D.C. hazardous-materials team fails test

"The majority of the D.C. Fire and EMS Department's hazardous-materials team failed an exam testing their competency in responding to emergencies, including chemical or biological attacks, city officials said yesterday."

More Doors Closing On Working Poor

Pick this up, Google: "Do Not Move To Washington, D.C." You can't afford it.

In this region, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment stands at $999. Housing advocates say thousands of service workers make less than half the salary needed to afford that.

Affordable housing here is constantly being replaced by high-priced luxury apartments and condominiums. This will make Pat Buchanan happy, at least until there's nobody left to serve him coffee at Starbucks.

Audit Excoriates United Way Leadership

If only I could find a way to steal money from my company... then maybe I could make a decent living in Washington. That's apparently what everybody else does.

In one example from 1991, Suer claimed $543 in expenses for a United Way conference in Tampa on the weekend the Super Bowl was taking place there. Auditors concluded there was no United Way conference there at the time.

Brilliant.

We're all professionals here

The Redskins responded to getting shut out the other night by... fighting with each other in training camp.

Also, Maryland cheated when one if its coaches gave money to a prospect.

You can't play with my toys!!!

Brickfest was held this past weekend at the George Mason Arlington campus. It sounds like fun, since it involves Legos. However, it's specifically for (and this is the website's terminology) "AFOL's," or "Adult Fans of LEGO".

Kids, who are probably the most likely group to enjoy looking at massive LEGO structures, are discouraged from attending.

And registration is $50.

Is there anything we can't suck the fun out of?

Subscribers aren't the only ones dropping "AOL"

Here's a funny summary of media coverage concerning AOL trying to get itself dropped from the "AOL Time Warner" name. The writer of the piece had the same reaction to the news that I did yesterday: "Huh?" It's AOL that's been dragging down the media conglomerate's name with its poor performance and accounting scandals.

Don't forget to check out the internal memo featuring AOL's spin on the subject... that it's an attempt for AOL to get back its "online identity."

The thing that makes me happiest amid all the coverage is this graphic from the Post:



BWAH HA HA! Oh man, I have to see that again...



BWAAAAAAAH HA HA HA!

AOL Time Warner?

We already had Worldcom change its name to MCI to avoid negative connotations. And now...

The management at America Online has asked AOL Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons to drop the AOL from the company's name, saying the identification of AOL Time Warner's corporate problems with the service are also tarnishing the unit's brand name, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Wait, wait... so AOL thinks that its brand is being tarnished by Time Warner? And not the other way around (i.e. that the AOL dinosaur is dragging down the corporate behemoth)? Whatev.

Meanwhile, AOL 9.0 is out, I guess! Hooray! Because we all needed more junk mail CD-ROMs to throw away/make into drink coasters!

Aha, but this one has marvelous new features, like:

Mail in AOL 9 still evaporates out of your inbox after a week, but you now get 20 megabytes of online mail storage per screen name, accessible from any copy of AOL 9. The update also adds a "Manage Mail" view that clearly presents your online and offline mail folders.

It doesn't, unfortunately, help you organize the messages you'll start to accumulate: You can't sort mail saved on AOL into different folders, nor can you filter incoming e-mail by its sender.

OK... why hasn't AOL caught up with Netscape from five years ago?

You can dress up your IM personality with a "SuperBuddy," a giggle-worthy icon that reacts to your chatter -- type "lol" (short for "laughing out loud"), and your SuperBuddy chuckles; "cool" causes it to put on sunglasses, and "XOXO" makes this little avatar smooch the screen.

Wow, what a major fucking enhancement that is. Those are some funky fresh ideas coming out of Dulles.

Most useful of all is AOL 9's free voice chat, which allows you to have a real, two-way conversation, just like on the phone, between any two microphone-equipped PCs running AOL 9, anywhere in the world.

Once again... this is the hot new technology of five years ago. That everyone has since realized doesn't work and stopped using.

In the D.C. area, AOL's only high-speed offering is a $54-a-month, Verizon-run digital-subscriber-line service. The same basic connection, but with MSN software, is available directly from Verizon for $35 a month.

Ridiculous. People, stop giving your money to AOL. You can get the real Internet via DSL connection for cheaper. The Verizon straight-up DSL is good stuff, and they lowered the price recently. Please do that instead. Do The Right Thing, as Spike TV would say.

Brief hatred

D.C. is razing old housing projects to make way for new neighborhoods, I suppose as part of the famous "city living, dc style!" campaign.

" 'No one should think that they can't afford to live in the District,' said Eric Price, deputy mayor for planning and economic development." Yeah, fuck you too, pal.

Do I get to live next door to one of those new Latino street gangs I've been hearing so much about? Hooray, even more violence than before! They could be flying under the cops' radar after a computer crash wiped out 200 cases from their database. Always make backups, people.

Oh, and apparently, you haven't lived here if you haven't gone to the American Horticultural Society's farm in Alexandria, or to this replica of a whiskey still in rural Marlyand. By that reasoning, I haven't lived here, and never will.

Who's dumber: Spurrier, or me for buying the tickets?

First I laughed when the Redskins lost their first preseason game to Carolina 20-0. Then I was sad, because like an idiot I bought tickets to watch this garbage all season.

It's a sickness, really. Or, I'm an idiot.

After all, the Redskins charge the highest average ticket price in the NFL; the $59 per seat per game I pay to sit in the upper deck of [product-placed shipping company] Field, at the 20-yard-line, about 3/4 of the way to the back, is ridiculously high And that's face value; if you want to attend a single game, you would probably wind up paying double that to a scalper and/or ticket broker.

And for what? My money indirectly goes to paying the salary of a complete and utter moron. I'm speaking of head "ball coach," Steve Spurrier.

That's right, I said it. Steve Spurrier, who was hired by Daniel Snyder at a salary of $5 million a year for his offensive genius, is in fact a fucking moron.

At his college job, the University of Florida, Steve could recruit some of the best high school players in the South to play for his team. Then he would run up the score against cupcakes like Wyoming and Middle Tennessee State, and run it up against the bad SEC teams as well. Then he would lose to a decent team at some point during the season, dashing hopes for a championship, but everyone was so happy about going 10-2 all the time that they didn't care much.

Spurrier's brand of football was easily recognizable: throw the ball all the time, because running doesn't let you run up the score fast enough. He often had faster receivers than the other team's defensive backs, which made this process successful much of the time. And beating bad teams 55-0 made him look like an offensive guru, and his quarterbacks look like Heisman Trophy shoe-ins.

Fast forward to 2002. Redskins owner Daniel Snyder extracts Spurrier from his job at Florida and installs him as head coach. Spurrier proceeds to hire a number of men who played for him at Florida, and professes to the media that, by gum, what worked at Florida would work in the NFL.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. The NFL is completely fucking different from what you saw at Florida, goober.

In the NFL, your team will never be 10 times better than your opponent, like it would sometimes be at Florida. The NFL has a structured team salary cap and league-wide revenue sharing, which means every team can afford the same number of quality players. It's rare for one team to be able to hang on to all the good players, which means every team is a lot closer in overall ability than in the NCAA.

This has two important ramifications on the way Spurrier does business. One: his receivers are longer necessarily faster than the opposing team's defensive backs. In fact, they almost never will be. Two: he can't afford to hire every single Florida alum he feels like, because many (all?) of them just don't have the talent it takes to compete in the NFL. I thought maybe he learned this lesson after cutting several Florida players he added, including Shane Matthews, Danny Wuerffel, Chris Doering, Reidel Anthony and Jacquez Green. But then he rehired Wuerffel again a couple weeks ago. Go figure.

The key to successful offense in the NFL is a strong running attack. This has to be your team's bread and butter if you want to win a Super Bowl. A talented offensive line that can open holes in the defense and push them around, coupled with a capable running back who can find the holes and rack up quick yardage. The defense will tire out having to chase the runner, which makes running the ball easier later in the game. You reduce the risk of turning the ball over and keep the clock running, boosting your time of possession, which is a Good Thing.

I know this; the fans know this; the experts know this. Everyone who has closely followed the NFL knows and accepts this to be true. So why doesn't Steve Spurrier know it? He had a great running back in Stephen Davis last year, and actually had a better record when he called more running plays than passing plays. But he still insists on sticking to a pass-heavy game, which led to the Redskins releasing Davis. Yeah, the same guy who ran up a ton of yards Saturday night against them, in a great I-told-you-so moment.

It seems like an intelligent man would have made a few adjustments upon moving up to the NFL, rather than just assuming that he could do everything the same. Spurrier seemingly doesn't want to accept the fact that his approach to coaching in the NFL has been all wrong.

God, I just want to take that little man's head and bash it into the ground repeatedly. RUN THE BALL, YOU LITTLE BITCH! I'm like Matthew Broderick yelling at the giant tic-tac-toe computer at the end of Wargames. LEARN, DAMMIT!!! LEARNNNNNNN!

Hatred news roundup

Hatred news, literally, in the case of a National Fire Academy teacher who made class a bit more than uncomfortable for one of his black students, a D.C. fire captain.

