Have you thanked a veteran today? What are you waiting for? Technology is only getting faster! That’s right, soon you will be able to thank a veteran by using a technology chip in your mind! (No, there’s no actual link to that…it's just a theory.)

Can’t remember if the Georgetown Circulator exists? Download the new iPhone app! And while you’re at it, you may soon be able to pay for parking at meters with your cell phone! Isn’t technology great? Oh wait, WUSA has just reported that there is a new virus that downloads child porn onto your computer. Does it call Chris Hansen too?

Do you Twitter? Do you use LinkedIn? This was actually a secret intern test to remember not to trust you (because you are obviously over 30, we don't touch that stuff). Anyway, the two companies announced a new partnership yesterday.

Stop the presses (are there any left to stop?)—commenters on Prince of Petworth universally agree that the new mural on Sherman Avenue and Barry Place NW is awesome.

The Advoc8te bemoans the lack of local news coverage in Ward 8, and argues that bloggers have been picking up most of the slack. Looks like print journalism’s fat lady is singing before I even graduate. At least when I’m unemployed, I’ll still be able to get a haircut.

Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service has reportedly placed an online ad for a new dean. A commenter says, “Let’s also put it on Craigslist. Then people searching for DVD players can also apply.”

And two things technology has yet to solve: death and politics. John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. sniper, was pronounced dead by lethal injection last night at 9:11 p.m. EST.

WTOP also reported on Monday that it caught Mayor Adrian M. Fenty biking in Bethesda in (gasp!) a no-biking zone. Oh right, he also used police officers and their handy sirens to clear traffic—apparently a violation of federal law. Evidence of corruption, or political mud-throwing? You decide. But this has to be evidence that we need more bike lanes. Fix that, iPhone.

Photo by Christopher Chan, Creative Commons Attribution License

By Sunday evening, a few hours after Washington's unsightly 9-7 win against the St. Louis Rams, Henson had taken up an online battle against a segment of disgruntled Redskins fans, calling them disloyal "dim-wits" who "work 9 to 5 at McDonalds."

Almost immediately, Henson became one of the anti-heroes of a game he had watched from the sideline, doused with criticism and insults on sports-talk radio shows and Internet message boards. And by Monday afternoon, Henson sheepishly exited the team's Ashburn training facility, accompanied by several team spokesmen, to apologize for a Twitter-enabled diatribe against fans that provided him his first moment of NFL fame.

"This is exciting," one television reporter joked.

"No it's not," Henson said. "It's the negative kind of media you don't want."

Not only is Henson an a-hole. He's also a quitter.

Bottom line: Cheap Seats Daily's hype of Dim WitsGate™ is validated!

From all the hate going Henson's way on Sunday's postgame shows on local sportstalk stations, I was certain this was going to develop into the biggest Redskins controversy ever generated by an inactive linebacker using new media. Or at least one of the biggest Redskins controversies ever generated by an inactive linebacker using new media.

And now it's on the front page!

Also, it's always nice to see former longtime DC resident the Great Dan Steinberg, the Woodward & Bernstein of Dim WitsGate™, on A1.

(Full disclosure: I still have my 35-year-old "Nixon Resigns" issue of the Washington Post in my paperboy bag in the basement. I'll get 'em out for Halloween. Hence the "-Gate" fetish...)

***

There they go again. Dan Snyder is using his web site to go to war with the Washington Post.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Is Henson being used to take heat off the real Redskins villains? Pravda's Ashburn bureau strikes again? How would you copy-edit multiple Twitters? Leonard Shapiro now using out-of-town newspapers to blast Dan Snyder? The NFL's blackout policy is as big a sham as the Skins waiting list?)

"Robert Henson did not get on the field on Sunday," read the faux news article written by Skins PR man Gary Fitzgerald and posted yesterday on Redskins.com, "but somehow he’s the talk of the town and strangely enough he’s a big headline in The Washington Post...Henson’s apologies on Twitter and in his Monday media session--as well as Zorn's comments on the young linebacker--were not fully included in a Tuesday story in The Washington Post. The article focused more on the mistake and not the contrition."

