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.

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.