Official Retirement and New Blog

Hey all! My "Late Independence Day Announcement" has finally come to fruition. I have moved into a new blog, Two Cents Richer. As such, I have officially written my last d.c. diary. Thanks to all of you who have followed the d.c. diaries over the years, both in its e-mail and Blogspot forms. I encourage you to subscribe to my new blog, and stay classy, readers.

Annie and Troy's High School Reunion

"'Cause I'm a million different people from one day to the next..."
- Bittersweet Symphony, The Verve

As I ambled through the skywalk at John Ascuaga's Nugget in my hometown of Sparks, Nevada, my mind wandered to television. My brain does this frequently, considering how often I have turned to the boob tube for comfort in my recessed state. This time, I reflected on two of my closest fictional friends, Annie Edison and Troy Barnes.

Annie and Troy are students at Greendale Community College on my new favorite primetime sitcom, Community on NBC. Troy is, in his own words, "a quarterback and a prom king". Troy is dense. Troy is dumb. Troy is also intensely nostalgic. Troy has arrived on campus at Greendale banking on riding his past glories into the future. In the pilot episode, he takes a heap of abuse for wearing his Riverside High letterman jacket throughout the first week of his post-secondary life.

Annie is an unpopular obsessive-compulsive former honors student who dropped out of high school after a brief addiction to prescription stimulants, earning her the nickname "Little Annie Adderall". Annie is neurotic. Annie is insecure. Annie is also a classic late bloomer. When her hair is not pulled back "like a librarian", she is delectably attractive - but she doesn't know it. Annie has arrived on campus at Greendale hoping to outrun her dispiriting past, to leave her high school haunts behind her and establish a new identity for herself at the most ridiculous community college in America.

Walking through the doors at my ten-year high school reunion last month, locking eyes with people I literally haven't seen in a decade, it slowly dawned on me. We are all Annie. We are all Troy.

The high school reunion is a truly peculiar American experience; then again, high school is really a peculiarly American institution. We may be the only culture on Earth that so worships youth and vitality at the expense of age and wisdom that we harbor the dormant belief that the years between 14 and 18 represent the pinnacle. The apex. If you were Troy, you spend the rest of your life trying to relive it. If Annie, to reinvent it.

Like most people, I suspect, my high school experience fell somewhere in between. I have fond memories of my life between 1996 and 2000. I had plenty of friends, no real enemies, and while I was certainly no quarterback, I did stake a Glee-like presence under the proscenium arch of the Reed High Little Theater. And I was a junior prom king runner-up (my date and queen candidate still refers to us as the "Prom Losers"); likable enough to receive the Benevolent Geek Party nomination, but sans the widespread popular appeal necessary to win the general election.

Still, somewhere within an unconquered insecure zone in my brain, part of me had been preparing for my ten-year reunion since I walked across the stage at Lawlor Events Center in June 2000. Since the invention of the American general public high school in the early 20th century, there has arisen a bizarre social hierarchy in which the quarterbacks and prom kings are virtual royalty. Other shapes, sizes, and personality types need not apply. Though I've always been perfectly comfortable in my own skin as a geeky, slightly quirky intellectual with an outlandish sense of humor and personal appeal, the shadows of unspoken expectations still loomed. Regardless of what we accomplish in our lives, however many degrees we may obtain, trophy spouses we marry, Audis we drive or diseases we cure, we subconsciously bow down to the archetypal royalty permanently crowned by the 12th grade.

Jeff Winger, defrocked attorney and chief protagonist on Community, explained it best:

"You think astronauts go to the moon because they hate oxygen? No. They're trying to impress their high school's prom king."

Having crossed the reunion threshold, let me tell you something, Sandy Frink. Drop the baggage. Nobody cares.

Which was exactly the attitude I adopted as I mingled with people I literally hadn't seen since the poker table at Safe 'n Sober Grad Night. By Saturday, July 24, 2010, I had thankfully stopped concerning myself with how fit or wealthy or accomplished I would be when I followed John Mayer in busting down the double doors. I decided to let my inner Troy and Annie out of their cages, and just be Scott.

And I had a blast.

I had a blast because I finally realized that I had been subconsciously (and narcissistically) viewing my friends, themselves real people with real issues and real insecurities, as cosmic audience members in the Shakespearean theater of my life. We all have our own lives to attend to, and I discovered that some people remained the same, some people backslide, while the majority of my friends had made significant strides in the intervening decade between the diploma and the dance floor. And by turning my attention to who they were and what was going on in their lives, I feel that they paid more attention to what was going on in mine.

