FEMA owes Benson a Stadium

Dome may have to be torn down. It does have a retractable roof now.

Among the Hillbillies part 2

Things that do not exist in Mom's neighborhood:
1) Sidewalks!!

Things that exist in abundance in Mom's neighborhood:
1)Crickets
2)Fireflies (didn't recognize these at first.. thought they were some kind of freaky air pollution.)

Afternoon was spent on a long unsuccessful quest for pickled pork. You can't buy it here! Not at the Food Lion, not at the corner grocery, not at any of the millions of Krogers that dot the landscape. I even tried the International Supermarket where, amazingly, you can get boiled crawfish but, again, no pickled meat. How am I supposed to make my red beans?

Olbermann

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?

I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.

link

Web Cast Saints Games

The New Orleans Saints will practice and likely play most of their home games in San Antonio, TX this year. Their fans are scattered far and wide. Many of them will remain so for months. During the Katrina crisis, New Orleans residents desperate for news from back home have been able to follow local news streaming on wwltv.com and wdsu.com. Those of us who were lucky enough to evacuate to places with internet access have been glued to our monitors all week. It seems to me that it would be a swell gesture on the part of the NFL to make Saints games accessible to displaced fans via streaming video this season. The NFL doesn't make it easy for folks to present their brilliant ideas via email but this form dedicated to questions/suggestions regarding their web site seems like a good place to start should anyone feel inclined to drop them a line.

Heartache

I don't know what's going to happen when the shit-water settles. But I, like many other New Orleanians, simply don't know how to live anywhere else. This Salon piece paints a decent picture of why that is so. Here's a taste.

When that is over, though, everyone needs to get back home. You don't take someone whose family's been in New Orleans practically since Cro-Magnon times and plop him in Houston with a hundred bucks and directions to the job center. Even if they did tell him where north, south, east, and west is, maybe he wouldn't know what you were talking about. In New Orleans, it's uptown, downtown, toward the lake, and toward the river. A shrimp taco may be tasty, but where's the red beans and rice? Where's the kids in go-karts busting through stop signs? Where's the casino? Where's the zydeco washboard pumping out of the T-shirt shop on Decatur even though it's jazz down here, not zydeco? Where's the big chief? And if you don't know what the big chief is, then you don't know the ugly pain we're going through.

If it's ever going to be healed, if there isn't to be a permanent hole the size of Lake Pontchartrain in our hearts, we need our city back, from the toniest mansion on St. Charles to the sorriest, most sagging roof on Desire. And we need to be protected this time. We need billions, and we need more billions. We don't just need it because you felt guilty that the Superdome turned into the hold of a slave ship. We need it because we love where we live.

Big Bad Momma

The shot gun toting bad ass on the left is none other than our very own Officer Barbie. Thank God she's ok. NOPD have been through pure hell this week.

Theater

NOPD chief Eddie Compass, a man obviously in way way over his head no matter what the circumstances, just let loose with a spectacular meltdown at a press conference. He's not wrong to be angry and all geeked up and I certainly sympathize with him... but.. I really don't understand how this guy is the most qualified to person to be chief of police in New Orleans. (Well actually I do, you see, Compass and Nagin are childhood friends.. but that's another story.) Please let there be video of this. The report simply does not do it justice.

City's Web Site

Back up. But not much info available.

Among the Hillbillies

So I can't buy a bottle of wine in the grocery store in Nashville. What the hell? Wine is a food. When you're cruising the grocery aisles planning your meal for the evening, you want to pick out a wine to go with it don't you? Here you have make a whole other stop at the liquor store where you CAN buy a bottle of wine... but you CAN'T buy a corkscrew. That's another trip.. probably to Wal-Mart. But wait. You also can't buy BEER at the LIQUOR store! For that, it's back to the grocery! I can't wait to go home to civilization where I can pick up a drive-through Daiquiri.

Greetings from Vanderbilt U

I'm posting from the top floor of one of the less aesthetically pleasing library interiors I've come across. Looks like an abandoned warehouse in here. Will be exploring downtown Nashville on foot for most of the afternoon. Meanwhile here is a new link to lii.org's Katrina page. I'll check in again tonight.

Note: Our old friend Blogger spellcheck suggests "strain" as an alternative to "Katrina."

Well that's nice

Cox suspends bill payments Wonder if Slumlord still wants his September rent.

Who could have known?

Dowd

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

T-P Sunday Editorial

Bears repeating:

Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

ALA statement

From ALA President Michael "Blog People" Gorman. Includes preliminary info on how to help Katrina affected libraries. Many of you may know that ALA had planned to meet in New Orleans next summer. Let's hope they can still make it.

Must Read

Palast:

I'm sure the people of New Orleans would have liked to show their appreciation for the official Presidential photo-strafing, but their surface-to-air missiles were wet.

snip

Then, as the waters rose, one politician finally said, roughly, "Screw this! They're lying! The President's lying! The rich fat cats that are drowning you will do it again and again and again. They lead you into imperialist wars for profit, they take away your schools and your hope and when you complain, they blame Blacks and Jews and immigrants. Then they push your kids under. I say, Kick'm in the ass and take your rightful share!"