I pity the tool who had to put a byline on that.

If the organization hadn't already proven it can't do anything right PR-wise, I'd be wondering if this whole Post-bashing exercise wasn't a ploy to deflect the media's attention away from Jim Zorn, Dan Snyder, Jason Campbell, Vinny Cerrato, and the parking and tailgating fiasco at FedExField.

They'd all be getting more play, and taking a bigger beating, if Henson wasn't all thumbs.

***

For those not obsessed with the Redskins off-field soap opera, Steinberg's A1 story had an interesting copy-editing situation, if that ain't oxymoronical. Here's how some of Robert Henson's Twitter ramblings appeared in the Post:

"No I didn't play but I still made more than you in a year and you'd [gladly] switch spots with me in a second," Henson wrote during a string of responses. "I was talking to the fans [who] said the crazy stuff, I'm use [to heckling] but I've never been booed in my own stadium. Again that was for the half hearted but if everyone wants to jump in come on. The question is who are you to say you know what's best for the team and you work 9 to 5 at Mcdonalds [sic]. You don't wanna follow me anymore then fine but we play for you and win lose or draw we represent you!! My guy on the Rams said they never got booed even when they didn't win a game."

That paragraph was made up of more than one of Henson's Twitters, yet was treated as a single quote.

I've never come across this situation before, and I'm guessing AP Style hasn't yet weighed in on how to treat multiple Twitters. So this is a time for Post copy editors to leave a lasting mark on their craft. I'm going to have to stare at my WWABD bracelet ("What Would Andrew Beaujon Do?") before I decide if this is correct copyediting or not.

***

Leonard Shapiro had to go to Miami to run this story blasting Dan Snyder as the worst owner in the NFL. I can't find it locally. Why didn't the Washington Post run it?

***

Now that everybody but the crazies accepts that Dan Snyder's season tickets waiting list is bogus and has been bogus for years, I wish somebody would expose the NFL's blackout policy as a similar fraud.

All you need to know: The Skins home games ain't sold out -- the team was selling general admission tickets for the Rams game through email blasts all week -- yet the games are on TV.

Case closed. Shut up.

Obviously, the NFL owners have as much motivation to enforce the blackout rule as they do to enforce the steroids prohibition.

Oh, right: Only baseball players and cyclists are dopers!

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

Robert Henson is in a bad place right now. The Skins sub-benchwarmer used Twitter to go after home fans for booing at the game, and cast the disgruntled masses in the stands as "dim wits" and folks who "work 9 to 5 at mcdonalds."

Henson, who wasn't even on the active roster for the game, went from unknown to reviled in a matter of keystrokes.

When I first heard of Henson's comments during the postgame shows -- WJFK gave a running account of the naive blasts --  I was sure somebody hijacked his twitter account. Unfortunately for him, it looks like nobody did. Henson's twittering later claimed he went after the fans only because he had things thrown at him.

Nobody's buying it.

From the sound of things, this could be a deal breaker between the rookie and the fans, at least those that really are dim wits or really do work 9 to 5 at mcdonalds.

In any case, Jim Zorn and Jason Campbell should buy Henson a meal before he leaves town. Henson is going to take a whole lot of heat that woulda gone their way today.

Some writers also expressed befuddlement over the crowd's behavior. Like Henson, writers don't pay to get into the games.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Snyder's the root of all booing? Jim Zorn: Read My Lips? Sonny Jurgensen vs. Jim Zorn, Round II? Juwan Howard is still in the NBA? How much would you pay for Juwan Howard's pants? The Nats are on the entrance ramp for the Road to 100 Losses?)

***

The discord in the grandstands trickled down all over the place. Some posters on the Dan Snyder-owned message board, extremeskins.com, and callers to the postgame show on the non-Dan Snyder owned WJFK, explained that the noise was at its core about dissatisfaction with management.

I agree, especially after hearing one angry lady call WJFK to rail against Snyder, telling host Chad Dukes about showing up at FedExField with her family and having her son's water bottle confiscated at the gate.

