Another dark night in the city. But you get used to it. The moon is rising. As much as I want electricity restored, I'd be even more excited about seeing what the dark city looks like under the full moon.
It's just me and my dog. It reminds me of that movie with Don Johnson, "A Boy and His Dog". If I could train my dog to stand in fuel and food lines, that would rule.
The last week and a half has been quite twisted. Here I am in Metairie, in my house and my old neighborhood, and there's nobody around. The whole city is pitch black. And even during the day after awhile you yearn to see familiar faces. When I was in exile in Baton Rouge, I'd run into people I knew everywhere - it was so bizarre. I was in a Wal Mart in Zachary, Louisiana and saw a friend; I'm in the coffee shop in Baton Rouge and Jonathan Ferrara, art gallery magnate and new owner of Royal Street B&B/R Bar was right behind me. It's even more ironic because I used to do the R-Bar's web site, and when they sold the bar to Mr. Ferrara, he had his own web guy who yanked the business from us. I was pretty upset since we'd done a ton of work for the old owners who were great friends. In an interesting twist, Jonathan asked me to help him get his laptop working in the cyber cafe and I went so far as to set it up so he could route mail through my servers... even though I lost his business many months ago. It makes me realize the casualty-rate of doing business virtually. When he was sitting there struggling to get things working, there was no way I was going to say, "Well, if you were my client, you wouldn't be having these problems..." I think this catastrophe has really helped to soften a lot of the selfish, jaded attitudes all of us have had towards each other.
So while Baton Rouge seems to be the new New Orleans, Metairie is a ghost town. There are just a few of us around and we check in with each other now and then. While I haven't seen any looting first hand, I, like most people brought that paranoia with me into the city after watching television from afar, and I've had my share of encounters with strangers who didn't know whether to share their life story with me, or pull their gun and run me out of the neighborhood.
Today St. Tammany residents were "allowed back into their homes." You gotta love the media. We toured St. Tammany right after the hurricane and nobody stopped us. The same thing for the "forced evacuation" innuendo in Orleans Parish. I'm no lawyer, but I suspect technically, the city can't really drag people from their homes without exposing themselves to a bunch of liability and this is more of that crazy media manipulation. I'm not complaining that much about it. The pseudo-threats they spin in the media probably help keep people out so they can get things done, but the problem is it's the law-abiding people who follow the rules, so the people that end up left in the city are either crazy nutjobs or criminals. I'm slightly skeptical as to whether the wisdom of these media threats are ultimately productive.
At this point, if I were an Orleans Parish resident, I'd be more concerned about rescue workers kicking in the doors and windows to my house and spray-painting graffiti on the doors and walls. As they go "searching" door-to-door for "victims" to rescue, they're basically systematically breaking into every house. You see video of them kicking out windows and beating in doors with sledgehammers, but you don't see any indication of them securing the houses afterwards. If there are any looters, they shouldn't have any problem getting into any house they want now. Keep in mind, while lots of O.P. is underwater, there are other areas, especially those near the river levee that probably didn't get any flooding, but the teams of rescuers from a thousand different areas of the country, will probably cover the entire area. Imagine, if you will, when they finally do decide to let Orleans Parish residents get to their property, that's when the real looting will begin as everyone's homes will already be cracked open. There will be a mad dash to get to your property and protect it as fast as you can.
When you walk outside at night now, there's this lingering waft of death in the air. I can differentiate between the stench of someone's refrigerator, and someone's pet or other living creature, and there's definitely a smell of death in the air. Part of this may also have to do with this huge pipeline they've now built on the eastbound lanes of Airline Highway where they're pumping out flood waters from Orleans parish.
Speaking of someone's refrigerator, this seems to be the new fad. Instead of cleaning out your fridge, you just duct tape it shut and drag it into your front yard. In the Parish there are hundreds of refrigerators and freezers sitting out on the curb.
When you're alone in a dark city, your mind just starts to wander. For the last few nights I've had an overwhelming urge to set up my drum set in my front yard and just launch into a half-hour monster drum solo. Imagine it. Nobody around, no electricity and no other noise than just drums playing. It would be heard for miles. It would be so cool. Who's going to complain? I swear I'm going to do it. If you don't hear from me, it means I've been arrested.. not sure what it would be for, but it would probably be worth it.
Signing off for the night... and going to dig up my Iron Butterfly CD.
- Mike
PS...Interesting Items of Note:
The American Institute of Philantropy has a good article on which charities are worth supporting using their criteria of grading charities based on how efficient the organization is and how much of your money actually goes towards helping people:
http://www.charitywatch.org/hottopics/hurricane_katrina.html
When VP Dick Cheney came to New Orleans, the media picked up on a local who said, "Mr. Cheney Go Fuck Yourself!" That man was Dr. Ben Marble, an ER Physician with a newborn baby who lost everything he owned, and wasn't too happy with the way the administration handled things. For his exercise of free speech he was tracked down by military police, handcuffed and detained.
