Go Home Already: Shouts and Murmurs
Man Stops Traffic at 17th and K to Demand $200 Million
Compromise Uncertain on Same-Sex Marriage Law
Morning Roundup: Second Helpings Edition
Fire at 17th and L NW Forces Evacuations
Good morning, Washington, and congratulations on surviving last night's storm. Around here the rain came pounding down at a forty-five degree angle, hail buffeted the roof and lighting boomed from seemingly across the street. It was pretty great — although we certainly understand if the thousands of you who lost power or were otherwise inconvenienced feel differently. One thing we can hopefully all agree on: the cooler weather ushered in by the storm is a welcome change.
Election Results: Virginia's little-noticed June primary is over, and the results are in. Gerald Connolly won the hotly-contested 11th District Democratic primary. On the Republican side, Mark Elmore beat self-described "Ron Paul Republican" Amit Singh in the 8th District. Judy Feder, Frank Wolf and Jim Moran also won victories.
Checkpoints Turned Away 50%: Despite yesterday's stories indicating the MPD's controversial Trinidad checkpoint was understaffed, according to WJLA it's at least doing... something. Police say that half of the fifty cars that tried to pass through the barrier on Saturday were denied entry (and that one person was arrested for having an open alcoholic beverage in their car).
More on Derailment: The Post has the latest on Monday's Orange Line derailment. There's still no firm answer as to why the train derailed, but there are a few new details. Among them: the train traveled about a half-mile after the third car's wheels came off the track; a Metro supervisor riding the train was the first to notice and alert the train operator; and General Manager John Catoe says the evacuation of the train went according to plan.
Briefly Noted: Montgomery County opts to demolish house on future parkland rather than allow homeless family to live in it... Bus destroyed by fire off New York Ave... Maryland tomatoes declared safe... Group organizes to demand justice over Deonte Rawlings' killing... Economists band together to oppose subsidy for new soccer stadium... Safeway to offer $4 prescriptions...
This Day In DCist: One year ago Gilbert Arenas said he wanted to opt out of his contract — and yesterday he did just that.
Image posted to DCist Photos by Flickr user philliefan99
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"yo, whatup officer? road block, huh? cool, cool. it's hot out here, want a swig of my Mickey's? wait, what?!"
FAIL
Ron Paul Republican is such a vague designation. Does he play World of Warcraft or Second Life? Does he live in his mom’s basement or her garage?
Jesus, I wish the MPD would turn away half the cars that drove through my neighborhood.
Seriously, the MPD would have caught a lot less flack from this if they just called it Congestion Pricing.
to the folks demanding "justice" for the rawlings shooting, i say good luck. and i mean that with all of my heart. because, that luck, and 35¢, will get you a transfer from metrorail to a bus.
where am i going with this? nowhere. and that's just where this drive for "justice" will go too...
The orange line was messed up AGAIN last night as a train 'experienced mechanical difficulties' as it was pulling into Rosslyn. I waited on the platform for about 30 mins. In total It took me over an hour to get from Rosslyn to EM.
Rukasu, be thankful you weren't in the train in the tunnel behind the broken train.
45 minutes in a crowded, no AC car next to a man with a bad case of flatulence.
Why does God hate the Orange Line?
Yup. Mrs. Monkey was offloaded from TWO Orange Line trains, both suffering from "mechanical difficulties". 45 minutes late. Delays, busted ACs, derailing trains...these "mechanical difficulties" are starting to form a pattern. Picture this:
Orange Line, U.S.A., early summer. A tree-lined little world of commuters with iPods, rustling newspapers, the chime of cellphones, and the gogo beat of the paintbucket drummer. At the sound of the roar and the flash of light it will be precisely 6:43 P.M. on the Orange Line, in the last calm and reflective moments...before the monsters came!
"Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their subways and radios and telephones and lawn mowers...throw them into darkness for a few hours and then you just sit back and watch the pattern."
"And this pattern is always the same?"
"With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find...and it's themselves. And all we need do is sit back...and watch."
"Then I take it this place...this Orange Line...is not unique."
"By no means. Their world is full of Orange Lines. And we'll go from one to the other and let them destroy themselves. One to the other...one to the other...one to the other..."
Monkey you must have an even more boring, life draining job than I do.
there's a mrs. monkey!?
or is that just monkey's mom?
The orange line probably can't handle the weight of all the extra passengers it now transports with its insufficient 6-car trains (despite the random 8-car).
I was offloaded from three orange line trains yesterday. I was on the broken train and it unloaded all of us at Court House. It went on to Rosslyn and we all got on the next train behind it. When we got to Rosslyn, our train dumped us out again on the platform and they used that train to push the broken train under the river. We got on the train behind us and when it got to Farragut West it couldn't close the doors so they unloaded us again. At this point I just walked the rest of the way home. It took me an hour to get from Court House to Farragust West.
Mrs. Monkey is actually the man with the yellow hat.
The yellow hat is also cursed.
