Ablaze in This Haze

A Country's Priorities, A City's Priorities (Take 1,200)

2012-02-09T19:22:00.006-05:00

It's a four-step shuffle, keep it movin

Watching footage from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's version of an uplifting speech, one that involves pratting on about "the energies of New Yorkers" as if she's talking to, or is that about?, eight year olds, just gave me a cramp.

Meanwhile, the city is planning to close 33 schools today, only three of which are in Manhattan, surprise. So, soon there may be no more Flushing High School, where my grandfather went decades ago; forget about these kids today, though, right? They’re all just a bunch of criminals. Or will be.

Must build more prisons.

Charter schools!

Money.

NYPD

2012-02-07T12:50:00.003-05:00

NYPD. Recent past-times include:

a gang beating of an unarmed, not white 19 year old who was on the ground already

lying about it later, though it was caught on film

the execution of an unarmed not white 18 year old in his bathroom in front of his not white grandmother, whose house they broke into

lying about it later

holding this grandmother against her will at the precinct for 7 hours, i.e., witness intimidation

lying about it later

planting drugs on multiple innocent "suspects" then crying on the witness stand to avoid jail time

getting caught with a massive stash of photos showing children under 16 performing sexual acts on one another, after running a "youth sports program" for years

chaining a transgender woman up in a precinct and mocking her for 28 hours, via comments like "Faggot" and "So you like to suck dick?" after arresting her for "illegally using her father's fare card"

-- and that's just this year.

Pretty scary and even scarier to me is how many white people are perfectly fine with these behaviors -- most especially with blaming the victim, after he is vilified and then, having been vilified, beaten or murdered. I mean, let's nuke Iran. Kill! Violence! Kill! America, we're the best and most just-est! If you don't agree, well, you're mean!

Already

2012-01-11T14:10:00.002-05:00

I'm feeling a disturbance in the force...bet this guy's one of those real know-it-alls, too.

That Old Gag, Again.

2012-01-07T12:22:00.017-05:00

It's always funny to me, and at times annoying, the way white men can take themselves so seriously, like they're [supposed to be] the arbiters of all opinions and if they disagree with yours, well, it's not a disagreement or an acceptable difference of taste, as you or I might be inclined to view it, but a chance for you or I--"you" or "I" often meaning: person with lady parts--to learn the correct way to think. I cannot emphasize how little interest I have left in this phenomenon after half a lifetime.

Enough already.

Who?

2012-01-06T20:05:00.005-05:00

Maybe I just need to cry it out in California, who knows

Curfew

2012-01-06T07:18:00.068-05:00

I can feel the constant low thrum of Bloomberg's army, boots

Farther away I can feel a sense, however hazy, of the pain and exhaustion of being a black teenage boy in New Orleans. Even though I know this sense is just a hint of a fraction of an impression of a whiff of how it must be, it feels rock-bottom bad just identifying the specific negative assumptions one must be subject to and where these specific negative assumptions have the potential to lead, with the reality resembling a war. Imagine. Talking to black teenage boys like they're people. Asking them to set down their guns--oh, right, they don't all have guns. In fact, most don't. That's not naive; it's reality. Treating all black teenage boys like they are criminals is racist. I don't know how else to explain it to those who don't get that. And it's not generally helpful to explain why racism is deplorable to people that make it known they have contempt for a certain race. It's more about not caring than not knowing. Also:

There are those who enjoy their hatreds

their ability to look down their noses at X group, the clear cause of all life's problems. If only they could be quieted down some, or perhaps silenced altogether. I couldn't even hear the people arrested for yelling earlier this week at Grand Central Station. The cops acted like they were plotting a raid more than just doing crowd control of a small protest they had already cordoned off, standing off to the side mugging under helmets as they were. This act is ridiculous. How can armed people be this afraid of the unarmed and call themselves rational? It's an act. Or a sport, fun for them, an opportunity to deploy gadgets on people. Otherwise: Do they not understand they are supposed to set a positive professional tone--does that sound naive? Should it? Do they not understand they are supposed to set a positive professional tone like the courteous, clear--no Brooklyn Bridge-type booby traps--and therefore respectful police man who oversaw the protest march to Governor Fracking? Please Say It Ain't So, Andy's office. It was all fine that day. It can all be fine. We don't have to aim guns at lone 8th graders' heads in Texas and I don't care if they are holding Uzis, let alone pellet guns; I'd sooner shoot myself than do that, a choice that is held up as the only one far too often in our oh-so-normal society [kill/be killed]. And where did the tasers and pepper sprays go all of a sudden?

Almost makes you nostalgic.

Nice, Huh?

2011-12-29T18:47:00.003-05:00

You know why she didn't want to see me anymore?

She said that I was high maintenance. And this is after all the time and all the money and all the fucking Prozac and all the cocksucking, motherfucking dream interpretations. And she said she didn't want to prop me up. And this from a broad that walks around on crutches half the time.

The Accidental Terrorist

2011-12-20T16:45:00.037-05:00

A 2007 ditty re-posted for my friend and fellow 718-er Maria, who is, at this very moment, lost driving in Manhattan

News of The Weird, Your Daily Loser: "If you were driving an 18-wheeler through the Lincoln Tunnel, and it was 6 inches too high so that on first contact the roof of your trailer started ripping and peeling off and dragging on your speed, how long would it take you to realize something was wrong?

Answer, by Gilberto Cantu (4-yr driver with a ‘spotless safety record’): maybe not until he got home. That is, he ignored many sound and flash warnings before the Tunnel, and inside the Tunnel, and seemed not to understand why he was stopped a mile and a half later when his nearly topless load emerged in New York City."

The above anecdote makes me feel better about my own, ah, mishap entering the Lincoln Tunnel and New York again after three days on the road in my 10-foot U-haul truck, which carried me, my cat Al and all of my belongings on a trip that was pretty relaxing, aside from the sobbing I did in the dark rain outside Atlanta my first night gone from New Orleans, the only place I’d planned to live forever. My departure, though, was for good and for real. Now it was back to wanting to live everywhere and nowhere: the nomad’s lot.

When I was telling her my travel plans, my mother kept mentioning that my truck might be too tall to fit under some overpasses, something I brushed off at the time as parental neurosis, but which, courtesy of road burn, actually caused me to duck inside said truck when I went under a series of these overpasses in New Jersey.

I didn't mean to make that wrong turn after the Lincoln Tunnel when I was trying to get on the Long Island Expressway; damn construction, damn lack of signs to go with the crooked cone lines. I had never--by very conscious choice--driven in Manhattan until that day, when I found myself on 34th across from Penn Station at 5 p.m., Tuesday in what suddenly struck me as a real monstrosity of a vehicle.

I also didn't mean to get back on the expressway going the wrong way--or to blow that NYPD security checkpoint, also unlabeled. I did stop--several times--at the sight of a handful of cops in the vicinity, but this seemed to make them angry; they kept waving me, I thought, forward, gesturing toward the overpass up the road from ten feet away. How else would one interrupt an arm and hand waving forward?--aka "go" in any other context. And how long was I supposed to sit there at the side of the jacked up road waiting for them to approach, when my being there appeared to infuriate them?

They were waiting for me on the other side of the unmarked construction zone when I again emerged unscathed from an overpass, "they" being two female cops who instantly began screaming at me, making me wonder if the ol’ truck was leaking gas or flames or blood. When I had an opening, I pulled over as directed by much clearer side-motioning, at which point I was further berated because I had "almost hit" the "poor guy" behind me.

Nope. But if I had met their panic with panic and gone careening over in my boxy jalopy, I would have. I thought law and order necessitated calm? Or, as I asked my not-so-welcoming welcome wagon, "Why would you scream at me to pull over immediately in this exact spot if I was in such close proximity to hitting another driver?” If they're this afraid of...what? me...a truck? post-9/11, well, that begs the question of who and what doesn't instill such fear.

As for yours truly, it seems I'd been the subject of a walkie talkie feed with their cohorts on the other side of the dreaded overpass and thus deemed dangerous in advance--what a relief for them that I wouldn't be able to get by without another [completely unwitting] fight.

A few minutes later, I'm opening the back of my highly suspect vehicle in the wake of my highly suspect behavior. One of the two female officers, bearing a striking resemblance to Deputy Raineesha Williams on "Reno 911!," is offering helpful and loud suggestions on how to unlock the padlock I have purchased, locked and unlocked for three days running.

"Do you have a grill?" she demands.

The road burn has won out. I visualize iron bars, kind of like the ones guarding homes in crime-compromised areas.

"A what?"

"A gas grill!"

"I'm gonna say...no."

A few minutes later, when I'm going the wrong way courtesy of my second set of erroneous directions from a uniformed official, I know I may have to spend the night--and perhaps the rest of my life--in New Jersey because there's no way I'm going through that again.

I wing onto Northern Blvd., away from any interstate or bridge, knowing this should take me into and--eventually--through Queens to Long Island. I stop at a gas station to double-check my theory. True to form, the gas station cashier knows nothing of local geography, including street names. A man on line offers his help, going so far as to wait for me to pump my gas so I can follow him to a purported shortcut back to the LIE, one that bypasses checkpoints, officers, bridges.

He gives me detailed descriptions of the two blocks I'll travel once he's turned off toward his own home and for the first time back I relax, relieved, remembering what great, thorough directions his caliber of New Yorkers give. He tells me I'll have to pass a graveyard, then get on the highway.

"No worries; I'm used to graveyards."

I follow him the four blocks, he turns, gesturing, giving me the go-ahead, and I travel under the overpass, not ducking this time, past the large police garage on the left and then the elevated graveyard on the right, with its long lawns, jutting tombstones, below-ground tombs, majestic

in its own right.

What Are They, Hysterical?

2011-12-16T16:16:00.082-05:00

The angry guy barges into the UPS-type store as I'm making my credit card payment for some printouts. There's no one else in the store and the main counter is ten feet from the credit card machine. He strides over until he is almost on top of me, interrupting my conversation with the hot gentleman behind the counter and demanding the package he says he just got a call about. Yeah, man; my phone's been ringing.

The gentleman goes to look for it right away, but that's not good enough: angry guy is immediately out with "You just called me. It's here." A few seconds later he is shouting the whole package number in addition to his last name, then saying, "How hard is this?" He is standing so close to me that if I step back, I'll step on him.

Angry guy answers his own question, angry: "It's not hard, if you know how to read the alphabet."

About 30 seconds have elapsed since he made his initial demand. Five more seconds pass and he starts to dish out another disparagement.

"Is it really that bad having to wait a few seconds?"

"What!"

"Is it really so bad to have to wait a few seconds?"

"I wasn't talking to you. Mind your own--"

"You are right on top of me."

"I wasn't talking to you! I-"

"You are right on top of me. I don't want to listen to this."

"I wasn't talking to you!"

"Fine. I wasn't talking to you either."

He backs up, morphing another level up the angry-odometer to outraged guy, and takes his box from the clerk.

On the way out, he tells me from across the store: "Shut the fuck up."

"You have a nice holiday. I'll shut the fuck up, got it."

I neglect to thank him for pussy blocking me.

Later, an actual UPS guy raps on my door. I answer and he gestures downward toward the floor, where two UPS envelopes sit.

"There you go," he says, pausing for a moment in front of me. He's very attractive.

Yet, I'm kind of shocked to realize he has no intention of picking up the envelopes he's tossed down in front of my door. I've never had a delivery guy do that. Actually, I've never had a delivery guy in for coffee, with maybe a little cream, maybe a little sugar, and that's always seemed like a fun idea. But we're off to a bad start here with this envelope situation.

We look at each other for another long moment. He's very attractive is again my only thought (ignoring the envelope stalemate). Before I can say anything, he is muttering something about not needing to sign and taking off, halfway down the stairs before I have a chance to reply or inquire.

Where are all these men in New York City always rushing off to, anyway?

"Thanks," I say, picking my delivery up off of the ground.

