Saturday, April 07, 2007

'Gringo' Lives With Mexicans in the Wild

(North Las Vegas) - When Manfred Merkwurdigliebe came upon three young Mexican men apparently abandoned by civilization, he decided to help them remain wild Mexican men in a most unconventional way -- by pretending to be a wild Mexican himself. He soon changed his name to Miguel Amorextraño.

"You can't get closer to Mexicans than he has," documentary producer Balli Conilupi said of Mexican researcher Miguel Amorextraño.

Amorextraño has spent his entire life studying the behavior of Mexicans and their interaction with humans. The National Geographic Channel followed Amorextraños' fascinating pursuit, producing a documentary called "A Gringo Among Mexicans" that airs April 16.

First becoming interested in Mexicans as a child, Amorextraño says he decided to live among Mexicans to help bridge the gap between Mexicans and humans. Amorextraño readily admits that many people will find it crazy that he lives and behaves like a Mexican, but he thinks the ultimate benefits of his experiment make his case.

In the documentary, Amorextraño describes how he eats and lives with the Mexicans. His food is placed in a plastic bag inside a pile of garbage that the rest of the Mexicans eat from.

In some ways, Amorextraño almost stopped being human. He talked about letting his emotions run wild while he was with the Mexicans, because they are very emotional much like women and domestic cats. When he leaves them, he finds it difficult to interact with other human beings. He is a "true Gringo Mexican. You can't get closer to Mexicans than he has," the documentary's producer, Balli Conilupi, said of Amorextraño.

Amorextraño warns those watching though that "it's very dangerous for people who haven't been trained, who think that they can just walk into a Barrio and be accepted."

The documentary includes the opinions of experts -- such as Christian Vidascomoperro, a Mexican biologist with the Raincoast Conservation Society's Mexican project and an instructor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia -- who are both intrigued by and skeptical of Amorextraños' unorthodox methods.

"I find it difficult to resolve that as humans we can teach Mexicans something," Vidascomoperro says. "I think the best teachers for Mexicans are their parents and older siblings in their natural social environment."

He concedes, however, that "lots of progress that has been made in science over the last century and more comes from the mavericks, or people that think a little differently."

Biologist Nicholas Mediocridade, leader of Portugal's Selvagem Mexican Project, said, "When you eat and sleep and interact with Mexicans -- that's something we can't replicate here, we won't do, we can't do."

Conilupi described the difficulties in filming, such as the camera crew having to wear gear to protect them from the unsanitary environment in which Mexicans congregate. They used a small camouflage tent to hide the camera. The Mexicans, he says, became jittery around strangers, so Amorextraño was in a unique position of being comfortable with the Mexicans.

According to Conilupi, Amorextraño who has begun collecting unusable automobile parts truly sees "the world through the eyes of a Mexican," offering a point of view that scientists so far have not been able to access.

Monday, September 11, 2006

New Orleans Recovers Around the Clock

How many flippin' journalism awards are there now? You know all of those awards that the media bestows upon themselves to validate their existence. It just seems that they have invented enough awards so that each and everyone gets one. It's like the Special Olympics. More to the point, the Media issuing Journalism awards is paramount to the Ku Klux Klan giving each of their locals a humanitarian open-mindedness award.

All of the awards recently seem to be going to people and publications for their reporting of the Katrina Clusterfuck. They all got it wrong! Every last one of them and now they are awarding each other to make sure we realize how right they got it.

The African American population of the City of New Orleans was 55%. How did every award winning news organization miss the chance to photograph or interview a single non-black resident of the City. Spike Lee never made a claim of being unbiased before he had to drive to the edge of the earth before finding two girls drunk and trashy enough to play the role of poor white trash in his epic that has been the closest anyone has gotten to responsible journalism since August 29, 2005.

On the anniversary of the storm every local network pre-empted all programming so that they could wallow in a collage of their poorly reported and wholly innaccurate portrayal of the storm as it unfolded. As they did so, I watched on my one channel as every reporter took turns telling stories.

