Vampires, Hookahs & Spies

That's right. Hamsters.

2008-07-31T01:28:00Z

It might seem that I would be the kind of guy that might have a street mutt as a companion, a mangy dog with lots of personality that was always at my side even when the world was against me. Man's best friend, right? You know, we'd play fetch, he'd bark at strangers, and he'd be this ever-present pal that would do anything for me. We'd go to the park and after a time we'd probably start to look like each other. We'd be a pair.

Or maybe I'm a cat guy. I've got my dark vibe going on, so perhaps a sleek little panther to prowl my apartment, warily watch me from across the room, and set an example for me of what it means to live on instinct alone. The feline would probably give me shit a lot of the time, but then again, when it got cold enough and I didn't seem to notice, the predator would sneak up onto my bed and dream cat dreams against my body heat.

But I don't have either. I grew up with many cats and dogs and I love 'em all. But I also found that I was happiest when they were happiest, and that meant when they had lots of room to roam, the great outdoors to play in 24/7, and every opportunity to, well, be animals. Not pets, but animals in the truest sense. Sure, they were domesticated, but they were beasts to be sure. Our dogs ran wild and cats wilder. We loved them all, but we never thought of them as our children or babies, but rather as companions and very cool reminders of the less civilized part of life, a part that we all too often forget about in our sick hurry to make money, buy more and more, and show others our success.

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Hamsters. She first brought up the idea, and after a few days of research--cost, feeding, habits, cleaning, accessories, medical information--I said yes. Within a week we went out to the PetSmart near Seven Corners and nabbed two little sisters, about ten weeks old. Ellie and Isabella, she named them; or El and Bel, to me. I have to admit, they are pretty cute, and their nocturnal lifestyle fits perfectly with my own. The only issue was the noise their running wheel made, but I found a kind that is actually quieter than their own feet, so that was easily solved.

Oh, and I was maneuvered into buying a Betta fish also, so that guy—I named him Mulder in honor of the X-Files—floats about in his little plastic tank on my desk, too. My place is a friggin' menagerie now. Jeesh. Welcome to the Wild Kingdom.

Anyway, I've got to go and check-up on the Little Girls, now. I think they'd probably like a little fresh broccoli....

Lunch in the city

2008-07-25T19:34:39Z

It's summer in DC and that means lunch in the sun, the brutally hot sun, and that means street carts selling the infamous half-smokes and other quick food.

This photo is actually a few years old, but what the hell. I still like it and it still reminds me of working downtown.

Oh, yeah. Like the Metro station?

What's on my iPhone?

2008-07-24T13:43:55Z

I've been constantly changing the home screens and applications on my new iPhone since I picked it up on launch day (yup, I stood in line for 3 hours and got my phone in the first 15 minutes they went on sale). Sure, there are lots of nifty little apps that are fun to play with a bit at first, but I'm not a game-player and I tire pretty quickly of the less-than-useful applications. What I'm big on is the productivity applications, things that help me with my tasks, calendars, notes, goals, projects, etc. Basically, I want my iPhone to make my life easier and more productive. So, without further ado, here's what I've got on my phone at the moment.

Home Screen #1

Remote, Clock, Settings, Camera

Safari, Maps, Weather, ICE

iPod, Photos, Contacts, Budget

Things, Evernote, Sketches, Shopper

Home Screen #2

Apps Store, iTunes, Fandango, YouTube

Mobile News, Google Reader, SportsTap, Google

Twitterific, AIM, Loopt, Whrrl

Facebook, Whoshere

Home Screen #3

SplashID, Calculator, Stocks, Notes

Morse-it, Units, TapeMeasure, myLite

iGet, Sol: Clock, MediaTemple, MovableType Admin

Home Screen #4

Hypnocity, Bank of America, SodaSnap, Tiny Violin

Labyrinth LE, HoldEm, Scrabble, PhoneSaber

Oh, and on my Dock I have:

Phone, Mail, Text, Calendar

Hmm. Where's my Vampire Locator, Hookah Simulator, and Encrypted Spy Communicator?

