DC Blogs is hosting a photo contest and asked for submissions of photos that inspire you. There are many things that inspire me in this world: catching a great baseball game; listening to my girlfriend recite entire passages from her favorite books; saving ungrateful baby birds.

But if I had to choose two things — and photos — that reflect my inspirations, I’d have to go with traveling and writing.

I took this photo of the pier in San Marcos, Guatemala, during my trip to El Pais de la Eterna Primavera this summer. We stayed for three days in Lago Atitlan, a truly amazing place where we rode horses, stayed in an apartment built into the side of a mountain, and kayaked in this beautifully clear and stoic lake.

I took this photo while visiting my girlfriend’s parents during Easter. Her dad owns this old, barely functional typewriter that sparked memories of my favorite Hemingway stories. I still type on my laptop like I did when I was 7 and my uncle taught me how to type on his old typewriter, one that looked much like this one, pounding away loudly at the keys and infuriating my co-workers.

If you’re anything like me, you spend most of your time mentally retaliating against those who have wronged you. CVS. Chinese pandas. That homeless guy you bought a sandwich for at 7-11 only to have him look at you suspiciously and ask you, “What is this, ham?” before asking you to go back into the store and get him something else.

I hope you’re not like me, though, because then that would mean being stalked by Gawker. Check it out:

This is getting out of control. It’s to the point where I can’t even walk through the streets of New York City or sing an obscenely patriotic song without being spotted and reported to the Web media. It’s starting to get embarrassing. As you can see from the Gawker Stalker I posted above, NYC-ites saw not only me during my latest trip to the City, but also magician David Blaine, that guy who plays Ryan in (and writes for) “The Office”, and something called Julian Casablancas.

The Google tells me Casablancas was born on the same day as The Princess and is the lead singer for something called The Strokes, which, given my recent invitation to join the AARP, I find an insensitive name choice.

Still, I’m sure Casablancas is entitled to point his finger at photographers just as much as I’m entitled to drink Heineken and awkwardly hold a microphone. Gawker has come under fire this year for this “Stalker” segment, which some celebrities compare to paparazzi-like harassment while the New York-based blog defends it as light-hearted, citizen journalism.

Since I can’t make my own decisions without doing something I call “research”, I watched a video yesterday of Jimmy Kimmel (who I hate for schtuping Sarah Silverman) lambasting Gawker co-editor Emily Gould on the YouTubes. I tried to balance both sides of the argument but I was distracted equally by Kimmel’s pompous attitude (did I mention he’s schtuping Jew goddess Sarah Silverman?) and Gould’s defiant good looks. I weighed the arguments and decided that Emily is prettier so I agree with her.

Nearly two years ago, The Princess and I spent a few days with my best friend Blue and his girlfriend BK Broiler in the City to celebrate the New Year. We were walking up Fifth Avenue (this one is an avenue, right Becca?) when we spotted Andrew McCarthy playing with his son.

We all looked at each other to confirm that, yes, this was the same dude who fell in love with a mannequin and acted like a dick toward Molly Ringwald. It was definitely him. I had my camera and my brazen attitude in tow, and was considering walking up to him and asking for some sort of affirmation and photographic evidence that WE SAW AN ACTOR!

I watched Andy (I feel like we’re on a first-name basis now) play with his son, happy with his privacy yet aware that four people were staring at him like vague fans often do. I realized he did not want to be disrupted. I imagined playing with my son, laughing, enjoying our time together, and having people invade my privacy. So we left him alone.

As we walked away, The Princess, sensing that I had wanted to approach him, turned to me and said, “It probably would have made his day.”

Maybe I should put Gawker on my speed dial.

It is our Thanksgiving tradition, to leave the city every year. Last year we went to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, for a friend’s wedding. The year before that, we went to New York City.

This year, The Princess and I decided to repeat Turkey 2005 and headed back to the City, the only City, to celebrate an apocryphal story that helps our children every year resupply the nation’s dwindling “turkey hand” epidemic.

I woke up sick as fuck on Wednesday morning. “Sick as fuck” has a particular meaning to me that might vary, to a certain degree, from what it would mean to you. To me, “sick as fuck” means a head cold that has melted my brain to the point that I act like a helpless, unwanted newborn.

The Princess, a middle school teacher whose Job-like patience might explain why she hasn’t systematically killed every one of her students yet, doted on me. Her doting, though, consisted of telling me to “suck it up”, “be a man”, and “sleep on the couch”. (While reading this excerpt, the Princess told me: “You’re a wimp when you’re sick.”)