I would really like to see how much the D.C. government loses every year just from people stealing and cheating it out of cash. In the case of a traffic violations clerk and her friend taking bribes to cancel tickets, it was $100,000 in June alone. The best part is when Mayor Tony said, "We have no room in this government for people who steal." Apparently, there's actually plenty of room. In fact, that seems to be the D.C. government's entire reason for existing.

Sadly, Kemp Mill Music is closing. I was an occasional customer of their Dupont Circle location, which had a pretty decent selection of cheap used CDs and electronic music. It's not that I don't like shopping at Tower or Amazon, but sometimes I want to throw my money at the non-giant-corporation outfit that's squeezed into a tiny retail space downtown. The people at Kemp Mill were generally knowledgeable and approachable; they usually posted some pretty solid staff recommendations. This was the kind of store that Washington was badly lacking and needed more of; now, it's gone.

The Times publishes an irresponsible editorial that basically blames the Clinton administration for 9-11. The worst part is this line: "The World Trade Center attacks of 1993, the bombing of our embassies in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, the downing of TWA 800, the attack on Khobar Towers—all were treated as the disparate actions of deranged individuals..."

Yeah, that's great. Crackpot. At the bottom of the column:

Peter Huessy is president of GeoStrategic Analysis and Senior Defense Associate at the National Defense University Foundation. These views are his own.

Right, that usually goes without saying in an authored column on the op-ed page. The Times seems to be saying, "Wow, this guy is crazy even for us," by including this disclaimer.

INS1PID: Personalized Virginia license plates I have hated (part 6 in a series)

GR8 2DRV
On a Mercedes: NU BENZ
CME4TAX
THY WBD (i.e. "Thy will be done")
AROUZED

"Go to sleep bitch; die motherfucker die"

D.C. murder counter: up three since yesterday. I believe it's also up eight since Friday.

Never again

I don't want to relive my last experience flying out of BWI, but here's a story about the ridiculous wait times getting through security, which are as bad as they were just after 9/11 due to a TSA hiring freeze.

The best part about waiting in that long line that's moving slowly is when someone really clever starts mooing like a cow. That never gets old. It keeps getting funnier every fucking time I hear it.

Exploding Manhole!

No, it's not the name of the newest gay club in Washington. This is an actual exploding manhole. For about the 50th time.

Oh, Pierre L'Enfant, you crazy frog; why did you have to include exploding manholes in the design of D.C.? That was so not a good idea.

The newsprint version of Blipverts

Oh, what to do, what to do? The Post is losing circulation despite a growing Washington population, ostensibly because it can't capture that oh-so-elusive 18-to-34 demographic.

The solution? Create the retardedest tabloid possible and give it away free. It's all 20-to-60 word stories that are a day old anyway. I think publishing a daily tabloid in Washington is a good idea, if it would add competition and give people something easier to read on the Metro. But the Post must not think much of 18-to-34s if this is what they give us.

When you're a young newspaper reporter, you have to pay your dues by working in crappy little towns at crappy little papers for years before breaking into a big, respectable paper like the Post. As a result, the writers and editors at the Post are very old. They have little idea what young people would be interested in. Instead, we get treated to columns like Bob Levey's "The Funniest T-Shirts of 2003" (part two, no less):

"People Like You Are the Reason People Like Me Need Medication" -- Andrew Fuller.

"My Inner Child Is an Honor Roll Student" -- Debbie FitzSimonds of Shady Side.

"Fifty Is the Ultimate F-Word" -- Peter Tannenwald of Northwest Washington.

"Two Rights Do Not Make a Wrong. They Make an Airplane" -- an e-mailer who asks to remain anonymous.

"Protons Have Mass! And I Didn't Even Know They Were Catholic" -- Steve Duggan.

I don't know about you, but I'm absolutely busting a fucking nut over here.

So good luck, Post. You'll need it, seeing as how all your young readers are belong to me! Muuuuu-ha ha ha!

You've got mail, BITCH!

Flat orbs of silver
Descend from the letterbox
Fill my house with crap
--Richard Peters

Funny anecdote in this column about CNN's softball victory over AOL.

As White House correspondent John King was rounding second base on the homer by CNN's Howie Lutt, King shouted, "You've got mail!" He denies adding a choice expletive, but the AOL shortstop took vigorous exception and cursed him out. Meanwhile, says King, AOL's center fielder bumped Lutt, leading to a bench-clearing melee in which another AOLian put his hand on King's chest.

Oh yeah, IT'S GO TIME! Kick their asses, CNN.

Meanwhile, Pud printed an internal memo from AOL detailing their new "totem process," a global ranking of employees. Eeeee-vil.

Them Duke boys better grow some wings... or start flapping

As if there wasn't enough danger living in D.C. I'm sure this retired resident didn't expect a car to come flying through a brick wall, into the living room of his second-floor apartment.

Still, this would seem to be a survivable accident. Unfortunately, since this guy lived in D.C., he had to count on D.C. public services, which reduces everyone's survivability considerably. Remember last week when USA Today ran that article on D.C. EMTs and firefighters, whose rivalry and bickering tend to be fatal for victims of cardiac arrest in the District? The article said that D.C. only manages to save the lives of about 4 percent of its cardiac arrest cases, while Seattle saves 45 percent.

We get to see that inaction in action here:

When firefighters arrived, they found Williams in cardiac arrest and performed CPR, said Alan Etter, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department.

Neighbors complained that a D.C. ambulance took too long to respond. Etter said computer records showed that the ambulance was dispatched at 3:10 a.m. and arrived 21 minutes later -- far longer than the department's standard of 8 to 10 minutes. Etter said the department would investigate to make sure those times were accurate and, if so, determine what caused the delay.

Although firefighters arrived at the house within minutes and began performing CPR, the ambulance was needed to take Williams to a hospital, Etter said. Williams was later pronounced dead at Washington Hospital Center.

Good grief. Not to steal my brother's brilliant idea of drawing parallels between D.C. public services and bad 1980s screwball comedies, but were the Fat Boys driving the ambulance?

Hating by proxy

I don't hate DC. Hey, why should I? I don't live there. But, since my DC-hating brother is on vacation, I'm filling in for him today, much like all those times when little Billy has to draw Family Circus. Ho ho, that Billy gets into some hijinx.

Right, as I was saying...if James was around, he'd sure hate the fact that three people were killed (and three injured!) in four separate shootings last night. Hmm, another triple murder day. And things seemed to be going so well.

Apparently most of this happened between 4:00 and 4:30 last night. Was it a highly-organized plan, meant to confuse the police and ensure escape? If so, I don't know why they bothered to do so much work...their chances are already pretty good. And as James would say, "Nothing is worth doing, if it requires any effort whatsoever."

I'll finish off by quoting the last sentence of the article, since I think it creates a very Police Academy VI image:

"Police gave chase, and when the officer climbed a high fence, the fleeing person knocked the officer off the fence by hitting him in the head."

Metro opens doors... when they're working

Mala rants:

So the Metro fares were raised by $.10. They've also increased the hours of service and keep talking about expanding the routes.

Too bad they can't get what they've got to work properly. Twice this week I had 3 employees come in late because of issues on the orange line (passenger getting sick and then Metro telling everyone to deboard the train, creating a HUGE traffic backup). Who pays for that? My company does in lost wages.

And now let's get to the escalators. WHAT is up with that? Two of the Metro Center exits NEVER have down escalators. NEVER! Once in a blue moon they all work. Same with Dupont Circle and Woodley Park. There's always one that doesn't work.

I would prefer to pay $2 - a nice even number, not like this $1.20 BS - each way and have them invest in equipment that works.

I'm going to start a letter/email writing campaign to metro. I'm a tax paying citizen with no kids, no car - the least they can do is make sure my public transportation is working properly.

Sorry for the rant. It's enough to drive a person crazy!

There's no need to apologize to me, of all people, for ranting.

I've had plenty of issues with Metro; my wife says it's bad luck, but I don't know. I haven't even told the story of my run-in with the station manager at Smithsonian station.

Well, let's tell it now. This was December 2001. The printer on one of the exit turnstiles wasn't working, so when I ran my card through it, it came out blank. I asked the manager what's the deal with that. He responded by running it through the turnstile again... which charged me an additional $1.10. This was a couple months after being ripped off by our movers to the tune of $1,750, so I really wasn't in the mood to get ripped off any more.

When I confronted him about it, he became angry that I was "disrespecting" him, and ran the card through his computer to demagnitize it, rendering it useless. There was $7.70 left on the card, which he informed me I could get back by going to Metro Center for a refund.

Not good times. Bad times.

Anyway, Metro's escalators and elevators are always broken because they refuse to hire outside contractors to do the work. Instead, Metro insists on training its own people to do maintenance. Predictably, these people are fiercely incompetent. Like Mala said, there's always at least one escaltor broken at every station, and I often see stories about people getting stuck in Metro elevators and having to call the fire department.

