Were you at the Cheltenham parking garage in Bethesda recently? Is this your sweet ride? I have to say – this really tickled me and brightened my day significantly. Thanks for adding to the factory paint job and keeping the DC area a fun, lighthearted place.

Has anyone else seen this vehicle? I love it!

Wayan’s DC Photos

The ANSWER protest sign drama continues as the anti-war group hides behind the First Amendment in its defacement of Washington DC public property.

Yesterday the Department of Public Works fined the ANSWER coalition $10,000 for posting hundreds of signs to promote a peace march September 15 that were illegally affixed to utility boxes, using glue that was too sticky, exceeded the number of signs allowed per block, and not registering copies with the DPW.

Today ANSWER responded that it would counter-sue, claiming that the DC government fined them in a “politically motivated” bid to silence their efforts against the war in Iraq.

Let me be one of the many to call “bullshit” on ANSWER coalition position. Slapping up ugly-ass posters on every inanimate object in the city, violating very clear anti-graffiti rules that every other protest organization follows, is not Free Speech. Nor would the content be what pisses off the citizens of Washington.

ANSWER forgets that DC is majority Democrat and in general does not condone the idiot in the White House, and is very much against the war in Iraq. More importantly, they forget that they are guests in DC, and defacing our city isn’t the way to treat guests hosts.

So I’d like to send ANSWER a message. I’d like you to join me in removing ANSWER signs and sending the detritus to ANSWER’s HQ at 1247 E St. SE, Washington, DC 20003. Better yet, give them an earful while you do it on (202) 544-3389.

photo courtesy of LarryKang

Max told us about DC corrections officials putting a woman in with the male inmates. Perhaps they simply were jealous that the female corrections officers are getting all the play, what with two female officers now being arrested for boffing people under their supervision.

Well, less people than person, given that they were both ….. ‘laying with’ the same man, each without knowing about the other, apparently. Some house arrest – I can leave my house and I don’t get that kind of delivery service.

On the drive from Columbia, I had that feeling creep up on me. It starts in my lower back, and works its way up my spine. I just need to put the pedal to the floor and feel the roar of the engine, to move through traffic like water down an incline, finding the surest path to the bottom.

Turning off the Beltway onto the GW Parkway, the radio obliged my need for speed, pumping up the bass line and ripping into “Going the Distance.” I wove like a shuttle through a loom. I knew I was risking a ridiculous fine and federal charges, but it was worth it. Traffic slowed as we reached the city again, but the feeling had passed.

I’d love to find more spots like the GW in the DC area to indulge myself automotively, where can you drop the hammer a bit?

photo courtesy of Get Your War On

Demonstrating the same kind of attack-the-supply thinking that has helped us be so successful in fighting the War on Some Drugs, the Herndon council has decided to start requiring the day labor center run out of the old police station to check the immigration status of workers who show up. Since the current organization running the center, Project Hope and Harmony, know they don’t work for INS they’ve refused to do so and will be replaced.

I look forward to the imminent return of rule of law, since once this is done we can expect that all the illegal workers will just leave the country and those jobs will instead go to all the people on welfare. Because “people wouldn’t be sitting around collecting welfare checks if illegal immigrants weren’t taking the jobs they are perfectly happy to do.”

I think this is gonna cure cancer too. And insomnia.

Someone commented to me over the weekend that I hadn’t put up a vanity plate photo lately, then on the drive to work today I saw this. Fate, I tell you.

Actually, no she’s not.

In what appears to be yet another major screw up by our fine DC police department, the Washington Post is reporting that a woman was mistakenly booked as a man for “suspicion of prostitution”. Despite her insisting that she was very much a woman, Ms. Virginia Grace Soto was held in a male detention area and allowed to shower with male inmates…”even after she was strip-searched”. It wasn’t until later that a doctor examined her and determined that yes, she was in fact a woman.

Now I’m sure that there are many ways that an androgynous person could be mixed up with the other sex, but when nine jail employees fail to realized that this he is really a she, there is something definitely wrong with the system. The good news I suppose is that three of those employees have been let go.

I’ve lived in DC for a few years now, and I feel comfortable in saying that our police force, while competent in many ways, has way too many incidents that lead us to believe otherwise. Is there any way to solve this? Can’t we hire someone to do a complete overhaul of our police force? Clean out the officers that aren’t performing? Find a way to recruit better officers? I guess I should just shrug my shoulders and say, “That’s life in the big city.”

Photo by DC Police

What gives, people? There I am, enjoying a nice walk through Donaldson Run Park and I find a poor, lifeless rubber chicken right next to the path. Sliced up the middle from crotch to sternum, completely gutted, only the skin remaining.

Just as curious as why someone would bother to slit a rubber chicken like that are the questions of why someone would bring it to and leave it in the woods and why rubber chickens have held such an important place in our lexicon of humor when really they are only funny when you find them gutted in the park like this. Not all mysteries are meant to be solved, I guess.

Have you been wanting to take your sweetie out for a nice dinner but can’t scrape together the cash? Or have you been eyeing a pair of running shoes but can only afford one shoe? Maybe your Metro SmartTrip card is running low and you don’t get paid until the end of the month.

Well here’s your solution: get rid of your unwanted car! You know, that thing that you’ve got up on bricks in your front yard? The one that has been taken over by a squirrel family? The one the police found a dead body in? The one that has had a permanent odor ever since you had it valeted at Lauriol Plaza?

Just call the number above and all of your prayers will be answered.

As anyone who has ever gotten a new TiVo knows, the process of teaching your TiVo about your preferences to make the Suggestions feature work well can take a little time. Yesterday, based purely on our expressed enjoyment of a particular Food Network show, TiVo started recording a bunch of arts-and-crafts type programs.

As Tom raised the remote to start deleting them, I noticed that the first program on the list was “The Joy of Painting.” “Stop!” I yelled. “Is that Bob Ross?”

It so totally was. And since I had a crap day at work yesterday, Tom humored me and we watched a full half-hour of happy little trees, each with a friend, and listened to Bob tell us, “It’s your world, so you can have whatever you want.”

Bob Ross died in 1995, but the company that bears his name is based in Sterling, VA, continuing to sell Bob’s paints and promote his “wet-on-wet” painting technique. The early episodes of the series were produced in Falls Church- which surprised me; I always imagined him living on a farm somewhere in California.

There has actually been a concept developed for a Bob Ross “Joy of Painting” video game for the Nintendo Wii, which will take advantage of the motion sensors in the Wii controller. The original developers walked away from the project, but Bob Ross Inc. is looking for a new company to pick it up. So Wii-owners, watch for that.