i agree with you both! she wasn't that talented, but the reason why the country is so fascinated with her has a lot to do with deeper, darker reasons that are very present in modern american society, and since we are not too good at talking about our issues like a family (ugh, thanksgiving was so rough, guys), the default comment is about what a waste of talent, how terribly sad and tragic, etc etc.
i had a terrible misadventure with those "humane" glue traps! the mouse got so stuck on there that i had to drench it in olive oil and pry it off with a butter knife. and then the mouse was so covered in goo that when i tried to put it outside, it just picked up all this dirt and leaves and turned into a mini swamp monster. so i picked it back up and decided to try to give it a bath (because soap and water would at least get all the oil off of him)- but as soon as i put it in the bathtub, it just ran STRAIGHT INTO THE DRAIN OF THE TUB AND GOT STUCK. so there was just this whipping mouse tail coming out of the drain, and terrible squealing noises. a friend had to pull it out using needle nose pliers, which mangled the poor thing beyond repair. so. rather than just quickly snapping its neck with a mousetrap, i basically tortured that little guy for a good hour and forced him to live through "hostel: the mouse files". :( i gave him a nice little burial in the woods though.
ALSO, i mean, the syllabus says that "we are living in a post-postmodern world" but, seriously, do you think that it was a prerequisite for the kids to take a course in postmodernism before taking this? i guess i'm just bitching because it seems like the fundamentals get neglected in order to discuss whatever seems to be most in vogue at the moment. barf.
im underslept, over-caffeinated, and waiting to hear back on plans with crush. tomorrow: going camping out in the swamps. so, i'm physically feeling terrible but life seems ok!
yes, there is virginia! though i'm a product of the deep south (georgia and louisiana), so virginia seems pretty distant to me. and yes! the south is really weird and confusing and it has literally everything to do with the fact that we were basically a colony of the united states and ran on a fucked up slave economy until basically the 1950s. it gives me the sads.
i was already well on my way to getting hammered when they started out by calling the entire south for romney. some days i do wonder if i can stand living here forever.
also, speaking of weird narcissism, there's this tiny part of me that is like, BUT WE HAD IT WORSE. and there is a part of me that is like, well, now other coastal communities will be getting all of the corps resources to protect them, while southeast louisiana still hasn't been fully funded for a levee system, and that's not fair! but those totally selfish things aside, i do hope that y'alls recovery goes way better than the ham fisted multi-level fuck up that is still churning along down here. and that the insurance companies don't fuck everyone quite so hard. and that your infrastructure gets the repairs and improvements needed. because seriously, we are all gonna be screwed as climate change keeps ramping up. and i swear, the next time i hear someone from the northeast tell me that new orleans is just too precarious to rebuild, i will resort to violence.
i feel like there are a lot of claustrophobic horror films! because a pretty key element of horror is the inability to truly escape. i feel like the shining is claustrophobic, as is cube. and i agree with lilbobbytales about the descent, which was filmed pretty much exactly in my favorite camping spot in northeast georgia. i had just gotten back from camping there when i went and saw that film in the theater, and it really changed the ambiance of the chattooga river for me.
a good friend of mine who stayed in new orleans for katrina moved away right before gustav threatened the city in 2008, and he called me right before i evacuated and admitted that he felt really terrible that he wasn't in the city for gustav. so, gabe, i think it's a weird but completely normal reaction to want to be in a place that you love when it's threatened, because it can be revelatory and deepen your connection.
yeah. the mayor just cut youth employment programs from 1 million to 900,000, versus a whopping 132 million for the NOPD and an additional 30 million for the sherriff and the jail. also, both the NOPD and the sherriff are currently under federal investigation due to things like murdering citizens and setting the bodies on fire to dispose of the evidence, dealing drugs and calling out hits on local activists, and having incredibly high rates of prison rape and murder on the books. but no, that is not part of the problem, let's just throw more money into the police state and cut parks, healthcare, and job training.