So we downed some overpriced Heineken, grazed the buffet for wings, baklava, and empanadas, reminisced about forgotten fun, introduced significant others, and opened our emotional yearbooks for one another to sign. And we took a sobering shot of Jack Daniel's for a fallen friend named Kenny, who was taken from us in 1998 before we ever closed our lockers in yellow hall for the last time.

By the time I finally crawled through the back door of my dad's house in the early morning hours, I realized something significant. I can't for the life of me remember who the prom king actually was.

Late Independence Day Announcement

Albeit four days late and 5.5 trillion Chinese yuan short, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all 35 readers of the d.c. diaries an ironic Happy Independence Day. Our holiday here at the d.c. diaries was a smashing success...we didn't have any nervous breakdowns, no drunken arrests, and only a broken flip flop tubing in the Delaware River. When I say "we", of course, I mean the royal "we". I am the only staff member of this enterprise.

I'd also like to make an announcement...of sorts. Within the next few months, the d.c. diaries will give way to an as-of-yet-unnamed successor blog, and will be retired into the archives of the Internet. Sad as it may be to think of the d.c. diaries floating around an endless series of tubes with the rotting carcasses of the likes of the Go network and Prodigy, this is not so much the end as it is the beginning of something new. Something big. Something mega. Something copious, capacious, cajunga.

I am declaring my own independence. I am going viral. I will conquer the Internet.

I have many reasons for doing this. The first is that it doesn't make any sense for me to host a blog titled the d.c. diaries if I don't actually live in D.C. I'm not ruling out a move back to Washington in the near- or long-term, but why chain myself creatively to one city?

Which brings me to my next reason: as I have grown and broadened my horizons, my blog has also grown and broadened its horizons. the d.c. diaries began humbly five years ago as a mass e-mail to friends and family back home in Nevada as I spent my first summer as an obscure Washington intern. Back then, it was really about D.C. and my wide-eyed experiences in a new land filled with people who don't say "dude" nearly as much as I do, and tend to bristle when I do say it. Today, it's about more. It's about perspectives from one American life on the entirety of that thing we call "American life". It's part political, part social, part economic, part satire, and other parts I haven't discovered yet. And I believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

This new blog, this mythic beast that looms on the horizon of the Atlantic seaboard, will hopefully serve as a springboard to other opportunities to cultivate my other vocational passion - writing. They say that the law is a jealous mistress. Well, so is the pen. I have two hands. I can hold a gavel in one and a stylus in the other.

I will continue to post content to this blog in the interim until I have established my new master plan to mesmerize the planet. Who knows? Maybe this newer, bigger, badder, bolder venture will result in a sparsely-attended book signing at Politics & Prose or one of those small-town boutique bookshops owned by a deranged aging hippie (the ones that have more boxes of tarot cards than anything else). Until then, keep your eyes peeled, and, for the long-term readers of the d.c. diaries (Mom, Dad, my old slow-pitch softball team, and the random loons who found me through Google), thank you for your support.

- The Management

The Boycott Problem

The needle is angled a little too far to the left for my liking. On the spectrum between "E" and "F", I need a little more "F" and a lot less "E". I can feel the "E" in the accelerator, shifting my way out of the parking lot of the SEPTA station.

Ca-thunk-a-thunk! Ca-thunk-a-thunk! Ca-thunk-a-thunk!

I really should have filled up the tank before the Focus turned into a Flintstones car. That would require forethought, which I often lack. Instead, I swear to God my car is actually borrowing from the physical force I exert on the gas pedal to make it the last 50 yards down Bellevue Avenue to the nearest gas station, the only set of pumps within striking distance of my God-forsaken lemon.

The sign at the station promises sunlight and hope, an oasis of green and gold. BP. British Petroleum. My salvation, an ever-present help in my time of need.

Go ahead. Shoot me.

The nozzle spews 87 unleaded into the tank. Anxiety eases; my streak of twenty consecutive months without a special gas can delivery from roadside assistance continues unabated. But as my anxiety fades, my conscience emerges as a substitute mental bother. Id has given way to superego. Images of bubbling black crude overwhelming the Gulf of Mexico, taking lives and livelihoods, stream into my field of vision. I have cast my dollar vote in favor of the destruction of a small swath of the planet. A conscientious American would have coasted on fumes until the car literally had a cardiac arrest on the I-95 onramp...