Details here:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jackson__050909_physician_who_told_o.htm
It's just me and my dog. It reminds me of that movie with Don Johnson, "A Boy and His Dog". If I could train my dog to stand in fuel and food lines, that would rule.
The last week and a half has been quite twisted. Here I am in Metairie, in my house and my old neighborhood, and there's nobody around. The whole city is pitch black. And even during the day after awhile you yearn to see familiar faces. When I was in exile in Baton Rouge, I'd run into people I knew everywhere - it was so bizarre. I was in a Wal Mart in Zachary, Louisiana and saw a friend; I'm in the coffee shop in Baton Rouge and Jonathan Ferrara, art gallery magnate and new owner of Royal Street B&B/R Bar was right behind me. It's even more ironic because I used to do the R-Bar's web site, and when they sold the bar to Mr. Ferrara, he had his own web guy who yanked the business from us. I was pretty upset since we'd done a ton of work for the old owners who were great friends. In an interesting twist, Jonathan asked me to help him get his laptop working in the cyber cafe and I went so far as to set it up so he could route mail through my servers... even though I lost his business many months ago. It makes me realize the casualty-rate of doing business virtually. When he was sitting there struggling to get things working, there was no way I was going to say, "Well, if you were my client, you wouldn't be having these problems..." I think this catastrophe has really helped to soften a lot of the selfish, jaded attitudes all of us have had towards each other.
So while Baton Rouge seems to be the new New Orleans, Metairie is a ghost town. There are just a few of us around and we check in with each other now and then. While I haven't seen any looting first hand, I, like most people brought that paranoia with me into the city after watching television from afar, and I've had my share of encounters with strangers who didn't know whether to share their life story with me, or pull their gun and run me out of the neighborhood.
Today St. Tammany residents were "allowed back into their homes." You gotta love the media. We toured St. Tammany right after the hurricane and nobody stopped us. The same thing for the "forced evacuation" innuendo in Orleans Parish. I'm no lawyer, but I suspect technically, the city can't really drag people from their homes without exposing themselves to a bunch of liability and this is more of that crazy media manipulation. I'm not complaining that much about it. The pseudo-threats they spin in the media probably help keep people out so they can get things done, but the problem is it's the law-abiding people who follow the rules, so the people that end up left in the city are either crazy nutjobs or criminals. I'm slightly skeptical as to whether the wisdom of these media threats are ultimately productive.
At this point, if I were an Orleans Parish resident, I'd be more concerned about rescue workers kicking in the doors and windows to my house and spray-painting graffiti on the doors and walls. As they go "searching" door-to-door for "victims" to rescue, they're basically systematically breaking into every house. You see video of them kicking out windows and beating in doors with sledgehammers, but you don't see any indication of them securing the houses afterwards. If there are any looters, they shouldn't have any problem getting into any house they want now. Keep in mind, while lots of O.P. is underwater, there are other areas, especially those near the river levee that probably didn't get any flooding, but the teams of rescuers from a thousand different areas of the country, will probably cover the entire area. Imagine, if you will, when they finally do decide to let Orleans Parish residents get to their property, that's when the real looting will begin as everyone's homes will already be cracked open. There will be a mad dash to get to your property and protect it as fast as you can.
When you walk outside at night now, there's this lingering waft of death in the air. I can differentiate between the stench of someone's refrigerator, and someone's pet or other living creature, and there's definitely a smell of death in the air. Part of this may also have to do with this huge pipeline they've now built on the eastbound lanes of Airline Highway where they're pumping out flood waters from Orleans parish.
Speaking of someone's refrigerator, this seems to be the new fad. Instead of cleaning out your fridge, you just duct tape it shut and drag it into your front yard. In the Parish there are hundreds of refrigerators and freezers sitting out on the curb.
When you're alone in a dark city, your mind just starts to wander. For the last few nights I've had an overwhelming urge to set up my drum set in my front yard and just launch into a half-hour monster drum solo. Imagine it. Nobody around, no electricity and no other noise than just drums playing. It would be heard for miles. It would be so cool. Who's going to complain? I swear I'm going to do it. If you don't hear from me, it means I've been arrested.. not sure what it would be for, but it would probably be worth it.
Signing off for the night... and going to dig up my Iron Butterfly CD.
- Mike
PS...Interesting Items of Note:
The American Institute of Philantropy has a good article on which charities are worth supporting using their criteria of grading charities based on how efficient the organization is and how much of your money actually goes towards helping people:
http://www.charitywatch.org/hottopics/hurricane_katrina.html
When VP Dick Cheney came to New Orleans, the media picked up on a local who said, "Mr. Cheney Go Fuck Yourself!" That man was Dr. Ben Marble, an ER Physician with a newborn baby who lost everything he owned, and wasn't too happy with the way the administration handled things. For his exercise of free speech he was tracked down by military police, handcuffed and detained.
Details here:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jackson__050909_physician_who_told_o.htm
posted by Wisdom at 8:41 PM
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