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I didn’t think the zombie trend could get any dumber, but it’s happened. “Urrgh: A Zombie Memoir” is written in “zombish,” which the authors seem to imply is the language of zombies. You can read the first few pages online, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. 

One of television's most popular holiday traditions will be back this year as TBS presents the 17th Annual edition of 24 Hours of A CHRISTMAS STORY, beginning Christmas Eve at 8 p.m. (ET/PT).

We had the best time with friends at barmini, Jose Andres’s cocktail lab. Amber is an adventurous eater, like me and Mike. Her husband Adam is just happy to go along for the ride.


The decor at barmini is great. Here's a saluting penguin that was next to us.


Mike's first drink was a gin and tonic with super fancy ingredients. He almost ate the lime thinking it was a cucumber. It's pretty, though.


He's a handsome devil, so who cares if he occasionally eats things that aren't actually edible.


Amber was abstaining, but she had a couple lovely nonalcoholic drinks, which she drank through metal straws.


I had another Cotton Candy Old Fashioned, which was delicious.


My new goal in life is to recreate it. Wish me luck!

It is impossible to kill The Killing. At the end of its third season, AMC canceled it for the second time. Now Netflix has revived the drama for a six episode fourth season.

This is a Cookie Monster costume. It’s probably not licensed by Sesame Street, but it looks like Cookie Monster.

This, too, is a Cookie Monster costume. It requires less commitment than the full-body suit, but clearly, still Cookie Monster.

This is also a Cookie Monster costume.

This, however, is not a Cookie Monster costume. It’s described as “Cookie Monster Costume” but it’s a blue dress with a Cookie Monster hairpiece. It’s styled to show off your toddler’s legs, because that’s what’s important, right? Boys can dress up like Cookie Monster, and girls can dress up like a dress. Never mind that it’s forty degrees and probably raining at the end of October. Get them legs out there in the cold so we can see ‘em.

Of course, if your daughter doesn’t like Cookie Monster, you can always put her in an Elmo dress. Or a Big Bird dress. The possibilities are limitless, unless you’re a girl, in which case the possibilities are dresses.

Dave Hax, "Efficiency Engineer" for Holiday Inn, showcases quite a few tips for smart and efficient packing, including how to fold a suit jacket and charge your mobile device with the TV.

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"Bollywood Steampunk" -- created by DeviantArt's MakeupSiren and photographed by Andrew Williams . There's loads more, all great.

Bollywood Steampunk : Salkcity Photo Shoot (via Pipedream Dragon)

There’s nothing less sexualized than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. All they want to do is be in the 1980s, say Cowabunga, follow a big-ass rat around and eat pizza. So it’s probably safe for a girl to

Oh goddamn it.

Federal workers affected by the 16-day government shutdown began heading back to work today, thanks to an agreement Congress passed on Wednesday night. The agreement funds federal agencies through mid-January and raises the debt limit.

Congressman Jim Moran (D) blasted the shutdown, calling it “purposeless” in a statement released last night. Earlier this month, he introduced a bill — which the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed — to grant back pay to all 800,000 furloughed federal employees.

Moran’s full statement follows:

“This bill brings an end to one of the most embarrassing episodes in congressional history. House Republicans, spurred on by Tea Party-aligned members and outside groups who have exploited the Citizens United Supreme Court decision to subvert democracy, held the government hostage in an effort to destroy Obamacare. These Tea Party actions have caused a financially damaging, demoralizing government shutdown that shook consumer confidence, and resulted in the furlough of 800,000 federal employees and employment cutbacks at nearly 85 percent of all federal contracting companies.

“Three weeks later, $24 billion in lost economic growth and the anxiety of people wondering if and when they would receive a paycheck, we have a deal to reopen government, lift the debt ceiling…and Obamacare remains virtually untouched. Clearly, the new health law is going to need tweaking going forward. But efforts to destroy it, rather than improve it, led by charlatans like Senator Ted Cruz, willfully ignored the fact that 1) Congress signed it into law, 2) it was upheld by a conservative Supreme Court and, 3) it was a major issue in the most recent presidential election which resulted in a five million vote victory for President Obama.

“This two week period of panic and pain has been purposeless. We are back to square one having achieved nothing but to have exposed the radical destructiveness of the so called Ted Cruz Tea Party faction within the Republican Party.”

 

(Updated on 10/14/13) Arlington police and the county’s bomb squad responded a possible pipe bomb in the Arlington Heights neighborhood Sunday afternoon.