...or would they?

In the immediate aftermath of the only oil spill in history to spawn its own academic subject, hesitance to pull into a BP station is understandable and, at least in the abstract, commendable. Who wouldn't want to stick it to Tony Hayward, that evil yachting captain of industry whose company's negligence may single-handedly devastate an ecosystem into perpetuity?

Well, you're not sticking it to Tony. You're sticking it to Ed.

Ed is a daytime cashier at the BP station on Lincoln Highway and Bellevue in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, one of over 13,000 independently-owned BP gas stations worldwide. Contrary to what you may have heard, BP doesn't actually own the vast majority of the establishments that bear its logo. Instead, like virtually every other major oil company, it enters into futures contracts with local franchises to deliver gasoline, contracts that are not exactly easy for the franchisees to get out of. So by the time you have opted to bypass BP in favor of more "righteous" companies like Shell or Citgo, Mr. Hayward and the the shareholders of BP have already lined the interiors of their wallets and the cabins of their flotillas.

When I pulled into Ed's station just after noon today, my car was one of four in the parking lot. The owners of a Chevy Tahoe, Infiniti G20, and Pontiac Grand Am were the only other patrons. I meandered into the store to grab a Gatorade to quench my perishing thirst. Ed, an Asian man in his 20s, didn't look too excited behind the double-plated glass that separated us as he rang up my purchase. After he dispensed my change, I decided to raise the issue.

"How's business been?"

Ed doesn't seem to understand my query. "Excuse me?"

I'm delicate, but direct. "Over the last two months, how has business been for you guys?"

Ed wavers. "Ehh...it's been....yeah, it's been fine...it's been alright."

The four cars in the lot during a non-peak hour indicate that he may be right, but I press anyway.

"The oil spill hasn't hurt you?"

In an instant, Ed's eyes indicated that he knew what I was getting at.

"Oh," he said. "Dude, it sucks. Totally sucks. I see way more cars drive by without pulling in."

I give him my sympathies, and inform him that I'm asking for the purposes of writing about the BP spill and the subsequent public backlash. He tells me "good luck", and I walk out the store and drive off. All the other cars have left, and none have taken their place.

But it bears repeating that BP isn't the one hurt by the burgeoning BP boycott. With a few notable exceptions, most modern boycotts generally don't work, primarily because they either target the wrong "evildoer" (i.e., Ed and the managers/employees of independent BP stations) or they aren't broad enough in scope to generate the economic leverage to get the bad guy to comply. Your individual boycott isn't going to amount to much if others are more than willing to suckle at the teet of your nemesis.

Example: as a senior in high school, I courageously participated in the 2000 American Gas Out in an effort to bring gas prices back down from the earth-shattering $1.50/gallon heights to which they climbed. From April 7th through 9th, I didn't buy gasoline. I sure felt proud of myself when I, like every other brave soldier who entered that conflict with me, celebrated my efforts by filling my near-empty tank to the brim on April 10th. We sure showed them!

As of this writing, the primary "Boycott BP" Facebook page has 704,930 fans and counting. If only those three-quarters of a million people had a chance to talk to Ed.

Plenty O' Fish in the City

A friend of mine from law school, now working as an attorney in Manhattan, has asked me to share her own blog about the trials and tribulations of dating in NYC. Think Sex and the City, minus the odious blonde.

the d.c. diaries heartily recommends Plenty O' Fish in the City.

The Partial Spectator

I couldn't help but note the irony as I took in the fresh-cut green grass of Lincoln Financial Field in South Philly. My first visit to one of the crown jewels of the National Football League, the home of the Philadelphia Eagles, in the birthplace of American liberty. And I was watching...soccer.

It was my first taste of live "football", as the unenlightened call it. For a sports nationalist like myself, this was a huge step, and it came with a hearty dose of quasi-historical guilt. Almost two hundred thirty-four years ago, the Founders risked their lives so we didn't have to play the games of our imperial cousins across the pond. Thanks to their bravery, we can play our own...baseball, basketball, real football, and the UFC. These are the pastimes of patriots. Our ADD-addled brains just can't handle the slow, plodding nature of the world's absurdly most popular game.

This tension opened a paradox in the sports-time continuum on Saturday afternoon as Team USA took on the Turkish national team. The patriot within was compelled to root for the Americans, but having a rooting interest in a soccer match is one of the most fundamentally un-American things one can do. It's kinda like when your son enters a drag queen beauty pageant. You find the contest offensive, yet deep down you'd be sorely disappointed if he didn't emerge victorious.