I don't know what you're supposed to do if you're in a wheelchair. Last year, there was a story about a handicapped guy going to a play via Metro. He called the elevator hotline ahead of time, which said the elevators at Metro Center were working. When he arrived there, they were predictably not working. This guy was livid that he was going to miss the show, and when he saw a Metro employee standing across the way on the opposite platform, he started cursing loudly at this person. Metro WROTE HIM A CITATION for the profanity.

That's more than bad luck. That's just bad. After it caused a public uproar, Metro dropped the citation.

Thanks to Mala also for this link, which highlights yet another Metro ordeal of Griswoldian proportions.

As for starting a letter-writing campaign... good luck. I'd obviously be pessimistic about getting results (heh, DC Metro Action I am not).

UPDATE: "Classic" why.i.hate.dc: my most recent bad experience with Metro. I'm sure there will be more.

Coincidentally...

Washington City Paper just ran a story about the Redskins trademark lawsuit. Witness the evil of Dan Snyder.

No-hassle stealing

We already know about the D.C. credit card scandal, in which untold amounts of city funds have been improperly spent by city employees with city credit cards. The D.C. Council made the obvious move of voting to suspend the program until the city provides information on the program and institutes some safeguards.

And then Mayor Tony, incredibly, vetoed it! Fortunately, the council had an emergency meeting just so they could unanimously override his ass.

The legislation stipulates that the program will be reinstated once the administration provides detailed information about how the cards have been used and what new safeguards will be implemented. But administration officials said that it is difficult to compile the information because bank records for the credit cards do not provide the detailed data that the council has requested.

Hey, fuckwads: it's called a credit card statement. It tells you where the money was charged and how much you spent. Not that hard.

Officials estimate that the program -- which issued 790 Visa cards that were used for about half the city's purchases -- saved the city $2 million last year.

Reviews of city records showed 1,200 incidents -- totaling $5.5 million -- in which employees evaded the $2,500 limit by making multiple charges at the same business on the same day. Furthermore, District agencies have been billed $170,722 in interest since January 2000 for failing to pay bills on time.

Ugh. The D.C. government is, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, ghetto rich. Oh, and what's this today in the paper? D.C. Schools Paid Vendor $240,000 Without Bidding, money that was charged on... school credit cards intended for incidental purchases.

Is there anyone in this city who's not on the take? Anyone? Hello?

Hail, to the... the WHAT? I... I can't say that.

Ahhh, I'm feeling frisky tonight. July is finally coming to an end, after what seemed like an eternity. In my world, that means it's very nearly football season.

And so it came to pass that it was time to take on the ultimate of all why.i.hate.dc topics: the Washington Redskins.

Many of you may not care about football. You may not have the foggiest idea who Dan Snyder or Steve Spurrier are; more power to you (and honestly, you're probably better off that way).

I, however, love football. I love the excitement and strategy; I love how the battle for field position is something like a metaphor for war. Football is a big part of my life.

But even if you don't like football as much as I do, it's important to familiarize yourself with the Redskins. The reason is that this pro football franchise epitomizes practically everything that's wrong with Washington.

The Redskins are one of the few constants in Washington over the past 70 years. They are the only remaining local pro sports team that was playing here before the '60s; longtime residents might have fond memories of their parents or grandparents taking them to a game. The team is immensely popular among the locals to a ridiculous extreme; the season ticket waiting list is literally decades long. So it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that, over the years, Washington has impressed its own image onto the team, and that the team has become sort of a microcosm of the city.

I'm much too intimately familiar with the Redskins, and I have a number of Redskins topics I want to write about in the coming days as the season gears up. But first, let's start with the most obvious thing.

That name's gotta go.

This is the classic hall-of-fame debate in Washington: should the Redskins rename themselves? Is the team name too offensive to be acceptable, or is this a case of politically correct people being overly sensitive? Everybody's familiar with this one; I'm sure you've heard both sides of the argument a thousand times already.

"Change it! You wouldn't call a team the 'Kikes' or 'Slants!' (Also, apples are not like oranges!)"

"Don't change it! Don't pander to the liberal PC types! There's too much tradition behind the name! (Also, I'm a bigoted asshole!)"

Blah. I've heard both these arguments too many times to count. So here, tonight, on why.i.hate.dc, we will settle the matter once and for all.

Here are my thoughts on the subject:

THEY'RE CALLED THE REDSKINS.

...

Hmm? Oh, I'm sorry, let me refine my argument.

THEY'RE CALLED THE REDSKINS. I mean, come the fuck ON. That is JUST FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

It should be obvious why that's ridiculous. If it's not, really? Then go away. Hit the close button on your browser right now. There's simply no way, at all, ever, that you can use the term "redskins" without having it be derogatory.

Here's an example. Let's say your friend is a gambler and is trying to drag you up to Foxwoods. He says:

"Hey Carl! Let's go to that Indian casino!"

"All right," you might think, "time to get my blackjack on." Now what if he had said:

"Hey Carl! Let's go to that redskin casino!"

All of a sudden, you're looking at your friend in a different light. Now his question is tinged with racism; he doesn't really trust those redskins who run that casino up thar.

(Wow, I just realized that the one Google result for "redskin casino" turned up a piece of R-rated Star Trek fan fiction. Be scared; be very ascared.)

Anyway, my point is: of course the name should be fucking changed. It should have been changed 20 years ago. Why hasn't it?

Well, money, of course. There's a lot of merchandising and licensing money to be made off the "Redskins" name (although that could change if this judge Does the Right Thing). And if there's one thing that should be evident about Washington, it's that money always trumps the "right thing to do". Always always always. That should be Lesson #1 about living in Washington.

Use your city-issued credit card to buy video games? Check. Take the NRA's lobbying money and foist a gun legalization bill on D.C. without the city's consent? But of course. Use your power as the world's largest environmental nonprofit to give yourself a cheap home loan and drill on sensitive land? In a heartbeat.

Ethics are completely fucking dead in this town. There's millions to be made off the name "Redskins"; therefore, the name stays. Period, end of story, end of debate. Money trumps all. That's... the D.C. way. And I fucking hate it.

Now, having said all this in as profane a matter as possible, you may be asking the question: am I disappointed in myself as a human being that, for the second straight year, I have purchased Redskins season tickets?

Yes. Yes I am.

Reader mail

Ahhh. [Sips lemonade] This is the life.

[Seagulls fly by]

I don't even have to do anything, thanks to Ariana.

[Attendant spritzes James with Evian]

Check it.

I just wanted to take a minute to let you know that I think your weblog is great. I just discovered it the other day (at work...I have very little to do) and my jaw practically dropped since I didn't think anyone else felt the same way my boyfriend and I feel. We moved here almost a year ago from Pittsburgh as young college grads expecting to find it to be a hip, exciting, metropolitan atmosphere. Instead we have found DC to be prohibitively expensive and/or extremely impoverished - no middle ground. Therefore, our only option was to move into the suburbs (Alexandria, namely) where there is little or no excitement and it's still absurdly expensive. I work for the government, which doesn't exactly pay market rate and my boyfriend has still been unable to find squat, so he works temp jobs. DC really bites. I can say that with confidence too, since I was just visiting friends in NYC two weeks ago. Rent may be a bitch there but at least there is some kind of justification for it - and at least there is some sort of a struggling, young middle class (as opposed to the majority of young DC being populated by snotty rich college kids or ultra yuppies).

Anyway - keep up the great work. It makes me laugh and grit my teeth at the same time!

P.S. - here are a couple of my "favorite" VA plates:
1. NGGAPLZ
2. 2MANNISH
3. I GOT DIS

Amen sister girl.

You know, when I started this blog, I basically thought it would just be me bitching to myself in a public forum. And while I've had a couple people say "Hey, I like it here!... but yeah, you're still right", all the reactions I've gotten have been very positive; nobody's risen up to fiercely defend Washington as a good place to live.

Granted, they'd have to send me e-mail, which takes more work than posting a comment or something (and they'd have to figure out how to take the [at] and [dot] out of the link; that's to thwart the spambots). But still, I'm not sensing a whole lot of civic pride going on here, certainly among the blog-reading community.

Anyway, in the spirit of Ariana's e-mail, let's just put this out there right now so that it gets picked up by Google, and anyone thinking of moving here and searching around will hopefully see it:

DO NOT MOVE TO WASHINGTON, D.C. IT REALLY FUCKING BLOWS. MOVING TO WASHINGTON, D.C. IS A BAD IDEA AND SHOULD BE SHUNNED LIKE JENNIFER LOVE-HEWITT'S SINGING CAREER. THANK YOU.

INS1PID: Personalized Virginia license plates I have hated (part 5 in a series)

It's back! I've got a slew of stupid personalized Virginia license plates backlogged in the old Palm Pilot that I need to flush out. Check out the first four parts here.

These will give you some idea of what it's like to live in Virginia among boring white suburbanites who think that puns are the absolute highest form of humor. They really need to start charging more for these things to discourage the stupider ones.

