“Sticky Fingers, Doron Petersan’s vegan bakery and restaurant in Columbia Heights, has launched a new menu that is highlighted by the addition of donuts and shakes as well as an expanded selection of burgers. The full menu is available here.
To start, the donuts will be served on Tuesdays and Thursday, and feature 4 rotating flavors, including Boston cream, raspberry filled, lemon filled, glazed and blueberry filled.
Classics chocolate and vanilla share top billing on the shake list, but you can also find cookies and shake, espresso, peanut butter and the Sticky Fingers brownie shake. All shakes are soy-based, though they can be made with coconut milk upon request.”
If you have any animal/pet photos you’d like to share please shoot me an email to princeofpetworth(at)gmail(dot)com with ‘Animal Fix’ in the title and say the name of your pet and your neighborhood. Your photos will go into the queue (usually 3-4 weeks wait) and will be posted in the order I receive them. If you’ve already entered your pet and would like to do so again – that’s no problem – just space the entries out a bit.
“Foley being adorable in Adams Morgan.”
“Momma Kitty of Pleasant Plains enjoys lounging in a pile of clean laundry.”
“Sienna from Logan Circle! She is about 2 years and came from the Humane Society in DC”
The sexual battery charge against Lt. Col Jeffrey Krusinski — the former chief of the U.S. Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response branch — has been dropped, but Arlington County prosecutors intend to charge him with regular assault instead.
Police arrested Krusinski in May after an incident that we’re told began near Freddie’s Beach Bar and Restaurant on 23rd Street S. in Crystal City, and then carried over to a nearby parking lot. He is accused of grabbing the breasts and buttocks of a woman he didn’t know.
At the time, Krusinski was chief of the Air Force’s program to prevent sexual assault, but he was removed from that position shortly after his arrest. According to the Air Force Times, a female two-star general now leads the branch.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Theo Stamos said dropping the sexual assault charge is a procedural move. Prosecutors are seeking a grand jury indictment for the new assault charge on August 19.
The change means the case can now head to Circuit Court instead of General District Court. It prevents a potential extra step in the prosecution, since convictions in the lower court can be appealed to the Circuit Court.
Just as with sexual battery, a charge of assault and battery is considered a Class 1 misdemeanor in Virginia and carries similar maximum penalties — a fine and up to one year in jail. The main difference is that prosecutors do not have to make the case for lewd behavior or intent.
Krusinski’s attorney, Barry Coburn, released the following statement today:
One of the most critical tasks prosecutors perform is the exercise of prosecutorial discretion: deciding how a case should be charged. Here, the prosecutors in Arlington County have exercised their discretion with care and judgment. While we respectfully disagree with the decision to charge Lt. Col. Krusinski with any offense, and look forward to defending our client at trial, we very much appreciate the care and diligence with which these prosecutors reached the conclusion that a sex offense could not legitimately be charged in this case.
Charging decisions such as this one must be based on the facts and the law of each individual case, not on politics or the desire to have a “teachable moment” concerning issues such as sexual abuse in the military. It is noteworthy that the reason this case became highly publicized was the combination of Col. Krusinski’s job responsibilities in the Air Force and the fact that he initially was arrested for misdemeanor sexual battery. His name and photograph were in virtually every newspaper in the country for these reasons. Now a decision has been reached by careful, responsible prosecutors that that was not the correct charge. This sequence of events hopefully will, in the future, give all of us, particularly persons of great responsibility, pause before we make premature judgments about pending criminal cases before trial, particularly cases involving individuals who have devoted their entire professional lives to military service.
If you ever want to make your mom's famous chocolate chip cookies, but your friend is gluten intolerant, they aren't necessarily out of luck. With some careful measuring, you can tweak almost any baked good recipe to be gluten free.
The trick, according to Food52, is is to weigh your gluten-free flour mix to be consistent every time. The weight of a cup of flour can vary dramatically depending on how you measure it, but when converting to gluten free, one cup should always equal 140 grams (you do have a kitchen scale, right?). Gluten-free flour has a much smaller margin of error in most recipes than wheat flour, and too much or too little can ruin a batch of cookies, so this consistency is important. You may need to make minor adjustments, like adding a splash of milk or an egg white, to get certain recipes perfect, but using the proper amount of flour is the big key. For more tips, be sure to check out the source link.
We spend a lot of time trying to avoid discomfort. We'll never succeed, though. Preparing for discomfort by getting used to it only makes sense.
