Vic is not on vacation, alas, nor on Hiatus, would that it were. I have spent the weekend writing relentlessly upbeat articles for the Winter issue of the Quarterly, and will not inflict them on you.    It is hell being Jimmy Olsen Cub Reporter for a minor metropolitan publication.  It is Monday and I feel […]

Soviet DELTA III Launching SLBMs I have not been out of the Tunnel Eight very much in the evening of late. Things were so nuts in the office starting in early summer that I felt lucky to get home and walk the long block with my Heavy Hands swinging, cook some dinner and go to […]

  The Celebrated Galloway Manure Spreader, Patent Pending   Dodgers vs Phillies, or Obama vs McCain.   I tried both, being a civic-spirited type. As is true with all compromises, didn’t do well at either.   The Dodgers had to win- for them there was no tomorrow, but in the end it did not matter. […]

26 October 2008   Absentee in Person   I couldn’t stand it any longer. The sun was shining brightly down on North Glebe Road, and the temperature was supposed to soar into the low eighties. I got up from the desk at lunchtime yesterday, took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out of […]

14 October 2008 Lipstick I got one of those good ones in the e-mail yesterday. It was pithy and on target, which is the key to effective humor. It was a list of common terms from the market, revised to meet the new reality. The one that left me gasping was this new definition: STOCK […]

Fifteen Zeros I’m bored with the financial crisis. It has determined the results of the coming election, spoiling the anticipation. It has created a perfect storm for the young senator from Illinois, whose opportunity to leap from the state legislature to the national stage was prompted by a sex scandal that bit ascendant Republican candidate […]

Lady Day, in the Day.   I blinked open in the darkness, the fir st conscious thought coming that perhaps things had changed, that it was going to be different than it had been.   I flexed a few muscle groups to test the hypothesis. Nope, still sore from wrestling the big bike around. Nearly […]

I am going to go over to the Courthouse and vote this week. They cal it “Absentee in Person,” which is one of those non sequiturs that abound in this new century.   Arlington is a thoroughly Blue County, and I expect things to be pretty crazy on election20day at the precinct next to Big […]

Dru Blair’s “While the Giant Slept” I bought a picture the other d ay. It is stupid, I know, since I don’t have enough wall to put it on. Once I had the Kazakh guys at K&H Framing mount the thing, They do really good work, and have framed just about everything I hold dear, […]

  Stephen Crowley/The New York Times “The turmoil will not end quickly, nor will the measures taken by the government solve the underlying problems.”  Somebody said that this morning, and it could have been Secretary Paulson, or it could have been oracle Alan Greenspan.   In terms of accountability for our ruin, the Times helpfully fingered […]