(no subject)
Oh my goodness what a fabulous weekend! Friday afternoon, Amal, Nootan, and I drove down to Washington, DC, for the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear). Amal has cousins who live in Virginia right next to a Metro station, and they let us stay there so it was pretty awesome. Saturday we went into the city, and it's lucky we left when we did, because we barely made it onto a train and at all the stations after us, no one could get on. Apparently at the station near the Mall later in the day there was an escalator accident, and four people went to the hospital! A down escalator, which I have always mistrusted.
Anyway, the rally itself was pretty awesome. I would highly recommend watching it, I think it's on the Comedy Central website? It was a lot of fun, and the serious speech that Jon Stewart made at the end was quite excellent. Except there was one part where he mentioned telling "real racists" from Tea Partiers, which, I think it's one thing to say that you shouldn't equate Tea Party with racism, and another to raise the question of what equals a "real racist." Like, do you have to walk around punching all the people of color you see and using racial slurs? Or enthusiastically support a movement which is largely based on promoting fairly explicitly racist policies? Or be a participant in the racist society in which we live? So yeah, I guess I did have a quibble with the specific language used in the instance, but the spirit of it was very "Hey guys, let's work together and try not to spew hate at each other!" which obviously I can get behind. Nice job, Jon Stewart! Also the song he and Colbert sang together was amaaaaazing if you watch nothing else from the rally you should check that out.
Afterwards, we wandered the crowded streets to get lunch, which turned into dinner because there were so many people that we were in line for over an hour. Never has a sandwich tasted so good. Then we spent the next couple of hours doing the loop of memorials, starting with Washington, then to Jefferson, FDR, Korean War, and ending with Lincoln. This was at night, so they were all absurdly beautiful. Sadly my camera is pretty crap at night, and pictures didn't turn out too well. But it was a fantastic evening. It was good times, because Nootan and Amal are government nerds and I am one for US history, so we were all very enthusiastic.
Then today we left at 6 am and drove home, and here we are. And I should probably start writing one of the papers that is due this week.
Also when we got back to the apartment last night we watched Thursday's episode of Community and how much Troy/Abed would I like? ALL OF THE TROY/ABED.
Anyway, the rally itself was pretty awesome. I would highly recommend watching it, I think it's on the Comedy Central website? It was a lot of fun, and the serious speech that Jon Stewart made at the end was quite excellent. Except there was one part where he mentioned telling "real racists" from Tea Partiers, which, I think it's one thing to say that you shouldn't equate Tea Party with racism, and another to raise the question of what equals a "real racist." Like, do you have to walk around punching all the people of color you see and using racial slurs? Or enthusiastically support a movement which is largely based on promoting fairly explicitly racist policies? Or be a participant in the racist society in which we live? So yeah, I guess I did have a quibble with the specific language used in the instance, but the spirit of it was very "Hey guys, let's work together and try not to spew hate at each other!" which obviously I can get behind. Nice job, Jon Stewart! Also the song he and Colbert sang together was amaaaaazing if you watch nothing else from the rally you should check that out.
Afterwards, we wandered the crowded streets to get lunch, which turned into dinner because there were so many people that we were in line for over an hour. Never has a sandwich tasted so good. Then we spent the next couple of hours doing the loop of memorials, starting with Washington, then to Jefferson, FDR, Korean War, and ending with Lincoln. This was at night, so they were all absurdly beautiful. Sadly my camera is pretty crap at night, and pictures didn't turn out too well. But it was a fantastic evening. It was good times, because Nootan and Amal are government nerds and I am one for US history, so we were all very enthusiastic.
Then today we left at 6 am and drove home, and here we are. And I should probably start writing one of the papers that is due this week.
Also when we got back to the apartment last night we watched Thursday's episode of Community and how much Troy/Abed would I like? ALL OF THE TROY/ABED.