Nothing too exciting has been going on with me lately.

I lost the bet and was the first one out. I lasted a week. In the end, I gave up because I had to get some work done. I procrastinate so badly in everything that I can find anything to distract me. I was avoiding writing an article and all I could think about was sex, so I gave in. I guess the cheap bastard is not as powerful as my "natural urges"

I saw the fireworks on the Mall for the 4th. It was really nice. There were no gaps between fireworks, they were one after the other. I especially liked one where it looked like a normal firework but sparkly. Once it explodes, each dot of light, then swirls creating this really cool effect. It looks like a dandelion when they have gone to see. My favorites are still plain and simple ones that are really really big. I have to admit though, the noise still makes me jump a little. When I was younger, I had to plug my ears the whole time because I couldn't take the loud noise. The tortures of being a sensitive guy.

Interesting sighting. Today when I got out of work, I was walking from my building past the West Wing of the White House and there is this guy standing alone across the street. He looks sort of familiar but I don't say anything. The exit we usually leave was locked so we had to tur around and go the other way. We passed him again and my boss whispers to me: that is Karl Rove. It was pretty cool. He was getting into his Jaguar at the time. It was neat being that close to him and being able to just walk up to him and say hi if I wanted to. I know I am a poli-sci nerd and normal people don't know/care who he is (here is a bio from the Left one from the Middle and one scary Rove Website from the Right *note these were just the first few things that came up in a google search, I scanned them but I have no idea if they are the best sources), but I am and that is why I am in DC and working in the "White House" (at least next to it).

In continuing with how I am a poli-sci nerd and my obsession with political porn, here is my latest installment.



This was at the Drudge Report under the headline: "Kerry Picks Mate"

That is all. I'm sad that I missed Ben Folds, the Goo Goo Dolls and Ani. It sucks that I am missing the Taste of B-lo this weekend too. I will just have to break out some Salen's hot dogs from the five pound bag in my freezer that I brought back with me.

In honor of the reinvigoration of election year porn, here is a classic from the 2000 race. If you know me, you already know what it is and what sound is to be made in conjuction with its viewing. Here it is. Enjoy!

• obnoxious slurping/sucking sound

I want to apologize in advance for this post. I am kind of in a cranky mood so if I snap at you, I don't mean it.

I would just like to start off by saying, the NY Times reporters are the most self-righteous full-of-themselves assholes ever. This fucker calls the office this morning and whenever a reporter calls I have to tell my press secretary what he is calling about so he can be sure he has the info he needs to respond near him. When I answer he gives me his name and that he is from the New York Times. I ask him if our press secretary knows why he is calling (most reporters get the hint that I want to know what topic it is on). He says "no." I then ask him, what are you calling about? He answers me, "I'm writing an article (no fucking shit sherlock, you are a reporter and you are calling a communications office, that is pretty much the only reason our office exists). I then ask him, "What is the article about?" He proceeds to tell me in the most condescending I'm-from-the-New-York-Times-you-know-the-greatest-and-most-important-newspaper-out-there-we-only-print-"all-the-news-that's-fit-to-print" tone of voice, "It is a very complicated issue, and I don't want to have to explain it twice" I just wanted to tell him off. Fuck him. He is a reporter, his job is to make complicated issues simple so that people can understand them. Plus, I work there. I know what reporters are asking about. I talk to 30 a day. I was not looking for a goddamn essay, just a simple - "its about Iraq funding" or "its about the Midsession review" I don't really care what you ask about, it is my boss who wants to know. I won't be answering your question. I just went in and told my press secretary that I wouldn't be able to understand the issue so I don't know what he wants.

To continue on my bitchyness, [inlink]holly,68[/inlink] I don't mean to be a nitpicker, but the states created the federal government, it wasn't the other way around. I know that is not the point of the entry and I apologize for being such an asshole. It is just one of those pet peeves.

