Entry 471: The "I Guess I Should Talk About Politics" Post

Some political news to discuss this week.  There were two impactful Supreme Court cases decided recently.  Liberals went 1-1 in these decisions, with some caveats to their "win."  In the loss, the court decided a ruling on state-level political gerrymandering was outside their purview, effectively allowing it to continue.  In theory, this doesn't privilege any political party over the other.  In practice, it is a huge boon to Republicans who are advantaged by gerrymandering much more so than Democrats.  In fact, I think that's precisely why the court came down this way.  If the situation was flipped, I guarantee you at least one conservative justice would have changed his vote.  That's not cynicism; that's reality.  It's not an insurmountable obstacle -- and it could have a boomerang effect on Republicans in that it will prompt Democrats to actually show up in state and local elections (they matter) -- but without question it's a blow to our representative democracy.

In the win, the court ruled, for the time being, that the Trump administration cannot include a citizenship question on the 2020 census.  The reason this matters is because such a question will undercount undocumented folks, who will (understandably) not want to share their immigration status with an administration who thinks concentration camps are good policy.  The census is used to determine the distribution of political weight in our country, and by constitutional directive it is supposed to count all residents of the United States, regardless of immigration status.  Leaving out undocumented people would unlawfully disadvantage those areas where they mostly live.  These areas are, of course, also where Democrats mostly live.

It's a straight-up power grab by a Republican party who is doing its best to stay in power despite moving further away from the average voter -- democracy be damned.  Fortunately, they were too transparent in this gambit.  John Roberts, the Bush-appointed chief justice, who is now the closest thing the court has to a swing vote, somewhat surprisingly sided with the liberal justices, saying the administration failed to provide adequate justification for why a citizenship question was warranted.  That's heartening, but it still leaves the door open for a future challenge.  I think Roberts really, really wanted to side with the Trump administration, but the premise of their case (that it was to support voting rights or something like that) was so obviously bullshit that he just couldn't do it.  It's like if you're a bouncer at a bar, and a kid shows up with a piece of notebook paper with a stick figure drawing on it, and says it's his ID.  C'mon, kid, at least show me your older brother's ID or something.  I think that's what Roberts was saying, and it's slightly nerve-racking, because the Trump administration could come back with a slightly more plausible fake ID -- and then what?  Probably they don't have time.  Maybe Trump will just distract his base with something more exciting and let this one slip away (as he does sometimes).  Maybe this won't even get back to the Supreme Court again.  But still, it might not be over.

In other political news, I watched some of the Democratic debates.  I liked them more than I thought I would.  I don't like the candidates so much, but the debates were fine.  My dream candidate is clearly not in this field, but I (obviously) will enthusiastically support any of them in a general election against Trump.  Here's my ranking of all 20 debate-qualifying candidates thus far.

1.  Kamala Harris: She was lower on my list last night when she said she wanted to abolish private health insurance, but today she said she misunderstood the question.  I don't think advocating for the elimination of private health insurance is a practical or smart political move for Democrats.  Universal coverage is a good message; protecting existing coverage is a good message; abolishing private health insurance (which a lot of people like) is not.  Even if it's what you want (and it might be for Harris, she's very wishy-washy on this issue), I think you need to be more realistic in how you go about it.  Slow, incremental change is sometimes the least-worst course of action.

In general, Harris has been less than consistent on several major topics (health care, reparations, voting rights of incarcerated felons), and she needs to get that sorted if she's going to stay at the top of my list.  I think she's spending too much effort trying to game out her answers in a way that is maximally politically beneficial, and that's the exact wrong thing to do, in my opinion.  It's totally counterproductive because it makes you look phony.  She should do and say what she thinks is right and work to make that the politically popular position.  People usually respect that even if they disagree with you.

Another big knock against Harris is her aggressiveness, illiberal behavior as a prosecutor.  But my feeling on this is if black people -- those most affected by overzealous prosecution -- are willing to support her despite her track record in this area, then so am I.  Also, her time as a prosecutor honed her razor-sharp mind and tongue (assets), and if we want to be really cynical, it's possible her problematic past will actually play well with people who are very liberal on most things (gay-rights, abortion, etc.), but more conservative on crime than they are willing to admit.  My hunch is that is not an insignificant number of voters.

Lastly, women and people of color, especially women of color, are the base of the Democratic party.  So, it makes sense to nominate one.  Again, I'm not in love with Harris by any stretch, but she's my number one, right now, if only by default.