Huey Long laid out a plan: a progressive income tax, real money for education, public works to rebuild Louisiana and America, an end to wars for empire, and an end to financial oligarchy. The waters receded, the anger did not, and Huey "Kingfish" Long was elected Governor of Louisiana in 1928.

Another new site

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Katrina Update
Announcements from affected colleges, and from associations and government agencies

Operation Photo-Op

Atrios's phrase... but an apt one.

See here

Social Contract

From Rude Pundit

But the Bush adminstration has broken the basic social contract in New Orleans, the one that goes all the way back to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the one that says we adhere to laws because you agree to protect us, and thus the city and its citizens have returned to the state of nature, which is to survive, motherfuckers, just survive.

And still there are people talking about never returning to New Orleans.... an attitude born out of either 1) A bigoted desire to blame the poor for their own plight or 2) A childlike irrational fear imposed by the "trauma" of sitting in your air conditioned living room drinking lemonade and watching people suffer on TV. That's fine, though. I'm going back. And when my city is rebuilt I don't really feel like sharing it with assholes.

Nagin again

T-P

Some observers have said that because the majority of storm evacuees are black, the lethargic disaster response has a racist component. But Nagin cast the color issue in another light. "I think it's more a class issue than race," he said. "The Superdome had mostly poor people in distress. The rich have resources the poor don't. The Convention Center was different. There the poor were mixed with people from hotels and predators. You had blacks, Hispanics, Asians. The predators in there didn't care. When those stories come out, like children raped, with their throats cut, then somebody's got to answer."

Nagin's ire began to rise anew as he recalled a foiled strategy to send able-bodied refugees over the Crescent City Connection to the high ground of the West Bank.

"We were taking in people from St. Bernard Parish," he said. "If we had a bottle of water, we shared it. Then when we were going to let people cross the bridge, they were met with frigging dogs and guns at the Gretna parish line. They said, 'We're going to protect Jefferson Parish assets."

The piggishness and inhumanity on display here is unforgivable. First, the poorest and most helpless are left behind to die.. then when they are reluctantly allowed to escape they are treated as a threat to "assets." Someone should have to answer for this. I doubt anyone will.

Anne Rice

Mediocre author.. but excellent spokesperson for New Orleans. Read this in its entirety.

What might have been

It was almost one year ago when Ivan just missed doing to us what Katrina actually did. I started the day getting ready to evacuate and ended it getting drunk at Igor's Here is how relieved I was at the time. If only those damn levees had held.. I may be feeling something similar today.

Pleasant Thoughts Quote of the Evening

Dad, a few moments ago talking back to the TV: "I hope he drowned in the bathtub."
Admittedly, Dad has had a rather rough week.

Bush: He Came He Saw He Continues to Ignore

Landrieu:

"Yesterday, I was hoping President Bush would come away from his tour
of the regional devastation triggered by Hurricane Katrina with a new
understanding for the magnitude of the suffering and for the abject
failures of the current Federal Emergency Management Agency,"
Landrieu said. "Twenty-four hours later, the President has yet to answer my
call for a cabinet-level official to lead our efforts. Meanwhile, FEMA,
now a shell of what it once was, continues to be overwhelmed by the task at
hand.

Landrieu said that FEMA has inexplicably failed to take advantage of offers of help.

"I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims - far more efficiently than buses - FEMA again dragged its feet," Landrieu said. "Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.

Landrieu said that her "greatest disappointment" is the lack of progress fixing the breached 17th Street levee.

"Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast - black and white, rich and poor, young and old - deserve far better from their national government," Landrieu said.

Starting to get the feeling that we're already reaching the "Mission Accomplished" phase of the federal photo op reconstruction effort.

Hey I found my place!

It's in this photo. There is definitely water in the streets. My stuff might be largely okay!!

Exhausted

Actually going to try and get a little air this morning.. see what's in Nashville. Will be back this afternoon.

Another way to help

And this is something really cool that you can do. It's Murph's Musical Charity Drive.

What is Murph's Musical Charity Drive? People whose homes are flooded probably did not take their record collections with them. As we know, CDs are expensive, especially if you had to buy all the Beatles CDs all over again at one time (that's $200 right there). With all the things evacuees will have to re-purchase, music is probably not at the top of their list, and understandably so. But that does not mean that they have to go without it.

So what am I saying? I'm thinking about trying to compile a wish list from the evacuees I know and start burning CDs for them and sending them a musical care package wherever they are now. I'm saying you can do it too. I'm saying we all can do it. I'm saying it would cost us almost nothing but a little bit of time.

New Site

katrina.louisiana.gov State Of Louisiana's official website for dissemination of information concerning hurricane Katrina.

Pet left behind?

SPCA will go get it for you.

Louisiana SPCA director Laura Maloney said shelter workers follow other agencies and crews through neighborhoods and rescue pets, some that are locked in houses. At the owners' request, "we break in," she said.

Owners have to call or email the operation and give their name and address and information about where the pet is confined.

The hotline number is: 1-225-578-6111. E-mail should be sent to Katrinaanimalrescue@yahoo.com.