@ boondoggle
Than which characters would his crotchfruit be? Hmmm...
(Yes, my job is just as draining)
Timmy,
I think you might be on to something. Awhile back I overheard a few metro maintenance workers talking about removing seats. Their main concern was that the cars were not designed to carry the additional weight and the cars needed significant structural modifications, especially the floor. If the cars were not originaly designed to carry that many people, we can assume the system as a whole is neither.
miss bee: there is a mrs. monkey, and a couple monkey-spawn. she's a very nice person, and not very monkey-like—if you can believe that anyone is monkey-like at all.
[puts down copy of Finnegan's Wake, throws feces at screen, shrieks]
Indeed!
[replaces fez and monocle, lights up meerschaum pipe, continues reading]
i was wondering why the orange line was so crappy last night. i was in the residual delays of the 'mechanical difficulties,' but we still had a whiplash-inducing stop-and-go ride from Ballston to Metro Center.
@RJ: i totally believe it. i hear those floors creaking all the time. i'd hate to be the one responsible for answering the "how do we fix something that will only get worse with time when we have no money for the repairs?" question.
Orange Line idea: passengers limited to one carry-on item weighing less than 20 lbs. No luggage, large duffel bags, or strollers allowed during rush hour. Yikes!
@ blittle
Hard to say. Curious George was not so much a family man. And he didn't often fling his feces either-truly an unrealistic account of monkey ownership.
He did seem to eat a fair bit, especially ice cream, so we can be confident that someone was dealing with his waste.
@inloganO: I must have been on the same train as you!!! And no A/C! It was nasty.
And should I out myself? Thanks for the kind words, IMGoph. Funny, just this a.m. Mr. Monkey and I succeeded in convincing the monkey-spawn that they were monkeys this morning, with only mild protests.
You eat bananas, don't you?
You like trees?
You have monkeys on your shirt?
You're a monkey!
YAY!
This technique ages out after the 4-year point.
OMG. mrs. monkey exists. I thought it was all a lie. It's like finding out who shot j.r. and then finding out that it was all just a bad dream.
err.. that reads wrong.
I should of wrote,
It's like when you find out that you never left earth but that you are in the future and that something happened in the past to where in the present future the world is ruled by apes.
yeah.
Actually, it's more like overhearing mom screaming in the bedroom, "F*** my dirty s***hole!"
i didn't believe there was a mrs. monkey either.
i kind of imagined monkey to be a 40-something bachelor living just off H st NE.
definitely not with monkey babies. but it does make me happy to find that the monkey family convinces their babies that they are monkeys.
Learning that monkey is married is shifts my whole paradigm, like when I found out that Dean Cain was in three movies this year. Dean Cain!
@ miss bee: i thought of the same monkey-situation, too!
too funny. hi, mrs. monkey. i hope you're aware of your husband's um, entertaining comments.
@heyitsgarrett: "Why does God hate on the orange line?"
Because the VA legislature refuses to pony up that state's share of a capital subsidy for metro, and therefore the whole system is about to go kaput. Sure must be nice having those low taxes and all down there in Rosslyn, especially since you'll soon have to walk to work every day.
I feel that finding this info out about the Monkey Family should make it to "This Week's Around the -ists." I mean...this is probably far more interesting to most of us than new grocery stores, another scandle discovery in DC government or whether a an Escalade with a biker stuck to the grill hits a pedestrian on a bike trail in Montgomery County.
rugbykate, I completely agree.
yes, but is it more interesting that DC's Wikipedia entry being hacked? is it?
dang, now I just poked a hole in the magical world of monkeyrotica. stop everyone, back away from the reality! just use your > i m a g i n a t i o n
[@#($*& stupid HTML.] i m a g i n a t i o n ... and you'll see the feces at it hits the screen. hear the shrieks? ahh. better.
connie, why does your comment transport me back to epcot's imaginationstation or whatever that was where a purple dragon called figment took me on a magical world through my imagination. for the bargain price of approximately $699.87 and a kidney.
um, i need to back away from the random disney references. sorry everyone...
you know, if y'all had clicked on connie dobbs' profile, you would have seen that she says "i married monkeyrotica"
sheesh, does no one know how to stalk people on the internet anymore? :)
And don't forget to pre-order her tell-all memoir, "Who Forgot to Flush?: The Lives and Loves of Monkeyrotica."
Soon to be a Major Motion Picture! Michael Bay is attached to direct!
@Vaughan: sounds like a bad acid trip. A friend of mine lost four hours on an interstate outside of Toledo, OH watching an 80-foot Grimace shake his finger at him after leaving a UMich party.
So IMGoph was hoping connie dobbs was single... very interesting...
@connie "i married monkey" dobbs: well, if you're gonna be stuck in a time warp with any mcdonald's character, it might as well be grimace. that purple blob has the most personality of all mcdonaldland's bland, but still somehow vaguely threatening, residents. except for hamburgular of course. you'll not defeat my childhood nightmares, er, precious memories, fatburger!