I've even raped and killed a mountain panda in the hills of Shaanxi.

The Ex-Millennial Girl blog is a compelling read. A woman about my age left her small town in Florida in 1999 to strip with her best friend in NYC, and they become addicted to opium. And she's good at remembering all the little details and it's just fascinating reading. Plus she's hilarious.  "All of [the Canadian] candy bars are like, violently named. Like ‘Punch in the Face’ or ‘Rip Your Mouth Out’ or something."

I also just read On the Take by a UW sociology professor. It was written in the early 70s and it focuses on the crime syndicates and networks in Seattle, but as the author points out can be generalized to any city in the world. But because it is Seattle it was especially fascinating for me. Before they outlawed "cardrooms" for good, the city had gambling stamps (for permission to gamble on premises) second only to Vegas back then. Also as I had just seen Serpico I had the taste for corrupt cops already.

Seattle sounds a lot more interesting and dangerous back then, but the author's point is that just because the big distribution network of graft was eliminated doesn't mean shit ain't still goin' down. He also describes a conversation another reporter overheard from LBJ back in the day, which demonstrated that Johnson could conceivably have been implicated in something that would have made Watergate look like a cakewalk. Good stuff.

Originally posted on herbaliser.vox.com

the best thing about seeing Borat last night was laughing loudly at the parts that made most Seattleites quietly cringing.

good things about working in the columbia tower:

view - even on a day like today, you can see stuff. Not the mountain obviously but the waterfront and I-5.

elevators - Reg called me, peeved because he was waiting in a tow zone for me to get in his car already, and I got down so fast that he was blindsided. Figuratively.

exercise - who needs a fucking gym when I can just go up and down Columbia or Marion?

food - there are like 20 million delis and "fast food" type places around here. I can have a sandwich, or a burrito, or some tandoori chicken and naan. A Tully's right below, too.

culture - the library is right over there, mang. And the pretty Methodist church. And Contour is right by my bus stop, if I'm not broke and/or hungover.

I think self-tanners have got to be the most retarded thing ever, but this is because I live in Seattle. I still think tan legs look nicer than pale ones, but when I saw everyone in Mexico sunburnt or leathery it really hit home how gross tanning really is. If only the movie industry had taken off in England instead of Hollywood. (I'm not saying darker skin is automatically bad, but it's pretty obvious when it's bad for you.)

"So there's this thing I was thinking about, I was getting really into my mind, and - did you know if you pulled out the RAID key it fucks up the entire controller?"

"Hey, can I see your boobs? [...] HA HA I SAW YOUR BOOBS."

"Dude, you move to San Francisco, you get Maer. You can't have Sid too."

"Deprioritize? What the hell are you talking about."

* meaning it's wed. and I still remember them.