Wonkette

Our last, best hope for Washington — that it would be destroyed by the horrible emergence of subterranean monstrosities — came tantalizingly close to reality on Tuesday, when a magnitude 2.0 earthquake shook the D.C. area. What was it, and why is the government claiming and then denying responsibility for the loud booms from Beneath the Earth? MORE »

The most widespread form of “life” in Washington is the common Norway Rat, which completely owns the miserable District. Like most stunned bumpkins forced by bad luck or weird morals to the nation’s foul capital, the new editor of Reason magazine is horrified to find that dog-sized vermin live in every home, even the White House. MORE »

And a sad story becomes sadder still: Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found hanging dead in a storage shed behind her mother’s Florida mobile home. Many pages of “handwritten suicide notes” were reportedly found in the shed by the Tarpon Springs police. Read the weird transcript, after the jump. MORE »

Forty years ago tonight, Washington burned, baby, burned — just as so many other cities burned after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. And it only took about 40 years to fix up some of the destroyed neighborhoods along H Street NE, 14th and U, and various other chunks of the District that ended up looking like Hiroshima after the Bomb. And now Wonkette’s own Liz Glover says the National Guard actually burnt D.C. to the ground, not the freaked-out rioters. MORE »

This week, George Will is sure going to be bummed when Borders shuts down for good, and one of you recognized a fireman or something. You people are not really being very good spies and operatives, are you? We realize nobody cares about anything but Barack Obama these days and all the famous-for-D.C. people are either recuperating at home or out on somebody’s campaign trail, but Jesus Christ, how about a few sightings? MORE »

Fears of a massive rat & roach spring swarm have crippled much of the District this evening as horrified office workers and other war profiteers watch major thoroughfares blocked off by mounted police while 20-foot-tall “rat proofing” concrete barriers are raised from Georgetown to Foggy Bottom. Law enforcement officials are keeping quiet about the real reasons for the horror stampede, and many locals fear for their lives. What the living hell is going on? MORE »

HELP D.C. KIDS FIGHT EVIL NATIONALS BASEBALL PARK: Positive Nature over at 1017 New Jersey Avenue SE is a place for the poor troubled DC kids to hang out and not be shot and to have Hope. But the baseball industry hate kids with problems, so Positive Nature is being forced out of its nice place because of the crazy new property taxes around the new Nationals Park. You could maybe do something good for a change and help ‘em out. [Positive Nature]

• “We returned to Columbia Heights and witnessed a mass congregation of firetrucks and pedestrians lurking on the sidewalk as a major blaze took hold of an apartment building on Mt. Pleasant St. We were able to get close to the blaze, scale a building and capture some moments as DC’s finest attempted to quell a wild fire.” [Brightest Young Things]
• “Oh yes indeed, I asked for hot dog controversy, and WaPo has tracked it down for me. The guys who sell the junk food to the street vendors are outraged — appalled, even! — that the city might grant some vendor licenses to people who wouldn’t buy their Utz potato chips and crappy hot dogs.” [Metroblogging DC]

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Outrage has swept the nation following revelations that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer probably paid $4300 to meet with a high-priced call girl in Washington D.C. Sure, everybody’s horrified and baffled that such a straight shooter would violate the sacred marital bond and betray his constituents’ trust. But the real puzzler is this: isn’t $4300 a little on the steep side for a lady of the night? Who does this guy think he is, Howard Hughes? MORE »

Lobbyist-lover John McCain has a lot of problems, including being 712 years old and completely hated by his party, the Republicans. Another problem he has is with the “social conservatives” — you know, the sort of people he never has to deal with because he’s a rich elitist Washington liberal with a cougar gazillionaire wife and any number of adopted liberal babies. So what does he tell the religious white voters down in Georgia on Friday? He calls his hometown of D.C. the “City of Satan,” that’s what. McCain has lived and worked in Washington for three decades. [NBC 4]

• “Former Prince George’s County homeland security official Keith A. Washington, jailed awaiting sentencing for fatally shooting a furniture deliveryman and wounding another, was found last week with
  a handcuff key and had a ‘clear intention of escaping’, according to court papers filed by prosecutors.” [WP]
• “There are a lot of options for cheap bus rides to New York, so what makes BoltBus different? It operates on the EasyJet principle, where tickets start out dirt cheap and get more expensive as the bus gets fuller.” [DCist]
• “Connecticut Avenue around mid-day. Various Greenpeace fanatics around. One is professing her love of the environment on some yuppie. Another spots her next target: A tall man, long coat, just lit a cigarette.” [Eavesdrop DC]
• “You already eat out most nights. Admit it. Go on. Now, this Thursday, you get to know that a portion of that price you’re paying for not dirtying up your dishes is going for a good cause. Yes, kids, it is time for the annual ‘Dining Out for Life’ Night, all of which is to benefit ‘Food and Friends’.” [Brightest Young Things]
• “I’m not going to lie. I am no stranger to drinking beers and listening to a Mariachi band. I think it is one of life’s great pleasures. I just never thought I’d be drinking beers and listening to a Mariachi band in a Target ….” [Prince of Petworth]

• “I buy the Post every weekday. I spend $120 a year on the Post. I can’t do it anymore …. I will not support an organization that promotes such outdated and misogynistic bullshit.” [why.i.hate.dc]
• “You’re not going to like the sound of this: the final set of rules governing the switch from the zone system to time and distance taxi meters were published in the in the D.C. Register on Friday, and the additional passenger fee was added back in.” [DCist]
• “[T]the last time I checked we don’t live in a communist society where the independent private business is forced to subsidize part of the driving public.” [Diary of a Mad DC Cabbie]
• “There’s just one problem with this idea; right now, Mark Warner is virtually guaranteed to be the next Senator from Virginia and Democrats are hungry to pick this seat up.” [Below the Beltway]
• “My nephew is going to be in town for a few days in April. He is 15. Do you know of any places to hear jazz (and maybe eat) where he can get in?” [DC Concierge]