"We paid $500 for the tickets!" she huffed at the beginning of a long tirade.

It is amazing that so many people still pay that sort of money to be treated as Snyder treats them. And we haven't even talked about how the new parking rules worked out, Lexus lanes and all...

***

After the Rams game, I will no longer wonder why coaches hold pieces of paper in front of their faces while calling plays. When the Redskins had second and goal in the third quarter, the Fox-TV cameras showed Zorn on the sidelines and I clearly read his lips: "20 draw," he said, then a couple more sentences with "draw" in 'em.

The Skins then ran a draw play that everybody else sniffed out, too. It went nowhere.

I was typing when Fox went right back to the same shot of Zorn on the sidelines, so I couldn't read his lips while he was making the call that will come up in his exit meeting with Dan Snyder: an option pass from Portis on third and goal. Boooooooooo!

If I ran a team, I might hire a smart kid from Gallaudet and give him a pair of binoculars on game day and see what happens. Bill Belichick's probably already done it.

***

For the second week in a row, the postgame interview between Sonny Jurgensen and Jim Zorn was way more entertaining, and had harder hitting, than the game.

Sonny started off telling Zorn if he were quarterback he'd have called a timeout rather than run that option pass to Portis, because coaches only call that play in that situation if  they have no faith in their quarterback.

"Then I take you out of the game," Zorn snipped to the Skins legend.

If I had to bet, I'd say, as the great Keith Jackson used to say during every big game he broadcast, "These two just plain don't like each other."

Sonny also got into Chris Cooley's craw on the air about the offense's non-production. Smart money says this has gotta be Sonny's last year in the booth, and he's going out on fire.

***

Juwan Howard lives to cash another paycheck: The former Bullet has just signed a one-year deal with the Portland Trail Blazers.

Howard was the oddest case of the many underachievers who took Abe Pollin's money in the 1990s. He was beloved when he came here from Michigan, before a holdout and some DUI arrests and getting in trouble hanging out with Chris Webber.

Portland is his seventh team. Blazers General Manager Kevin Pritchard said Howard brings in said the forward will bring a "wealth of experience." A wealth of wealth, too: The guy's gonna put in 16 years in the NBA! Around here, Howard is regarded as a bust, but, again: 16 years!

I passed up a chance to buy a pair of Juwan Howard's Bullets used warmup pants for $12 at some charity auction years and years ago because they wouldn't fit. They still wouldn't fit, but I'd pay $12 for 'em today.

***
The Nationals are cruising on the Road to 100 Losses: The Mets take another at federally funded Citi Field, leaving our boys just 2 defeats away from triple-digits.

The latest loss brought a milestone: It guaranteed the Nats last place in the Eastern Division...again. We'll have to wait a week or so before the team also locks up National League and Major League worst honors.

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

*Remember the huff over Monica Hesse's piece on Brian Brown? The one from August 28, in which she describes the NOM executive director as "pleasantly, ruthlessly sane"? Nearly two weeks later, this thing still has legs. About this time last week, Rebecca Armendariz of the Washington Blade denounced Hesse's story as a dangerous “puff piece.” Now, on WorldMagBlog—the online arm of (yes) the evangelical rag World—Les Sillars claims the controversy as evidence of liberal bias. Media Matters, on the other hand, says the Post's ombud response "illustrates fundamental flaw in 'liberal bias' claims." (Hey, guys, it's like a goddamn Rorschach test up in here!) The Awl weighed in from 20,000 feet with a post on Hesse's status as a "failed lesbian." And the better angels of our nature wept. [Seriously, though, I'll leave the final word here to Wemple—or to our very own Hess!—but having read the piece, I'd call it a.) misplaced aggression and b.) self-defeating to accuse the woman of "journalistic vandalism," or what have you. Hesse tried for a human(e) feature on an easy-to-revile fellow (with whom many of us disagree), and her conceit backfired. Doesn't make her a monster.]

*NEOLOGISM FAIL: NBC Washington (see above) gets trigger twigger happy with some regrettable twucked-up wordplay after oh God I can't go on like this:

You know how we know it's a modern kinda world? 'Cause everything starts with a Tw- these days. Sorry, did we say "everything"? We meant "tweverything."