So there I was, screaming with 55,000 others at Landon Donovan as he dribbled through Turkish defenders in his sequin dress and pumps. I had support. Leave it to Philadelphia, of course, to supply obnoxious soccer fans. Turkey actually had a respectable contingent, as the second- and third-largest cities in Turkey (New York and Washington) are within driving distance. They were incredibly nice people, and their women are strikingly beautiful...with apparent staying power. As they chanted "Turk-i-ye! Turk-i-ye!", clad in red, I heard the following retorts that chilled the patriot within:

"Slaughter the Turks!" (unlike the Dallas Cowboys, the "Turks" are an ethnic group, and slaughtering them is genocide)

"Go back to Europe!" (the land now occupied by Turkey was once known as Asia Minor, thus, technically, Turkey is not really in Europe)

"Good luck in the World Cup! Wait! You're not in it!" (neither would we be if we were competing with Germany, England, and Italy as opposed to El Salvador and Haiti)

...and my favorite...

"Let's go Flyers!"

The last line was delivered by a beer-soaked fat man as he staggered down the stairs. I reminded him that there was no ice on the field and no one was skating, and he promptly stopped talking, to everyone's laughter and delight. I do what I can.

All of which is to suggest that the sports patriotism to which I alluded earlier has its limits. It also suggests that American fans...or, Americans, generally...could use a lesson in cultural sensitivity. We are all partial spectators. We are partial to our towns, our teams, and our traditions. That doesn't provide an excuse, however, to provincially apply the sports manners we accrued during all those years at Veterans Stadium and apply them to an international friendly.

I may love America, and I may not have any passionate love for soccer, but I do know enough to know that you don't really need to "slaughter the Turks." A 2-1 victory for Team America is enough.

Socialist Anxiety Disorder

The other day, I plugged my earphones into my laptop at my co-working office in Center City Philadelphia and indulged myself in the rants of a madman. A priest and prophet in a time of fiscal meltdowns at home and the ominous threats of dictatorships abroad, the man heaped blame on a wide range of bogeymen for casting their curses on an America in decline. One bogeyman outshone the rest as the ultimate source of domestic evil.

It's that damned Socialism.

You'd probably be surprised to know that the madman to whom I refer is neither Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, nor the ultimate pariah of the airwaves, Michael Savage; neither did these rants arise in the aftermath of 11/4. The madman was the populist Father Charles Coughlin, and the year was 1937.

It's a banality, I know, to suggest that history does repeat itself. Then again, I've watched an awful lot of Lost over the course of the last year, and as a result I'm convinced that time really is more circle than line. Once upon a time, large swaths of Depression-afflicted Americans suspicious of FDR's New Deal imbibed Coughlin broadsides with titles like "Somebody Must Be Blamed", and the nation neither slipped into "socialism" nor civil war. I have to remind myself of this every time I stroll down the road and spot an otherwise well-intentioned patriot clutching a copy of Glenn Beck's irony-inspiring Arguing with Idiots.

Or, more appropriate to 2010, when I read some of the status updates of my conservative friends on Facebook, the agora of our time. They often raise legitimate concerns over the lack of fiscal discipline or accountability in Washington. Unfortunately, I find a good number of their arguments to be simplistic, reductionist, and alarmist. Forget a real discussion over how government can effectively be utilized to curb excessive risk taking on Wall Street or to contain the swelling costs of health care. Far too often, they speak in shorthand, with "socialist" or "socialism" the blunt weapon of choice.

"Obama is turning this country into a socialist dictatorship!"

"The health care reform bill is socialism, pure and simple!"

Aside from the decibel level, there are two real problems with the over-misuse of the word "socialism" in any debate over the policies of our 44th President. The first is that Obama is not a socialist. Ask any actual socialist. Fiscal policy is not a binary choice between unfettered market libertarianism on the one hand and centralized state ownership of your cats on the other. In between lies a vast middle area that recognizes property ownership and entrepreneurship as the foundation of a free and efficient economy, but also understands that free economies can only exist with a reasonable exercise of government oversight of and, dare I say it, participation in the economy.

