Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Wittiest Should Win.





(American Apparel. Duh.)

The Door Screams I Hate You, Hate You Hanging Around My Blue Jeans



...the one and only William Parry. Too freaking cute.






Yes:
Cold cans of soda from pretzal carts.
Air drying my hair.
Eating at Founding Farmers. Yum.
Virginia.
Filene Center at the Wolf Trap.
J.Crew catalog themed after my favorite book.
Trader Joe's: esp. banana chips and fresh salsa


No:
Home hunting with no credit history or viable income. And other people's carpet stains.






I have no idea how this happens
All my maps have been overthrown
Happenstance has changed my plans
So many times my heart has been outgrown
- Wilco, You Are My Face







Sorry To Bore You, But I'm Gonna Talk About Health Care Now.


Why we need it, in a nutshell:




1. My aunt is a psychiatric researcher at the University of San Diego. A lot of her patients are schizophrenic. A lot of her patients can't work, because they are schizophrenic. Thus, they don't have the money for treatment. They don't have treatment, they do crazy things like...shoot people.


2. To supplement the cost of caring for patients without health care coverage, hospitals routinely charge patients with health care for expensive tests they don't really need.


3. The public option is pivotal.
This is the only way insurance companies would feel enough competitive heat to drive down their prices. And this reform should be all about competition.
I also think it would force innovation. Always a good thing.

4. By denying the poor and minority groups access to health care, our country reinforces inescapable and tired socioeconomic stratas and racism.


...It's obvious something about our health care system has to change.

If there is legitimate conservative input, I can respect that.
But so far there's no focus on solutions. Only ruining the high everyone is still on from Obama's election:

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

- Jim DeMint, Republican Senator from South Carolina






Go read Paul Krugman.

And watch Jon Stewart. Who, though I'm not supposed to think this, is the journalist right now.



Saturday, July 25, 2009

July 25, 2009





Congratulations!
Phil + Taryn, deserve all the happiness in the world.


Thursday, July 23, 2009

Nationals Baseball Game.





...just another thing to love here.


Sunday, July 12, 2009

Andrew Wyeth/Edward Hopper Moments.



Summer in the City.



So my roommate Hanna and I ventured out to the farmer's market in Eastern Market on Saturday morning and it was just about the best thing ever: sunflower bouquets, piles of peaches, sliced cucumber, homemade salsa, hommus, blueberry pancakes, melon, fresh squeezed lemonade, cheese, chocolate banana nut bread, huge blackberries...
Hanna took amazing pictures to document the trip, so soon I hope I can go into more detail about why I've decided to buy only from farmer's markets from now on.
...I'm loving this city more and more.

Also this weekend:

Dive bars.

National Museum of the American Indian.
Maybe it's growing up in Oklahoma with the curriculum of the Oklahoma school system, but I've always been completely and utterly disinterested in Native American history. Like, bore me to death bad.
But this museum was incredible: the architecture is stunning, the value system hits home, there was an exhibit on reservation skateboarding (which pulled on my love for California skateboard culture, Lords of Dogtown and the Z-Boys) and the cafeteria is insanely good, featuring amazing, unique food from all the different tribal regions.

National Portrait Gallery.

National Gallery of Art.

Smithsonian American Art Museum.

(...Okay, so I like art).

King Street.
In Virginia. We walked down to the water and had the best ice cream ever.






Wait, Robert McNamara died!? Watch The Fog of War. Seriously haunting stuff.

My parents are back from Greece. Jealous.
Meg is taking art classes at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, CO for a month. Just a little background as to why Meg is amazing: we were lucky enough to grow up in Snowmass and we'd always take hikes over to beautiful Anderson Ranch and "oooh and aaah" about how cool it would be to go there someday. And then she goes and wins a fellowship there.
But most impressive: Casey survived a week on her own with our grandparents!

Jay-Z's Death of Autotune is exactly why I never tamper with the ring on my cellphone.
And Common's What a World is for BAMF moments walking down city streets.

I finally finished John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.

"Claude is dumb. Okay. I'll grant you that. Claude is all the time worrying me about them communiss. Okay. Maybe he don't know nothing about politics. But I ain't worried about politics. I'm worried about dying halfway decent. Claude can be kind to a person, and that's more than you can do with all your politics and all your graduating smart. For everything nice I ever done for you, I just get kicked around. I want to be treated nice by somebody before I die. You learnt everything, Ignatius, except how to be a human being."

Probably the best, most creative capacity for writing and wordplay I've ever experienced.
But while every write-up praises its comedy, I found it really depressing and therefore hard to get through. But I always found Don Quixote to be extremely depressing too, so I guess it's fitting.
Though the end was totally worth it.

I get to work with this girl. Cool beyond belief.
She posted the lyrics to Animal Collective's Summertime Clothes and right now, I feel like nothing could describe my life more perfectly: that East Coast lack of summer air conditioning forces you to fall into restless sleep on top of your sheets when you've got so much on your mind.



and i want to walk around with you
it doesn't really matter i'll go where you feel
hunt for the breeze, get a midnight meal