Telling stories should not and cannot be confused with reporting. Particularly since each of them just reported something that they heard one of their colleagues say. Most notable is "the official line" from the Army Corps of Engineers and the White House, "work continues around the clock on the Canals breached by Katrina."

Every so called reporter, the local reporters all repeated the line over and over and over. I've heard rumors from people in St Bernard that have said that they think that work goes on at night along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet because there are bright lights in the marsh that can be seen from the Green Monster. But I can attest that the "around the clock" work on the 17th Street Canal ends at dusk, Monday through Friday. No work at night, no work on the weekends and no work when it rains(everyday at about 3pm). It has been this way since before the Corps first bullshit deadline of June 15th.

WWL-TV has a webcam at the construction site called Eye on Floodgates. It must be the catchy name that wins those awards since not a single one of their so-called reporters have ever looked at the camera at night. Perhaps all of those crack investigative journalists work floodgate construction hours of 9-5 M-F weather permitting.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

The Crazy Ivan

For the ladies, I'll splain the reference from the greatest movie of all time. Yeah, I know! Leaving the gun and taking the Cannoli is important but with special effects and Sean Connery, The Hunt for Red October is the greatest movie of all time. Oh stop, you bunch of whining art-fags, Citizen Kane doesn't even rate. What? Rosebud wasn't a sled? I guess I'll be watching that one again, I must've missed something.

LOVE STORY? Get the fuck outta here. Girls, a flick that not only kills the only remotely redeeming character but does so with cancer can never, ever, be considered a good movie. Yep, that's right! Never saw Memoirs of a Motherfucking Geisha and don't plan to either.

So, Alec Baldwin is a CIA Agent pretending to be a Naval Officer. That part just kills me now, Clancy would have never sold the script had he known Hollywood was going to hire a communist card carrying member of the Democratic Party to play the likes of Jack Ryan. It kills me, not only does the biggest Marxist in California(that's a lot of Marxists) get to play Jack Ryan and Jimmy Doolittle but he eventually does a fine job portraying the most war-mongering Democrat of all time, Bob McNamara. Okay, honorable mention to both presidential Roosevelts.

In the movie, the Roosky Sub or as only Sean can say in his best Russian brogue, the Ballistic Missile Boat, Red October, turns suddenly every half hour to see if anything is behind them. The maneuver is called, "The Crazy Ivan."

The Crazy Ivan

I'm schlepping a few days ago over at the Home Depot. In a less than scientific survey, I have found that about once per month, I will get some asshole who apparently receives no pampering in their life and makes up for it by demanding the sum of all of life's missed pampering from some asshole in an orange apron. And my handy slide rule says once per month the statistical balance of the universe requires the apron wearing asshole to be Moi.

Keen powers of observation allowed me to notice that I had hit the jackpot with these two guys in about 10 seconds. So, what the hell, I wasn't busy and if they really needed to believe that they were in the Gucci on Rodeo Drive and not the HD on Veterans Boulevard, I was up for a little role play. All the while, deep in the recesses of my mind I slowly stoked the coals in their own personal furnace.

I sucked up every bit as much as a 6'6" 250 pounder can when faced with a guy in shower flops in the middle of a home improvement warehouse. But, then the mouthpiece of the two wanted to barter also. As Yota would say, "trying the patience of the apron wearing asshole, they were!"

I offered a 10% discount off of the cheapest item on the floor and they demanded 40% and insisted I take the offer to management and I needed to make sure the Manager understood that they were paying "Cash." I had lost the intrigue for the role play and scurried away to find a Manager that was willing to tell this guy to go fuck himself.

When I said, "Oh yeah, he is paying CASH," the Manager squinted and said, "what does that have to do with anything?" I had a good giggle and explained that paying cash is apparently substantial on a Tiajuana used car lot. I suggested that perhaps he was evacuated south of the border because I suspect his flip flop wearing ass had never left Gentilly before the Coast Guard snatched him off of his roof last year. I begged the Manager to come back with me and apologize for my mistake but we could only offer some stupid amount like 7.25% but he wasn't game. He did tell me though that I could offer an additional 10% if he opened a HD charge account. With that comedy, I was empowered to role play on and counter his cash offer with charge it!

