well, hellooooooo. is everyone having a grand time in san francisco? no? hmmm. oh, wait. that could be because you're not here and i am. bwahahahahaha!
seriously, i miss you all and---sorry. started laughing again.
anyway, arrived in the City at 1-ish this afternoon after a groovy 180 mile commute that included almost no traffic (other than the idiot in front of us at the bridge tollbooth who spent something like 5 minutes either looking for exact change or chatting up the very cute booth operator). started out the morning with a javalanche from java wava to kickstart the drive. hit modesto and stopped for iced tea, film and batteries. livermore's a & w/kfc mega-greasepit was the official pisspoint (seemed appropriate). then over the hill, into the brisk sea air and a glorious afternoon of wandering around the tenderloin and looking at hookers...i mean, bookstores. um, for the next installment of our adventures, you'll have to go lecram's blog.

Jim Crow Back On The Beat

there's no way this can be true in our enlightened era. right? anyone? bueller?

Half Nekkid Thursday

happy happy joy joy! it's HNT time again! this week i'm pulling an oldie from my college days. back in the year 19mumblemumble i was but a wee lad who thought he had the makings of a sean connery, sean penn, sean young or pauly shore. there i was at the U, making my way up the ranks of the privileged class (those who were given parts without having to really audition). at that time i was about a pfc. most of my work was being done in the "black box", which is where the student-run productions happened 9and where the best shows occured, because they were anarchy at its finest). i had been blacklisted by a professor a semester or so before this picture was taken, because i failed to show up for one of his poetry class readings (or something like that). so, i had been working the non-teacher-controlled plays for a while. when a senior grade actor decided to be Hamlet for his senior project i went to auditions hoping to get a minor supporting role. in fact, the professor/director had suggested i try out for laertes or Hamlet's sissy friend. reading the script for the first time in my life i quickly focused on Claudius (that bastard evil king/stepfather/murderer). something about him just clicked with me. i got the part and this is the one promo photo i was given and able to hang onto. it's not necessarily half-nekkid now, but i felt ALL nekkid when i was on stage. this was my biggest and baddest role to date. and damn i was good looking before the drugs, booze, baby and narcissism took full hold of me.
happy HNT to all and to all a good night/morning/afternoon. go here for the rules (more like guidelines, actually) and go here to see my favorite hottie (if she's out of the hospital and feeling up to blogging). and go here to check out HNT's creator's blog. also, lecram's HNT is up.
go. now. i mean it. quit staring at me. or say something. anything. fuck it. fine, just go. this was the biggest mistake of my life trying to be honest with you. you're just like all the rest. ogle me and on to the next. you'll get yours someday and i'll be there to laugh and laugh and laugh...i'm sending you the bill for my therapy.

so, theraminman (who, evidently, actually started writing on his blog while i wasn't looking), gave me a cd of Jonathon Richman and the Modern lovers. much loved gift. it's jonathon singing live and "ice cream man" is perhaps one of the best live versions of any song i have heard by anyone ever. "egyptian reggae" ain't so damn bad either. that would have been enough to get me to his music gig last saturday (plus the gig was damn fun. i haven't danced like a giraffe in heat for some time; made me reealize that if i'm going to not quit smoking i need to get back in the other habit of getting exercise). but...
BUT he can't give me just one richman cd. no, he has to tease me with a "bonus cd". and when he hands it to me it turns out to be the very album that got me started at the age of 16 on my jonathon odyssey. my older sister had bought a rubinoos album (vinyl, of course). inside, though, was something by someone we didn't know of. sis wanted to return it right away, but i and her older brother convinced her to play it first. the rest is history...she didn't return it. and i have followed his music ever since. how could i go wrong with songs like "here come the martian martians", "abominable snowman in the supermarket", "hey there little insect", "hi dear", unique covers of "back in the u.s.a." and "amazing grace", and "rockin' shoppin' center"? not to mention "lonely financial building".
so, thank you theremainman (sic). you rock just as does jonathon. and your "ticket to ride" gig on saturday was a kick for me. the music was good, the dancing was strokeworthy (not in the kleenex way, mind you) and your shoutouts made me feel like i was having my birthday all over again. and the picture above is my badnewsblonde way of thanking you (she thanks people who buy her stuff by showing parts of her body...which is damn smart. you don't get that. you get what i got. and what i got is me at 15 trying to be cool for the camera. but aces works for the gift. aces to you, beeyatch).
cheers to all and listen to jonathon richman as much as you can. by the way, the cd has at least three more songs on it than the vinyl did, including "roadrunner". SUPER BONUS!!!!!!!!!!