The undead just keep rising

2008-07-18T17:18:37Z

You would think that after a while the whole "vampires are cool" thing would begin to wear off. But no. Good thing, as I made a few bucks myself off the nasty blood sippers, but even I'm amazed at the staying power of this archetypal creature. Hell, my friend Eric even wrote a whole book that was recently featured at Barnes & Noble, "The Dead Travel Fast," that focused on our culture's fascination with these undead bastards. Now, scouring iTunes and the Web I find that there are many current and upcoming television series based around vampires. "Moonlight," "Blood Ties," and "Bloodcopy" are prime examples, following, of course, in the footsteps of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and its spinoff, "Angel." And that's not mentioning the many other shows that feature vampire characters as either regulars or "monsters-of-the-week."

So, here's a big ol' glass of blood to all you fangsters, out there. No matter how often we think the genre has finally died, well...you know the rest.

Hey, we're drowning here

2008-05-09T13:40:19Z

It rained today. More importantly, it rained last night, all night, with the requisite thunder and lightning and occasional cloudbursts, drenching the Washington area with rapturous abandon. I love falling to sleep with the windows open, the sound of rain and thunder and the semi-regular explosions of light as well as the raw smell of wet air my own private lullaby. Better, when I woke the soaking grayness of the sky blocked out the usual searing sunlight that burns into my eyeballs in the A.M. and causes the temperature of my East-facing apartment to go from comfy-cool to sweltering despite the best efforts of the air conditioning units beneath the windows. The sight of the DC skyline clotted with smudgy low clouds, tumbleweeds of fog and sheets of water, smearing the distinct outlines of monuments and monumental buildings into an almost watercolor-like vista that adds mood and depth. Really, I welcome the rain. I don't even mind walking in the rain. A few months ago after a near-disastrous experience with my umbrella and a post-near-disaster inspection of the accessory's fragile engineering -- the slender metal ribs that so easily give in to the force of wind, the pathetic threads that hold these ribs, in theory, to the bat-like black cloth, the main pole constantly threatening to snap, the points of the ribs bursting through their bindings and jutting out skeletally, daring to poke eyes and leaving me even more exposed to the elements -- I decided to find something better to shield me from rain. A quick search on Google found me the incredible and not-expensive-at-all Senz umbrella. Seriously, check it out. It looks like the umbrella Batman would use and is built to pass even his likely rigorous use. The beast works as advertised and so it has become almost fun to wander in a downpour, laughing silently at the fools still clutching their technologically obsolete and utterly insufficient traditional regenschirms.

But all the umbrella advancements in the world won't keep your feet dry. As I left my building and scooted towards Pentagon Row I realized that the final leg of my brief journey along the cement sidewalks that would take me to the street brought me to a place that would require me to traverse a pool of water, perhaps 2" deep. Not cool. Not far away was the "cowpath" of now mud that, had the property owners possessed foresight and common sense, would instead have been turned into a proper cement sidewalk and would now provide me with a relatively dry and more direct path to the road; but no. So, I was left choosing between mud and water. I chose water, hoping it would not be too deep and I'd quickly get through it; better than slipping and falling in mud, I reasoned. Luckily, the water was not so bad, though it did a pretty good job soaking part of my leather shoes.

The real horror of the day came when crossing the open plaza of Pentagon Row, however. The cement here has always posed a water problem, as the gentle and irregular sloping of the plaza surface has never seemed to have been designed with thought to where water would go during a storm, with the idea that clear paths should be created for pedestrians to pass through. Instead it seems as if it was designed by random, the sloping of the cement and the placement of drains apparently completely unrelated to where people might walk. It's always been a game to try and find dry spots and avoid the deceptively deep low spots when passing through the area.