Avoiding discomfort doesn't just make us unprepared for the unavoidable difficult parts of life. If we avoid too much uncomfortable activity, it can lead to a downward spiral. As Zen Habits puts it:
The problem is that when you run from discomfort all the time, you are restricted to a small zone of comfort, and so you miss out on most of life. On most of the best things in life, in fact. And you become unhealthy, because if eating healthy food and exercising is uncomfortable, then you go to comfort foods and not moving much. Being unhealthy, unfortunately, is also uncomfortable, so then you seek distractions from this (and the fact that you have debt and too much clutter, etc.) in food and entertainment and shopping (as if spending will solve our problems!) and this in turn makes things worse.
What's the solution? Try at least one uncomfortable thing every day. Eat something healthy that you've never had before. Do math without a calculator. Walk to work instead of driving (if it's feasible). The more you choose to tackle uncomfortable tasks willingly, the more you'll be able to handle it when you don't have a choice.
"Be yourself" is great advice for learning to be comfortable and confident in your own skin. It's also horrible advice that can lead to character flaws being interpreted as "personality quirks".
Sometimes people need to change. If we didn't, sites like ours would be out of a job. Accepting your idiosyncrasies is a great way to boost your confidence, but sometimes "that's just how I am" is really "I have a problem and don't want to deal with it" in disguise. We've talked before about how sometimes, if you suck at something, you should quit. Unfortunately, you can't quit being a person, but you can alter your mindsets and behaviors if you're willing to admit you need to change first.
If you have any animal/pet photos you’d like to share please shoot me an email to princeofpetworth(at)gmail(dot)com with ‘Animal Fix’ in the title and say the name of your pet and your neighborhood. Your photos will go into the queue (usually 3-4 weeks wait) and will be posted in the order I receive them. If you’ve already entered your pet and would like to do so again – that’s no problem – just space the entries out a bit.
“Dillinger from Brightwood gets his fur done every few months and makes this face at me.”
“This is Ernie, you’ll find him walking around the Meridian hill park area”
“Tuck, short for Kentucky; he’s a rescue from Bourbon County. On his walks around Columbia Heights, the ladies coo, “Salchicha!”
Hey look, more new pages of comics! Well, surveil mah grits!
Click them in order to make them larger in size.
These two pages were done, if you can even believe this, to thank a cool friend who very selflessly gave us an old smartphone after we complained that our dumbphone just broke — & then, probably a day or two later, the Snowden leaks broke, & our already wingnut-high levels of paranoia shot up to somewhere so stratospheric that the only thing we could use this new cornucopia of new technology & fun for was for sending elaborate performance pieces to the silent, nameless NSA agents watching & listening on the other side of our AT&T connection.
Anyway, our friend — identity preserved for the purposes of an illusory privacy — will be receiving the original pages of this in the mail soon, so they won’t be for sale. But the rest of you are free to enjoy them digitally right here, any time you like — even you government agents in the back row!
“I’m considering rescuing/adopting a small dog for my apartment in D.C. Adoption costs I’ve got figured out, but I’m trying to budget for other expenses having a pet will be (i.e. vet, training, extra rent, etc.) Anyone have any suggestions for pet budgeting or anyone have any experience with what one might call the “true” costs of owning a dog? I’m in an online “responsible pet-owner” class now as I want to be sure I’m also ready to own an animal. Suggestions?”
You can see all forum topics and add your own here.
Click it bigger. The original watercolor is of course for sale over at The Store, as usual. We’re not even sure why you’d buy this one. It’s pretty random & doesn’t have much of a “message.” But also, we are almost entirely convinced that one of you out there has a dog that is almost exactly like this, & would like to keep this hanging above its head at all times.
Next week we’re gonna post a 2- or 3-page comic about how smartphones are bad and scary. There’ll be a lot of words and it’ll be pretty boring to read, so enjoy this mindless-indulgence comic with its garish, dazzling colors while you can.
If you have any animal/pet photos you’d like to share please shoot me an email to princeofpetworth(at)gmail(dot)com with ‘Animal Fix’ in the title and say the name of your pet and your neighborhood. Your photos will go into the queue (usually 3-4 weeks wait) and will be posted in the order I receive them. If you’ve already entered your pet and would like to do so again – that’s no problem – just space the entries out a bit.
“Hank from T street. With his “pet” lucy.”
“Pat thinks it’s playtime. Maddy doesn’t agree. At the Newark St. Dog Park.”
Department of Defense furloughs went into effect today and AAA Mid-Atlantic suggests that may mean less traffic congestion.