Even I Am Stunned By The Absolutely Incoherent Manner In Which Bush Addresses Katrina

(normally i'd just link to an article, but this is so intense as an indictment of our current leader's incompetence that i chose to go ahead and print it in its entirety. this man has no clue. he can't finish sentences. he loses track of his thoughts. he calls what he did extraordinary. he becomes combative when a question diviates from what he expects to hear. he falls back on repeated words to try and convince people that he has a handle on the situation. switching questions from new orleans to iraq seems to have flummoxed him momentarily. his grasp of the english language is simplistic at best and rote at worst all in the same q and a period. he claims he doesn't lead by poll, but unquestionly accepts on what his handlers tell him [it's in here if you read closely]. he tells the country that a big storm is coming on monday on monday morning? i must have missed that, because i was at work as was everyone else. actually , he was still out at his ranch on vacation. if he had called an emergency television message wouldn't i have at least heard about it? maybe NPR and those other left wing commies censored it. and, wow, he signed a pre-declaration in anticipation of a big storm coming. what the hell does that mean?!? and what did it contain? because nothing other than devastation, death, looting and panic ensued. police from neighboring states cut off routes of escape. doctors were forced to put to death those patients they couldn't justify taking with them. the national guard wouldn't allow food drops. local, state and national agencies had no idea what the other was doing. it took bush almost three days to be called out of vacation to do a fly-over. FEMA had no idea people were being housed in the convention center until 4 days after katrina hit. FEMA's head has resigned "in the interest of the country and in the interest of the president" [somebody tell me what that means, please? did he finally realize that a political appointment should be looked at as a responsibility? or did he get a call from karl rove?]. anyway, here is bush's press conference from today.

President Bush Meets the Press in New Orleans, Admits 'Sense of Relaxation' After Hurricane Hit By E&P Staff Published: September 12, 2005 5:00 PM ET
NEW YORK Appearing in hurricane-scarred New Orleans today, President Bush took a few questions from reporters, a little before Michael D. Brown, embattled director of FEMA, would resign. But here, the president could not identify any shortcomings in the relief effort, denied any racism in responding to the storm, and said there were plenty of troops to fight the war in Iraq and maintain security and relief here at home. He also said that after the hurricane struck, and he believed New Orleans was not ravaged, "there was a sense of relaxation."A transcript:

Q Sir, what do you make of some of the comments that have been made by quite a number of people that there was a racial component to some of the people that were left behind and left without help?
THE PRESIDENT: My attitude is this: The storm didn't discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort. When those Coast Guard choppers, many of whom were first on the scene, were pulling people off roofs, they didn't check the color of a person's skin. They wanted to save lives.I can assure people from the -- and I know from the state and local level, as well, that this recovery is going to be comprehensive. The rescue efforts were comprehensive, and the recovery will be comprehensive.
Q Mr. President, does the federal government need the authority to come in earlier, or even in advance of a storm that threatening?
THE PRESIDENT: I think that's one of the interesting issues that Congress needs to take a look at. And it's really important that as we take a step back and learn lessons, that we are in a position to adequately answer the question, are we prepared for major catastrophes, that the system is such that we're able to work closely together and that --
Q Do you recommend that Congress consider allowing the federal government to act more quickly?
THE PRESIDENT: I think it's very important for Congress to take a good, close look at what went on, what didn't go on, and come up with a series of recommendations. And my attitude is, is that we need to learn everything we possibly can; we need to make sure that this country is knitted up as well as it can be, in order to deal with significant problems and disasters. Meantime, we've got to keep moving forward.And I know there's been a lot of second-guessing. I can assure you I'm not interested in that. What I'm interested in is solving problems. And there will be time to take a step back and to take a sober look at what went right and what didn't go right. There's a lot of information floating around that will be analyzed in an objective way, and that's important. And it's important for the people of this country to understand that all of us want to learn lessons. If there were to be a biological attack of some kind, we've got to make sure we understand the lessons learned to be able to deal with catastrophe.
Q Will what is needed to get this area back on its feet have any impact on the timing of troop withdrawals in Iraq?
THE PRESIDENT: In Iraq?
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: We've got plenty of troops to do both. Let me just -- let me just talk about that again. I've answered this question before, and you can speak to General Honore if you care to. He's the military man on the ground. It is preposterous to claim that the engagement in Iraq meant there wasn't enough troops here, just pure and simple.Do you care to comment on that?GENERAL HONORE: Well, we have about 90,000 members of the Reserve and National Guard deployed, of a total force of approximately 400,000. So 90,000 are deployed. We've got the capability. We're here, we're demonstrating in deed every day. We're performing the mission with the great support of the National Guard from multiple states. The response is here. The troops are getting the job done under the conditions that you see here today, and they're making America proud that we have that capability.We have capability. We're applying it -- air, land and sea -- our federal forces in support of the Governors of Louisiana and Mississippi under the direction of the Adjutant General. The system is working. We've got the capability, and we're looking forward to get the job done and get the job completed, until the Governors tell us otherwise.
THE PRESIDENT: The troop levels in Iraq will be decided by commanders on the ground. One, we're going to -- our mission is to defeat the terrorists, is to win. Secondly, the strategy is, as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down. And so, to answer your question about the decisions made on the ground in Iraq, they will be made based upon the ability of the Iraqis to take the fight. And more and more Iraqi units are getting more and more qualified.There's still a lot of work to be done there. Obviously, we're going to make sure we have a troop presence to help this political process go forward. There's an election -- the ratification of the constitution -- election will be coming up, and, of course, there will be elections this -- later on this year. And we will have the troop levels necessary to make sure those elections go forward. After all, the enemy wants to stop democracy. See, that's what they want to do. They want to kill enough people so that -- in the hopes that democracy won't go forward. They tried that prior to -- more than eight million Iraqis voting. They were unable to stop Iraqis from voting, because people want to be free. Deep in everybody's soul, regardless of your religion or where you live, is a desire to be free. And they can't stop it. And what we're going to do is help -- and they can't stop democracy from moving. And so what we're going to do is help make sure those elections are accessible to the Iraqi people.
Q Mr. President, there is a belief that we've been hearing for two weeks now on the ground that FEMA let the people here on the ground down. And perhaps, in turn, if you look at the evidence of what it's done to your popularity, FEMA let you down. Do you think that your management style of sort of relying on the advice that you got in this particular scenario let you down? And do you think that plays at all --
THE PRESIDENT: Look, there will be plenty of time to play the blame game. That's what you're trying to do.
Q No, I'm trying to --
THE PRESIDENT: You're trying to say somebody is at fault. Look -- and I want to know. I want to know exactly what went on and how it went on. And we'll continually assess inside my administration. I sent Mike Chertoff down here to make an assessment of how best to do the job. He made a decision; I accepted his decision. But we're moving on. We're going to solve these problems. And there will be ample time for people to look back and see the facts.Now, as far as my own personal popularity goes, I don't make decisions based upon polls. I hope the American people appreciate that. You can't make difficult decisions if you have to take a poll. That's been my style ever since I've been the President. And, of course, I rely upon good people. Of course, you got to as the President of the United States. You set the space, you set the strategy, you hold people to account. But yeah, I'm relying upon good people. That's why Admiral Allen is here. He's good man. He can do the job. That's why General Honore is here. And so when I come into a briefing, I don't tell them what to do. They tell me the facts on the ground, and my question to them is, do you have what you need.
Q Did they misinform you when you said that no one anticipated the breach of the levees?
THE PRESIDENT: No, what I was referring to is this. When that storm came by, a lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through at first, people said, whew. There was a sense of relaxation, and that's what I was referring to. And I, myself, thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people, probably over the airways, say, the bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to.Of course, there were plans in case the levee had been breached. There was a sense of relaxation in the moment, a critical moment. And thank you for giving me a chance to clarify that.
Q Mr. President, where were you when you realized the severity of the storm?
THE PRESIDENT: I was -- I knew that a big storm was coming on Monday, so I spoke to the country on Monday morning about it. I said, there's a big storm coming. I had pre-signed emergency declarations in anticipation of a big storm coming.
Q Mr. President --
THE PRESIDENT: -- which is, by the way, extraordinary. Most emergencies the President signs after the storm has hit. It's a rare occasion for the President to anticipate the severity of a storm and sign the documentation prior to the storm hitting. So, in other words, we anticipated a serious storm coming. But as the man's question said, basically implied, wasn't there a moment where everybody said, well, gosh, we dodged the bullet, and yet the bullet hadn't been dodged.
Q Mr. President --
THE PRESIDENT: Last question.
Q This is two weeks in. You must have developed a clear image at this point of one critical thing that failed, one thing that went wrong in the first five days.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I think there will be plenty of time to analyze, particularly the structure of the relationship between government levels. But, again, there's -- what I think Congress needs to do -- I know Congress needs to do -- and we're doing this internally, as well -- is to take a sober look at the decision-making that went on.And what I want the people of this state and the state of Mississippi to understand is that we're moving forward with relief plans. And we're going to move forward with reconstruction plans, and we're going to do so in a coordinated way. And it's very important for the folks of New Orleans to understand that, at least as far as I'm concerned, this great city has got ample talent and ample genius to set the strategy and set the vision. And our role at the federal government is -- obviously, within the law -- is to help them realize that vision. And that's what I wanted to assure the Mayor.