Volunteering as an Adolescent

2011-12-12T20:26:00.017-05:00

"Hold the banner straight -- Kelly, tell your friend to hold the banner straight!"

Faye, elderly president of the Bohemia Historic Society, was yelling at me again.

The opportunity to accompany my friend on this volunteer gig struck me as just too bizarre to refuse, an urge that can sometimes result in awkward situations.

La la, la la la

went the song strangling out from the tinny speakers of a car idling behind us in the parade. That was all there was to it: five "la"s, backed by Scandinavian-type music, that would remain lodged in your head. And our banner was heavier than it looked. Faye must have been a cheerleader in high school -- but angry, not easy.

"Kelly, hold it lower on your side now!"

La la, la la la

"How are people going to enjoy a parade when all they can hear is her yelling?"

La la, la la la

"Stop making me laugh!"

Faye never did laugh.

The Bohemia Historic Society also held a Chinese auction, though there were no Chinese people to be found anywhere in the vicinity.

It was hosted by a man who looked just like Don Rickles and his general aura was that of a wound Long Island man who was also a mai tai-loving 1950s beach boy, and he blinked like crazy, as in all the time. I started doing it, too, and felt exhausted after only a minute.

I knew that possessing enough energy to send your lashes fluttering as a permanent tic would be dangerous, but all apprehension about the merits of this event and its denizens went out the window when I won a toaster -- that turned out to be broken.

Weird

2011-11-29T18:35:00.016-05:00

I started out the work week in sort of a weird way and now it's been a weird Tuesday, damn it, the weirdness is spreading.

I went to take my garbage and recyclables out Monday morning, all dressed and fresh and caffeinated like a good self-employed person, not some mental patient working and shuffling at home in pajamas, unfit for public consumption, which is what a lot of people remark on when I mention I'm not office bound: "Oh, you work from home? You get to work in your pajamas."

After years of hearing, and having to refute, this observation, I can't help but wonder if they're picturing me in pajamas and if so, what kind? What kind? I want to know. Then I want them to tell me if I was an animal what kind of animal I'd be.

When I was coming back up the stairs after dropping off my trash, I found myself at eye level with a tall ten-year-old girl wearing a cool headband and vomiting on the sidewalk, a weird thing to walk up towards.

A woman was standing off to the side sort of glaring at this girl, a not very sympathetic mother, if that's who she was, and the porter came out from the lobby of the building to gape at her.

I didn't find it to be a horrifying vision, just weird from my original vantage point. She's a kid. She got sick. Help her or stop staring.

Haven't they ever thrown up before? Isn't it somehow crossing from voyeuristic to creepy to gape at a child that way? And where are their Iphones?

Weird.

On: Turn Phone Off

2011-11-28T11:29:00.049-05:00

It's happening more and more: people using their phones as walkie talkies in public, not only on the subway, it turns out, but also in the lobby of my building this morning. So now we're all privy to not just one side of the conversation, but both, often at loud volumes. Or we all inherit an unwanted dj blasting crap music, the only kind that ever seems to be blasted out of these shiny tinny devices, ain't it a shame?

What makes people okay with doing something they must, on some level, realize is disturbing everyone around them -- something with no higher purpose, other than to disengage from others -- meanwhile involving them all the more? Yet what's considered rude is to say anything about it, like "Do we all have to listen to that?"

I will admit to heckling a {terrible} harmonica player with that line on the Long Island Railroad, after ten long minutes of it, to get him to stop. He did -- after I used the line three times, hidden several rows back from faux blues man, behind those tall LIRR seats that can be just ideal for blaming the person in front of you for any undesirable comments you utter. Also, I was hungover.

Wouldn't you know it, though? Right after he gave it a rest, one of those portable music players erupted from the guy right across from him, who clearly heard negative feedback but went ahead and defied some harpy's evil bid to censor him anyway. A real freedom rider. I didn't have the stamina for another heckle in the key of both polite and bitchy, by then.

There's something sad and infantile to me about insisting on playing your music or playing walkie talkie in public transit spaces. In a park, I'm all for it. On the street? That's what the street was made for. It makes more sense to me in the subway, but I find it offensive, unlike musicians or random speakers or even inquisitive freaks. If human oddity makes you uncomfortable, well, it used to be that I could genuinely say you're living in the wrong place, but now that's less and less true thanks to Lord Toad and his smug, vapid, mean little apostles. The Machines.

Yes, new millennium, crap sound products in confined transportation spaces piss me off. And then I can't help but wonder what's next: airplane walkie talkie? Whereas I'd laugh if someone got up and starting singing on a plane, particularly if they were drunk, if someone started with that crap walkie talkie phone sound, that high-pitched bleep over and over, I'd be annoyed, partly because that sound makes my leg want to kick out and partly because it's putting shit that's not there over the people who are -- and are stuck there, unless they opt out of the car in motion by way of the subway door, which gives me the creeps. (What if I tripped?) (I've watched too many strange train films.) At any rate, I still think it's much harder to resist the urge to be loud when you're inebriated, or even just excited, than it is to simply put some damn headphones on.

Bleep. Bleep. Bleeeeeeeep. Sweet Jesus! Did their mommies and daddies not explain to them that they are not the center of the universe, that manners matter? People scoff at that last point as some sort of archaic, passed-over notion, thereby ensuring etiquette's continued irrelevance, ain't it a shame? And tsk, look how far we've fallen from the reign of those guys who would walk around with boom boxes standing on their shoulders. Their music was gooood. I hope the break-dance kids can still save us.

Or will we all soon be engaged in constant noise wars, performing but not performers, out in public like we're at home in private, clutching our respective devices and activating them in the "me me me only" battles? If I cover my eyes with both hands, will the sounds go away? Headphones...remember those, the main way people used to listen to music in public just five minutes ago?

Where's my harmonica!

Say

2011-11-15T19:54:00.085-05:00

They say I'm tiresome. I say they take too many pills.

They do things like settle down, i.e. die from the neck up, pelvis down, that just don't sound pleasant.

Their favorite monarchs are too busy hyperventilating behind bizarre guards hyperventilating behind visor-shield masks to be reasoned with, please call back and, in the meantime, they'll beat you down.

Then, your sideline intellectual friends will ask you questions, questions that just don’t seem to get to the right people, questions that can sound like questions not of what you say but of you, questions? that insinuate you have to justify your stance, as if compassion, logic, peace, justice, anger at lack of, is a stance.

They will ask you about things you have experienced & they have not like they're testing you for signs you know what happened, i.e. demanding you tell a tale that matches their preferred vision.

They will continue to make like it's acceptable to move to Manhattan from some faraway dusty place & dismiss people who have worked in the city for decades as "bridge and tunnel." Hey look, they're here to get famous; it's for others to build, maintain & defend.

They will talk as if witnessing violence is the equivalent of reading about witnessing violence & know what could have been done to prevent it (if only they'd been there).

Will bullshit post-2005 as if living in New Orleans for years is the mere equivalent of what they've read or felt about it on five or no visits, on their celebrity television sojourns; reality is less valid to them, of course, than the tales they want to push.

And push they will, sometimes with sharp hard sticks
wielded by furious men being attacked with fury
by no one
but their own urges against the unarmored.

Next, they say nothing. Their silence screams.

On: Charades

2011-11-10T19:43:00.003-05:00

People berating college graduates, or students, for taking out loans under the guise of how it's irresponsible to incur that much debt, as if it's not irresponsible to charge that much tuition.

On: Easing Public Speaking Jitters

2011-11-09T22:22:00.014-05:00

Subhead: Things I Told Myself Tonight That Are Not Actually Helpful

At least it won't be at a funeral this time.

Hang loose.

Psych!

Remember that time the friend you became more than friends with, garbling the friendship until it was time to leave for grad school, showed up at your first class of the semester years later and you taught it with him there staring at you, both of course realizing you were in the wrong more than him? Adjuncts' names often aren't listed in the class schedule, so it might just have been wacky karma that he picked that class to try & enroll in. The part where he had to talk about himself was fun, once the suspense of whether he was going to say something confrontational had diminished. He didn't. Then it turned out the person in charge of these things said there wasn't room for him there. And he won't be there tomorrow. Yeah.

I better have a desk. I'll have a desk. A podium's okay. Not another stage though, please.

Psych!

I wonder if my voice will do that weird thing.

What if I don't feel like talking?

Or I might really start having fun, i.e., start rambling, a mixed bag.

Psych!

One of the other guest speaker people works for MTV, peh modern MTV. I'm not digital, I'm Billy Idol MTV. I'm still picturing transparencies you use hard copies with -- just project the damn printout, was that so bad?

I wish I was one of those people who are super enamored with talking about themselves in public instead of feeling like kind of an asshole for it...

Psych!

On: Healthcare.

2011-10-30T23:29:00.005-05:00

One thing you learn when you have to pick your spots healthcare-wise is what your priorities are.

Mine boil down to pussy, eyes, psyche.

I don't know if that's the right order. But these, I've learned through those years of not having coverage, are the areas I pay out of pocket for.

Audition

2011-10-13T23:02:00.022-05:00

Maybe I'm BPXQ.
They'll tell me to take pills.
Young men beat old men.
Old men were asking for it.

BPXQ, how will it feel to get treated?
Will I forget to see, will I
beat old women?
Will they be asking for it?

Scared to Skip & Step in Case You Trip & Fall

2011-10-13T13:02:00.095-05:00

And is that any way to live, my fellow Generation X'ers?

I understand that in America, many people in their 30s still tend to strive for status quo trappings -- office gig, wedding, house, offspring, sense of superiority/justification to look down nose at all others, divorce, rinse?, repeat -- to prove they are real adults and all, despite current economic and political realities. "If it's broken, force it, don't fix it" could be this societal subset's motto. I find the striving to be more pronounced, more desperate in my generational peers because, let's face it, we're getting a little long in the tooth.

So, judging by what I hear and see more and more of as that clock god ticks, those of us who have not done so should hurry to close ourselves off already, to grab our family values before it's too late, to denounce the unemployed, the single, the poor, the married people who still care about issues larger than themselves, to close the door on the wider world still experienced by some of us as a vast, beautiful, chaotic, complicated universe, leaving all that noise to the skeleton crew of idealists that remains: those, married or single, who have either not succeeded in securing these trappings or are too screwed up to know they've missed the boat, the apparent weirdos whose primary interests do not include parading around in virgin gowns, boasting about how happy they are on Facebook or popping 'em out sans political engagement in a country with an abysmal education and healthcare system. Oops:

There I go again!

Where was I? Lost, I suppose. Because listening to my chronological counterparts' reactions to the Occupy Wall Street movement, offered largely via social media, has felt pretty alienating and their reactions have also been standing out as ah, unique against those of other age groups.

For the most part regarding this movement, and it is a movement, no matter how often sideline whining and police beat downs go down, I've observed Generation X either:

A. Remain dead silent

B. Complain like Archie Bunker about people breaking the rules in exercising their democratic right to protest -- seeming to have forgotten that human beings matter more than dictates handed down by often illegally elected daddies, let alone about the civil disobedience they themselves have benefited from -- or

C. Take their talking points from comparatively wealthy transcribers and television talkers, snarling that the problems being protested by just about everyone but them are "not clear enough."

A commenter on a New York Times article about one of the protests, with coverage offered only weeks after they began and exuding that creeping disdainful tone, observed that many of the people making these critiques seemed to be taking the attitude that these actions are to be judged the way one would judge a material object, prompting a like/dislike response and little else. I watch this manifest as a one-way circuit, where one can be just like his or her favorite monarch: bring nothing to the table except the desire turned demand to be served, to be satisfied based on personal preference by people whose job it is to uh, do stuff, remaining seated and immobile at all times. Case in point re: bringing nothing to the table was the chick in her 30s who barged through the middle of the October 5 protest march on Wall Street, angrily knocking aside the woman in her 50s from Long Island I had been talking to: a me-only imperative. This anger seems rooted in disgust that anyone still even cares at all and, worse yet, that anyone believes they can change anything at all. Meanwhile, these people, these dern radicals, have the nerve to be out on a public street in a large group during one's commute home to one's couch, one's almighty television. This online grousing did seem to reflect an actual reality: Mirroring my dating life these past few years, there were few 30somethings of note to be found at the New York protest I attended. What was heartening was how many other people of every other age group attended, making this Generation X segment's absence all the more striking.