2.  Joe Biden: Now, for the complete opposite.  Yes, I know, he's a gaffe-prone old white guy, drawn to the siren-song of "the good old days" and bipartisanship.  He over-the-hill, has little of substance to say, and his only asset is being associated with Obama.  But I'm buying into the "he can beat Trump in the Midwest" narrative.  Maybe this is foolish, I don't know.  But I do know he has as good a chance as anyone to be the nominee, and if he is, all the sane people in this country have to come together and support him.  Period.

3.  Elizabeth Warren: I like almost all her policies, with a big exception being the aforementioned abolition of private health insurance.

4.  Pete Buttigieg: I love how he challenges the right on their religious hypocrisy.  I'd rather see him run for a Senate seat than the White House though.  I mean, he's younger than me.  Why the rush?

5.  Julian Castro: I thought he came off the best on immigration in the first debate.  This is an issue Dems should go toe-to-toe with Trump on.  "Treat human beings like human beings" and "don't criminalize desperation" are winning (and moral) ideas, in my opinion.

6.  Andrew Yang: If the only thing the next president does is pass a universal basic income bill (and not be Donald Trump) it won't be a terrible presidency.

7.  Jay Inslee: Somebody needs to make climate change their main priority.

8.  Corey Booker: I don't really like or dislike anything about him.  He's the epitome of generic Democratic candidate.

9.  Amy Klobuchar: Moderate Midwestern purple-staters are a big reason the Democrats retook the house last year, and I'm super grateful for that, but they still don't inspire me much.  Sorry.

10.  Bernie Sanders: A Bernie Bro, I am not.  I do like how unapologetic he is on his ideas, however.  As I said before, I wish Kamala Harris had more of this in her.  In retrospect, I really think Bernie would have beaten Trump in 2016.  I don't think he would in 2020.  He narrowly missed his lightning-in-a-bottle moment.

11.  Kirsten Gillibrand:  She's the female Corey Booker, only doing a little bit worse in the polls.

12.  Marianne Williamson: Beating Trump with love is a great message at your secular, new age-y church or whatever.  It's probably not the best message for a sure-to-be-nasty presidential race.  Although... who knows?  And she does seem to have a laudable humanitarian track record.

13. Beto O'Rourke: I liked him when he was running against Ted Cruz for a Senate seat, but as a presidential candidate, I feel about him the same way Josh in Big feels about the toy building.

14. -- 18. Tim Ryan, Tulsi Gabbard, John Delaney, Michael Bennett, Eric Swalwell: In no particular order, because I still don't know enough about these people to rank them.

19.  John Hickenlooper: A brewer by trade and yet he opposed the legalization of marijuana as governor of Colorado.  Then he tried to reference it as an accomplishment on the debate stage.  Bruh.

20.  Bill de Blasio: Everybody's favorite punching bag, so I'll join the fray.  Why is he there?

Sorry not sorry to Steve Bullock, Seth Moulton, and Wayne Messam.  You can make my list when you make the debates.

Until next time...

Entry 470: Just Turn Off the Power and You'll Be Fine... Right?

Slow days at work this week.  We have an important "live run" with a prospective client early next week -- it could be a lot of business -- which means I have to be ready at any moment to help fix something if it breaks.  But thus far we've been all good (for my team, at least), so I spent the past week tying up loose ends and stretching 10-minute tasks into half-hour ones.  This is when it's good to work from home a few days a week, as I can at least be productive at home -- and by productive at home I mean, I can do the New York Times crossword puzzle, the New Yorker crossword puzzle, the NYT spelling bee (my new favorite game), and answer my daily trivia questions. (I'm super annoyed, by the way.  There was a question about a 1970s rock album, and I knew it was by Pink Floyd, but I put The Wall and it was The Dark Side of the Moon.  My opponent forfeited, however, so it didn't really matter.)