A Somber Note

"Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. "

and this:
"Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger. "

saturday night slights

we seem to have contract security forces in new orleans. not the national guard, not the marines or army or navy. not the police. these guys i've heard of and i've followed their exploits in iraq. they really can kill with impunity. so long as they don't shoot at or shoot back at u.s. military. it's an amazing thing. they are almost all ex-military (which makes sense) and they make somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000-500,000 a year for going to iraq. and their companies all have guaranteed contracts either with our government or with major government contractors. remember the men hung from the bridge in fallujah? that's them. remember the men arrested by us when they fired on a u.s. checkpoint in baghdad? no one does, because that was embarrassing and they may not have fired first. contract security forces...legalized militias?
"As the threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons. This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons." "
and then there's michael brown of FEMA. what a world of hurt this man is in. accepted a political job (he's a big supporter of conservative causes) and runs smack into katrina. not a good way for an unqualified candidate to publicly helm that boat. but to me it seems endemic with this administration.
"Jones was surprised Brown was being considered for job at FEMA but figured it wasn't impossible he could have risen high enough in local and state government to be considered for a job directing FEMA operations in Oklahoma.
"The agents quickly corrected him. This was a national post in Washington, deputy director of FEMA, the arm of the federal government that prepares for and responds to disasters around the United States.
Jones looked at the agents, "You're surely kidding?" "
and andrew card is looking a bit peaked these days if you haven't noticed or the white house press has forgotten to tell you.
"I knew that if word leaked out, the bureaucracies would defend themselves," "
this one speaks for itself. FEMA is trying "pilot programs" like it's a brand new toy? FEMA used to know how to handle disasters.
"FEMA spokesman Matt Burns in Washington told the Chronicle today its debit card program was a pilot, designed to get money quickly to a large number of people sheltering in one location.
Ed Conley, the FEMA liaison at Reliant Park, stressed today that FEMA is still giving financial assistance, just through different channels -- by checks that will be mailed and by direct deposit to bank accounts. "
i was talking to karen about this tonight. she hadn't heard about it. i read it on one of the lousiana papers. now here it is in the new york times. the quote i read (from the swamp news) went something like "we don't want another new orleans with looters and all".
Police agencies to the south of New Orleans were so fearful of the crowds trying to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina that they sealed a crucial bridge over the Mississippi River and turned back hundreds of desperate evacuees, two paramedics who were in the crowd said.
well, here's something for the central valleyites. at least we don't live in stockton.
"This is the fastest-growing region in California, and the bulk of that growth is taking place on the flood plains," said Jeffrey F. Mount, a geology professor and the director of the Watershed Center at the University of California, Davis. "What we are doing is creating our own New Orleans."