Imagine an America with no free public education system, in which the intellectual development of the next generation of workers were left to the whims of the "free market". Public education is, at a theoretical level, antithetical to the abstract idea of the market; yet it is wholly irrational to call it "socialist", unless you believe that Thomas Jefferson was America's first socialist. Or imagine an America in which investment banks trade risky securities in the shadows, away from government oversi....sorry, I know. That one hits a little too close to home.

The second problem with the conservative overplay of the S-card is more basic, and it can be resolved by opening the dictionary. The primary definition, according to my Apple dashboard app:

"a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."

In other words, the primary producer, distributor, and seller of goods is the government. That is the dictionary definition of socialism. Over the past century, the cultural definition has become more fluid, but that only augments my point. To peg Barack Obama as a socialist is akin to crowning him the Queen of England - it is a title with no real meaning, save for creating the false impression that the Obama Administration wants to trade your guns for a sickle and hammer.

So I pose this challenge to my conservative friends - and I do indeed call you friends. If you agree to stop dropping the S-bomb, I'll agree to let you all in on the little known secret that Adam Smith decried the concentration of wealth and that the New Deal did not impose socialism, but actually saved capitalism from it.

Elba, Pennsylvania

It turns out Ol' Dutch was right. The economy does trickle down after all. We have all become recipients of the trickling. You see, some years ago, a brilliant group of investment bankers and financiers in Lower Manhattan invented a series of complex equations designed to capitalize on risky lending. Subsequently, some Math happened. As we have all learned, Math has consequences. For me, the consequence of Math was the inability to find gainful employment, resulting in a one-way ticket to the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I am 28 years old.

I am a lawyer.

I now live with Mom.

Thus begins my temporary (indefinite?) exile from my transplanted home in Washington, D.C., the city I have grown to both passionately love and despise. I'm a politico. The bulk of my friends are in D.C. I can't practice law anywhere but in Maryland. Not living in D.C. is difficult for a guy whose blog is titled "The D.C. Diaries". Difficulty aside, mindful self-reflection is often thought to be the best medicine for what ails us. The enlightened response to my exile would be to settle into serenity and allow the currents of life to carry me in whatever direction they please. I could lose myself in the moment, sacrifice my worries on the altar of the Universe...

...or...

...I could harness the piss and vinegar percolating in the depths of my soul and figure out a way to break loose from my captivity.

I could be just like Napoleon.

Napoleon Bonaparte is a fascinating character study. L'empereur is also an appropriate model for me to emulate over the coming weeks and months. Napoleon, hereinafter referred to as "Nap", is perhaps the most beloved (or least reviled) malevolent dictator since Alexander the Great. The reasons for this are complicated and wreak of moral duplicity. I suspect that his relatively sympathetic portrayal in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure may have something to do with it. You can't very well take Hitler to a water park, can you?

Nap's crimes against humanity notwithstanding, the man's resolve is admirable. He had seven siblings. He spoke with a thick Corsican accent that earned him the ridicule of his French classmates. He was probably dyslexic and autopsies suggest he stood no taller than 5'2". Nonetheless, he quickly rose through the ranks of Robespierre's military and, despite turmoil and arrest, came to declare himself the Emperor of France and conquered large swaths of Europe. He was the cock of the walk, a young nobody who reached the pinnacle.

Then, there was mutiny. Forced to sign the Treaty of Fontainebleau after devastating wartime losses, Nap was exiled to Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean. As a consolation prize, however, Nap somehow retained the title of Emperor. This was no mere ceremonial title. The dude actually governed Elba, issuing regulations, developing mining and agriculture, and building a small army and navy. Though technically in exile, he didn't act it. He kept his eye on the French throne he once abdicated, and eventually returned to re-claim it.

In this respect (and this respect only), Nap is my inspiration, my muse. I am neither short nor dyslexic but, like Nap, I overcame numerous obstacles to claim my "throne" in Washington. Having been momentarily deposed, I must do as he did and spin the Math back in my favor. Nap never really learned to spell, but his teachers pegged him early on as a math whiz. In this sense, Nap was calculating. When the time was right, he escaped from exile and took back what was (completely not) rightfully his. While waiting to retake France, though, he settled for dominion over Elba.

So I begin working out my own Math to counter the Math that put me here, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on the outskirts of Philadelphia. While I lie in wait to escape and conquer, I can at the very least play fort and rule the City of Brotherly Love with an iron fist and an aluminum laptop. Nothing to fear, readers. I will return. In the meanwhile, you all can join me as together we build our very own Napoleonic Complex.