I did sleep on the couch. And Thursday morning, despite hallucinations that Nicole Kidman and a polar bear were after my Golden Compass, I woke up at 7am to leave DC. A nearly five-hour trip can be pretty taxing when you can’t focus your eyes on the traffic on I-95. It can be even worse when your head cold makes you forget entire stretches of time. Luckily, The Princess’ cursed Honda Accord gave us a moment of unmitigated glee when its odometer surpassed the 190,000-mile mark. With this kind of excitement to entertain us, we just knew it was going to be a fun weekend.

Day One (Thanksgiving Day)

Lincoln Tunnel is traffic-free…the streets of New York are dirty after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade…thanks to my friends Blue and BK Broiler, for letting us crash at your awesome pad in Union Square…damn it, Strand Bookstore is closed…hot chocolate from Max Brenner and an unseasonably warm afternoon of walking around…dinner in Chinatown…General Tso’s Chicken and eggplant with broccoli at Wo Hop…some old man sits down at our booth across from me while The Princess is in the bathroom…and he doesn’t say a word.

Day Two (Friday)

Brunch at Le Pain Quotidien…finally, two hours shopping at the Strand…not enough time, only buy five books…Black Friday on Broadway Ave. is not a pretty sight…late lunch at Katz’s Deli, where they filmed Meg Ryan faking an orgasm…we sit one table over from it and hear one “I’ll have what she’s having” joke too many…best matzo ball soup I have ever had…

…karaoke that night at Sing Sing…The Princess sings like a gifted lark…with my nasally head cold scraping my vocal chords, I sound like a wounded seagull…still manage to sing my guilty pleasure song, “God Bless the U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood (click HERE to watch YouTube video of my awful singing and The Princess laughing maniacally at me)…Udon noodles for late dinner…mine is served with a raw egg.

Day Three (Saturday)

The Princess goes shopping down Broadway while I sleep in…she buys me bagel with lox and cream cheese for breakfast…we walk to Union Square Park and Greenwich Village…visit Porto Rico Importing Company (the best smelling coffee since I was in Costa Rica)…buy way too much cheese, sausage, and olive oil at Murray’s Cheese…The Princess tries to sneak into a guided tour of how they make cheese…share some Pinkberry frozen yogurt…watch Hogan Knows Best and eat amazing meal…call an audible and decided to beat Sunday’s traffic by leaving NYC that night…get home at 12:20am, great call.

Day Four (Sunday)

While thousands of people jam the tunnels out of NYC, the New Jersey Turnpike, and I-95, The Princess and I sleep in…spend the day relaxing, reading, watching DVDs, laughing, wrestling…go to sleep early…Nyquil knocks me out.

This trip, we decided, was not so much a vacation to New York, but more of a vacation from our lives in DC that just happened to be in NYC. We didn’t do anything too “touristy” like visit the State of Liberty or even walk through Central Park. We just enjoyed being together in a city we both love.

I don’t have time for a long, explanatory blog post on Movember, our team’s valiant effort to fight ass cancer, or the state of our mustaches. Suffice it to say, our facial hair has helped us frighten off our girlfriends, wives, boyfriends, fuck buddies, family members, and pigeons.

We met last Tuesday evening for happy hour beers at Madhatter. We ridiculed one another, took some photos of the absurd state of our faces, and we then kicked ass at trivia, winning a $25 gift certificate off our tab. Booyah.

Foxymoron, Nickels, and INPY wax the ends of their ’staches as they plot their evil plan:

Shiftless Badger and I plot a much less evil plan to foil the above-mentioned evil plan:

Shiftless Badger is agog at the awful state of our mustaches:

Nickels thanks INPY for growing the hairiest ’stache by giving him the manliest kiss I have ever wished I hadn’t seen:

Trivia night, shmivia night, that’s what I say:

Nickels tried to kiss INPY again after this photo was taken but INPY slugged him. I’m not sure what hospital Nickels went to:

With the month (thank you, God almighty, thank you!) nearly over, we will have some Movember party announcements coming soon. Thanks to everyone who donated, you guys have made a huge difference, trust me. And for those who promised you would but haven’t “gotten around to it yet”, well, I can’t be much clearer than this: DONATE HERE. CLICK ON THESE WORDS THAT YOU ARE READING. THE ONES YOU ARE LOOKING AT RIGHT NOW. THAT’S IT, MOVE YOUR CURSOR RIGHT HERE AND CLICK THE MOUSE BUTTON.