In Virginia alone, nearly 72,000 DoD employees are affected by furloughs, which require one unpaid day off per week for 11 weeks. The state is expected to be particularly hard hit by the cuts due to the Pentagon being housed in Arlington.
It’s too early to definitively claim furloughs will ease traffic congestion, but AAA believes fewer people on the road could lead to less gridlock and fewer accidents. In fact, the organization suggests commutes could resemble those of July and August, when the region experiences its lowest traffic volume and rate of accidents.
“For all other workers, the morning and evening commutes to the daily grind could look like it does on any of the ten federal holidays in the Washington metro area or on Fridays, when federal workers use their flex-time schedules or compressed work weeks (AWS) to take time off,” said John B. Townsend II, AAA Mid-Atlantic’s Manager of Public and Government Affairs.
AAA predicts Metrorail and Metrobus ridership may be affected as well. According to WMATA, nearly half of peak period commuters are federal employees and 35 Metrorail stations serve federal facilities, including the Pentagon in Arlington.
Rep. Jim Moran (D) took to Twitter earlier today to express his displeasure with the furloughs. He also sent the following statement to ARLnow.com:
“Due to sequestration, today marked the first of 11 furlough days for 650,000 DOD civilian employees. This 20 percent pay cut is the unfortunate and shameful result of Congress’ failure to work together to find an appropriate way to reduce the federal debt and deficit. I voted against the Budget Control Act that set up sequestration not only because it focused solely on cutting discretionary spending at the expense of increased revenues, but I feared that the Supercommittee could not find compromise. Congress must make tough choices, but we cannot balance the budget on the backs of our federal workers.”
The images and scenes we discuss below are not those of a conventional film plot. Nevertheless, *spoiler warning*.
It’s hard to know how to write about The Act Of Killing, the unsettling, surreal, humanising, nauseating portrait of an Indonesian death squad that is generating such interest. Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and the mainly anonymous Indonesian crew (anonymous for fear of retribution) have conjured something quite extraordinary into the world. Laced with caustic insights into atrocity, empathy, memory, commodification, artifice, power, solidarity, fear, self-deception and play.
One million people were killed in Indonesia in the mid-60s following a military coup. The massacres which aimed at obliterating “communists” (along with ethnic Chinese and intellectuals) have been largely undocumented, with many of the perpetrators occupying prominent positions in the Indonesian government. Without wishing to give too much away or to channel and pre-empt the multiple, contradictory emotions that it is bound to elicit, the main conceit is a film within a film where the murderers re-enact their murders, all the while debating whether to recreate this method, or whether that victim would have cried out in that way, and sometimes whether they might just be showing us too much truth in their performances of the past. At one point there is the satisfied declaration that these scenes of re-articulated horror will be seen as far away as London! Part voyeurs, part students, we are thus implicated in their narratives, viscerally. Aghast, covering our eyes, retching when they retch, laughing guiltily at moments of shared humanity.
The Act Of Killing is a deliberate move from the ‘theatre of the oppressed’ to the ‘theatre of the oppressor’, a move that is challenging not simply because we – those ostensibly passive spectators – are made to face deeply uncomfortable ‘truths’ but also because it is above all a movie that painstakingly documents what Hannah Arendt, in a different context, called the ‘banality of evil’. Whilst there is nothing anodyne or sanitised about these gruesome renactments, they are almost flippantly juxtaposed with the mundane rituals, pedestrian encounters, and even moments of compassion and kindness that make these men all too human. The result is an audience suspended between empathy and disgust, between acceptance and incredulity, and between the absurd and the quotidian.
The Act Of Killing,for us at least, is a gut-twisting manifestation of sometimes nebulous socio-political insights. Insights such as Agamben’s ‘camp’ or Foucauldian ‘state racism’: concepts that suddenly unfold themselves before us on film, embedded as they are in a context otherwise deeply unfamiliar to us. But although seemingly focused, somewhat narrowly, on Medan, Indonesia the ambit of The Act is far greater: it offers a compelling commentary on the connate imbrication of capitalism, commodification, legality, sexual discrimination, racism, and their inescapably violent manifestations. It is less a document-ary about Indonesian history than a meditation on violence, memory and subjectivity themselves, a provocation made universal precisely because of its lingering gaze on these few aged torturers.
