My monument is more unique!

I run now, and my route takes me down to the mall. Not the Texarkana Central Mall, which will cease to exist on January 25, 2032, when Jesus appears, but the National Mall. As of today, I am going to keep statistics of how many men I see while I'm running who are taking photos of the Washington Monument as their penises. Tally as of today: one. Not this guy:

or this guy:

or even this guy:

but like these guys, all of whom I found in the totally safe Google image search for "Washington Monument Penis." Apologies for not taking my own pic. I was running and didn't have my dispatching equipment with me. Though he did. Ba da bing!

Um, no thanks. Think I'll skip that party.

Seen today on K St, a "party wagon":

A man (guessing on the gender) who refers to his van as a "party wagon" comes across to me as a teenager or a creepy (possibly impotent) perv.  Maybe of the pedo variety.  Guessing again, but this isn't a teen (unlikely to pay for vanity plates).  Or a pedo (too many windows).  But, ew.

Aren't you glad Urine DC?

I've been in DC over 2 years now and thought I was past comparing it to NY. But, two things brought NY to mind recently. First, the folks taking art pix (in pig mask!) in front of the street art down the street. My pic of their pic of the art (plus pig!) was so meta it felt more NY than DC.


Second, I just had to pop into a downtown Metro station to reload my transit card. Since I'm within walking distance (or a quick bus or cab ride) to work and most places I tend to go, I don't ride the metro all that often. So I may be speaking naively when I say the metro here is more comfortable and smells better than nyc's subway. But, today? Overwhelming odor of urine. Not quite on par with what I remember of august in ny (despite my best efforts to bury those scent memories), but it is, after all, only early spring.


UPDATE:  ok, it's not a pig. It would be better if it were a pig.  For a better (non-cellphone) pic of the street art behind them, go here.

Coffee Klatch

The bagel place down the street from the office wants to pre-sell its 2011 coffee club cards.  Gingie co-worker noticed this sign they put up:

(photo by disgruntled co-worker)

I'm not sure why, but I started to picture the shape of things to come:  Dec. 31, my 2010 coffee card at its climax, and I'll have a hole that will need filling.  And Jan 1, with no more member-ship, my wallet will get the shaft!  I'll need a hard, fast deal.

Ain't no party like a Glenn Beck party

Glenn Beck came to Washington, DC Saturday.  Obvs, I had to go and take pictures.  We parked near GW and walked down to the mall, passing all sorts of bumper-stickered and messaged cars, including one with a discarded jeans diaper next to it:

Got to the mall and saw what I expected.  Oodles of red, white, and blue and flags a plenty:

And Reagan fetishists:

And statements that I'm/We're "not racist":

And patriotic Christians:

And, bringing, one could say, a bit of Texarkana to our nation's capitol, Christians carrying 8-foot crosses:

And a hungry Satan pregnant with Glenn Beck's child:

As I said.  Just what I was expecting.  So to speak.

Walked back towards GW and the car, where I saw t-shirts whose messages were a bit more familiar:

There were more pictures than I could/should put in this post.  If you want to see more of the pictures I took today, see the album at the Texarkana Dispatch on Facebook.

Don't Mess with the Lamar Woman's Club (or my brother)

To continue some catch up, here are some pix from my trip to Texas last month.  Loved this hand-lettered sign near the Goose Island, TX wild bird sanctuary:

Those Lamar Woman's Club women will cut a bitch.  I was there because I had followed the signs to the "Big Tree":

No, none of those trees are the big one.  The sign is actually next to the 5 parking spaces by the street.  The Big Tree is a short walk down a path:

So, if one is caught in Texas, say on a hunting trip, with nary a big tree in sight, one may need to use this Big Hunting Toilet fashioned by my brother:

Everything's crazier bigger in Texas!

I'm a Total Beavis Edition

Can't beat (so to speak) this headline from One News Now, the christian news website:

Bonus, somewhat related, KY jelly photo:

An "ad" I made 15 years (!) ago for an advertising class in college.  Concept -- to modernize a product of our choice -- by me and my bud Jeff, using a photo taken by friend Simon.  