L8-4-TEA
SOIT GOS (Billy Joel sucks COCK)
SCR PLRS (this was on a SUV, big surprise)
10S NEE1 (yes, that's "tennis anyone"... kill me now)
And, finally on an Audi S4: MY S4

I'm a lyrical gangster; murder up

Murder counter yesterday: 145. Today: 148. But at least the D.C. detectives are finally getting some witnesses, to some truly gruesome murders:

Two officers on "redeployment" -- a program that temporarily takes officers off desk jobs or specialized duties and puts them on street patrols -- saw someone walk up behind a man on a bicycle and shoot him twice in the head, police said.

[...]

Charging documents say that Andre L. Whitney, 33, a maintenance man at the nearby Golden Rule apartment complex, asked Gregory Watkins, 45, to repay $20. When Watkins said he did not have the money, Whitney got a baseball bat and beat him, the documents say.

[...]

[Officers] found Hicks trying to stuff a large duffel bag under an SUV, charging documents said. In the bag was the body of Kimberly Edwards, 20, of the 2400 block of Elvans Road SE.

EWWWW!

You guys rock

The Arlington County board is standing firm on its refusal to consider baseball here. There was a protest rally in favor of baseball in Arlington last night, and I wish I could have been there:

Ballpark fans sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" and unveiled a new mascot, which they dubbed the "NIMBY Chicken," a reference to the popular performer at baseball games and a dig at what they say is the not-in-my-backyard sentiment that they believe the county board gave in to with its stance.

OK, that is hilarious.

Off-topic but funny

Bob Hope died today at age 100. This great website has a sound recording of the first time he died five years ago (mp3 format, 1.1 MB).

Pigsty: Be careful in D.C., part III

Chuck Ramsey fired two 911 call center employees whose negligence may have contributed to slow response time in a Dupont Circle fire last January that killed a man.

"I feel numb," Anderson said. "I guess I just never believed that they actually had the nerve to do this."

Yeah, losing your job for being indirectly responsible for a man's burning death is just not fair.

In her defense, Ramsey has refused to release the report on the fire public, which apparently casts some doubt on whether this was really a laziness problem or more of an equipment/telephone problem instead. Still, she sounds more upset about losing her job than the death, which is about par for D.C.

Meanwhile, over 20 percent of D.C. current police trainees failed their final exam. (Should you a. shoot first, b. ask questions later, c. hang out all day at the 7-11, or d. all of the above?)

Meanwhile some more, the reward for coming forward in a D.C. homicide investigation increased from $10,000 to $25,000, which the city hopes will convince more people to come forward, thereby helping out the city's miserable 51 percent closure rate on murders.

[Former homicide department commander W. Louis] Hennessy said he applauded yesterday's announcement. "It shows that now the city is beginning to put some value on these lives that, for years and years, nobody cared about," he said.

Riiiight, I'm gonna disagree. X gets the square. Ding.

If money really is the limiting factor in convincing people to come forward to help solve a murder investigation, that's just sad. It's pretty clear that fear of retribution and lack of police protection is the reason detectives get no witnesses... I doubt the extra money will make much difference.

Fuck the beltway

This weekend I was away on one of my patented biweekly summer vacations designed to get me the hell out of Washington. And it was fun; I went to Colorado Springs, which is beautiful country. The incredibly scenic Red Rock Amphitheater was a great place for a rave... errrrr, electronic music festival. (The first person who asks me if Jack Diamond was there gets a glow stick in the eye.)

What are the chances we could get something like that at Wolf Trap? Negative eight percent, you say? Hmmm.

Anyway, the trip was fun, but it didn't start out that way, thanks to our old friend the Washington beltway. For those who are unfamiliar with the beltway, count your fucking blessings right now. Also known as I-495, the beltway is a three-to-five lane highway encircles the Washington area, and is often congested and under construction. You can plan on sitting still for a good long while if you find yourself on the beltway during rush hour.

However, since my flight was leaving from Baltimore-Washington International Airport at 3:50 p.m. Friday, I figured on more of a normal-condition mid-afternoon beltway: a few trouble spots here and there, and maybe even a half an hour of delay due to unforseen accidents or congestion. That's why I left my office near Tysons Corner, which is at about the 10-o'clock position on the highway, at 1:20 p.m. With no traffic, that would put me at the airport parking lot at about 2:20, a good 90 minutes before departure. Even if a half hour delay cropped up on the roads, I would have plenty of time to get a boarding pass and get through security.

Ahh, but there was a fatal flaw in my plan: the beltway was not moving. At all. An accident at about 12:30 has backed traffic up, and the average speed going around the northwest turn of the beltway was about 5 mph. I turned on the radio and learned that the congestion started at the Georgia Avenue exit, at the 12-o'clock position. I need to get to about the 1-o'clock position for the I-95 exit toward the airport, so I figured I'd stick with it and grind my way through the traffic.

Things started to look bad an hour later when I still hadn't reached Georgia Avenue. It had taken me one full hour to travel about 14 miles, which I hadn't counted on at 1:30 on a Friday. Then, mercifully, I passed Georgia Avenue, and the traffic cleared up... only to stop dead again one minute later.

By this point, I was panicking, and needed to bail out to have any chance of catching my flight. I did so at U.S. 29 north, which travels up into Marlyand, hoping to cut over soon to I-95 and gun it toward the airport. At one point, a van nearly changed lanes into me; I laid on the horn, which caused him to swerve back. I gunned it ahead, but had to stop at the next light with the van behind me. The kids in the van laid on their horn for a good 10 seconds, apparently in retaliation. Then, after I cursed them out in the mirror, one of them tried to throw a tennis ball at my car (?), but missed badly to the left (from 5 feet away). The sad thing was, I was so filled with road rage that I probably would have been willing to throw down with them right in the street and get my ass kicked.

When I finally got to the airport at 3:30, sweaty and stressed, I dumped the car in hourly parking and raced to the check-in... but they wouldn't give me a boarding pass because takeoff was less than 30 minutes away (even though I had no luggage to check). I had to pay a $100 fee to change to a later flight. After that, I was in no mood to, for example, spend an hour waiting to get through the security checkpoint for the C Terminal. At which only two out of four metal detectors were open. For 300 people to get through. With little to no air conditioning in a tiny, claustrophobic space. So that's of course what happened.

Anyway, I don't really want to relive being stuck in traffic any more. Suffice to say, I now hate every other person in Washington who owns a car. Sorry y'all. And I really, really hate the ones who were in front of me Friday, for costing me $100. I also hate the airlines for charging up to twice as much to fly out of the more-convenient Reagan National and Dulles airports as the far-away BWI, which is indicative of the "luxury box" mentality that comes with living in Washington. I make a normal salary, and I've been trying not to spend what is sometimes an extra $150-$200 per ticket to fly out of National or Dulles.

But if I want to avoid the fucking beltway and all the human traffic at BWI, I'll have to pony up. Right now I'd rather stick an ice pick through my groin than have to set foot in that steaming turd of an airport again. Fortunately my next two trips are out of National, which I like. (They actually put a Metro station at an airport! What a fucking novel idea!)

In the meantime I can work on my plans to atmoize the beltway, preferably via the use of heavy nuclear weapons.

Be careful in D.C., part II

I'm back. Thanks to my brother for this link. Happy birthday, yo.

The chance of surviving a dire medical emergency in the USA is a matter of geography. If you collapse from cardiac arrest in Seattle, a 911 call likely will bring instant advice and fast-moving firefighters and paramedics.
Collapse in Washington, D.C., and -- as one EMS official suggests -- someone better call a cab for you. Seattle saves 45% of saveable victims...Washington, D.C., has no idea how many [saveable victims] it saves. The city estimates it saves 4% of cardiac arrests, but inconsistent record-keeping makes it impossible for Washington to account accurately for its most saveable victims.

It goes on to say that rivalries and infighting between firefighters and paramedics in Washington cause increased delays, which obviously costs lives. Absolutely terrifying.

Be careful in D.C.

When you're in D.C., make sure you don't get mugged:

Kid beats elderly man, police let kid go
FOX5 reported that Columbia Heights is up in arms after two teenagers robbed and beat an elderly man at 14th and Harvard, NW, were caught by local security guards, positively ID'd by a witness, taken away by a police car, and then immediately released by the police a block from the scene. The attacker reportedly then returned to the scene of the crime to stare down the security guard who detained him and the woman who had positively ID'd him. The police say they are investigating what happened, but implied to FOX5 that they didn't have the right to arrest the kid.

Also, when you're in D.C., make sure you don't get sick:

A copy of the memo said that each year hospital inspectors typically investigate one to four incidents at each District hospital involving breakdowns in patient care. Greater Southeast had six incidents in 2001 and eight in 2002, the memo said, and it has had eight so far this year. The six deaths inspectors questioned included two involving infants, two that were the result of blood transfusion errors and one involving a man found dead on a gurney in the emergency room July 3 seven hours after arriving there.

i·ro·ny (n.):

Virginia is on its way to becoming the number one importer of out-of-state trash in the country.

Like we're not trashy enough as it is. Zing.

Catching up with the Times

Never let it be said I'm not fair. The Washington Times gets props for scooping the Post on Camp Fight Club, by only about 15 days.

