Honkings & Other Stories

Just now on Prytania Street a man driving a truck full of Port-A-Potties honked at me. My only question is, I wonder how much play you think you're going to get with a truck full of Port-A-Potties.

Yeah.

I'd like to give props to the St. Lawrence Women's Hockey Team. The Saints are 31-4-2 and will be playing in the NCAA Division I Frozen Four this Friday. The #3 Saints (who I personally believe ought to have been #2 but were the victims of a crappy bit of bracketology which is a moot point now) face #2 Wisconsin in the semifinal. Two of the Saint captains were freshman residents on my floor when I was a CA my senior year... Go girls!

So a really big issue in New Orleans is the upcoming mayoral election. There are a ton of people running, from politial heavyweights to Joe No Teeth From Da Hood. Mike and I saw on TV that a 24-year-old grad student was running and said, "Awesome! We're voting for him!" On examination of his site, however, I have decided that he is a tool. I admit this isn't a highly researched political opinion... but I know some of the people on his site that he's friends with, and they are tools. So he's a tool by association. I don't know who I will actually vote for yet.









Gratuitous Jolee Photo of the Day

Tags: st. lawrence, hockey, new orleans, jolee

Internet Kitty

One of the animal rescue volunteers from the shelter where I adopted Jolee has him featured on her site. (I told you I wasn't making it up that they called him Mr. Bitey!) She also has some great accounts of her Katrina rescue experiences.

Jolee says, "Mrrrrff!" Well, actually he doesn't say anything. He's asleep.

I finally got my car back yesterday. Yes, I've been driving around in a rental for two months. The car looks as good as new, though, which isn't surprising because it WAS new before it got hit. It turned out we got hot water and my car in the same day. Needless to say, it was an exciting day here in the 504.

Tags: cat, jolee, car accident

Ignorance on CNN

SERIOUS FEMINIST RANT
Mike and I were watching Anderson Cooper on CNN last night, when something came on that made me flip out. A female correspondent was doing a segment on the recent deaths that may have been caused by RU-486. The headline on the screen read "ABORTION PILL DEATHS" or something like that, but the reporter said "... two recent deaths from taking the morning after pill." I immediately sat up and was like, "Hello? Which is it?"

Those are two entirely separate drugs. The morning after pill is Plan B (levonorgestrel). It is an emergency contraceptive, NOT an abortion pill and in fact will not work if you are already pregnant. The abortion pill is RU-486 (mifepristone). Since the correspondent stated the WRONG DRUG on air, the only way I knew which one they were actually talking about was seeing the close-up shot of the pill bottle which clearly read "RU-486."

This kind of carelessness has the effect of grievously misinforming the public about an important women's health issue. Conflating these two drugs is NOT OK. This is all we need, some ignorant teenager seeing CNN and thinking it is not safe to go and get emergency contraception. I have taken Plan B, and it is more like a large dose of birth control and NOT NOT NOT the abortion pill. It so safe the FDA is considering making it over-the-counter. I knew what they really meant because I am very familiar with this issue and recognized the name of the drug. Casual viewers might not. This mistake was extremely upsetting to me. It almost makes me think it's not a mistake and part of a huge conspiracy by conservative America to equate birth control with abortion... I mean, geez.

I emailed CNN to that effect today. (But didn't mention the conspiracy.)

/SERIOUS FEMINIST RANT

Tags: feminism, pro-choice, women's health, rant

IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE!

Hark, what is this glorious sight? A truck with a trailer full of hot water heaters parked outside my house! Aaaaahhhhhh! They will be turning off the water for an hour and a half, and then... hot water! After three months, I've almost forgotten that normal people take showers, instead of just putting their head under a freezing cold faucet. Too bad I heated up a bath Little House on the Prairie style yesterday-- I don't even have to shave my legs. But you can be damn well sure I'm getting in and having a totally superfluous shower anyway!


(Jolee reacts in surprise and alarm to the sound of the hot water heater men in the basement. But he knows not the joy of hot water, because he is a cat.)

Tags: new orleans, post-katrina, hot water, jolee

Book Geek Thing

I discovered Library Thing yesterday, and proceeded to waste several happy hours of my afternoon away. It's an online service that allows you to catalogue your books, with little cover pictures and everything.