i just got back from the new orleans city council chamber, where the city budget was just announced. 27% of the budget will go to NOPD, 3% will go to children and family services, 2% to economic development. priorities in this city are ridiculous. luckily we're building a big new fancy jail to support all the people we keep arresting!
after katrina, when i came back to new orleans after the city was just opened up, i remember standing in line to get MRE's (which are not terrible) and these absolutely heinous peanut butter and jelly tortilla sandwiches. the peanut butter and jelly both came packaged the way individual slices of american cheese are packaged- wrapped in individual cellophane slices. so. at least you don't have to eat that! (yet!)
“This is not a hole in the ground,” Jim Butler, the stereo enthusiast, said. “The waters will come in, and then they will recede. It’s not New Orleans. It’ll be a big deal for a day or two, and then we get to go back to living our life on the waterfront, which is just the greatest place to be.” Dear Brooklyn monsters, please find this person and punch him in the face for me.
i know! i just pulled this quote from an article i was reading: “We’re in New York,” Iona Barrow said of her decision to stay put. “We’re not in Miami or one of those tragic places. It’ll never be that bad.” Pride goeth before the fall! and as a resident of one of those "tragic places", i kinda want this lady's windows to get blown in and all her fancy shit to get ruined. the thing is, it is WAY BETTER to be over-prepared than to be a jaded, dismissive person about this kind of stuff! just because irene was mostly a joke, doesn't mean that this storm won't be and the next one won't be, either.
oh, also. here are some hurricane tips. shower now! if your electricity and power go off for awhile, you're gonna wish you had. also fill up your bathtub with water. you might not want to drink it, but it can be used to flush your toilet if the water shuts down later. don't invite people you don't completely love to your house for the hurricane party. isaac made me stay with the same people for five days, and thankfully i loved them all, but if the wrong person is there you will want to murder them roughly 12 hours in. the majority of hurricane deaths in florida are after the hurricane hits from people walking around in puddles with electrical cables down. buy a new book and a deck of cards. batteries for a tape player / radio are key, so you can jam some tunes and also find out what's going on news wise if you have to. canned food is good, but you're gonna want some fruit and veggies too in order to cut down on your inevitable sodium bloat. find out if any neighborhood bars are open 24 / 7 for this / which ones have generators, you're gonna want the escape / it's really fun to get tanked with complete strangers in the dark.
as a gulf coast monster, it feels really strange to watch the coverage of this storm. two years ago, when i was in grad school, a professor told me that he thought that new orleans did not deserve to be rebuilt because of our geographic location made us too vulnerable, but that the major cities of the northeast would surely warrant protection by large federally funded floodwalls before climate change became too serious as to seriously jeopardize them. which was massive bullshit on both points. but. y'all. i hope you all stay safe and warm, and that sandy doesn't do to you what isaac did to me this summer (8 days without power = hurricane party for a week = too much drinking and board games makes everyone crazy). global weirding! we are all fucked in different ways.
have you ever read infinite jest??? there is a section in the novel where david foster wallace is talking about video phones being this massive technology in that universe, and how people began to be so neurotic about being able to be seen during phone communication that they began constructing elaborate photographic walls to hide behind, to make sure that they were projecting the confident life they felt they needed to be projecting whenever they spoke to someone. and that's how i feel about facebook- it's like this elaborate kabuki theater version of your life that you can curate. and yes, i've had this exact conversation twice in the last week.
man. i'm debating applying to a PhD in like, two years. and my number one is berkeley for public policy, and they accept "one, maybe two" applicants per year. hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. cough. ha. and then i talk to my mentor from grad school, who- even though she has her PhD from oxford and was a rhodes scholar- could NOT find a tenure track job anywhere other than a bumblefuck state university, and i think to myself, "why do i want a PhD when i could just work in the nonprofit industrial complex and nurse an unhealthy drinking habit for the rest of my life?"
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