Even Mr. Bill Knew

Bush: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Louisianians will remember these commercials from the campaign to save America's Wetland featuring Mr. Bill. Eerily prescient. via Bob Harris

Hospitality

Nashville is doing nice things for evacuees including complementary library cards. I may have to check some of this stuff out.... if I can ever tear myself away from the news.

CNN is starting to get it

Lying bastards vs reality.

FEMA suck suck sucks

Director Mike Brown woefully unqualified. (via oyster)

More on Brown from Atrios.

More images

Before and after. Includes a graphic look at the power outage.

They found Fats

(CNN) -- Rock 'n' roll pioneer Fats Domino was among the thousands of New Orleans residents plucked from rising floodwaters, his daughter said Thursday.

Letter to Bush

From Michael Moore:

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Read the whole thing.

How to help

What Oyster said. I am lucky. He is lucky. We have families and support. Many many others do not. Oyster linked to billmon's list. Donate. Volunteer. NO needs you.

Going home

Mark my words, I will go home. As soon as they open the city, be it next month or next year, I will go back to New Orleans and I will do whatever is needed of me to help rebuild. New Orleans is (was?) the most special place in America. I always said I couldn't live anywhere else. If I have any say in it, I won't have to and neither will anyone else.

He did it again!

Bush just now in Biloxi. "I don't think anyone could have been prepared to respond to this."
Stop with the CYA bullshit and get to work, you troll!

Heartbreaking

Erica links (and posts full text if you don't feel like watching the commercial) this Salon piece. Lots of familiar places here. Unreal, like everything this week.

Katrina Info Map

Might help you sort out what is damaged.

Cleaning Up

It will be a long time before we even think about this but...
Saving Water-Damaged Books

More Sites

City by Satellite. Looks like I've got water.

Tell CNN where you are.

What day is this, assholes?

MSNBC is reporting the "1st convoy of FEMA relief supplies entering the city." It's fucking Friday!!

Nagin

I'm sorry about all the bad things I've said about him. Listen to this.

And worse

Every morning, I get up and flip on the computer hoping to see the day when things start to get better instead of worse. Today is not that day.

NEW ORLEANS — An explosion at a chemical depot jolted residents awake early Friday, illuminating the pre-dawn sky with red and orange flames over a city awash in corpses and under siege from looters. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

New Orleanians have always harbored a tounge-in-cheek illusion that their city was too strange to actually be part of America proper. We never thought that America would take that seriously enough to abandon us in a time like this but that does indeed appear to be what's happened.
Give 'em hell, Ray

"They don't have a clue what's going on down there," Mayor Ray Nagin told WWL-AM Thursday night. "They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn - excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed."

Did we really need to be reminded in this way that Bush is the worst president ever? An entire city.. horrific numbers of Americans. Poor, sick Americans have to die because Bush doesn't care enough to come back from vacation until two days later.. because we commit resources to conquering Iraq for Texaco. Because we are morally bankrupt enough to just let it happen.
Good motning. I think I'll go make some coffee.

So I'm sure we all know by now the big story of the week

That would be the Onion site redesign.

Aerial photos from NOAA

They're incomplete but fairly detailed. Try and find your neighborhood.

Ivins

Why New Orleans is in Deep Water

Also..once again.. cannot stress this enough. Watch the WWL streaming coverage. It is sooo much better than the disaster porn on cable news.

Return of the Gumbo Krewe

From the T-P blog:

Gumbo Krewe cooking up comfort food
Littice Bacon-Blood
River Parishes bureau

When Shawn and Danielle Bradley returned from Shreveport to their Norco home late Monday, they had cooking on their minds. They were thinking about gumbo, and lots of it.

On Thursday, the founders of the Gumbo Krewe, transformed their covered patio on Good Hope Street in Norco into an al fresco kitchen. The group, which gained national acclaim in 2001 for packing up its pots and heading to ground zero to feed hundreds of emergency workers in New York following the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, now wants to spread a little comfort closer to home.

And by 12:30 p.m., according to Shawn Bradley's estimate, they had cooked up, dished out and delivered more than 100 gallons of chicken gumbo, jambalaya and red beans to emergency workers in St. Charles Parish and Kenner, with plans to feed many more.

"We're trying to feed whoever we can,'' Bradley said. "We're feeding cops and rescue workers first."

However, unlike 911, when the krewe was able to mobilize its kitchen and feed people on site, safety concerns this time around have members delivering the food to certain locations.

"We have drop-off points, drop-off points that are safe, '' Bradley said. "We have to have security wherever we go."

Bradley said Whole Foods in Metairie donated food, seasoning and paper products, he said. "They have given us everything we need,'' he said. "They've promised to send a truckload every day."

Bradley and his band of volunteers say feeding the workers - and whoever else happens by - is their way of giving back during a time of a national crisis.

"I've got to do my part,'' said Greg Lassiter of LaPlace as he readied ham hocks for stewing with red beans.

Gage Alleman, 10, of LaPlace came to Norco with his mother Debbie to help with the food preparations.