A couple of people asked, "Yes, but why?" I do not know the potential purpose of this site (apart from being able to put a really cool little bit of javascript in the sidebar of this blog, which pops up random books that I own), but it's still the neatest site ever. I guess it's something that appeals purely to book geeks, aka people who can think of nothing more satisfying and fun than staring at their own bookshelves all day.

Tags: library thing, geekdom, books

Cancel That, We're Going To Have A Rant After All

The U.S. Postal Service. What the fuck?

OK, so I previously noted that in our neighborhood the mail has been coming on a regular basis, which made us lucky compared to a lot of people from New Orleans. Yeah, well... can someone please explain why the mail has gotten WORSE over the last month? I am not making this up. The man came every day like clockwork at 3:30 during January and February. I'm home. He parks the truck on our corner. It didn't come Saturday, nor did it come today. Two people called me this weekend and said they got mail returned, which should not be the case because I left a forwarding address. And if I said, "Guess whose car payment is now late?" and you guessed mine, you'd be right. Walk to a mailbox? Can't! Because they picked them up off all the corners! Today I stuck mail in our slot with a post-it saying to please pick it up (sort of the annoyance of having a slot instead of a box). I was out twice today and could have gone to the post office. But no. For some reason, I trusted that the mailman would come. Yeah, well, that's not going to happen again. I put that mail out there at noon, and when I got back from class at 6:15? Still there. The funny thing is I joked to Mike at three that the mailman wasn't here yet... and he probably wasn't going to come because it was raining.

That joke is so much less funny now.

Irritated. And you know, one of the few pieces of mail I got last week was a postcard from the USPS saying they're back in business and here's their 800 number for feedback. Are they sure they really wanted to distribute those in this city?

Tags: post-katrina, hurricane katrina, rant

And Now, a Nice Interlude

I don't have to work till Wednesday, nor do I have any major school projects this week. This is hopefully going to manifest itself in a couple of good writing days. Mike had a convenient break from the journal this week, which allowed us to do nice things like have dinner at Upperline (I love Upperline; it's this eclectic art-filled Creole restaurant near my house), and go for a long walk through Audubon Park and past some amazing New Orleans houses. Most of you probably know the houses are one of my favorite things about this city, and why I love the Uptown neighborhood the best.

Paid some bills today, and registered the cat's microchip. This is the coolest thing ever, although as my dad remarked, it is rather X-Files. When the people at the shelter took him to the vet, he got a microchip. Then you go online and pay a fee and register it. Name: Jolee. Breed: Himalayan. Markings: Seal point, blue eyes, clipped left ear, broken front tooth. Owner: Me... And then if he gets lost, they just scan the microchip and call me! It makes me sad that if more people had done this, they might not have lost their pets after Katrina. But I am not about to let Jolee lose us like he lost his other people.

Speaking of the X-Files, last night's DVD viewing featured the original appearance of the alien bounty hunter. But we are going to have to stop burning through the episodes so fast because we have been neglecting our Netflix.

Why is it impossible to reminisce about St. Lawrence without a beer?

Seriously. I have tried, but somehow never managed to succeed. I randomly started scrolling through the college stuff on my website, and I found myself laughing out loud. Then I thought, "Damn, what I need is a Blue." But of course, I live in New Orleans, where Blue is not readily available, so I grabbed a nice cold Miller Lite in a can.

Sigh. Sometimes I suspect I go long periods without reading these things or looking at pictures because some part of me knows I'll miss it and refuses to let that feeling bubble up. For instance, I have all my diaries from my St. Lawrence years (put them in my backpack and carried them with me out of Katrina, in fact), but I won't read them. Sometimes I even feel reluctant to talk to my friends because it will make me miss it (and sometimes, it's just geography and how busy we are).

I am just one of those people who truly believes I had the absolute best college experience ever. It's almost hard to describe how hilarious, and fun, and real it was. Blows me away that 2003 was three years ago... Well. Those pages just cracked me up this afternoon. The in jokes of the girls, the crazy nights at the Tick Tock (funny note: Mike's mom went to SLU and saw one of my pictures and said, "Is that place still there?"), the antics of me and Packy... If any of you Larries ever want to come down to New Orleans, you have a place to stay. All of you are welcome. And you're welcome forever.

