Lawrence.com

Says local resident, "It's true: My cat's breath smells like cat food."

I have a title by godjilla

I never liked your name. It's insidious, foreboding, and seems like something a superhero might battle against. Now I have a good, solid reason.

It's not just that you fired two very talented and capable people, it's more of a slow progression into flagrantly dickish behavior.

Good job though on discovering Web 2.0. I'm sure your user-generated, RSS bullshit content will garner you many awards and accolades for local coverage. But who cares about prestige or integrity anymore anyway. WHAT WITH THE ECONOMIES AND ALL, we gotta pay the billz! Let's just outsource everything! What with the webbernets, there's no need for place-based reporting, right? I mean, clearly anyone can report on anywhere from anywhere these days. I know I love it when people pretend they're in New Orleans and know what the hell is going on here.

Look, I understand the death of the Deadwood Edition. I didn't like it, but I understand it. What I don't understand, is this b.s. website. So glad to know that the city I formerly called home, the city I love still, has succumbed to the homogenization so prevalent in our GLOBAL FUCKING VILLAGE. Wherever you go, there you are. We're all uniquely the same. Well done.

And mad props on your ridiculous use of advertising space. I, for one, thoroughly enjoy annoying flash adverts and taking control away from the user. We can't be trusted to make good decisions anyway. The simple fact that as I type this, there's a cheap-ass Flash ad for The Oread (thanks for gentrifying my old neighborhood) only further aggravates me. What the hell is going on there, Lawrence?

To the staff remaining, it's not you. Or maybe it is, I don't know. We all gotta work, right? I don't know who the decider is over there any more and I don't really care.

Don't cry though, I do have a parting gift for you. Embedded in beautiful, hand-writable HTML and pulled from another site, with a little bit o' Flash, just like you like.

It was fun while it lasted.

http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... (by J.Ensley)

From the looks of the homepage, you guys could use some content that doesn't involve movies, porn, or the internet. Or, maybe you couldn't. In that case, boobs. There, everyone's happy.

I stopped at the local no-name petrol station this afternoon after a hellacious rainstorm (the words, "we have flying debris" escaped my lips at one point) to get a grape soda. Yes, a grape soda. There was a young man in line behind me who came in just for the paper. He grabbed it and uttered, "I'm so sick of this shit, this oil." He walked home reading the increasingly dire news and I drove away, justifying my four-wheeled transport by the fact that I try not to drive, and when I do, it's usually for work. But in the end, let's face it, we had this coming. I won't bring up other tragedies that we probably had coming, but it's increasingly obvious that we simply don't, or won't, understand risk. And when we outsource that risk to large corporations with pockets big enough to buy and sell us all, this is what happens. There was/is no incentive for BP, or any other big oil company, to avoid this, to make sure it wouldn't happen, or at the very least, be able to stop it if it did.

So yes, BP is evil. Let's all boycott. Even though, that would probably hurt your neighbors more than big, bad British Petroleum, "In fact, BP spokesman David Nicholas says all of the company's 11,700 filling stations in the U.S. have been sold off in recent years and are now independently owned and operated. "We supply the fuels and branding. That's it," he says." (full article) Or, we could accept some of the blame for this ourselves, for letting corporations run amok, being too lazy and overwhelmed to do anything about our dependence, and turning an awful situation into a red and blue mud-slinging contest. In the end, this could have been any of them. It could, and has been Exxon. It could, and IS, Shell in the Niger Delta. So let us not frame this as Us vs. Them, even if They are primarily responsible, it's still OUR job to hold them accountable. You can't look that flowering green logo in the eye and cry out, "we trusted you!" It's a logo, a brand designed to invoke feelings of goodness and security in order to grow ever-larger on capital. And that logo, that brand, is only concerned with saving its own image and future endeavors because that is the system we have chosen. Our safety and security is merely a by-product of its goals. So let's all stop being surprised and instead start asking for some accountability, from all of them, they, we, and us. And this time, let's try not to forget. I believe Garland Robinette, of WWL Radio said it best today when talking about Cajuns, politics, and the oil: "When the plane is going down, you don't look left and right."

I'm not chastising. I'm not grand-standing. I'm equally to blame for not demanding more, or less as the case may be. And if there's any good, ANY good, to come from this, it's that maybe for once we'll understand the risks of how we choose to live and remember there is a third coast, a beaten-down, battered and beautiful Third Coast that is losing by the minute and damn if you won't miss her when she's gone. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e...