Earlier, he had onion duty. Did he cry?

"Once,'' he said with a smile.

Despite having roof damage from the hurricane, Debbie Alleman said she came simply because she heard the Bradleys needed help.

"Everyone said that they were working for blessings,'' Alleman said. "I thought that was nice."

With large fans sending the smell of simmering chicken, roux and onions through the air, your sense of smell could have guided you to Bradley's house. If not, the four flags - two American, one Louisiana, one Mardi Gras - posted high in the air and whipping in the wind could be easily spotted more than a block away. A banner stripped across the front porch proclaimed: Gumbo Krewe "Food for the Soul."

The Bradleys say they have not put a time limit on their service. They'll dish out comfort and comfort food, they said, "until the need is not there."

I hope someone drops a house on Dennis Hastert

And thank god Oyster got out because he can still give clear voice to my rage.

Questions

From Tom Tomorrow

It's not like we didn't know that this might happen.

So why weren't more emergency personnel and equipment in place and ready to go?

Why did it take the president two days to get back to DC? Why wasn't he in the White House on Sunday night, overseeing emergency preparations?

And what the fuck is Condi Rice doing attending Broadway shows and shopping for expensive shoes at a time like this?

Sorry--does it "politicize" the issue to wonder whether we are quite literally being led by sociopaths and insane people?

I'd like to know why are the soaps and "price is right" and "around the horn" on tv today? This is worse than 911. It's just not as big a deal when it happens to poor people.

FEMA continues to suck

Web site is directing donations to Pat Robertson.

FEMA sucks

Feds have totally dropped the ball. Networks still don't have a handle on this. Watch wwl stream.

Is now the time to ask

What color will our ribbon be?

Some good news

Oyster is okay.

Fuckers

Bush: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

Chertoff: "The critical thing was to get people out of there before the disaster," he said on NBC's Today program. "Some people chose not to obey that order. That was a mistake on their part."

This is the kind of aid and sympathy that poor people can expect from their government.

Meanwhile:

More from the Police Officer. I'm typing as fast as i can while he talks to us:

He's only hearing bits and pieces. The people in the city are shooting at the police. They're upset that they're not getting help quickly enough. The fireman keep calling because they're under fire. He doesn't understand why the people are shooting at the rescuers. Here it is 5 days ago the Mayor said get out of town and nobody went and now they're pissed.

The National Guard was at the Hilton, but now the Hilton is evacuated. When they said the CBD was gonna get 6 feet of water, it seems like everyone evacuated.

He turned the corner onto Canal Street and it looked like a flea market. People breaking into every store, going to the neutral gound (median) and trading and selling everything.

They broke into Winn Dixie Monday Night. Do they steal food? No. Cigarettes and liquor. Store was a mess. All the meats were going to waste so the districts went over there to salvage food for officers. Many cops have been eating MREs.

The Iberville Housing Projects got pissed off because the police started to "shop" after they kicked out looters. Then they started shooting at cops. When the cops left, the looters looted everything. There's probably not a grocery left in this city.

Over 30 officers have quit over the last 3 days. Out of 160 officers in his district maybe 55 or 60 are working. He hasn't seen several since Sunday. HQ is closed, evacuated. No phones to contact them.

"HQ, be advised, we're going 10 7."

"Ok, y'all coming back on???"

"We don't know."

Where is the Nat Guard? Why were the fuckers not ready for this?

Jesus gives NO the finger

Literally


Hunt is on for Jesus’ finger

By James Varney
Staff Writer

In the garden behind St. Louis Cathedral on Royal Street lies an incredible tangle of zig-zagging broken tree trunks and branches, mixed with smashed wrought iron fences.

But right in the middle, a statue of Jesus is still standing, unscathed by the storm, save for the left thumb and index finger, which are missing.

The missing digits immediately set off speculation of divine intervention.

Flood street

Then (Betsy)


Now (Katrina)

Tryin to wash us away

Unbelievable satellite photo

Still doesn't quite show my neighborhood but you can see where it's still relatively dry here.

At digital globe there is a before and after.

More blog forums

Carol found this one.

Here's one for the Loyola University community. The fact that their campus was largely undamaged should be somewhat reassuring for uptown residents.

Nero

Bob Harris gets it right.

Good News

Dasiy just reminded me:

Skookses float

I'm sure he must be okay.

Will someone please shoot these assholes?

I'm really not in the mood to hear this crap right now.

Gays 'Responsible' For New Orleans Devastation Group Claims

T-P blog update

good news: Still got it Johnny White’s Sport Bar on Bourbon Street at Orleans Avenue didn’t close Tuesday night, and had six patrons at 8 a.m. drinking at the bar. “Monday night, they came by after curfew and wanted us to close,” bartender Perry Bailey, 60, said of officers then patrolling the French Quarter. But all we did was shut the doors and stayed open.”

bad news: Getting more water. Meanwhile, water was still spreading through Uptown Wednesday morning, and was making its way over St. Charles Avenue towards the river. On Marengo Street, water was 3 to 10 feet high in stretches between Claiborne and St. Charles avenues and between Napoleon Avenue and Louisiana. Water lapped into the bottom floors of houses, and residents were being evacuated by boat on Marengo and surrounding streets. Along Prytania Street, the water was a foot high and still rising at 10:30 a.m. And while water was still running in Uptown faucets Tuesday night, the flow stopped Wednesday.

link

NOPL MLK Branch

Underwater.. just like everything else. T-P photo.

water rising

wwl says St. Charles & Jefferson is taking on water now.

fucking hotels

Kicking survivors out because their reservations are up. Get a clue!!

evacuee blog

Good stuff here.