This morning I made a grave error while playing this absurd game. I chose to travel down the middle of the plaza as it appeared to be the least plagued by pools of water. Halfway across I made my fatal mistake. I turned aside from the direct path that would take me to the passage beneath Bally Fitness and directed my travel towards the Starbucks, thirsting for a Doubleshot. I knew I'd get a bit wet as it appeared there was a bit of water in my path, but I was not prepared for what I found. Instead of a half-inch of spotty puddles I found myself in bout 3" of water! As my shoes quickly became drenched and tried to run out of the situation in the hopes of magically moving faster than the water could get to my preciously dry feet. But alas, how silly of me. The trench of water stretched for nearly a dozen feet or more and my frantic journey across left my feet soaked through, shoes, socks and flesh. My pants were similarly drenched as far up as my mid-calf and I stood there cursing, not the heavens above, but myself. And the people who manage Pentagon Row.

Sure, there was a serious rain storm. Sure, you can't manage that well. But still, as I gazed across the expanse of the plaza later it became clear that the way the plaza surface was created was not one designed to efficiently channel and drain floodwaters. Important areas for foot traffic were underwater, while other areas that receive far less were dry by comparison.

In short, it is my belief that property managers and engineers need to inspect their properties now and then to see how it fares under varying conditions. You don't just build it according to plans you think are perfect and then just leave it at that. You must consider that the original plans might be imperfect, you must examine the handiwork under less-than-perfect conditions, and you must observe under those conditions how people use and cannot use the property. I build websites this way, creating a great design but then always reexamining how site visitors actually use it...and then changing the site to better suit my visitors. It's called usability and to a lesser degree accessibility. It should not simply be the practice of website designers, but also of designers and property managers of all types. Products and designs need to be constantly revisited to find improvements, even if only minor, if the experience of the users is to be improved.

My experience -- and I can't be the only one -- with the pedestrian surfaces at Pentagon Row and River House convinces me that its usability is far from sufficient. It's time for the managers and engineers to go out in the rain themselves, walk around, see how other people use and misuse the area, and then go and make improvements based upon those observations. I want my feet to be dry.

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My first Web application: Hypnocity

2008-05-09T01:04:35Z

Hypnocity is my first iPhone Web application. I was goofing around with my iPhone at the office and was checking out the public website for my hometown (and current employer), Arlington County, Virginia, a community just a stone's throw across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, and was sorely disappointed by how difficult it was to find certain information that I felt, as a resident, was of great usefulness to me. I thought of putting the useful phone numbers and addresses in my iPhone Contacts application, but that seemed way too much effort for just some quick links. Well, hell, I'm a Web guy. Why don't I just create my own Web application that nicely displays the info I feel is important and then I can just access it anytime I want? So I did it and a few days later had Hypnocity.]]> Hypnocity is a simple and extremely useful Web application that makes it simple-as-pie for people to find all the most important phone numbers and addresses for services in Arlington County, Virginia, and to be able to immediately dial those numbers or find those numbers on a map via the magical wonderfulness of the iPhone.

Got a stray dog terrorizing the block? Just tap the number for Animal Control! Need to find out the address for the library branch that has a hard-to-find book? Tap and get its address just like that! More seriously, need the local substance abuse hotline? Need to report a broken fire hydrant? Want to find out if the county has towed your car and where to pick it up? Want to report suspected child abuse? Gang activity? Or do you just want to find the location of the nearest Metro station? All this and more is available with a few simple taps on Hypnocity.

Okay, sure, that's great for people in Arlington County, but what about other cities? Well, that's where Hypnocity is going. We're building the application as a full-service that municipalities can sign-up for and supply their own important addresses and numbers for their own residents with iPhones. For a fee, municipalities will have access to their own list of information that they can customize as desired. Visitors will pay nothing to access the application, of course, though there will be some very minor and out-of-the-way advertising (Google AdSense links or something like that). As new municipalities are added, visitors will be able to select them from the application's homepage and...voila! All the important information you need without searching in your Contacts, scouring the Web, or calling 411. Just go and tap.

