WaPo writer Anne Applebaum has emerged from her cocoon of Polish Secret Service agents to assure everyone that her car explosion yesterday was simple mechanical trouble, not an assassination attempt. (Are you writing under duress, Anne? Blink twice.) The details!

Everybody slow down! Is what Anne writes in Slate:

Here is what happened: I was driving home from a friend's house in a Warsaw suburb Saturday night when my engine died. I tried to restart it, pumped the accelerator, heard a small explosion, and saw a flame. Smoke started coming out of the hood, which I didn't want to open. (This was a bad move, in retrospect, but I've seen what happens to smoking cars in the movies.) Someone called the fire department, which clearly didn't take my car problems very seriously.

When they finally arrived, around 20 minutes later, the scene did admittedly look rather spectacular. Columns of billowing white smoke, flames, the works. Still, it was only the engine burning, not the entire car, and the policeman who showed up agreed that the cause was probably some weird mechanical malfunction.

Then the cops heard her husband was a big politician, and they called in the Secret Service, and then the tabloids arrived, and the photographers, and the story spread, and next thing you know she was reading about herself on this very blog, which she calls "the high point of the entire day."

Honored! Whether it is Washington Post columnist car explosions or Washington Post newsroom fistfights, we stand ready to sensationalize!