Murph on cable news: Don't listen to the big cable networks because they don't know shit and their condescending, careless ignorance is an insult to not only the state and journalism but to human compassion.

You know it's bad when

This is a big new item.

Disinfecting water when you can't boil it

Worse worse worse it just gets worse

They couldn't (or wouldn't) repair the levee breach before the last pumping station failed and now my neighborhood is guaranteed to flood. I just can't get my mind around the immensity of the loss of an entire city. It's only gradually beginning to feel like a real thing. I want to ask trivial questions like where will the Saints play their home opener? Or can Tom Benson apply to FEMA for a new stadium? But it's hard to keep a sense of humor when you've been watching aerial photos of places you drive by and stores you shop in and your actual library of employment flooded to the rooftops. I am overwhelmed, angry, depressed. Don't know what else to say tonight. Will continue to reevaluate life tomorrow.

looting

You know, if folks are scavenging for supplies, I really can't blame them. If they're breaking into houses for TVs and jewelry well that's different. Still I can't see why dealing with looters should be much of a priority.

Latest video from wwl looks like most of FQ is still dry. Not a lot of pictures from uptown for some reason. Everything else seems to be underwater.

My god, the gas fires look just plain hellish!

The Metblog has updates today.

So does Michael

Still watching. Still in shock.

Best news is all local

Keep checking wwl wdsu and nola for news.
Don't know what we're going back to.
Does anyone still have a house? a Job?
Will there be enough beer?

Water Still Rising

This morning, WWL TV just evacuated their studios due to rising water in the French Quarter. University hospital is talking about evacuating. I still keep hearing that Uptown is okay.

Unreal

It's every bit as bad as we feared. Most of town is underwater. There are people and animals trapped on rooftops and in attics. Bridges are out. Debris everywhere. My place is uptown. I hear that it was likely dry during the storm... but now that the levees are broken.. I don't know... wish I could have gotten more of my stuff out. I left at about 11 AM in a Tercel full of random crap. It took 15 hours to drive to Tuscaloosa. Stayed one night there in a Red Cross shelter. Got to Nashville the next day. Not sure what to do next. Hope everyone is safe.

I must be hungover

Because I can't stop laughing at this.

Today's Wacky Reference Question

Member of Public: Y'all got any books on... children's diversity?

An already on guard me: Do you mean.. perhaps... something covering the various kinds of children in existence?

Public: No I mean, like, you know women doing men's jobs and men doing women's jobs.


Said it before. Don't listen too closely to the public or your head may explode.

Inflationary Irony

This week's Onion. Top "In the News Photo" What would Clovis and Ben Martin say?

Sick Bastards

Plaquemines Parish wants to put a chip in your dog.

And it just keeps on going

K&B, McKenzie's, Holmes, Maison Blanche, Schweggman's, Pontchatrain Beach, Jax, Dixie, Regal, Nash, Hap, Buddy "D", neighborhood parades and now the Catholic League too?

sigh

Extra! Extra!

Sleep has become very precious to me lately as various events over the course of the past week have conspired to deprive me of the normal healthy dosage of sweet oblivion. Some will say I spend a more than adequate quantity of my waking hours in an oblivious enough state to compensate for this, but we'll leave that for another discussion.

For the past few days, the greatest obstacle to my beauty rest has been the fact that I have finally caved under the pressure (largely from Daisy) and actually taken up reading Harry Potter. It's taken me a while to get to these because 1)I'm not particularly big on fantasy/sci-fi and 2)I have a natural aversion to popular trends. It turns out that, as in most things, my instincts have steered me very very wrong. Just in case anyone needs to be told, the Harry Potter series (at least the bits I've read) turn out to be every bit the excellent children's/YA coming-of-age books they're advertised as. The characters here are growing up and coming to terms with a bewildering, imperfect, yet beautiful world. They seem to grow the most by learning not to blindly trust arbitrary convention or authority. There are few better things for a child to take away from a book than the value of thinking for one's self. Plus, I can't put the damn book down.... hence the lack of sleep.

I must have been particularly determined to make up for lost time this morning as I managed to remain largely undisturbed by the 5 AM rantings of a drunken Consuela who barged into my room to rant about whatever the hell had happened to her last night.. who knows... the point is I was wholly unable to pay attention. Unfortunately, things were a bit different at 7:30 when I was violently whipped into consciousness by a ringing telephone.