Tags: st. lawrence, college, memories, SLU

NaNoWriYe

That's right, I've decided that I'm not going to finish my novel unless I go all NaNo on myself. So, henceforth, I will be doing at least 1,000 words a day. I figure, this is a really easy total to enforce. It doesn't take very long. It's just a little chunk. This is Novel Writing Year for me. The reason I feel an urgency to get back to writing every single day is that I've been frustrated lately with how little writing I've done in the last two weeks. I feel as if, in my head, I'm all ready to write, and then the actual sitting down doesn't materialize. I had some projects due for grad school this week, and the training for my job has pretty much been eating my life. Plus it was Mardi Gras. It's also a problem that Mike is so busy-- he's in his last semester of law school and is Editor in Chief of a journal that's trying to play Katrina catch-up by putting out two issues at once. So when he is home, of course I can't write, because I hardly ever see him.

I found myself thinking serious thoughts last night... about writing, about inspiration, about some stories I did in college in particular. Mostly about my weaknesses, one of which is a tendency toward the lack of revision. I am one of those writers whose work has been so self-edited before I let anyone see it, I almost resent it when someone tells me to rewrite. I thought about some things I maybe regret. The characters I was writing then (you can see some of the short stories I'm talking about here) were very close to me, probably too close. On the other hand, I want to bring more of that into my novel; just because it's a science fiction adventure doesn't mean I can't try harder to really, deeply get into my four characters. I also thought about a writer I was working with then, who was the first person to ever rip my work apart and tell me to start over, instead of just handing me an A. I learned that writing is hard and writing is being pushed.

I did finish a flash fiction story (at least, I think it's flash-- it's just under 1,000 words) at the laundromat Sunday night. I'm not sure I want to send it anywhere, because it's kind of sensitive. I don't know the etiquette of how long you should wait before submitting anything Katrina-themed. On the flip side, lots of people may be doing this and editors are already sick of it...

And Asimov's has had one of my stories for two months. Can't they just reject me already so I can get on with it? This is the part of the writing process with which I am not patient enough.

Did I Say No More Cat Pictures?

This is Jolee employing what Mike calls "the Pimp Hand." It's one of his favorite poses when he lurks in wait for us outside the bathroom, we suspect to lay the smack down or something else equally shady. It also shows his mutantly impressive number of toes. See how he has thumb toes! So cute. (The other foot is like that too.) Cats are supposed to have five toes on the front feet, and four on the back, for a grand total of eighteen toes. Jolee is a polydactyl cat. He has seven toes on his front feet. Four are his fingers, and three are his thumbs. He kind of uses the thumbs to sit up on tiptoe, which I haven't managed to get a good shot of. One of these days I'm going to train him to pick stuff up...

See the Jolee album here...

Ten Things You Might Not Know About P.K. New Orleans

1. There are still few traffic lights working. Instead, we have four way stop signs at major intersections, and the mysterious blinking red/blinking yellow. OK, so I get that a yellow is yield. What's a blinking yellow? And if the other street has a stop, then who are we sort-of-yielding for, the idiots who were too dumb to stop? And is making the light change colors that much more expensive than making it blink? Logic has flown out the window in Post-Katrina traffic control.
2. The water pressure is crap. We're lucky to get a drizzle out of the sink. It's part of the reason why NOFD is having such trouble with fires.
3. Picture your favorite race track video game. That's what driving is like here, only the "obstacles" are dumpsters, dead scavenged cars, furniture, debris, and holes in the road.
4. Speaking of holes in the road, I'm not talking about potholes. I'm talking, the BellSouth truck came and dug up a section of the street that's 6 feet across and 4 feet deep and just left it there with a few pathetic orange cones because no one has the money to fix it. These chunks of missing street are all over town.
5. 24 hour groceries are no more. Store hours are still limited here.
6. We have been living here for over two months with no hot water. There are many, many others camping in New Orleans without various utilities.
7. You'd better not get a DWI because lord knows how long you will get lost at central lockup. Traffic court is not functioning, and neither is the courthouse, meaning the justice system here is effectively stalled.
8. Those flooded houses you saw on TV in the Lower 9th Ward? Today it looks exactly the same there as it did in September.
9. Our mayor is a well-intentioned man who probably has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and should really be barred from addressing the national media.
10. In our neighborhood we mostly get mail every day... but this is far, far from the norm. We just lucked out. I've heard tons of stories about Christmas cards just coming.

