Nancee Lyons, a spokesperson for the D.C. Department of Public Works, just returned my call in the matter of the $50 fine Washington City Paper received this week for "failure to separate recycling from other solid waste" at 2390 Champlain St. NW, the location of the paper's newsroom.

The timing seemed curious to some at the newspaper because, just a few weeks earlier, City Paper had published a cover story in which it criticized DPW for failing to crack down on private trash haulers who mix recycling and trash during their rounds.

I asked Lyons if there was any connection—was this meant as some kind of retribution? "Of course not," she said. Usually, she explained, citations are issued after someone makes a complaint and an investigator goes to check it out, not because an investigator is out looking. Lyons did not know if someone had complained about the Dumpster behind 2390 Champlain.

Read More "DPW to City Paper: Recycling Violation Not Retribution" »

Busted?

Washington City Paper has been slapped with a $50 fine from the D.C. Department of Public Works for "failure to separate recycling from other solid waste" at 2390 Champlain St. NW, the address of the paper's newsroom.

Normally, City Paper wouldn't report on this as news. Except there are several curious things about the citation (view a PDF of it here). First, the timing: City Paper recently ran a cover story by Christine MacDonald about how D.C.'s private trash haulers often commingle recycling with solid waste during their pickups and how the city has been lax in cracking down on them. The story hit the streets Nov. 5 12. The date of violation on the citation is Nov. 16.

Read More "DPW Nails City Paper After City Paper Nails DPW" »

Mornin', City Desk readers! Welcome to the second edition of what used to be but is no longer Freedom Friday. Remember: Freedom is dead. Don't worry, you'll get used to it.

One word: Oprah! The "queen of daytime television" will announce today she's ending her show in 2011. This is huge! Now, in case you're a little slow, let me connect the dots and tell you what's really going on here. Just this week, Sarah Palin goes on Oprah to plug her book Going Rogue even while insisting that 2012 is "not on my radar screen right now," which is what all candidates for president have to say in 2009. Oprah is all charming, as usual, and gets her biggest audience in two years! Then, just a few days later, Oprah announces that she will be leaving her show after 25 years to "start her own cable channel." Coincidence? This could really only mean one thing: Palin-Winfrey 2012! You heard it here first.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: The “Palin-Winfrey 2012″ Edition" »

The givers-away of the cult edition of Darwin's Origin of Species have been spotted! A graduate student at Virginia Tech, Josette Torres, reports via Twitter that she was handed a copy yesterday. She thought this was just random. But now she knows better. It's not random, it's divine!

Read More "The Cult Edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species: Spotted at Virginia Tech!" »

Mornin', y'all! Welcome to ex-Freedom Friday! As Mike Riggs, your favorite freedom-lover, reported last week, he is no longer doing City Desk's Morning Roundup on Fridays. And that means only one thing: Freedom is dead.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: The “Freedom Is Dead, Friday the 13th” Edition" »

Speaking of rewhitening D.C. Public Schools, what's with Sammy Sosa's new face? The one he brought along to last week's Latin Grammy awards in Las Vegas.

Thankfully, it's all clear now, this question of whether Sosa is trying to lighten his skin.

Read More "Sosa’s Whitening: “I Don’t Think I Look Like Michael Jackson”" »

The best post-election piece I read today appears as an Op-Ed in the New York Times. In it, writer Colson Whitehead makes no mention of Bob McDonnell's win or Jon Corzine's defeat but, rather, reminds us of something much more important: It's been exactly a year since the United States became a postracial society.

And so, 365 days after Barack Obama was elected the country's first African-American president, Whitehead suggests it's time for a little oversight in the form of a new government position: secretary of postracial affairs. He selflessly offers to serve his country in that capacity himself.

Read More "Forget Gov.-Elect McDonnell, Meet the New Secretary of Postracial Affairs" »

Arnold Schwarzenegger is speaking at Georgetown University's business school tonight, which seems like enough of an excuse to bring up the California governor's recent memo to state legislators informing them that he was vetoing a certain bill authored by a guy who reportedly once told him to "kiss my gay ass." The memo has gotten all kinds of attention for including what seemed to be a hidden (or not-so-hidden) message.

Take the first letter of each word on each line, and you'll see it spells the following:

F(or)-u(nnecessary)-c(are)-k(icks)-y(et)-o(verwhelmingly)-u(nnecessary).

That's "Fuck you"!

Read More "Gov. Schwarzenegger, Busted by Cryptologist!" »

It wouldn't be fair to write just about the so-called Virgin Vault at Virginia Tech. Because the Blacksburg campus has also been home to a seven-story all-male dorm so manly it earned itself not one, but two, nicknames over the years: the "Man Castle" and the "Seven Layers of Players."

With over 1,000 beds, that's a lot of players.

Read More "Virginia Tech’s “Man Castle”: Now Less Manly" »

Reading about the "Booty Wall" at Howard University last week sent one regular City Paper reader on a trip down memory lane. A graduate of Virginia Tech, she wrote in to share some of the particulars of her time living in that school's "Virgin Vault."

Read More "Enter at Your Own Risk: A Tale from Virginia Tech’s “Virgin Vault”" »

Since it's been established here, here, and here that terminology matters, it seems worth pointing out the screaming language on the front page of the Washington Examiner yesterday: "Suburban dreams turn into ghettoes." The headline inside the paper said: "Foreclosure crisis creating suburban slums."

The story by Bill Myers and David Sherfinski began:

Two years of economic collapse have pockmarked the D.C. region's affluent suburbs with blight, and experts are worried that the foundering cul-de-sacs and towns are on the verge of becoming the region's next ghettoes.

Here's another term - "ghetto" - that gets thrown around far too much, and too casually, in talking about urban (and, in this case, suburban) problems.

Read More "More on Why Words Matter: The Examiner Says D.C. Suburbs Are Becoming “Ghettos”" »

Saying "it seems I've aggravated a lot of people with my reference to apartheid," Katie Connolly has struck that word from her recent blog post at Newsweek on race, class, and D.C.'s low marriage rate.

Read More "Katie Connolly Takes Back “Apartheid,” Adds Asterisk" »

A day after City Desk wrote about Katie Connolly's reference to "apartheid" as D.C.'s "dirty secret" in a post in Newsweek about race, class, and the city's low marriage rate, At-large Councilmember Kwame Brown has weighed in.

Read More "Kwame Brown Didn’t Like Newsweek’s “Apartheid” Reference, Either" »

Redecorating? Try the "Funny Pirate Booty Wall Clock"!

Note: This item is not affiliated with the Booty Wall at Howard University (as far as we know).

To anyone who is continuing to question the existence at Howard University of the so-called "Booty Wall," please stop. Or at least direct your questions to Marquis Barnett, the nation and world editor at the campus' own Hilltop newspaper, who just interviewed me for a story he's writing about me having written about the Booty Wall.

Read More "A Howard University Student Editor on the “Booty Wall”" »