Quick background: Having spent nearly ten years of my young life working in various capacities as a customer service type person, I have grown hyper sensitve to the emotional needs of service employees whenever I come into contact with them. I try not to make eye contact, much less annoying small talk with drugstore clerks. I don't order anything that looks like it might be a pain in the ass for the bartender/barrista to make. I always tip well. (In fact I tend to overtip when I have received what on the surface appears to be bad service because I figure I am at least in part to blame for causing the provider of said service the stress of having to deal with me.) Above all, I have never ever EVER IN MY LIFE asked to speak with a manager.

In light of the above, it was with a great deal of trepidation that I allowed Daisy to complain on my behalf to the Times-Picayune about a weeklong.. um.. interruption in my paper delivery. I was willing to be patient with this because 1)It was possible that someone in the neighborhood was stealing it and 2) I have one of those weird corner apartments to which delivery of mail/pizza/newspapers is naturally something of an adventure. So I can totally understand if not everything gets through on time. The real problem here is that my T-P subscription was a birthday gift to me from Daisy which means that I am not the only one invested in the delivery issue which means that if she wants to call and complain.. well.. she has every right to. And so she did... a few times over a period of days where the T-P phone lackey promised to straighten the situation out but failed to do so... until a week later when the paper began showing up again which it has done without further interruption for about two weeks. I considered the matter closed, although Daisy still asks nearly every day to see if she needs to be put back on the case.

Soooo.. as I mentioned above, my all too brief slumber was further truncated by an early phone call which turned out to be..... my paper delivery man calling to berate me for getting him into such a spot of trouble with his superiors over the lax delivery service. The gist of his lecture: He is a "veteran paper man" and he knows what he is doing. During the delivery interruption, he claims to have been on vacation. Whether or not someone else covered his route inadequately or all of his customers went without service for a week was not made clear. What was made clear was that 1) the man's bosses were "coming down on me" and 2) despite the fact that none of this was my business, I could rest assured that my paper would be at my door on time every day from then on, dammit.

I just hope that's all he leaves there for me.

Awful Book of the Morning

Slim pickings this morning. The winner by default:
Getting Rich In America 8 Simple Rules for Building a Fortune and a Satisfying Life.

Going here on the theory that anything from the enumerated rules/steps to self-betterment genre is worthy of at least some suspicion. The back cover features a series of provocative questions designed to give the reader a hint as to the nature of some of the life changing secrets to be gained from purchasing this tome. The first one reads, "How does smoking reduce your chances of becoming a millionaire?"

Editor's Note: I feel obliged here to include yet another promise to return soon to a more regular posting schedule as well as to finally resolve some long neglected cliffhangers. Fear not. This and more is in the works in conjunction with festivities to commemorate the two year anniversary of this site. Stay tuned.

Big Giggles Today

Via:

Daisy

Murph

Oyster

Yep, it's pretty much football season again

For what it's worth, the T-P Saints beat writers are covering training camp in blog format. For my money, the moment of the pre-season thus far came last week when renowned literacy advocate, Aaron Brooks commented to reporters that he was pleased with the Saints' new simplified play calling system for 2005, or as he called it, the "reducement of the offense."

The Problem

From Utne Magazine, today's must read.

Imagine a social space that's designed for individual enlightenment, a "people's university" where all can read and learn. A haven from commerce where everyone can conduct research or enjoy the arts. A place for children to escape their family bonds just long enough to glimpse a broader world. A home away from home for those curious about ideas and passionate about knowledge.

Such is the American public library at its best. And who doesn't love a library, at least in concept? In a land where private ownership is the rule, libraries lend items and offer help for free. Historically, they've provided things to be shared, not consumed and thrown away. Good libraries are deeply conservative in that they guard and archive the culture's diverse wisdom and beauty, its vast oddities and amusements. But they're also radical bastions of mutual aid. In a "knowledge economy" where information carries an ever-steeper price, where the rich get wealthier and the poor have less, libraries are one of the few ways still available for many to educate themselves -- ideally, an American right.

By some measures, these wellsprings of the democratic spirit have never been more popular. According to the American Library Association (ALA), public library visits have risen from 500 million in 1990 to about 1.2 billion a year. Reference librarians now answer more than 7 million questions a week. And as the ALA likes to note, there are more public libraries in the United States -- 16,421, counting all branches -- than there are McDonald's restaurants.

But lurking in that comparison is a hint that all is not well with libraries. In fact, the same forces that have turned the United States into a fast-food nation could soon drive the traditional American library out of existence. In a society where everyone's basic needs for health care, housing, education, clean air and water, meaningful work, creative expression, and open space are not met, the historical model of the public library, open to all, is under siege. Critics say it's a crisis that mirrors a larger one rooted in the failures of capitalism and perhaps democracy itself.

Much more. Go read.

Who Knew

That anyone ever used Who's Who anymore? All it does around here is eat up shelf space.

Just a Thought

So.. what are the odds that Bill Jefferson decides not to come back from Brazil this week?

Bad News Bears

One soldier's account of the kind of "training" Iraqi security is receiving from the US military.

