Lunch with the Leaders

Today I had lunch with two future leaders of the free world; Wesley, who I learned wrote an article for the National Review last February, and Poulod, who wrote an article for the New Left Review last November. Both were classmates with me at a small, liberal high school. I feel hopelessly outpaced, although if I ever finish my Time article I assume some magazine out there would like to take it.

Our (private, thank you) conversation covered a large amount of ground, mostly about counter-terrorism because Wesley is going back to Iraq next fall in lieu of going to school. Would that I had such a great excuse to skip school... oh yeah, I am going to go live in a monastery... If I'm learning anything solid from this enlightening internship, I concluded, it should be something I ought to apply to my search for a career.

In an Internet Cafe

I am typing in the only real Internet cafe in Washington. I shit you not. Free Wifi is all over the place, but computers for the computerless are nowhere to be found. I mean, they even have Internet cafes in Japan-- what's up with this? Yeah, there's another one somewhere near here, but it's $15 an hour to use their computers, which is clearly out of step with the hallowed traditions of thousands of Internet cafes around the world. Pic related.



I saw WALL-E yesterday with a friend and I thought it was superb. All of you should watch it. The only complaint I'd make is that the political commentary is a little heavy-handed. But a lot of people eat that up, especially here in DC. At the Smithsonian festival, the Bhutanese in the food traditions tent was explaining that if the churned milk does not produce butter, they attribute it to an evil spirit brought in by the guests. (The milk in the churn wasn't producing very much butter, because it wasn't raw milk, but pasteurized milk brought in by "Washington cows".) "So," he said, "I hope there are no spirits here from the White House..." A member of the audience broke out in a loud guffaw.

A few patterns I've noticed here in DC:

1. Rain in DC comes out of a blue sky, lasts for 10 minutes, and stops by the time you head inside. There is no way to predict the rain. I saw a forecast of thunderstorms and brought my umbrella around last Monday; there were no thunderstorms, even through 6PM. So I went to Trader Joe's without the umbrella, and then it started raining. I thought I had caught on; I carried an umbrella for the rest of the week, and it didn't rain once. Finally I decided the storm had passed and the umbrella was dead weight, so I left it in my room. Of course, then it started raining again. Since then my umbrella has never left my side. The best way to prevent it from raining, apparently, is to carry an umbrella in your backpack.

2. The have-nots in DC will often ask for change to ride the metro, and the haves never give it to them. There are panhandlers everywhere, but based on my completely objective and impartial sample, I have concluded I am the only person in DC who actually gives money to people who ask for it.

3. Maybe it's just a summer internship, but I've noticed a lot of people from Compassion over Killing handing out flyers about vegetarianism and veganism. Right at the Capitol Hill metro stop (!) they were handing out flyers. I like the fact that unlike PETA, who make all vegetarians look crazy, they promote veganism as a multilayered choice and not a question of religious purity. The booklet reminds you that it's okay to accept meat from friends every once in a while and you won't become unclean. On the National Mall at the entrance to the Folklife Festival, they were handing out free samples of orange veggie chicken and booklets with lists of vegetarian restaurants and grocery stories. I took them up on their offer and went to an Asian restaurant in Georgetown with my friends. You could replace all their dishes with mock meat, and it the kung pow mock-chicken delicious! A+++++++ would go vegetarian again.

Bhutan Pavilion

Update 8/21/08

My photos

Folklife Festival page

---

I am devoting this weekend to the Bhutan pavilion at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which runs through next week. Kunzang Choden said that Bhutanese people were formerly shy but now they are proud. I would argue that they are still shy. A yak herder at the pavilion was asked to do his traditional dance, and he sang very quietly (almost inaudible) while taking baby steps. I also got to see a traditional "black hat dance", a dancing meditation comparable to whirling dervishes-- but the monk was so shy at performing before a foreign audience he only danced for 10 seconds.

They also were unaccustomed to our expectations of entertainment which I found comfortingly realistic. For example, a little monastery was set up where monks chanted 10 hours a day. Inside, you could see the monks were pretty worn out by the heat and were fanning themselves and taking breaks from chanting by drinking lemonade. It was likely disillusioning to some tourists. But the paintings on the wall were fantastic! I asked a monk if they were handmade and he didn't seem to understand-- he said they were normal monastery decorations. Eventually he told me they were handmade, but insisted it was nothing special. I have pictures but I can't upload them right now.

There were some characters, who deserve shout outs. Mainly, an old grandpa playing the announcer for the yak herder, who was completely unfunny (he made jokes about shooting the President... golf clap) but had such confidence and extroversion that he made everyone laugh anyway just by making it sound like he was telling the world's best joke ("MAYBE... the FBI come question us! HA! 'WHO FIRE THAT GUN? WHO FIRE?'"). I'm sure he was an expert Bhutanese standup comedian.

A demonstration of Bhutanese food and hospitality was made. The former cultural minister of Bhutan came to the food pavilion and sat down in front of the bowls like one normally entering a house. They prepared food for him like they were sharing a meal with a visitor. Then a real visitor came-- a young man wearing a devil mask with a wool pigtail, who clearly was uninvited and was leaning on the woman making the food. It was very funny because the announcer had just explained that all guests in Bhutan are "uninvited" but they just drop by whenever. It seems the Bhutanese saw the fireplace and food and decided it would be only proper to drop by. Then the old grandpa came by too, completely interrupting the announcer with his loud voice and demanded he have some food as well. "Oh, these people do VERY GOOD! Give them a hand! [applause] First time in the world that people are given a hand for EATING! HA!" The grandpa was handed a microphone. "I don't need this! I am PLENTY LOUD! All you can hear me, right?" He was completely right, he was the only Bhutanese who did not need a microphone at all, even at the crowded pavilion. He then pointed out that there was no silverware or chopsticks in Bhutan, but soup and rice were eaten with your hands. He explained his tricky habit of drinking the soup from the bowl first. "That way, if your host finishes and sends you off... you wait for him to turn around, and dump your bowl in your robe, and you will hurry out the door with the food! But if you don't drink your soup first... you will dump your bowl in your robe... and spoil your robe!" (He told this much more engagingly than I relay it here, and many people were in tears from laughing even though it was very barely a joke.)

I also met a college friend and asked her to watch Wall-E with me. She wanted to see an Australian movie called Outback instead, which turned out to be a piece of crap. Well, there's always tomorrow.

Kunzang Choden

My congressman on transgender issues: The phrase "having something trapped in the wrong body" is how we often feel when our bill goes to the Senate.

Yesterday I volunteered to help revamp his website. It's currently a total mess with incomprehensible navigation. When I looked it up last fall, I was unable to find the internship link; only my mom could find it, after a dedicated search. We'll see how this goes. The last intern to revamp the website made a mess of it and added an <iframe>.



Last night I went to a Smithsonian event by Kunzang Choden, the first Bhutanese woman to write a novel in English. She gave us a description of her life and conditions in the country. I have a picture of her with me (it's a really funny picture-- I didn't realize I had undone the top button on my shirt and my tie was falling off) but I can't upload it right now. Apparently one of the other interns came as well, but I didn't see her. She only told me this morning! The Smithsonian's Bhutan event is the largest exhibition the country has ever held outside its borders. I'll try to take the day off tomorrow and see the excitement for myself without the crowds. Bhutan is the most sincerely Buddhist country.

Then I headed into Georgetown, which people told me was like Cambridge. That is a pack of lies. It is like Wellesley. They do have an independent bookstore, though.

Subway and Flag Room

I didn't realize the Capitol had its own subway! I rode on the House "tram" line and there's also a covered subway for Senate members. The subway walls were lined with state flags, statues, and busts of various lawmakers including Hammurabi and... Colbert.

At the other end of the subway we went to a place which looked a lot like a post office. It had a window, drop boxes, and piles of outgoing mail. But wherever I would expect to see the words "post" or "mail", it said "flag" instead. And all the outgoing mail took the form of flags! It was, apparently, the Flag Office. So many people in the United States want flags shipped to them from Congress that they needed an entire office for sending them out. We dropped off our flag and headed back to the subway.

Calls are continuing to come in on the "Iran naval blockade" thing. It's troublesome because I don't yet know why my congressman supported this bill.

A Congressman's Office

I have learned that it is definitely not a good idea to reveal the name of my congressman on a public blog, so if you don't know his name please ask me or a friend privately. People are always telling me what an awesome guy he is and usually calls begin with a thank-you. Unfortunately today is not so great. People are calling in about the "Iran naval blockade" resolution he cosponsored along with 200 other representatives. Yesterday it was just the angry pacifist; today it is a half-dozen people in the first two hours of work.

The phone is not constantly ringing off the hook here. We get hundreds of "robos" in big packages but normal people calling in with their concerns happens only three or four times an hour. Yesterday it was Medicare; today it's the grassroots "Iran naval blockade" thing. Believe it or not, responding to stuff on the Internet does make a difference.

I came into work today and there were some Old Order Amish guys being patted down at the door. I decided to interview them, in the name of real Internet journalism. Also, I was curious.

- What are you guys here for today?
- We're meeting with the department of Homeland Security.
- Why?
- Border crossing (he whispered).
- Oh, do you live near the Canadian border?
- No, but our people live all around the country and there's been some issues with... border crossing (whispering again).
- Well, good luck...

Old Order Amish, keep fighting the good fight!

Yesterday I went to Buddhist meditation at the Shambala center in Cleveland Park. It was a lot different than the meditation I'm used to. You keep your eyes open, and at the end of the session you invoke a Tibetan deity with an English chant. With my eyes open, I felt like I was being tortured awake. I guess that's good, though, because I usually fall asleep in meditation. Afterwards, I spent an hour talking to a girl, and rode the metro home with her. I think she liked me. I almost asked her out to dinner but I was too nervous.

Oh well.

In a Congressional Building (Updated)

Right now I'm halfway through my first day interning with my congressman. I still haven't asked whether I can use his name blogging. In any case, I'm free right now so I'm writing. An intern's job is ad-hoc. There is very little instruction and mostly I'm just sitting and watching the other guys do their work. When nobody's given us a job, we do data entry and answer the phones; there are many other tasks but none of them are happening today.

My congressman has about 60 staff members, most of whom are on a committee he runs. I introduced myself to him briefly but he doesn't like to be interrupted at work, as I soon learned. Then I sat down at a desk I share with another intern and immediately started taking calls from crazy people. It seems today is a very special day: the AARP called all their members, gave them a rapid-fire political message, and told them to press 1 to "speak to a real person," which forwarded them to us. Most of them didn't know what was going on and thought we had called them. Some of the callers simply said "don't cut Medicare!" I dutifully recorded all their names. Then I went through over 200 form letters sent to us (called "robos" in the office) and manually entered each of their names into our database to send a response. I always suspected this is what happens to the letters you send on political website. That didn't lessen the drudgery though. And for the finishing touch, the letters were addressed to my senators and not my representative, and dealt with a Senate bill, not a House bill. We had been CC:ed.

One tip for writing your Congressman: don't ask him to vote one way or another on a bill on the day it goes to the floor. I pass on all the calls I get but they go to a separate staff member who reads them in bulk later in the day. It'll probably be too late by the time he forwards them.

I watched one of the staff print out a "Dear Colleague" letter about the Protecting Americans from Unsafe Foreign Products Act. On top of the letter he wrote, "[Rep name]-- Cosponsor this? M." There's the big secret, folks. I am here in the office of the secret elites who control the country, and that's how they get it done.

Yesterday I went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. I remembered it from when I was little. Not much had changed except now there were updates pasted on some of the handrails explaining that the descriptions on the back walls were wrong. Phrases were used like, "So, this diagram is wrong." Why don't they just update the descriptions, then? They must have serious budget problems... in any case, most of the museum is under construction this summer, so maybe some of it will be better soon. There were also some bigass turtles, sloths, and arthropods. Some kids go for dinosaurs but I was fascinated by the big turtle.

Update: An intensely angry pacifist is on the phone. He wants to know why my congressman is cosponsoring a naval blockade of Iran. I agree completely-- Iran has done nothing to deserve a naval blockade. Unfortunately this guy lives nowhere near my home state and I tell him, in a dull bureaucratic tone, that my congressman doesn't want opinions from outside his district, but I'll try to bring it up with him personally if I get to talk to him. "Warmongering son of a bitch!" he yells as I hang up the phone.

At the Library (Update)

I did various boring chores today. I also visited the Spy Museum, a very glitzy place with a lot of gadgets but very little focus on specific spy communities. I was entertained but not really to the tune of $20. I should have spent the money on two movies instead. I'm sure Daniel Brandt would create quite a different Spy Museum. In the evening I'm going to try to go to a concert in Fort Reno Park.

I found a library near Trader Joe's, and the "A" key is free at last, but this library is not really suitable for writing blog posts in. For one thing, there's an hour-long wait even in the middle of a weekday. One of the computers is being used by a man blaring music from his headphones with his trousers around his knees; when several people ask him to pull up his pants and turn off the music, he jabbers incoherently, and even after they leave out of frustration he continues muttering gibberish about "Mexican whores looking at my ass" for over ten minutes. The Web is very slow, something like 1 or 2 kilobytes per second. The computers are insecure, and God knows I wouldn't want Russian hackers reading my e-mail. Hopefully I'll have my own computer at my congressman's office.

In completely unrelated news, the Pew Forum on Religion released a sociological report that I participated in. Its chief finding is that a majority of Americans of every religion believe in pluralism, and Jews and Buddhists in particular are over 80% pluralist. The lone exceptions are Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Update: I ran into Wesley Morgan, famed military whiz kid and friend of Petraeus, while walking back from the library. How likely is that?! He's actually not, as I had previously assumed, interning at the Pentagon. He's working with the New York Times, interviewing returning soldiers from the Iraq surge. (There was only one "A" in that sentence.)

Silly season

I arrived in Washington's Union Station at around 5:30. A mass of people of all ages, colors, and sizes swiftly flowed around me. A group of Buddhist monks clad in orange came in one of the doors, looking for their train. A huge tour group of middle school children wearing ID necklaces surrounded me. Finally, my e-friend Shiunji appeared at the door, we got into his car (license plate OH-SNAP; Pokemon CDs in the glove compartment; top hat on the floor), and we took off for George Washington University. Shiunji was entirely different from how I imagined him from his e-mails, which was something like Jumbo from Yotsuba&!. He knew the area, but unfortunately for me his contracting firm keeps him up all night, and he sleeps all day.

Outside, the weather was an eerie omen. The sky had turned everything orange even though there was no sun visible, and rain was falling even thought there were no clouds. I entered my dorm, which was surprisingly beat-up and pocked with strange scratches, but livable. Finally, I knocked on the door at the end of the hall. My roommate introduced himself as Champ, which confused me; I didn't know if I was in the right room. It soon came to light that Champ was just a nickname; his real name was the one on the GWU website. But I will keep this private for now because the next thing I learned was that his father is the governor of Guam. Let's call him Champ on this blog.

Champ and his female friend down the hall are interning in the Guam representative's office. Now, Guam does not actually get a vote in Congress; they only observe. So their intern work seems to primarily consist of learning about the history of DC and giving tours of the Capitol. Even so, Champ will get up early and work late, like me. I wonder if I'm going to give tours.

I plenished our refrigerator with some snacks from Trader Joe's, then the three of us went to dinner at a greasy spoon down the road. This restaurant served burgers, but they were out of hamburger buns, sandwich buns, and tomatoes. So I had a gyro. But I left a nasty tip. Finally I came back here. I don't have my own computer. Champ let me use his... but the "A" key is broken, and I have to hit the rubber thing underneath instead. Is that really all right? Now I'm starting to hate every word with the letter "A" in it. I tried to post the rest of this entry at 10:00PM last night, but the residential network rejected my login. It turns out I needed to go to the computer center and pick up a converter box with a specific serial on it. That's hardcore technology.

Today is my day off. I will look for a local library where I can make blog posts. Actually, my own laptop would be pretty nice too. But after the Daxyne project caused so much stress I might take a break from owning a computer for a while.

My line of work

I don't know what sort of work I'm going to be doing when I get to DC. What is depressing is that politics now, even politics this summer, seems to be worse than ever.

First let's look at that campaign, that buttload of minutia the media unloads on us every day. For many people my age Barack Obama is a dream candidate. For me, the line between him and waffling, NAFTA-signing Bill Clinton seems to shrink every day. Obama went to an ultra-right Zionist conference where he committed $30 billion to Israel. He endorsed John Barrow, a notorious war hawk. He endorsed chickenhawk Joe Lieberman when he was running against a Democrat. Lieberman, of course, won the election and promptly stabbed his endorser in the back, getting behind McCain and denouncing Obama. All of these things demonstrate terrible leadership. I have no faith in Obama. He has to prove himself to me.

Now, lucky me. There is currently a litmus test in the House of Representatives which is exactly an opening for Obama to display that kind of leadership. Unfortunately it is simply a demonstration of how low this country is getting. The title of the provision in question is "Protection of Persons Assisting the Government." Basically, what it says is that nobody should ever get in trouble for doing what the Government tells them to. No question of whether they followed the law-- the government is always right. Once this passes it will immediately nullify a bunch of trials against telecom companies for illegal wiretapping.

Never before in our nation's history has a group of corporations become so powerful that they submit a bill to prevent themselves from being tried for a crime. Sure, there have probably been cases where courts refuse to hear the trial. But nobody has ever been able to halt a fair trial once it began. If this bill passes, it establishes a precedent for the disassembly of our country into a corporate-owned fascist regime. No exaggeration. The government is always right, the corporation's power is absolute: that's fascism as it was practiced in Italy.

Wouldn't you like it if you had the power to nullify a pesky court trial, simply by giving large donations to all the legislators? Wouldn't you like to have the power to censor your critics and ensure the legislators you have in your pocket get reelected? Okay, enough sarcasm.

In the Senate, Chris Dodd successfully blocked telecom immunity. But House Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, have caved to the telecoms. Some people are calling on Obama to put the traitor Democrats back in line. Such an act of leadership would genuinely please me. He'd get my vote. But I'm not holding my breath... so I donated to the netroots PAC to push against immunity.

I hope I can do something about this when I get to my Congressman's office next Tuesday. If this bill passes by then, I'll be showing up in DC to clean up after the end of the party.

Adventure Time, the Monomyth

Today I spent several hours hanging out with Harmonix, the makers of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Under the terms of our nondisclosure agreement I am not allowed to tell you exactly what it was that I got up to at Harmonix. Suffice to say I had a lot of fun, white tea is delicious, and "Batman" would be a great name for a rock band.

This week has been a mad rush of dinners, visitations, movies, and questionable gifts. I don't think anyone will fault me for being lazy about meeting my friends this year. Last year maybe I was not on the ball. This year I've not only had lunch with most of my friends from Commonwealth, I also have talked with the friends of both of my younger brothers. And I even impressed them sometimes. My brother's friend has a little brother named Shiva. He gained this name, I slowly realized, because he is the living embodiment of chaos. At my brother's graduation dinner he crawled under the table, demanded people read to him, threw bread at me, and punched me in the balls.

I think that kid is growing on me. He probably has ADHD, which I don't think is a disorder. Sure, he is unfit for polite society, but if he were living in a hunter-gatherer culture, I think he'd get along with the other kids pretty well. He has the initiative and the energy to learn useful physical skills. He just needs to build up his attention.

But enough about that. Today I want to talk about how Adventure Time is a contemporary and enjoyable expression of the timeless Monomyth. The Monomyth, or "hero's journey", is an overarching structure found in ancient journey legends around the world, according to academic mythologist Joseph Campbell. The first stage of the Monomyth?

The Call to Adventure

"The adventure begins with the hero receiving a call to action, such as a threat to the peace of the community, or the hero simply falls into or blunders into it. The call is often announced to the hero by another character who acts as a 'herald'."

The Crossing of the First Threshold

"The hero must cross the threshold between the world he is familiar with and that which he is not. "


The Road of Trials

"Once past the threshold, the hero encounters a dream landscape of ambiguous and fluid forms. The hero is challenged to survive a succession of obstacles and, in so doing, amplifies his consciousness. The hero is helped covertly by the supernatural helper or may discover a benign power supporting him in his passage."



Apotheosis

"The hero's ego is disintegrated in a breakthrough expansion of consciousness. Quite frequently the hero's idea of reality is changed."



The Magic Flight

"When the boon's acquisition (or the hero's return to the world) comes against opposition, a chase or pursuit may ensue before the hero returns."



The Crossing of the Return Threshold

"The hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real."

The Monomyth Begins

This blog is a first for me. I've written the trivia of my life in my diary, and I've broadcasted important things to a close-knit group of friends, but I've never written about trivia and emotions for the general public. I'm not sure what people care to read about. I do have a better sense now than I did freshman year of what's interesting to read.

I am going to be keeping this blog for as long as my life is exciting. This extends at least through the summer and fall; hence the title.

This summer I am taking an unpaid internship with a certain Congressman. Many of my readers know who this guy is. In order to save my ass I'm going to keep his identity private until I'm absolutely certain it's okay for me to write about the stuff he says in his office.

The Eastern Seaboard is generally not a fun place to be in the summer, according to what I've heard. This is also a summer of chaos in Washington. I'm not talking about the presidential campaign, which will be affecting everywhere but Washington; I'm talking about a huge mess of rallies and protests spilling onto the National Mall. I am taking part in many of these. It will be fun, in the way that driving a car off a cliff is fun to watch in an action movie.

In the fall I will continue to update here as I will be in Kyoto. Yes, Japan. I am going to be living in a monastery and waking up at 5 AM to meditate. That is basically all I know right now about the program. It's going to be a long series of surprises and I will likely write loads about it. I've been to Japan before but it was not the greatest thing. If you don't know about that, I might post a summary as filler in late August.

So, there you go. You're up to speed with what I've been repeating to my friends for the past month or so. Now it's time for me to venture into the great unknown. I've spent a long time applying and preparing for these two seasons. What I cannot predict is what is going to happen once I start. These might be excruciatingly boring outings. I guarantee, though, that I will learn something. And then I will rehash what I think I have learned to you; but I will be wrong, because I talk nonsense anyway.