The W.O.N.G. Way

"Just because you can" doesn't mean that you should.

That's the mantra I want seared into your consciences. There are many things that are allowable but nevertheless should not be done for the sake of others, or for personal pride. Like consuming the equivalent of four square meals at an All-You-Can-Eat buffet, or failing to bathe before boarding a commercial airliner. There is one practice, however, that is so vile and disgusting so as to become the target of my ultimate contempt. I am speaking, of course, of aging, out-of-shape men who insist on embracing full frontal-and-behindal nudity in the men's locker room at public gyms.

This, my friend, is the W.O.N.G. Way. Wrinkly. Old. Naked. Guy.

I will not go into full detail, primarily out of a sense of propriety. But let me draw a rough...um..."picture" for those who remain blissfully in the dark. The men's locker room is many things. It is a storage facility. It is a restroom. It is a sweat lodge. And it is a changing area. Now, in the course of changing into your sweat-stained Georgetown Table Tennis shirt, navy blue socks, and snow white New Balance sneaker, there is an inevitable moment in time in which you will be temporarily in the raw. This incidental nudity is a necessary evil, and acceptable in the course of one's transformation from government analyst to graceful athlete. I am not a Never-Nude. However, such nakedness must be never be prolonged beyond a period of reasonable necessity. The men's locker room is many things, but it is not the Garden of Eden.

Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of fitness enthusiasts, including those at my branch of Washington Sports Club, display a hazardous, reckless disregard for these basic rules of social etiquette. For some inexplicable reason, they treat the locker room as a fat-friendly nudist colony, where nakedness is not merely a physical state, but a state of mind. They will lounge around in the buck, rubbing their butt-sweat all over the benches. They are also often guilty of "traveling", by literally picking up their pivot foot and milling about the place, engaging in otherwise routine activities like shaving, weighing themselves, or using the blowdryer, all with their manhood on full display. Some of them even engage in full-blown naked conversations:

MAN BOOBS: "Evening, Sam."

FRECKLED BACKSWEAT: "Jim, how are ya; how's Diane?"

MAN BOOBS: "Fine. Fine. Your kids in college now, right?"

FRECKLED BACKSWEAT: "Nah, not yet, but Steven's looking at a lacrosse scholarship...Hey, it's Randy!"

JUNGLE PELVIS: "Hey guys, is this locker room getting colder?"

This sort of perverse interaction occurs with alarming regularity. The rest of us are forced to endure it because, technically, there are no gym rules against it. We also cannot ask them to politely put some damn clothes on, because to do so would require us to come into close contact with their glistening man flesh. There is also the remote prospect that they may gang up on us on a fit of rage, which would exacerbate the atmosphere of tension further.

I am curious, however, to know at which point these late bloomers shed the ordinary sense of Puritan shame that average people carry concerning their own bodies. Perhaps they are too influenced by Greco-Roman culture; or maybe they are simply releasing decades of corked sexual frustration stemming from traumatic gym class experiences in junior high. Never mind. I'm not that curious. I just don't want to know.

Now excuse me while I change into my jean shorts for the shower.

Paperboy

And now for something completely different...

...yesterday, I warmed the cockles of reader's hearts with my own tale of snowbound horror from the Chevy Chase Pavilion on the D.C./Maryland border. Today, I would like to introduce my first "guest writer" reporting from a different perspective from the same location. His name is Aaron Brooks, a 5th-grader from Bethesda, Maryland. His family is cooped up at the Embassy Suites, presumably due to a power outage in their home.

This morning, I made a second consecutive trip to the Cafe Cino for the Embassy Suites breakfast buffet, the only place open for several blocks. While I contemplated retrieving a copy of today's New York Times from Starbucks a couple of floors beneath us, I received a surprise delivery from Mr. Brooks. It appears that Mr. Brooks had channeled his restless energies in a productive manner. Hence, the first issue of The Suite Times, a three-article accounting of the goings-on in Friendship Heights in the midst of the "Snowpocalypse."

I'd like to share this 11-year-old wunderkind's review of Clyde's Restaurant, as I can preemptively claim that I briefly knew this young man years before his first byline in Newsweek:

Clydes is primarily a dinner restaurant near the Embassy Suites Hotel in Chevy Chase. It is the talk of the town with its 2000 to 2300 customers on an average weekend night. The atmosphere is incredible, with old fashion cars, antique toy planes, beautiful paintings of ships, and detailed murals. It also has an electric train running around the room at ceiling level. It wasn't running last night when my family had dinner there; maybe because the storm closed down all the above ground means of transportation. The restaurant has a booth type interior. With the dim lights of the main eating area, it has a dramatic feel. On weekdays it gets an average customer number of 1100. The food at these places lacks some quality but overall it's good. I mean it doesn't all have to be gourmet. This restaurant is probably the best restaurant in friendship heights.