My time as a Team Leader in Iraq was temporarily interrupted when I was sent to the "Green Zone" in Baghdad to train the Iraqi army. I was more than happy to do it because we were being told that in order for us to get out of Iraq completely the Iraqi military would have to be able to take over all security operations. The training of the Iraqi Army became a huge concern of mine. During the time I trained! them, their basic training was only one week long. We showed them some basic drill and ceremony such as marching and saluting. When it came time for weapons training, we gave each Iraqi recruit an AK-47 and just let them shoot it. They did not even have to qualify by hitting a target. All they had to do was pull the trigger. I was instructed by my superiors to stand directly behind them with caution while they were shooting just in case they tried to turn the weapon on us so we could stop them.

Once they graduated from basic training, the Iraqi soldiers in a way became part of our battalion and we would take them on missions with us. But we never let them know where we were going, because we were afraid some of them might tip off the insurgency that we were coming and we would walk directly into an ambush. When they would get into formation prior to the missions we made them a part of, they would cover their faces so the people of their communities did not identify them as being affiliated with the American troops.

Not that long ago President Bush made a statement at Fort Bragg when he addressed the nation about the war in Iraq. He said we would "stand down" when the Iraqi military is ready to "stand up." My experience with the new Iraqi military tells me we won't be coming home for a long time if that's the case.

There's more.

Quickie Book/Movie Review

How to Be Idle Tom Hodgkinson

This series of essays thorough which Hogkinson argues that the rigid institutions of modern hyper-capitalism (consumerism, bureaucracy, the corporate workplace) conspire to obstruct our access to the simple pleasures of the truly examined life manages to entertain and annoy in equal measure. On the one hand, Hodgkinson's observations on the nature of work are well stated (if less than earth shattering). The following excerpt captures more or less the gist of the book.

And there are new enemies of leisure today. Hunger and God have been replaced in the consumer age by possessions and status. The advertising industry leads us to believe that life will be improved by the purchase of a product. The purchase of a product requires money. Money requires hard work. Or debt. We go into debt to chase our desires, and then keep working to pay off the debt. It's the modern form of indentured labour.

Throughout Hodgkinson flaunts his erudition by peppering his work with pertinent quotes from, among others, G.K. Chesterton, Samuel Johnson, Lin Yutang, Oscar Wilde, and even Barbara Ehrenreich. All of this gives the book the feel of an extended literary review (and a very entertaining one at that). It also allows it to descend too far into effete snobbery. This is tolerable to a point, but becomes unacceptable when Hodgkinson's self-absorption leads him into outright hypocrisy. Only a few chapters after his screed against the proliferation of caffeine addiction wrought by franchise coffee sellers, Hodgkinson luxuriates in his own nicotine dependency even going so far as to elaborate on his unapologetic engagement in the affectation of rolling one's own cigarettes. Hodgkinson rails against blind participation in societal trends and conspicuous consumption and then merrily goes raving with the trendy set and later buys his own home beer brewing kit. And here we hit upon the intellectual trap one encounters when engaging in this kind of criticism. It is one thing to point out that society is beset with an oppressive combination of banal trivial obsession and vulgar profit grasping. If one attempts, however, to make this point while claiming that one's own banal trivial obsessions and means of profit grasping (Hodgikinson is a successful editor, writer, and accomplished yuppie in his own right) are evidence of one's besting the corrupt system, well that's another thing altogether. By all means, read How To Be Idle, though. It manages to entertain as well as make a few points even if it ultimately defeats its own purpose.

The Devil's Rejects
Rob Zombie follows up on his cult horror hit "House of 1000 Corpses" by sending sending the villains from the first film out on the lam after their lair is raided by a disturbingly zealous sheriff. What follows is more of a demented chase than an actual slasher/horror flick. The gruesome action sequences are shot in a stop/slow motion fashion against a well selected classic rock soundtrack. (Okay, I could have done without "Free Bird." I mean I realize that it provides just the right degree of camp irony, but I just hate having to hear it.) The stylized violence and snappy diologue make this a kind of hillbilly Pulp Fiction. Its greatest weakness comes from the director's inability to choose from what appear to be three different endings written for the film and consequential decision to sloppily combine them resulting in some unnecessary lengthening. You know you have a problem when stuff is exploding and folks are being shot to pieces and nails are being driven into hands and the audience still feels like the thing is dragging on a bit. Still this movie is way funnier than the first one and I don't much regret the loss of my $7.50. Check it out if you need an excuse to continue your idling.

Some Asswipe

Has jammed his/her ratty floppy disk backwards into one of our two remaining functional removable A drives and snuck off leaving me to sit here and fish out the little metal disk clippy deal with a paper clip. Add to this the constant rush of headphone vandals and mouse ball thieves (that's right mouse ball thieves!) and you wonder how this place stays running.

Update: Problem solved. Good 'ol butter knife.

Fun with headlines

Registrar repays money to Jeff
Where's my check?

Jeff high-rise ban may be extended
I'm afraid of heights anyway.

Who's watching?

In New York, could be anybody.

Across Long Island, thousands of regular citizens -- from shop clerks to waiters to landlords and teachers -- are quietly being asked to enlist as foot soldiers in the war on terror through Operation Safeguard.