It's that simple. Just point your iPhone Safari browser to the following URL:

http://www.hypnocity.com/iphone/arlington/

Don't have an iPhone handy? Click here to preview Hypnocity

First Alert

2008-04-29T18:59:10Z

Vivamus vitae mauris id nisi feugiat malesuada. Nullam tincidunt venenatis neque. Proin vel tortor. Aenean libero. Curabitur dolor. Etiam neque risus, vehicula eget, ultricies quis, lobortis vitae, turpis.

Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Curabitur interdum. Duis semper nunc in lorem. Phasellus ornare.

Birthday Billiards at The Continental

2008-04-16T18:48:03Z

A few days after my birthday my girlfriend organized a surprise party for me at The Continental, a trendy lounge and billiards hall in Rosslyn. About a dozen close friends showed up and made the evening a memorable one. One of my friends and my long-time billiards partner, Aaron, played his other famous role as event photographer, old school style, without any digital equipment. His photos turned out fantastic, most done in black and white. One of the color shots had a great pose, but I didn't like the lighting, coloring or general sense of the photo, so I did something about it. Stripping it of color, reworking its shading and balance, grunging it up a bit with various filters and manual destruction, recoloring it manually, and finally adding some text, borders, and stress seemed to do the trick. This is the result of that labor. Oh, the font is a new fave, Bleeding Cowboys (with the subtext in Fountain Pen Frenzy).

Let's do the Time Warp...again

2008-04-10T21:02:10Z

When I first switched from a PC to a Mac one of the first orgasms I experienced was the thrill of seeing half the cables that had overgrown my desk and its environs like a plague of unsightly vines suddenly vanish. Just like that, my iMac's sleek aesthetic enabled me to do more with my computer with less snaking cables from device to device and to my power strip. I marveled. I erupted in joy. It was a beautiful thing.

Two years later when my second iMac sported an integrated iSight camera and a wireless keyboard and mouse the cabling diminished even more. However, I needed to add an external drive for space and backup reasons; and with the iPhone, its sync cable was added to the mix. I spent entire days playing around with various configurations of Firewire 400 and 800, USB, and power cords, chaining devices together and moving them around to reduce the cabling as much as possible. But with a printer, speakers (left, right, subwoofer), a pen tablet, my digital camera, my iPhone, and my external drives, along with a USB hub, there was no perfect solution. I did the best I could, hid the necessary cables as much as possible, and got on with life.

And then the Time Capsule was introduced.

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Two days later it arrived and I cleared my Friday night to put it into action and streamline and improve my home network and device clutter. Because my cable connection is located in a part of my apartment that was effectively unusable for computing (it is on the opposite side of my place from where my desk and "peripherals shelving" is located) I quickly realized that I would need an AirPort Express Base Station after all. The ideas was that the TC would be directly connected to my Linksys cable modem and be located with it in that one inconvenient location, replacing my 802.11g Linksys wireless router. Then, I would remove all the cables from my various peripherals--external drives, printer, speakers, etc. --and instead have them connect to my AEBS instead.

This would essentially serve as a wireless hub that would connect to my TC network and be "controlled" by iMac this way. If this worked, I would have nothing but a power cord connected to my iMac. This would be not only aesthetically desirable, but it would also make it so much easier to move my iMac around my apartment (I have an extra long power cord extension so I don't have to shut down while moving it from the desk to the coffee table to the bedside table), since I use my iMac as a computer, television, and media center. Additionally, I aimed to move all content from my external drives to the TC, lots of video files as well as my previous Time Machine backups.