Inside this restaurant there are two bars. The main floor bar, with fancy drinks, is a place where more mature drinkers go to have a Manhattan on the rocks; whereas the bar downstairs is a place where you can enjoy watching 10 different sporting events and not stay focused on one single game. This downstairs bar is where you can scream loudly with your other college buddies. Older people don't go down there unless it is to go to the restroom. At the sports bar there is an oval shaped bar surrounded by an oval shaped booth area bordering the room. The restaurant is 8 out of 10 overall rating, probably the place you would go to have a nice family dinner.

I'm not sure which is more impressive: Aaron's command of the written word, or the fact that he knows what a Manhattan is. Nice work, Aaron. We'll see you in the Big Leagues.

Snowpocalypto

I have to say - the structural redundancy of the mall skylight is impressive. Six glass triangular panels rise and converge at a center point, each bearing the significant weight of snowpack, preventing what sunlight remains from reaching the floor of the atrium of the Chevy Chase Pavilion below.

It is the second time in a matter of days that Mother Nature has seen fit to caress the Mid-Atlantic with another doting blizzard. Last weekend, the Potomac Basin saw 30 inches. Over 300,000 homes - including my little bungalow - went hours, some even days, without heat or electricity. Streets went unplowed. In spite of its latitude, the District of Columbia remains perplexingly incompetent when it comes to handling the wintry elements. Either way, we had a slight reprieve earlier this week. This morning, though, Jack Frost returned with a bitter vegeance, promising an additional foot or so, courtesy of howling winds.

I am anxious awaiting Pat Robertson's pronouncement that this is God's punishment on the capitol for our attempt to pre-empt divine healing with universal health care.

Such theology would dovetail nicely with the parlance of this time. "Snowpocalypse" is what they are calling it, or so I hear. I have also heard "Snowmageddon" and, in a tip of the hat to the first-place Capitals, "Alexander Snovechkin". The sound you hear is the collective groans of transplanted Washingtonians from the Northeast or mountainous regions, to whom this is not the end of the world as much as it is "Wednesday". Reno may be no Calgary, but given the number of snow days I was forced to "endure" as a child, I reserve the right to roll my eyes with them.

Still, the relentless bluster is annoying, if not outright frustrating. Our lives have, for the moment, come to a screeching halt. Commerce has been slowed, knowledge has ceased, and tongues have been stilled. It may not be the end of the world, but it at least feels like our second intermission.

I have personally developed a heightened sense of cabin fever, so much so that this morning's 20 mph winds failed to deter my escape from the apartment to a nice brunch at the Embassy Suites at the Chevy Chase Pavilion. The only thing I can do to combat the stir-craziness is to scribble my thoughts furiously in my Moleskin. The Montgomery County Judicial Center has been closed since Monday morning; given the below freezing prognostications for the next several days, the snow and ice will likely linger long enough to secure me a nice little 11-day weekend. This might be delightful, but for the fact that I've already spent the last three months in a desperate scramble to find something to do. First, the hedge fund windfall relegated me to a part-time, unpaid position with my old employer. Now, the snowfall has temporarily snatched even that away from me. It's as if God and man have conspired in a villainous attempt to deprive my life of meaning.

I keep reminding myself that this, too, shall pass. But when? A blizzard, in and of itself, is nothing. I've seen worse. On top of the present malaise, though, it is insult mounted upon injury. I'm a zen dude, but even zen dudes have to engage the valve and release some steam. This is just irritating.

Yet the snow is but a metaphor for all of our collective troubles. Relentless. Unyielding. Not instantly lethal, but gradually dulling. There is little we can do but wait and pray that it doesn't bury us all. The shovels are of ill use if the snow won't play fair. For now, I'll have to settle for glancing occasionally up at the skylight, awaiting the hour when the snow will melt and the sun will return to shine heaven down upon us.

Let's hope the roof doesn't collapse before it does.

Bagging Rights

NOTE: I know many of you are eagerly awaiting my review of Sarah Palin's book, but, to be quite frank, it is taking forever. In the meanwhile, enjoy this little anecdotal eco-nugget...

