Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Insensitivity Training

We're turning around in the struggling neighborhood behind Earhart, en route to the movies but detoured by even more construction there, when we come upon a house that has simply collapsed into the street, like some giant applied his sledgehammer or puff puff blew lives down. There is a car parked directly across this divide, only a few feet from the spilled-over house parts, meaning we have to drive right over these splintered remains.

We feel bad about this, but if non-native and, peachier, native vultures have taught me anything, it's that conscience is a waste of time in dealing with disasters and those in their paths.

A few days later, I drive by one of the cleared lots on St. Andrew, two doors down from my pre- and post-K apartment. After: two enterprising young men have set up a mini-golf course on the now invisible remains of burned-down homes and are teeing off, having a grand old time,

chap.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

You got me, America!

I'm walking around town topless begging for beads and drinking hurricanes, carrying stolen stereo equipment, shooting at helicopters, raping babies at the Superdome, where I've piled corpses ten thousand deep, tapdancing in the Quarter for quarters, cloaked in a velvet cape pretending to be a vampire while drinking real blood donated by goth babies and sacrificial Southern virgins, sitting outside Anne Rice's house with binoculars and a crucifix, parroting phrases like "The Big Easy - I live in the Big Easy - le bon temps roulez le bon temps roulez le bon temps roulez," awash in a sea of fleur de lis, sniffing jasmine and dressing for dinner, getting drunk all day, smoking cigars behind beards in neon-lit daiquiri shops, having my palms read by veiled gypsies in dingy backrooms, jammin out to Jimmy Buffet and airport jazz, eating at Emeril's, sticking pins through dolls, escaping

along the Mississippi.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Nevermind

Cingular customer service rep:

"This is Katrina. How can I help you?"

Click.