Setting up the TC to replace my slower router was a cinch. It was so nice not to have a Web interface but the Mac-based AirPort Utility for this. It took a few minutes to look at the various options--I chose the manual setup so I could have the greatest control over everything--and get going. The one thing that was important to do was to change the name of the TC device and its "volume" name. The default names actually don't work, but I preferred this, as I wanted shorter, more to-the-point names for my local network. I ignored some of the option tabs (iTunes, Printer, etc.) as I was planning on configuring those for the AEBS, not the TC. After updating the info the wireless network kicked in and all was cool.

Next, I added the AEBS to the network, plugging it in and connecting my USB hub and speaker input cable to it. Via the AirPort Utility I set about configuring the device, telling it to stream iTunes music, use my printer (which it auto-recognized), etc. The only problem, and a vexing one, was that it could not see my external drives, chained together via Firewire and connected to my USB hub. I tried and tried everything I could and read stuff online and finally realized that the AEBS could not see external drives. This kinda sucked. I had no real space for the drives near the modem/TC, even though I believe the TC (and not the AEBS) is able to see external drives connected via the USB port. The only option left to me was to connect the drives directly to my iMac via USB. Sure, my system mounted them properly, but now I had to surrender part of my wireless fantasy and leave one extra cable connected to my iMac. Damn. Okay, time to move on.

I did not want to do a very long initial Time Machine backup to the TC, so I tried to copy the massive backup file on one of my external drives to the TC in the Finder. No luck. Try again. No luck. Again. Same result. So, back to reading online and finally realizing that the Time Machine will not permit this. Even though theoretically I should be able to move files to it, trying to dump a 400GB backup file to it didn't work at all. I also realized that even if I could do this, Time Machine would not recognize this as an initial backup and would require a new one anyway, so I would have devoured half the space on my TC needlessly. Realizing this, I again surrendered one my cool ideas and began the initial Time Machine backup.

Oops. Wirelessly, the initial backup seemed like it would take a week to backup 400GB. That blew, as I wanted to delete my old backup from my external drive in order to clear space there and remove the drive from my system; but I didn't want to do that until I had a new backup in place on the TC. I headed over to Best Buy and bought a 25' CAT6 ethernet cable and used it to direct-connect my TC with my iMac and then I told Time Machine to begin the first TC backup. It seemed faster than the wireless method, but it actually took almost three days to finish, so I'm not sure it was. In fact, I'm not sure it went any faster. It's possible that the ethernet connection was ignored in favor of the wireless one, but I was not about to sever my wireless connection for three days to find out; I use my iMac for everything (work, news, entertainment, communications, hobbies, etc.), so even a day without it is a serious pain in the gazortch.

No, I let it run and when I awakened on the third day it seemed done. Yay. Not. See, when I woke and checked Time Machine it was actually doing a backup, but it appeared to be an incremental backup. The TC drive did have a nice big 400GB backup file in a weird "sparse bundle" format and Time Machine seemed to be doing a relative small 400MB backup, which I assumed consisted of all the changes that had occurred on the system since the initial backup was begun days before. I was glad and decided to pull the ethernet cable from the iMac during this backup. I figured that it should continue just fine wirelessly (the whole point of the TC) and even if there were a problem, the worst that would happen would be that this incremental backup would be bad and Time Machine would just do another one an hour later.

As I said...not. The backup seemed to hang indefinitely after I removed the ethernet cable from the iMac. Since I had to get to work I had no desire to wait and see how long this would last, so I finally went into Time Machine and stopped the current backup. It took a bit, but finally it seemed to end and another backup was scheduled for some 15 minutes or so later. Cool, I thought, but instead of waiting I manually told Time Machine to start the next backup immediately. It began and then...I realized that the backup would be 400GB! Wait! That's a full backup that would take at least three days! I then noticed that Time Machine did not report the existence of a "Last Backup" at all. Blank. It didn't seem to see the huge backup it had begun three days before and supposedly completed during the night. Shit!