Healthy Edition

The P6 wasn't too crowded.  At least one person per row, but it wasn't a packed bus.  The person behind me is giving off just a little underarm odor, but only a little.  I'm sitting there thinking, it's not so bad, it could be worse, some kind of baby powder overkill layered on top of under-breast sweat and unwashed hair.  And then I look down and see this lovely bit of personal grooming detritus:

And a close up:

Mmmm, yellow!  After taking the photos, I look up to get my bearings, see if I'm at my stop.  And there, above, I see this decrepit poster:

Next stop, healthy living!  I said, NEXT STOP, please!

Not thinking it through Edition

Unfortunate pedo-orgy window sign at the Zara store on F St:
  

In all fairness, the photo's cropped.  But still.

.

Horsesh@$&t Edition

Busy day at office.  Didn't have much time to take photos to dispatch evidence of the anti-abortion march in town today for Roe v Wade's b-day.  But did take this lovely aftermath one.  Enjoy.

Child Beauty Pageant Glitz Photo ME! Edition

The most visited post on this dispatch -- by far -- is the child beauty pageant post.  Seriously, I get more visitors from google searches to that post than to all the others combined. (Including from some creepy perv-type search terms.) 

So to feed the needs of those who can't get enough of the glitz and glamour of child beauty pageants, and to honor the horror that is the pageant aesthetic, I decided to transform myself to see what would result.

I did some quickie online research of pageant photoshop shops specializing in child beauty pageants.  I ultimately went with what seemed the glitziest.  I emailed and asked what was needed for a full-glitz retouch.  (Can you tell "glitz" is a term of art in that world?)

After the first photo I sent was rejected for being too blurry, I sent a snapshot taken of me in full-on boring-government-employee mode: no makeup, flat hair, plain sweater, blemishes, nicotine-stained teeth, no jewelry, against a white wall:

(photo by Hemsley)

In only a few weeks (even with the holidays) and for only a few bucks, I got back this:

retouching copyright of Foto4Good.

The retoucher says "you glow in the photo."  Indeed!  I glow and sparkle, and I've lost a chin, and gained bric-a-brac and diamonds, and have doll eyes and perfect teeth and  . . . omg.  No more words.

Secret word edition

For my first iPhone blog post, I ask you: what's today's CalTort
secret word? Vomit!

Fancy Edition

I am rectifying a true failing of these dispatches: not enough vomit.  In fact, no vomit whatsoever.  Until now. 


So, for the first time, these dispatches are employing those fancy "click for more"-type jumps, so as to protect those of gentler sensibilities from vomit pictures.  So clicky-click-click for more, those of you with hardier constitutions.  

Glamorous Edition

No. I wasn't in the hospital today. But I was in a dressing room at Macy's in Pentagon City. Apparently after a woman who left the hospital thinking, "I think I want to go shopping."

Institutionalized Edition

This is my new boyfriend: a wax model of a man with really bad rosacea. With a pipe. He lives at the National Museum of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. One of the more interesting tidbits in the museum was the sign explaining the source of the fetuses in formaldehyde in the fetus exhibit:

To the best of the museum staff's knowledge, all of the anatomical specimens used in the exhibit were the result of conditions that prevented the survival of the embryo or fetus. Others were stillborn because of complications during pregnancy or were the result of medically necessary operations.

Translation: no abortions here! Here's a picture of some deformed fetuses (to the left, you jokers):

The Walter Reed campus had the same feeling as the St. Elizabeths Hospital campus, where John Hinckley, Jr. lives. Both feature lovely, though institutional architecture. A Dispatch special operative took me on a tour of St. E's a while back. Reagan's would-be assassin lives in the room at the top left of the photo below:

I think that's enough grainy cellphone photos for one post.

