DISCLAIMER: PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT THE FOLLOWING LINK IS INCREDIBLY NSFW. Please do not follow it if you are squeamish, are in a public place, or have any other reservations about seeing graphic photos of public sex and drug use. D.C. resident Kevin Keith Eby, of the blog Knee Deep in Mud, recently came home to a rather rude surprise in the alley that faces his kitchen window: two individuals engaging in sex acts and......

Not just anyone can update "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," one of English literature's oldest works -- originally written in Middle English -- into modern verse. And not just anyone can do that with an eye towards liberating it from scholars and academics to make it accessible to readers of every caste. Of course, Simon Armitage, who will be reading from his works at Olsson's Old Town tonight, isn't just anyone. In Britain, where......

"Books," wrote the poet Philip Larkin, "are a load of crap." No doubt Larkin, one of the most gifted lyric poets of the 20th century and a career librarian at the University of Hull, was being ironic. But irony or no, the participants and sponsors of this Saturday's National Book Festival vehemently disagree. Held every year for the last six years on the National Mall -- rain or shine -- the festival brings together marquee-name......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

Last Saturday morning, under grey skies and whipping winds, DCist rolled out of bed to take a walking tour of Embassy Row, one of the 60 free tours being offered in this weekend's WalkingTown DC, an event offered by Cultural Tourism DC. Like Sommer, I was initially sceptical that there was much to learn about the Dupont Circle neighborhood, a familiar stomping ground for many Washington young people. But on the Embassy Row tour,......

MONDAY At Chapters, they’re mad for mystery writers on Mondays in March, and for alliteration at all other times. Today, they have a fine guest: Laura Lippman, who’ll be reading from her latest, What the Dead Know. 445 11th Street, NW, 1 p.m. TUESDAY Tom Bissell and his father, an ex-Marine who served in the Vietnam War, travel back to Vietnam on a journey that retraces both national and personal history. He’ll be in town......

Last week's ruling by a U.S. Court of Appeals that the District's restrictive gun law is unconstitutional has had the expected impact -- battle lines have been drawn, and activists on either side defend the decision as a step forward for personal freedom and self defense or deride it as a reckless move that could increase violence in an already violent city. The Post jumped on the decision first, publishing an editorial condemning it the......

Well, Washington, we seem to be stuck in a rut here. The country is mired in war, the Tysons tunnel debate drones on, and the weather remains nothing but frigid. Even the Grammys were stuck in the past. A show meant to honor the best music of the past year was dominated by The Dixie Chicks and Mary J. Blige? Red Hot Chili Peppers? Lionel F%&$ing Richie? Rest in Peace, Pop Music. Solid Year Expected......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

It's been a busy year in the world of D.C. media. People have come and gone, newspapers have struggled to salvage their readership, and blogs are more the rage than ever. Blogging's the New Black Everyone's blogging these days, and the D.C. media is no exception. The Post led the charge in 2006, throwing blogs at every issue that came its way -- 29 to date. While some have received rave reviews -- the D.C.......

In recent years, various neighborhood listservs have popped up across the District, serving as hyper-local sounding boards and electronic community forums. There's NewHillEast, WoodleyFriends, cleveland-park, HillcrestDC, AdamsMorgan, columbia heights, FriendsOfSligoCreek, gloverpark, MPD-1D -- you get the idea. So much commentary is exchanged on these many listservs that the City Paper's blog, City Desk, has taken to publishing twice-weekly excerpts of the best and weirdest that gets exchanged. But one new listserv is looking to fight......

Among local journalists, no one had the blogosphere reaching for their sarcasm tags like the Washington Post's Laura Sessions Stepp. You may remember the apex of her collected letters from last May, when the Style Section editor condemned numerous column inches to death by publishing her infamous "wingman" article. The article, deemed by Rusty at Why.I.Hate.DC to be "The Most Asinine Article" ever, casts Stepp as an odd amalgam of The Glass Menagerie's Amanda Wingfield......

As this is Washington, prepare for a protest tomorrow: -- the Post reports that the largest protest regarding the Israel-Hezbollah conflict is to occur tomorrow. It's expected to draw tens of thousands of people to surround the White House. Police Investigate Shootings: Last night Southeast saw four distinct shootings. Three of the shootings occurred around 9 p.m. in the area of Minnesota Avenue and Naylor Road. NBC 4 relays that three adult males and a......

The Washington Times has been scorned by Linda Cropp, and they're not going to let her get away with it. Not quietly, anyway. It appears that at a Council breakfast meeting yesterday morning, a Times reporter, who was the only journalist present, pulled out a tape recorder. Seeing the device, Chairman Cropp asked the Times to stop recording. After being refused, she calmy pronounced the meeting over. The Times took the affront to the pages......

About as close as many of us will ever get to the inner-workings of the White House is the annual Easter Egg Roll, set to take place this coming Monday. The National Park Service has announced that they will start distributing tickets for the event on Friday night, with more tickets to be given out on Saturday and Monday mornings. From what we hear, they were planning on having a password-protected internet pre-sale, but......

The liberal blogosphere is atwitter over the recent debut of Red America, a blog unabashedly aimed at educating us decadent coastal types on the finer points of mid-American wisdom. The general point of view among the technorati is that the blog, authored by Ben Domenech, is a response to criticism the Post has received over a perceived liberal bias, specifically in the blog written by Post journalist Dan Froomkin. Froomkin's White House Briefing focuses on......