I also got something legitimately productive done on Friday.  I switched the ceiling fan in our bedroom with the one in the living room.  They're the same model, but the one in our room makes this ticking noise that gradually revs up into an unbearable clacking cacophony -- tick, tick, tick, TICK, TICK, CLANK!, CLANK!, CLANK!  Usually I find the whirring of a fan soothing while I fall asleep, but not this one.  It's perfect fan weather here in DC too.  It's hot enough that you need something, but not so hot that you feel justified in running your AC all night.  So, what happens each night is S goes to bed before me and turns on the noisy fan (because she's one of those blessed people who can sleep through almost any noise), and then I come in and turn it off when I go to bed (because I'm not one of those blessed people), and then she doesn't like being hot, so she goes to sleep with Lil' S2 (Lil' S1 also doesn't like turning on the ceiling fan, because he's afraid it will fall on him while he sleeps), and then I wake up in the middle of the night alone sweating through my tee.  I don't even get much of an advantage in having the bed to myself, because we got a king-size bed when we moved, so there's more than enough room for two people.  (That thing is a game-changer, by the way.  I love it.)

Something had to be done.  After unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to stop the clacking of the fan, I made the bold decision to try to switch it with the one in our living room, which notably did not clack.  My first impulse was to call an electrician, but then I thought: Just look at it yourself.  You really want to wait for an electrician to come out here and pay him a couple hundred dollars for this?  At least try.  I mean, as long as you turn off the power, you'll be fine, right?

So, I tried, and I think I actually did it.  Both fans were taken down and reattached to the ceiling, and at least they don't look or sound like they are going to crash and/or burn.  I have two basic strategies for going about things like this: 1) Take pictures in every phase of the process; never assume you will remember how it fit together; 2) YouTube it, even simple things.  I watched a video of how to twist wires together with pliers and use a "wire nut."  This is probably electrician 101*, but I never would have known what to do if not for YouTube.  I mean, my dad has probably offered to show me this a dozen times, like when he installed a light fixture in our last house, but I never actually took him up on it.  (C'mon, Pops, when am I gonna need to know THAT?)

*What do you call the field of work electricians are in?  Electricing?

This morning I noticed another issue: Our freezer is dripping water.  The problem is that it's not cold enough for some reason, and so the ice in the automatic ice maker is melting and finding its way onto our floor -- so annoying.  I'm hoping that the door was left slightly ajar last night and that's the cause of it, but initial testing doesn't support this hypothesis.  I'm running one more experiment: I put a cup of water in the freezer, and I'm waiting to see if it will freeze or not.  If it doesn't (which is what I expect) then I'm going to have to clean out all the filters and unplug it and defrost everything completely and then try again tomorrow.  Then if that doesn't work, I'll have to call a repairperson.  Actually, S will probably do that.  That's our de facto arrangement: I try to fix it; she makes the appointment if it doesn't work.

A little added annoyance is that the refrigerator doesn't display the current temperature, only the one to which it is set.  (Our old fridge displayed both.)  I don't have an ambient thermometer, so I'm just kinda guessing at the temperature.  I can't even tell if it's the freezer and the fridge or just the freezer.  We do have a second freezer and fridge in our basement, so I can't complain too much.  At least we have a backup, so all our foodstuff won't go bad.

Alright, I better get to it.  Until next time...

Entry 469: Trivial Matters on Father's Day

I’ve been on a serious trivia kick the last few weeks.  I've been watching Jeopardy! daily.  I've been playing weekly at a bar, and I started playing this game called LearnedLeague, where you get six questions every weekday, and you compete head-to-head against some random people.  It’s all on the honor system, and you assign defensive points based on which questions you think will be the most difficult for your opponent.  For me, pretty much every question is difficult.  I average around two correct answers per day.  (Friday I only got one right.  I have yet to be completely shut out; my record for correct answer is five – and I lost!)  But that isn’t abjectly terrible, as my record is 5-8-4, and the only people who would ever want to do this are hard-core trivia nerds, so I’m kinda-sorta holding my own.

My biggest flaw in trivia is near total ignorance in several key areas: art, classical music, opera, Greek mythology (most of the ancient world actually), religion, Shakespeare, and very recent pop music.  That still leaves a decent number of categories in which I’m either excellent (sports, math, Gen-X pop culture, word play/vocabulary), pretty good (movies, TV, science, current events), or mediocre (literature, history, geography).  So, as reflected in my record, it all adds up to below-average-but-not-completely-awful.

Retention, sadly, is also becoming an increasingly worse problem for me.  I just don’t have that iron-trap memory that I once had.  I actually got a math problem wrong the other day.  I knew exactly what this thing was and how it was used, but I couldn’t for the life of me come up with the term in question.  It was so frustrating.  I had some sort of mental block that wouldn’t let me remember it.  That’s totally an age thing.  That type of thing just didn’t happen to me in my twenties.  I mean, it’s not like I’m a decrepit old man, but I’m a little slower and little less sharp than I used to be.  That’s just how aging goes.