Links: Some heartbreaking images, including the one above, that you should probably see.

Risk & disaster in Grand Isle, LA

Hurricane Season started June 1

A great discussion, world call-in show that aired today. Listen to the full podcast here.

LA and Offshore Oil Revenue: an Editorial

How you can help & more info. This is a list of organizations I personally trust.

Gulf Restoration Network

Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana

Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation

Louisiana Bucket Brigade

I set out this morning to build a new blog, but my caffeine high is getting in the way and I lack the proper focus. So, lucky youse, this will reside here. And it could very well be the last one. How many times can I talk about this and how can I not talk about it. I don't live there anymore. I've made my choice. Much love to you, Lawrence. Always a bridesmaid. You were good to me, and who knows, maybe in the future we will get back together.

Right now, I should be on Grand Isle planting little seeds of hope (if that word hadn't been cheapened by now it would mean more) but I cannot afford the gas to get there and isn't that fitting, in some doomed and circular way. Yes, today is the day. Eight/Twenty-nine, Two-thousand and Five. I wasn't here, so what the hell do I know?

I know that sometimes I love this city so much I want to kiss the moldy concrete that makes up its failing infrastructure, quite literally get out on the sand-sunk ramps, amid the buzzing, the whooshing, the honking of the World's Worst Drivers and wrap my arms wide around broken intersections and hold it all together. And I know I'm not the only one, outsider, insider, in-betweener.

I don't care for the commemorations, or the "where are we now" specials. But where are we going? All of us.

Yesterday I had a small camera shoved down my gullet and as I waited, propped on my side, with tubes, monitors, and needles going in and out, I passed the time listening to a terrible 70's compilation until my RN started up a conversation. He was from a little bayou town south of Houma and we began talking about the rapidly disappearing land, the marsh, the dying surge-blocking cypress trees. We talked about how we all know it's happening, those closer to the action fully aware as their livelihood sinks into the Gulf, and yet, and yet...

People, we can treat, throw everything we've got at them to save their lives, to diminish their discomfort, prolong the inevitable, but on a grander scale we falter. (I'll save the health care debate for another time.) It reminds me of the Vonnegut quote, "We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap." And yes, some would argue that the Earth doesn't need saving, that she (like a ship) will shake us off if we get too heavy a burden. It is we that need saving, from ourselves. But what about the earth we depend on, what about those places in-between the earth and sea, places where life forms, the murky, slimy, sludge from whence we came but have lost all connection and respect for? Why make things harder on everyone?

I'm not participating in the "festivities" today, the one-day rebuild-a-thon, not because I don't want to, and not only because to take one day out of the 1460 that have passed since is a valiant, but somewhat misguided effort, but mainly, and honestly, because I spend my days fighting to keep my own head above water. Like so many these days, life gets in the way. The fight resumes tomorrow and continues on, but for today, as I look out my 6th floor window on the waterlines across and below, today is mine. To plan and reflect, to finish and start.

Instead, instead I will force upon the world, once more, one of my absolute favorites to stupidly mark this day, four years ago, when every day since then has been an anniversary.

"Local Heroes"

by Thomas Lynch

Some days the worst that can happen happens.

The sky falls or weather overwhelms or

The world as we have come to know it turns

Towards the eventual apocalypse

Long prefigured in all the holy books --

The end times of floods and conflagrations

That bring us to the edge of our oblivions.

Still, maybe this is not the end at all,

Nor even the beginning of the end.

Rather, one more in a long list of sorrows,

To be added to the ones thus far endured,

Through what we have come to call our history:

Another in that bitter litany

That we will, if we survive it, have survived.

Lord, send us in our peril, local heroes,

Someone to listen, someone to watch,

Some one to search and wait and keep the careful count

Of the dead and missing, the dead and gone

But not forgotten. Sometimes all that can be done

Is to salvage one sadness from the mass of sadnesses,

To bear one body home, to lay the dead out

Among their people, organize the flowers

And casseroles, write the obits, meet the mourners at the door,

Drive the dark procession down through town

Toll the bell, dig the hole, tend the pyre.