Interviews and documents show that the unique statewide plan, started last year by the New York State Office of Homeland Security, aims to use local police to contact citizens who are encouraged to identify, report -- and even confront -- possible terrorists.

The authorities are asking Long Islanders to do everything from reporting on diners' conversations to monitoring strangers' Internet use to observing fellow worshipers at religious services to noting when parents withdraw their kids from school.

Once gathered by the local police, contact information from participating businesses and organizations -- names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses -- is forwarded to the Albany-based agency, which uses the data to warn of threats. Tips from Operation Safeguard are forwarded to a Joint Terrorism Task Force made of local, state and federal authorities.

This is getting out of hand. But what can you do? I suppose repealing the PATRIOT Act wouldn't hurt. Here, go sign the petition.

Oh No We Suck Again!

After yesterday's draft, it looks like my Yahoo FFL team (The Fat Guys) is in for a typically crappy year. Here's the lineup: (Quirks: our league inexplicably allows for two starting QBs three defensive players, and some flex WR/TE or WR/RB spots)

Fat Guys 2005
QB: Tom Brady
QB/Literacy Advocate: Aaron Brooks
RB: Deuce McAllister
RB: Clinton Portis
WR: Hines Ward
WR: Lee Evans
TE: Bubba Franks
WR/TE: Isaac Bruce
WR/RB: Cadillac Williams
K: Lawrence Tynes
DEF: New England
LB: Takeo Spikes
DL/LB: Jonathan Vilma
DB: Tony Parrish

Bench: JP Losman, Kevan Barlow, Donte Stallworth, Brandon Lloyd, Justin McCariens, Rex Grossman

This is going to be ugly.

The public being weird again

A man just walked up to me and asked randomly, "That's not your Vespa outside is it?"
It is not.
"Ok, I was just... impressed."

He doesn't seem to be surveying the room for other possible scooter conductors. Why have I been so profiled?

Uh oh

New LSU head football coach Les Miles gives tiger fans a moment of pause with this dubious comment on his level of anticipation for the upcoming season.

"I want to get to games," Miles said. "I want to start playing games with these guys and see how they respond to opponents' colors. But that's a ways away, and I look forward to the practice that leads up to that.

"I can't wait to play football. I can't tell you -- this is as pensive as I've ever been," Miles said later. "I haven't taken the field with this team yet, and I so desperately want to get this done."

(Emphasis mine) This can't be the word he was looking for can it?

Could it be?

Did the former president of COX cable and habitual friend to and enabler of the continued corporate gutting and disneyfication of the culture of New Orleans for the puroposes of generating profits off of the backs of the perpetually demeaned and underpaid hospitality industry wage slaves of the city actually do the right thing for a change?

Don't bet on it. This hotel will be built and it will receive the mayor's blessing.
The ban on new hotels in the French Quarter will be effectively ended and the destruction of the last of what is authentic about this neighborhood will continue.

And it gets stupider and stupider and stupider

My much promised return to regular posting may be delayed a bit further as I muddle through a transition to a new home internet connection. In the meantime, I'll try and peek in from work.. if I get the time (which is in short supply around here these days). If you need something to do in the meantime here are this site's latest reading recommendations.

Planet Simpson: How A Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation Chris Turner
It's more or less what the title says. That is an argument that the last 30 years of pop culture zeitgeist resonate most clearly through the satirical language of this goofy little cartoon. Turner covers a lot of ground and I find myself in agreement with his take on just about everything from punk rock to indie films to rave culture to Ultima to bungee jumping. But then, he's a white male exactly my age so... what are the odds.

The Lost German Slave Girl : The Extraordinary True Story of the Slave Sally Miller and Her Fight for Freedom John Bailey
Nearly novelized story of Sally Muller, a young German immigrant who was separated from her family only to be found years later by a relative horrified to discover that she had become a slave. The legal battle for her freedom reveals a great deal about the complexities of race and slavery in 1840s New Orleans. While the subject is intriguing, the dramatization is a bit much. Bailey admits that he hit upon this project while being nearly bored to death by his research for a much denser work on slave law. He seems to have overcompensated.
Book reviewed by others here.

Bad Blogger's penance Take 3

Ok so I promised to get a bunch of fun stuff up here like yesterday and it's still not up. It's coming, I promise. But for now, just know two things.

1) Tomorrow is my birthday which means I may be too hungover to look at a computer screen for much of the weekend.

2) We have the new Harry Potter at our library right now and you can't have it yet. I personally couldn't give a snitch about Harry Potter but it certainly is fun to lord it over someone who might.

Futile note to public no. 890

Please, for the love of God, stop tugging violently on the locked door which is clearly marked "use other door" and which sports a large red arrow indicating the appropriate door to use. Your repeated assaults threaten to shift the building off its foundation.

OK so we're back on the air.. I think

As usual with the extended hiatus has come a considerable backlog of crap to get to including the latest tenement tales, some booknotes, auto trouble, and a restaurant review. Probably won't get to that stuff until tonight though. In the meantime, this promises to be another busy work day. I'll try and pop in when I can. I miss you blog people, really I do.

Will Update Soon

Still getting my bearings after this morning's wild animal attack. Details to come.