Friday Night Fights

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as much as i hate tagging unless it's done artfully and to the competition's shop window, i will acquiesce (but not silently) to lecram's.

10 Years Ago: i was living in seattle, washington in the freelard neighborhood and working for a candle supply making shop called pourette. i was heavily involved with a woman named jennifer. i was taking in seattle mariner baseball games. and i was learning the very tough art of gardening in the pacific northwest. the summer season there is actually a defined season unlike here in the central valley of california. if i wanted tomatoes, peas, carrots, radishes, dope and the like i had to watch the extended forecasts closely (and i mean the national ones, not the stoopid local ones. by the way, if i were i local meteorologist up there i wouldn't even go to work some months. a simple placard that reads "rain expected with some clearing and a chance of afternoon sun" would suffice). however, it helped me to hone my green thumb. unfortunately, i brought that green thumb back to the san joaquin valley and killed quite a few vegetable plants through overzealousness. also, i was learning that i wasn't cut out for extended and daily relationships. my true joys of an evening were to go to a nearby pub, drink guinness beer, throw real darts, work the crossword, write a drivel of a poem or two, shoot a game or two of pool and wander home. all in all a very enjoyable evening (and if i had or found someone who had the KGB, even better). my girlfriend, while not too demanding of my sobriety, was a bit too demanding of my time. a well learned lesson, the outcome of which was that we agreed (mutually, i might add) that our lives just didn't mesh after 2 and a half years. we made better friends than...the cliche.

5 Years Ago: i moved back to Fresno. decided seattle was just too damn small and conservative for a man like me. so i packed up my 1969 VW bus and cruised over the mountains to klamath falls, oregon where my beloved sister lives with my beloved niece. it was to be a weekend stop, but events conspired to lengthen the stay. on the way over said mountains of no name i was stopped by a crew laying high speed phone lines. as i was in a line of cars i turned off my engine. when it was my turn to go forward i tried to start the bus and it wouldn't. facing uphill. long story short i ended up being the only obstacle between it and a deep ravine with a river at the bottom. in other words i got out of the bus, put a rock under the wheel, got back in, tried to start it in neutral and the rock shifted. i got back out to fix the rock and forgot to set the hand brake. for ten minutes i was back to back with the bus, because it was in neutral and i had already kicked the rock out of the way. i waved to people as my body groaned against the weight trying to push me over and my legs began to tremble. the one driver who made eye contact just sahook his head as i yelled to him to get out and set my handbrake. he got the seattle one finger salute. eventually, i got out of that jam all by myself, faced the bus downhill and jumpstarted it in second gear. got to the bottom of the "hill", turned a round, got back in line and didn't cut the motor until i got to my sis's. blown oil pump, gaskets, everything. the bus's oil pan was flooding when it faced uphil and couldn't breathe. got to fresno (sanger, really), moved in with my parents for a while, laid low and was found out by people like lecram.

1 Year Ago: i was swearing to never work the rogue festival again. i had been one of its founders. i had been running venues for it for too long and last year was a bugger of a venue. i was also looking at my job and wondering why i was still working for assholes.

Yesterday: after a very long day at work mixing asphalt and running tests on it and tests on other black goo that came from the visalia airport and highway 99, i sat out on my patio with a beer and looked at the albatross that is the empty two-story fouplex built acroos the street from this past june. empty, because the bay areas owners bought it sight unseen for a cool $750,000 only to view and realize they owned a pig in a poke that was D.O.A. no way to make their money back in any timely or untikely fashion. so they've decided to rent it for a price no one will touch (i'm smelling tax writeoff). then, lecram called. he's borrowed my second car for a bit (yes, i am a "monied" man), but he evidently can't read a gas gauge. i picked him up, he bought a gas can and filled it up, we replenished the bmw and he was on his way again after a very good conversation about friends, lovers and the heartbreak of psoriasis. then, writerboy shows up at my house. only met this guy once at a barbecue. he wanted to "buy a baggie". i had to tell him that i am now a blue moon smoker and had nothing on the shelves (i stopped short of telling him that hurricane katrina had swamped my crop). he was polite and obsequious, which did nothing for me. i like my folks blunt. a dry martini ain't bad either. i watched the USA soccer team tie guatamala, but it was okay because USA has already earned their way into next year's world cup in germany (and you know i will be up watching every damn game that i can when next summer rolls around). then, i went to bed, because i had to be at work at 5 this morning.