You know, Kurt Cobain was not being literal with his "Here we are now, entertain us" call; he was commenting on apathy. Did that need to be spelled out? Does everything? Is the rampant social injustice, economic inequity and subsequent deterioration not plain by now? Does it really need to be proven -- to people desperate to maintain their illusive status quo lives, who will not believe it anyway, who will squeal and throw food at you for even bothering to try at all?

I don't think so.

An Addition
Visual Aid for the 30s A.B. Phenomenon: Whoa, this is just like me, an apparent Modern-Day Meat-Head, with the last guy I dated, a self-labeled "progressive" who announced one night, after many insinuations of such, that my "views" were "wrong" (blog strikes again), including the ones I hold about Lord Toad, his dishonorable Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Then the snarling started and so I opted to rock a doob, like Mikey's admitted to but never been imprisoned for unlike countless young black and brown men, & some Tom Petty solo, which felt right, not wrong.

Signs, Times

2011-10-05T22:42:00.012-05:00

Lust

2011-08-01T23:59:00.007-05:00

makes the edges blurry

the trail of that cab taking you away

lights that tease-retreat

a photo of someone you can no longer

touch, the chance

for a future keeps your present taut.

And Now for a Word From the Inner Voice

2011-08-01T14:19:00.011-05:00

The Inner Voice: Dialoguing/Getting ready Saturday night

He started out last night's conversation telling you how he sabotages relationships. Then, he set about sabotaging yours. Do you think he's done masturbating aloud yet? Either way, it's time to go dancing.

I think you should wear heels tonight.
I think you should bite me.

The Inner Voice: Subway observances, Saturday night

If only this guy weren't so smug about how good looking he is. Smug enough to wear hot pink shoelaces with his tattoo sleeves. Hate.

Why is this MTA worker screaming at us through the megaphone? Scream or megaphone, buddy: pick one. Can't understand you either way. Consider your duty to the company discharged.

These Brits are so getting off at Union Square.

The Inner Voice, Street ramblings, Saturday night

Yes, I am putting another coat of lipstick on and walking through your volley of stares and heckles, I shall not want.

My friend who considers this part of this neighborhood dodgy should see some of the other places I've frequented. Inner zen maintenance boulevard.

Does this guy really think I'm under 21, really?

Advice?

2011-06-27T14:13:00.001-05:00

Dear Counsel, My name is Elizabeth Nakamura. I am writing your firm regarding enforcement of divorce settlement with my ex husband who resides in your jurisdiction. If you are in the position to represent me, kindly advice.

Your's truly,
Elizabeth Nakamura.

Give me all your money!
I'll even throw in an edit.

Beware: Booth Diva

2011-06-22T17:28:00.002-05:00

Coney Island, Brooklyn

What I Had to Say: Talk About Perverted

2011-06-13T13:23:00.006-05:00

Based on the results of a Marist College poll published by NY1, the majority of voters in Representative Anthony Weiner's district want him to remain in office. In a real democracy, that would be the end of the discussion. Yet the witch hunt continues. Speak on it here, assuming Salem isn't your societal ideal.

My comments: In the absence of illegal conduct, it is unpatriotic, undemocratic, and frankly outrageous for ANYONE but a representative's constituents to say he or she should leave office, a decision that is the province of voters -- remember? It is especially outrageous in this instance because the majority of voters in Representative Weiner's district want him to remain in office. How dare you declare yourself more important than the will of the people. I am sick of your hypocrisy and insanity, Pelosi, Boehner, et al. I also don't believe Representative Lee from upstate New York should have had to resign in the absence of illegal behavior this past February. Either way, and despite all your bloviating, you were not appointed, and therefore have no right, to judge people's personal, sexual lives this way or to ruin them because they don't conduct their personal, sexual lives in the same way as you.* Would your emails and photos stand up to this level of scrutiny? Given your total lack of character in repeatedly bringing pain to the middle and working class, the answer to that question is an emphatic no. And Democrats, this is exactly why I am a member of Bernie Sanders' Independent party. Please stop dragging my country, and one of the few representatives to advocate healthcare not just for YOU but for the people, through the mud. How do you live with yourselves, given that, aided by your mainstream media flunkies, you are the bringers of genocide, both domestically and internationally? Talk about perverted. Wake up!

*Hmm, or maybe they do.

The Land Is Dry

2011-06-06T22:12:00.019-05:00

And baby, I am so thirsty.

And Americans are so judgmental of one another, sheesh. So many pursed lips, cries of disapproval, as if they matter, over things that don't even involve them or pertain to the public domain. Silly hens. We've all done things we're embarrassed about, or that are even "wrong," in our personal lives, right? I know I have. And I'm not referring to sex, something a lot of you people seem to have a fucked up view of, if you don't mind my saying. If you do, why is that, do you think? Do you expect everyone to adhere to the personal guidelines you set for yourself, in your personal life? I don't because it's not realistic. Does that make me a nihilist? Haven't you ever wanted someone, something that was bad for you? Have you faced that? Have you resisted? Haven't you ever had someone really good, even once? I only pose that last one because your current cries come off limp, and register deprived.

The Land Is Dry.

Priced Out

2011-05-18T22:50:00.005-05:00

Hey, Baby

2011-05-11T12:39:00.000-05:00

Wanna pet my alligator?

Straining to Be More Mainstream

2011-05-08T20:01:00.011-05:00

Now now, gentle reader, just because I'm good with being single, and do not want a wedding beyond a so-minimalist-you-can't-hardly-see it ceremony, does not mean I don't want to have an I'm married party at some point that does not require pageantry of any kind. Unless I go disco or trailer. Then all the guests would be required to either wear roller skates or low-riding hemlines.

So I'm practicing being more normal by fantasizing about a wedding. As you might notice, this is coming off a little forced for me, except the part about the outfit I'd be wearing: a very hip, yet old-fashioned ivory suit with an A-line skirt & some smart heels.

Did I mention I used to bite on my Barbies' feet as a child? And, okay, just the other day, but I've been a little stressed, don't judge.

Thangs I Hear, Ignore, Utter, Roll My Eyes @ Re: Facebook

2011-05-08T19:43:00.006-05:00

I can't believe she deleted me, I can't see his photos, I'm tired of hearing about, Some people really need to learn that, Rejecting a friend request is not the way to tell a person you're angry, Anyone who thinks that is, I'm leaving, Everyone who lives here is, If you don't like this show, you're, I'm tracking those profile visits, I have a right to my opinion though I am unfamiliar with the topic, I can't stand when certain people, I'm back, Don't you read this, I'm better since, I have the best blank in the world, If you care about this you'll repost this, Let's invite everyone but, Why is he using the internet to stalk me?, I hate this website, Thank you all, You missed out, I just got sick of this so I said this and this is right -- I said it, I'm here with them, Where are you?

Keep It Unreal

2011-05-07T11:10:00.081-05:00

Something about turning 30, perhaps the taking stock that accompanies milestone birthdays, freed me somehow; I've felt less beholden to expections, shoulds and other people's opinions than I did during my last decade. Wanda Sykes defined this post-30 shift as "I don't give a fuck." And it appears to be true: I feel better. Yet

the implication I keep hearing is that, being almost 35 and a woman, my life is in fact over, oop: I have failed to find a husband, to have, or want, a wedding, to birth babies or to buy a home.

I've been aware of certain overarching...judgments for some time, but am just now starting to get true-irritated by them, them being accumulated comments, insinuations and inquiries from voices in life, in media, in stereo. For instance, I have heard the phrase "I'm a real adult now" upon congratulating various friends and cohorts on their home purchases or engagements enough times to wonder if, in tandem, I am insulting myself, as by this definition of "real adult," I am not one.

Then I can't help but wonder whether these people are friends at all, considering their opinion of me appears to be pretty errrr low, certainly lower than my own of either myself or them. And on the heels of that question comes my awareness of all those who do not fit this definition, first and foremost being gay people in America who are denied these opportunities -- based on the bigoted logic that they are not real, either.

While the individual comments are not meant to be insulting, and are not monolithic (perhaps springing from those in the 50-percent pool of soon-to-be-marrieds who are soon-to-be-divorceds?), they are also not meant to be uplifting and they are not kind or, in my view, necessary. I don't think to say these things. When I'm happy about something, I don't think others should aspire for the same. That'll give you cramps. Plus, I don't even know how I would translate my life experiences into a blueprint that would make any sense.

Also, I guess I'm sort of a hippie by our Roman Empire standards, but it would seem to me that externalizing one's happiness is more often the root cause of unhappiness, a precept of meditation that has shaped my own heart and mind, unreal as they, too, may be and as challenging as this process can be (damn car alarms).

Of course, I can strive to live by nonjudgmental principles all I want, and so can we all, but pesky society is not wired that way. And comparison shopping is an embedded feature of our modern American life, which I think is...distasteful to apply to people. But, if we are to do line-by-line comparisons of married versus unmarried, why not look at more than what single people lack, given that this category encompasses more people than ever before, including divorcees and widows? What advantages might an unmarried individual have, if not legally then psychologically or spiritually? The ways this question is answered in our culture, often through the almighty television, have never held much relevance for me in, dare I say it?, my real adult life -- for example, the notion that because I do not have a spouse, I can do whatever I want, a concept that became ludicrous when I began interacting with other humans as a child. But that's just it: the belief that unmarried people, especially never-married people, are abnormal seems to spring from the viewpoint that unmarried people are tantamount to children. Hmm. Is it mere coincidence that those who harbor this opinion are almost never single?

Meanwhile, though people will project onto singles the belief that they are miserable, particularly at weddings, I think the fact that I can both support and entertain myself, whether I am in a romantic relationship or not, whether it is serious or not, has been a major asset. That doesn't mean I don't support or entertain others (like a selfish child). What it does mean is I have a relationship with myself that I feel like people who question the merit of others' personal lives must not have, such as those who ask why I'm still single, as if I could boil it down to some simple answer, or need to, or get angry when I tell them the having-kids ship has sailed for me personally. It would seem to me that people like this are not comfortable in their own company, which would explain the dread and horror single people evoke in them: It's projection. If it were them, they would feel awful. Therefore, it's awful.

This paradigm more than any seems to define us as Americans in the current milleiu: expecting everyone to validate life choices by not only applauding them but making the same ones, lest they be put down or ostracized. Yet paired-ups who do this branding never seem to meet the many couples who do not, which brings us to another popular Amerian paradigm: My experience is the epitome of the adult experience. Under that rubric, who needs anyone that does not echo back one's own choices, beliefs, opinions? Under that rubric, in certain circles I don't exist -- and don't want to, thanks. Under that rubric, I'm all too happy to keep it unreal.

Disconnect

2011-05-02T22:04:00.021-05:00

Their pain?
An opportunity

for orgiastic delight, for lapping up
all the attention your sense of entitlement requires, for
ranting at how even though some 9/11 victims may not thirst
for blood,
you do and that's your right as an American

After all, it's all about you, the pleasure
you take from violence disguised as righteousness

Insensitivity training
schooled you to the cruelest ways
to make authoritative claims about places, pains
you've never known but don't need to know to inflict
so you at last feel

Feel your sadism
And they do, too.

And this is what passes for acknowledging disaster
across empire.

The Subway

2011-05-01T12:43:00.096-05:00

I'm not sure why the gentleman on the train taking me home from a friend's party in Brooklyn was swinging a plastic gallon container of orange liquid, or why he had to change seats to do it right across from me, but I've been riding the subway long enough to be unfazed by this sort of attention seeking -- unlike the other occupants of the car, all of whom seemed to be backing away per usual. These types strike me as being the same ones who go back to their places of origin at Christmas and brag about what tough New Yorkers they are, yet can't even stand to be near someone weird (good luck). So they do what adults do best in America: pretend what's right in front of them does not exist, a behavior I personally consider insane, not to mention counterproductive. And I think we can see how well denial has worked out for US.