I was pissed, to say the least. What the hell?! I turned Time Machine off and went to work and spent a good portion of the day reading whatever I could find about "sparse bundles," TC, Time Machine, and all that jazz. There was nothing about Time Machine not recognizing an initial backup that had just been completed unless that "sparse bundle" file was corrupted, but I didn't see how that would have happened. Apparently, even if the backup is interrupted it will continue again without a problem when it can. Ultimately, I felt that all I could do was let Time Machine start over again. I deleted the backup on the TC (used the Erase function in the AirPort Utility) and turned Time Machine back on. The backup prepared itself and began...slowly. I'm still waiting to see what happens with that.

As for my other drives, I chose to keep them. Since I can't really use TC for simple file storage in the same way I would a non-TC external drive, I need one to store massive video files on. It will also serve as a scratch disk for graphics applications. The other I'll use as a transport drive to migrate big files when necessary. And because I have to connect them directly to the iMac, I need that additional USB cable. Hey, at least my speakers don't have to be connected to my iMac! I have AirTunes via the AEBS! But again...not really.

Seems that first, only music files can play this way; video and podcasts cannot. Since I use my iMac for downloaded television shows, podcasts, and movies (mostly DVDs), this meant that only a fraction of my media would work this way. The rest would end up playing solely from the on-board speakers. Well, that sucks. Sure, there are a few apps out there that seem to overcome this, but they have drawbacks (like not perfectly synced audio/video). No, not going that route. What's more, I thought that just maybe I could deal with that; at least I could keep that speaker cable out of my iMac.

But...then I discovered the other hitch. AirTunes essentially bypasses the system volume and only responds to the iTunes volume. Yes, these are actually different, though it's not obvious to many people. What this means is that even if your music is being wireless streamed across your place, if you want to change the volume you have to go back to the Mac and use your mouse to adjust the iTunes volume slider. That blows. Truly. I use Front Row all the time with the Apple Remote and want to be able to adjust the volume that way. But that is not possible via AirTunes. So, I pulled my speaker cable out of the AEBS and plugged it back into my iMac. Another damn wire I still need to keep connected. And that also meant that the only thing my AEBS was good for was wirelessly connecting my printer to my Mac. My USB tablet went unrecognized, my iPhone sync cable was unrecognized, etc. Major suckage. Verdict: I put all my stuff into my USB hub (including my external drives) and then plugged that into my iMac.

So, I have a USB cable and a speaker cable in my iMac, which is not actually very different from how things were before this experiment. I returned my AEBS to the Pentagon City Apple Store without hassle. Now I'm waiting to see how my TC/Time Machine initial backup works. How long will it take, wirelessly? Will Time Machine properly recognize it and then do the usual small incremental backups or will I have to start all over again? And most important of all, how can I become less wired and more wireless. It seems that the dream is not yet a reality, despite the seeming promise of some of Apple's hardware and software. When can I go truly wireless and have all my devices "talk" to each other quickly and without hitch? I'm waiting, optimistically.

The Horrid Origin of Count Macula

2008-04-09T00:40:43Z

Except for some use of an Apple IIc in high school my entire life had been one dominated by Windows, personally and professionally. I ran a help desk supporting Windows machines, I had a PC at home, and I was happy. Then, one seemingly inauspicious day I saw an iMac G5 and in that instant was transformed. My PC life quickly deteriorated. Despite how much I had invested in the Windows platform, the lure of the Mac was too much and before long I quit struggling and succumbed to its rapturous seduction.

I was born again as a Mac person and nothing was ever the same again. Colors were brighter, applications were faster, everything I wanted to do was easier and had a magic to it that made my former existence seem pale and crude. I rid myself of all traces of my Windows life, even sloughing off Microsoft Office until I was no longer stained by any vestige of Windows or its related hardware and software.

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There is no going back, of this I am sure. My Windows life is over and I am bound for eternity to Apple and its supernaturally astonishing creations. The man I was before is gone and in his place there is only Count Macula.

