Cold in D.C. today

It is very, very cold today in the D.C. area. It's so cold, my thick Russian wool coat feels as protective as a wife-beater t-shirt when the wind blows. It's so cold, when I speak outside, my words freeze in mid-air and fall to the ground, where they smash into pieces.

Naturally, there were delays on the Metrorail this morning, so about 200 people and I were left standing on the freezing station platform until a train arrived, which took over 20 minutes. The Metro was formerly the sole glory of the Washington-area transportation system, but the slack-jawed yokels who run it are slowly turning it into a costly mess with Third World-quality service. Used to be that although the roads were terrible, you couldn't get an ambulance, the police were incompetent ("Ask Us About Our 200 Unsolved Murders This Year!" is their slogan), Washingtonians could at least point to the Metro as the one thing that worked in the city.

The Metro board, made up of obscure elected officials from Washington, Virginia, and Maryland, can pat themselves on the back for taking a public good and running it into the ground — and making it more expensive, too. In three years, my daily commute has gone from less than $6 to $8.55. That actually masks the true price rise, because if you added $10 or more to your farecard, they used to give you a 10% bonus credit. What they are doing with that money, I cannot say: there are broken escalators at lots of stations, and they've reduced the frequency of trains during the off-peak hours, to the point that walking is a better option if you're going less than a mile.

But the point is: it's cold today. Also, the St. Blogs comment function seems to be broken, and Richard needs to fix it because the rest of us have no idea how to do it.