Thanks, Twitter!

So it should come as no big shock that a mid-year D.C. Twestival is coming to the third floor of the newly launched MidTown Loft....

If this sort of badinage appeals to you, hit up the Loft (1219 Connecticut Ave. NW) tomorrow from 7-11 p.m.

*FILE UNDER "SWEET WEB GADGET OF THE MOMENT": Slate's new "News Dots" feature, a visualizer of major news stories and the interrelation between them, launched yesterday as part of the Web pub's "Slatest" aggregation thing. And it's pretty neat! See how Obama is the sun 'round which all stories turn?

*TONIGHT IN CITY LIGHTS: The Cult at the 9:30 Club. Fischer sez:

In the current age of album-centered nostalgia tours, it’s no surprise that the chameleonic five-piece is exhuming its 1985 breakthrough Love, which took from the best of that decade’s left-of-the-dial music—postpunk, goth, neopsychedelia—and made it muscular and accessible.

But something wasn't quite right about it. The first tweet, on July 27, informed the world that this was a summer-jobs project. There's the poor design and copyediting, not up to the EOM's usual standards. Then there was the repeated admonitions to "stay in school!" And today comes a strangely relevant tweet.

Yesterday, LL was intrigued as to why Hizzoner's profile contained the line, "For more information about this profile contact McKennaLong & Aldridge c/o Jessica Abrahams,or Badele McQueen Esqs."

McQueen, reached yesterday at the law firm, had no idea what was up with that.

So LL asked mayoral communications director Mafara Hobson, who says her office has nothing to do with the @MayorFenty Twitter page. Someone's freelancing! "It's not ours," she e-mails. "Can you get the word out?"

A Twitter feed might be helpful for that!

One word, @MayorFenty: entertainment!

Check out this set of instructions for building your own wind turbine. OK, most of us aren’t going to rush out and erect one of these above our row house or apartment building. But isn’t it nice to know you could?

The study by Pear Analytics - of 2,000 random tweets over a 10-day period this month - broke all twitterings into six categories: news (anything you'd see on the news); spam (plain old junk); self-promotion (tweets pushing products, services or other "Twitter only" offers); pointless babble ("Man, I hate the Yankees"); conversational (instant message-type tweets, back and forth dialogues, questions prompting responses); and pass-along value (any tweet with an RT in it).

The results:

Pointless babble: 40.55 percent
Conversational: 37.55
Pass-along value. 8.7
Self-promoting: 5.85
Spam: 3.75
News: 3.6

The study also presented some Twitter demographics, care of Quantcast.com:

55 percent of users are female
43 percent are between 18 and 34
78 percent are white
1 percent of users contribute 35 percent of the visits
72 percent are passersby; 27 percent are regulars

If you're feeling beaten down by all the babble, first, be aware that, given the statistics above, you yourself are probably part of the problem. Second, there may be help in the form of a filter called Philtro, now in beta-testing: "If you've got a truly unruly Twitter feed, we've got your back."

You thumb-up or thumb-down the tweets you like or don't like, and the "type" you don't like gets filtered out accordingly.

BTW: If anyone wants to follow my pointless babble, I'm @eniedowski.

Seems the fake Adrian Fenty Twitterer, "FentyDC," now has some competition. From the real Fenty - or, "MayorFenty."

The D.C. mayor - assuming it really is him; his office has yet to confirm - has only one post so far, and it clearly wasn't written by him. The account went live last month with this tweet:

• Mayor Adrian M Fenty's Twitter Page Built by the 2009 Summer Youth Employment Program IT participants as part of the DC DOES SYEP. Lets talk 1:32 PM Jul 27th from web

Boring!

