The mark of Xenu?
3 minute read
July 29, 2009, 9:15 PM
The building next door to my office building is being renovated, and has been under construction since around April, and has been thoroughly driving me crazy with all the noise while I’m trying to work. You name it, I’ve heard it, from dumpsters banging to jackhammers to the movement of various equipment. Plus dust in the vicinity as I’m walking to Whole Foods. And you know who the new occupant will be?
The Church of Scientology. Yes. THEM.
This must be their way of harassing me at work. Rather than sending nasty letters to my office as some Anons have alleged has happened to them, they’re instead putting a facility right next to my office building. This is supposed to be their Ideal Org, as I understand it. So for the past three months or so, they’ve been gutting and rebuilding the Embassy Building at 1424 16th Street NW. First they did some demolition. Then asbestos abatement (hopefully performed better than on the Freewinds). Then more demolition. Then all the construction stuff disappeared. Then a new company took over and demolition continued. Now they’ve removed the windows and covered them with plastic.
Continue reading…Categories: Project Chanology
So the fun in the water and the sun went quite well…
3 minute read
July 28, 2009, 7:54 PM
Let me tell you something… I had fun this past weekend, spending plenty of time outdoors and in the water. Saturday involved a tubing trip along the Shenandoah River with my coworkers, and then Sunday I went to Splashdown Waterpark with a few Anons. Not a bad time. And no horrible sunburn, either.
Saturday was an honest to goodness road trip, since we went out to Luray. And I managed to do just fine crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains at Thornton Gap. And then the water was awesome, though the river was a lot shallower than I expected. Previously, I had always gone tubing on the James River in Rockbridge County, and it was always at least four feet deep, if not mistaken. The Shenandoah River at its shallowest was less than a foot deep. Kinda hard for the tubes to go over, but somehow, we managed. And the water shoes problem was taken care of by my wearing my Crocs. They worked well enough, though I did manage to kick one off at one point. But thankfully, Crocs float, so I retrieved it with little difficulty.
Meanwhile, my coworkers amused me. Usually, when we go for drinks as coworkers, we get, you know, good beer. However, for the river, most of my coworkers had Pabst Blue Ribbon, which, if I’m not mistaken, is like one of the cheapest beers on the face of the Earth. So there you go, I suppose.
And then while on the river, we encountered a storm. That storm is actually what’s depicted in the photo feature right now. It seemed to come up from out of nowhere, as all of a sudden, we heard some very mild thunder and got significant wind and rain. Some people actually got out of the water briefly to ride it out, but most just continued on. After all, the storm would pass, and it did, and just in case more came up later, the best way to avoid it was to just finish the course. And so we did.
And just to give you an idea of how the wind and rain was, observe:
As you can see, the rain is coming down at a 55-degree angle due to the wind. Not the most fun, but it passed.
Then on the way home, we were treated to lots of lightning, as storms were brewing along Route 211. I took Meredith and Jorge back from the river, and we were witness to a good amount of it. The most memorable lightning was not long after we crossed Thornton Gap. Never before had I seen lightning go up. This lightning, which appeared yellow-orange in color, started at the ground, rose up to the clouds, and then spread outwards in the clouds. My reaction to the spectacle was unprintable, but it was quite a sight.
And we eventually made it back. Look for a Life and Times photo set a little later on that more completely documents the tubing trip.
Then Sunday, a few Anons and I got together for a trip to Splashdown Waterpark in Manassas. That was a lot of fun, as we hit every slide in the park at least once, spent plenty of time in the lazy river, and also swam around the pool. Splashdown is kind of unique as waterparks go for having, along with everything else, a conventional swimming pool. The reason can be traced back to the park’s history, though. See, Splashdown Waterpark started out as a conventional community pool. Then the facility was later expanded into a full waterpark. And I’m glad they did, because it’s nice to be able to hit up a good waterpark fairly nearby and not have to drive for hours and hours. And the price is quite nice for what you get.
