• Local writer Garrison Spik has been awarded the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which challenges entrants to submit terrible, cliche-filled opening sentences to imaginary novels. Spik’s winner: “Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'” That’s pretty bad, indeed.
• Eight local law firms were named among the 50 best law firms for women, according to Working Mother magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers LLC. [Washington Business Journal]
• Mayor Fenty, wearing a tie, tested out a SmartBike today. He managed to somehow not look too dorky, according to photographic evidence. [City Desk]
• A 15-year-old Manassas boy burned his face while trying to make a homemade smoke bomb. Well done, smart guy. [NBC4]
• A 42-year-old man was seriously injured at a construction site in Southeast. [WTOP]
• One more guilty plea in the Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement case. [WaPo]
• A woman in her 30s was found dead in an alley in Southeast this morning. [AP/WJLA]

Photo by afagen