The nation's capital prepares for the election

This photo was submitted by someone who wishes to remain anonymous -- and asks, "Isn't the word 'evacuation' in this context somewhat ambiguous?"

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The bus set him up

This time it was the bus that set him up.

Marion Barry, former Mayor for Life of the District, filed a claim with Metro asserting that a Metrobus sideswiped him last summer. There were no witnesses. As the WaPo story explains:

About a month later, Barry filed a claim against Metro. Metro tracked down the bus operator, who denied hitting any vehicle. There was also no damage to the Metrobus. Unable to confirm Barry's account, a mid-level Metro manager advised against paying the claim.

So, of course, that was the end of the story, you're thinking.

Are you on crack? Are you? Barry sits on the Metro board. Needless to say, Metro took another look at the claim.

"We couldn't prove it one way or the other," [Metro General Manager John] Catoe said in a recent interview. "The reality is, he's a member of the board of directors.

"In my judgment, I did not feel that he would have lied about such a small claim," Catoe said. "I believed he was truthful, and I made the decision to pay him.

So now, it's the end of the story, you're thinking. Wrong again! Metro paid Barry $3,227.40 and sent him a letter saying that, while it was unable to confirm the truth of his story, "in recognition of your public position and your commitment to the public interest, [Metro] has determined that it is appropriate to accept your demand for full settlement."

The $3,227.40 was an estimate of an independent appraiser, but in the meantime, Barry had his car repaired for about $1000 less. The Post raises an interesting question:

So, given Metro's financial difficulties, would Barry consider returning the $1,000 to Metro?

Barry said he couldn't remember the actual repair cost. An aide handled it, he said. "The case is closed where I'm concerned."

All right. Now, it's the end of the story.

UPDATE (6/17): A letter writer to the Post notices something I missed in this story. Barry claims that his parked car was sideswiped on the passenger side: "a Metrobus sideswiped his car on the passenger side." Was it parked in the middle of the street? Was it parked on the wrong side facing traffic? The letter writer seems to take the charitable view that Barry was telling the truth but illegally parked, instead of the reverse.

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D.C. commemorative quarter update

For reasons that elude me, the U.S. Mint will issue a commemorative quarter for D.C. and the U.S. territories to go along with the quarters that have been issued for each of the 50 states.

Mayor Fenty asked residents to propose designs. And now, says the Post, here are the finalists:

Yesterday, the District submitted three ideas for its quarter, part of a popular program that has produced coins representing each of the 50 states. One would feature the three stars and two bars of the D.C. flag; another would portray Benjamin Banneker, the 18th-century abolitionist who helped survey the city; and another would depict jazz great Duke Ellington, a D.C. native.

Each design would include the inscription "Taxation Without Representation" or "No Taxation Without Representation."

As the Post article notes, it's far from clear that the Mint will allow the slogan, because it doesn't allow "controversial subjects" on coins.

So which designs were the also-rans?

In addition to monuments, birds and flowers, there were calls for exploding manhole covers and red-light cameras. One person suggested a picture of Alexander "Boss" Shepherd, the 19th-century public works czar, eating a hot dog from Ben's Chili Bowl, a well-known restaurant. Another sent a drawing of a subway escalator, apparently aimed at educating clueless tourists. "Step to the Right on Metro Escalators," the motto read.

Scott and her team did not limit themselves to the e-mails, calls and letters from residents. They checked out local blogs that solicited ideas, which ran from the serious to the sarcastic.

The suggestions included making use of such potential D.C. symbols as a rat and a crack pipe. One blogger called for commemorating a takeout joint called Fish N Stuff.

"People were definitely into this," Scott said.

I offered my own design over a year ago, and since it beats the crap out of all these other things, I'm going to show it to you here again.

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Taking the Green Line, not the 7 Train, to Flushing

When I was in college, you probably will not be surprised to learn, some of my friends were pretty immature. One of them used to make cracks about synchronization among the female students. At "that time of the month," he'd say, there'd be a mass simultaneous flushing of toilets, putting the entire plumbing system of the college at risk.

This was actually one of the less immature versions of the stories I heard. Supposedly, it's a common college prank to have the guys engage in coordinated flushing of the toilets, with the goal of actually breaking the system. My buddy's joke was a lot less destructive, I'd say.