And I came out unscathed, save for a very mild sunburn, and a little road rash from striking the bottom of the splash pool at the end of one of the water slides due to my losing the tube mid-slide. Basically, I fell off the tube on a hard curve, and decided that rather than fight to get back on the tube while sliding down at high speed, I’d just let go. Thus I went first, and the tube followed. And at the end of the slide, without the tube, I scraped the bottom of the pool with my elbow. That hurt, but it will heal.
So all in all, I had a fun weekend. Next weekend is a little calmer, though I am going railfanning on Metro with my friend Patrick on Sunday. That ought to be fun, since I don’t believe Patrick’s seen all that much of the system, and certainly hasn’t been to all the terminals yet, though I’m not sure yet what parts of the system we’ll cover.
Categories: Friends, Recreation/Exercise
One would think it wouldn’t be that hard to find aqua socks in the middle of July, but if you thought that, you would be wrong.
4 minute read
July 19, 2009, 8:29 PM
One would think – July is the middle of the summer. Summer is a time when people spend a lot of time in the water. One would think that one would be able to find water-type shoes in the middle of the summer. But no. I went to seven different stores, and found no aqua socks that fit at a price that I was willing to pay.
The reason, of course, is because of the way retail works. “Spring” starts December 26, and runs to roughly Easter. Then “summer” runs from around Easter to the Fourth of July. Then “fall” goes until around Labor Day or so. Then “winter” runs from Labor Day to Christmas. Thus now, on July 19, the aqua socks are mostly gone, and the stock of sandals is dwindling.
So why am I so worked up about finding a pair of aqua socks? Well, I’m going tubing on the Shenandoah River in Luray next weekend with a bunch of my coworkers, and the Web site for Shenandoah River Outfitters, the company we’re going through for this tube trip, recommends that shoes be worn on the river for safety purposes. Makes perfect sense to me – there could be rough bottom terrain, sharp rocks, or other kinds of hazardous debris, and I don’t want to get hurt on the river. Even more so when you consider that I’m one of the drivers for this outing, and thus my feet will be doing a bit of work beyond the river, and injured feet on the pedals is a Bad Thing.
Categories: Retail, Shoes, Video games
“The color coded alert system was security theater at its best, and blatant fearmongering at its worst.”
2 minute read
July 16, 2009, 9:45 PM
So said “BFS” in the Express. And for those of you who have been following this site, “BFS” is me, as I usually post comments for Express using my initials. And my comment got published again, as seen at right in this excerpt from page 28 (56 in the PDF file) of Express.
According to an article on page 4 of the July 15 edition, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has “appointed a task force to determine in 60 days how effective the current system is.” The idea is to either overhaul it or do away with it entirely.
I’m surprised that they’re even appointing a task force for it. I’d just ditch the thing outright. After all, if you step back, what did the terror alert system do? It was propaganda. It told people when to be scared, and what to be scared of. And it was no secret that the system was used by the Bush administration to score political points. Every time they wanted you to be scared, they just looked into the camera, and said…
It’s “orange”! Oh, no! Grab your duct tape and plastic sheeting and head for the hills!
And looking at the history of threat level changes, it seems to prove that the Bush administration wanted you to be scared at times that were advantageous to them. What officially tipped me off is when they raised the threat level to “orange” at the beginning of the Iraq War, and left it there until just after they took Saddam Hussein down. They worked long and hard to make you scared of Iraq, and so when they went in and invaded an unarmed nation, they wanted to make doubly sure that you would be fearing the terror boogeyman. Apparently, wetting your pants was patriotic, and if you didn’t wet your pants, the terrorists would win.
And once people stopped paying attention to the terror alert scale, Homeland Security stopped using it, as we never saw an alert above “yellow” nationally after August 2005. And we never saw a “green” or even a “blue” threat level. You’d think that they would have dipped it down into “blue” a time or two just to make the public think that they were doing a good job. After all, if you’re going to manipulate it to make people scared, you might as well manipulate it to make the people think you’re doing something right (even if you aren’t). But instead, the two bottom levels were simply decorative.
So in the end, I think that the Homeland Security task force will scrap the alert level system entirely. Its main purpose is to make people afraid of things they can’t do anything about. And you know what they say – why worry about a problem you can’t solve? Like I said in the comment, it’s security theater at best, and blatant fearmongering at its worst.
