Parsa Kabob, the local Persian restaurant, is tucked away in the side of a shopping mall a little south of my office. It’s staffed by a friendly fellow who knows your favorite dish before you’ve reached the counter, and it smells like garlic and fresh bread inside. I drove Todd there for lunch this afternoon, and instead of walking next door to the comic book store (super sweet!) while waiting for his order, we checked out the dollar store. Inside, for $7.35, I picked up three rolls of X-mas wrapping paper, a box of boxes, a pair of work gloves, a green lightbulb (so that folks can “stop at the green light” as opposed to sailing on past our house and into Ellicott City), and Lieutenant Extreme. Lieutenant Extreme is a 1′ poseable plastic action figure, sort of a poor kid’s old-skool GI Joe, and the particular LT I bought is wearing a camofluage hoodie and packing an M-16. This is the kind of thing I would have paid months of allowance for when I was eight or so. Look at the beauty in buying Lieutenant Extreme in bulk at the dollar store: Your kid could spend all week beating the crap out of Lieutenant Extreme and blow him up on Sunday, and you’d have another one waiting for him Monday morning for the kingly sum of $1. He may not pose quite as well as Mr. Joe, or have comparable footwear (Lieutenant Extreme has two-piece plastic boots that snap together over his feet like concrete sneakers), but you get a lot for your Washington. Right now he’s standing point on my monitor, plastic eyes scanning the horizon for signs of trouble, M-16 set on “full auto.” Step off, yo.

Another Aspirin, Please. I met Jason last night at the Brewer’s Art for some drinks and conversation; we had a great time catching up and sampled the Ozzy (any beer poured from a tap sporting a rubber hand in the ‘metal ruuuules‘ pose is one you have to drink) but I found that three glasses of 7.5ABV beer is not so good for my head in the morning.

One good thing is that being in a bar talking loudly over other people in cigarette smoke drops my otherwise squeaky (to me) voice down about two octaves.

Looks like Todd has signed on to the HDR project as well as my eight students; I’m trying to figure out how I can get his stuff critiqued by the class (if they’ll even let me.) Somehow i think the new MICA isn’t going to let non-students come in and audit classes like my friend Jason did back in the day.