The jug swinger stared me down, swirling his strange liquid, so I returned his gaze for more than a few beats, causing him to lose interest in me, right on cue. Can't say I blame him, seeing as how his goal seemed to be to freak out or frighten someone and there were other, better candidates to choose from, like the guy reading with the book so close to his face he might as well have been wearing it. Of course, there is something inherently confrontational about being confined in a moving, locked train with seats facing one another, be it above or below ground. I understand people wanting to protect their space by not engaging. But at what point does that m.o. become ludicrous? Mock the devil and he will flee from thee, after all.

On the flip side are those -- men, more often than not (and no one is sorrier that's the case than this lady) -- who enjoy the confrontation, who see the subway as their opportunity to preach, to leer, to impose, to expose, to throw a scene, to get some in the form of rubbing up on some woman who will, more often than not, pretend that's not happening. Going against the standard advice of ignoring reality, I find that if someone is feeling a bit more rowdy than orange-liquid guy and waiting them out won't work, talking back is, in reality, a successful way to discourage these behaviors. Telling someone to stop, moving away and/or pushing back is more an instinctive reaction to being imposed upon than something I have to strive for, or be congratulated for. To me, it's akin to common sense. However, sometimes I feel like the weird one on this issue, given the way people back away from you in America should you speak up for yourself -- without first considering all the reasons you shouldn't and then falling silent, bringing to mind the way the other kids would back away from me at the pool when a beetle would get stuck in my thick hair and their leper treatment would unnerve me more than the beetle.

I understand on an intellectual level that people can freeze under duress, but when I hear a woman say she sat there afraid to move while some perv masturbated in front of her on public transit, I just don't get that. Worse things can happen if you hang around there, lady. And I truly don't understand how you can have some stranger well, rub his genitals on your person apropo of nothing and not run away, scream or otherwise freak as an automatic reaction. I saw a guy masturbating under a tree once in fifth grade, while riding bikes with another friend at our elementary school. You know what we did? Pedaled faster!

I don't want to be unfair. I guess some of the reluctance some women feel -- and I tend to hang with women who are the opposite of ah, reluctant, so I can only guess -- can be attributed to the old victim-blaming saw that you better not say anything or the creep will get mad and hit you. But if someone is already touching you, that caveat sort of goes out the window, huh? What do you have to lose by, at the very least, saying something, as the post-9/11 MTA parlance goes?

The sleazoids disgust me, but I do enjoy rebutting the people who go on to their captive subway audience about how everyone but them is going to hell if they don't accept the distorted version of Christianity they're pushing, a pronouncement that's especially special, and especially prevalent, on trains bound from Flushing, Queens, where the majority of citizens are Chinese and Korean -- and therefore all misguided sinners, by that illogic. Take heart: Explaining how they're misrepresenting the Bible encourages sacrilegious preachers to exit the train, though sometimes I, too, am possessed by the spirit and can't help but cry out, "You're all going to hell except him -- he's God! He's God! Worship him -- or he'll set you on fire!"

Less enjoyable are the dudes who put their backpacks on my head; the guys who are always on hand to block the only entrances and exits to the train, refusing to move until someone either asks them to or moves them by default (hey, these exits and entrances are time sensitive, you know); the leg spreaders who take up two to three seats, must be huge; the Mariachi players, one of whom once thought it would be cute to shake his ass in my face until I made it clear that no, it was not (everyone again went blind when I said so); the nose pickers; the people who can't be bothered to cover their mouths when they cough; those American tourists 'n transplants who talk about how ________ all New Yorkers are, with the most-often-used adjective being "rude" and "New Yorkers" meaning the people from 718 to 212 to 516 who established this city they have now graced with their presence in order to plunder; and the people who glare at babies for crying when a. the babies are understandably disturbed by the latter delights and b. unlike the babies, they are grown folks who should be capable of behaving better than the infant they are stink-eyeing, yet won't.

In an emergency, I seek out someone else with a local accent, put it that way -- a good thing to do any place, I've found.

There are other subway hazards, one being the MTA itself, with its cooked books that never seem to draw any penalties. In recent years, I've seen people online, including MTA employees, claiming the "two books" scam is not in effect since there are not literally two ledgers and becoming indignant about their idiotic literalism to boot. Maybe if they included some evidence, such as a photo of the MTA accountant's desk with just one book on it, I'd be convinced?

Garbled announcements, bad information, fluorescence, conductors slamming the doors shut on people, no elevators in most stations outside Manhattan to accommodate the elderly, infirm or tired riders, "please be patient" (please be less condescending when your company's screw-up has trapped us) and that green liquid that drips from certain ceilings, such as the one cracking apart on the downtown F/M/D/B track at the Bryant Park station.

When I first came back to New York in 2007, I thought those who wore sunglasses underground were a little robo looking, a bit much, but now I've become one of them, if only to keep that green goo from dripping down into my eye socket...

Now For That Whole Poem, And Then Some

2011-04-25T19:46:00.127-05:00

As Houses

Heavy
shades
games
played.

Ablaze
in this haze,
summer days
are better off
far away, but
winter without
a trace.

We’re always
seeking escape
from the isolation
we create – the desolation
of your absence
is better off
than our single-celled
seizure together, untenable.

I can entomb
in the cold,
grow old behind
film, reel upon
reel, emotions enacted
safe
from experience, enclosed,
never
know.

************************************************************************************
A friend of mine who read this poem told me she felt like killing herself now, thanks. Meanwhile, I didn't feel depressed about it -- 'til she said that. It can be difficult putting yourself out there, though, and paper rejections from magazines are the least of it. Those are impersonal.

In the more personal vein, there's the poetry teacher who waited 'til after I contracted her to offer a critique of my manuscript, American Woman, to inform me how much she dislikes any poetry that rhymes. That's the kind of caveat that puts me on the defensive, an opinion self-elevated to authority, and besides, I only rhyme some of the time, so...wait, why am I defending that? "Take all the rhymes out." That command also strikes me as a tad...ivory. If I was just a bit more neurotic, and sometimes this can be a fine line, I could have developed a complex over it.

Or an alleged friend, writer choosing to stop speaking to me with no explanation right after I gave her my play, Post-Apocalypse, dedicated to my deceased gay boyfriend in Nola, a choice I only found about out when she rejected my facebook request, twice, after I started a page there to help promote the readings I was producing of said play. wakka wakka.

Like that time I got fired by this woman only after my broke poet ass had put the payment down on a new car, something her and her middle-class non-poet minions kept asking me about: "Oh, did you get a new car yet?" Yes, minions, I know I was late once thanks to my Oldsmobile, Regency 98, year 1982, a loyal fortress of a vehicle until it wasn't and black plumes of smoke were blowing out from the tailpipe, after I had scraped and shoveled it out, after a car accident that left me with a kind of excruciating back injury, yes, five minutes late that day. "Oh, did you get a new car yet?" At last: "Yes." Now you can stop bugging me. A few days later, it's "I want to meet with you later." Later, it's "You're fired." double wakka.

The hostile can be so dull, let them have it though: I prefer to be fired.

Heavy Shades, Games Played

2011-04-25T19:40:00.007-05:00

-----------------------Skate At Your Own Risk------------------------------

Outtakes From Seymour Hersh

2011-04-20T19:41:00.012-05:00

at The New School, Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy: A Social Research Conference, held in 2010, which I found on a torn-out piece of notebook paper mixed in with my tax papers.

Oh, and as an aside to whatever Tax Act representative was reading the blog: this may seem like an offbeat site to you, based on the snotty tone of the last email from your "help" center, which essentially said I'm a stupid girl who doesn't know how to operate a computer, but I can assure you I am indeed a more traditional journalist in addition to being offbeat, with a lot of contacts, including my fellow journalists and offbeats -- and psst, we talk.

I suggest you spend less time playing D & D, both on and off the clock, and more time reading the actual content of your customers' email inquiries and answering them, rather than sending form letters to avoid having to, shudder, interact with them and rather than blaming this paying, courteous customer for your lack of attention, accuracy or clarity -- including re: the apparent glitch that can occur if Firefox is used to download your program on a p.c. Duh!

Let's all ingest some Sy Hersh and heal:

That's the bureaucracy: It's all mindset.

I won't talk to a source that won't independently verify the information with a fact-checker.

Re: 9/11 "Truther" movement
There's just never been an empirical case.

You never sexually humiliate an Arab. Do you Americans know what you've done?

I don't know any Pakistani who wants to knock down buildings in New York City.

"Hated French" -- you can say that easily

People aren't getting through it; they're not surviving it.

prone or supine

They Called Her...

2011-02-28T21:06:00.003-05:00

Eve Desmond: Hello

2011-02-20T16:59:00.001-05:00

Hello

My name is Eve Desmond, I saw your profile today through the help of chamber of commerce in ouagadougou the capital of Burkina Faso) and became intrested in you, I will also like to know you the more,and I want you to send an email to my email address so I can give you my picture for you to know whom I am..Here is my email address (evedesmond@voila.fr)I believe we can move from here!I am waiting for your mail to my email address above.

Remeber the distance or colour does not matter but love matters alot in life

Best regards
Eve Desmond

Spaces

2011-02-07T14:06:00.000-05:00

Many live forever, regurgitating
junkshitpiss, pretending
while you chopped trees, burnt —
I fill the spaces.

2011-01-17T16:52:00.000-05:00

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Talks Palin Cross Hairs

2011-01-12T19:58:00.001-05:00

Listening to a Gravely Ill 9/11 Worker

2010-12-20T14:15:00.008-05:00

on Thom Hartmann only deepens my disgust with the Republicans' blocking and disdaining of a bill designed to help the declining emergency workers, firefighters and police officers, not the banks or billionaires who contribute so little to society in comparison.

Kill their spirits, break their bodies til they can no longer fight would be their working philosophy, it seems.

Passing out the remains...we were hoping to find somebody alive...Every morning, those victims' families were all lined up at that gate before I got in there, showing me pictures...I would take those cards and I would reassure them...but the reality was that I knew that for every person we found, or for every piece of a person we dug up, that the people on the other side were at least going to have closure...We still don't have closure...the asthma, all type of respiratory problems...There were no types of masks when we first went down there and we were reassured by our government officials that the air down there was fine. Everybody heard it. We were eating it down there, we were breathing it...

The speaker, John Devlin, has inoperable throat cancer.

Captain Beefheart Died!

2010-12-18T00:32:00.001-05:00

I feel sick.

And I don't have any liquor in the house.

Sue Us.

2010-11-18T23:10:00.013-05:00

I'm glad New York is considering a ban on the TSA's body snatcher, I mean, body scanner machines from both JFK and LaGuardia, though I already avoid the latter at all costs. That would be where I learned the ticket I'd purchased for my first trip back to New Orleans in 2005 did "not exist," for one of many happy memories, another being the crazyass busdriver who shuttled me between terminals to a flight that did exist.

I really want to know what it's like, the training sessions for those new TSA policies. Sounds like they could be comedy gold. But what is it like to actually think that way, to be that sadistic, that afraid, that...? CBS says 80 percent of the American public is in favor of the snatchers, er, scanners, but that survey is based on a sample of 240 or so people (I refuse to link to it here because it's such obvious hasty p.r.). Playing along for a second, though, how many of the good timers surveyed for this little poll have actually experienced being scanned, or groped, by the TSA -- or under other circumstances?

Those rubenesque blue body scan images

I remember when places like Kansas didn't have so much concern, such patriotism for New York. Back when everyone thought anyone from New York, wherever in the state it was, was strange, off somehow, filthy even. Then September 11 happened and that changed. Or did it? This legislation feels like a ground zero saying thanks, but no, to these faux protections for its own good. At last...

Now what?