So, as you can see, it's not over yet!

Tags: hurricane katrina, post-katrina, new orleans, road rage

100th Post and a New Layout!

My apologies if you visited the blog in the middle of my HTML fiddling and found it a mess. This is Still Life With Soup Can's 100th post since I started blogging last July. I thought I would celebrate with a more customized look (since Blogger only has, like, 10 templates after all). Let me know if you like it!

Who's Out There?

My hit counter tells me I get around 15-20 unique visitors here per day. I know most of you are my relatives, maybe some friends, maybe people from SF and writerly sites that I frequent. Who are you? Leave a comment and let me know! You may also tell my cat he is pretty. He isn't opposed to that.

I went over to Latter Library this afternoon to return the first two Harry Potters, which I've had out since last July. They survived TWO collapses of the roof, and somehow managed to stay dry. It sort of felt like my good deed for the day, to bring those back. In fact, you should go to the New Orleans Public Library's site and see just how much they've been through. And if you're one of my bookish friends looking for a great place to make a donation, please consider it. But I don't have any money, so I returned my Harry Potters. It was the least I could do.

In other news, Mike and I are watching The X-Files Season 2 on DVD. This was the season I started watching, when I was in high school, and I am remembering how much I loved the noir feel of that show. I also crack up whenever I see a pile of sunflower seed shells on Mulder's desk, because I happen to have the same fixation. I used to have the poster Mulder has on his wall, the I WANT TO BELIEVE poster with the picture of the UFO... but it got wet in Katrina. I suspect some secretly geeky part of me would find it super cool to hang out in the basement and be a Lone Gunman.

Jolee Says, "Beads! Beads!"

I can't believe it's been five days since I've had time to be on my computer. Training for my job is killing me... 9 hour nights, not getting home till 1:00 AM, and no tips. Plus it's Mardi Gras. We were at the parades all day yesterday. Hopefully next week things will settle down. I feel like my feet will thank me when they do. Anyway, Happy Mardi Gras!

Tags: cat, jolee

The Galaxy's Best Waitgirl

I'm employed again! I start orientation tomorrow at _____ on St. Charles. (Hey, I'm not about to be one of those bloggers who gets fired for talking about work.) Once I finish training, I'll be waitressing 4-10 Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. When I add this to my current schedule of grad school 4-6 Monday, Tuesday, and every other Friday, this means I'm pretty much free all day! The manager at _____ promised me lots of $$$ for few shifts. I hope I don't make as much as I did at my "real" job. Then I'll be really depressed.

This really takes me back to when I was working at Anthony's Lobster House, over two years ago. It was this restaurant near the convention center downtown, where one wall was made entirely of windows overlooking the Mississippi. During the day it was just barges and tankers. But at night the bridge would light up, and you could see the colors in the water, and you could stand there refilling the guests' water glasses and imagine... somewhere else. One night after waitressing, I came home and scribbled in my notebook a few paragraphs about a redheaded waitgirl who has a secret, a waitgirl who works in a place with a view. Only her view wasn't of the lights reflecting on the Mississippi: her view was of the skyway, the flare-lit road I imagined winding above a huge city on another planet, and the stars. And one night this waitgirl took off her apron, let down her hair from its ponytail, said, "Keep the change," and walked out.

Her name was Ari Kloss. And that scene was the beginning of my novel. Well, damn, it's funny where inspiration comes from. I'm going to go write.

Tags: waitressing, writing, dcds

Geekdom = Right Here

Just warning you. Until this fall, I had never played a computer game. Then I got sucked into Knights of the Old Republic, or as we call it, The Game. I played for, like, 30 hours straight. SO MUCH FUN. Really. SO FUN! Like being in Star Wars! I guess I never did the role-playing thing because it made me think of guys in basements. But the writerly part of me loves naming my characters, figuring out who they are, etc. Then I discovered mods, and that opened up a whole new aspect of geekdom. For some reason, I really really like being a Twi'lek in a skanky outfit. I haven't been a guy yet, and I haven't managed to be evil because it makes me feel so awful. But I have been:

Malta Amakiir is my character in Neverwinter Nights, which I'm several hours into. She is a half-elf ranger. She is a chaotic neutral character, which I interpret as a reluctant hero who helps the good guys but isn't above taking on some shady quests for fun and profit. Malta has a direwolf called Nymeria (just like Arya Stark!). Though it lacks the Star Wars factor, this game is pretty cool.



