Friday, September 28, 2007

LSU

i was sitting in the coffee shop this morning listening to the guy next to me have an imaginary conversation because he is off his meds. we are living in a giant mental ward and everyday the inmate population grows while charity hospital sits empty. i talked to people after the storm, doctors who went into charity and with the help of the germans pumped the water out of the basement and had three floors clean and operational, only to have the head of lsu kick them out upon threat of trespassing. he says charity is not safe and yet other buildings in that area have managed to open back up, such as the hutchinson clinic right across the street. besides, safe in new olreans these days is a relative term. is charity safer than a fema trailer that out gases its occupants? is charity safer than a mold encrusted house? is charity safer than wandering the streets at night, scared and confused because you cannot get the medicine necessary to help you? we have a health care crisis right now but lsu wants you to wait for their new proposed 16 block plus v.a/teaching hospital complex. why? charity is waiting. it is already constructed. oh sure, it needs a good scrubbing and some cosmetic work but at least it is a place for the ill to go. and the area that they propose to build in sits within designated historic districts. the second oldest mcdonough high school is there, built around 1879.
i just read in the paper today that they are saying that there is not much historic significance to the area and that is just bullshit. the environmental report isn't even in yet, which covers potential national register sites. why do we want to tear down more buildings in this city? didn't katrina do enough? part of what makes this city so magical is its historic buildings.
i think this city needs to start making a fuss about this. we need health care now! we need hospital beds now! we need a treatment plan for our mentally ill now! tell them that some future date does not cut it and demand they open charity back up! katrina changed everything. we can no longer afford to sit back and let things happen to us. they will change this city for the worse if we let them. every new orleanian must be an activist now!

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Wetlands



check out this video about louisiana's vanishing coastline!

Thursday, September 20, 2007

the roof

my roof is sprouting. SPROUTING! it is not going from the ground up. there are no vines insidiously working their way up to wreak havoc. it is sprouting. how does this happen? how does a roof just sprout? i now have my own ecosystem on the roof. i don't have a ladder. i need a ladder so that i can climb onto my roof and weed! who has to climb onto their roof to weed for god's sake. is it not enough that my back yard is over run with weeds? the katrina flood waters catapulted it to ruin and despite my best efforts at waging war, nature is winning. she always will. so, i'm scared to climb onto my roof to weed...i mean i can't even park my car. this could be dangerous. i could fall off. oh, i know what you are thinking...spoke is a cat, right? spoke has nine lives. spoke likes all of his paws in working order and besides, i'm afraid of running through those nine lives.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

yep

one traffic light gets fixed and another one goes down. i almost got sucked up by a sink hole. the ambulance and fire truck are out front of my house but i don't know why. i hope it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that i just ran my truck into the light pole. oops! i'm not sure how that happened really. i was attempting to park and the next thing i know the pole jumped out and hit me. this happened in front of god and everybody, so now the whole block is wondering what the hell is wrong with me. i'm wondering that myself.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

new orleans

if you have to ask why new orleans should be saved, then you just don't get it! and if you don't get it, stop reading this, go turn on american idol(the show that got more people to vote for their contestants than turned out to vote for the president), and keep sleepwalking through the rest of your life. you think it is fool hardy to build a city in a flood plain? perhaps, go tell that to new york city because most of it is either at or below sea level. you think new york doesn't have to worry about hurricanes? think again. they have been hit in the past and they will be hit again by a storm in the future. it is a waiting game just like the one new orleans plays every storm season when we hunker down in white knuckled fear during the dangerous days of summer. clue in! this was no natural disaster. this wasn't an act of god. it was stupidity, plain and simple. the government installed faulty levees. they broke it and they should fix it. if i wreck your car, you would expect me to pay for it, right? right! either we are an american city or we are not and sometimes it is hard to tell around here. five fucking days! it took five fucking days for the so called richest nation on earth to save its own citizens from the watery hell that it created in the first damn place. hell, maybe shrub couldn't find new orleans on a map. we all know he had no idea where afghanistan was prior to our invading it. hey, miss teen carolina, get that boy a map.
i hear people talking about katrina fatigue, like the rest of the country would like to move on...yeh, so would we. you know that we are not even suffering fom post traumatic stress disorder here because in order for that to happen, the stress has to actually end. here it just goes on and on and on. people still don't have any money to get back into their homes because the road home is a joke, only we aren't laughing. so these poor people sit in tiny white boxes that out gas chemicals and poison them in their sleep, provided the damn thing doesn't just catch on fire and burn them to death, which has happened. we have a health care crisis that is third world in its scope, even as we lead the nation in depression and our murder/suicide rates climb. you think you are sick of katrina, well i got news for you, so are we.
say america, i have a proposition for you. next august 29th, pull the cord to the power grid and plunge the nation into darkness for five days in memory of what happened to this, my city. shut off the water to every structure from the east to the west coast. no televisions. no radios. no x-boxes. nothing but the blackness that stalks its way in like a monster from a horror movie. don't drink any water and don't eat any food for five days. periodically, open up your fridge and sniff the rotting contents of the interior, even more foul than the smell of your own body five days without a shower. then sit down calm with yourself and imagine if it were for real. your on your roof. the water is lapping at the shingles and it is a black water, full of oil and god knows what. imagine not knowing if friends and family are alive. imagine the heat and the sun drilling its way into your brain as each day ticks by with no water. imagine the dead all around you. the stench. the helplessness and hopelessness. imagine what the man; who jumped from the i-10 to his death below, was thinking as his feet left the pavement. imagine what it is like to be forgotten. then maybe just maybe, you will know what it means to be from new orleans.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Spoke the cat would like to apologize to all my furry friends for not mentioning that you should not leave your pets in cars anymore than your children.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Spoke the cat says, rock or something! Just past the two year commemoration of Katrina and I was feeling a bit nostalgic for MREs.