He took the original 10% and in typical fashion demanded that I go and get him a cart for his freezer because it "is my job!" I just couldn't give him the standard operational procedure line about him being in the "warehouse store" and everything being, "self service." I did briefly consider asking him for a reach around but decided to let that go. I did laugh to myself though knowing that their was a guy working 10 feet from me that tells old ladies to go get their own carts and will say that it is against insurance regulations for him to go to the parking lot. He loves Home Depot and has achieved his highest goal by landing this gig. He smokes a lot of pot.

Did you forget your cart

Who are all of you fuckers who stroll HD without a cart? Have you not been to the place a thousand times? Do you ever remember leaving empty handed? Is it not true that you will impulse buy a pail of fresh, stinky, warm and drizzly cat shit if we put a "reduced" tag on it? Grab a basket on your way in. You can lean on it while waiting in line to check out.

If you pull in to HD with your kid in a carseat, what possesses you to think that the kid is then safe pretending to surf on your lumber cart as you push it down the aisle? Do you really think that the stoner on the lift truck who has already reached the pinnacle of his life's ambition is going to think twice about clipping the cart as he passes you?

If you are too fat to carry your own weight, what makes you think that a do-it-yourself project is in order? Hire a contractor, Dumbo! Yeah we got motorized baskets. They have batteries just strong enough to get you and your cankles into the store but not out. The motorized basket was an ingenius idea by some corporate dickhead trying to justify his salary and look good to the ADA nazis. The seating section comfortably fits no person larger than the basket collector kid in the parking lot who after pushing baskets all day deserves a little r and r on a 1 mile per hour go cart provided some asshole the size of the thin little wafer guy in that Monty Python movie hasn't run the battery dead inside the store.

Shower flops? You people!

I strolled on out to the farthest reaches of the parking lot to get a cart and slowly made my way back. Along the way, I came abreast of two other guys making their way to the store. About thirty feet off of my bow just port of dead ahead was a perfect ass in one of the many ways that I adore. No underwear and shorts slightly too small causing a ride up her cheeks that was accentuated with each step. It was beautiful!

Perhaps she forgot her wallet or her measurements but whatever the reason she suddenly did an about face on her heal. In our heads, I am certain the guys on either side heard Jonesy's scream just as I did. CRAZY IVAN!

The guy to my port stared out on the horizon as if he was Magellan. I opted for a crash penny search as I stared at my toes. On my starboard was a guy about 75 years old and he reacted by looking straight up into the sky. No sunglasses and a typical New Orleans September day, bright, very bright.

As we neared the front of the lot and the nymph was well out of our wake, Magellan exclaimed, "we were so busted!" The old man replied, "oh yeah!" I just laughed. I love this job. I wish I smoked pot.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Original Sin

I found myself this evening crossing Katrinavilla in a most wonderful state of mind. Physically I was headed from Beachcorner, the cultural center of Lakeview for the safety and confines of River Ridge. Upon this moment, I had achieved a crackrock of the instance, pure unadulterated satisfaction. Okay, maybe a bit adulterated. Upon writing this, I realize it was completely adulterated but core pure just the same.

At the moment of my drive, Over The Hills And Far Away was playing on the radio and for that moment it was the greatest song ever written. Now that I have eaten dinner and sat down to tell this tale, I have now listened to a version of the song repeatedly about four times before realizing that I could take it no longer and turned on Minor Threat. I have also sobered and this combined with Minor Threat could possibly alter the original intent of this tale and that is an attempt to secure for posterity a momentary instance of pure satisfaction.

I will be forced upon this consideration to open another beer, the fifth of the day that is four more than my self-imposed limit. I will enjoy this beer as if it were the first breath of opium or the first taste of a woman but that has nothing to do with the story but then again perhaps it has everything to do with this tale as the title may suggest this is a story of original sin, the one driving force that has kept me going on these years.

