It has been gorgeous here in DC for the past few days, unseasonably warm with highs in the upper 60s even passing the 70degF mark. Gorgeous weather isn’t necessarily the best for contemplation. It’s too easy to be distracted by suddenly visible flesh and the feel of the sun on your face. Still, a few things have popped out over the past few weeks that bear mentioning.
Fashion
Something is wrong with us culturally. I say this truly not because of the usual reasons why someone declares our culture sick or simply wrong. No, I say this because we have no coherent fashion motif other than shear chaos. Our local PBS station ran this past season two documentaries on our fair city, Washington In The ’60s and Washington In The ’70s and even though culturally and historically the 1960s and the 1970s overlap by quite a bit (really what we think of as “the ’60s” began in November 1963 and ended April 4, 1975), it’s not hard to look at the footage and tell with a fair degree of certainty which time period you’re looking at. The same can not be said for walking down the street in the present day.
During our recent good weather shortly after seeing the 40ish gentleman with the p.o.r.n. ‘stach worthy of something from the Linda Lovelace era I spotted a guy who couldn’t have been more than 23 years-old wearing the following: off-white khakis with a crease so sharp you could cut yourself on them, topsiders, not one but two Polo shirts (in complimentary, pastel colors) with the collars turned up, that hint of stubble meant to look like two days’ growth, and oversized sunglasses in black plastic and a style that would have said “nerd” in 1955. Now, can you name that year in gay fashion? If you guessed 1983 or 1984 you get the grand prize.
If it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?
Ah…spring, and with it come the tourists. Normally, we wouldn’t be seeing hordes of confused, scared looking people with maps until early April when the Cherry Blossoms are predicted to be in peak bloom. This is not a normal year.
Yesterday we had not one, not two, but three major events downtown – the national marathon; an anti-health care reform rally (um, yeah, ’cause I like getting denied coverage because “being female” is considered a pre-existing condition), and an anti-war rally – all at the same time. Aptly labeled “the first fringe of spring” by DCist.com, this is more crazy than even we’re used to. Good thing METRO has made sure that they’re cutting back on weekend track work in April so all those wonderful folks from out of town can get around ’cause hey, if you live here you’re used to being trapped at home on the weekends or adding an extra hour to a trip that normally takes 20-30 minutes.
What do you mean “all the lights are on?”
I’ve been listening to a lot of NPR lately and between reports about the health care bill and why it might move forward or might not move forward, there have been several reports about the stalled climate and energy bill. That combined with the way my brain works got me to thinking how tied to a certain way of life many of our idioms are.
“All the lights are on but nobody’s home” describes someone who seems to have life in hand but in reality isn’t either fully engaged or is incapable of being fully engaged because of lack of intellect. This is an expression that depends upon the idea that energy is cheap enough that leaving “all the lights on” in your house is something you would routinely do. And I wondered as I sat in my car on the way to the inspection station if I would live to see a time when there were people wandering my country who couldn’t parse that idiom because energy was so expensive no one would think to leave a light on any longer than necessary.
The apocalypse may very well have arrived
America is about to become the only first world nation without reliable mail service.
And in totally unrelated news, my employer hasn’t paid rent on the office I work in for more than 6 months. Last week we got a “pay up or get out” notice from our landlord. Now, how realistic is the idea that we could come up with $100,000 in back rent in 10 business days when we haven’t paid full rent on time in 6 months? Not very, I think, which is why I went in over the weekend and got pretty much all of my personal items out of the office. Any one want in on the unemployment date pool?
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