5 Songs I Know All The Words To: Mojo Nixon's "She's Vibrator Dependent" (don't want me in it); Bloodhound Gang's "You're Pretty When I'm Drunk"; Kinky Friedman's "Waitress, Please Waitress"; the Roches' "The Boat Family" (although the harmonies kill me); Southern Culture On The Skids' "House of Bamboo".

5 Snacks: baby ruth, peanuts in the shell, microwave popcorn sans butter, celery and peanutbutter, beer.

5 Things I'd do w/ $100 million dollars: wait outside my house for the bottle and can pickers i know to be honest and hardworking and set them up right; buy a small nightclub/bar and hire musical acts that i actually like (like the Roches, Bloodhound Gang, Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones, Joan Osbourne, Jonathon Richman, Michelle Shocked, U2, REM, Sleater/Kinney, Eyes Like Mars, the Moldy Peaches, Fiona Apple); run naked down wishon boulevard from shields avenue to belmont shouting "i have the littlest dick in the world" and then pay the cops to turn their flashers on for me; disappear for the rest of my life (with sporadic emails to certain friends and family about where they can meet me all expenses paid); pay the drycleaning bill for lecram's pants.

5 places I would run away to: AAA (when AA isn't enough just keep aaadding); Madagascar, because it was always the darker appendix to the dark continent when i was growing up and, evidently, it has an ecosystem unlike anything else; Nepal (and i'd even quit smoking in order to be able to breathe the rarified air); Molokai (has a huge telescope that i could commandeer if this was tied into the $100 million question); seattle, but only if i could afford to live on a union lake houseboat without working (the july 4 fireworks are amazing).

5 things I would never wear: a toupee, a muscle shirt, a pushup bra, mickey's mantle, lederhosen (sorry, theraminman).

5 favorite TV shows: West Wing, Xena: Princess Warrior, Arrested Development, Reno 911, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

5 greatest joys: candlemaking, poetry writing, telescope viewing, beer drinking, masturbating.

5 favorite toys: weed whacker, pruning shears, computer, the cat, t.v.

5 people I'm tagging: probably none, because the gentleman who tagged ME knows all of my blogger friends.

Ass-Fault (Half Nekkid Thursday)

so, i work in an engineering lab. i've been doing this for 5 years now and have become way too proficient in the knowledge of soils and concrete (what it is, does, doesn't want to and shouldn't under any circumstances). if you land safely on an airport runway or arrive safely after a long or short road trip; if you survive an earthquake, because your building didn't collapse...you can thank me in part).
but it wasn't until i came to my current employer that i began to really learn about the black stuff your wheels grip. with that in mind, i present to you this pictorial tribute to my current passion. the stuff that keeps you safe. the road of happy returns: Ass-Fault. because no man should drive there alone.
HNT is a good thing. visit all of them. now, dammit!

a polaroid generation

my good friend generik found this letter from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which says it all. we can pretend that shit happens and no one is perfect, but this is pure 100% administration fuck-up. this is the result of 5 years of cuts in FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Wetlands Protection Act. this is the result of turning FEMA into a subdivision of Homeland Security, where beurocracy (spelling on that, judges?) reigns and execution of law seems like a distant wet dream. rightwingers are trying to confuse us by saying that clinton started all of the cuts when, in fact, he didn't. but they tried that with iraq, gas prices, the recession (which may be coming around again). why can't we find a politician who is willing to say "wow. i fucked up. that started and got out of control on my watch. i will make this right even though i voted to fuck it up in the first place"? leftwingers are tying themselves to the mast of a ship that blames all republicans when some republicans are not to blame. when are the "liberals" going to accept the fact that when they refuse to budge on important issues that affect all americans they, in effect, do harm to many of them? however, this letter hits the coffin nail right on the fucking head. bush and his "employees" have fucked up in grand manner.

OUR OPINIONS:
An open letter to the President
Dear Mr. President:
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."That’s unbelievable.There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

happy non-HNT night. i just wanna show a tattoo.

wow. weird what a night at lecram's can do to one's head. especially when mustang is there. and "J". trust me when i say that these are three individuals who should never be in the same vicinity as me. drunk, drunk, stoned and drunk. and i speak of just me. them i don't know about. i hope "them" are sufficiently dizzy enough to not fall asleep until they've puked.
a nice barbecue. lots of burned meat, lots and lots of beer, tequila and devil's brew. eclectic mix of folks. good conversation that would turn dirty and/or silly at the twist of a word. jaded stopped by and starsadie (neither of whom write very much) hung out. some guy named "writerboy" was there. not a clue about that. we named him, but we want a paternity test. man, there was a lot of booze there. and no dope. nope. nada. nichts. niente. zilch. nein. nyet. null set. zippo. well, at least it was fun. otherwise i would have told them all to fuck off. so, lucky for them that they're really cool.

News

"It is incredible, the government had no evacuation plan ... the first power in the world and it left its own population adrift."

Looting chaos hits New Orleans relief effort

Mayor Ray Nagin ordered 1,500 police officers to leave their search-and-rescue mission Wednesday night and return to the streets to stop looting that has turned increasingly hostile as the city plunges deeper into chaos.

Declaring that freedom is "untidy," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday the looting in Iraq was a result of "pent-up feelings" of oppression and that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The assistant secretary of the Army resigned Wednesday, with congressional aides saying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had him fired for questioning proposed budget cuts for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Authorities are avoiding airdropping provisions into New Orleans — the traditional way of supplying disaster victims — out of fear of sparking riots, a state official said.