[I would have won a LearnedLeague match had I remembered Louie Anderson once hosted "Family Feud".  I used to watch that show all the time.  I just couldn't come up with it.  Super frustrating.]

[Dimebag Darrell of Pantera.  I would have won a LearnedLeague match had I known what band he was in.  Pantera was my second guess, but I went with Insane Clown Posse.  It was a bad guess, not just because it was wrong, but because I know the two many people from ICP are named Jay and Violent Bob or something like that.]

My Sunday night bar trivia is a good palate cleanser, however.  We just dominate the competition.  We've not taken first place only three or four times over the past three years.  Last week, our best player wasn’t there, and we still won by like 100 points.  I was coming through with a lot of correct answers, and it was nice to remember, oh yeah, against “normal” competition I’m not half bad.  My father-in-law wants me to go on Jeopardy!, because I get most the answers (er... questions) right when we watch it together, but I’m not sure he realizes two key things about the show: a) They don’t just let you go on it because you want to; there’s a very competitive tryout/audition process; b) all the contestants on it know almost all the clues all the time.  Everybody is so knowledgeable it effectively becomes a game of buzzer speed, betting strategy, and luck.

Speaking of Jeopardy! contestants, the aforementioned best player on my trivia team has an audition in a few weeks.  He’s been trying for like 15 years, and this is the first time he’s gotten this far, so he’s pretty excited.  If he gets on, he will be the eighth person I know personally to be on the show.  That's crazy.  Almost all of them come from the crossword puzzle community.  There’s a huge overlap between Crossworld and Trivialand.  (I also know a guy who won almost $3 million on a trivia game show.)  Personally, I don’t really have much desire to try out for Jeopardy!.  I don’t feel like I’m good enough, and I don’t really want to put in the work to try to get good enough.  Sports Jeopardy!, on the other hand, I’d love to go on that show -- if it still existed.  I did try to sign up once for it, but the website was temporarily down, and I never went back and tried again.  So, I guess I didn't want to be on it that badly.

In other news, today is Father's Day.  (Why isn't it Fathers' Day?  Doesn't the day belong to all fathers?  If it's singular, I'd prefer it be Father Day or Fathers Day with an attributive noun instead of a possessive.  Anyway...)  It's kinda a made-up holiday, but I guess it's nice to have my family be extra nice to me for an hour or so (that's usually how long it lasts).

Alright gotta run -- literally I'm going for a jog.

Until next time...

Okay, that’s all I got for today.  Until next time…

Entry 468: Scooter

I rode a motorized scooter today in DC for the first time.  They seem to be catching on.  You might have seen them in your city -- Lyft, Lime, and Bird are the big names.  Their presence on the streets has been somewhat contentious here in DC, in large part because everything new in DC is somewhat contentious, but overall I think they're a big net positive.  They provide a much more energy-efficient alternative to a car, and that alone basically outweighs their downside, in my opinion.

[Once I was at the dog park with a friend and his dog, and there was a guy there in really nice clothes standing a bench, because he didn't want to get his shoes dirty, tossing a ball for his dog.  He was the first person I've ever seen with a bluetooth device for his cell phone (this was almost 20 years ago).  We struck up a conversation somehow, and he told me he just got his dog from a prior owner and was trying to teach it a new name.  "It was named Scooter," he told me, "but, I'm like, that's fine for a kids' dog, not for an adult."  I asked him what its new name was, and he said, "Lucky."  And then I spent the next few minutes trying to figure out why somebody would think Lucky was a less childish name for a dog than Scooter.]

Plus, they can be very convenient.  Last night I had to meet S and the boys at a graduation party for a friends' daughter (well, a friend of friends' daughter, if you want to be technical).  It was about three miles away, too long to walk in a timely fashion, and not near a major bus line or metro stop.  It was a beautiful day, so I downloaded an app and scooted my way there.  It cost about a fifth as much as a Lyft ride and took about a third as long as public transportation -- very nice.

The big downside, however, is safety.  You're not supposed to ride them on the sidewalk, and cars aren't very respectful to you when you're causing a traffic hold-up by puttering along at 12 mph.  Also, I don't wear a helmet, which... I dunno... I guess I should.  It's probably comparable safety-wise to riding a bike, and I prefer to wear a helmet when I bike.  But, I took it easy and tried to avoid the major streets, unless they had a bike lane.  If things started to feel hairy, I used the sidewalk and just pushed it with my feet.  It worked out pretty well.