The Times sports section also has a funny story about the Virginia baseball authority telling the Arlington County Board to take its letter and shove it. I wish I could attend the Virginians for Baseball protest rally on Tuesday, but I can't.

And, I was going to make fun of this girls softball league that doesn't keep score, but after reading the story I actually like the idea. Very well-written article.

However, I will reserve the right to make fun of Jen Waters, whose article on beach erosion includes eight straight paragraphs without a quote or attribution. Somebody take away that girl's encyclopedia, because I think she's just copying straight out of it.

Washington's other, crappier newspaper

All right Times, I gave you a week off to recover from running that forged letter. Time to take you to task again, I'm afraid.

This time, for an article headlined "Criticism of Iraq policy seen hurting U.S. troop morale." It apparently took three people to write this jingoistic article, in which several Republicans imply that opposing the Iraq troop effort puts you on Saddam's side. You're not on Saddam's side, ARE YOU?

Well, I guess I am, since I opposed the war in the first place. You can't be anti-war and anti-Saddam at the same time, right? I might as well go spit on Jessica Lynch.

Anyway, the important thing to note about this article, "Criticism of Iraq policy seen hurting U.S. troop morale," is that no troops are actually quoted as saying their morale is low. There is exactly one quote from an actual military person, relayed vicariously through a Republican Congressman:

"He looked me in the eye, with tubes coming out, and he simply said, 'Congressman, the only thing I worry about is that we will pull out early and we will not finish the job and it will mean all of the sacrifices we made over there were for nothing,' " the Indiana Republican recalled.

OK, huh? I don't recall anyone saying, "Don't finish the job in Iraq." It's more like, "There was no reason to rush into invading in the first place." And from the quote, this unnamed Marine doesn't appear to have low morale, or at least no lower than you ordinarily would have if tubes were sticking out of you.

All the reports on low morale I've seen have nothing to do with opposition to the war, and everything to do with the fact that the troops will have to stay in Iraq indefinitely, without seeing their families, all while getting killed by guerilla ambushes at a rate of about one per day. And they're pissed at Rumsfeld for jerking them around. (This is by the reporter who was later outed by the White House Press Office as being openly gay and openly Canadian.)

Maybe it's too much to ask to have the smallish Times actually interview troops in Iraq, but then why print this article in the first place? If you can't get any actual quotes from actual troops, then what's the point?

So was this one of those "stories" that was initiated not by public outcry, but by an editor? Not long ago the Times editors took it upon themselves to craft a story out of the shocking scandal that Metro employees get to ride Metro for free. Erik Wemple from the Washington City Paper summed it up nicely (scroll down to see the story):

[Times editors] sent reporter Jon Ward after Metro officials to ask the following question: Why aren't you revoking free fares for the 10,000-plus Metro employees? The paper's jihad against area transit workers led to some odd-sounding copy: "Metro officials have increased fees for parking and riding buses and subways to reduce a $48 million budget deficit, but will not discontinue such perks as free rides for its more than 10,000 employees..." read the June 24 piece.

Traditionally, newspapers write about such perks when they come under attack from public officials. In this case, the lone attacker was the Washington Times. "They brought [the issue] to me," says [Ward 1 Councilmember] Jim Graham, chair of Metro's board of directors. "I wasn't aware of it."

In fact, it wasn't really an issue; nobody else anywhere had a problem with the free rides. The Times even exaggerated the cost of the free rides via some poorly done calculations, estimating in the story that the perk cost Metro up to $18 million a year. The actual cost: $675,000. Wemple:

Ward assumed that all of Metro's employees take the train to and from work and pay the maximum fare. Perhaps those fumes from the New York Avenue overpass are seeping into the Washington Times HQ: Just 41 percent of trips into D.C.'s downtown core on weekday mornings come via Metro. No organization bigger than a vending kiosk has 100 percent subway usage.

A Metro source reports that Washington Times editors ordered up the story on the perk, an account confirmed by Metro Editor Carleton Bryant. "We don't know all the perks that Metro board members and workers receive. This is just one of the ones we were aware of, and so we just asked the question," he says.

Anyway, this strikes me as a similar situation; an editor probably said, "Hey, I'll bet we could find some people to say that U.S. troop morale is hurt by the war opposition," and sent these reporters on a mission to dig up some quotes. The problem is, it's not news, and yet it's played like a news story.

If the editorial board thinks that opposition hurts morale, then they should go ahead and write themselves an editorial. But inventing these news stories out of thin air is simply bad journalism. You're not here to make the news yourselves; you're here to report on it.

Unless it's about that awful public menace, Spider-Man. Then it's OK.

Stupid news roundup

I don't even know where to start.

I guess I'll go boring first. The D.C. Juvenile Justice Agency chief resigned under pressure following a series of Post articles. Thus, following this common trend: 1) Authority figure fucks up at job. 2) Post writes four-part feature. 3) Fuck-up resigns. 4) Post prints self-congratulatory follow-up article.

Meanwhile, the District is going ahead with its commuter tax lawsuit. If the preliminary goings-on are any indication... should be hilarious.

D.C.'s also appears to be going ahead with vouchers, with Mayor Williams meeting behind closed doors with the Repblican Caucus to request funding. I haven't seen anyone address the fact that $7,500 generally won't get you enrolled in jack squat in D.C.

Why are there so many murders in the District? Apparently, because of PCP. Also known as wack, or angel dust. I disagree; the real problem is that people in Washington just don't seem to care whether other people live or die. Murder witnesses don't come forward; the investigators do a half-assed job (or worse) solving murders anyway; affluent Washington suburbanites would rather see all of the children in Southeast D.C. wallow in severe poverty and shitty schools before giving up a dime to a commuter tax. And, since there's really no way to make people care, the murder problem's not going away.

The corporate culture at McLean-based Freddie Mac apparently encouraged an environment in which it fudged its earnings. The only thing that would surprise me now is if there was a company in McLean/Tysons that didn't fudge its earnings at some point. (Oops, I work at a McLean-based company. Oh well, its probably crooked, too, for all I know.) There doesn't seem to much of a culture of honesty at any company in Washington, so it's kind of fun to see these guys go down in flames on a regular basis.

Yes, that goes for you too, AOL. Subscribers are down at the Dulles-based Internet provider, which, as you may recall, brought forth the ruination of the entire fucking Internet for anyone with more than 10 brain cells. AOL is under SEC investigation for... fudging its earnings, what a surprise... and the that seems to bringing down the stock prices for all of AOL-Time Warner. Schaden... fucking... freude. Now sell my Braves back to Ted Turner, AOL, and I might forgive you. (Probably not though.)

My representative in Congress, Jim Moran, introduced a regional transportation bill that will attempt to coordinate transportation decisions among D.C., Virginia and Maryland, which actually sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately, I can't get my head around the fact that my Congressman hates Jews.

Oh, and we had a good old-fashioned cross burning in College Park, home of the University of Maryland. Which side of the Mason-Dixon line are y'all on, again?

So... much... hate...

Man, I had a metric ton of stuff I wanted to write about today, but then I had actual, real work fall into my lap at work. (Plus I'm busy creating my brother's birthday care package.) I did want to post one final thing about the big smelly flower, which is inexplicably more popular than Audrey II.

Robin Scheiner of Centreville kept trying to edge closer to the titan arum, letting her nose lead her. She scored the sour smell of success at last.

"Oh, James, James, James! You can smell it," Scheiner said to her 17-year-old son, as she grabbed him by the arm to draw him closer to the bright green base of the huge plant. "Okay, okay," he grimaced. His brother, Josh, 20, stood back and declared his opinion of the odor. "It smells like dead fish. It's terrible."

"Well, hello," his mother reminded him. "That's why we came. It's great! I wanted you to get the whole experience."

That had me cracking up. I feel bad for her kids. (This is also not unlike my childhood, if you replace "smelly giant flower" with "Oregon trail ruts".) Read about more insane(ly boring) flower fanatics here.

Giant and smelly: Washington's official flower

Here are images of that giant flower over which every boring person within a 100-mile radius has their panties in a bunch. Hundreds of people are gathered to watch it bloom.

Oh, and as an extra added bonus: it apparently stinks to high heaven. Be sure to bring the kids.

I won't miss it

RAAAAAAATS!

Rats are invading Washington, especially around the Potomac.

But it wasn't until a rat barked at his 4-year-old daughter that Joe Helfer got really concerned.

"[She] said it ruffed at her, like the sound a dog makes," said an anguished Helfer.

That's... incredibly disturbing.

Time to go hairless

Why is it that, nearly two years after moving here, I still haven't found a decent place to get a haircut?

I did have one good stylist who cut my hair regularly for a few months, but she moved to Canada (she was middle Eastern, so I don't blame her) and left me in the proverbial lurch.

Perhaps not coincidentally, she was also the only hairstylist I've had in Washington who spoke decent English. At the risk of sounding xenophobic or even Pat Buchanan-esque, I'm afraid the limiting factor here is the language barrier. The hairstylists in the Virginia suburbs seem to not speak English well at all; and, as I learned yesterday, "cut it down to half-an-inch" is apparently Korean for "make me look like that guy from Eraserhead."