Bluejeans at 36

2008-03-30T18:50:17Z

I shot this photograph a few months back, but as I was rebuilding the site and reworking my body of artistic work for reposting I liked where this image fell on the page, even if the original text was just a clump of lorem ipsum. I took about a dozen or so shots using my apartment door as the backdrop and my trusty and oh-so-unprofessional Sony DSC-T10 for the shots, as usual. Still, I do like to believe that the camera used is far less important to a good shot than the subject, the lighting, the photographer's eye, and spontaneity. My subject, Rebecca, was perfect, the lighting was done with a few cheap-ass photo bulbs, and...voila. And yeah, she was a healthy 36 years old at the time. Not too shabby.

Click here for a larger version and to purchase as a print

Old Tyme Telegram

2008-03-18T18:49:26Z

This is a new rendition of a vintage telegram template that I've had kicking around for a few years. I was sitting around playing with some graphics, stumbled upon the old template, and at the same time was miffed about how the Washington Area Metro Transit Authority seems to make no effort to police the rampant practice of drinking coffee, soda, etc. in the Metro system, something that has always been unlawful even if now wholly ignored. I figured that if the WMATA so obviously ignores letters and emails regarding this practice, perhaps a demand for action that came in the form of an odd vintage telegram might at the very least get them to reconsider the issue, even if only for a moment. So, here it is. Not sure if I'll actually send it in or not.

Shortcut

2007-11-14T20:22:10Z

Last night I took a shortcut. The door of the Middle East Institute had closed behind me, its warmth held close, the cold quickly stealing its opportunity to grasp at my legs and arms and bare head as I made my way across N Street, shuddering in vain agaist its cruel bite. I did not wish to think about the walk down Connecticut Avenue in this wind, so I chose daring above routine and chose to abandon my usual route in favor of a dash into St. Matthews Court, grateful for the towering closeness of the buildings that line this narrow corridor, shielding me from the worst of the night air.

]]> The street was empty at this hour, hollow and ill-lit, a straight shot south which, I hoped, would deposit me at its terminus along Rhode Island and M Street, eliminating at least a portion of my journey to the Farragut West Metro Station. I am not in the habit of listening to music or podcasts or anything requiring earphones when walking alone in the darkness, unwilling to remain oblivious to the sounds around me, the hum, hiss and growl of the streets, warning me of danger or opportunity. Instead, I moved along in my own form of silence, my eyes reaching into the depths of the dimness, seeking motion or sign of company that I would prefer to do without.

St. Matthews loomed like a Romanesque toad, squat and malicious on the left, its dome above adding menace to its grim facade as it eyed me in my passage. I tried to pay it little heed, quickening my pace as I advanced along its length, but before completing my race to the main avenues ahead and putting this gantlet behind me, I froze in my tracks. Perhaps I saw her already and yet my brain chose to tell me otherwise in the hopes that I would keep moving and thereby preserve myself from possible trouble. Or possibly she had not been there and only now stepped from the shadows. Whatever the truth, she was there, behind me, half a block back, in the middle of the alley, alone, unmoving. It was the same strange woman I had seen before at Tapeo, of this I was sure despite the darkness. The reptilian part of my mind told me this, assured me of this, and whispered this to me with an almost sadistic delight. I turned slowly and still she did not move, garbed in black, tall boots below the hem of her coat, her hair spilling down as ink spills, saturating her and completing her striking pose. She stood, gazing through the gloom in a way that unsettled me and yet stoked some inner flame that could as easily destroy as it could ignite and create. Neither of us spoke or moved. Finally, I took a step, very slowly, in her direction. With that, she turned and walked away opposite me, up St. Matthews Court and towards the origin of my travels. I chose not to follow, not wary of a trap, but simply because it did not feel right, not now, not yet. That was not the night for us to meet.

I forgot the wind as I moved on autopilot to the Metro station and rode home, her silhouette the only thing I could see in my mind's eye. I would see her again, I knew. When the time is right. The next time I take a shortcut, perhaps.