Palyn Nu is my current character in Knights of the Old Republic II. She's a hottie who somehow manages to fight without her boobs falling out of that shirt. Really I just run around in the game watching myself and going, "EEEE I look so cool!" Thanks, pcgamemods.







My current character in KOTOR I, Mariorav Fortuna was supposed to be evil, but I couldn't do it. Sigh. So yeah, she's a Scout/Jedi Guardian. And she's purple. And her midriff-baring robe is pretty cute. I really need to get going on that Dark Side thing, but my party gets so upset with me when I beat up random people and take their credits, I just get depressed.




Arkady Darell (tribute to Asimov) was my first KOTOR II character. She was a paragon of the light. But the game wouldn't let her hook up with Bao-Dur, which was a huge letdown, because he is pretty sexy for an alien guy with horns. Arkady rocked the double-bladed silver lightsaber (which really just looks white.)


Duru Antilles holds a special place in my short gaming experience, because she was the first. No relation to Wedge (I figure Antilles is the Smith of Star Wars), she was a sarcastic Scoundrel who became a Jedi. Duru favored two lightsabers, one blue and one purple. She was such a bad ass. And she saved the galaxy. And it was awesome. I miss you, Duru!
... But this morning, I think I'll be purple for a while.

Tags: geekdom, rpg, kotor

The Parade Must Go On!

I don't think there should be any controversy over whether Mardi Gras should have rolled. It had to. The argument is that if Mardi Gras goes on as usual, people will think everything is OK here. Which it is not, but I got news for the detractors: most of America already thinks that anyway. I know better when I drive down Gentilly on the way to class. And did you know that the cable company here devotes an entire channel to playing music and showing photographs of the 9th Ward and Lakeview 24/7?

But today's floats showed a sense of humor about things, and it's a healthy idea. It makes you forget for a while that you have to dodge giant piles of debris and derelict cars everywhere you drive. I now have a lovely Krewe of Carrollton "Blue Roof Blues 2006" cup. The parades are much shorter than usual, but my usual spot at St. Charles and Milan was crowded enough. Let the parades roll!

Books, Cats, & Valentines

I have been doing a lot of market research lately for my writing. I'm in one of those "ugh" phases where I keep re-structuring my 3/4 finished novel, changing my mind, and moving the scenes back where they were. I am worried that it starts weakly, and as an unpublished writer who will be sending out queries sometime this year, it can't afford to. But I am ready to settle down and do some serious work on it this month. I need to read about writing on the internet less, and actually write more. I have three short stories very close to completion, which just need that final push to get done.

For Valentine's Day dinner Mike and I went to Arnaud's in the quarter. Illustrating the difference between New Orleans and Boston (and in fact most other cities), when there was a mixup and we sat for 15 minutes before being given menus or drinks, the maitre d' came out personally, apologized, and gave us complimentary appetizers. I love just walking around in the quarter, looking at the flower-filled balconies and mysterious courtyards and old shuttered houses. It's nice to know that the oldest part of the city survived mostly unscathed.

I found out UNO will finally be sending my refund check for living expenses this week. However, I'll only get $1,000 and the rest will come in a month. Argh. I am also applying for jobs so hopefully it won't kill me to wait. After all, I need to pay for the car I don't have. (Have been driving a rented Sunfire for two weeks, which is longer than I had the Accent. No word on when repairs will be done, but at least I have not had to pay for any of this.)

I have been in this whirlwind of obsession over the cat in the last four days. I am so glad I took a chance on him, even though he was bitey and unfriendly at the shelter. That is not his personality at all. He was just traumatized. He is very vocal (a nice way of saying loud... YOW YOW YOW) and purry. And I really am trying to refrain from posting cat pictures, but...