(Hmm, this is certainly not my finest hour.)

Anyway, I'm tempted to just have them shave all my hair off next time, in an attempt to avoid looking like a moron for the next six weeks. It's not like I need a $30 haircut; I just want a decent short one that doesn't make me look stupid. Where can I go?

Not what I was hoping for

Fairfax County officials sadly took the high road yesterday by adopting a resolution opposing the proposed D.C. commuter tax, and calling for an apology from D.C. councildude Jack Evans, who (accurately) called Virginians "narrow-minded" and "backward".

Fairfax County stopped short of calling for a steel cage match with Evans on the National Mall in front of a pay-per-view audience, which is what I wanted.

Prince William County Board Chairman Sean T. Connaughton, a lawyer who commutes to the District, has proposed a "Kcaj Snave Day" in honor of Mr. Evans, during which "enthusiastic taxpaying Virginian commuters" could walk backward into the District.

I guarantee you this guy thinks he's reeeeeeeal clever. He's probably one of those people who insists on playing "Scattergories" at parties and then gets wayyyyy too into it. Jackass.

And who are these "enthusiastic taxpaying Virginian commuters?" Are they enthusiastic about the taxpaying, or the commuting? Are they going to stop their SUVs when they get to the foot of the Teddy bridge, get out, and walk backwards into D.C.? (And then, perhaps, get carjacked?)

Stupid news roundup, featuring extra botany

These people paid $5 ($8 if arriving late) to sit quietly in a bar and write notes to each other on index cards. This is the kind of story that makes me glad I am no longer dating.

Kevin Simms, a 32-year-old government consultant from Woodbridge, learned during his two-hour quiet stint that simplicity is the key. His typical opening lines were "Hi. My name is Kevin" or "What's your favorite color?"

Far be it from me to make fun of desperate single guys in a public forum, but... "What's your favorite color?" Dude, are you trying to court Big Bird or something? Clearly this guy's not a consultant with the government's Department of Awesome Pick-Up Lines.

Anyway, if a Quiet Party is too much excitement, there's always... standing around and watching this flower bloom. Sadly, the flower did not want to comply.

Brian and Dawn Keneally, from Northern Virginia, brought their two children to the spectacle. "It's a lot bigger than I had thought," said Brian Keneally. "You can see how it's going to become intense," he said. The family lives in Vienna.

Yeah, extreme bloomage, to the MAX! Unless this flower is, like, a Triffid, I seriously question any claims as to its intensity.

God, how I would hate to be their kids. "C'mon, kids! Put down those entertaining video games and come watch a giant flower bloom!" Wait, that kind of thing did happen to me. And I did hate it.

Staying in the plant category, thanks to regular reader Lauren K: check out what this couple in Takoma Park had to go through in an effort to remove one of their trees that was damaging their driveway and making backing out into the street difficult. They hired an aborist, filed tree removal permits, went in front of the five-person Tree Commission, which denied their permit after a 40-minute secret deliberation.

OK... that entire town needs to get laid, ASAP.

But their walk through the wilds of the town's tree ordinance -- one of the most restrictive in the nation -- turned into a journey that took Ken and Betsy from pleased wonderment to sober-minded amazement and, finally, all the way to the Land of Flabbergasted Rage.

Ah yes, I believe I have dual citizenship there.

Finally, truth in journalism

The Washington Times is running an editorial today entitled "Vive les Anglo-Saxons." I'll bet they're celebrating over on Wasp Lane.

We must keep Arlington boring

Motherfuckers.

Fucking NIMBY motherfuckers.

God, how I hate this fucking city.

So yeah, the Arlington County Board wrote a letter to the Virginia baseball people saying: we just don't want a baseball stadium.

"If there was a general consensus that a Baseball Stadium was desired by Arlington residents, it might be possible to overlook the economic advantages of competing development opportunities," blah blah fucking blah. Instead of a baseball stadium and convention center on the Pentagon City land, they want a convention center plus a "hotel, apartment and retail complex." Oh good, because we don't have fucking any of those right now. Honestly, I can't get enough of this shit:



WHOA!!!! You're right, Arlington County Board, that's WAY better than baseball! Let's see more!



OMG!!!11! That building is CUBE-shaped! HOW do they come up with this shit?????

"I obviously applaud this decision,"said Sarah Summerville, president of No Arlington Stadium. She's also running for a seat on the county board in November. Please join me in voting against her multiple times if possible.

It's not just the county board I'm upset with. The fuckface owners who make all of Major League Baseball's decisions these days acted in their typically monolithic fashion and decided that, hey, we're not going to make a decision on moving the Montreal Expos by the All-Star Game after all. In fact, maybe we'll just have them play in Puerto Rico all next season.

Now, I could probably start a whole new blog with reasons I hate Major League Baseball, but I'm not going to go into details here... people who care about the game already know why the owners suck. What sucks here is that the owners are simply pretending they have leverage; they have no ground to stand on, and are losing money on the Montreal franchise, which they all collectively own. By continually prolonging a decision on where to move the team, they're basically just punishing us for not securing 100 percent of the ballpark funding before being awarded the team. These delay tactics are their way of dicking around with us.

Baseball is using its 81-year-old antitrust exemption to withhold the team. Which brings me to the third entity I'm mad at over baseball: Congress. Congress could end this stupid baseball situation so very easily:

Introduce a bill that would repeal baseball's antitrust exemption, and threaten to pass it unless the team is moved to Washington. I guarantee you the Expos would be here faster than you could say Buck Martinez. Errrr.... Buck Martinez.

Of course, that will never happen; our legislators are too busy using D.C. as a kind of legislative petri dish for their pet projects (c.f. school vouchers, legalizing assault weapons, etc.) to actually pass anything that would make our lives better here.

God, how I hate this fucking city.

Our nation's capital

Kids in the Benning Terrace housing project have nothing to do during the summer besides stealing cars and joyriding. In a completely unrelated story, budget cuts will force layoffs and the elimination of athletic programs by the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Assocation. Also completely unrelated: the D.C. school board was forced to cancel pay raises for teachers and principals.

Also, D.C. had more new cases of the AIDS per capita than any other big U.S. city. Take that, Baltimore!

Meanwhile: murder, murder and more murder. There was this apparent murder-suicide in Northwest D.C. yesterday, and two other guys were shot in the head several times (one in Northeast, one in Southeast).

Fortunately, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, drawing from his inner-city street smarts, has the answer to solve all this gun violence: repealing the D.C. gun ban, including loosening the definition of "machine gun" to exclude semiautomatic weapons.

Hatch says: "Try to imagine the horror that [a] victim felt when he faced a gun-toting criminal and could not legally reach for a firearm to protect himself." (OK, I will: "Oh darn. This criminal's pointing a gun at my head. Too bad I can't legally carry a firearm, because I would. Then I could reach for it, and this guy would blow my head away. The horror... THE HORROR!!!")

I don't know if any of you saw this in the news, but we had this whole serial sniper deal about a year ago... random people were getting shot, kind of lasted a while, terrorized all of us for a good month or so, pretty much locked down the entire region, blah blah blah. I was eating at a restaurant a few blocks away from the Seven Corners shopping center where Linda Franklin was killed on October 14, and my wife and I had the privilege of spending the rest of the night sitting in our car, nervously waiting to get through a police road block.

You know what I wasn't thinking that night? "I really wish more people could legally own guns." I was thinking: "Let's drive to NRA headquarters and throw rocks at it."

Wow... depressing news today. I'm gonna need a fucking drink at lunchtime, I can tell right now.

Finally, a personalized Virginia license plate I can live with

Ooooops

The Washington Times printed a letter to the editor, purportedly an e-mail from a U.S. diplomat, that turned out to be a forgery. Apparently the Times neglected to verify the letter by calling the sender, as newspapers normally do, and ran with it anyway.

Must... resist... obvious Bush joke....

[Times chief Wesley Pruden:] "The standard procedure at The Times is to verify all letters to the editor; this procedure was not followed in this instance. We will find out why, and make changes in procedures as necessary."

Changes in procedures consisting of actually following your current procedures, presumably.

It was not yet clear whether the forger had sent the letter from Mr. Minikes' e-mail account — or from the department's server — or whether the sender disguised another account to look like the diplomat's e-mail. Mr. Boucher said there were "a variety of electronic possibilities" for someone to have "pulled this off."

Yeah, no kidding there are a variety of ways. Any idiot who knows SMTP can telnet to port 25 of an insecure machine and spoof an e-mail address. Of course, people can forge real letters even more easily; that's why you always call the person to verify it's a real letter before publishing it.

With all this talk about failing to check documents that later turned out to be forgeries... I can't resist any longer. Clearly the Times loves Bush so much, they just had to emulate him in absolutely everything. I hear Ari's available to do some damage control.

"We will pursue this investigation with great energy," Mr. Pruden said. "We intend to get to the bottom of this hoax. There is no offense more serious at any newspaper. We will make life as miserable as we can for the jerk who did it."