Kermit the Frog really doesn't get enough credit for his genius. Put aside, for the moment, his lack of muscle tone or his weak will in allowing Ms. Piggy to romantically run rough-shod all over him. The man (er...frog) is an exceptional artiste, and he presciently hit on the zeitgeist of our generation:

It's not easy being green.

My recent experience at Rodman's provides a suitable object lesson for this problem. Rodman's is the aristocratic convenience/liquor store on Wisconsin, situated around the corner from my lavish sunlight-starved bungalow on Harrison. Consider it a rich man's Rite Aid. I regularly replenish their coffers with small purchases of various sundries: hummus, Grape-Nuts, Uniball pens, antacid, etc. Only a few things at a time. Poverty precludes large shopping sprees.

The all-East African staff are ordinarily very polite and charming, a breath of fresh air compared to the anti-joy bureaucrats at CVS. They actually smile at you, which is a bonus in D.C., where getting a service worker to acknowledge your existence is a victory itself. They ring you up, then wistfully bag your purchase and wish you a pleasant evening.

Or at least they used to.

"Would you like a bag, sir?" The female cashier tapped on the register, awaiting my response.

I glanced up from fiddling with my iPod Touch, puzzlement creeping across my face. I bought a few more items than usual, so the question sounded ill-placed and the answer obvious.

"Uh, of course, yeah, sure." I returned my attention to my New York Times app.

"It's five cents, sir."

My head snapped back up, mouth open in a gnat-swallowing position. The cashier pointed at a sticker on the countertop. Happy New Year. As of January 1, 2010, the District of Columbia now exacts a flat five-cent tax on all disposable bags at stores and restaurants. Of course, the sticker was written by Alexis de Tocqueville, and "asked" all D.C. residents to "help" the environment, echoing the spirit of enlightened self-interest. What an exciting opportunity in the spirit of civic volunteerism!

Eager to do my part, I enthusiastically grunted and shrugged. The cashier typed into the register, and $16.10 magically became $16.15. I swiped my debit card, grabbed my bag, and hustled out into the Arctic freeze. On the walk home, I quietly cursed the D.C. City Council.

I'm certainly no granola, but I think I have a pretty good ecological track record. I did spearhead the creation of the Green Campus, Clean Campus campaign in law school. I've always cut up those anachronistic plastic soda rings to prevent canardicide, and I drive a Ford Focus. The first two required some effort, while the third has come at a considerable sacrifice to my sex life. The plastic bag cost me a nickel. And, boy, did that piss me off.

It's really absurd that I feel this way. Perhaps the bag tax did nothing more than rouse my Inner Libertarian. I already have a serious beef with the meter maids who impose arbitrary tickets on innocent cars. It's not the five cents, I argued to myself. It's the principle! How much more can they take from me! My inner dialogue actually scared me as it progressively moved from pity party to Tea Party. A mild financial annoyance devolved into an expository lesson in personal liberty. Mankind is by nature free, I mused as I fumed at the plastic bag that held my soy milk hostage, but everywhere he is in chains. Somewhere, Rousseau spun in his grave as I trivialized the hell out of social contract theory.

After my rage subsided and reason re-surfaced, I came to three conclusions. The first was that I really needed to start working again. My private seminar on The Economic Philosophy of Plastic Bags was a serious waste of credit hours. Second, I realized that I had fallen prey to the Progressive's Dilemma. I am more than willing to skewer the leisure class for their objections to "paying their fair share" in income taxes to provide for the general welfare; yet, I remain hesitant to match a nickel to their thousands. Leaving marginal utility alone for the moment, this effectively renders me a hypocrite. If I am bound by the underlying American social contract to support the common good, then I must accept the burdens (a nickel or no bag) with the benefits (increased tax revenue and a marginally cleaner D.C.).

Finally, the stupid plastic bag tax has reminded me, yet again, that we, as a species, suck. Man may be by nature free, but he is also a selfish asshole. A quest may be noble in the abstract, but Prince Charming won't brave the fire-breathing dragon to save the Princess unless she shows a little leg. An oil baron won't shut down his refinery unless he sees profit in natural gas. An idealistic public interest lawyer won't give up his plastic bags unless he can save a nickel or two along the way.

So it falls to the carrot and the stick to save the Earth. I'd like to think of myself as an altruist, but who am I kidding? That's just human nature.