We Are Siamese If You Please

We are Siamese if you don't please. Well, part Siamese. Himalayan. I feel like I have a child. Lie down. Wake up. Comfort yowling cat. Back to sleep. Wake up to cat on pillow. YOW. YOW. Pet cat. Back to sleep. YOW YOW. But it was a lot better than Sunday night. I think he needs reassurance. The newest cute (or not) cat behavior: he has taken to following me around the apartment. If I go to the bathroom, he gets off the couch and sits outside the bathroom door. YOW YOW.

But... Progress! He only went under the bed three times today. Once was when I took out the trash (gone for two minutes, instant loss of trust, cat shoots under the bed). Once was when I went to school for two hours (even more egregious betrayal of trust: drive to Metairie and not take the cat!). And also, when the mailman came onto the porch, he growled at him and ran under the bed (guard cat, very useful except for the running under the bed part).

Kitty has informed us he would like to be called Jolee Bindo.

Tags: cat, jolee

Hello Cat Under Bed!

Yesterday I went to the adoption festival at Celebration Station, where the Hurricane Katrina pet rescue operations are wrapping up, and brought home this handsome fellow. He was found outside in January. They trapped him and had to cut off all his pretty fur because it had huge knots. He bit the person who shaved him. They were warning everyone about that, so a lot of people didn't want him. But if someone held me down and shaved me, I'd bite them too! Poor kitty seems pretty traumatized. He kept me up all night. Every 45 minutes he would sit up on the bed and cry until I woke up and petted him (he does purr though). I think he just wanted to check that we were still there.

Now he's under the bed. We've regressed a little bit this morning. Note that this picture is his "good side." From the back he kind of looks like a cross between Mr. Bigglesworth and a poodle.

Tags: cat, hurricane katrina, pet rescue

Senate Hearings On Katrina

Doing some outlining/structural work on my book, while watching the Katrina hearings on C-SPAN for entertainment. Oh, we have blamings, and finger pointings, and convenient "I forgot who I talked to"s. Of course, now it's come out that the White House knew about the levee breach on the first day. "Brownie" was pretty quick to turn on Homeland Security now that he's no longer on their payroll, accusing them of shunting disaster planning to the side to focus on terrorism. Federal officials are stuttering. "Well, we weren't sure of our information," whines one. "We had reports of a broken levee, but on TV I saw people partying in the French Quarter!" Susan Collins (R-Maine) is displaying some appropriately non-partisan snark as head of the committee. (Rightly so, she's a St. Lawrence alumna.) Now they're disagreeing over their chain of command.

You know what I think? I think it's a two hour flight to Baton Rouge, and a one hour drive to New Orleans from there. Shouldn't someone higher up have GOTTEN ON A *@%#ing plane and gone to see for themselves?

The Joy of Education

I think the funniest part of being in grad school for education is the randomness of the coursework. To wit: my final projects in this semester's classes range from a poster, to a binder (pretty clip art required), to a 20-page paper.

I have been spending this week writing and vaguely scanning Craigslist for a part time job. I hope there's something out there that requires pretty clip art, 'cause I am so putting that on my resume.

My Brain Explodes

I just wrote a practice query letter & synopsis for my novel (inspired by enormously helpful fellow gin drinker Miss Snark) which I'm pretty sure are better than the novel itself. It was nice to get the plot summarized in a way that makes it easy to pick out its flaws. I saw several connections that needed to be strengthened, for instance. Now to tighten up the plot till it resembles what I just wrote...

Also, I want to give a shout out to NOLAFugees.com, the voice of satire in P.K. New Orleans. Their take on the Mayor Nagin "Chocolate City" controversy has to be my favorite.

Why People Aren't Authors

You know, before this fall I thought, "I'm a good writer. Lots of people are good writers, much better than the crap that's in print. Yet they aren't published. Why the hell not?" I mean, I have read some horrifically crappy novels. We're talking major publishing house and the sentence structure is embarrassing.