The Rebellion of the Talking HeadsNewscasters, sick of official lies and stonewalling, finally start snarling.

WASHINGTON - September 2 - Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) gave the following speech today on the House floor during a special session to provide relief money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina:

The 17th Street levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps that was so chronically underfinanced that senior regional officials of the Army Corps of Engineers complained about it publicly for years

The Administration wants out of a multinational agreement to spend at least 0.7% of U.S. GDP on development assistance for poor nations

Evacuations were halted at the Superdome before dawn Saturday, leaving several thousand people trapped in squalor as authorities diverted buses to help some 25,000 refugees at the New Orleans Convention Center.

At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday.

New Orleans Going To War

(will someone please tell me that this general is not comparing new orleans to somalia, because they are both dominated by black populations or because this general is saying that it is black people who are the problem. please. someone?)

NEW ORLEANS — Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

Sandra Bullock Gets ScarySquirrelMan And Spammers Can Keep Their Sorry Loser Asses Off My Blog

because it's my friggin' birthday i am posting this beautiful woman again. why? screw you, i got my reasons. and she makes all of my problems disappear for at least a little while when i gaze upon her visage. she is one of a very, very few number of actresses who actually get it onscreen. she understands "be natural" and "don't try to be what you can't" and "scarysquirrelman loves it when you snort while laughing".
just watched "miss congeniality 2" this morning at 1, because i couldn't sleep. it is good, but not as good as the first. dietrich bader did his best, but he was no michael caine. benjamin bratt is gone and good riddance, because he was on my hit list of men who are not allowed to touch lips with sandra (johnny depp, benicio del toro, john cusack and hugh grant are. in fact, it would give me a major boner to my chin if they did. being as sexually secure as i am in my lifestyle allows me to be candid). william shatner is as good as he ever was, the airport girlie fight was great and sandra bullock is gorgeous.
before that, i watched "the jacket" with adrien brody and keira knightly. a cool, weird, semi-scifi, redemption story. one complaint, though: no boobies. keira is almost as fine looking a woman as i've ever seen (bend it like beckham, pirates of the caribbean, love actually which may be my favorite christmas movie that i can watch any time of year) besides sandra, audry hepburn and audry tattou. but i need to see her babymakers one time before i die without having to resort to crap like "doctor zshivago" (or however that pretentious piece of crap is spelled). booooorrrrring. by the way, "bend it like beckham" is a hell of a good story. while i'm "on it" so is "whale rider", which sounds like porn, but isn't so much.
today, i left work early in order to drink away all of the useless 40 year old brain cells that i will no longer be accessing and watched "sin city". "from dusk til dawn" meets "pulp fiction" meets "kill bill" and throws in about 7 bad b movie flicks from the 50's. all in all, a grand time. two dicks way up. all of the actors did very well. brittany murphy, in particular, was excellent. i'd give it two giant cocks up the pooper, but the only boobies were so fake as to not be attractive. were i 18 it wouldn't matter. tits are tits at that age. but i'm FORTY ONE!!! and i can only appreciate the real thing, baby. actually, the real thing might make me dizzy. it's been a while. my blood pressure is higher than it should be and i don't know what blood loss to all of my joints but one would do to me for more than a minute or so. hookers might call me a dream date, but i prefer "efficient and end-result orientated". looks better on the old resume. plus, no employer will know just what i like to do when i'm on the road for the company. call it team spirit if you will.
anyway, where was i? oh yeah, drinking away old memories no longer needed. so, after i got off work i went to drug fair and bought a half rack of corona. two steps after purchasing and crossing the whoosh doors the cardboard went karrriiiiipppp and the bottles smashed onto the cement. i finally understood the heineken commercial where those bottles break and a guy somewhere else rolls over and tells his babe not to touch him. i watched the twelver leak and wondered if i should demand a replacement. after a few moments of silence for the dead i put it on the asphalt where it would dry out quicker. then i noticed my leg was leaking as well. somehow, a bottle shard had made its way out of the box and jumped up my leg, leaving a trail of cut 8 inches long. very shallow, but still red. the little shard had popped out and up, which is a little weird. i later found a bit of blood on my shorts where the glass landed after doing its shuttle impression. the drug fair folks were nice enough to give me a new twelver and aplogize even as i was telling them it wasn't their fault at all. what a great white trash moment.

The boxes are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all. If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water. "As the water recedes," says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, "we expect to find a lot of dead bodies."

from Scientific American in October of 2001 comes this prescient article. we have evidently known for a long, long time what would happen if a large hurricane were to hit Louisiana and yet we (as a government) have done worse than nothing. we gutted federal disaster relief to one of the few areas everyone knew would suffer the most.