Speaking of things that are annoying me. I have another article due for my friend's website (see my shameless selfpromotion). I know what I want to write it on, but I don't feel like doing it because NOONE reads them. It is understandable because we realy haven't done any advertising for the site and everyone is home for the summer, but it just frustrates me when I put the effort in only to get a total of 3 responses that aren't me from the 3 articles I have written. It is also frustrating to check the views count and see it at 13 and you know 4 of those are you. And when other articles get responses but yours don't. I don't know it is just disheartening.

Ok on to other things, I am sure you are tired of hearing me bitch and I am sorry I am such a downer today.

Here is a well written article on the gay marriage amendment outing controversy from the Washington Post. I am probably going to have to agree with the general sentiment that they shouldn't out gay conservatives. I guess the arguement comes down to does the end justify the means. Call me an idealist, but I don't really think it or anything does. What good are the principles you hold if you are willing to violate them. You aren't really principled anymore. There is some quote that my mom has on our fridge at home about what good is it if you become as evil as the evil you are seeking to destroy. That is enough of the preaching. Here is the article:


Capitol Hill Insiders Irked By Campaign To 'Out' Them

By Rebecca Dana and Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 15, 2004; Page C01

The phone kept ringing in one Capitol Hill office -- hourly, daily, all leading up to yesterday's Senate vote on the constitutional amendm
en
t to ban gay marriage. Mike Rogers was on the line again. He knew something very personal about the press secretary of a Republican House member who supports the amendment, and he wanted to tell someone, preferably someone high-ranking, that the man is gay. Rogers cannot understand this. How can someone help articulate the opposition to homosexual unions when he himself is homosexual?

Rogers, a 40-year-old Washington fundraising consultant, has waged a controversial "outing" campaign in the month leading up to yesterday's vote. He sent out more 10,000 e-mails encouraging and perpetrating outings. He handed out fliers at the gay pride parade in June, asking people to send in names of gay Hill staffers working for senators and representatives who supported the Federal Marriage Amendment. He created a Web log last week listing some of those names.

He made phone calls, day and night, to the offices and homes of these staffers. His message: How dare you?

Rogers's campaign has caused a stir throughout the capital, rallying some gay-rights advocates and horrifying others, for demanding that people who are gay and Republican to defend themselves. Rogers says he plans to continue his campaign despite yesterday's vote -- the amendment was defeated 50-48 but probably will be taken up by the House this fall -- and he will tack on a "fidelity pledge" to expose members of Congress who promote "family values" but have extramarital affairs.

Openly gay since 1986, Rogers views the marriage amendment as a "very personal" hit. Everything he says on the topic ends with an exclamation point. There is "the conspiracy," he fires, "on Capitol Hill!" And "the hypocrisy," he can't believe, "among gay staffers!" He is riled up, energized and organized, using "sources" around the District to identify and expose the homosexuals on the Hill who, he believes, are abetting discrimination aimed at themselves.

"This is the big cheese!" he says. "We are under attack! Gays and lesbians are under attack! It's amazing to me that people don't get that! So what are we going to do? Protect these gay staffers who have influence on policy matters while their bosses spew hate and bigotry?"

No, says John Aravosis, national co-chairman of the activist Web site DearMary.com -- which last week ran an ad in the Washington Blade, the gay weekly newspaper, that read: "For Years Our Silence Has Protected You. Today That Protection Ends." And the Blade itself has published back-to-back front-page stories on the outing campaign, naming senior staffers and two elected officials -- one congressman, one senator -- whose names have been circulating on the Web and in other gay publications.

In an editorial on July 2, the Blade's executive editor, Chris Crain, wrote: "It is 2004, not 1954, and sexual orientation in and of itself is no longer a 'private fact' beyond the pale of inquiry." The Blade, he wrote, "would investigate and report about whether influential Hill aides are gay if facts about their sexual orientation raise highly newsworthy questions of hypocrisy in the stands taken by anti-gay members of Congress for whom they work."