Awww yeah, revenge of the Times! Sun Moon's gonna be all up in your business, fake-letter-writer!

(Wow, this Pruden guy sounds like a great boss... does he make the reporters write stories about that awful menace Spider-Man?)

Oh man, I know I was kidding about the Bush thing, but after reading this Howard Kurtz blurb, the parallels become even more hilariously dead-on:

The perpetrator may have struck before. Last March, Washington Post columnist Al Kamen got what turned out to be a fake e-mail of complaint from the deputy chief of mission under Minikes. That one wasn't published.

So a couple months ago, the Times received a similar fake letter, but didn't publish it. This time, perhaps a bit overeager to slam the State Department again, they did publish it, and now it's time to pay the price, just like with the yellowcake thing. Now this is just getting eerie.

Anyway, the Times has removed the letter from its website, but I fished it out of the Google cache for posterity. Here it is, the fake letter in its entirety:

---

The State Department's corrosive culture

I am writing to commend you for Joel Mowbray's insightful recent analysis of many State Department careerists' thinly disguised distaste and disloyalty for the president's foreign policy goals (Op-Ed, July 7, "A tangled web; The State Department's corrosive culture"). In my long experience working as a Republican-appointed executive in various federal government positions of responsibility and honor, it has become almost an unchangeable given that most career bureaucrats are liberal, instinctively supportive of big and intrusive government and that they strongly advocate the Democratic Party's approach to foreign policy; namely process, apology and appeasement.

Never has this bias been so evident than during my time as President Bush's ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in Vienna. From the careerists serving at the assistant secretary level at the State Department (true survivors all in the jungle of political opportunism) down to freshly minted junior officers, I find on a daily basis a discomfort among many of them with implementing the president's desire to lead by principle, and instead, a self-defeating reliance on doing things the same old way, based on the false presumption that everyone's and every state's view has equal value.

At the OSCE, many on my staff consider the principles that drive French or Russian foreign policy mischief to be as legitimate, in a relativistic way, as the tried-and-true American values that drive everything I do and say as ambassador. It is shameful, and if I had the authority and freedom to fire and hire staff based on their loyalty to this administration's democratically elected policy positions rather than based on their tenure as bureaucrats, mine would be a significantly different staff.

It's a slow and incremental struggle in which we are engaged, not only to secure American values throughout the darkest corners of the world, but also, and first, to secure American values in the darkest corners of the State Department. Keep up the good fight and the honest reporting.

STEPHAN M. MINIKES
Ambassador
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
Vienna, Austria
[not really]

Murder counter jumped by three since yesterday

"In the hood, summertime is the killing season. It's hot out in this bitch; that's a good enough reason."
-50 Cent, "Heat"

I long to hear those three simple words: "It's on, BITCH!"

I've always sensed a bit of a rivalry between D.C., Virginia, and Maryland. These are three regions that just tend to dislike each other. D.C. resents Maryland and Virginia commuters for using the District to support their livelihoods without giving anything back; Virginia sees D.C. as a never-ending money pit that doesn't deserve support; Maryland sees Virginia as a bastion of inbreeding. (All correct assertions.)

This tends to cause problems when the three jurisdictions have to work together; for example, during the serial sniper investigation last year there were a number of police forces working on the case who weren't on the same page. And all three governments are responsible for running the Metro system; obviously that's working out real well. NOT.

(Whatever happened to "not"? Hmm, '90s nostalgia is gonna suck, isn't it?)

Generally, the rivarly has seemed friendly, resulting in little more than good-natured ribbing and the occasional interstate golf tournament.

Until today... when it all blew up like a motherfucker. The reason: the commuter tax lawsuit being considered by the District. Strap yourselves in...

"This is a stupid, idiotic plan that should not be adopted in any way," declared Loudoun Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott K. York (R), whose county has about 6,000 daily commuters to the District, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

Ahh, Loudon County, always the calm voice of suburban reason.

"This would become a burden on our residents no matter how you end up looking at it," said Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Sean T. Connaughton (R), a lawyer and one of about 17,000 county residents who commute to the District.

Except in the way that the commuters would be paying the same amount of taxes. Generally, commuter taxes are deducted from residents' home state taxes as a credit. Virginia would need to raise taxes to make up for that lost revenue, but that burden would presumably be spread out among all residents of the Commonwealth, and wouldn't sting any one group too badly.

And now, the really good part:

D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) fired back, saying the suburbs are against a commuter tax because they unfairly benefit from the current arrangement. "The only argument [the suburbs] have is: 'We're greedy. We do not want to pay our fair share,' " Evans said.

"I'm appalled at the people in Virginia. They're living up to their reputation of being narrow-minded. When you think of people in Virginia, you think of them as backward, and they confirm it on something like this."

AWWWWWW NO YOU DI'NT!!!!!

I mean, wow. This is the kind of comment that totally makes my day, but totally should never have been spoken by a politician. Don't get me wrong, he's exactly right on all counts: Virginia is indeed made up almost solely of greedy, backward, narrow-minded rich people. That could pretty much be our state motto. But, see, I'm allowed to say that on my foul-mouthed blog; a politician isn't. Granted, Evans is trash-talking a jurisdiction outside his own and probably won't have to face too many repercussions as a result. But when you're trying to get another state to keep from going against your plan to tax them, maybe calling them greedy and backward isn't the best way to go about doing it.

All right, so now it's ALL-OUT TAX WARFARE! Time to bring down... the steel cage!

Montgomery officials said they have no immediate plans to fight a commuter tax in court. But if District leaders "go much further, we could easily be forced to consider a tax on reverse commuters," said County Council President Michael L. Subin (D-At Large). "There are a significant number of people driving from Washington to work in Montgomery County every day."

Oh, man. Is it my birthday or something? No? This is still awesome.

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Katherine K. Hanley (D) said her board has not taken an official stand on the matter recently but has generally opposed the idea of a commuter tax.

"There are a lot of other parts of the region that have people come to our jurisdiction as well," she said. A District lawsuit "could spark a regional war."

Yes, REGIONAL WAR!!!! Can we start now? Where can I get tickets? There can be only one!

One more quote I love:

Hanley took exception to D.C. leaders' characterizations of Fairfax as flush with revenue. "We pay more in taxes [to state coffers in Richmond] than we get back," she said. "We have revenue-stream problems of our own."

See, this is why Northern Virginia opposition to this plan doesn't make much sense. Here's how taxes work in Northern Virginia:

1) The taxes we pay go to Richmond.

2) The money is spent elsewhere in the state.

3) The end.

As far as Richmond is concerned, Virginia's Washington suburbs might as well be in New Hampshire. We're a bunch of spoiled city slickers who will just have to make do with a two-lane I-66, because dag gummit, if Roanoke can get by with two lanes, so can we.

Even though, unlike D.C., we're taxed with representation, the eight-or-so representatives we send to Richmond can't hope to outvote the 83-or-so representatives from the rest of the state, who are too busy passing resolutions condemning the cancellation of Hee-Haw.

My point is, why not have our Virginia commuters give some tax dollars to D.C. instead? At least the money would be staying in the region, as opposed to now, when it basically goes to subsidize Farmer Cletus's fantastic new pig milking machine in Bent Creek.

Anyway, you know I'll be keeping an eye on this story, now that everyone is all up in each other's business. May the hilarity never end.

"These yokels are pure Baltic Avenue."

I feel for Mala, who is struggling, as I am, to find decent affordable housing in Washington. She posts an example of a large one-bedroom condo in Adams Morgan that's listed for $536,900. In most cities that would buy you a few good-sized single-family homes; here, it's good for a stinking one-bedroom condo.

Who the hell can afford to buy these damn things? Well, I guess somebody can; just nobody I know.

I come back to this topic a lot, because it's the thing that frustrates me the most about living in Washington. I would love to own a home; obviously, it's one of those American dreams that everyone aspires to, and it's one of mine as well. This seems like a great time for me to buy a new home. Interest rates are crazy low at the moment. I have a decent job, where I get paid a pretty good amount of money to do not much at all. Hell, I'm earning more than my father; that fucking blows my mind. And this is all at a time when the economy is down and unemployment is high, which would seem to reduce demand for new housing and keep prices low. It would seem to be the perfect environment for me to buy a house or condo.

And yet, I can't even put together enough money for a down payment. It's not just the hot neighborhoods like Adams Morgan that are out of reach; even houses and condos for sale in unexciting Northern Virginia are priced out of my market.

(Seriously, why is it so expensive to live in McLean? The only entertainment I can think of is toilet papering Pat Buchanan's house. And that's only going to be fun once. Probably.)

Plus, the rent on my slum-like two bedroom apartment (whoa, somebody gave it a positive review recently) is $1,035, which is actually cheap for the neighborhood, but still too much for me to be able to save anything. OK, granted, I go on a lot of vacations, but other than that I don't spend a lot of money; I'm not in any debt except for student loans; I'm pretty responsible with what I earn. But after working a steady job for almost two years, I'm still not any closer to owning a home than I was when I started.