The fake posts, about which CP wrote a few months ago, are way better:

• I know how my AG feels. This whole "I'm sorry" thing is new to me as well. 24 minutes ago from Power Twitter
• I think the shaved head look works for me, but it is killer in this heat. about 23 hours ago from Power Twitter
• Thinking about signing an executive order that next mayoral election be decided by a triathlon http://tinyurl.com/n4yrv7about 23 hours ago from Power Twitter
• Frat party snafu might have gone unnoticed if I didn't bill city for my tailored Brooks Brothers toga http://tinyurl.com/l3ecgb 9:27 AM Aug 5th from Power Twitter

So far, the fake Fenty has 236 followers. The real one has 23.

• "I rocked in the corner by myself, slowly slipping into madness."
• "I returned six months of phone calls, gave blood, pulled weeds, mastered knee-hooping, kicked all my computers at least once, and took pictures of my butt."
• "I spent time with my kids. Kinda nice actually."
• "I went to the Great British Beer Festival (@gbff #gbff). Got slightly drunk and missed out on the Fullers' Vintage Ale because they were announcing it going on sale using Twitter."
• "Found girlfriend, got marr[i]ed, started my own business, divorced, traveled around the world and ate pie."
• "Read...gasp...mainstream media to find out what was going on."
• "Good grief. Where's the 'I Survived Twitter's Downtime' T-shirts?"

It has since been reported that the attack, which also affected Facebook and Google, was directed at a single individual - a blogger from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The blogger, who uses the account name "Cyxymu," (the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia) had accounts on all of the different sites that were attacked at the same time, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told CNET News.

"It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard," Kelly said. "We're actively investigating the source of the attacks, and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them, if we can."

Cyxymu himself, via his Twitter account, which as of a few hours ago was finally accessible again, had no doubt who was behind the attack: "My twitter is online! Thank you all for support after ciber attack from Russia!"

The whole twittering from the grave thing got folks over at AppScout thinking, to this end: Check out the site's "Six Dead People I'd Follow on Twitter" list. Among those who made the cut: Ludwig van Beethoven, Andy Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, the physicist Richard Feynman, Charlie Chaplin, and Abe Lincoln.

A few folks also suggested Jesus.

Also: Yes, Twitter is down. The world is probably ending.

I like his thinking. Arrington's, that is.

Orakpo signed last night and will be dressed out today. The Sporting News ranked the Redskins as the best fit for Vick.

***

The Vick influence, meanwhile, remains profound. Ultimate fighting opponents for years have tried to keep states from sanctioning MMA by calling it "human cockfighting," a term made famous by Sen. John McCain. But McCain's tag did nothing to stop the spread of the cage matches. So, New York legislators opposed to seeing the sport, or whatever you want to call it, sanctioned in their state have adopted "human dogfighting" as their catch phrase.

***

Speaking of guerilla marketing: Larry Weisman looks more like a brilliant hire for Dan Snyder every day.

(AFTER THE JUMP:New Skins PR official calls team "mediocre"?)

Weisman, a longtime USA Today pro football correspondent, now writes press releases for the Redskins that look a lot like his old-school journalism. And real news organizations that are either lazy or duped have been treating the releases like news stories. (What's up with that, ESPN?)

But, because Weisman was so prolific in his final days as a newspaperman, his pieces are still trickling out as he starts working for Snyder. The Sporting News recently published a state of the team piece that Weisman co-authored before Snyder began paying for his services.

Here's some highlights from Larry's last ride in journalism, headlined "Mediocre Returns on Big Investments":

"The modern Redskins are spring champions and winners of free agency — and not much else...Since Daniel Snyder bought the franchise in 1999, it has one division title and two playoff victories, accolades hardly worth the megamillions Washington has burned through trying to get the best players of the day...An 8-8 team, the Redskins appeared happy to just tread water this year.

The Redskins want to run the ball, but Clinton Portis faded down the stretch in '08. He's a high-mileage player for his age — he turns 28 on Sept. 1 — and lacks a downfield burst at this stage in his career.... The offensive line is past ripe, the quarterback has not matured and the receivers are in transition. They rely too heavily on Portis on offense, and on defense, they'll bank on Haynesworth to elevate everyone's level...Even with all that, this team will be hard-pressed to make the playoffs in the competitive NFC East...Bottom line: The Redskins are a mediocre team."