Although others enter at points, sometimes as major points of rupture and revelation, The Act Of Killing spends the great bulk of its running time with three figures. Most prominently there is Anwar Congo, an infamous death squad commander well-known around town (although we hear at least once that he may not have been quite as prominent as he claims). Then Adi Zulkadry, who boasts of killing his girlfriend’s father in the street because he was Chinese, and who remains a well-connected to political and economic elites. And finally Herman Koto, the light relief, thespian talent and failed political candidate, who regularly (and inexplicably) takes on the role of woman/drag-queen in the various re-enacted scenes.
All three are associated with Pancasila Youth, a hybrid paramilitary/preman (gangster) organisation with a membership in the millions. Other Pancasila members, including its leader Yapto Soerjosoemarno as well as current government ministers, support the various reconstructions, at one point participating in the burning of a village to mirror the strategies of 1965. A near-emetic scene in itself. Anwar, who Oppenheimer discovered having already interviewed several dozen other preman, is our protagonist/antagonist (might we even say the pro-agonist?). He compels both because he seems proudest of his actions, dancing and showing off as he explains in meticulous detail the microphysics of his atrocity process, and because as we progress with him through the reconstructions, he becomes increasingly haunted, the once-willing performances peeling back his delusions and self-justifications. He re-enacts his own night terrors, and eventually bares himself to Oppenheimer, pushing at him, and at us, because he knows and he feels the pain of those he killed in the act of recreating their deaths. The film unravels in the last ten minutes with an unforeseen fervour. The climax is more than cathartic, it is positively purgative, with Anwar experiencing an abreaction as physiological as it is emotional and that continues to reverberate long after the scene ends.
But it is Adi who is perhaps more compelling. Although he is, for us at least, undoubtedly less troubled by the past than Anwar, he is also less inclined to apologism and aggrandising narrative. When Anwar recollects an old propaganda film about Communists that gave him strength in killing, Adi insists on revealing it as fiction. We were the worst. If anyone is the psychopath of the piece, it is Adi, and for just that reason he is also its centre of truth and its (a)moral compass. When he leaves the film, it is not because of the unwelcome reminder of massacres he commanded, but because of the political trouble he suspects it will stir into life. And on this, as on the causes of the coup-massacre, he is clear-sighted. There is no remorse, but also no dissimulation.
Adi and Anwar are thus our poles. We have no prostrate confessor, no preman-on-trial (the impunity is too great for that), to resolve the arc of justice. Just these two modes: on the one hand, the infamous killer, oscillating between delusional pride and remorse-angst. On the other, the calculating perpetrator, calm in the reality of what he did, alive in the present, unapologetic and calculating still. And maybe a recessive third: the not-too-bright pitifulness of Herman, who just wants to be play along with the big boys.
And so the effect on the audience, as with Renzo Martens’ Episode III: Enjoy Poverty, the opposite of the coddling tales of Kony 2012 and its ilk. Not necessarily because The Act Of Killing forces us to face our own complicity, or provides any such politically neat conclusion, but because the plot narratives we are accustomed to cannot be serviced, cannot accomodate the abrasions of watching Anwar et al. recreate scenes from 50 years ago. There is no appeal to eventual prosecution, or donation to this cause or that, or to another opportunity for the White Saviour Industrial Complex. Only historical memory of a sort. A long-form exposure to the discomforts of the torturer. A gap, a lingering gaze watching someone else retch at the memory of the horrors they carried out for minutes on end, and feeling pity and sadness for them, and not for their victims, who remain un-shown and un-named.
And for all that, there are some instructive traces, clues to be followed up in the wake of the viscera. As Oppenheimer recounts it, one instigation for the film was the desire of a death squad leader he had interviewed to have his picture taken by the scene of previous murders, to be seen, complete with victory signs and thumbs up. Just like those American soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Visibility, representation, recognition, presence. And yet the distant perpetrators are not visible, or present. In the Q&A after we saw the film, Oppenheimer revealed that there were also interviews with two CIA agents who had been charged with providing the necessary support for the massacres. What would it mean for their recollections and re-enactments to be included? Integrating those testimonies would have rubbed against the ethos of The Act Of Killing, which thrives on not detailing the facts of every atrocity, every chain of events and chain of command. But those CIA agents are there nonetheless, reminders in their absence that ‘local’ violence in far places is sometimes not so indigenous after all.
