OK, so I really didn't expect anybody to comment. That was all just padding to make my "hey, look what I noticed!" thoughts fill out to be long enough for a blog entry.
Y'all should read the story, though. And Catch-22. And Kevin Wilson's short story collection Tunneling to [...]
I read David Foster Wallace's short story "Incarnations of Burned Children" after reading about it in a blog entry (I think) by brilliant short story writer Kevin Wilson.
Wallace was clearly insanely talented and this story is one of those that tumbles rapidly downhill, taking you on a [...]
In my head the story is beautiful, it flows and aches with sadness, but on the page it's drunk and stumbling, stammering over simple phrases, tripping over its own shoelaces, knocking over chairs, talking too much too loudly and then lapsing into awkward silences, never finding the right words [...]
"I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me..."
There was this thing that happened on the night of August 16-17, 1987, if you're old enough you might remember it, called the Harmonic Convergence. It was a night in which eight of the planets of the' [...]
When I revived the blog, I went back and reconstructed some of my old sobriety posts from the archives and reposted them. Some of you might have seen these come through as reruns if you're using a feed reader, and if you weren't reading my blog in 2008 or [...]
"You were inside, I was outside. You were supposed to keep in touch with the blog. I kept asking you if you were gonna write again."
"What was I gonna do? Take away your only hope? Take away the very thing that kept you going out there? I took the" [...]
"Too much living is no way to die."
Annual report, year 5 A.D.
Lost three friends to the grave, much too young. Lost more friends to circumstance.
Made new friends, really good ones, and reconnected with old ones, really good ones.
Lost some family. Got tighter with other family. My kids and my siblings [...]
"Too much living is no way to die."
Annual report, year 5 A.D.
Lost three friends to the grave, much too young. Lost more friends to circumstance.
Made new friends, really good ones, and reconnected with old ones, really good ones.
Lost some family. Got tighter with other family. My kids and my [...]
I tell you what, Biden totally rocks that leotard and cape.
Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital:
Existing cash flow is key, 'cause you ain't getting any more from anywhere else any time soon:
Gurley also says for companies to expect “across-the-board reductions” in valuations, and a tough market for raising money - “Basically, the cost of capital is going way up.” Hedge [...]
January 29-30, 2009
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
CALL FOR PAPERS
Please distribute widely
The Black Humanities Collective (BHC) and The Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS) of the University of Michigan invite individual paper and panel proposals for our 2009 symposium, “Heart of the City: Black Urban Life on [...]
As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the [...]
Wall Street Journal on millionaire haven Greenwich, CT:
Greenwich, Connecticut is a rich enclave of hedge fund managers- and thus is feeling the pain of the current financial crisis like a ton of bricks. Ned Lamont, a Greenwich resident who ran for Senate in 2006, says, 'This is our Katrina.' ...First [...]
So I get a recorded call from Wee Walker Hines on my cell, urging me to vote for James Carter for District 2.
Oddly enough, the call came from a 202 (Washington DC) number.
Hines is already part of the Beltway elite? Jeez, boy, don't they still card you at Georgetown bars?
It [...]
Right. It's just so tiresome. See this, this thing right here, is what is wrong with our mainstream commentary, what is wrong with the people who supposedly make decisions in our discourse, one major part of what is wrong with newspapers. This thing, right here. This elevation of [...]
NHC has a great explanation of the vocabulary and usage of the various storm models we've all been following:
Technical Summary of the National Hurricane Center Track and Intensity Models
It'll help you understand statistical vs. dynamical models, early vs. late models, why the GFDL always takes so long and [...]
As far as I can tell, the curfew doesn't keep cars off the road, and doesn't keep gangs of kids from congregating either outside bars or on random neighborhood corners.
What it does do is make all the stores close at 8:00pm. Which sucks when you threw away everything in your [...]
Last night I had to get up to refuel the generator at 3am. I use it for a CPAP since I have sleep apnea, so when it shut down I woke up real fast. Sleepy, using an LED lantern for light, spilled gas everywhere obviously.
This morning it ran out of [...]
All the way home just to learn to survive. No power in our neighborhood, no ETA on getting any. I drove up to Zotz on the rumor of AC and wifi and found it to be true. So did dozens of other people.
When I get home, I get to rig [...]
Jefferson, St. Bernard, Plaquemines, St. John, and St. Tammany Parishes are all allowing residents back in at 6:00a.m tomorrow morning.
Orleans, which was arguably the least damaged parish in the metro area, is holding residents out until midnight tomorrow night.
This is ludicrous on several levels. One, that they would keep us [...]
Broussard is on 870 AM right now with info on re-entry timetable for Jefferson Parish.
Tier 1 and Tier 2 people with placards can enter at noon today. If you're Tier 2 and don't have a placard, you can get one at [www.jumpstartjefferson.com].