I think the main thing people don't like about these scooters doesn't have to do with the scooters themselves but rather what they represent: A gentrifying city.  Marion Barry once said if you give white people bike lanes and dog parks then they'll be happy.  So, a bunch of shared bikes and scooters in a neighborhood is a symbol of gentrification to many people.  Along these lines, the party I went to last night is in a predominantly black neighborhood, one that isn't really gentrified (yet), and so I felt a bit self-conscious riding a scooter through it.  I mean, I roll up to the party and an old(ish) black man is sitting on the porch sipping something strong-smelling from a plastic cup, chewing on an unlit cigar, and I'm a Dockers-looking white guy parking a neon green scooter in front of the house.  But the guy couldn't have been nicer, which is typical.  One of the least true stereotypes is that of the angry black person.  In my experience, it's the exact opposite -- African-Americans are an incredibly welcoming and accepting people.  And that's saying something because if there is one group who has a legit claim to being upset, it's the one who was literally treated as chattel for the first century-plus of our nation.

Coincidentally, when I sat down at the party, I happened to sit on the periphery of a conversation about gentrification.  It is something I've thought about a lot, but I didn't feel comfortable butting in giving my two cents.  Plus, I don't have much interesting to say on the matter, because, although I've thought about gentrification a lot, I don't know what we do about it.  It seems to me an almost impossible problem given our current economic system.  We're talking about a Bernie-Bro's-wet-dream style revolution to change things.  Laws like rent control and rights of first refusal are half-measures at best and counterproductive at worst.

The conclusion I've come to is that the best we can do is pay the people who are most likely to be displaced.  Buy them out.  Make sure they at least get a decent chunk of change before their inexpensive building is purchased and renovated and converted into luxury homes for people who probably don't look like them.  That's the least-worst realistic short term solution, in my view.  Then, in the long term, we need more affordable housing.  That might mean "unsightly" skyscrapers or mega-complexes of inexpensive apartment units in neighborhoods that don't really want it.  That's just something people like me will have to deal with.  The value of our houses might tick down; crime might tick up; but I think it can be done in a way that's not too disruptive.  No more NIMBY liberalism.

On the flip side, people need to realize that neighborhoods change drastically even without gentrification.  If you stay in a place long enough, the businesses you like get replaced with ones you don't like.  The types of people you've gotten to know leave or die and new types people you don't know move in have kids.  A lot of people who complain about cultural gentrification sound a lot like old people pining for the good old days that weren't all that "good," just familiar.  Not everybody riding a Lime scooter is a new-to-the-neighborhood, well-off white person who calls the cops on their nonwhite neighbors every time they turn up their music.

On the flip flip side, if you are a new-to-the-neighborhood, well-off white person don't call the cops on your nonwhite neighbors for petty stuff.  When Science Vs looked into gentrification that was the most tangibly deleterious problem.  If you can afford to live in luxury housing, you can afford a sound machine and a set earplugs.  Although, I must confess, I'm very glad I don't live in that area, because that go-go shit would drive me bonkers.  Shades of gray and nuance... such is life.

Until next time...

Entry 467: Mo' House Mo' Problems

Our latest “adventure” with our new house: a flooded basement.  That’s a bit of an overstatement -- it wasn't flooded flooded, but water definitely was getting in from outside and getting our carpet wet.  I noticed it about 11:30 pm Thursday evening, and there is no worse time to discover something like that than right before bed.  I was up for another hour and a half trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it, before I finally decided to cut my losses and try to sleep, which of course I couldn’t do, because the carpet in my basement was all wet and I didn’t know why.  I maybe got three hours of shut-eye in.

Then the next morning, all I wanted to do was resolve things, but I had to get the kids fed and clothed and drive them to school, which now takes well over an hour, because we have to drive across town in heavy traffic.  Then I had to deal with some stuff for work, so it was nearly noon by the time I got back to our soggy floor.  In the light of day, I quickly diagnosed the issue and made a video to send to S.  She probably didn’t really want a video, but it was the best way to convey my message of “I’ve been working on it and I figure it out.”  If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth millions of words.