It's what we do. The daylong news is dire --

Full of true believers and politicos

Old talk of race and blame and photo ops.

But here brave men and women pick the pieces up.

They serve the living tending to the dead.

They bring them home, the missing and adrift,

They give them back to let them go again.

Like politics, all funerals are local.

To stop hurricanes and end hunger.

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about "manipulating" an entire ecosystem to fix the fact that we've already caused a change in said ecosystem, but like the article said, I guess this is Plan C. I suppose river diversions, building behind natural levees and rebuilding wetlands isn't quite as sexy, technologically speaking. (I bet Bill calls it his 3 1/2" floppy.) This seems to be the next giant leap in Army Corps way of thinking, that whole let's tame nature, control it until it bitchslaps us for our arrogance. The invasion has begun. If it's not the hairballs of the sea, it's the bullies of the deep.

And I suppose treating world hunger like just another commodity, ripe for speculation and the whims of that mysterious entity known as the Free-Market was bound to happen. Yes, let's engineer a system designed to help the few when the whole problem is that the few don't have enough in the first place. The simple fact that there IS enough food in the world might lead one to believe the problem is primarily with distribution, maybe gluttony if you're hell-bent and aiming to play fair. Again, not as sexy. What is sexy, is manufacturing a system open to grand fluctuations, profit margins, and geared towards hoarding, when hoarding is one of the key problems in the first place, not an overhauling of the status quo. Baby with the bathwater. UN World Food Programme, sponsored by Monsanto!

"What people are uncomfortable about is when you speculate about food," continued Roman, "something so fundamental to life. When you're speculating on something that is the essence of life, when you're speculating in that space--" and here she stopped. She gazed across the press-room and she frowned. "People don't like that," she said.

I can't imagine why.

Linkage to lighten, which surely, is where the comments will come from. I'm not down with just the flute guy, so if you agree, go to minute 4:07.

California is so much in debt that they're asking Jackson fans to pony up.

Staycation finally makes the cut.

The real reason the Third Coast is sinking.

Besides bourbon and Abita beer, my new favorite al-kee-hol, Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka (ohyes.) recipes from Tales of The Cocktail.

Sorry if you don't have the Facebooks, just google Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka and recipes and you'll find something. I happen to know that Vermont St. BBQ has it and makes a delicious libation. I like mine with ginger ale.

Here's something that consistently gets my goat, chaps my hide, and gnaws on my brainstem (3fer!)....WHY does every damnable post office in this country have to be such a pain in the (chapped) keister?

USPS, if you want to, say, perhaps, I don't know, compete in this GLOBAL MARKET VILLAGE ECONOMY, perhaps you might staff your locations with more than two workers at any given time. I've often wondered why there are even five to six counters in most locations anyway. Perhaps they are just for show? Maybe that's where they keep the GOOD mail, x-rayed packages of chocolate, gold, and gold-covered chocolate. Maybe that's where they keep their valium and pot because no one who works at the post office EVER moves more than .2 mph. Ever.

So, maybe instead of raising postage in ridiculously stupid increments (make it even, damn you!), you could compete with FedEx and UPS not with flat-rate boxes, but with better G.D. service. Stop with the Grandma Moses, Chatty Cathy shenanigans and give New Orleans back its Automated Postal Centers while you're at it. I realize it's hard to make a machine read a new $5 bill, but I believe in you. U.S.A.! U.S.A!

Today I ordered food and when I went to pick it up, the waitress showed me the ticket and pointed to the bottom. Apparently when I gave my name over the phone, she thought I said MILF.

We shared a laugh and the tilapia tacos were DELICIOUS. So delicious that I'm gonna go to the NY Dolls show right now and get preg-nated just to live up to my new moniker.

Usually, I don't encounter a lot of snobbery centered around where I'm from down here. I mean, it's the South, easily mockable and they know it. Or maybe it's just that there are so many people who've moved here from all over the country, that it's not a big deal.

HOWEVER.

