Did You Know Washington Has Group Houses?

It's true! Group houses here in DC. This journalistic coup was generated by The Washington Post in a hard-hitting article that was published this morning. The Post sent crack reporter Monica Hesse into a Mount Pleasant group house and reported her wacky observations.

People in group homes hoard Oreos! And they share chores. They do not share laundry detergent. Wacky! Who knew these people lived among us?

Ok, confession time. I live in a group house. I am one of them. We all met through a mutual friend and have been sharing chores and figuring out a shower schedule ever since. The Post article gives little details about what it's like over on 1700 Park Road. I would do the same for my home except I get the feeling that no one gives a shit.

You don't care what we watch on TV. You don't care what time we take showers. You don't care about my brand of laundry detergent or what kind of beer I buy. If you do care, you shouldn't. So, kudos to the Post for publishing an article that no one could possibly care about. Group home living isn't news to anyone and it isn't of interest to anyone other than the story's subjects and story's author. The Post is batting 0-for-2 here.

What's next? An article about the various challenges one must face when living in a dorm? How about apartment living? Oh, the challenges of waiting for building management to send an exterminator after you saw that cockroach by the garbage disposal!

And this excerpt made me dry-heave:

How do you make a home in D.C.?

Where half of the people you meet are recovering valedictorians whose plans to save the world don't allow time for coffee? Where the other half have lived in D.C. for so long that they are suspicious of you, the newbie, who does not get the jokes about Marion Barry, about the Soviet Safeway, about the delays on the Green Line? How do you join that community?

I double-dare you to find someone living in this city who doesn't get a Marion Barry joke. Like, who hasn't seen Bring the Pain?

But, yeah. A city filled with idealist fucks and townie snobs. Sounds about right to me.

Analysis of College Rankings, Season 2

Please see last year's post for my opinion on various schools. I'm just going to chart movement here.

I doubt it needs to be said but these rankings are stupid. I hate them. Who gives a shit about alumni donations?

T14. Johns Hopkins University
Last year: 16

Tied with Brown and Northwestern. Seems about right. Congrats on beating the Duke Rapcists in this year's NCAA Men's Lacrosse Finals.

T23. University of Virginia
T23. Georgetown University
Last year: 24 (UVA), 23 (Gtown)

And UVA catches up! Huzzah! Take that, Hoyas!

T54. George Washington University
T54. University of Maryland - College Park
Last year: 52 (GW), 54 (UMD)

Oooh, a backslide! I've been pretty outspoken about my disdain for Maryland students. Perhaps their tie with a local school on the US News rankings will give them cause to set a couch on fire. Fear the Turtle!

Oh, poor George Washington. Having to share space with those cretins in Prince George's County. No one deserves such a fate.

Pepperdine, the most beautiful campus on Earth, is also tied at 54.

T71. Virginia Tech
Last Year: 77.

This hardly seems fair. A school massacre would actually help them in the rankings due to the crazy increase in alumni donations. Shouldn't a school be penalized for not locking down its campus with a murderer on the loose? Like, there should be a penalty for that.

T85. American University
Last Year: 86

Yay! Up a spot! Whoooo!

Now is the time to mention in the comments that you went to a better school than me and that my diploma might as well be toilet paper.

AU is tied with Denver, Kansas, NC State, and Iowa State. We're still (barely) ahead of Alabama.

T96. Howard University
Last Year: 88

Uh oh. Big drop. Sorry, dudes.

T122. Catholic University
Last Year: 120

That's 122 out of 130. There's no school, other than Maryland of course, that I despise more than Catholic. What do you expect when my only experience on that campus was being dragged to a, ahem, Rusted Root concert? I was dragged I tell you! So, yeah, no fond memories there.

Here's the link you can use to find out how your school did. And, again, congrats for getting into a better school than me.

Mourning + Newsworthiness = $$$

Virginia Tech will offer the families of the April massacre victims $180,000. Some families don't think that's enough.

No word on how much the family of Michael Whitfield is being offered.

I'm a Coward, but Not an Asshole

There was a letter to the editor in yesterday's Post about treating the homeless with humanity. If you don't have change or even if you don't want to hand a stranger a spare quarter, at least look them in the eye and say, "Sorry, I can't help you today."

Yesterday, outside the Tenley Starbucks, a man was sitting down asking for change. One person he asked, an older white man, responded with "No wonder you're poor if you keep drinking that expensive coffee."

You son of a bitch. Hell, I prefer it when some asshole gets asked if he has change, answers "yes," and then walks away. But this guy takes the cake. Making flippant comments to someone in need? Is that how you get your rocks off? Well fuck you, you lily-white priviledged fuck.