As I left work today at the More Stuff Than You Could Ever Possibly Need Depot after a full day of selling convenience and style to the insured masses, I picked up a phone message from a former bro in garbage who like myself was eliminated by the evil It Corporation following Katrina but not before he was given the opportunity to save his own job for a few weeks by baring false testimony against Me. He was drunk and clearly by both his message and the sounds of the background noise in the process of doing the one thing that separates us from the rest of the entire fucking world, he and the characters around him were carrying on!

I, in my new found pathetic existence actually considered whether to grace the folks with my presence. I considered not gracing them with my being as I was too mature and adult and serious and bored, boring and in the process of infecting my boredom on all of those around me. I would go and have just enough drinks to tell my old bro to go fuck himself. I would go home feeling good and vindictive and afterall I was bored.

One of the characters who I suspected to be present for this gathering and probably the instigator of said gathering had just been awarded possibly the most controversial contract in the 288 year history of New Orleans and that is a lot of controversy. I use the term gathering deliberately since the handful of guys I suspected would be present are to New Orleans carrying on, myself included, as Conan McCloud and his buddies are to mayhem. We were for a few years the Highlanders of carrying on and as I was soon to find out the Quickening had arrived.

The controversial contract was for collection and storage of derelict automobiles and boats left from Katrina’s carnage. The City has awarded this contract two other times to three bidders but this guy’s firm has now been awarded it by the State. Really, if you do not know what drives the elected, allow me to inform you that it has little to do with pleasing the electorate and has everything to do with shaking down as many contractors as possible. If you can keep awarding the same contract over and over, all the better for having someone buy you lunch or dig your swimming pool or give you $100,000 in cash wrapped in Popsicle boxes for easy storage. Now, of course, the last 10 months have proven to anyone watching that while New Orleans and Louisiana have deserved reputations for corruption, they are no match for the greed and corruption rampant in the U.S. federal government. But, while FEMA is paying the bill, the most clear reason that this contract has needed to be repeatedly awarded is that the newly re-elected Mayor of the City of New Orleans, C. Ray Fudcicle is a complete and total fucking idiot! He is a born again racist also but that has little effect in this matter. The original version of the contract was for inventory, collection and disposal of the vehicles but in the shitstorm of controversy due mainly to the City not considering recycling options, our illustrious leaders at every level have figured out that by breaking up the elements of the contract they can continue awarding the contract indefinitely. At present they have awarded collection and storage to my friend. They have mandated the State Police to handle the inventory at no direct reimbursement and yet intend to still bid out secondary storage and disposal/recycling. It really makes perfect sense to double your transportation costs and create intermediate storage requirements. Perfect sense if you are a complete and total fucking imbecile or corrupt to the point of being evil.

As I pulled up to Beachcorner, I parked across the street from one of the derelict cars. It was a Jaguar with two flats and couple of broken windows and had clearly been fully submerged 10 months ago. I got to believe that this car has salvage value, I asked him to deliver it to my apartment but he immediately shut me down by explaining that he was contractually obligated to store the car at the State’s expense indefinitely. Mrs “all I can do is cry on national television” Governor of Louisiana, should be crying now but what does she care, she got a teacher pay raise approved, a campaign promise, never mind that 10,000 teachers lost their jobs and that every school in three Parishes were destroyed. She doesn’t need to cry anymore because she secured a raise that the remaining teachers will never be able to spot in a grocery basket. We just would’ve been a little better off had we voted for the Indian instead of the Woman.

I arrived inside to find all of the pre-Katrina barmaids along with a new one that was about 6’1” in a pair of daisy dukes. I intend to have a fantasy about that tall cool drink of water in the very near future. Included in this line up was a girl that has been serving me drinks for so long that I almost remembered her name. She without question has the most toned legs in Orleans Parish. Many an evening has been spent watching her shoot pool in twisted anticipation of her needing to lean across the table to make a shot. She had on long pants but it was okay since their were the lingerie girls whoring their tickets about the place. Girls in undersized drawers are like the second best thing to naked girls. Two of them looked like Anna Kournikova but younger and one looked like Michelle Wei but younger. I recognized two of them and felt good that there are at least two women left in the universe that I recognize in their underwear. Original sin was in the air.