Tell it like it was, Larry! At the very least, Snyder has to worry about one less guy out there who'll write this stuff.

***

Speaking of spurned ex-Redskins: Mike Wise bottles Jon Jansen's whine about getting cut by Snyder. The team's press release at the time of Jansen's release made it sound like he died comfortably, surrounded by friends and family. The warm and fuzzy vibe ain't nowhere in Wise's fine piece.

***

Nats lose. Big. All the hopes and dreams fans had for the team for those few days in late July 2009 are gone.

Football season?

***

Just hours after President Obama met with Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley at the White House in hopes of converting the brouhaha into a brew-haha, TruthAboutIt reminds us of one of pre-Post-Racial America's funnest pastimes:  Mocking whitey on the basketball court.

The level of racial profiling in Cambridge ain't nothing compared to the amount of profiling on the hardwood.

Truth About It (inspired by a racially charged tweet from the street's favorite white blogger, the Great Dan Steinberg) awesomely provides a list of all the caucasians who've worn a Bullets/Wizards uniform in the last quarter century. And damn if they don't make the case for color. My only problem with this list, and I think Lou Dobbs is with me on this, is it includes foreigners. You take out the Eastern euros, and there's really nobody who ever made a contribution, save Tom Gugliotta. And even with Gugliotta -- I'm sure Lou's with me here, too -- that last name ain't American.

(So, will  John Stockton will be the last American whitey NBA All-Star? Discuss.)

***

Another milestone on the Road to Ripken yesterday, with the disclosure that David Ortiz, the beloved, wholesome, no-way-he's-a-cheater Red Sox slugger, tested positive for steroids in 2003 with more than 100 other Major Leaguers. Ortiz gave his "I did not have sexual relations with that woman!" speech many times over the years.

I totally get these guys taking steroids. I'll never get taking steroids and then doing interviews bragging about not doing steroids.

I gotta say, I wish it was Curt Schilling who got outted instead. I might start drinking again to celebrate when that day comes. Or maybe start taking steroids.

***

Jimmy Lange tried to escape Fairfax, but couldn't. On Sept. 26, Lange, who could be nicknamed the "Most Successful Junior Middleweight in Boxing History to Never Fight for a Title," will come back to Patriot Center, scene of his last seven fights, to meet Jonathan Reid. Tickets for Lange vs. Reid, priced from $30-$500, are now on sale.

Reid, like Lange, was a cast member on NBC's reality series, "The Contender." Lange has parlayed that appearance into several top-of-the-card fights before big crowds at the Patriot Center. In a previous fight, Reid lost to DC's own William Joppy, a onetime middleweight champ.

So how come Lange never fought Joppy?

DCist is reporting that the Real World DC cast may be arriving right friggin now. Has anybody been this excited by the arrival of more d-bags into D.C.? DCist writes:

"A tipster just texted that the D.C. Real World cast appears to be arriving as we speak -- she reports seeing a blonde girl with a suitcase walking through Dupont Circle, looking clueless and being trailed by a camera crew."

Of course, we've been doing our own serious blogging on the subject over at Housing Complex. The Anti-Real World DC blog has pictures (see above) capturing the apparent awkward move in.

"Hi. I'm Ethan. I will be playing the drunken frat boy in cargo shorts."

"Hi. I'm Zoe. I will be playing the drunken ditz who hooks up with you in the second episode."

There's more after the jump!

Anti Real World blogger writes of the mayhem/excitement:

"Walking by the house on my way to my birthday lunch and saw Generic Blonde Girl castmember walking to house. Straight male friend thought she had too much make-up on.

Sidenote, cameramen were literally shoving people out of the way..."

One Real World-themed twitter feed notes the following:

*"Remember: Know the law: Stay off RW property. Stay off Safeway property. Sidewalks are public - not even cops can have u move"

*"The Real World Cast is moving in. Fer REAL"

*"They're filming outside by the grill now."

*View really bad picture of possible cast outside Real World Home.

*photo by Anti-Real World DC. They have more pictures. You should check out their site if you give a shit.

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