Wonkette

• Express makes their own 36 Hours: DC, including the Brewmaster’s Castle, Saloon and Tabard Inn. Ours is just an eight-ball, a couple bottles of Turkey, and Gaucho on repeat. [Express]
• Patsy Cline started her career with DC’s country music scene in the late 40s. [Metroblogging DC]
• DC man dies in Kentucky crash, coworkers coincidentally given toy airplanes. Rod Serling unavailable for comment, due to death. [Conversations with Mud]
• Fun with tourists: “They recently passed a law about using cell phones on the Metro. It’s actually a $25 ticket.” [Sandblower]
• “There are bad people with guns and drugs that live on the unit block of Todd Pl.” [Eckington Blog]

• If Sleater-Kinney’s breakup doesn’t crush your soul, the Metro will. [Why I Hate DC]
• Gay refugees flood into the District from the south. [WaPo]
• Tourists continue to not get the whole Metro escalator rage thing. [tourist in dc]
• Cynthia McKinney TOTALLY VINDICATED. [WaPo]
• Breaking and entering: It’s not just for crackheads anymore [Whisky Pants]
• Imagine the most horrifying thing you can possibly conceive of David Brooks saying, then multiply by, like, a billion. [FishbowlDC]
• Top marketing gimmick for DC bars, 2007: Cancer nostalgia. [Metroblogging DC]

• WMATA to hand out free bottles of water tonight at Dupont Circle station, after your sweaty ass foots it up the broken escalator they can’t figure out how to fix. [Metroblogging DC]

• WaPo reporter and HGTV decorator in pissy little pissing match. [Fishbowl DC]
• Never, ever underestimate the stupidity of tourists. [Eavesdrop DC]
• Venerable Italian restaurant closing, forcing Justice Scalia’s blood to return to only 40% pure parmigiana. [Metrocurean]

• Trapped on a 60 year-old boat with families from the fly-over states wearing rubber duck beaks - being a tourist in DC really does suck that bad. [Best Summer Ever]

• Ain’t fallin’ for that again. No sir, Marion’s not gonna get set up by your bitch-ass blog. [Beyond the Mall]
• If you don’t go out on Wednesday nights how are you ever going learn that the “ass mélange that is reggaeton” is now a Hispanic pan-national anthem? [Panama's Propositions]
• Right now in Petworth a hipster is feverishly typing out a blog post with the working title, “Spotting Mainstream Members of the Material Culture In Their Natural Habitat.” [Circle V]

• Congressional spawn/hipster Jackie Kucinich loves getting paid to write about bars you’ve been to a hundred times, still hates freedom. [The Hill]

• Someone tell the tourists that a Segway rickshaw is not a chariot, even though it might resemble the motorized wheel chair their fat-asses will be confined to soon enough. [Metroblogging DC]
• The weekly celebrity magazines are there for you when your brain is beaten and tired. [The Oral Minority]

• No reason to get shook, it’s just a little crime. Sounds like someone’s been watching too much of The Warriors. [America Blog]

• Er, rather it’s a “crime emergency.” Quick! Everyone watch The Warriors for survival tips. [Cut DC Taxes]
• Old people and fat asses are your best friends if you just dropped ass on the Metro. [Sarcastic and Cynical]
• 7-11: Too lazy to keep all the slurpee flavors properly frozen and too cheap to give any of their precious colored sugar water away. [DCist]
• Tucker Carlson’s new show has yet to hit its stride. [Two-Timing the Cosmos]

• Attention tourists: the following will vastly cut down on the number of dirty looks you receive per hour of touring. [An OC Girl Living In An Extraordinary World]

• Not included in the guide: how do handle crazed violent psychos on the metro. [ Thoreau's Journal]
• Distinguishing the rapport of a bottle-rocket from a MAC-10 is for more advanced urban tourists. [Cruel Sommer]
• A cell of terrorist haxors has started attacking sites they find while surfing for porn. [The Gentlemen of the CPMC]
• MTV heads to Hawk n’ Dove for the same reason everyone does: hard partying underage interns willing to exploit themselves. [The Hill]

* The Supreme Court bench-slapped the White House in the Gitmo military tribunal case. Tony Snow is unfazed: “Oh, those wacky Supreme Court justices, who knows what those guys mean!” MORE »

* Sci-Fi author David Brin tours Capitol — yells at police that confiscate his tri-corder, “You don’t know what you’re doing! My work must continue!” [Conservative Futurist] MORE »

It’s hot, and our building’s AC is down for the day. So we’re kind of miserable. But we take solace in the fact that we don’t have to lead tours of the Capitol. Some folks aren’t that lucky. One of those unlucky folks is (or was) our very own Anonymous Hill Staffer, who’s checking in today with another installment in his glorious Quixotic quest to answer every single question about working on the Hill ever.

After the jump, ageism, mostly, with a dash of racism and a the usual smattering of nepotism.

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Ask a Hill Staffer

Our anonymous Hill Staffer works hard, play hard, and answers your questions with the absolute minimum effort required.

Today, in between backrubs for John Conyers and stalking the mysterious new Representative Paula Vaughn, he tells ya’ all about finding a job, eating lunch, and how to dress to impress. Keep those questions coming, people — he almost had to do real work today.

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Hey, at least one House employee listened to our demand that you send us vulgarisms while yer supposed to be working: MORE »

Washington tourists in August: Clearly, the rejects of the vacationing world. An article in today’s WaPo shows how our subway system, designed to thwart invasion and attack, also cleverly repels a more pernicious presence:

With no public transportation experience, George said, “we didn’t know what we were supposed to do.” The first challenge was simply buying a Farecard. “That ticket machine is awful,” she said. “We finally figured it out by just pushing all the buttons.”

Of course, that’s also how Americans vote. The real tragedy? The family still thinks they’re in New York. The article also highlights a rather Sartrean visitor Metro dilemma, quoting a confused passenger, “Which way is the exit? How do you get out of the building?” Ah, yes, we’ve heard of the tourist mole people, trapped underground in world they didn’t build and don’t understand. But, frankly, as long as they stand to the right, damn it, we don’t care. MORE »