Thank you.

There was a moment last week when I thought to myself, “I’m starting to like my mustache. Maybe I’ll keep it even after Movember ends.”

Then a flock of pigeons tried to kill me.

I was walking back to work from lunch, stroking the ends of my ’stache like a man who had just tied a beautiful woman to the train tracks, imagining in my mind’s eye how awesome it looked to everyone around me.

Having my hand up near my mouth must have made a group of pigeons think I was eating something. Or maybe they’re just really stupid. Because in that one moment, hundreds of these sky rats descended on my face.

It was like a scene out of The Birds. Pigeons on my right, pigeons on my left. Pigeons clamoring at my feet, pigeons on my shoulder. You’d think I was Ace Fucking Ventura: Pigeon Detective the way they all gravitated toward me in unison.

In my bewildered state, I looked straight ahead and saw one of the ugliest gutter birds I have ever seen take off and fly directly at my eyes. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. We made eye contact. He accelerated. And I could have sworn I heard him say, “I’m going to eat that caterpillar resting on your upper lip.”.

I dodged his flight path at the last minute and started to walk faster to the safety of my office building. Since I wasn’t playing a real-life version of Duck Hunt, I couldn’t do much more than politely nudge them out of the way with my foot, which is a nice way of saying I kicked them. “You are mistaken!” I yelled as passers-by stopped to stare and laugh at my avian plight. “I do NOT have any food!”

These pigeons were undeterred, following me all the way to my building while I flapped my arms and lurched violently to scare them off.

It never occurred to me when I started Movember that a gaggle of pigeons would someday try to kill me. I knew I would encounter some teasing from friends and alienation from The Princess, but not an all-out air assault on my face.

Still, I am ready to shave this monstrous thing. And I think everyone around me is, too.

While meeting my friend Chinese Buffet Pussy for lunch the other day, she took one look at me and started to laugh. And she couldn’t stop. I managed to squeeze a question in between her howls of amusement.

“Do I look like Zorro yet?” I asked her.

“You look like something.”

I look like something. That might be the understatement of the month. Because looking like this has not been easy. Especially this past week, when every glance at the mirror is followed by an automatic face cringe. The Princess can’t kiss me without covering my face’s veritable chyron with her hands and looking only at my eyes.

Ten days, that’s all I have left with this hairy mistake. If you feel sorry for my condition, please click HERE to donate. All monies go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation to fight ass cancer. Any amount is appreciated, but remember, $10 gets you an open bar at our end-of-the-month Movember party.

And now for the real reason you skipped slogged through my blog post: Photos!

“No, INPY, I do not want to buy insurance from you.”

Cagey could not keep her hands off my face

MJ: “Your ’stache scares me.”

Shiftless Badger: “There’s some candy in my van, kids.”

At a house party several years ago, I engaged a lovely young lady in the finer points of political discourse. I told her how I felt. She told me how she felt. I told her she was wrong. And then she started to cry.

Now before you admonish me for making this woman sob at what was supposed to be a fun housewarming for a friend, consider this: she was a Republican.

I don’t remember what I argued that now infamous night, but I’m pretty sure I threw out terms like “GOP scum”, “Fascist pig”, and “Look at that guy do a keg stand!”.

But it became clear to me that night that opposing one’s political views can be a dangerous game, especially in this city. I know where I stand on most issues and, though I am open to new ideas, I remain steadfast in this respect.

Which is why my inability to choose a presidential candidate is mystifying me.

This is the first year where I will make a real choice. In 1996, the first election year I could vote, I of course helped re-elect Bubba. In 2000 (a year when I actually uttered the words, “How bad can it be?” after the Supreme Court awarded Bush the presidency), it was really no choice when I voted for newly crowned Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore.

In ’04, it was John “Anybody-But-Bush” Kerry. Which brings us to 2008.

Barack? Hillary? Colbert? I have no idea. For some reason, which is not grounded in policy or voting record, I think I like Bill Richardson but I really have no idea why. This is idiotic, since selecting a candidate because you like his haircut or you think he looks like a nice person is an absurd exercise in mindlessness.

So I turned yesterday to the only thing that could help me decide: an Internet quiz that took less than 5 minutes to take.