Just before 3:00 p.m., an off-duty police officer was asked for directions by a driver in a vehicle with New York tags. The officer noticed drug paraphernalia in the vehicle and called in backup, according to a fire department official.

The car was stopped and the driver detained on the 100 block of S. Highland Street. Officers then noticed a pipe with two caps on each end in the back of the stopped vehicle, the official said. Believing that the device could be a pipe bomb, the street was shut down between Arlington Blvd and 2nd Street S. and the bomb squad was called in.

A robot was used to inspect the device, and a technician in heavy protective gear attempted to defuse it. After a second technician inspected the vehicle, the bomb squad performed a controlled detonation. The robot was dispatched again, after which it was determined the pipe was empty. The driver of the car was interviewed and now faces a drug charge.

Residents in the area were being asked to shelter in place in their homes during the incident.

Editor’s Note: Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

Ask what the average person thinks when they hear the words “homemade gin,” their mind will probably go to bootleggers and bathtubs.

Arlington resident Joe Maiellano’s mind, however, goes to high-quality juniper berries and botanicals, a strainer and a funnel.

Maiellano founded The HomeMade Gin Kit with his wife, Sarah, and friends Jack and Molly Hubbard last November. The company pre-packages the instruments and ingredients needed to make gin — minus one critical component: vodka — and ships them across the country for $49.95 a box.

Like many startups, the Maiellanos and Hubbards didn’t come together with the idea of shipping out do-it-yourself gin kits. One day, while drinking gin and tonics made from Maiellano’s homemade recipe, Joe and Jack looked at each other decided they wanted to open a distillery together.

It didn’t take long before their research revealed that opening a distillery costs nearly $1 million before a single bottle of spirit is ever produced. The two full-time D.C. professionals had neither the time nor money for that, and the dream almost died then and there.

“Jack said, ‘the recipe is still good,’” Maiellano said. “That’s when we came up with making the kits.”

They ordered Italian glass bottles and all the other components to make homemade gin, and spent a month putting together 250 packages, stacking them “floor to ceiling and wall to wall” in the Maiellanos’ den in their apartment near Potomac Yard.

Once they launched last November, the four entrepreneurs were hoping to sell their 250 kits by Father’s Day, Maiellano said. A month later, they had sold more than 2,500.

“We took vacation days from our day jobs, we brought in family and friends,” he said, “and gave them a kit so they would help us.”

Back then, Maiellano was making trips to the FedEx Office downstairs in his apartment building every day to ship orders coming in on their website. Mere months later, HomeMade Gin Kit is contracting with a storage and shipping facility in Dulles, Va., shipping out truckloads of kits to online retailers like Uncommon Goods and RedEnvelope and negotiating deals with major national retailers.

Through it all, Joe and Jack continued their work as fundraisers for D.C. nonprofits, and Sarah and Molly also kept full-time jobs. For The HomeMade Gin Kit team, the project is one of passion: although the bootstrapped company is profitable, Joe said, all of the profits are being reinvested back into the business for now.

In addition to the kit, HomeMade Gin Kit sells refills of the botanicals and juniper berries for $10 apiece. Maiellano recently perfected a Christmas-themed gin — with a flavor reminiscent of a Christmas tree — that the company will sell. It’s the first step toward expanding HomeMade Gin Kit’s product line.

Maiellano wants to build kits for different spirits, as well. His passion for Absinthe led him to try several different recipes, but he couldn’t find one that wasn’t horribly bitter, he said. A spirits perfectionist, he said it took him 12 different tries to finalize the gin recipe he and his co-founders built the business upon.

“I think it’s the best gin-and-tonic gin there is,” he said. “Not all of my friends are big drinkers, but pretty much everyone I get to try it likes it.”

Different flavors of gin and new homemade spirit kits may be next on the to-do list for the Maiellanos and Hubbards, but there is still one dream left to chase.

“We would still love for this to lead to opening a distillery,” Maiellano said. “Craft distilling is where craft brewing was in the 1980s. We’re hoping to get in on the ground floor of that.”

The “Law Enforcement Reverse Peephole Viewer” ($75) lets someone look backwards through a peephole and see what’s going on inside. You are now aware that:

1. Law enforcement can look into your hotel room or apartment without you knowing.

2. Anyone with $75 can look into your hotel room or apartment without you knowing.

In the couch gag opener, director del Toro throws the crypt wide open