Say Nope To Dope

"heh. reading a book with y'all. great fun. reminds me of my ranch when the help would milk the cows and i could read Reader's Digest to 'em. made me laugh. so, uh, i just want y'all to know that i'm down with y'all. good americans. all of ya. proud of ya. uh, some of ya have got piercings on ya. shiny metal stuff. just, uh, want ya to know that, uh, even though i believe self-mutification is a sin and all that, it's not as bad as some things. y'all could get an abortion or do drugs or something. eat your boogers. that would be badder. uh, but i was thinking on the way here way up on air force one that your problems are real small. especially from up there. that's like 300,000 feet or something. way high. and getting high is bad. so don't do it. just say, uh, nope to dope. because you'll never get to be me if you loose your way. and when you loose your way, then it's the highway.
so, why is clifford red? and he's big, too, huh? i never got to read this in tenth grade. now i know why. it's, uh, a real big book.
but i want to, uh, go to what i talked to before. y'all got metal on you. you know ya couldn't get by my new airport stuff with that, right? i mean, you, uh, would probably half to get half nekkid to pass. and that's not cool with this fool. heh. but i wanted to talk on this fartherer, because i did a thing when i was in my twenties, like you, that i ain't proud of, but i still got. ya see, during my hazy frat days when i was puttin' stuff in my body that can't be proved, so put your hand down young man, i got me a souveneir from a night spent with my daddy's buddies. took me out on the town, heh, and got me all fucked, i mean energized, up and we found a parlor. called 'em parlors in those innocent days. so, i want you to know that i am down with your lack of moral compass, because i still have a dick chainy.
whoops, national security is calling me. gotta go and do important things. that's what bein' pregnitent is all about, important things. signin' bills an' cuttin' off funding. good, strong leader stuff. y'all have a good class now an' remember that killin' babies is for libruls and commies."

Hurricanes, Floods, Drill Rigs And The Oil Gestapo

"At least 20 oil rigs and platforms are missing in the Gulf of Mexico and a ruptured gas pipeline is on fire after Hurricane Katrina tore through the region, a US Coast Guard official said. "

...um, just missing? like they were there yesterday, but today they seem to have moved somewhere else? like the companies that own the rigs didn't bother to have an environmental assessment done before building them so that (in the case of a large hurricane) their legs would stay anchored? seems to me that our wonderful government is not the only entity to misunderestimate the perils of living and working within that great locale "anywhere within 1000 miles of the hurricane corridor". we teach our children to not live within 5 miles of a mobile home park in the midwest, because that park is a tornado magnet. but we don't seem to be so concerned about oil rigs in the gulf of mexico.
wow. 20 of them just gone. missing. presumed drowned. what the fuck, folks? we're the world's leader in engineering (and, yes, it is in part because we steal a lot of brain matter from india and japan), so why didn't we foresee this and makes the appropriate moves? louisiana is a conduit for water belonging somewhere else. new orleans has been living under the threat of something like this for a long time. mobil, exxon and shell have been raking in record profits for the last two years as supplies have dwindled (and spent money on commercials telling us why it isn't their fault). now, the south is suffering and disease may be on the upswing due to floodwaters, coffins, broken sewers and the general exodus of those who stayed too long. but the let's see how much money the oil giants kick in to the kitty to help these poor folk out. or do they continue telling us that they feel our pain and there's nothing they can do about it? remember that iraq is producing oil, but we're seeing none of it. easy way to push the alaska drilling for a paltry million barrels a day? we'll see. but i do think that new orleans and its surroundings will become political pawns in the domestic oil fight.

Half Nekkid Thursday

to make up for last week's wimp-out i humbly submit two. no stories. one speaks for itself, the other is a promise i made a couple of HNTs ago. if you're new to HNT go here for the guidelines.happy HNT everyone. does my fat ass belly look like fidel castro or billy joel?

