Juanita Cousins has the 411 on the recent Georgia Bigfoot discovery:

Turns out Bigfoot was just a rubber suit. Two researchers on a quest to prove the existence of Bigfoot say that the carcass encased in a block of ice—handed over to them for an undisclosed sum by two men who claimed to have found it—was slowly thawed out, and discovered to be a rubber gorilla outfit.

I want to say, “I told you so,” but I can’t—no, won’t—because I was hoping for something miraculous. The only thing that could possibly make me feel better? Learning that those two off-duty hick-a-billies hosed some “researchers” worse than they did me.

The Washington Nationals are withholding stadium rent from the city because, they say, the stadium isn’t finished. Well! I’ve been to a couple games, and I see a fully-functioning stadium. And it costs $11.50 for a beer and a bag of peanuts!

Fellow D.C. taxpayers, listen to my plan: So long as the Nationals withhold money from the city, I’m going to withhold money from the Nationals. The stadium allows outside food. So next time I’m offered a free ticket (which happens weirdly often), I’m going to smuggle all the beer I need by hiding it in a bag along with peanuts and other legitimate items. I predict that this will have no effect whatsoever on the franchise’s deadbeat doings, but I will enjoy myself righteously. Join me!

Early this winter, a woman from Southeast called me nearly every week to leave long rambling messages about a rat story I should be writing. I didn’t want to write her particular rat story, because I’d already written a fair amount about rats in another piece published a few weeks before. This city offers a bottomless pit of rat stories–just layers upon layers of rats and the people that despise them, on and on forever. Sometimes, you got to say “No. No more. This week, I’d like to write about graffiti.”

But anyway, I lead with that tale because I’d like to recommend a rat story. The June 2008 issue of Reason features an editorial by Editor-in-Chief Matt Welch called “City of Rats” examining how, to quote Welch directly, “Thinking Big’ at the municipal level means abandoning the basics.” In short: city officials would rather lavish millions on a baseball stadium than fix our eternally backward and broken city agencies.

This is old news to us locals. But, Welch’s piece succinctly illuminates exactly how we continue to suffer as politicians choose flashiness over functional government.

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WTOP’s Mark Segraves reports that the District’s won an arbitration ruling that will save the city more than $4 million in ancillary stadium costs. Just how ancillary? Some juicy parts:

Since last summer, the team and the District have been in arbitration over who is required to pay for ancillary items at the new stadium, such as golf carts, fork lifts, and medical and office equipment….

Early on in the negotiations, the team had asked the city to pay for team uniforms as part of the fixtures of the stadium. That request never reached the final arbitration process, but an another uniform request did. The Nationals unsuccessfully argued that D.C. should pay for the uniforms for the stadium security guards.