This fine eve, after work, I went into a specialty shop, a boutique-y lingerie store to be more specific. I was tired, just wanted to look around and see if I could find anything to spend my little gift certificate on (undapants). I don't like to be bothered or catered to when I'm deciding if I should spend money or not (you can probably guess it was not cheap by the words "boutique", "specialty", and "lingerie"). But I was the only person in the store and the clerk felt she had to earn her keep I suppose. So she proceeded to be all peaches and cream and try and help me find some things. I ended up with what I came in for (undapants) and the clerk proceeded to take my email and name as she was ringing me up. Well, I have a quiet voice. I don't project (unless I'm drunk), and I like it that way. I don't like loud and obnoxious and don't want to be accused of it. So, it took her a couple tries to get my email right and she mentioned that I had a quiet voice, TWICE.
YES THANK YOU I KNOW. GIVE ME UNDERPANTS.

Paid with debit card. She asked for I.D. and when she saw the Kansas license, smiled that Southern Gracious Asshole smile and said "Kansas. That explains it."
Then I set the place on fire, grabbed some $200 brassieres and walked out. Or rather, laughed and then realized as I was leaving that she was being a bee hatch and went home to bitch about it ON MY BLOG. Because I'm awesome.

So, here you go, clerk at XXXXX XX XXXXXX:

1. Let's not assume all Kansans are quiet little hayseeds just because we're not snotty, boisterous jackholes AND
2. Let's not assume that just because my D.L. is from Kansas, that I haven't lived elsewhere.

The 'tude reminded me of this....with bonus art commentary:

What can I say that hasn't already been said, or Twittered. Probably nothing new, especially since I haven't read much on this site lately, or any site that isn't bacon or podiatry-related (I have a new hobby.) for that matter. Should I not admit that? That Grandma still no likey new website? Whatevs. Grandma been sick with Swine Flu (aka Head Cold. And no, not H1N1. It's too late for that PORK INDUSTRY. Too late I'm afraid.) Damn free energy drinks.

Turns out, pig kissin' isn't our downfall, but more ice in our hot summer drink of ocean. Live it up.

Speaking of Summer, or as you Yankees call it, "Spring", what's up with the boots, ladies? Someone explain to me how this stupid ugly boot trend has carried over into the warmer months. Wait....I may have a photo...No, I don't actually. But here's something close:

midcityjazzfestcamel.jpg

Ok, so that's just your average camel walking around Mid-City after Jazz Fest. Still, it has about the same effect. Ladies, if you insist on wearing next-to-nothing, let's keep it consistent. Not only is the ugly boot thing played out, but it's just distracting from your slutty ensem. Camel TOES, cherie, not camel LEGS.

Speaking of Jazz Fest, it seems our (your?) former Governor, (the one who bailed on us (yes, US) just in time to let that coal plant go through, yes that one) is a big Fest head. A fun and interesting fact for you to enjoy while you peruse the rest of that website. Because I fully realize that most of you could give a shit about Charity Hospital or historic swaths of sweaty New Orleans, I still feel it's my duty to bring you these tidbits. Look at our battles here as proving grounds, a litmus test for Future America. Our land grabs, your land grabs, our uncaring, greedy, and corrupt local government, well...yours, perhaps, someday. Not only is New Orleans ground zero for the impacts of global warming, but it seems the battles rage in Second Line time with education, housing, health care, and the equally ferocious forces of blight and gentrification, sneaking off bits and pieces with regular and wild abandon/re-classification. It could be yoooooou.....

It's not. But it could be. It could be your city still quietly reeling and sinking. MR-GO is closing (more on that later) and that's good. Maybe come hurricane season the speed bump will be a godsend for the people of St. Bernard, the Lower 9th and Holy Cross. And maybe now we can talk about how to fix the damage done by digging that channel in the first place. The economic woes blanketing the rest of the country have yet to hit here. It IS tourist season after all. So, we're pretty good on the surface. New Orleans is always pretty good on the surface, and down through the layers the goodness still flows, because that's what this is, a Good Place with Good People. But I just wanted to remind you that the thing that happened, coming on four years ago, is still here. Like a dark flutter-flicker to your left, to your right. It's ok. I have to remind myself from time to time these days.

There are some people here who will argue and say that recovery has passed. We're in a New Phase now and we can't keep talking about what happened because it causes too much pain. Yet, I didn't go through it, you probably didn't go through it, and I'm sorry if you did. But let's be honest, this is for those forgetful souls beleaguered by more immediate troubles, those outside this bubble, to remind you that yes, still here, still need help, still working on it. It will be years and years, but it can be done. Save Charity, Save Mid City, Save New Orleans, Save America.

backyardliberty.jpg