MPD: Bass Ackwards.

It’s not often you can chuckle at something that poses a mild threat to your safety. But you can’t help but laugh at the befuddling new crime summaries MPD 2D has begun sending members of its listserv, which almost seemed designed to keep you in the dark about the criminal goings-on in your neighborhood. (Ths after trying to replace the crime reports with—you call that a crime map?)

Georgetown Metropolitan does a good job comparing the older, better crime summaries to their newer, garbled counterparts:

Here’s an example of the old ones from February 19th:

PSA 206: Theft occurred in the 3200 block of M Street NW on 2/14/09 between
8:15 pm and 8:20 pm. A citizen reports that one subject stole a coat
from the location. The subject is described as a white male, 5′7″ and 135 lbs.

Now compare the listings above to what started getting released around the beginning of March:

PSA : 206
CCN : 09030187
RPT DATE : Mar 6 2009 12:00AM
SHIFT : DAY
OFFENSE : Theft
METHOD : 2
BLOCK : 3200 B/O M ST NW
LOCATION : Specialty Store
START DT : 03/06/2009
START TM : 13:00:00
END DT : 03/06/2009
END TM : 13:10:00

“Hell,” he notes, “they’re not even gathered by PSA. You have to browse through the whole list to find all the crimes for your particular neighborhood.”

Right on. What’s with that coding, anyway? We’ve got the full glossary after the jump, but among my favorites are “MPD = Metropolitan Police Department” (got it?), and “Criss Cross = Two people fighting, usually against each other, both are arrested” (you learn something new everyday!).

One thing’s for sure—If George the Third ever comes back from the dead, she ought to adopt this catchy new phrasing. Doesn’t “Spotted, W/M, L/S with A/F didn’t LOF A/F’s ex-boyfriend, who used F & V in an ensuing Criss Cross at B/O Sig Ep house. XOXO, R1,” just sound so titillating?

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With this post, it’s possible that Vox covered Georgetown’s late Gossip-girl more regularly than George the Third posted in its lifetime. Well, we can stop now. George is dead, whether by its creator’s absence from campus to study abroad, her boredom, or general mediocrity.

Steely Dan’s “Kings” tells us that in these situations, it’s best just to move on.

Via Daily Monthly.

Where did she go? Maybe she’ll never tell.

Having put Vox on holiday hiatus, I thought we could start off the year with a hypocritical bang: after all, a more pressing question then ‘Who’s George the Third?‘ has become ‘Where’s George the Third?’

Right now, things don’t look promising. As early as December, an attempt at unmasking the blogger’s identity on Juicy Campus (“George the Third Official Outing Thread”) was met with yawns.

Dormant since mid-November, the Gossip Girl-y blogger hadn’t really been satisfying saucy since Halloween—but it remains to be seen whether the deep midwinter will prompt George to sneer again at the fashion snafus of other students for our amusement once again.

Aspiring Georgetown gossip blog George the Third has finally started earning its arch tone. When we found George last month, he was busy squandering his promise (“the essence of the Vanity Fair campus”) on writing about Sarah Palin and leggings.

Halloween has reinvigorated George, though. The jewel in his crown are two pictures that seem to show someone cheating on his girlfriend, but the less prurient can enjoy some good and bad Halloween costumes.

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This year has seen an onslaught of new Georgetown blogs—starting with Saxa Speak, then the Hoya‘s newest venture, Outside the Gates, and the Independent’s The Daily Monthly, plus the return of The Progressive—but I’m willing to bet that I’ve found the most fabulous, zeitgeist-y one: George the Third.

It’s an anonymous blog based on the camera-phone-fueled, dishy-and-bitchy Gossip Girl model. Here’s the delightful mission statement (emphasis and paragraphing mine):

Welcome to the world of The Hilltop, aka Georgetown University, a college community like no other. Here you will find an eclectic student body from all walks of life. Some grew up diving bombs in war-torn states, while others grew up diving off their docks in Newport.

However, they all have one thing in common: Georgetown students want to rule the world. This is what separates them from the youth at other elite American universities. And why should anyone stand in their way? This is the essence of the Vanity Fair campus. And who am I? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. I’m here to chronicle the movers and shakers inside the Ivory Tower. Welcome to the Catholic, Colonial, Cosmopolitan Camelot.