I entered the bar telling myself that I would have one beer, not a cocktail but just one beer. I would let the one beer take the edge off and then find a polite way to tell my turncoat friend to go fuck himself and also lightly but professionally grovel for work from any friends that I have that just may happen to be sitting upon a giant municipal contract. As I walked in, a roar erupted from the back of the crowded bar. As I approached I was accosted by an unfamiliar hand offering a Heineken. It was ice cold! I was home! I might have two but that’s it.

Amongst the crowd at the rear was a sizable contingent from the St Bernard Parish Department of Sewer and Water. They were what we down here call “essential personnel.” They greeted the highest storm surge on record for North America and waited 5 days longer than the City of New Orleans for the first Army Hummer to arrive. They had stories!

I was sipping my third beer with one of the Kournikovas on my lap. She was a sweet young thang in every sense. Not real good with the English though. She was awfully cute and awfully young and was probably not a victim of some sort of Eastern European white slavery ring. She was however on my lap and her perky supple rack could barely be contained in her too small frilly top. Linda from the sewer of God’s Country had lit a Kool, it smelled of ambrosia. Absence makes the heart grow fonder!

Linda told a story of the desperate days in God’s Country in the early days of September. They had survived the storm and the floodwater was receding with every tide. They had made it to the secondary command center on the upper floors of Chalmette General Hospital. They watched as people wandered both by boat and self out of the marsh. Desperate times had called for desperate measures. Two teams were sent out to forage which as you know is what white people do instead of looting. The primary destinations were the Family Dollar in Chalmette and the Home Depot in Meraux. Their instructions were to gather anything usable that was above the water line and all the beer that they could carry whether above or below. Priorities are important as is anesthesia.

She said that they took what they needed in order of importance was beer, cigarettes, feminine products, toilet paper and bottled propane. I asked about water, she said that they got water and soap from the National Guard a week later and it was welcomed. She explained an elaborate sterilization process for the beer that had been submerged utilizing bleach and science. She finished the story with a community wide understanding of important priorities.

As she told this story, I was hearing the other version from a couple of my bros from Garbage. On the one week anniversary of landfall, little to no outside help had arrived in St Bernard. The Sewer folks had begun to assess the ability or inability to get pumps back in operation. They had yet to see the first element of the federal government and had only seen a few helicopters fly over. Most of the aircraft seen were running search rescue in neighboring Eastern New Orleans and the Ninth Ward. A lone helicopter landed as close as possible to the Chalmette General Site. Aboard were my two bros one of which is formerly of St Bernard Parish Government. They had purchased 50 filet mignons with all the trimmings from Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Baton Rouge and flown it to the downtrodden in God’s Country. I thought that was beautiful and ridiculous in all its splendor. As Linda said, “we were getting desperate and up flies Stevie with a large amount of beef!”

She also explained that somewhere along the way in that week it just did not seem so important not to smoke as she had quit in 1998. She has been smoking and quitting ever since.

When I first arrived, the lingerie whores came around hustling off their raffle tickets. When I was accosted, I was with my turncoat friend who also is possibly the tightest son of a bitch on earth. His tightness that I reference was during a period during which he was taking down 6 figures a year. Now that he has been unemployed for 3 or 4 months, I could only imagine that he could give Shylock a lesson or two on misering. A golden opportunity presented itself when the lingerie whore arrived. I announced that I would forgive him for fucking me if he bought me some tickets.

It was perfect I envisioned, he couldn’t possibly do something as full fledged squanderous as buying these tickets knowing clearly that it was as pointless of an expense as recreational income could ever encounter. Then, his refusal to buy the tickets would open the door to a little long overdue berating of saving his own ass and then being fucked the same way by the same guy that he sold his soul to. He bought the tickets without hesitation! Fucker!

He didn’t just buy the minimum either but an amount pissed away to a degree that encouraged one of the Kournikovas to come sit on my lap to get more. That’s a lot of tickets. So this whole thing completely derailed my ill intention. How could I ever hold this against him now? He left me nothing to do but give him unconditional absolution in this matter. That was okay because I still didn’t have to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he lucked into a little unconditional absolution. I was feeling good as number 3 hit the bar and Kournikova lept into my lap like a galloping gazelle. Damn that cigarette smelled wonderful.

