I had a client in the Watergate building on the 6th floor. Right next door to them was the actual office where the break-in occured, so, on this, the 35th Anniversary of the scandal, I thought I'd post some of the pics that they were kind enough to allow me to take, here.
Enjoy this little slice of Washington DC history....
(UPDATE: Blogger is being a little bitch right now, and not letting me post these pics the way I want them to go, and also since I've got to get ready for the below mentioned POS day-job, so, much to my chagrin, these two pics will have to do for now.
I'll put the rest up when I don't want to gash my teeth, rend my cloth and tear my hair out like I'm actually in Hell, for reals. ~nyc)
Despite what the "new & improved" Blogger might have to say about how long I've been on their corner of the internets, it's been a long, long, long time that A Pen Warmed In Hell has had a presence, and I gotta tell ya. it can get pretty discouraging sometimes because nobody's been leaving any comments here.
Kinda depressing, flying blind, it can be.
Not to mention discouraging too
Well, finally the ice has been broken.
First jurassicpork popped in and said "hi" and just now today, enigma4ever, of Watergate Summer, just left me some nice words of encouragement, and I gotta tell ya, The Spiritual Patron Saint of A Pen Warmed in Hell, Mark Twain, himself, is right, you can:
"Get by for two weeks on the strength of a compliment".
Who knew?
So I want to do something special for them both, and since I'm not in a position to award cash prizes, at least not yet, if anyone out there wants to show me how to set up a PayPal donate link, or sell advertising, in addition to Google's Adsense Program, here on A Pen Warmed In Hell, so I can, like, y'know, I'm like everybody else and I really want to quit my day job, they don't understand me over there anyways, so it's not like there'd be any hard feelings, and do this full time, that'd be awesome.
In the meantime, and since it works so well with the President Ford stuff that I'm planning on writing here, here are some honest, Out-Sourced, Injun, pictures that I took last year, when I back to DC last Spring to visit my girlfriend in DC, (babs you are SO missed), of the actual office that the Watergate Building Break-In, which led to the Fall of Richard Nixon, happened in.
There's actually a freaking Shrine, of sorts, in there.
How cool is that?
I hope you all like them.
More to follow.
~nyc
Let's all give a fiery A Pen Warmed In Hell welcome to today's guest author, none other than The World's Famous, Revolutionary, Firebrand, of The Far East, One Yahuda Bangs himself, most recently hailing from The Little Red Email, who has graciously deigned to grace our presence here today with his pick for A Pen Warmed In Hell's Regular Feature, which you have all come to know, and love, as our greatly anticipated:
One of the most time honored traditions in media is the year-end feature listing the superlative (or superlatives) in any particular category. The task this year has fallen upon me, and the category on which I’ve been asked to expound by my overlords in A Pen Warmed In Hell's Media Bunker (located deep inside Manhattan’s Underground Subway System) is that of
Looking back at the American body politic of 2006 provides a panoramic view of scumbaggery in all its myriad forms:
From the naked hypocrisy of a morally and ethically bankrupt ruling party clinging tenaciously to a fictitious moral high ground, claiming to the very end to be the party of family values (all the while sheltering pedophiles within their ranks), to the dying spasms of the same party attempting to cling to power through fear, intimidation, and outright electoral fraud.
From a Vice President so inured in treachery that deception was his natural strategy for dealing with a simple hunting accident, to the lapdog right wing media that attempted to spin the incident as having been the fault of the shot rather than the shooter, only to be slapped back into line by, of all people, gun nuts.
From the outright lies told by an American president to continue the war in Iraq, to the fraud and mismanagement committed by those whose financial interests lie in the continuation of a pointless conflict physically destroying one country while simultaneously corroding the collective soul of another.
So you see, even the most cursory glance back at 2006 produces a bumper harvest of scumbags from which to chose, and picking one choice rose from this field of bastards is a difficult task.
In choosing a “Cretin of the Year” I had to ask myself to accept the heavy responsibility of assigning ultimate blame for the horrible mess the world is in on one individual alone. The individual in question, I realized, would need to be one revered by some and despised by others, someone whose fingerprints could be found on the levers of power (even if actual power were held by some ruthless shadow-cabal, and the prints put there only for appearance).
Though there are many worthy choices for Cretin of the Year, the criteria left me with only one true candidate to fill the position of ceremonial head scumbag. Thus, without further adieu, I’d like to announce the man to whom this dubious honor is bestowed.
Our Cretin of the Year is a man who has proven himself completely divorced from reality. He is an individual whose bumbling clownishness has forever besmirched the reputation of not merely the presidency, but of the nation itself. The damage done to America’s standing in the world by our Cretin of the Year cannot be mended by the mere passing of time. Indeed, this individual’s performance record is so shoddy that his very name will go down in the annals of history as a stain on the reputation of the high office (a position gained through dubious means) itself:
Excuse me.
…What? No, no, the internet’s been down since the earthquake, I haven’t seen the news since…
He what? You don’t say. Wow. That changes everything. No, no. I totally agree, that would be a bad move.
This just in.
Former President Gerald Ford has passed away at the age of 93.
A Pen Warmed In Hell wishes him a glorious afterlife. May death come swiftly to his enemies!
In unrelated news, for his unparalleled role in the ongoing destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, for overseeing the collapse of the American military, for willfully ignoring impending environmental challenges, and for blindly leading his lemming-like constituency as well as much of the world over a cliff and into a dark abyss from which return will be nigh impossible, the A Pen Warmed In Hell award for Cretin of the Year goes to.....
George W. Bush.
Way to go, Asshole.