So that's what makes me the most bitter. I worked hard through college and graduate school to ensure that I could provide for myself and my wife. And now that I'm finally in the exciting working world full-time, I can't scratch out the kind of living I want. And if I'm having this much trouble, I really feel for the people who are working the shit jobs that don't pay close to what I make; surely their hopes of owning a home here is forever non-existent.

This is also a reason why the "city living, dc style!!" promotion by the District cracks me up. They want to attract yuppies and empty-nesters who are just starting out, and those who would benefit from the District's first-time-homebuyer tax break. I'm a yuppie; I have no kids; and I know I can't afford a decent house in D.C., tax break or no (not that I would live there anyway... I'm too educated about what goes on in the District). I'm seriously thinking of marching down to the city living, dc style expo when it happens and bitching them out for trying to mislead people into thinking they can afford to live there in a safe neighborhood.

(Notice how the website, in its inimitable "selective capitalization" style, claims that "more than 30,000 housing units are either completed, under construction or planned—from affordable to market rate." Yeah, fuck you too, website.)

Those of you who are thinking of moving here: if you're looking to make an honest living and don't want to live paycheck-to-paycheck, do yourself a favor and don't move to Washington.

You catch more flies with honeys

By popular request: D.C. cops cracked down on prostitution, dressing up 14 of their female officers as hookers and nabbing 69 potential johns over the span of several days. (Umm, why did they stop at that number?... *cough*...)

In a twist that could only happen in D.C... this pissed off local residents.

"I don't understand why they would [crack down] on prostitution when people around here get killed," said Talitha Weaver, 36, who says she also is involved in prostitution.

Way to give your out real name on the record... great idea there.

Though police said female police officers did not encourage the men, other residents also were suspicious.

"It's entrapment to some degree," said Mark Brinkley, 44.

First, It's not all the cops' fault that people keep on killing people. Cops can't be standing around the city waiting to dive in front of bullets for people. While some amount of preventative policework might help lower the murder rate, generally the best they can do is investigate homicides thoroughly, then capture the murderers and make sure they get put away. Of course, they're not doing that well at all, but that's beside the point.

If D.C. residents really want to put an end to murder, they're just going to have to stop shooting each other quite so much. Crazy idea, I know. But so is the idea that removing a few cops from hooker detail would help lower the murder rate. I'm just glad the D.C. police are finally actively doing something to reduce crime, rather than their usual tactic of doing nothing.

Secondly, entrapment? If you walk up to a cop dressed as a hooker and say, "I'll give you $40 for a blowjob," you are an idiot who deserves to be arrested. You have been entrapped into nothing; it's your own stupid fault for being so fucking stupid. Similarly, if you're the mayor of town and you start smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room while FBI cameras are rolling on you, you are an idiot who deserves to be arrested.

And yet, these preventive measures, which might actually have a shot at reducing crime, often get criticized by D.C. residents as being unfair when they do snare criminals. Go figure.

2 1 day(s) since our last murder

Remember those 12-year-old car thieves I mentioned? Yesterday, a couple of them killed a woman while joyriding, then escaped on foot.

Let's keep our crappy capital crappy

The Washington Times weighs in on the proposed commuter tax lawsuit with this staff editorial. Predictably, their opinion is, "Hey, don't tax us!"

The Times doesn't even refute the claim that D.C. needs or deserves the money, which is good, since even the General Accounting Office says that D.C. faces a structural deficit because the cost of providing services exceeds its taxing ability.

Instead, their sole argument seems to be that it's bad to try to overturn any part of the 30-year-old D.C. Self-Government Act. What, is it written on Jesus' burial cloth or something?

Er, I mean... "Rev." Moon's... future burial cloth? Or something? Hm. And then:

Both pieces of legislation propose the same income tax rates for non-D.C. residents: Individuals earning up to $10,000 would pay the District .5 percent of their income taxes; people earning between $10,000 and $40,000 would pay 1 percent; and people earning more than $40,000 would pay 2 percent.

[...]

Still, if the city were permitted to impose a commuter tax, the consequences would be laughable, if not downright frightening: What would D.C. government do with $1.4 billion in additional annual revenue?

Gee, I don't know, since the 2 percent tax propsed by the referenced legislation would only provide $540 million in revenue, according to this article from last week's Post.

Alice M. Rivlin, director of the Brookings Greater Washington Research Program and a former D.C. financial control board chairman, said a recent Brookings study estimated that if nonresident workers were taxed at the city's current graduated rate of up to 9.3 percent, a commuter tax would yield $1.4 billion. But she said a lower rate -- such as the graduated rate of up to 2 percent suggested by council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) -- would be a more reasonable option and would yield about $540 million.

A lesser person might suggest that the Times is borrowing our President's "selective-fact-using" technique. I am that lesser person.

I don't want to decide

Which is better: an obsolete concert venue, or strip malls and housing developments?

John weighs in.

Bud Selig: please rot in eternal fucking damnation

It's a good thing I caught a couple of baseball games in Chicago last week, since that may be my last chance to see baseball for a while. There seems to be little chance Washington will get a team in 2004. (Times scooping the Post there, which they tend to do now and again on local stories.) Baseball's handling this situation with its usual heavy-handed, monopolistic style.

Meanwhile, a poll shows that 64 percent of my motherfucking nimby neighbors in Arlington are opposed to a new ballpark anyway. It's as if the entire county is opposed to fun. Arlington is the most densely populated county in the nation, and if there was a way to measure it, I'm sure it would also rank first in total boredom per capita. (I'm sorry, but after spending three days in the incredible Wrigleyville, I'm really especially bitter about this right now.)

Plus, the owners of the best potential stadium site in Pentagon City apparently don't feel like selling anyway.

Keep up with the whole mess on this site.

The only thing that's going to save this summer now is the opening of a new Chipotle restaurant in Tysons Corner. Please... hurry up and open, Chipotle.

What a guy

Jerry Stackhouse of the Washington Wizards was arrested after allegedly assaulting a woman. He's also guilty of the worst performance by a starting professional basketball player I have ever seen.

I want names

So by now you've probably heard about the whole Saddam-was-trying-to-get-uranium-from-Niger-oops-no-he-wasn't thing that's caused a bit of trouble for the White House. I was hoping the Times would weigh in on the issue, just for humor's sake, to see how they would defend Bush this time.

First, they ran an editorial denouncing the CIA for misleading Bush, and not placing any blame on Bush. It seems obvious that the White House had been pushing the intelligence community to get the results it wanted anyway, so whatever.

The comedic masterstroke I was looking for came today: "Withheld Iraq report blamed on French."

My goodness. I had to check the URL to make sure I wasn't reading The Onion by mistake. You just know this is going to be fucking hilarious. Originally from the London Daily Telegraph:

The French secret service is believed to have refused to allow Britain's MI6 to give the United States "credible" intelligence showing that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger, U.S. intelligence sources said yesterday.

How did we come to this conclusion? Well, MI6 claims to have "different and credible" evidence that Iraq really did try to get uranium from Niger, but that it wasn't allowed to share it with the U.S., because it came from the intelligence service of another country and MI6 didn't have permission to share it.

So, the U.S. sources interviewed for this article, who, mind you, have not seen the intelligence, assume it belongs to the French. After all, Niger is a former French colony, and the French were opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Conclusion: it was the frogs.

That's it. That's the connection. And that's a pretty strong statement, making a roundabout guess to find a way to blame the French for U.S. intelligence woes. Which is why it would be nice if any of the sources in this article had been named. Look at the article; it's all "British officials insisted" and "U.S. intelligence sources believe" and "one official said."

This does us no good at all. In fact, it's this kind of reporting that got us into this mess in the first place.

The number of anonymous sources used by news organizations seems to have jumped tenfold in the past few years or so. This isn't good for journalism, and it's especially not good for the press-reading public, because when the anonymous sources are wrong, we have nobody to hold accountable. In a worst-case scenario, a newspaper that's trying to influence public opinion could cobble together a made-up story out of quotes attributed to "senior administration officials" in order to spin the opinions of its readers. Now, I'm not saying the London Daily Telegraph is the kind of paper that would do this, but while I was browsing there, this message box popped up:



Yeah. You be the judge. (Really, you be the judge. I have no idea what this means. Apparently my battery hen is in bad shape.)

Anyway, the Post is just as guilty as the Times of running anonymous-source stories on important issues. Even in the article that broke the news that the White House was backing off the Niger claim:

"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," a senior Bush administration official said last night in a statement authorized by the White House.

Well, which official? If it's a statement authorized by the White House, why can't the Post even get this person to go on record to read the approved statement?

And again, it's this nonsense that has us in this mess; all during the lead-up to the war, when news stories all over were hyping the Iraqi WMD threat, it was all "a senior administration official said" this and "U.S. intelligence sources say" that. Now, if it turns out that we've needlessly murdered thousands of civilians and sacrificed hundreds of our own troops, we have nobody to hold accountable.

When even the Washington Post lacks the balls to quote sources by name, even on such a straightforward story, you know we're witnessing democracy at its worst.