Election Eve Special

2010-11-01T21:55:00.002-05:00

The Nobodies
by
Eduardo Galeano

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them - will rain down in buckets.

But good luck doesn't rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing.

The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper.

The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.

Hey Rahm:

2010-09-28T13:14:00.001-05:00

Don't let the door hit you -- too hard -- on the way out.

So

2010-09-03T22:37:00.001-05:00

Is Dick Cheney still pulsing?

Little Ditty.

2010-08-29T17:53:00.021-05:00

You know, the more I write about certain major life experiences, the more my current life experiences seem to resemble them.

As I rewrote Post-Apocalypse for the last time, I experienced three shorts in the electrical wiring at my NYC apartment, leading to three power failures & typing in the dark, plus fire hazards galore. Having seen my car on CNN as St. Andrew St., New Orleans burned two houses back that September ’05, well, I have developed a healthy fear of fire.

Living in a flame-prone neighborhood, I wasn’t only being paranoid in racing back to check on my cat each time I heard sirens screaming toward St. Mary St, back in that day. My building there didn’t catch fire, but William’s did, as I learned from one of the more jarring text messages I’ve ever received: My apartment burnt down. I’m out on the curb with Bonaparte and my laptop.

These are not life experiences you just get over.

The next week into my Post-Apocalypse rewrite, my wall began disintegrating due to a leak upstairs, since fixed. To identify the origin of the leak, the super tore a huge hole in the wall that I had to fight and threaten to get repaired, just like with the hole in my kitchen floor on St. Mary, which was never fixed, only covered.

America has infrastructure issues.

I was in Diamondhead, Mississippi five years ago today, taking free refuge—the only kind I could afford—at a friend's parents' house, with my refuge being not from Katrina, of course, but from a city that would not be offering 911 access to its residents during what could be a true catastrophe.

My friend and I sat outside on two lawn chairs during the eye of the hurricane, among the fallen trees, having already heard via the radio that our city was 80 percent flooded. The catastrophe here was not levee failure, but it was for whoever was left back there.

My friend passed away in 2008, six months after William. After three days in Diamondhead, the only person to pass by and check on us, besides neighbors, was a guy in a cheap rental with rolled down windows and a camera stuck out at us.

My friend was an idealist.

And the Spam Saga Continues...

2010-08-18T23:08:00.003-05:00

So when last we spoke, I had been the proud recipient of not just any spam, but a spam customized around my paid gig as an editor.

Alas, I am merely one of many editors to be courted by this particular spam sandwich, according to a message broadcast today by an editorial association I'm a member of.

"Dear members,

A scammer using the name Dependra Santha has been attempting to prey on our members and apparently also members of similar organizations in the U.S. and U.K. (and elsewhere for all we know). The scam involves an apparently legitimate offer of editorial work. Those who follow up and accept the 'work' receive a cashier's check for several thousand dollars more than the freelancer's estimate, supposedly in error. They are told to deposit the check and sent the difference from their own account back to Dependra. Needless to say, the original cashier's check turns out to be phony, leaving the freelancer out the money sent to the scammer, to say nothing of bank fees for depositing a bad check.

We urge you to beware of this scam in particular and this sort of cashier's check scam in general."

Dependra, I thought you wanted meeeeeeeeee.
Sigh.

Spam Done Right -- or Better, at Least

2010-08-05T14:46:00.004-05:00

Now, as opposed to the usual offerings, this is some sophisticated spam mail:

Subject Line Says: Editor Needed

My name is Dependra Santha, I will require your service to assist me in proof reading and copyediting the two documents I have attached to this email. I will like to know how much you will charge for both document. Once am sure of the price, I will instruct my associate in the USA to mail out a cashiers check payment to you for the service since I am out the country now a short course in the United Kingdom. The document will be due by the 22th of August as am trying to submit them to an accessor over here. I will be waiting for your reply,
Regards,
Dependra Santha

I am a proofreader/copyeditor type, after all.

Alas, Dependra Santha, my price just shot up to a million big ones. Give me your account number and I'll edit whatever once those funds have transferred.

You Again.

2010-07-01T18:49:00.001-05:00

Greetings

I have been waiting for you to contact me for your Confirmable Bank-draft of $750.000.00 United
States Dollars,but I did not hear from you. Then I went and deposited the Draft with FedEx COURIER
SERVICE,Here in West Africa,I have paid for the delivering Charge,Insurance premium and Clearance
Certificate Fee Contact Person:Mr Fred Osamudia,Phone number:+234 8139583375
Email:fedex_dispatchunitcourier0148@yahoo.com,(1) FULL NAMES (2) CONTACT ADDRESS (3) PHONE NUMBER/
FAX (4) COUNTRY Let me repeat again, try and contact them as soon as you receive this mail to avoid
any further delay and remember to pay them their Security Keeping fee of $150 dollars for their
immediate action.

---- Nuova grafica e nuove funzionalità! Crea subito Gratis la tua nuova Casella di Posta Katamail

Bending Threads: What is Commitment? A Cabaret

2010-06-22T19:45:00.016-05:00

A few weeks ago, I took in another stellar modern cabaret show. This one was held at the Mainstage of the Broadway Comedy Club and presented by Theatre Arts Workshop, headed by Lisa Jordan, and Bending Threads, a dynamic cabaret act whose work has shined at a variety of New York City venues, like the Duplex. Bending Threads is comprised of Patrice Bell, Kareen Foster, Westley Todd Holiday and Rejinald Woods, with special guest artist Frank Holmes both guesting and filling in for Woods for their latest offering, "What Is Commitment? A Cabaret."

The latter question was open-ended enough to keep things interesting and also made my mind wonder a bit to queries such as "And Who Should Be Committed?" because I'm deep like that and perhaps also because there could indeed be a relationship between these two questions, based on the last couple of dates I've gone on...

The event itself segued through an extensive range of material, with the commitment theme threaded loosely through the tracks, many of which, in a nice twist, were covered by the students involved in Theatre Arts Workshop's training program, with the always expressive Holiday serving as the M.C. in addition to putting together the vocal arrangements.

Highlights included a version of Hawk Wolinski's "Ain't Nobody" sung with spunk and assurance by Trish Pennix, a duet of "Friendship" offered in a comedic spirit by Chloe Berger and Ola Stefankoswski, and the opening and closing numbers performed by the Bending Threads foursome, whose range of styles both complemented and contrasted with one another in their characteristically strong, rich manner.

While interpretations of the show's central theme can and do vary, the journey's the thing, and I look forward to my next installment...of the Bending Threads/Theatre Arts Workshop collaboration, I mean.

Till then, check out Bending Threads' YouTube channel here.

Secure

2010-06-02T10:05:00.003-05:00

Secure
So, I walk into the shiny Manhattan office building today and see the same security dudes — who mostly hold elevators, or stare — that I’ve been seeing there for several years. But now one is blocking my path, telling me I need to show him my i.d. “Why? You know me, man,” I say, kidding but not kidding. He mumbles something. I show him my face on a card. We are all safer now.

Jump/Burn
So, I'm riding the subway in the now safest large city in America, where the murder rate is the lowest it's been since 1962, when they first started tracking the kills. A voice comes over the loudspeaker, admonishing me to hold onto my personal belongings. I know he loves me. And I know he's right: if we all mistrust one another, they'll never be another September 11 again.

If I Could Just Reach It

2010-05-25T09:03:00.003-05:00

Last night, I stood staring on Queens Blvd. after a series of loud, low-flying helicopters kind of sparked my curiosity. My view is of the courtyard area between two buildings, so I had to go outside to see what I was hearing.

A few people, and my cat, were spooked, but my super shrugged it off, another American ever ready to smile, to go inside where he can't see or hear anything. Meanwhile, toxic dispersants are being rained down and down on the people of the Gulf, but maybe if we all pretend they're not, they won't be.

These rackets were made by media choppers and as I stood there under one, I was reminded of my time in Los Angeles, which is when I headed toward the Empire State Building. As I got closer, I couldn't help but see it as a target, a molten ball and I kept walking down Queens Blvd. toward it, and another helicopter rattled the air, and I wanted to huddle in that building's base, curl up, take mercy, if I could just reach it.

When I got back, toxic dispersants were still being rained down on the people of the Gulf, and a dog's high-alert ears stood framed in the window, over my doorway.

The Gulf Coast

2010-05-20T15:37:00.005-05:00

I don't have any spare hair to send. I mean, we all only have so much -- and some none at all (those people? Hate 'merica). How do hair donations stack up against millions of gallons, exactly? Hardly seems an adequate solution -- outside a corporate kleptocracy, that is. Just like stuffing levee flood walls with newspapers? Not the best plan.

Whoop, time to get out the duct tape. Almost forgot someone recently left his cooler unattended near Times Square, right near where I get my favorite cawfee! Also, if I keep the duct tape around my mouth, the Gulf-induced screams remain muffled.

The future's uncertain and the end is always near...

Contradiction in Terms

2007-12-24T14:35:00.000-05:00

The season of joy and generosity

vs.

People almost coming to blows over a Cd.

Hmm.

The Perils of Capitalism

2007-11-19T00:37:00.001-05:00

If I ever saw the "burger king" next to my bed, I'd run like hell.

That guy is scary, yo.

Markers

2007-10-18T20:44:00.000-05:00

Numbers, digits
repeating
road after road
Never listen
what you’re told.

I Know Where I'll Be Eating Next Week.

2007-09-28T13:04:00.000-05:00

And I'll give ya a hint, you crazy kids: It won't be the Olive Garden.

Dear Beezlebub,

Please take Bill O'Reilly.
Please.
It's done enough here.

See: Dining at Sylvia's with Larry Wilmore.

What He Said.

2007-09-24T20:27:00.000-05:00

"All of the hysteria over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speaking at Columbia University is so tiresome for so many reasons, beginning with the fact that it is all rather transparently motivated by exactly what Juan Cole says: 'The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state.'

In their minds, we are at war with Iran -- even though, in reality, i.e., according to our Constitution, we are not -- and all of the ensuing hysteria is rooted in the fantasy world they occupy in which Iran is our Enemy at War. By their nature, such fantasies cannot be reasoned with...

But what is new, and what most certainly is worth commenting upon, is this extremely disturbing report from The New York Sun regarding the threats made by Democratic State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to use state power to punish Columbia for inviting a speaker whom Silver dislikes. Silver -- who, among other things, has long been a leader in efforts to free convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard from prison -- did not even bother to disguise the threats he was making:

As the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, prepares to address Columbia University today amid a storm of student protest, state and city lawmakers say they are considering withholding public funds from the school to protest its decision to invite the leader to campus...

What this really illustrates more than anything else is the true danger to our national character and basic liberties from being in a permanent state of war fighting. When we become a society that just leaps from one New Ultimate Hitler Enemy Who Must Be Destroyed to the next, we ensure that all of our political values and institutions become infected by this bloodthirsty mentality. When we have one Enemy after the next to annihilate, who really cares about dreary luxuries like due process or restraints on government power or the First Amendment? Saddam/binLaden/Ahemdinijad/Assad is Evil, a Hitler, and all power must be vested without limits in our Leaders so they can destroy him/them."

MAKE IT STOP.

Care Bear Pimpin'

2007-09-13T22:01:00.002-05:00

Please consult/credit before reposting photos.

Untitled

2007-09-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

Must be lazy, unstructured
to work this way
I cannot summon the energy
to be who I was
yesterday.

Broken Clock

2007-09-12T05:46:00.001-05:00

"It’s been six goddamn years."

Ah, right on schedule. The ethos of certain "new" New Orleanians. The second-to-last line of the aforelinked essay stinks of it--stop right there: it just stinks. I don't know where these words originated, but they reflect something that comes rippling back to me in the form of a lifetime of living somewhere routinely castigated, judged and attacked--N.Y.--filtered through life in the second city I loved--N.O.--receiving the same treatment and then proceeding to fork it out.

The wonderful people interviewed in When the Levees Broke, at least one of whom has been senselessly murdered by a fellow New Orleanian since the documentary's release, seem a portrait of another time, a different ethos. An echo.