Categories: National politics, News
This raid was a small one, yes, but it was still plenty of fun…
5 minute read
July 13, 2009, 8:44 PM
I don’t know what it is, but it seems that there’s something about July that makes for low turnout at raids. Last year’s July raid, Spy vs. Sci, also generated a small turnout, though that was attributable to the diversion of much energy from the global raid to the Over 9000 Anon March, which was being held the following weekend. This time, though… who knows.
The theme for the July raid was supposed to be “Tiny Tyrants”, referring to Religious Technology Center head David Miscavige, whom newspapers recently reported as having a tendency to use violence as a means of managing people, and who is somewhat short in stature, measuring a mere 5’5″ – somewhat short as American men go. However, in practice, that idea got thrown out the window, and we just did a general anti-Scientology raid. After all, in the year and a half that we’ve been doing this, we’ve generated a fair amount of signage, and these once again were put to good use.
Meanwhile, I did my own costume a bit differently this time around. As you may know, I usually wear a zentai to raids during the summer months. This one was no exception, but surprise – I had a new zentai this time around. Usually, I wear a black zentai with eye holes in the hood. This new one was bright green, and is more pure in its form, containing a completely blank face – no eye holes. That caused a considerable limitation in my vision, but it definitely made for a new and different raid experience. And I’d practiced ahead of time, walking around the house with the hood up, so I wouldn’t look like a complete fool navigating the sidewalks around the Org with spandex over my eyes. Yes, you can see through the zentai’s hood, but only mildly well. I’ll have to take a photo from inside the hood some time so you can see what I mean.
Categories: Project Chanology
“Will play for tuition”?
3 minute read
July 10, 2009, 6:14 AM
You know, one thing I love about Dupont Circle is that you never know what you’ll see coming to/from the Metro. Today, coming back from the Metro, I ran into this scene:
Categories: Washington DC, WMATA
So what ever happened to the DNA evidence?
2 minute read
July 8, 2009, 8:45 PM
For the past four days, I’ve been having a little fun with my Facebook friends. I’ve been posting status messages with the phrase “DNA evidence” in it without any explanation, and seeing what kind of responses I get. I chose “DNA evidence” as a phrase as a tribute to the use of DNA evidence as a running joke in six consecutive Strong Bad Emails on Homestar Runner. Then it was all explained in the cartoon DNA Evidence.
All together, I posted four “DNA evidence” status messages:
Ben Schumin is going to have that DNA evidence on the desk by nine!
Ben Schumin is not going to make the 51 bus tonight. The DNA evidence pointed to it.
Ben Schumin wonders what happened to the DNA evidence.
Ben Schumin *sigh*… DNA evidence.
Categories: Amusing, Homestar Runner, Social media
First time bowling in almost seven years…
3 minute read
July 5, 2009, 9:38 AM
So I went bowling for the first time in seven years on Friday with Matthew Tilley at Bowl America in Sterling, and we had FUN. We each bowled three games. Matthew, who used to bowl in a bowling league, scored way better than me, but that wasn’t the point. The point was having fun.
However, “fun” required having the correct ball. I know I use a 16-pound bowling ball, but the fingering was wrong on the first ball I picked up, and after hitting zero pins my first two frames, I realized that I couldn’t be that bad – it had to be the ball. So it was back to the ball racks for me, and I found a different ball. With a different ball, my game greatly improved immediately. Thus it was the ball.
We also came up with fun train names to put into the scoring system. I was Breda 3287AC, and Matthew was Rohr 1299.
In playing the three games, you could tell that I was getting back into it slowly but surely. At the end of the first game, my score was pretty bad, like 50-something. Then on the second game, I did a little better, knocking down a few spares, and then in the last game, I finally nailed a strike (yaaaaay!), though I still didn’t break 100.
Categories: Matthew, Recreation/Exercise
I saw this picture, and…
6 minute read
July 2, 2009, 9:32 PM
I saw this picture on the front page of the Express on my way to work this morning, and it scared the heck out of me at first:
Photo: Kichiro Sato/AP