The Onion gets me.

Poets. They lurk in the funniest places…and not just behind the dumpsters of your local library scavenging for food. A lot of them are actually highly productive members of society. And then there are the ones that are lawyers.

But seriously, I was under the impression that Zadie Smith’s hot hubbie Nick Laird was the only angsty attorney-turned-troubadour out there, but apparently one lurks here in our own backyard.

R.J. McCaffery is a 2007 graduate of the Law Center (the secrets of which are unlocked here) and writes about legal issues, bad days and cycling on his unexpectedly intriguing blog. He also posts his poetry (which is actually good), proving perhaps that there is hope for your soul after law school?

Or perhaps all we have to look forward to is this:

“So now it’s just me, a glass of red wine, Tylenol, the Red Sox on the radio, palmer’s lotion, a raging appetite, and another week without trials.”

Actually, that sounds pretty good. Minus the Sox. And the whole going to law school thing. Pen on R.J.

Remember when Facebook was an e-Skull & Bones for people who went to East Coast schools and knew one another from dear old Camp Chikiwawa? You could post whatever grotesque initiation pictures you wanted, but then Mark Zuckerburg let in the riffraff, and everything went to hell. Now anyone–employers and snoopy journalists, worst of all–can see your awesome keg stands and projectile vomiting.

In today’s L.A. Times, Ivygate editors Maureen O’Connor and Jacob Savage make the rather astute observation that like an elephant or Ray Danieli, Facebook never forgets:

For every tip we follow up, there are half a dozen we ignore. But we don’t delete them, and neither do our peers. Should the subject ever become famous, you can bet there’s incriminating evidence on a hard drive or server just waiting to explode into the blogosphere.

There are potentially hundreds of images (plenty of them unflattering) of every person between the ages of 18 and 30 floating around the Internet — including your future congressman, city councilman or president.

Forewarned is forearmed.

It’s Friday, and I’m feeling a whole lot better about the future than I was yesterday. Work-mandated happy hour is in three hours (and counting!), but mojitos and Merlot are not my only motivators. Instead, my heart is cheered by the tale of Kara Ross (COL ‘88), whose jewelry is featured in this month’s Elle UK.

Ross took her love for shiny things to a level most women only dream of–she got a degree in glitz…or gemology, to use the official term. Her stuff is actually pretty cool, even if Elle chose to feature some some rather bizarre handcuffy, nautical-themed bracelets.

In case you want to date Kara, according to her bio she likes “relaxed elegance, high quality and good manners.” Large gems, too. Go get ‘er boys; she sounds real low-maintenance.

Photo from Kara Ross

What with Eliot Spitzer’s sexual adventures and the fascinating prospect of a fictionalized account of Laura Bush’s sex life, these past few months have lived up to Washington’s storied history of trysts and tits. I mean, that’s why you chose a college here, right?

The best is yet to come, though, as long as your “best” has to be pseudo-pornographic.

HBO has just announced that it will shortly begin the filming of a pilot episode for Washingtonienne, a TV series based upon former Senate staffer Jessica Cutler’s District sexploits, which she so prudently parlayed into a chick-lit novel. The buzz promises to basically be a new Sex and the City, but given that it’s set in DC, the clothes will be frumpier.

You eat peanut butter because it’s cheap. You drink at home before going out to bars because drinks at home are cheaper. You’ll take any free furniture that’s offered, even if you know five people who had sex on it.

Did you think that penny-pinching would end after college? Putz.

In the most depressing read since I got my tuition bill, Joel Achenbach writes about, among other maudlin things, how he is going to have to borrow money from his young daughter to afford her older sister’s college tuition. It’s hyperbole, but geez, still. He also discusses his cripplingly depressive fear of appetizers:

One of the worst moments is when the waitress asks if you want to start out with an appetizer, and you say no, because over time you’ve become the kind of person who can’t afford appetizers. It’s a clear line in the sand, or, more precisely, a socioeconomic stratum, clearly delineated right there on the menu.

Later, Achenbach proves there’s a thin line between humor writing and a cry for help: “My own plan is to acknowledge that fate has chosen for me a path of decline and shabbiness.”

And this guy works at the Post! Maybe I should just face the inevitable and be a hobo.

It’s just as we pedestrians suspected all along. All those caffeinated attorneys and government drones in Volvos are out to get us–and not just with lawsuits and taxes. They’re using their cars, and Mayor Fenty’s fighting back with a new traffic plan. Predictably, the commuters are complaining.

Washington’s pedestrian death rate is higher than New York City’s, Chicago’s, and Los Angeles’s, inspiring bald beauty Fenty to propose the Pedestrian Master Plan (Chills? Me too). Using choice phrases like “sidewalk gap analysis,” the plan lays out a basic map of problem pedestrian areas, and how the District plans to fix them.

Part of the plan is an all-out assault on suburban commuters. The city has already made a couple of the busiest routes into and out of the city one-way, prompting AAA’s John Townsend to call D.C.”the most anti-car city in the country.” C’est horrible!

Death merchants from the exurbs, the sort of people Townsend represents, are crying foul. They say that Fenty has overstepped his bounds in his attempts to keep them out of the District. If they’d read the news, they’d know a new traffic plan is desperately needed.

For the District, the master plan means less pollution, fewer deaths and decreased congestion. Arlington commuters are probably just angry that these changes will make the District more livable.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is out to prove that gossip and personal attacks on classmates don’t have to end upon graduation. A Georgetown alum and the founder of the conservative publication The American Spectator, he’s distilled his disgust for Bill Clinton into a new book, The Clinton Crackup.

In the book, Tyrrell makes it clear that, unlike the College Democrats, he is not Bill’s homeboy.

This isn’t a new revelation: He’s already made something of a successful career of digging up dirt on Bubba. In 1994, the New York Times Magazine called him “a man obsessed” with the Clintons.

Today, Tyrrell shoots up again to stave off Clinton jonesin’. The article is an amusing reminiscence back to Bill and Bob’s days at Georgetown. Tyrell says Clinton was a fat schmoozer in school with girl problems (a classic case of eating his feelings). Tyrrell also calls Clinton’s claims of poverty grossly overstated.

Score one for Jesuit ideals.

Charter bus company DC2NY is getting desperate. The company sent out 2 emails in 24 hours yesterday asking for help help against a new mandate forcing all intercity buses to load at L’Enfant Promenade, the only “designated intercity bus zone”.

That order comes courtesy of the District’s Department of Transportation, and means all the companies, including beloved Chinatown buses, will have to leave their native environs. DC2NY, naturally, has a counter-proposal: designating their turf at Dupont Circle an inter-city bus zone too. Their plan to do that involves getting their fans in DC, who have so often benefited from DC2NY’s help with distant concerts or booty calls, to pitch in by emailing Transportation employees and councilmembers.

After all, as those water bottle mongers insist, Southwest is scary! Save Dupont! Write to our favorite  councilman Jack Evans (who conveniently sits on the relevant committee) and help DC2NY load wherever it likes.

Whole e-mail, with a font that practically says, “Remember me, the cool bus? We had great times, didn’t we?”, after the jump

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Start saving your pennies, 3 AM pancakes lovers. Wisconsin Avenue institution and health hazard Georgetown Cafe is up for sale…on Craigslist.

According to a listing posted yesterday, the restaurant is selling for $325,000. Along with the unmentioned charming, dingy interior, the owners are offering a “hard to obtain” liquor license. Oh la la!

Flickr photo from shawnblog used under a Creative Commons license