Hypocrisy: the apocalyptic swan song. A Nola friend bitching to me about the 2006 9/11 anniversary. A Nola writer telling me all about New York, how horrible it was, pushing the "rules"--no badmouthing New Orleans.

More and more, this kind of thinking became a popular post-apocalypse ethos--and when this particular rhetoric is stripped, what do we have left, per this faction? It's one thing to criticize apathy, but the desire to ignore, negate or ridicule the suffering of others--the very thing you decry--is this what you've become? Does it make you happy?

Having lived there for the better part of six years, I know that New Orleans was never much interested in the rest of the country. I'm not much interested in a lot of what's on offer from the rest of the country. In regard to "Katrina" and New Orleans, I'm much more interested in what should have been (and is still not) on offer from the federal, state and city government.

Never felt much need to go around blanket-bastardizing this "rest of the country" as is done so often among this subset of NewOrleansNow. Just as I have heard the people of Minnesota disparaged in the wake of the bridge collapse. Just as I did not hear a word from anyone in this set--outside of dreaded Yankees and regular, non-faux-diehard New Orleanians and other Southerners--on the actual day or, come to think of it, regarding the tsunami disaster, or any other major disaster. What I do hear from the clique is things like the Guardian Angels and other outside charitable organizations being put down despite their volunteer efforts. It's not good enough, not good enough.

Well, of course it's not because The Bitters are confusing the issue: people outside the city, people not from the city, people drowned out and turned away within the city can only do so much. The Bitters are too busy poisoning the well down there to listen to reason, driving the good people of New Orleans out. I can hear it in another friend's voice on the phone.

Did this pattern begin with the most recent levee failure? No.

But it did morph into this weird, uptight (weird because it's uptight and it's New Orleans), "only our tragedy" counts mentality that doesn't exactly encourage support. Get in line or get out. If you're going to leave, shut up and leave--you are no longer allowed a voice, snaps Poppy Z. Brite, who, in addition to writing, makes a practice of telling people what they should and should not do with their lives because New Orleans is more important than their lives. Who cares if you get shot dead there? Who cares about the people shot dead?

[Oh, and Poppy: Nah nah nee nah nah, still bitchin'---but back in NY! Flounce, Flounce!]

So, am I just some Yankee-fuck-Middle-American-Mountain-Woman-falling-into-the-ocean-California-crank suggesting New Orleans should not be rebuilt? Obviously

not.

2007-09-11T08:20:00.001-05:00

Who knew?

2007-09-10T21:32:00.000-05:00

I met the Statue of Liberty today at Battery Park and:
a) she was kind of a he-she who
b) spoke Spanish.

2007-08-29T15:39:00.001-05:00

Manhattan Mini-Storage Ad

2007-08-16T09:03:00.000-05:00

Insensitivity Training, Part III

2007-08-13T13:46:00.001-05:00

Take One
"I was at Ground Zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to," courtesy of Rudy Ghouliani.

I have a real problem with that statement, said Battalion Chief John McDonnell, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York. "I think he's really grasping and trying to justify his previous attempts to portray himself as the hero of 9/11."

Take Two
"What I was trying to say yesterday is that I empathize with them because I feel like I have that same risk," he said.

"There were people there less than me, people on my staff, who already have had serious health consequences, and they weren't there as often as I was," Giuliani said, "but I wasn't trying to suggest a competition of any kind, which is the way it come across."

"He is such a liar because the only time he was down there was for photo ops with celebrities, with politicians, with diplomats," said deputy fire chief Jimmy Riches, who spent months digging for his firefighter son.

"On 9/11 all he did was run. He got that soot on him, and I don't think he's taken a shower since."

[Also see: Insensitivity Training Part I & Part II.]

Little Wisdoms

2007-08-05T12:32:00.001-05:00

I don't advise a hair cut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hair are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bold-headed men are uptight.
- Bruce Robinson
[Editor's Note: I'm sure it's probably supposed to be "bald-headed men," but--come on--it's better this way.]

Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
- Emo Phillips

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
- George Carlin

Initially, a lot of people are put off by my work. I don't purposefully start out to make something grotesque...it just ends up that way.
- Patricia Piccinini

Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean, I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.
- Mariah Carey

I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.
- Andy Warhol

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?

Answer: I would not live forever because we should not live forever because if we were supposed to live forever then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know.
- Donald Rumsfeld

The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe.
- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia

As I was going up the stair,
I met a man who was not there.
He was not there again today,
Oh, how I wish he'd go away.
- Mike Jackson (Quoted in Ghost and Ghoul - T C Lethbridge)

It's all happening too fast. I've got to put the brakes on or I'll smack into something.
- Mel Gibson

In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely.
- Hunter S. Thompson (Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time)

That bitch is still on delay.

2007-08-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

From Levees.org: "President Bush has promised to veto the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), which contains flood protection projects critical to this country and to south Louisiana, a region ravaged by faulty federal flood protection."

This doesn't surprise me, though it does disgust me; after all, George W. Bush is the same man who stood in Jackson Square and pledged to rebuild New Orleans in early September of 2005, then literally pulled the plug after his speech, plunging the city back into darkness on his way out, where much of it remains to this day--yeah, he shut off all the electricity once his photo op was over. It's in When The Levees Broke, a documentary that should be required viewing. Why more Americans, including certain notoriously lax New Orleanians [read: the Eddie Jordans; the Warren Rileys], are not visibly outraged by this whole debacle is something I'll never understand.

Wake up, America.

My slightly tweaked version of Levee.org's letter:
"I strongly urge you to immediately sign the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA).

A veto of WRDA would constitute yet another terrible governmental blow to New Orleans and south Louisiana's recovery. WRDA includes major projects like 100-year hurricane protection and restoration of Louisiana's ravaged coast.

It also includes billions in crucial projects that protect other areas of the country. These projects cannot wait.

In 2005, our nation learned the hard way what happens when critical water projects go unfunded. Large sections of New Orleans were destroyed due to poor design and management of a federal flood control project. This costly destruction could happen anywhere. I would also suggest using the Netherlands's system as a model for our own levees, as that nation has certainly been much more effective than the Corps of Engineers. Katrina did not kill thousands of Americans; the breaking of the fragile, ill-conceived levees did and federal apathy continues to ensure the city's stagnation and ruin--which may very well be your goal because you are doing very little, if anything, to help restore the city of New Orleans on any level.

Taxpayers must be able to trust the critical infrastructure that protects their lives and property, or we should not be required to pay taxes."

Artificial Sweetener

2007-07-29T20:58:00.000-05:00

Pulling thread
through needle
Love
between stitches
Apron afternoons
spent
in the oven

Life set

to a broken timer.

I'm an American

2007-07-22T19:15:00.000-05:00

One of those lost souls you've read so much about

Stranded on the side of some broken highway

A fucking stillbirth

that never quite made it

here in my promised land.

Independence?

2007-07-04T20:19:00.000-05:00

Yet Another Fumble

2007-07-03T19:00:00.000-05:00

"As to the future, I rule nothing in and nothing out," Bush said as he left a visit to Walter Reed Medical Center.

It's simply unprecedented, at least in my lifetime: a President too braindead to even utilize cliches properly--come on, man, cliches were created to provide the braindead a functional, er, vocabulary.

Maybe it's just that he's transcended the burden of the brain.

They're way overrated, ya know.

News from New Orleans.

2007-06-30T22:12:00.000-05:00

It's not good, the norm for these dispatches to an ex-pat---unfortunate, just as my continued anger at what amounts to...a shadow is...not good.

"From : Hot 8
Sent : Friday, June 29, 2007 5:25 PM
Subject : A statement regarding the Dinerral Shavers murder case

We were disappointed and shocked to hear this morning that the murder case against David Bonds, accused of shooting our snard drummer Dinerral Shavers, has been dismissed. We are currently on the road, trying to spread the music and culture of New Orleans and to broadcast a positive message about the city across the nation. Dinerral's death, and now the dismissal of his case, only prove to us how important this work is. We will continue to fight for New Orleans, at home and away. We will continue to honor the generous spirit of Dinerral, who gave so much to our music and to our city.
--
Hot 8 Brass Band
www.hot8brassband.com
www.myspace.com/hot8brassband"

I respect their fight, their determination and Dinerral's contributions, which I learned a lot about in writing and researching a commemorative piece on him and filmmaker Helen Hill for the February issue of Antigravity.

Don't Stop The Music.

And yet.

I can't help but worry the phrase "broadcast a positive message about the city across the nation"--not because there are not positive things to broadcast, but because these things have been broadcast for so long at the expense of confronting out-of-control crime meets halved, post-K population; a lack of jobs and decent public schools; rising rents; one truly crazy police force (even by urban American standards); conviction rate--what conviction rate?; levees--what levees?; a hard-to-define yet tangible lack of empathy for women; and bitter race-baiting on both sides.

Community pride and community activism, of course, do not need to be mutually exclusive.

It's just that they still so often are.
And there's nothing "positive" about that.

Face The Music.

Addendum: I think what bothers me the most amid my gnarled feelings for New Orleans is the "Let's put our energy into telling everyone how great we are!" rah-rah, rather than into demanding change or even acknowledging the problems (kudos to the Hot 8 for that one, though)--as if the latter will invite further scorn from the national press, which lacerated New Orleanians in the immediate aftermath and continues to fall down on the levees-not-Katrina-caused-the-damage front, save for the New York Times.

However: Who cares?!

Why is the opinion of strangers more important than demanding accountability and change? Denying reality doesn't actually change reality.

Plus, it's been two years 'n shit.

Seriously, the level of local denial got to be staggering-- and continues to be vis-a-vis reports from friends and the usual litany of email/list messages. My last boyfriend became angry at me simply for being disgusted with the place post-K (see above) instead of, say, taking down Southern defense mechanisms long enough to empathize with the root causes of said disgust, which affect those in denial, too (naturally, they deny this).

In the Quarter, three people have been murdered within a three-block radius of him since then, and I remain disgusted and afraid.
---"Traitor"

In Space, No One Can Eat Ice Cream...

2007-06-10T14:36:00.001-05:00

Though life as a freelancer wasn't always lucrative, the work was steady and interesting for quite a while there. I still have some work from Antigravity Magazine and my longstanding professor client, but my volume began to dwindle-fade-dwindle at the top of '07. Ensuring a consistent workload is a freelancer's biggest challenge anywhere, though this challenge became more pronounced in '07, especially before relocating back to New York.

Now, I've begun the jobhunt and client search anew. My sources (namely, stumblebums and carnies) tell me it can take up to five months to land a promising position in one's field, and publishing is certainly competitive. It's only been two months and I'm about to chew my arm off-- and that's with enough work to keep my mind somewhat limber. Maybe it's the horror movies I watched last night, but I'm coming to understand the carnivorous, desperate nature of zombies, werewolves and klowns.

Is there anybody out there?

A. The Day of Work Required for Certain Applications---Sans Any Guarantee of a Response, Let Alone an Interview

One of today's Craigslist offerings--albeit one I'm overqualified for and uninterested in--is still so, well, special that I feel compelled to mention it.

Subtitle
Lesson One for the Novice Editor: Your Resume? Don't Mean a Thang.

"DO NOT, we repeat, DO NOT SEND IN YOUR RESUME OR ATTACHMENTS.

Instead, write in and tell us:

1) What were the last 3 books you read, and what did you learn?

2) What has been your greatest success, and greatest failure in the past 3 years?

6) If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?
[I am not making this up. Also: Note their numbering skills.]

8) Do you subscribe to any magazines, or newspapers? Which ones?

5) What do you want to be doing three years form now?
[Learning how to distinguish "form" and "from"?]

7) Give us your top 3 stock picks which you expect to double in the next 12 months, along with your investment thesis."

Is there anybody out there?