Brains from Humans Edition

I've witnessed a whole bunch of crazy this weekend. First, there was the guy flailing his arms on the street corner and screaming to the world that he holds his privates on the right side. Then, I saw this 2-sided note attached to a bus stop downtown. A bit hard to follow, but I think it is protesting the ironic mistreatment of NASA's kidnapping and harvesting of "organs, including brains from humans":

I agree. No stealing organs from the living, NASA!

Machete Edition

I finally figured out how to use the SD card slot on my new computer and uploaded some pix from my camera. And I realized I had two entirely separate machete-related photo albums.

Here's a picture I took last month of the flagpole at the massacre site in Goliad, TX.

Under the Texas flag is the Goliad, or Texas Independence, flag, circa 1835. That's right. It's a blood red arm holding a bloody machete, because the Texians would rather cut off their arms than be subjects of Mexico. Didn't work out too well. It is a massacre site, after all.

And, entirely unrelated, but for the machete, is this photo I took down the street from my place in DC this summer:

Wtf is anyone doing clearing brush with a machete in downtown DC? But, who am I to say anything? One, he has a machete. Two, I bought the $3 polyester version of the Goliad flag at the massacre site gift shop and have it hanging in my office. I guess I just can't help it. I have the Texas Independence Trail in my blood.

Rodent Edition

Bear with me. This is a multi-part story.

Part 1: Yesterday, I hailed a cab to go home after shopping at Whole Foods. My cab driver was a big guy, probably over 400 lbs, so his driver's seat was pushed very far back into the back seat to fit in there. It was easy to look at him while he talked to me. When I gave him my address he asked why I was shopping at Whole Foods when a new Safeway grocery store had opened on my block. I told him I wanted to get some things they don't have at the Safeway.

The cab driver said, "You must have a more sophisticated palate than I do." He went on to describe how, when he was growing up, the only cheese he ever had was Velveeta. He told me how little the Velveeta cost back then (I forget the amount) and how his mother made Velveeta mac-n-cheez, Velveeta sandwiches, and Velveeta on top of spaghetti with a sauce of Campbell's tomato soup and 1 lb of ground beef at $0.39/lb. He told me he had never had any other kind of sauce growing up but that his wife made him promise to never make it. He sounded wistful.

About a block from my building, for some reason, the cab driver started telling me about eating squirrels as a child. They'd bake them for dinner and then eat the squirrel brains the next day at breakfast. Then I was home. I gave him a big tip, went upstairs, and was blissfully distracted from thoughts of squirrel brains and Velveeta by talking with a friend while eating my Bali turkey burger, asparagus, and corn fritter.

Part 2: At work today, coming back from a cig break, I was in the elevator with a guy I don't know. Out of the blue, and in total violation of well-established stranger-in-elevator etiquette, he says, "I wish they'd make May 14th National Chipmunk Day." I don't know why, but probably because my friend Carrie has shared with me her obsession with prairie dogs, I responded, "Why not prairie dogs? Why chipmunks?" To which the elevator man replied, "They're tasty."

Wtf. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go cook up some beaver.

Abstinence Edition

I picked up these bracelets at the teen abstinence booth at a Texarkana street fair:


I know they're hard to read, but the pink (presumably the girl's) says "Worth Waiting For" and the blue (presumably the boy's) says "A Man's Strength is in his Character." The parallelist and reductionist in me was troubled by the message that a man's value is in character and a woman's is in va-jay-jay. But, after learning that Merriam-Webster defines "character" as not just "moral excellence," but also "firmness," I see the connection.
Anyway, the bracelets inspired me this evening to create an abstinence tableau, with bracelets, Marilyn Chambers-autographed Behind the Green Door, and Japanese-import-Hello Kitty vibrator:
My kind of abstinence!

Klan Architecture Edition

This is the old Kline Bakery Building one block down from my place in downtown Texarkana. They gutted the long-abandoned building a few months back, but kept the 3 Ks on the facade. Given the date of the building -- back to the heyday of the Klan -- the part of the country this is, and the longevity of the facade, I can't believe the KKK is accidental.

Love from the trenches,

Jess

ps: check out this wonderful Baby Jesus post over at Princess Sparkle Pony.