The first quiz I took was this one by something called the Internet Straw Poll. I answered 14 questions regarding the death penalty, the war on drugs, and Social Security. After carefully calculating my answers, it then told me I favored this guy:

Tom Fucking Tancredo! A xenophobic fuckwad who would have personally chased my family back to Argentina back in 1979 despite our green cards.

I found this an odd result considering I answered a resounding (I clicked hard on my mouse) YES to the question, “Do you think illegal immigrants should be able to earn citizenship?”

I decided that the Internet Straw Poll was a biased mechanism bent on proselytizing its right-wingers. So I looked for another quiz.

I took this “Candidate Calculator” test on a site called VaJoe, which sounds especially funny when you sat it out loud. This one asked me 23 questions that varied in topics and allowed you to “weigh” each answer.

I answered with more thought this time, taking care to consider my stances on topics like “U.S. sanctions against Iran” and “ANWR drilling” (drilling is bad, right?).

My top match?

Dennis Fucking Kucinich.

So there are my two choices for next year, people. A guy who would deport you for being too dark-skinned or a guy who has no shot in hell at the nomination, let alone securing an invite to the Democratic Convention.

I wonder if I can still vote for Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy”, protagonist Arthur Dent learns that the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is, succinctly, this:

42.

Of course, knowing the answer precludes him from ever knowing the Ultimate Question.

This philosophical paradox was what was going through my head recently while perusing my own Deep Thoughts about Yahoo! Answers, a community-driven knowledge site that allows anyone – and I mean anyone – to ask and answer questions that run the gamut of human curiosity.

Why are we here? Does God exist? Why do we drive on a parkway but park on a driveway?

These are the great questions of life. But Yahoo! Answers is a world full of “people” seeking their own strangely prioritized answers to a laundry list of interminable questions. These people look to strangers to answer their deepest inquiries, which is not much different than spending 7 1/2 million years computing the Ultimate Answer.

Some of these Yahoo! members’ questions are legitimate queries of objective measure, such as:

What can I do to increase my breast milk production?

Others come from ambitious seekers of subjective information that transcends human thought, such as:

How many years away are we from being able to colonize another planet?

But my favorite questions are the ones you would never dare ask your friends. The ones you’re almost embarrassed to even think about. So you posit these questions in the safest way possible — online.

Here are eight of my favorite recent questions asked on Yahoo! Answers, along with my unpublished replies:

I have had a penis for 32 years and I’m not sure I have ever “worn” it. Though when I reached puberty, like most boys, I suppose I did wonder about which way it should hang or why I could only hit the toilet 40% of the time in the morning. All these questions seemed to sort themselves out as I aged and the one thing I am the most thankful for was that MY MOM DIDN’T ASK THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ABOUT IT.

As a grotesquely giant English boy, you have no need to worry about waiting much longer for your voice to break. I would worry, however, about your “man bits” that “have sticked”. You have socialized medicine across the pond, go to a urologist who specializes in sticking man bits.

I think you need to speak English to first be excluded by Spanish people who want to gossip about you. Still, I understand your concern, which is why whenever I get my hair cut at my primarily Latino hair salon in Silver Spring, I pretend not to speak Spanish so I can catch them talking about me. Know how many times I’ve caught them? Zero.

We’re busy tomorrow, check in with us on Friday. Next week, at the earliest.

The Princess, who is a middle school teacher, already has had a 14-year-old student who was pregnant when she was 12. It didn’t work out well. Get her a Cabbage Patch Doll.

Dictatorphiles like you are rare. So are real-sounding names like Joey Stalin.

I’m not a woman. I also rarely ask women about their periods. But I’m pretty sure they don’t “go off” like an alarm clock. I could be wrong, though. But don’t put it in the Lord’s hands, I bet he doesn’t know much more about them than I do.

I wish I could help you with this one, but my girlfriend is perfect. She told me so. But I think you’re on to something in asking whether the measures of true love can compensate for the complications incurred by the deterioration of daily life. That was your question, right?

If anyone has any further answers to these poor souls, these wisdom-seekers, these erudite dreamers of life, search them out and help them.

I know I will.

“You’re cheating!”

Since the start of Movember, I had read and re-read the charity event’s five rules of growing a mustache. Rule #4 states:

“There is to be no joining of the handlebars - that’s a goatee.”

No problem there. So why was I getting flak from my teammates?

“It looks too much like your goatee.”

This was true. In the nine days since I decided to enter this event all in the name of raising money to fight ass cancer, I had been growing a trucker, or handlebar, mustache. It initially caused problems with my girlfriend, who tried to remind me that, no, I do not, in fact, drive a big rig.