B. The Low-Paying, No Benefits, No Security Gig: All Take, No Give

""P/T EDITORIAL ASSISTANT (20 hours per week, long-term temporary)

Reports to: Editor

Responsibilities: Research, edit, perform data entry, and proofread information for database publication.

Requirements: Attention to detail and good copyediting skills required. Database experience helpful.

Hours: Flexible. Must be able to work 20 hours per week (Monday - Friday between the hours of 9:00am - 5:00pm)."

In a semi-frustrated moment, I thought this job might be a good way to ensure some part-time income in my field as I recruit clients and/or job leads. I applied a month ago, when the ad first appeared on Monster.com, and heard nothing--until it appeared again on Craigslist (In terms of one's chances? Bad sign). This time, however, the following information was included:

"Salary: $9.00 per hour"

This pay rate is, of course, a joke by Manhattan standards and--bonus!--no job security beyond "long-term temporary" or, natch, benefits.

C. Do as I Say, Not as I...

"Please send concise, sharp email with relevant job experiece stated briefly. A love of fashion is not enough here. Don't misspell anything."

Is there anybody out there?

Federal Government Finds Itself Innocent.

2007-05-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

In the shadow of their relentless online JazzFest coverage, the Times Picayune is running a short, poorly written (surprise!) piece on how the federal government has once again sidestepped any accountability for its violent neglect of the citizens of New Orleans in the wake of (laughingly constructed) levees breaking.

R.I.P. Ethel Freeman.

Photo: Ted Jackson

A Short-Lived Experiment.

2007-05-02T19:07:00.000-05:00

I barred myself from watching W - well, I'd say "speak," but "stumble," "slur," "pout," "chide" and "insist on his beyond-transparently stupid rhetoric in the face of all logic" would be the more accurate verbs - a while back, outside of The Daily Show.

Tonight, I attempted to watch his post-vetoing... collection of angry sentence fragments. I unmuted the television just in time to hear him applying the same "facts" he was so fond of pushing in the immediate wake of September 11: "...Al Qaeda, who trained men to come over to American soil and--[mute reactivated]"

SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU IDIOT! IRAQ WAS NOT BEHIND 9/11 AND YOU KNOW IT, YOU FUCKING PSYCHOTIC CHILD, WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE PLEASE SEND SOMEONE OVER TO HIS SOIL TO -

It was a short-lived experiment.

And This is the Democrats' Dream Candidate?

2007-05-01T10:53:00.000-05:00

"Mr. Obama reassures liberal audiences about the role of religion in public life, and he tells conservative Christians that he understands why abortion horrifies them and why they may prefer to curb H.I.V. through abstinence instead of condoms.

AIDS has spread in part because 'the relationship between men and women, between sexuality and spirituality, has broken down, and needs to be repaired,' he said to thunderous applause in December at the megachurch in California led by the Rev. Rick Warren, a best-selling author."

How "evolved."

Jesus Camp: The Movie

2007-04-24T18:05:00.000-05:00

Some highlights and "points of interest:"

"They [children] are so usable in Christianity," Pastor Becky Fischer, Pentecostal children's minister

"We have -- excuse me! -- but we have the truth! We've got to stand up and take back the land!" - Pastor Fischer, accompanied in the documentary's opening by children whooping and crying out for war while adorned in literal war paint

Forty three percent of Evangelicals are "born again" before the age of 13.

Quote from a video dismissing the big bang theory: "Did we come from a gob of goo? I don't think so."

"There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love Jesus and those who don't."

"Warlocks are enemies of God; had it been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter would have been put to death!" - Pastor Becky Fischer

A SIDEBAR ON THE OLD TESTAMENT
LEWIS BLACK [outtake from the Larry King show]: "You know, I'm Jewish. We -- it's our book. The Old Testament is ours. It's ours. It's not theirs. It's our book. The Christians, the book wasn't good enough for the Christians, was it, Larry?

No. They said no. This book isn't good enough for us. We've got a better book with a great new character. You're going to love this guy. And so it's our book. So let us -- if you want to know, if the Evangelical Christians really want to understand what's in the book, you know, ask us. We're everywhere."

Pastor Fischer: "Unlike McDonald's, this is not about how fast you can go through the drive-thru; you need to stay in the pot - let him simmer you in the Holy Ghost!...Take these prophecies and do what the Apostle Paul said: Make war with them! This means war! This means war! Are you a part of it or not?"

"You're not just a piece of protoplasm -- whatever that is," said one male Evangelical speaker wearing a red "LIFE" T-shirt, which matched the red LIFE stickers later secured over the children's mouths. "You look great with that tape over your mouth!" he added.

Colorado Springs has the greatest concentration of Evangelical Christians in the country.

"If you use any of this, I'll sue you," Ted Haggard, who meets with George W. Bush every week, to the camera (after granting permission for filming). "It's massive warfare every day. Let the battle begin!"

Haggard advising a burgeoning child preacher after the above speech: "Use your cute kid thing until you're 30 and then you'll have good content."

As Houses

2007-04-19T00:16:00.000-05:00

Heavy
shades
games
played.

Ablaze
in this haze,
summer days
are better off
far away, but
winter without
a trace.

We’re always seeking escape
from the isolation we create –
the desolation
of your absence
is better off
than our single-celled
seizure together, untenable.

Truth Out, Sucker, Truth Out

2007-04-14T06:44:00.000-05:00

The above photo appears as the main image on one of today's many incarnations of the online Times Picay-ew, with the header: "New York Couple Dances at French Quarter Fest, Fa La Friggin La."

Please note: No self-respecting New Yorker I know wears tye die. In fact, I've never even seen anyone wear tye die below the Dutchess County line. It's not tolerated.

(And I'm not even going to get into it with those socks, ya heard me?)

Here's the deal: these are either closet tie-dye Manhattanites who have finally--though temporarily, bitches, temporarily--brought 'em out or, much more likely, upstate people fond of talking shit about "downstaters," who "eat up all their tax dollars" (yet "generate the bulk of their state's revenue") while telling everyone outside New York that they're from NY--the implication being, of course, that they're from not upstate.

Either way, though, given all the "war of Northern aggression," "Yankee" shit one endures from a certain segment of lame throwbacks in the South, some of whom seem hellbent on keeping New Orleans news out of newspapers, this is a straight slap in the face.

Even hippies in the real New York don't roll like dat.

On Leaving '07 New Orleans

2007-04-12T21:56:00.001-05:00

Imagine going out to get your paper first thing in the morning and finding blood on your front steps. A "pulpy puddle of blood" to use my friend's exact phrasing via text message last night. Imagine then finding a torn-up, used pair of men's underwear in your garbage can, alongside requisite empty pill bottle.

Of course, being sane, you call the po-po. Of course, being standard NOPD, the officers need a little prompting to file a report because, in one's words, "It's not a crime."

His solution?
She should "buy a gun."

She should keep it locked and loaded.
She should hit up the ol' shooting range.
She should expect to fight for her life.
She should know better than to live alone without one.
Perhaps she should know better than to live alone at all--after all, she is a she and this is 21st century America.

Why should we--New Orleans residents past, present, future--expect more?

Why should we expect anything?

Why even recognize that the world we inhabit--a world where the nation's highest murder and incarceration figures collide with its lowest conviction rate--begets not safety but, seemingly, more violence? That the more troops we call in, the worse things get?

It's hard not to feel under siege when, well, you are, whether you're being jacked by Entergy or man with gun, taking the daily grim tour out in the East or the Lower 9th or even just looking out your window at the burned houses on your deteriorating, now-ghetto block, when the levees are being held together by the equivalent of gum and masking tape, you're being followed down the street at night while walking your dog, pulled over by drunk police officers for d.a.w.f. (driving alone while female), criticized for leaving, exhorted for staying, pressured to come back--on and on until, for some, the post-apocalyptic, New-Orleans-on-high-voltage-crack cycle comes to one abrupt end.

Being dead's not enough, though. You must be criminalized, explained away, scapegoated by the local media and that denial-lovin segment of this Catholic city, as with the recent murder of Noizefest founder Keith Moore. In pitch-perfect "first my body, now my corpse" style, Moore was next done in by WDSU, who decided it was more important to emphasize how and why it was his own fault, i.e., the header "Deacon John's Son Killed in Drug Buy," than that the execution occurred at 3:20 P.M. in a very public, residential area. That sort of emphasis is the norm there.

Still the bodies fall and I can hear them from here and my worry for those I love is a visceral, nauseous knife in the gut and still They scream for help and still They snit when someone like experienced, if blunt, recovery czar Ed Blakely speaks out because to them his crime, of course, is being "an outsider," and still the bullets drop inside,
still,

still,

still.

Snaggletooth and...

2007-04-04T00:10:00.000-05:00

Grassy Knoll Guy?

Hee Haw, it's.....Crawford time!

[Photos robbed from Yahoo.com]

That's What Hollywood Parks Are For,

2007-03-20T20:48:00.000-05:00

"They said they smelled a very strong odor of what they found to be marijuana," Rode said. "They followed the smell to a gentleman sitting under a tree. He was actively smoking the marijuana cigarette as they approached him."

stunad.

Chandelier.

2007-02-23T18:43:00.001-05:00

Bedtime for Toys: something like a phenomenon.

Limbo

2007-02-16T13:55:00.000-05:00

I see life gone down,

fan blades that beat

down, raven intruders

shooting out

their articles of abandonment.

I want

[*****]

to ravage me again

with his precision

lips, undecided

fingertips subject

to denial yet holding on

all the Nola while.

Is there a bus

I can ride

to the destination I’ll never reach

the lust I’ll fail to obliterate, the

hardness I step out of

as ghost collapsing armor

Louisiana falls

California calls, promising

such thin walls.

New York waits, potent uncertain,

while I stand behind

heavy red curtain.

What is the Meaning of this?

2007-02-10T18:45:00.001-05:00

Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager

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Our Lord and Savior? Part I.

2007-02-03T00:38:00.000-05:00

Ah.
Lower Garden District, Louisiana.

So swampy purty.
I wonder how -

That can't be right.

WHAT THE???

You loot, I shoot.

As Always, This One's for the Tourists, for the Cameras.

2007-01-31T06:30:00.000-05:00

It then will move on to other unflooded areas until city officials finalize the terms for FEMA to reimburse the cost of the service in neighborhoods that were swamped, he said.

Which will happen any never now.

War, Huh -

2007-01-23T23:11:00.000-05:00

Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far reaching," the president said. "If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides."

Hmm. Kind of like...our government.

"In such a case, he forecast 'an epic battle'..."

and smacked his lips 'n
twirled his spurs.

Mature.

2007-01-19T18:53:00.000-05:00

I appreciate and encourage diversity in my readers, which I suppose is a plus? because according to StatCounter, someone's been landing here from afore-linked "mature" starting point.

Or not.

Note to NOPD

2007-01-19T09:59:00.000-05:00

At this point, Schnapp witnessed Coleman "turn quickly" and push away an officer's hand. One of the officers then "attempted to physically detain him while simultaneously identifying himself as a police officer."

"The force in which Ronald Coleman turned, coupled with the fact that the ground was wet and it was raining, caused both the investigator and Ronald Coleman to fall to the ground," the report noted.

Become better liars or stop lying.

[Brevity mix]

Enough.

2007-01-12T18:22:00.000-05:00

Photos from yesterday's anti-crime march and rally, which converged - literally - on C. Ray Nagin and Warren Riley at New Orleans City Hall.

Please consult/credit before re-posting.
Thanks.

Enough. Part II.

2007-01-12T18:07:00.002-05:00

Please consult/credit before reposting.

"Killer Bees Tracked Near New Orleans"

2007-01-08T14:22:00.000-05:00

Look, dump me in the river and be done with it already, alright?

Shiiiiiiiit.

Your Megaphone Has Lost its Sound.

2007-01-08T13:19:00.000-05:00

From today's Times Picayune, which featured coverage of yesterday's citizen forum on crime: Carter, who spearheaded a New Orleans crime summit with the council and Nagin's office in September, said he welcomed both the meeting and the march.