So, number 5 came to the bar as cold as number 1. Number 4 was a shoo shoo as my former boss dumped it before its time with a drunken arm. 4 ½ was 3 ½ passed my self imposed limit but still 26 or 27 pints less than my driving threshold that is itself a few gallons less than my spend the night in jail threshold. The Kool tasted like shit as I enjoyed every breath of it. At this moment and just for a moment, it was Xanadu or may I even say the mythological Elysian Fields that were only a mere mile or so away.

I hit the road with a pair of jeans that fit a good bit better than when I arrived. The tobacco buzz was still there on top of the long weeks end Heinekens. I drove back to River Ridge lavishing in all the immature wonder of driving with a buzz. At that moment, Led Zeppelin was playing the perfect song and the buzz of original sin was fresh in all of its repetitive grandeur.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Nuclear Test Range

Brad Pitt and Global Green want a C-note as an entry fee for designing a sustainable neighborhood so that won't be happening in my spare time. Besides, I am thinking the best thing for the City's sustainability right now would involve the development of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Nuclear Testing Range. I envision enormous amounts of spending that will provide for numerous types of tactical nukes being detonated in and around the City. Most will fail, and locals will call them shoo shoos just like misfired bottle rockets. Everyone will blame our leaders for the shoo shoos and assign them the blame for inhibiting New Orleans ability to becoming the finest Nuclear Test Range in the world. Faced with our dreams of being the premier irradiated wasteland slipping away, no one will suggest or consider redeveloping and modernizing the port that was the largest port on earth for the better part of 300 years dating back to a time when we built our homes on high ground. To punish our leaders for allowing our dreams to be squandered yet again, we will lift the ban on term limits and begin re-electing them to force them to lead us until they get it right. The ones that detonate will give off spectacular mushroom plumes that will be immediately followed by unscathed jobless New Orleanians returning to their stoops to watch the parade of silly men in silly outfits roam their City.

In the aftermath, the world will watch as the media reports of all forms of life being exterminated except for a group that will be limited to humans born within a zip code that begins with 7-0 along with mosquitoes, roaches and azaleas. Science will not be able to offer an explanation for their survival but will note that the surviving alligators are more aggressive than before the bombs exploded.

When asked why they think that they survived the atomic apocalypse, groups of locals will immediately change the conversation to the racist nature of the federal government's invasion of Bill Jefferson's congressional offices and note that it is perfectly normal for "a man of color" to have $90,000 wrapped in foil and stuffed in used Popcicle boxes in his freezer because of the banks being controlled by white jews. "Homey don't trust no Israelites!"

If only Congressman Jefferson had stuffed the money in Fudcicle boxes, my spiritual world would have found balance, zen even!

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Stablemaster nominated

In the last 8 months or so since that whore came knocking, we have seen an abundance of reasons why we are incapable of handling our affairs. In fact, we are less capable of self-governing than your run of the mill Islamic nation whose polling places are known for the presence of soldiers and U.N. inspectors. As I write this morning, ominous anvil shaped thunderheads are building in the sky from the west.

Whether this will be merely rain or a "rain event" is anyone's guess. Whether we have reversible flood gates and or sheet piles closing the feet of canals is also anyone's guess. But what really matters is what I can make a damn pretty good guess of, and that is that all of the area Pump Operators have the day off because it is Saturday and "nobody could have ever guessed that we would have a thunderstorm on the weekend." Another near certainty is that the Knights of Columbus in their annual forage for palm fronds, tomorrow is Palm Sunday, will have their holy task made a little easier this afternoon because the fronds will be spread all over the lawns of any thoroughfare like Dickory or Carrollton that has palms on the neutral ground.

As we less than eagerly await to find out that today's potential flash flood was in part the result of our Pump Operators foraging for palm fronds instead of turning on the blasted pumps, I reminisce of all of the other unique personality disorders that have reared their heads since the whore came knocking. We have acts of the masses and the individual that note the inherent character flaws of the indigenous Metro-New Orleanian.