But all of this was brought back to me by an article in the Washington Post today. I am very unhappy that I was not asked to participate in this project, which would have been a blast. And you couldn't even call it immature, because it was part of a planned testing program to ensure the plumbing in the new Nationals Stadium can handle 30,000 or so beer-sodden fans (assuming they ever get that many).

The project I'm referring to is this: "A Test of 7th-Inning Stretch Proportions, Flush by Flush."

It was an important, if not highly skilled, job required of 175 volunteers yesterday at Nationals Park. They were present for a synchronized swooshing, a choreography of commodes to test whether the new stadium's plumbing could handle the nearly steady flushing of more than 500 toilets and urinals.

Synchronized, eh? Did they invite the women from the college dorm?


Just as with the immature pranks I described above, you have to test the system to the max. How often would each urinal be used during a game? Every 30 to 45 seconds, perhaps? Well, you have to test it with a shorter interval.

"Please instruct your people: every toilet every 10 seconds, every urinal every 15 seconds," Howard reminded over the radio. "No more, no less."

The trouble is that when you let the women get involved in a project like this, which is really saturated in male immaturity, they don't quite get it right.

And the volunteers took their jobs to heart. Inside a ladies' room on the 300 level, Emily Harris, 24, kept a steady eye on her watch. "Five, four, three, two, one," she counted off as she and her mother, Kit Harris, 54, and another volunteer, Morgan Dodd, 56, alternated their way down the row of stalls, flushing one toilet every 10 seconds.

Ladies, it's not one toilet every 10 seconds; it's every toilet every 10 seconds. If they had invited me to participate, you can be sure I wouldn't have screwed that up. And I would have earned my commemorative tee-shirt.

"We were nowhere near straining the system," Kirlin project engineer Tony Giampapa said happily as he handed out commemorative T-shirts after the test.

I'll bet I know what the tee-shirts said. "My brother flushed more than 500 toilets and urinals, and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt."

I hope the Nationals realize it'll be a long time before I get over my bitterness about having been excluded from this.

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Let them eat quarters!

Well, after a protracted battle over what's truly important, the District of Columbia is going to have its own quarter (as will all the territories of the United States). The design is still the subject of much contention, but last year, I offered my own design:

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Not funny, still

I've noted about professional humor writers how hard it is for them to be consistently funny:

Even a great humor writer, like Dave Barry, is funny about 30% of the time. As in baseball, batting .300 in humor is the sign of a star. Gene Weingarten, on the other hand, is sometimes funny, but he seems to me to hover well below the Mendoza Line.)

Weingarten, whose writing appears in the Post's Sunday Magazine, adds in the "annoying jerk" factor. Even when he's funny, it's often despite the fact that he's an annoying jerk -- possibly because he is.

Fortunately for all of us, we now know why his batting average is so low: "Washington has the worst sense of humor of any big city that is not either located in Germany or currently under military siege." He was talking about Arlen Specter doing stand-up comedy, by the way, but still.

Mario Mendoza has nothing to worry about.

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Wednesday mini-linkfest

[Ed.: Technically, it was a late Tuesday mini-linkfest, not Wednesday. Sue me.]

1. True headline of the day: "Author protests ban over phrase 'generous bazoongas'" (via Fark)

2. Our newest cause for which to raise massive sums of research dollars: "The cause of vulvodynia is unknown. This is partly because there has been a lack of research on the disorder in recent years." (via HotAir, where a commenter posts this video link. Subject-matter content warning, as if the initial link could be justified in the name of Science.)

3. Runner-up true headline of the day: "China recycling used condoms as cheap hair bands" (via Fark)

4. A classic example of the "Nanny State" -- at least where the nanny is dressed in a black leather halter with studs, spiked heels, and a riding crop: "Norway's largest erotic chain store was forced to change the labelling on products such as penis pasta, candy cuffs and chocolate bodypainting, to comply with Norwegian food regulations." (Need I say: also via Fark)

5. Finally, in the category of "Things We Wish We Had Said But If We Had Actually Said Them We'd Wish We Hadn't," Tim Page, the classical music reporter for the Post, responded thus to a blast email press release from an aide to Marion "Bitch Set Me Up" Barry: "Must we hear about it every time this crack addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new -- and typically half-witted -- political grandstanding? I'd be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to and including overdose."

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