• Ruined: My early-adulthood having been forged in anthropological texts and historical minutea, I know my brain is wired such that I can't get too much history when I'm traveling. Its usually one of my foremost goals and what I spend most of my time searching out. But, yesterday I learned that while I can't get too much history, I can get too much ( Read more... )

Taking these short trips, less than a few weeks in any given region, works best when I can focus my interest beforehand on two or three general characteristics (budget? cuisine? history? 'authenticity'?)....this involves a great degree of prejudging a location by what I know if it before I go, giving myself more of a guidebook-driven vacation than ( Read more... )

• Reason #45 why usually seek out the least-traveled destinations I can findOn the shuttle from the airport this morning ( Read more... )

I've become quite the GTD goon lately ( Read more... )

In DC, its illegal to carry a firearm, but if it weren't:

...I'd never fear crime again: If ever I were mugged I know I would fast-draw, whip around in a quick one-hundred-eighty and pop the bastard in the gut before my jumpy-coked-up assailant knew what to do. All twitchy, irrational coked-up and desperate muggers would clearly see that mugging me ( Read more... )

I've always disliked Don Imus, and could never stand to hear his show even as a coworker's background noise.
...but the idea of someone getting canned under such circumstances runs counter to my idea of civil society on so many levels.

• Truth: Coarseness is a form of honesty, or at very least honesty about one's own views. It should be punishable ( Read more... )

I'm convinced the Jose Andrés, DC's self-styled Lord of All Tapas, is running an elaborate econo-social expirement....consciously searching out the exact price proposition of food quality and size versus how much people are willing to pay for it. That, or he's losing his marbles ( Read more... )

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I wanted Boston to be a break from the routines, routines of routines and routines within those routines that I've found myself settling gradually into....

...something to jar my senses back, to help me again fear and appreciate life for itself rather than for its variances from the ordinary.

So:

• My train caught on fire. I rode home from Boston ( Read more... )

[Aether ( Read more... )