Picayunes

Here is a quick rundown of today's notable Times-Pic offerings.

• In a clarification of yesterday's report which appeared to indicate that the New Orleans Public Schools were short 150 teachers a week before classes begin, the school system is now saying that those vacancies will be filled from a pool of recently hired teachers who have not yet been assigned posts.



• A century and a half later, the local labor market is still more or less in the hands of the plantation owners. Of course, nowadays they call themselves the "hospitality industry" but as Terrell Owens might say, if it looks like a rat and smells like rat.. then, well, you figure it out. Yesterday, an effort to unionize New Orleans Tours Inc. failed prompting the paper to make the following earth shattering observation: "Unions are typically a concern in the tourism industry because they raise labor costs."



• Finally, Chris Rose closes the book on yet another failed attempt to bring the quintessential New Orleans novel, A Confederacy of Dunces to film. This, of course, is probably a good thing... or as Rose puts it

  And let's face it: We'd probably hate it no matter who stars in it and who directs it because we all have our own vision of protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly -- you know, that guy who collects tin cans in your neighborhood and still lives with his mom; the cab driver with four unpublished novels in his trunk; your girlfriend's nephew who sits in a windowless room and blogs all day, etc. -- and anything short of that vision is . . . unacceptable.