"This -- citizen activism -- is the most important part of the city's fight against crime," he said.

Spoken like a true New Orleans politician.

It's this new strategy they've adopted, illustrated by Warren Riley and Ray Nagin this past weekend. Subtle 07 refrains from directly blaming the victim and instead claims it is the citizens that were somehow inadequate all this time, per comments that not enough people come forward as witnesses.

That's true.

But the real problem, of course, is the criminal justice system or lack thereof, with NOPD as disaster and the courts doing everything but installing the revolving doors.

I've been fortunate enough personally to have been helped by individual officers, as have others I know; they're not all Danziger executioners or bullies, though those boys have more pull than I'm comfortable with. But when shadow-dwellers, those in the gray area, those who would not dare in cities with effective or even functional police and courts, feel emboldened to kill men and women during the day in public, as was sadly the case for Dinerral Shavers, or right down the block from police stations, there is something very wrong within those police stations.

I've had this discussion a lot in the last year: Are humans naturally prone to violence and murder?

After everything I've seen and experienced as an adult in America, I'd say that some are. Most, though, are opportunists and opportunity is abundant here - not for professional jobs, education or, for young black men in particular, a literal future, but for pasttimes of a treacherous order.

Some of this has been endemic for a while. All of it has been magnified and multiplied by the storm. I kept trying to tell myself it would be hypocritical to blame everything on said levee failure, but the bottom line is I was happy here before and, aside from time with my friends and fellow artists/fighters/educators/survivors, who are leaving in greater and greater numbers, am not happy here now.

At one point, even admitting that aloud was considered taboo; you'd have someone like Poppy Z. Brite calling you a "weak sister" who couldn't hack it here and thus didn't belong, anyway, as she did last year via the national press, albeit in answer to loud criticisms of the departed and departing, some of whom may have gone overboard, but some of whom raised valid problems, if sloppily. Labeling people who came back and attempted to live through this flouncers because they couldn't or didn't want to bear it, especially residents whose families go back for decades or centuries, even, seems unfair at best. And there were enough of these remarks from such alleged city representatives early in da post-apocalypse game that they seemed to constitute talking points, orders of speech, for us "lesser knowns" and while such remarks were more common when people were suggesting the city not be rebuilt, still, we can see where this brand of denial, this hush, don't snitch, no bitch, mentality has stranded us.

MAKE IT STOP.

2007-01-05T01:17:00.000-05:00

"These were people who came here and worked for the poor and helped out those in difficult situations," said Robert Thompson, a friend and owner of Fair Grinds, a Mid-City coffee shop where Hill held free filmmaking seminars.

The couple had moved into their North Rampart Street apartment in August after returning from South Carolina, other friends said. They fled their Mid-City home during Hurricane Katrina and were trying to rebuild it.

"They were proactive people that were trying to help solve the city's problems," Thompson said. "They cared."

"This is a huge loss for the city," he said.

The Self-Proclaimed Danziger Seven & Co.

2007-01-03T16:55:00.000-05:00

My Love Ain't Blind.

2007-01-02T00:16:00.002-05:00

Am I being unfair to this Darklaw guy?

Certainly, his statement that the accused deserve a fair trial is valid. I'm not sure, though, why he feels the need to point out something that is, by and large, obvious and undisputed. If all officers truly adhere to his hypothesis that "We are one NOPD," are we, the citizens of New Orleans, to believe that these seven officers have every officer's support regardless of their innocence or guilt? To go a step further, are we to subscribe to the notion that they are above the law they've sworn to protect and uphold? If Darklaw is serious about his post, rather than ranting in a heated moment, what are we as citizens to do? What would be the advantage of blindly following these men - for us? Why does Darklaw feel entitled to dictate what we should and should not believe, what we should and should not advocate? Does he speak for the entire department; does the department know it is being represented in this manner? In his subsequent comments, he amends his stance, writing that "I want everyone to adhere to the constitutional fact that they are innocent until PROVEN guilty, which I somehow doubt will happen." Meanwhile, Darklaw refers to the victims as "armed renegades" minus any official proof that they were, in fact, armed. But I guess it's okay to assume their guilt.

I have tried and been subsequently discouraged from working with NOPD, a tactic that enables this organization to claim they're misunderstood, misrepresented, etc., which for them is preferable to the truth leaking out. Last spring, and summer, and fall, I contacted NOPD representative Bambi Hall - albeit only after being given a series of wrong numbers both over the phone and at NOPD's MLK division - to set up a ridealong and interview some officers regarding the realities of law enforcement post-apocalypse, as well the lack of support they receive from the brass, as alleged at the also-anonymous cop site, signal26.com. [This site says the cops MUST be acquitted - again, their guilt or innocence seems a moot point.] After being told that ridealongs were suspended indefinitely "due to Katrina," I was given the small-time runaround - told, for instance, that I had to call at certain times, calling at those times, and receiving Ms. Hall's voicemail. I cracked the wall of silence erected by New York Governor Pataki when I was 20, so I can assure you of my persistence and patience - but, after months, it became pointless to channel any more energy into this endeavor. If I worked for the good ol' Times Picayune or the prestigious New York Times, I would have had the privilege of running the brass' stock quotes.

I also received no response from Darklaw when I attempted to draw him out via email and after some initially encouraging dialogue, Signal 26 dropped off my radar. Self-fulfilling prophecies re: "the liberal media" can be fun; now that I've spoken out against the above hyperbole, I can be dismissed as having had "an agenda" when my only agenda has been to uncover and tell the truth in order to maybe, just maybe, make life a little better here in the oligarchy, a job I am certainly not paid for as an independent writer - I mean, talk about low salaries.

Now, Darklaw's girlfriend has posted her own call for citizens to show up and support the Seven when they turn themselves in tomorrow, a luxury most defendants, incidentally, are not afforded - at least not poor, non-politically connected defendants. Twilight Mermaid also urges the readers of this community not to make the murders a racial issue despite her boyfriend's comments regarding how the D.A., Eddie Jordan, discriminates against whites - i.e., despite her boyfriend playing the race card. This latter phrase can be tricky because people throw it around so often, sometimes to discredit people who, like me, feel the need to point out that blacks, particularly in the South, are discrimated against on a massive institutional level. I also believe prejudice is something everyone is capable of and that there are instances, certainly, of blacks in power overruling whites by virtue of their race or blaming everything on race in an absurd and malicious manner, a la the New Orleans School Board back in the day. I most certainly do not believe that, historically or percentage-wise, whites are the major victims of institutional racism, especially compared with blacks.

It seems to me that if these posters were truly offended by racism and corruption, as they claim they are, they would raise their voices on behalf of victims or potential victims outside their own clique. Neither have yet to write a word about Ronald Madison, the mentally handicapped man shot in the back and killed, or the other victims, or the frightening and dangerous precedent set by allowing unchecked aggression and zero accountability to flourish. It's an m.o. that creates criminals and encourages crime. The reason I left New Orleans for Katrina is because I did not want to be trapped - literally - between men with guns, both those labeled criminals and those branded righteous. The cops stuck between these two groups, Serpico-style, have my deepest sympathy - I know several who left both the force and this city after witnessing both in-house corruption and what went on during the aftermath of the storm, as do a lot of residents.

According to twilight mermaid, however, love for one's city and the men facing trial are one and the same, a la her ultimatum that, IF YOU LOVE THIS CITY, BE AT SOUTH BROAD AND TULANE AVENUE TOMORROW BETWEEN 9-9:30 AM AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR THESE MEN.

I love this city, but I can assure you that if I attend this event, it will not be to show my support for these men because I do not believe these men represent the best that NOPD has to offer, the best this city can offer us, or the interests of citizens trying to survive post-apocalypse.

And Throw Away the Key.

2006-12-31T13:22:00.000-05:00

Apparently, shooting an unarmed, mentally handicapped man in the back is just part of doing your job as an NOPD officer. Hell, we should be thanking the seven cops indicted for the murder of two civilians, including the aforementioned Ronald Madison, the maiming of two civilians, and the attempted murder of still other civilians - at least according to an NOPD officer known online as "Darklaw," who had the following to say in a New Orleans community:

"Please Support the Seven NOPD Officers that are facing indictment and trial for doing their job. They stayed during Katrina and now the System has turned their back on them, with the DA calling them rabid dogs with a gun. DA Eddie Jordan is out to make his biggest political move yet - wait, he did that when he fired every white employee at the DA's office and got sued in Federal Court. Imagine doing your job, during Hurricane Katrina and acting approapriately, acting within reason, and acting to preserve not only your own life, but the lives of others...and being indicted for Murder for it. With no bond. You will sit in prison until the trial is OVER, regardless of verdict."

And so the true miscarriage of justice has been revealed; clearly, these cops were indicted because they're part of our country's most oppressed class - you know, good ol Southern white boys - that just so happen to shoot a lot of black boys.

Obviously, since their own department pronounced them innocent, the case should be closed.

However, before we adhere to this request, let's review some additional details of said case:

"Katrina trek led to bridge
So, when Hurricane Katrina was barreling toward New Orleans, it made sense that Ronald Madison would stay at his big brother's two-story condominium. The family's two dachshunds, Bobbi and Sushi, to whom Ronald was very attached, were with them. Although Lance Madison thought his townhouse would provide safety, after Katrina the area was surrounded by 6 feet of water. After spending a few days in the condo without food and water, the Madisons decided to seek better accommodations at the dental office of their brother Romell Madison on Chef Menteur Highway.

They ended up staying at the office for a few more days, getting supplies at a Winn-Dixie. Madison said they were hoping that buses would take them to safety. But on Sunday morning, six days after the storm, that hope evaporated. Ronald and Lance Madison were out on the highway trying to catch a bus to take them to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, according to Madison's testimony from a Sept. 28, 2005, magistrate hearing. When no buses appeared, they decided to try to get to Fuki Madison's house, but they eventually turned back toward the dental office.

As the Madisons were walking toward the Danziger Bridge, Lance Madison said, six teenagers in white T-shirts and jeans approached them and started shooting. As the Madisons ran up the bridge, away from the gunfire, a group of police in civilian clothes appeared on the scene, Madison testified. They also began shooting, and Ronald Madison was left dead with five gunshot wounds to the back and two to the upper arm, according to the coroner's autopsy report.

In his testimony, Madison said that one officer who shot at him and his brother jumped out of a small postal truck, although he also mentioned that officers arrived at the scene in a rental truck.

Clashing testimonies
In the three federal lawsuits stemming from the day's events, the victims said the seven officers who jumped out of the back of a rental truck did not identify themselves as police.

But police accounts are different, with officers saying they arrived because of reports of sniper fire targeting rescue workers. Sgt. Arthur Kaufman, a homicide detective who arrived after the officers in a commandeered Budget Rent-A-Truck, said at the Sept. 28 magistrate hearing that the officers identified themselves. They fired only after being fired upon by four of seven suspects on the bridge, he testified.

In his testimony and in a police report, Kaufman identified Lance Madison as one of the people shooting at police. He also said that one officer, Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, who has been indicted on a first-degree murder charge, saw Madison throw a gun over the bridge into the Industrial Canal.

David Ryder, who claimed to be a St. Landry Parish Sheriff's Office deputy, also identified Lance Madison as one of the people shooting at rescue workers. In fact, Ryder was not a deputy but a man with a criminal record that includes a conviction for false imprisonment and arrests for battery on a police officer and possession of cocaine, according to court documents from Nacogdoches County, Texas.

Madison has said that neither he nor his brother was armed. Fisher produced a record of a polygraph test he said Madison passed on Oct. 3, 2005, in which he said he did not have a gun or shoot anybody.

At the Sept. 28, 2005, hearing, Orleans Parish Magistrate Court Judge Gerard Hansen said he believed Madison. 'I don't think you're one of the shooters. I don't think that, OK,' he said. 'I could be wrong, but I've been doing this for 32 years and I think I have a gut reaction on this.'

The state grand jury apparently also reached that conclusion."

R.I.P. Ronald Madison.