He was acting like something similar couldn't happen to someone he loves. Well it fucking can. Al Gore and football coach Andy Reid were both in the news for trouble caused by their children involving drugs. Prescription drugs and heroin is like jumping in the express lane to homelessness. Look at former Florida Governor "Jeb" Bush. His daughter Noelle has been in and out of rehab with severe drug addiction issues. So, asshole, yeah this can happen to you or your loved ones. It doesn't matter how much money you have or how great a parent you think you are.

And fuck me for being such a coward and walking away. That motherfucker deserved to be shamed in front of all of Tenleytown and I couldn't bring myself to say a word to him. Instead I resort to bitching semi-anonymously on the Internet. Awesome. Good for me.

I'm sure you have all witnessed similar ass-hattery from people here in Washington. It's inevitable in a city with such a high homeless population and such a high concentration of privileged fuckers, douchebags, college students, etc. That coffee jab can't be the worst. I'd love to hear your stories in the comments.

Crime!

Someone left this in the comments:

"I was walking home on Rhode Island Av., in front of the Catholic Charities Center for the Homeless, in a well lit area, and with a knife on my chest so I gave him all my money, then he made me empty my pockets and demanded only the cash; then, he said "go." As I got on to the corner of 6 St. and Rhode Island, and turned left I was shocked and froze to hear the same phrase, and I turned to look on the corner of my eye I saw that he was mugging to another guy in the very same spot were he intercepted me"

The whole story is here.

Please note how 911 put the victim on hold (!) and 311 (the shitty city service, not the shitty band) treated the victim with disdain. I've had my own terrible 311 experiences as I called to report flooding on Nebraska Avenue caused by a broken hydrant or broken water line. They asked for the closest address and I gave them the address for what was then the Swedish Embassy. They told me no such address existed and hung up on me.

The employees of the city, the people hired to protect you, could give a shit about you and your problems.

If You Want to Rob a Bank...

Today's your day.

If you're the type whose lifelong dream is to wreak some mayhem on the streets of DC, your best odds are right now. Police Chief Lanier's "All Hands on Deck" nonsense has resulted in such exorbiant overtime payouts that the city is currently being underserved by the MPD to cut costs.

Fewer than half the number of officers needed to patrol some neighborhoods are available to work the second half of this week. Some officers are estimating the entire police force is down by about a third right now.

Hopefully this will buy you some time when you rob that bank.

I know I should give it more of a chance, but "All Hands on Deck" has been a catastrophic failure. The extra police presence hasn't prevented any crime. And now we have a severe police shortage. That won't prevent any crime either. I get the feeling that if crime drops in the city it will be despite Chief Lanier instead of because of it.

But, hey, at least she hasn't been stealing from DC's coffers. Small victories!

Metro Bomb Scare

It was fucking paper and cardboard. Three stations closed because of a box filled with cardboard.

It's over. The terrorists won.

FFFFFUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKK

I am not going to complain about the heat. That would be ridiculous. I mean, it;s unbearable out there, but that happens in DC a few times a year. I just hate how Washington handles it. You'd think that a city that gets extreme heat and humidity wouldn't feature a subway line that can't function in extreme heat and humidity. But here we are.

Ok, so expect some minor delays?

No.

Rusty's Theory of Metro Delays, that when one thing goes wrong everything else spirals out of control, is once again supported by empirical evidence. Check this out:

Dupont Circle station temporarily closed due to suspicious package on board a train (red line). Shuttle bus service requested between Woodley Park and Farragut North stations.

Oh fuck a duck. I've heard Cleveland Park and Woodley Park are closed as well. Fuck. FUCK.

Why does this shit have to happen? That fucking suspicious package better be a fucking bomb because if I'm stuck in downtown DC in 100-degree heat because of a backpack with some yuppie douche's gym clothes in it, I am going to have a major fucking meltdown.

(Irony alert: I am a yuppie douche and I was planning on going to the gym today.)

And I know the suspicious package and the heat are unrelated, but, Jesus, this shit always seems to happen at the same time. How the fuck do I get home now? A cab? Guhh. Do they have meters yet? Of course they fucking don't.

I hate this fucking city.

I probably should have mentioned this yesterday, but, oh well. All of the 9:30 Club staff was forced to work the Virgin Fest. I don't really have a problem with that. I do have a problem with the Club refusing to pay for travel or lodging expenses. You'd think the profit margins being reaped on six dollar bottles of Yuengling would afford these guys some goodwill, but, no.

Oh, if you couldn't find or afford a place to stay, they'd let you camp out in a tent at the Merriweather Post Pavilion a mere 20 miles away. Because showers are for suckers.

