So something weird happened as I walked with a friend along the Potomac next to the Kennedy Center tonight. Block-letter text began slowly crawling up the forest on Roosevelt Island, directly west toward Virginia. It looked like it was from a speech or perhaps a play. President Bush's primetime speech on the future of the Iraq war? Nope, a bit too flowery. Shakespeare? Nope, not with the reference to the "American continent." We were transfixed by the slow-scrolling text, which started on the water and slid up the trees and disappeared into the night. I was coming off a bit of a buzz, and if I didn't have someone else with me, I might have thought I was hallucinating.

Eventually we decided to investigate the source and nature of the projection. The balconies at the Kennedy Center were quite sparse - no crowds watching from above, as we had speculated. Perhaps a dozen people, perched over the balcony, with projectors on the north and south of the water-facing sides of the building and a couple people running them. We didn't dare inquire as to what nut would stick a couple projectors on the balcony and fill the trees across the water with lumbering text, like a race of slow-witted aliens who wanted to make sure their own threatening signals to Homo Sapiens were easy enough for their walnut-sized brains to follow.

Turns out they were quotes from Kennedy and Teddy Roosevelt. They were definitely jarring enough to stop people strolling along the water toward Georgetown and almost get us hit by a few bicyclists that only saw gawking pedestrians in their way, not messages from dead presidents.

Washington, D.C.: Our words can beat up your words.