L.A. Times Interview With A Real Nutjob

Getting Agnostic About 9/11
A society of nonbelievers questions the official versionMARK EHRMAN
Anyone who types the words "9/11" and "conspiracy" into an online search engine soon learns that not everybody buys the official narrative of what took place on Sept. 11, 2001. As a professor emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, 66-year-old David Ray Griffin would seem to have more affinity for leather elbow patches than tin hats, yet after friends and colleagues prodded him into sifting through the evidence, he experienced a conversion. Now he's spreading the bad news. Griffin compiled a summary of material arguing against the accepted story that 19 hijackers sent by Osama bin Laden took the aviation system and the U.S. military by surprise that awful day in his 2004 book "The New Pearl Harbor" (published by Interlink, a Massachusetts-based independent publisher covering areas including travel, cooking, world fiction, current events, politics, children's literature and other subjects). He recently followed up with the book "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions" (Interlink), a critique of the Kean commission document in which he suggests that a chunk of the blame for the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil lies closer to home than the caves of Afghanistan. We contacted him at his Santa Barbara-area home for a report on his journey from mild-mannered scholar to doubting Thomas.How did you join the ranks of those questioning the official account of the 9/11 events?
I was rather slow getting on board. For the first year and a half I just accepted the conventional view, really the blowback thesis, that this was blowback for our foreign policy. When a colleague suggested to me about a year after 9/11 that he was convinced our own government or forces within our own government had arranged it, I didn't accept that. Then several months later another colleague sent me [a link to] a website that had a timeline. Once I started reading that and saw all those stories drawn from mainstream sources that contradicted the official account, I decided I needed to look into it more carefully, and the more I looked, the worse it got. I considered it an obligation to kind of organize, compile the evidence and put it out there for the public.The Internet is full of 9/11 conspiracy theories. What have you contributed to the discussion?My main contribution has been the second book, [showing] that the 9/11 commission report is not worthy of belief, and the implication of that is that they were covering up the government's own guilt.What would constitute a "smoking gun" against the official 9/11 account?There are many. By just ignoring them, the 9/11 commission implicitly admitted they couldn't answer them. The towers coming down into a pile only a few stories high is a smoking gun. Many laws of physics had to be violated if the official story about the collapses is true. [The collapses] had all the earmarks of a controlled demolition by explosives. One of those is total collapse into a small pile of rubble. The fact that Building 7 [a skyscraper near the towers] collapsed when it had not been hit by an airplane, and collapsed in seven or eight seconds, that's a smoking gun. The fact that standard operating procedures were not followed that morning, and we've gotten three different stories now by the U.S. military as to why they did not intercept the planes, that's a smoking gun. The Secret Service leaving the president and themselves wide open to being attacked by [not responding immediately], that's a smoking gun. I can't say one is bigger than the other. You've got six or seven that are equally big.Critics of the official 9/11 account seem to draw sinister inferences from instances where people, buildings or physical objects didn't react or behave as one might expect in theory. For example, if the hijackers were devout Muslims, why were some drinking, eating pork chops and cavorting with lap dancers? Doesn't real life unfold inconsistently, even bizarrely? That's true, but the 9/11 commission simply ignored those questions. They're creating this image of fanatics who were so devout and convinced of the truth of their religion that they were ready to meet their maker, yet here's all this evidence that suggests they were not devout at all. [The commission] simply ignored evidence.Dissenters also seem to find it suspect that in a dire emergency, individuals and agencies bumbled, fumbled, delayed, dropped the ball or choked. Won't that occur in any emergency?Well, of course, that is the official theory. It's a coincidence theory that just happened to be that on those days, everybody became terribly incompetent. Take the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]. They've got these standard procedures: If a plane goes off course, if you lose radio contact or lose the transponder, you call the military. On this day we're told these FAA officials hit the trifecta. They got all three of these things, and yet they would stand around debating, "Should we call the military? No, I don't think so." And when they finally call, the people at headquarters won't accept their calls because they were in conference or wouldn't pass the call on. They have roughly about 100 hijack warnings a year where planes have to be scrambled, but suddenly they become just all thumbs. The whole thing is just implausible. The other thing is, if you've got accidents, screw-ups, some ought to go one way and the others the other way. Here everything goes the same way. Everybody fails to do their jobs in relation to something to do with 9/11. With others, you have alleged that inconsistencies, omissions or lies in the 9/11 record point to a cover-up, or even collusion or orchestration, by the American government. What would motivate such a scenario?You've got liberal Democrats and Republicans and Independents who are appalled by what Andrew Bacevich [a professor of international relations at Boston University] called "the new American militarism" in the book "American Empire." New meaning, qualitatively different than before. This post-9/11 push to a new level has made the world an enormously more dangerous place. Many people apart from thinking about 9/11 as an inside job have decided that the United States is doing what [Princeton University emeritus international law professor] Richard Falk calls a "global domination project." Chalmers Johnson [Japan Policy Research Institute president], a previous conservative, now says that we have become a military juggernaut intent on world domination.Have you followed polls on what the public believes about 9/11?There was a Zogby poll in New York. The question asked was, do you believe the government had advance knowledge of the attacks and consciously let them happen? Forty-nine percent in New York City said yes. I believe it was 43% statewide. That is a pretty remarkable figure. In this country there has not been a poll that asked, do you believe the government actually planned and orchestrated the attacks? The question has been raised in Europe and Canada and has gotten to somewhere around 20%. It would be interesting to have such a poll in the United States.Conspiracy theorists are often dismissed as marginal types. Where do your views on 9/11 place you in the eyes of your peers in academia? One thing to point out is, the official account itself is a conspiracy theory. It says that 19 Arab Muslims under the influence of Osama bin Laden conspired to pull off this operation. The question is not whether one is a conspiracy theorist about 9/11. It's which conspiracy theory do you find most supported by the evidence?Does your role as a 9/11 dissenter depart from your life's work as a scholar and theologian?At first glance it may seem strange, but the task of a theologian is to look at the world from what we would imagine the divine perspective, [which] would care about the good of the whole and would love all the parts. [So] 9/11, if it was brought about by forces within our own government for imperial reasons, is antithetical to the general good. Evil has been a subject of your academic writing. It's also been a recurring theme in administration rhetoric. Is that strange? In these politicians' mouths, it's used to describe certain groups and organizations when it's politically convenient to do so, and then to overlook even greater evil when it's politically convenient to do so. If you understand the divine as an all-powerful and wrathful creator who seeks vengeance, and uses overwhelming power to destroy its enemies, why then, if you've got the political power, you're probably going to think you're acting like God if you do that. The [Christian] church during the early centuries was anti-empire. Rome was the enemy. With Constantine, the empire accepted Christianity, and Christianity started accepting empire and all that entailed. There has been a long history of support for militarism, so from that perspective, it's not so strange.Prior to your 9/11 work, did you have an anti-establishment streak?I never burned my bra. I was fairly critical like a lot of Americans are, but I don't think people would have looked at me and said, "There's an anti-establishment guy."Do you get hate mail?I've had a few people suggest I need to see a psychiatrist, and one psychiatrist in L.A. even kindly offered his services.