Ok, I know that these people got into a $200 music festival for free. If you're a big Police fan, this is a great deal. If you don't care for any of the bands that played Pimlico, this is a fucking travesty. You lose your weekend and you lose money out-of-pocket for little luxuries like a roof over your head and, assuming you don't have a car, a train ride. Weak.

Potpourri

It should be really hard to complain about DC after spending a weekend in Baltimore for Virgin Fest. Baltimore...Baltimore has some issues. Walking from Pimlico to the Rogers Avenue Metro station was not the wisest choice. My "white bitches," the title some of my friends were given by a local, agreed.

But, whoo-boy. One hour of Internet and e-mail and suddenly the rage is back. Thanks to all the e-mailers and the blogs (really just DCist) that gave me such valuable ammunition.

First, thanks to a reader for sending me this link. It's pretty boring, so let's dive right into the good stuff:

Washington, D.C., has the country's least safe bridges, with 63 percent of the district's 245 bridges rated either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

Hurray! Next time you walk across Rock Creek Park or drive across the Potomac, keep your fingers crossed. The Douglass Bridge is currently closed so there's a minimal chance of joining the distinguished list of corpses pulled from the Anacostia.

To Washington's credit, or, more accurately, to my home state's discredit, Massachusetts is right down there with DC in terms of bridge disrepair. Maybe my folks' property values will go up if they market their house as an island estate should a bridge drop.

Let's move on to my favorite whipping boy: Metro. We all know Metro is in desperate need to limit costs and/or increase revenue. As much as we would all hate a fare increase, there is one idea floating around that is much worse. Metro is considering removing its late-night service.

This is a nightmare. An absolute nightmare. People depend on the Friday and Saturday late-night trains to get home after a night of drinking. What other alternative is there? Busing? That's Metro General Manager John Catoe's suggestion. More buses. Oh my Christ. Mr. Catoe likes making a big deal of how he takes the Metro to work every day. Well, Mr. Catoe, have you ever tried getting a bus after 10pm? It's a fucking crap shoot. Hell, 10pm is being generous. It's always a crap shoot. It won't be any different at 2am.

DCist points out that this could very well lead to an increase in drunk driving. I find it impossible to disagree with them. More people will drive to get to their favorite bars.

The Metro gives reasonable access to most of the city. Buses don't. How the fuck would they expect me to get from U Street to my home in AU Park by bus? I guess I would have to take the Adams-Morgan connector, hop on the L2, and then walk a mile from Connecticut Avenue to Wisconsin Ave. on the same dark street where a New York Times reporter was bludgeoned to coma by some thugs before being killed off by DC paramedics and hospital workers. Thanks, but no thanks, DC.

And can you imagine the effect this will have on bars and nightclubs? This keeps drinkers tied to their bus lines. That leaves me Dupont and, shudder, Georgetown. Any bar off the beaten path will lose business.

The stupidity of removing late-night Metro service astounds me.

Finally, and again from DCist, comes this story of Hawk 'n' Dove refusing to admit Marines unless they're in uniform or accompanied by a lady. I hate to get all Michelle Malkin on you, but it takes a special kind of asshole to treat soldiers with anything but the utmost respect. I love me some pacifism too, but, Christ, these people are risking their lives for us. Just because I don't support the war in Iraq doesn't mean that I don't have the most sincere pride in knowing that my uncle is over there fighting for me.

So, fuck you Hawk 'n' Dove. Fuck you hard. They claim that Eastern Market bars were being hassled by Marines in the early-1990s. Uniform and women keep them behaved. If that's the case, Marines aren't the problem. Douchebags are the problem. To single out Marines as aggressive unruly men is unfair and disgusting. I've never been to Hawk 'n' Dove which makes it considerably easier for me to boycott it.

Boycott established.

Metro Shenanigans

It's easy to see why DC's subway has its proponents. It's so freaking clean and its considerably cheaper than Boston and New York. It's still a relatively young system, too. There are less maintenance issues than what you'll find elsewhere.

But something is always not quite right. Perhaps it's that it's never something. It's always everything.

I almost never travel on the Blue/Orange lines, thank Christ. Check this out.

A line is shut down because a train's brakes fail. Of course it's during rush hour. And of course it's a major problem that forces the WMATA to resort to using one track. And of course it's at one of the busiest stops on the Metro. And of course they don't get the word out warning people not to take the fucking subway.

The subway is a joke. The scary part is that it's still way more reliable than taking the bus. You know how people say "I don't know what the point of having a car in the city"? Well, I'm the opposite. How can you not have a car here?

If You See a Mob, Run.