We were going to hold out on publishing anything St. Patrick's Day-related until Thursday. But to be honest, it was a slow news week and the parade was held yesterday, so we're left with little more than to mention that in only five days the city's few Irish pubs will be packed with the Irish and Irish-for-a-day. Maybe the best part is that this year's celebration of the traditional Irish holiday falls on a Friday,......

Making fun of the Washington Times has always been like shooting fish in a barrel, but Patrick Gavin at Fishbowl DC notes that soon we may not have the Times to kick around anymore, or train our house pets on. Founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon in 1982, the paper has long bled money, losing perhaps over $2 billion during its publishing run while being kept alive by cash infusions from Moon's Unification Church.......

Just kidding. But as you may have noticed, today's Morning Roundup did not include the usual comments feature. Before you get all conspiracy-minded, let us say that comments have been disabled for a perfectly legitimate reason -- technical difficulties. Not because we're trying to stifle our critics, much less because we are fending off an attack from he-who-shall-not-be-named, but an unexpected technical bump in the road. There seems to be a slight hiccup in our......

This is just one of those moments where you give thanks for digital cameras and one-step online publishing. Courtesy of Ridor, a blogger who identifies himself as the "Most Controversial Deaf Blogger in America," today we find that even the District's finest need a break from the usual toil of chasing after the city's criminals. Ridor tells us that his friend and fellow blogger Jason Lamberton was going about his normal day on Sunday, only......

Yes, bloggers have families too. DCist will be publishing on a lighter schedule for the next few days as we tear ourselves away from our T1 lines and wireless connections to spend some quality face time with our loved ones and of course, stuff ourselves silly. For our part, DCist staff will be scattered all across the country, from rural Tennessee to sunny LA via some time spent in North Carolina, Toledo, Ohio (think there......

Judging from the comments you leave us, loyal readers, you've got plenty to say. So say it here. This past Sunday, we launched Opinionist, our version of an Op/Ed section that gives our contributors and now you, the reader, a chance to express your opinions about the issues affecting your life. We encourage thoughtful, critical, constructive and articulate first person op-eds about almost anything and everything having to do with life in DC and its......

We first discovered D.C.-area artist Frank Warren's PostSecret project at the 2004 Artomatic exhibit. The artist was handing out blank postcards addressed to a P.O. box, encouraging visitors to write a secret on the card and drop them in the mail. As the replies came in he would display the replies -- ranging from whimsical to disturbing -- at the exhibit. After the close of Artomatic the project kept growing: the City Paper began printing......

This one of those pictures that just makes you stop, makes you wonder, makes you want to ask, "Is that for real?" While we are not discounting the possibility that Council-member Adrian Fenty (D-Ward 4) may be the favored candidate in the much sought after 8-15 age-group, we are guessing that someone's parents are taking next year's mayoral race just a step too far. Hopefully she didn't run into the hyper-active nine-year-old with the......

As we in the DCist newsroom say, you can never have too many society magazines. Via U.S. News & World Report's Washington Whispers, we hear that Capitol File, a new Washington society magazine, hits the streets tomorrow. According to editor-in-chief Anne Schroeder, the new magazine reveals that "Washington is fun and sexy." Not to self-promote, but we at DCist have been publishing that fact for the better part of the last year. Or making fun......

Thanks to a friend of DCist, who passed along the info that "Dog Days", the debut novel of Ana Marie Cox, has been moved from an October 2005 release back to January 2006. The word from Riverhead Books, Cox's publisher, is that she is "behind." But given the timing of the normal publishing cycle, "Dog Days" should have been sent to the printer some time in the next four weeks -- with the complete manuscript......

Well it's not exactly the FEC, but it looks like one local blogger is being chased by John Law. The Washington Socialite's Kelly Ann Collins has been served a cease and desist letter by Perkins Coie for publishing the hacked contents of Paris Hilton's now-infamous Sidekick. The letter claims that the materials are copyrighted and that Hilton has a "privacy interest" in the materials; the letter is most likely one of many arriving in various......

Think the Washington Times, the Examiner, and The Weekly Standard are the only D.C.-based publishing operations with ties to the right? Take a look at any bestseller list this Sunday and you're bound to see one of their comrades-in-arms: Regnery Publishing, Inc., which calls D.C. home. The vast majority of books that appear on bestseller lists are from publishers based out of New York, with a handful from publishers based in other locales. Bestsellers from......

Who knew that bloggers could take a sabbatical? DCist's favorite potty mouthed political blogger Ana Marie Cox will be MIA for the entire month of February. Today marks the first day that former Gawker editor Choire Sicha takes over blogging duties at Wonkette. The site, a part of the New York based Gawker Media Empire, is apparently letting Cox loose for a month to write a book. Ah yes, another blogger turned author. You can't......

Happy Monday, D.C.! We hope you enjoyed your holidays. If you're back at a half-empty office like DCist is, keep checking back for periodic updates - we're still on a slower-than-normal publishing schedule, but we'll have a few posts throughout the day. Thousands Killed in Southeast Asia: The big nonlocal news story is that a huge earthquake caused tidal waves throughout southeast Asia this Sunday, killing more than 20,000. The hardest hit countries were Indonesia,......