At 5PM tonight, Broussard will announce the timetable [...]
Got cell phone report from East Baton Rouge (Highland Road area) from my brother Billy's Crackberry:
"Windy as a MF! Ronnie is down 4 trees and part of his fence. Good news is we are on a generator and are earning an "A" in beer management. Sitting on his porch watching [...]
As Unapologetic said, "Great. We finally get on Boing Boing right when we stop talking about the storm to talk about lunch."
FYI, if you're coming here from BoingBoing, most of us are not on the ground there, we evac-ed to safety. The best advice I can give [...]
CNN has a reporter on the I-10 high rise over the Industrial Canal, and he is showing water to the south of him and calling it "catastrophic flooding of the port of New Orleans".
Look at this map, he's on the I-10 bridge facing south:
He's showing water covering that industrial [...]
CNN correspondent was just on camera at Children's Hospital (uptown, near Audubon Park), standing outside trying to dramatize how windy it was, and while she was talking some dude in a grubby t-shirt walked behind her and stood there talking on his cell phone in the wind.
I could swear I've [...]
You know it's a real storm when Gulf Sails starts blogging again.
Heard from Benz, one of my "correspondents" out at the Lakefront. He said, "It's pretty windy." I laughed and told him that's not very descriptive. He replied, "It's pretty fucking windy."
GS is the eye witness on the [...]
Here I am on the beach
I'm watching the water roll in
Here I am all alone
I'm losing all my friends
They asked me to tell the truth
The truth is we're gonna die
....
I said "Why?
Why is this happening to me?"
--Sister Double Happiness
First little mini rain band just passed through Pensacola. Five minutes of good soaking and now I think the sun is trying to fight its way through again.
A few NOLA bloggers are in Pensacola (myself, Sarah Elise, and Varg) so we're thinking of getting together for drinks tonight. If you're here, let me know.
My hosts in Pensacola (Rice U. buddy and Pensacola blogger Pat) recommended the Seville Quarter. If anybody has any other suggestions, [...]
If you still can't find a place to stay, my buddy Eric's mom reports that hotels in Durham are wide open. 12 hours away on a normal day. My brother Mark headed east to B'ham, said traffic is light in that direction, if you know the back ways out of [...]
For my dwindling set of readers and dear friends outside the New Orleans area who aren't on the NOLA bloggers listserv, an update:
St. Charles Parish and St. Bernard Parish are likely calling for mandatory evacuations by noon tomorrow. I imagine Nagin will call for one as well to cover his [...]
The maps put out by the state are confusing gobbledygook, so these lovable mooks have put together a Google Maps application that asks you "where you wanna go?" and tells you where to get on the freeway.
As usual, avoiding the freeway entirely may be a better option.
I think the worst part of all of this is the waiting, and the watching.
It's like that Rwanda book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. It's not "I'm killing you now with a machete", it's "tomorrow I will kill [...]
I remember learning about Utilitarianism in college, and being appalled at the argument that mistakenly executing the innocent is as morally good as executing the guilty, because it will still help deter crime.
Will Bunch of the Philly News applies the philosophy to New Orleans:
I hope for the sake of [...]
For the second time in recent memory, I've run across a blog post about a punk zine I published back in college with my friend Rob Stewart. Oddly enough I had just run across what I believe is my last remaining copy of the thing the [...]
From the student dress code of Ben Franklin High School, one of the most rigorous and selective public magnet schools in the country:
Pants must be worn at the waste.
My first thought was, "Jeez, what an embarrassing mistake."
My second thought was, "I bet they put some student in charge of [...]
So this year I haven't been glued to the NHC and Weather Underground like the past two summers, but this bugger is annoying me. Two days ago the models all had it curving out to sea, yesterday they had it curving up the east coast, today it's curving [...]
Posting has been getting light around here, and I think I am probably going to take a break from blogging here for a while. I've got a lot going on between family, roller derby, work, and volunteering, and none of it is stuff I particularly feel like writing about.
I haven't [...]
My semi-annual emergency-customer-feature alpha-release behind-schedule Sunday-night-code-freeze self-pitying why-don't-somebody-please-destroy-the-tech-industry so-that-I-can-be-a-fireman musical self-pity exhaustion headache blues post.
Not available on YouTube.
We move so fast today
Nothing stands in our way
We're free to act
And forced to pay
Have power over people
Understand the subtlety of body language
One up [...]
The link a couple of posts ago (or if you want, go get it at NuPac) has the video replay of David Simon's tribute to Ashley Morris at the DePaul commencement on Sunday.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have another good cry in me that's been waiting to get [...]
The webcast for Ashley's college, including speaker David Simon, will be broadcast tomorrow morning at 8:30am CDT at this link:
http://webcast.streamlogics.com/audience/index.asp?eventid=49097
[...]
