Goth goth goth, POSE, aaaand chili half-smoke

Summarizing the weekend has rarely been easier, but it does look a little odd.

I've gotten onto a major gothic kick in the reading department and am midway through both The Castle of Otranto and The Monk, having polished off the somewhat less ridiculous Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard. All I can say about The Monk is that it's either one of the best future-oriented jokes—something Lewis was hoping would cause neverending laughter a hundred years or so along—or a perfectly horrifying ball o' cheese. Not only are there bleeding nun-ghosts who demand marriage and/or laying (heh) of their spectres, unholy fiends who pose as the models for pr0n unusually well-venerated icons, dark rites conducted in moldering crypts, and dirty dirty incest, there's a perverted pet bird who shows up solely to titillate a voyeur. I've lost track of the number of times people have met by coincidence and sat down to tell long involved "so I was walking through the woods and met this [bandit/distressed maiden/bleeding ghost/bandit dressed as a distressed sanguinous ghost-chickie]" stories that purely beggar description. No doubt English classes go right to town on this book, but on its own merits it walks a beautiful line between insultingly intricate and downright hee-larious. What little I've seen in Otranto promises much the same. No wonder people of Jane Austen's era worried about what reading this stuff would do to their kids' minds and morals. Good times!

Because woman does not live by goth alone, Teal and I made the traffic-clogged drive out to the National Arboretum on Sunday to frolic and take silly pictures, which I will upload soonest [ETA: Flickr link]. Jeans are not conducive to yoga poses, and my Crow is not yet consistent enough that I wanted to try it on the flagstoned verge of a scummy lily pond, but at least we were out in the air and enjoying ourselves. The Arboretum is home to an enormous collection of Glenn Dale azaleas, only a few of which were in bloom; we mostly amused ourselves by peering at their names ("Glenn Dale Bacchante. Presumably you don't let guys stray off the path here, euan oi oi oi oi?" "Glenn Dale Shameless. Goodness!") and trying to figure out what the principles of organization were.

Lest all that healthy trekkin' and triangle-posin' have accidentally conferred any healthful benefits upon us, we went back into downtown and joined several hundred other people who had decided to close out the weekend by standing in line at Ben's Chili Bowl. You can kinda sorta tell that President Obama had visited there, what with the stickers of the Presidential seal featuring his face, the wall-size poster of him with Mayor Fenty, and the ball-point addendum under the "Who Eats Free at Ben's: Bill Cosby and the Obama Family" note that reads, "BUT HE PAID." So did we, for chili-cheese half-smokes, fries, and chocolate shakes. My God, you know you're in for indigestion after a meal at Ben's. But it is so so worth it.