Over the weekend seven people got shot in Northeast. Fortunately, amazingly, no one died. I guess the gunmen were aiming low. There was a big poo-poo over this since it happened during one of those wacky weekends where Chief Lanier demands an increased police presence by forcing every cop to work overtime. Back to the drawing board, Chief.

The violence in Northeast took a rather bizarre turn yesterday. There are now hordes of lawlessness shooting people in the back. That's right. Hordes. Two people were shot by an unruly mob last night. Again, no one died.

It feels like we're getting awfully close to another stupid "crime emergency." If some of those bullets had hit vital organs, we'd probably already be there. If, or when, people start actually dropping, it'll be interesting to see how Fenty handles it. He was the lone dissenting vote when the DC Council passed that stupid crime emergency legislation last year. If his administration is really driven by "vision" like he promised during the campaign, it will be interesting to see what new ideas he has to offer. If we get another youth curfew and more useless surveillance cameras, I won't know what to do with myself.

Maybe Homeschooling Isn't That Bad

Home-schooled kids are usually easy marks. As Mean Girls pointed out, home-schooled kids tend to be stereotyped as spelling whizzes or religious nuts. But maybe the parents who lock their kids away from basic social interaction are on to something.

In what has to be considered a black eye for the Fenty administration, DC public schools will not be prepared for the first day of classes on August 27. Three thousand classrooms currently lack air conditioning. The average high temperature in DC in August is 86 degrees Fahrenheit. If I were a student, I would prefer A/C.

Air conditioning is a nice little luxury, but what about heat? DC classrooms don't have that either. Twenty schools were temporarily closed last year due to a lack of heating in the classrooms. The problems haven't been fixed. DC has until October 15 to fix this. In the meantine, the air conditioning will just have to wait.

Oh, and there aren't enough textbooks to go around. Not only are the schools uncomfortable, they're also impotent. Kids can go have some hands-on learning with dealing with uncomfortable environments. After that, the education stops.

I can not fathom how it got to this point. Twenty school closures and we're just now getting to fixing the problem? Three thousand classrooms without air conditioning in a city with a ruthlessly hot climate? No textbooks? How can a parent feel good about sending their kids to these schools? Fenty ran under a platform of changing the schools. Basically the platform that everyone runs on and the public continues to buy hook, line, and sinker. But it's the same old shit. Expecting wholesale changes in one year is a bit too much to ask. I'm not that naive. But, Christ, they still haven't fixed the heating? That's the issue that's fallen through the cracks?

I continue to applaud myself for not voting for this man.

UPDATE: I find it hard to keep a link to the terrible Examiner up when the Post has an article concerning the same problems. Here's something notable:

At a news conference yesterday, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) promised that this would be the last year of such textbook debacles and said the city is updating school heating and air-conditioning systems.

I am now very, very excited for July 31, 2008.

Yes, I Know About the Dead Birds

Yesterday was a bad time to be in Eastern DC as three stations were shut down due to poisoned birds. These sparrow corpses join high temperatures as a ridiculous inconvenience that can cripple the second busiest subway system in the country. Next thing you know East Falls Church station will be shut down by, I don't know, scary looking clouds.

Not a ridiculous inconvenience: someone dying at the hands (wheels? rails?) of a train. A commenter, "edthered," pointed out that Metro switched from killing birds to killing humans. Sure enough, there was a service alert on the Metro website saying the Ballston station was closed down to a train killing someone. Details are forthcoming. I'm of course not blaming Metro for this. Yet. This could have been a jumper for all we know.

I do not envy Orange Line commuters today.

The Patriot Center Needs More ATMs.

I went to the White Stripes show at the Patriot Center on Saturday. It was my first trip to George Mason and I was amazed that they could fit such a big school out in the middle of nowhere.

The show was fine even if the sound was, um, not good. I just wanted to point out that I had never been surrounded by so many dee-bagz in my entire life. It was worse than any frat party or intern fair I had ever attended. Douches everywhere. Bros punching each other and then hugging and saying "I love you, man." I thought that was just a cliche. But it really happens! And if I hear one more asshole propose to Meg White in the middle of "In the Cold, Cold Night" I am going to shoot myself.

My roommate told me that every show she goes to at the Patriot Center is like that. So, what's up? Is this just a coincidence or are GMU students/Fairfax residents super-obnoxious? Or do The White Stripes attract a douchey audience? All theories are appreciated. It was the first time an audience greatly affected my enthusiasm.

And God damn it, if you're lucky enough to be on the floor at a rock concert, fucking move around a little. Nothing is more depressing than seeing hundreds of people just standing there while rock music is being performed. I expect that shit at Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann concerts. But The White Stripes? Really?