Vampires in Washington

2007-11-09T02:25:41Z

Yeah, that's right. Vampires. Here. In DC. Yup. No shit. And no, I don't mean metaphorical vampires, like the politicians and lobbyists and neocons and evangelicals and protesters and drug dealers and muggers and the countless other parasites that feed off the lifeblood of the naive and innocent and stupid and make this town what it is, but real vampires, as in Dracula. Yeah, the real deal. Blood drinkers who need it to survive another night, rather than the gothic goobers who walk around calling themselves vampires and sipping a teensy bit of each other's blood in what amounts to nothing more than a pathetic game of "here's how I'm gonna get laid" mystique. You know, the walking undead who can't step foot in sunlight and who are damned for all eternity to feast on the blood of the living. Those vampires. They are here, in Washington, going about their business of draining the unwitting and unlucky of their precious vitae, unbreathing fiends prowling in the dusky shadows of the monuments and halls of power, feasting on the army of itinerant interns, aspiring aides, dramatic do-gooders, and drunken hangers-on spilling out on the pavement after nights of pseudo politicking and clumsy philandering, thinking they are impervious to these hungry monsters simply because such creatures do not exist. How wrong they are.

]]> I have seen them. To most, they appear as nothing special, in fact they are extremely skilled at appearing to be nothing special, either as a consequence of long practice or because they possess some supernatural ability that renders them so to those who, unlike me, are far less used to peering into the darkness that surrounds us, whispering, threatening. The odd fellow in the back corner of Tortilla Coast, the lone woman nursing a dark wine in a booth at the 18th Street Lounge, the guy standing outside Madam's Organ with his hands in his pockets, wool cap pulled low. But I see them for what they are; their eyes sunken and red, their teeth exposed, their hunger nearly a howl to my ears. I don't confront them or even let them see my awareness, if that's possible. I merely notice, shiver briefly, and move away, putting distance between us in the hopes that somehow the reality of the situation will diminish with each step further away I am. But I know better. I know I am no safer than anyone else. I know that even my knowledge makes no difference.

There are vampires in the nation's capital. Most terrifying is that they are not the greatest of my concerns.

Homeward

2007-10-26T17:43:12Z

Pentagon City station was muggy, fetid, and dim as I disembarked from the southbound Blue Line train, the red glow of "12:07 AM" dully illuminating the desolate platform, reminding me of the time. Only one other exited the rail car, a woman in her sad years, shuffling towards the elevator, either too tired or too incapable of riding the escalator to the upper station. All the better, as I relished the solitude and preferred to travel alone, on foot, the rest of my journey. The station booth was empty, though a maintenance worker was on the far side of the area preparing for the long night's track work. He paid me no heed as I passed, moved automatically through the turnstile, and wended my way through the tunnel, up another shorter escalator, and through the lowest level of the Fashion Centre shopping mall.

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The cavernous structure was weirdly silent, not even a custodian was visible in the vast food court or along the concourse. A flash of lightning briefly lit the sky above the atrium, making the place look for a moment like an eerie carnival, its freakish performers asleep for the night as I crept past their tents along the darkened midway. Passing through the parking garage this illusion was dispelled, but in its place another, that I was being watched, that any moment a dark sedan would appear around a distant bend and slowly move towards me, its lights off, its occupants occluded, menacing me in a way that reminded me of the words of the man on the bench.

As I rose to the street behind Pentagon Row the light rain shattered that fantasy also and I strode along in the wet, past the yet-to-be-completed ice skating rink that dominates the center of the plaza, past my usual neighborhood haunts, Tapeo, and across the street until my feet were once again safely on the River House property.

In my apartment on the 14th floor--the 13th actually, but that number was customarily avoided--I gazed in the darkness across the river, the city, resting my sight upon the glowing monuments in the sodden sky, the occasional burst of lightning still working its wonder upon the skyline now and then, before closing the blinds and burying myself in the familiar warmth of my bed, my art and belongings whispering me to sleep.