In my defense, I was clearly not violating the Movember rules and it looked much better than I thought it would. Still, when my Movember team — the Committee for the Restoration of Trebek’s Upper Lip Hair – met last Friday night, they were adamant.

INPY’s effort, though clearly the winner so far for fullest ‘stache, reminded me of an insurance salesman. Nickels and Foxymoron were cursed by light, blondish facial hair that hid their otherwise obvious forays. Shiftless Badger was growing quite the great 70s-gay porn mustache, and Rory’s lackluster effort prompted me to ask him repeatedly if he knew he was supposed to actually be growing one this month.

“You have to shave,” they said, badgering me over lots of beer and wine at Rory’s place.

I realized that though I was technically staying within bounds of Movember’s proscribed regulations, the goodwill of my team was more important. So I borrowed Rory’s Gillette Mach 3 and dragged its triple-blade action system over the sides of my mouth.

“Much better,” my teammates said afterwards. We polished off another bottle of wine and several six-packs of beer, one of which I bought at a liquor store from a beer wench who showed me a photo of her “Free Mustache Rides” t-shirt on her cell phone.

Even done in the name of fighting ass cancer, Movember has been a bewildering event, much like a vegetarian finding herself at Fogo de Chao or a Guatemalan rooting for a winning soccer team. Having a mustache opens you up to inquisitive looks and openly personal questions, all revolving around the same theme: “What in the name of Yahweh are you doing?”

Still, it has not been as embarrassing as I had expected. People at work seem indifferent to my mustache and people on the street don’t look at me any more or less than normal.

As a team, we passed our fundraising goal on the FIRST DAY of Movember, making the Top 20 Money Raisin’ Teams in the U.S.:

We have since revised our target figure, one which we continue to inch toward thanks to the generous donations of family, friends, and readers. You guys have been more than great, in fact, as evidenced by my friend Ladder 49, who showed her support for my ’stache by growing one of her own (not bad for two-days’ growth):

We still need your help in raising money, though. You can click HERE to donate.

We are also hosting the official DC Mo Town Party (fondly nicknamed Alcohol and Razors), which will be held at the end of the month at INPY’s house followed by a field trip to Wonderland. We’re discussing giving away some prizes and anyone who donates at least $10 will have an open bar (at INPY’s). The top donor also gets the dubious honor of shaving a Mo Bro’s month-long mustache.

I’ll continue to update as our mustaches fill in and scare off little children.

I am really close to terminating my Facebook account. I opened one up months ago only because some of my co-workers were on it and they said it was “the next MySpace” (like that’s a selling point) and that we could share photos and videos.

Since then, though, it’s been one Vampire Invitation/Superpoke/Status Update after another and, frankly, I’ve been getting sick of it. Hell, I even discovered recently that my former campers have disturbingly grown up when I found their Facebook profiles.

Still, as fas as entertainment value goes, it has its benefits. Like finding this:

30 Reasons Girls Should Call It a Night

This Facebook group, which as of yesterday had 161,711 members, 4,817 photos, and 6,645 Wall posts, has been, as the young kids say, “blowing up”. It features photo after photo of women in their 20s in various undignified poses of drunkenness and overall skankiness.

Among the 30 reasons, the group’s founders advise:

“#22. You think you’re in bed, but your pillow feels strangely like the bathroom floor.”

…and…

“#27. One minute you’re strutting your stuff, the next minute you’re rolling on the ground, and you can’t seem to remember the transition.”

Even FoxNews has deigned to report on this important issue, illuminating the world to the fact that, yes, women get drunk and vomit on each other’s shoes. Social networking as absurdism has hit an all-time high (or low, depending on your view of things).

Believe me, I am not looking down at these inebriated girls. I feel a sense of pity for many of them for having their humiliation broadcast in such a Web 2.0-way. Who hasn’t gotten so trashed that jumping off a balcony or peeing off an eight-story roof sound like great ideas?

But Jesus Christ on a cracker, why do they let their friends post their photos?

Still, they’re entertaining as shit. Here are some of my favorite:

For those Facebookers who, like me, just can’t seem to quit the site, here is a 6-step wikiHow.

After writing yesterday about holding Alexander the Great without having him vomit or shit on me, I found this disturbing video. It is safe for work, but if you ever had wonderful memories of playing with toys, prepare to say goodbye to them. Why am I showcasing this video if it’s so disturbing? Because if I had to suffer through it, then you do, too: