking do this! Let's get old together DC!


But wait. What the hell is that? Who's Ms. LH Claude? Goddamnsonofabitch! Just when I began to get used to the idea of acting 85 at the age of 28, just when I decided to accept my fate, I learn that this sweet, informative AARP newsletter isn't even addressed to me. It's for Ms. Claude. Sweet, little, sassy Ms. Claude. Maybe we can hit up the Denny's sometime soon? God, I hope she's in the demographic that reads this blog.