I walk through the heather
Underneath the sky
The leaves have never looked as good
As now they're going to die


T. V. Santhosh, Bitter Lessons II, 2009

* Can you believe it? The Redskin's vendors are selling beer in the men's room at FedEx Field. excerpt:

"But then last weekend, the same guy who posted the shot a year ago put a video of FedExField’s head hawkers on YouTube. Commenters again chimed in to say they’d seen such sales at various men’s rooms during Skins home games. After Washington City Paper wrote about the clip, it went viral, so to speak. The bathroom beer vending gave the world another reason to mock the Redskins.

"Even folks who regulate beer sales for a living were shocked and awed by what they saw.

“'Our phones were ringing off the hook last week,' says Norma Lindsay, the chief liquor inspector for Prince George’s County. 'Everybody—us, the [county] health department, everybody—got involved. That sort of conduct is absolutely against code, because it’s a health issue. There’s every sort of health inspector in the world at that stadium for Redskins games, but nobody had ever heard of that or witnessed it before. I can’t even imagine who would want to buy a beer in the bathroom. That was frightening.'

“'Oh, my lord,' gasped Jill Pepper of the TEAM Coalition as she watched the video of the bathroom beer sales for the first time.

"Stadium beer is Pepper’s bailiwick. The TEAM Coalition is a local nonprofit that, Pepper says, was formed 'to promote responsible consumption and sales service of alcohol' at major sporting venues.
...
“'A bathroom can be hazardous to your health,' she says, “particularly as guys, since the track record for guys is, after they urinate, they’re quite disinclined to wash their hands. You pick up things from all over in the bathroom. When they hear this, some guys say, ‘I don’t think my hands are contaminated.’ Well, they might not be picking anything up from the act of urinating, but you may be carrying around bacteria and viruses from other sources. Even without the science, frankly, I’m surprised anybody would be considering mixing any type of food or beverage with the bathroom setting.'

"The Redskins were not sanctioned by P.G. County for the bathroom beer sales. Lindsay says she’s confident that the men’s room vending is in the past at FedExField. Her agency has been in contact with the team and its caterers since the story broke, she says, and they’ve assured her that the salesman in the video has been fired. But, she adds, just in case, county health and liquor inspectors have all been briefed on the situation, and from now on they’ll all be spending more time in men’s rooms.

“'We’re used to dealing with sales to minors, selling after closing time, sales on Sundays,' Lindsay says. 'Nobody ever thought of looking in the men’s room for beer sales. That one’s going down in the books.'"

* Falsedawn!

* "The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment." -- Dorothy Nevill