Crain, in a phone interview, explains his controversial position: "The more these staffers are personally responsible for policies that challenge the basic civil rights of gay people, the more it's our responsibility, as a gay newspaper, to ask them how they justify those positions considering that they're gay."

Rogers, Aravosis and Crain inherited strategic outing as a tactic from the 1980s and 1990s, when several congressmen announced their homosexuality under pressure from others. Republican Steve Gunderson, a former Wisconsin lawmaker, came out in 1994 after threats from both gay-rights activists and House conservatives. In response to a political ad in the Blade and the rumor of a story in the gay magazine the Ad
vocate
, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) came out in 1996 after voting in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

"The whole outing campaign makes me a little uncomfortable, but I still think it's the right thing to do," says Aravosis, a 40-year-old political consultant. "A line has been crossed. When you talk about amending the Constitution to make me a second-class citizen based on my personal relationship, then you've crossed a line of decency."

Gay organizations on the Hill -- the newly formed Gay, Lesbian & Allies U.S. Senate Staff Caucus and the 10-year-old Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association -- oppose Rogers's tactics, as do the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay conservatives that has offered counsel to the targets of Rogers's outings, and the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay-rights advocacy group.

Lynden Armstrong started working for Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) in 1995, and came out in the office two years later. As administrative director, he manages the senator's five offices -- four in New Mexico, one in Washington. He is a Republican. Being gay, he says, has not been an issue at work. He considers Rogers's campaign a "personal attack" on gay staffers "who haven't gotten to the point, emotionally and psychologically, that they feel that they can come out at work."

"That is a personal decision," says Armstrong, 32, sitting in the office with Fox News playing in the background. A native of Fort Sumner, N.M., now living in the District and co-chairing the nonpartisan Senate Staff Caucus, he declines to comment on whether he supports the marriage amendment. His boss voted for it. "I have to keep in mind that the senator has nothing personal against me or the gay community. He is having to do what he is elected to do -- represent his constituents. And New Mexicans, if you look at the polls, are overwhelmingly supportive of the amendment."

His beef with the Rogers campaign: "What a lot of people don't realize in this whole outing campaign, and one of the bigger problems I have with it, is they're outing people who aren't in the place in their life where they're ready for that to happen. Besides, is outing a staff member going to really affect a senator's or a representative's vote? Is it going to change anyone's position?"

Victor Castillo, a Democrat, has worked on the Hill for 11 years, first for a congressman from San Diego and now as a senior legislative assistant for Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.). Castillo is on the executive committee of the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association. He opposes both the marriage amendment and Rogers's campaign. "What purpose does it serve? It's misdirected. If anything, his campaign pushes people further into the closet."

The press secretary Rogers has threatened to out, one of more than a dozen staffers he has approached, has been open about his homosexuality for years -- to his family, his friends and his co-workers. For even longer, he has been out as a Republican to the same people, which might be an even more daunting position, especially now. He supports, or more accurately doesn't oppose, the marriage amendment, because if calling homosexual unions " 'marriage' is going to upset the fabric of civil society, to me, it ain't that important."

Friends don't understand this, he says. They don't see how the 38-year-old press secretary, who declined to be named at the request of his boss, feels no inner conflict between his job and his sexuality. This gay man is not torn about the marriage amendment. Like others whom Rogers has targeted, he is the opposite of torn.

"The irony of all of this is that the people who should be among the most tolerant when the tables are turned are those who are the first to condemn and judge," he says. "Often the gay platform is one of accepting every X, Y
and Z. Gue
ss what? That hasn't been my life experience. I have more in common with [my Republican colleagues] than I do with any person off the street that happens to be of similar sexual orientation."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

I guess that is all for now. To all my friends who are going on vaca, enjoy. I can't wait until you visit Jill. Less than a week left than we shall party hearty. Wooo Woooo. Take care of yourselves and sorry I was so cranky, none of it was personal (unless you are a fucker from the NYT) Bye

My Roommates and I currently have a bet going on abstaining from selfpleasure. The first two to break down have to put in $5 to our "party fund." Unlike some bets, this is not total abstinence from sex, just self pleasure. You can do whatever you want as long as it is with someone else, and you aren't paying them. (Not that that will help me). It will be interesting. The bet started last saturday and we are all still in. Everyone has me going out first, but hopefully the cheap bastard in me can overrule my urges.

On to other sex/relationship talk, I have to give props to teres "beast" on her comments and the discussion it sparked. It has been really interesting reading everyone's views on that crazy little thing called love (whether physical or emotional). I really enjoyed your response MK. That is all I am going to say about that here.

On to Kenmore cops. My favorite Kenmore cop story is one time when I was hanging out in front of Kenmore West and a fight started and at least two Kenmore Police cars got there way before the school security guards came even close to it. The joys of suburbia.

That is all for now. I am procrastinating on writing an article for Intellectual Wastebasket. I really should do that. Maybe I will or maybe I will just go to sleep. Stay out of trouble, and for all those looking for a good time - no glove. no love.

Due to my early mornings, I have to catch a 5:52 bus at the end of my street. IT sucks waking up that early but I've addressed that previously. Riding that bus is very bizarre because it is not like there are people on the bus who just missed the bus before it and normal people don't wake up that early just to go somewhere. The people on that bus are there because they have to be on that specific bus. As a result, It is the same people on the bus every day. On top of that, everyone sits in the same seats every day- myself included. And noone says anything to anyone else. It is just very eerie getting on that every morning. It is kind of like the movie groundhog day except that I am not changing, but embracing the pattern. This brings up the topic of humans and patterns. Once people start doing something someway, it seems like they keep doing it that way until they can't. Take for example sitting in seats at a class. Most people will sit in the same seat week after week- even if there are no assigned seats and even when they become friends with someone else in the class. They just keep sitting in the same seat because that is where they always have sat. It is just interesting, especially when it is so pronounced as in my morning bus ride. Just a thought.

Today was not the best of days. First off, I woke up at 3:30 from a really scary dream. There was a huge thunder storm and it was the end of the world (I've been sacred of the end of the world since I saw a movie about the Rapture (simply put when God beams up all the christians before the world ends) in the fourth grade, but that is a whole other entry). When I woke up I was all paranoid. To make it worse, we rarely lock our apartment doors both to our patio (we are on the first floor but it is raise but you can still climb up into it) and our door too the hall (all the people in our building go to AU because the university leases it and plus it is not even a quarter full for the summer). So then I started geting wierded out about that. I had to force myself back to sleep cause I had to get up in another hour cause I am working the early shift this week (I have to be AT work at 6:30 AM).

When I left for work, I was half way down the street to the bus stop when I realized I had forgot my glasses and I had forgot to put on cologne (I am paranoid about smelling bad).

When I got to work things seemed to be going well as I got the news summary done before my boss got into work. But when my supervisor got in, I was chastized for not answering the phone fast enough. She was very nice about it, but it still was a kick in the balls. I don't answer it fast because sometimes she knows it is for her and gets it, so I would wait a second to see if she gets it before I do. I also wasn't quick to answer the phone because I dislike talking on the phone to people I don't know. See previous entry [inlink]jessbob,3[/inlink].

Then, while reading the washington post online, I found an article that I had failed to put in the news summary that specifically mentioned OMB. While scanning it I didn't notice because the first part was about the torture memo, but it turned out to be about all the memos that have been leaked by the administration- Including an OMB memo. I was force to email the article out to all my bosses apologizing for missing it. It was thoroughly embarassing. My supervisor tried to make me feel better by saying "good job catching it." I then pointed out the fact that my own incompetence is the reason for sending out the email. I"m glad my supervisor is nice about things even when I am the moron.

In response to Beast's IMs, I"m fine, just lazy. That's why I haven't changed my away message. Don't worry.

That is all for now. I have to go to bed so I can wake up at 4:30 tomorrow morning. Wooo Hooo.