> netslackers <

-- Saturday, March 22, 2003 --

Woah, no updates in a while . . . well unless you count Branden's post last night that said, and I quote, "THE MARYLAND GAME OWNED!!!!!!" Yes, I deleted it.

KCNile: ill leave it up if you just add a few coherent sentences after it
B182bwb: too much work

A few things have happened since I last left a message. First of all, the United States has pretty much put the smackdown on Baghdad. To use a metaphor (a comparison between two things that are more or less completely unrelated; people who write thick books with titles like The Day World Stopped Spinning because it was Dizzy like to use them), this war is essentially between a used and abused action figure with threatening karate-chop action capabilities (Iraq) and a two-year-old toddler who enjoys shoving things in his mouth before dropping them on the floor (USA). Don't see the connection? Don't worry, you wouldn't be the first to misinterpret my genius as stupidity. Anyway, they might have gotten Saddam, but then again it could just be one of his body-doubles. In the meantime, Baghdad has been reduced to rubble and I'm sure I don't want to know what the casualties are like on the Iraqi side, civilian or otherwise.

I haven't really written about any events that directly involve me except for sporadic Silver Chips updates and for the most part that's the way I'm going to leave it. I figured the following warranted an exception:

We had a walkout on Thursday to protest the war and you couldn't have asked for a nicer day. All that rain and the bitter cold sure made the marching fun especially in shorts and a t-shirt. I did find a jacket in my car, but I was the only kid out there without at least a pair of jeans on. It really wasn't so bad once my legs had lost all feeling and turned the color of Tinky Winky. After we did a bunch of disorganized laps around the school, most people left.



Those that hung around were all supposedly going to a protest consisting of MCPS students meeting at Judiciary Square. I had a car so I shuttled two groups of kids to the subway station and eventually got on myself. I reached the Metro stop around 3:40 and saw about eight kids waiting around. It took us some time to figure out that the rest of the group had congregated at the other exit and by the time we made this discovery, there were only four or five of us left. In total we numbered somewhere around 75 and sadly few kids from Blair were there and some of them left before we even got moving.

We spent the first hour or so walking aimlessly around in a tight circle mumbling various hackneyed chants and occasionally people would hit their "drums" (more often than not these were buckets) loudly for no apparent reason. The protestors beat their buckets with such precision and in such unison that they might have even rivaled the conformity of a synchronized swimming team whose members consist of turrets syndrome patients high on crack cocaine. The circle we walked in was maybe a little larger than, say, your average family room. It was a pretty pitiful sight.

When we finally got going though, it turned out to be well worth the wait. We were a small group but we attracted the attention of no less than five police cars of various makes and models that followed us the entire time except for the few times we somehow managed to lose them. Honks rained down on us and everytime one was directed at us, we cheered . . . whether they were honking to support us or simply to grab our attention so they could flick us off.

We ended up meeting with a much larger group of adults at Dupont Cirlce at which point some of my long-lost friends showed up. Yes, two of them write on this blog (Chris and if you still consider her a contributor to this site, Maya). Maya had told me she'd meet up with me at the subway station and Chris and the rest were all supposed to have been there much earlier too. Instead they were lazy and sat at home eating food. Guilt tripping is quite possibly the greatest of the American pastimes, just ahead of baseball and fast food bingeing.

The final leg of the trip was a march down to the White House where we stood and shouted at pretty much no one except for a few cameras, the line of police motorcyclists to our left making sure we didn't spill onto the other side of the road, and the guards standing behind the barrier cracking jokes. It was 7:30 when we left meaning I was outside in the rain walking pretty much non-stop for about six and a half hours.

All I can say is the world damn well better have been watching us on the fucking TV because I missed the NCAA Tournament for this shit.

In other news: Speaking of the Tourney, my bracket is shot to hell. I'm on a two year skid now after being in the 98th percentile back in 2001. At any rate, there have been a bunch of good games. Here's the rundown of how the ACC teams have faired: NC State went into OT before losing to Cal, Drew Nicholas hit a last second three to save the Terps from an upset at the hands of UNC Wilmington, Wake Forest nearly got knocked off by East Tennessee State in a nail-biter, and Duke got a scare from Colorado State.

There were also a bunch of great individual performances I'd talk about if only I weren't tired of writing.

Duke plays again tonight against Central Michigan. The Blue Devils have pretty much had a cake walk to the Sweet 16. We'll see if they can do any damage after that.


> KC 2:51 PM [91191103]
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