I will tell you why many good writers are not published. It's HARD. My main problem, sifting through my so-far-unfinished novel today, is there's so MUCH of it. And I only have 60,000 words so far, which is very short. I shudder to think what the authors of my favorite 800-page fantasy tomes go through. It's not like a short story. I forget what I've written. I lose track of the timeline. Are we in today, or tomorrow? Hell, maybe this happened last week, I have no idea. Recurring themes? Forget about it. I don't even remember where my characters are. I still have at least five major scenes to write, many more to flesh out, and then comes the editing. And from the research I've done on the submission process, no wonder there aren't many people who do this. It's sort of like hazing.

I wonder if I will get weeded out.

How did this come up? While doing some brain-killing work on my outline, I ran across the following sentence of dialogue: "'And as soon as they pull the records,' added Jesov, 'they'll find out we’ve been using them to get into the shuttleport. They’ll seize the ship, if they haven’t already.'"

Which is a fine sentence were it not for the fact that Jesov was killed in the previous chapter. Oyy.

Tags: writing, dcds, novel

State of the Union: Pretty Shoddy

How big was Hurricane Katrina where you lived? I mean, am I biased in thinking it was one of the major national events of 2005? OK, just because I was kept out of my residence for six weeks because of mandatory evacuation, lost my car, job, health insurance, and stuff, wallowed in limbo and tears for weeks, and was forced to spend all my savings doesn't mean it was that huge for people who didn't live in New Orleans. I accept that. But come on, I am pretty sure lots of people donated money, and Katrina certainly is being covered by the media in pretty much every other American city even five months later.

Why, then, did we get skipped? I mean, and pardon my language, I think a huge WTF is due. For those keeping historical track at home, I am pretty sure the destruction of a major American city has not occurred since 1906. I admit to not having watched Bushie give his shoddy address on the state of his shoddy union, but I read the transcript. And personally, I was baffled. Perhaps shocked would be a better word. The Gulf Coast got 156 words out of 5,300.

But you know why Bush ignored us? I'll tell you what I think. I think we got shafted for two reasons. The first is that the Bush administration knows they dropped the ball on the FEMA/Katrina debacle. "Hey, Brownie ol' buddy, yer doin' a great job!" Feeling embarrassed yet, Bush? Right. So they'd rather pretend the destruction of an American city in a natural disaster didn't happen, because it makes them look bad.

The second reason is that Bush loves simplified, them vs. us, "morally" appealing figures of speech. (Doesn't matter if it's factually inaccurate, it appeals to our good old compassionate hearts, right?) This is the shit he thrives on. Man, is he stumped on Katrina. Because he got away with the War in Iraq garbage for far longer than he should have, by throwing out keywords like "evil" and "barbaric," and junk about "protecting" the country from "terror." But Katrina isn't politically expedient for him for precisely that reason: it was a natural disaster that probably caused "terror" in a lot more American lives than any possible terrorist attack, yet you can't blame Katrina on evil. You can't nail it down into a little constructed package and tell us who to blame.

All apologies to those affected by 9/11, which technically did have a higher death toll. But did it cause the largest American diaspora since the Civil War, the future social effects of which won't be measured for years? It did not. The thing I don't get is that NYC was something like 90% blue during the 2004 election. What I want to know is how on earth Bush managed to garner votes by convincing people in Bumfuck, Kansas that they needed to be protected from "terror" and "evil." Like anyone is ever going to bomb you idiots. Like anyone even visits your town. NYC actually got hit! And even they didn't fall for Bush's rhetoric! And somehow he turns this rhetoric, this 9/11 induced fear, into another term. To get back on point, though, Bush simply can't use what happened to New Orleans to further his own goals. So he leaves it out.

So yeah, where I live is apparently not part of the Union, but Iraq is. Hadn't you heard it's our new colony? Or at least important enough to waste nearly an entire address entitled the "State of the UNION" on. We really care about bringing "freedom" from "evil" to the Middle East. $400 billion to the "war." Less than a quarter of that to the Gulf Coast.

Oh boy. I'm going to wear my MAKE LEVEES NOT WAR shirt every day this week. But I might have to buy two or three more of them, so I can alternate them and not get smelly. Because, oh, did I mention I HAVE NOT HAD A SHOWER IN A MONTH? Because I still have no hot water.

This is America, Mr. Bush. Right here. Excuse me while I go stick my head under a freezing cold faucet.

Tags: bush, hurricane katrina, state of the union, ignorance, political