These most notably include those that did not evacuate. I am not speaking of those in nursing homes or who live everyday in abject poverty, those intended to be in the evacuation buses funded by dollars that C Ray Fudcicle thought better spent on basketballs, but the other 50,000-100,000 who with their running automobiles, barbecued the days away on August 27th and 28th, 2005 thinking that the whore would make a last minute turn and that they would look like geniuses compared to their neighbors who will sit in traffic for hours trying to come home. Of this group, I particularly want to note the one's who thought, expected and demanded that the Superdome, Convention Center and superstructure of the Crescent City Connection be well-appointed resorts at which to spend the early days of September. The parents of the teenagers who returned home on August 30th with guns, video games, and televisions and never considered questioning their source(s) also get dishonorable mention. These were the masses.

Also are the individual acts of idiocy. The residents of places like Lakeview that after spending years looking up to the trawls of shrimp boats passing their homes in the 17th Street Canal, thought it to be a sound preemptive measure to put their furniture on cinder blocks elevating it as much as 6 inches above the floor, just in case the levees should break. Those everywhere who just before leaving vacuumed their living rooms because, "it's so nice to come home to a clean house" and never thought to clear the leaves and twigs from the storm drain out front. Those like myself who packed four flashlights and two pairs of underwear as evacuation necessities and were quite perplexed in a blacked out Baton Rouge on August 30th trying to wear a Maglite. Those who upon returning who weeded their garden just in case the country club photographer passed, before considering calling anyone to report that their neighbor 3 doors down's house had a strong smell of natural gas.

There are the ones who tell the contractors how much insurance money that they have before getting quotes and the one's that pay the contractors in advance and are shocked when like from that commercial a few years back, they "inexplicably disappear," they dream of the contractors one day returning at which time they will, "give him a big kiss, right on the lips." The people that spend 3pm-5pm every weekday afternoon in the Metairie gridlock and still find it necessary to honk their horns. People who think that any one of those 2 dozen clowns will be able to deliver us from this collective hell by becoming Mayor. Anyone and everyone who for even a second considers using Michael Brown's consulting firm. Those who still look to Nagin, Broussard, Blanco and or our beloved bat-eared President and honestly expect leadership.

The residents of flooded homes whether in the house or in the FEMA trailer that think that their new respiratory condition is the result of the pollen count. The springtime gardeners who look out on the blue tarp horizon and pray for rain. The U.S. Army, Corps of Engineers. For all of these unique characters but particularly the greatest moronic phenomenon of the post-Katrina era, the idiots who still tailgate on the Causeway, I offer this solution.

I hereby, with godspeed and due diligence, do nominate, one Scott Strauss to become Stablemaster and spiritual leader of Katrinaville. This is the guy who after being rear-ended on the Causeway and being forced through the guardrail and into Lake Pontchartrain had the presence of mind to allow his truck to sink to the bottom and fully flood so that the pressure would equalize and allow him to open his door and swim to the surface. Mr Strauss, we need you!

As we spend the next generation recovering from the whore's wrath and with each year progressing closer and closer to the statistically certain landfall of the next whore, wouldn't it offer us a ray of hope knowing that Mr Strauss has planted his seed in each of our cows of child bearing age. Greater than floodgates and coastal restoration would be the hope of an improved gene pool. And by who better than not only a guy with something that so few of us can display on a regular basis, a little good sense but also possessing undeniably a big set of balls. I estimate his balls to be proportionately bigger than the rest of us by at least twice the proportion than the Grinch's heart grew after hearing the Who's sing without presents on Christmas morning.

Obviously, there would be other contenders for our new Stablemaster. We would have to consider that guy who after having a bullshark snatch his arm in Perdido Pass, swam to shore and gave a passing motorist instructions on how to tie the tourniquet on his severed limb. Also, considered would be the guy who has the undisputed biggest balls of them all, no not AC/DC, that guy who amputated his own arm with a pocket knife and then hiked out of the park following his rock climbing accident. Of course, Rick Tonry would nominate himself and demand a popular vote.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Louisiana needs a wartime Consigliere

Free Political Prisoner Edwin W Edwards