And then there are the loops of memory and action, present throughout in Anwar’s recollection of time spent outside the local movie theatre, but rendered more explicit and unsettling in Oppenheimer’s backgrounder to the film:
To explore their love of movies, I screened for them scenes from their favorite films at the time of the killings – Cecil B. DeMille’s ‘Samson and Delilah’ and, ironically, ‘The Ten Commandments’ topped the list – recording their commentary and the memories these films elicited. Through this process, I came to realize whyAnwar was continually bringing up these old Hollywood films whenever I filmed re-enactments with them: he and his fellow movie theatre thugs were inspired by them at the time of the killings, and had even borrowed their methods of murder from the movies. This was such an outlandish and disturbing idea that I in fact had to hear it several times before I realized quite what Anwar and his friends were saying.
He described how he got the idea of strangling people with wire from watching gangster movies. In a late-night interview in front of his former cinema, Anwar explained how different film genres would lead him to approach killing in different ways. The most disturbing example was how, after watching a “happy film like an Elvis Presley musical”, Anwar would “kill in a happy way”.
Something’s going on here, and it’s not the one-dimensional observation that violent movies inspire violent acts.
And then, although the question of crimes against humanity comes up only once in the film (and is batted aside by Adi with the observation that the victors make the rules as they go along, and as a victor he necessarily gets carte blanche), there is a question of legacy, and after-shock. National memory, as the below interview with Oppenheimer suggests, is consciously and continually policed. At one point in The Act Of Killing, we see it joyfully manipulated anew, as the perpetrators appear on a daytime chat show where their genocidal violence is not only openly discussed, but celebrated.
The scale and character of the 1965 massacres seems to have had all the hallmarks of an open secret in Indonesia, but the telling of the secret, by the perpetrators, has nevertheless stimulated some discussions and investigations, as well as some retributions. Underground showings are underway, in the face of real risks. It is hard to believe that there will be a satisfyingly just resolution, but here, as for Anwar and his preman, there are possibilities in the act of a past re-presented.
“At approximately 1130 pm last night, Third District officers were called to the 700 block of Fairmont Street for a shooting. Once on the scene, officers found an adult male suffering from an apparent gunshot wound. The male was transported to a local area hospital were he succumb to his injury. Further investigation revealed that there may have been some type of argument or struggle in the middle of that block possibly that led to this shooting. If anyone has any information related to this event, you are encouraged to call (202) 727-9099.”
The fatally wounded student, 22-year-old Omar Sykes of Northwest Washington, was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, according to Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Officer Araz Alali.
A police sergeant would not comment on the alleged motive for the shooting.
Update from Council Member Jim Graham:
“My information from MPD indicates that it may have been a robbery that resulted ultimately in this death. A gun may have accidentally fired during that robbery and beating. There is a witness, and there may be video evidence as well.”
Sorry I lied - Hogwarts is not yet on Google Maps.
However Google has now captured Street View imagery of Diagon Alley.To capture the new imagery the Google Street View trekker had to find the secret entrance that exists in the courtyard at the back of the Leaky Cauldron pub, on Charing Cross Road.
Once in Diagon Alley, Google managed to capture Street View imagery of the whole street, including Gringott's Wizarding Bank, Ollivanders Wand Shop and even Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Take a look for yourself and I promise like Harry Potter himself you will wish you 'had eight more eyes' just to take it all in.
“Wow! Awesome! Artistic-Architectural design! Cutting-edge loft-gallery style in Rock Creek Park. Tree-top living in modern city-cool. Great party house, showcase your art/music, spacious rooms on a hidden enclave. Nature views all-around: stream, woods. Private Drive. 5 bdrms, 4 baths, 4 fplcs, 2-car grg, + extras: game room, gym-office space, loft, solarium, screen porch; R U Ready?”
When becoming a member of the PoPville flickr pool please make sure your settings allow me to download your photos. Join the PoPville flickr pool here and follow PoPville on twitter here on facebook here.
Detectives from the Metropolitan Police Department have announced an arrest has been made in an assault that occurred in the 1800 block of 14th Street, NW.
On Sunday, June 23, 2013, at approximately 3:15 am, a male performer who was dressed as a woman was assaulted by two women while inside of an establishment in the 1800 block of 14th Street, NW.
On Tuesday, July 2, 2013, one of the women, 28 year-old Raymone Harding of Gaithersburg, MD, was arrested and charged with Simple Assault. The case remains under investigation.
There is brutal video from a questionable website on youtube here.
A fundraising site has been set up for the victim here.
facebook 
reddit 
Decorated veteran Joshua Brandon works to bring vets into the environmental movement
Chad Wright's series of crumbling sand castles is a moody and dark statement about the struggles of American suburbia and rising sea levels.