misplacing children

I was watching the news last night and it was all about forgetting your child in the hot car during summer. Now I don't have kids and truthfully, this is for the best but if I did have them, I would like to think that I would keep up with them a bit better than I do my car keys! The thing that I found most disturbing about the news report was the tips for helping parents not forget their child in the car. They said, put things that you might need in the back seat, such as your coat or brief case and that way you will see the child when you go to retrieve these things.OMG! Really? Put things in the back seat that you might need...like, I don't know, your child. If you can't remember to take your child out of the car seat, then you probably can't remember your coat either. And what does that say about our priorities? Your child is not as important as your brief case? We understand you forgetting the kid but not you important work papers. If you can't remember your child, then you shouldn't have one! By the way, temperatures in vehicles during the summer can easily exceed 200 degrees, that is hot enough to bake cookies. You wouldn't stick your child in an oven would you?

Thursday, September 6, 2007

exporting crime

I am from New Orleans and I'm proud of that fact so if one more person(and people from Houston are the worst) comes up to tell me how their crime rate has increased since Katrina, my head will explode. I have taken to explaining that during the chaotic aftermath of the storm, when 80% of the city flooded, we methodically sorted out our population to deliberately export the dregs of our society. Clearly, we had nothing better to do. It was club med. We had no jobs to worry about, just plenty of time to sun and and take a swim off our roofs. Five days later, we grew bored and that is when we concocted the plan of exporting our criminals. We sent most of them to Houston. Why? Because we hate Texas! By the way Houston, your crime rate was on the rise before Katrina as was the national average and if the truth were told, you have always had a crime problem. So spoke the cat says, shut the fuck up!

Monday, September 3, 2007

Southern Decadence

Southern Decadence is a parade of assless chaps, stuffed loin cloths, prissy gay men, big hairy bears and surprisingly more and more lesbians. It is one of the country's largest gay celebrations and what better city to host it every year than New Orleans. Living here as I do, i ventured out. I went to one of the most dreaded of all lesbian events, the drag king show. Dear God! It was the saddest thing ever and so of course, I stayed for hours. ok, here is the thing girls, there needs to be some sort of mentor program between gay men and lesbians. A big brother, little sister kind of thing whereby gay men teach lesbians how to dress and dance. Throw away the polyester plaid pants that have not fit you since 1975! Put down the collar on your stupid polo shirt. It did not look good in the 80's and it does not look good now. And for pete's sake, learn how to move your hips. The highlight of the show was the guest appearance of a drag queen and do you know why, because she could dance. Why should I put a dollar in your cargo pants if all you are going to do is stand there and lip sync poorly?

how spoke the cat came to be.

I'm a crossword puzzle junkie and i do them in pen. The clue on this particular day was "spoke the cat" and I know I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I was thinking who the hell is spoke the cat. I thought perhaps he was some sort of cartoon character but I couldn't think of which one when it slowly dawned on me that the answer was "meow", as in what the cat spoke. Not to be daunted by my idiocy, I decided to turn spoke the cat into a character by which I could spout my opinions. Spoke the cat has become his own entity. From here on out, you can blame him.