Given that we had a problem, a clogged storm drain was probably the best-case scenario.  I was worried that it was a broken pipe or some other internal leak or, even worse, something under the carpet.  Since it was outside we didn’t have to pull up the floor or break any walls or anything like that.  We just had to pay a plumber $400 to snake our storm drain.  I thought about trying to do it myself.  I’ve gotten pretty good at unclogging drains using a plunger and a baking soda and vinegar mixture, but I figured it best to go with the professionals for this one.  I’d hate to realize during our next heavy rainfall that I didn’t do the job right and be outside with a bucket running up and down the stairwell trying bail things out.

So, it's fixed now, but our carpet is still kinda wet.  I've been running two space heaters pointed at the damp area for nearly two days straight (our electricity bill is probably gonna be through the roof).  It's definitely helping but carpet just takes forever to dry because there's no air flow from the bottom.  We might have to invest in a dehumidifier.  Also, we're gonna need some sort of air freshener in there, because it's getting that nasty mildewy smell.  I actually hate the smell of most air fresheners.  That ersatz Glade odor gives me a headache; I'd almost always rather smell the smell of whatever it's covering up than smell the smell of an air freshener.  But something is going to have to be done.  Maybe I'll burn some incense or a scented candle or something like that.

Anyway... aside from all these things popping up seemingly daily, settling in to the new house is going pretty well.  S likes to take the lead on most things, and I don't, so that has been working out pretty well.  Every now and then I have to argue for something she doesn't want though.  Usually that's because she will want to get rid of something that I use regularly.  For example, she hates the DVD player.  Now, it's true that DVD players are mostly outmoded, but I have a stack of workout/yoga DVDs that I use a couple times a month, so why get rid of it?  She said that it's because it looks bad and takes up space.  But our "entertainment system" is currently a TV on a pair of boxes and a single folding chair in an otherwise empty room, and it's going to stay that way for a while, because it's all we can afford, so that's not a very persuasive argument.

It's the same way with this bookcase we have.  It's a fine-looking, sturdy bookcase that does an admirable job holding books, which is good, because we have a fair number of books.  But S doesn't like it for some reason, and so she's always purposing we get rid of it.  And then we I ask her where we would put our books, she says we should get rid of them too.  But I like having books (although I did actually give away a bunch before we moved -- textbooks mainly), and so I like having a bookcase to store my books.  So, the bookcase is staying.  I usually get my way when I put my foot down on something, likely because I don't do it too often.  Pick your battles, see.

In other news, they finally made Trainspotting 2 available for rental (for like two years, I couldn't find it on any streaming service), so I watched it.  Feckin' loo'd it, ah did.  I mean, it doesn't even compare to the first one, but it was really good as far as sequels go.  It's a quintessential "enjoy it for what it is" movies.  It was based on the novel Porno, Irvine Welsh's follow-up novel to Trainspotting, and it continues the story arc with the same characters 20 years later.  Since I'm only a few years younger than the characters in the story (though not the actors themselves -- Robert Carlyle is in his late 50s), it hits home.  Well, the part about aging and growing apart/reconnecting with friends from your 20s hits home anyway.  I definitely don't identify with the part about substance abuse and addiction.  That has never been my bag, thankfully. 

I made a couple of notable actor connections watching it.  I don't watch a ton of movies, some I'm not the guy who knows everybody who's been in everything.  But I love trivia, and I pay attention to the cast of the movies I do see, so I really enjoy filling in the gaps in my mental movie network: Oh, that's Actress X who was in Movie Y with Actor Z... that's who that is!  In Trainspotting 2, I realized the actress who played Diane, Renton's (underage) love interest, is Kelly Macdonald from Boardwalk Empire and No Country for Old Men.  But the one that really blew my mind is that Tommy, a character who dies of AIDS in the first movie, is played by Kevin McKidd!  The Grey's Anatomy actor who a friendly bloke at an Australia gym said I look "exactly like."  His appearance is starkly different in Trainspotting and Grey's Anatomy, so it's not that weird I never made the connection before.  I guess it's fitting, because of all the Trainspotting characters, the one I most identified with was Tommy.  He kinda had his shit together and frowned on his mates for using hard drugs.  But then in a moment of pain, Renton gives him a shot of heroin and he gets hooked and contracts HIV from a dirty needle.

And on that note, I should probably go.  I'd like to do the dishes before S gets home.  She went to a Bell Biv Devoe/Bobby Brown concert (seriously), and I can't imagine a bunch of middle-aged women are going to be raging on a workday.  But who knows?

Until next time...