Far South of I-10

I'm over in New Orleans today, working in a client's office while a well is drilled offshore somewhere. I didn't go into town yet, I stayed out here in the burb's and from this office it looks like every third house has a blue tarp covering the roof. This area just had normal streetflooding that results when the pumps aren't turned on due to the workmen being evacuated, not due to a levee breach. But it does look like a mild war swept through the area. All of metairie seems to be bustling, help wanted signs are everywhere and every other vehicle seems to be full of mexican roofers. On the other hand, tonight I can look out through the darkness outside this office, and through one window I can see the thin ribbon of the causeway bridge stretching out to infinity, through the other window I can see that the center of New Orleans is ominously dark. I can remember christmas' from my childhood, when the soaring towers of downtown left their lights on in the shap

I flew back home from alaska tuesday on one of the suckiest flights where I got upgraded to first class for one leg. I got pulled from a middle seat in a packed coach section where I was speaking with a nice old lady, brought up to first class for what I thought was the whole flight. Drank my 3 bloody mary's (they're free, you gotta drink 'em) and passed out asleep. I got woken up in seatle by someone checking my ticket, she tried to throw me out of 1st because my ticket had my old seat # written on it that they had used to find me in coach. I asked her to check, and she checked her list then said I was good. I resumed passing out. A small child's screeching woke me up as the other people were boarding. "Mommy mommy he's in my seat!", "Yes, dear, there's a man in our seat, but mommy will get him out of there"...a wispered conversation behind my back with a flight attendant... which was quickly followed by the flight attendant telling me

Lawrence Simon is running a dead pool again this year and I thought it might be a good idea to sign up and join something instead of just lurking. Here is a list of the prospective entrants. No hard feelings, (except for the couple that I'm rooting for to win) for any of the entrants, it's a trip we all take, but if you can win me a $10 dominos card while your at it then great. here's my list: Name - Famous for what? - DOB Dick Van Dyke -Actor 12/13/1925 Saddam Hussein - Bad Actor 4/28/1937 Mohammed Ali - Fighter 1/17/1942 Jimmy Carter - Wimp 10/1/1924 Margeret Thatcher - Tough girl 10/13/1925 Earl Cambell - Tough Guy, tailed off with the saints 3/29/1955 Nancy Reagan - ex actress, ex first lady 7/6/1921 David Duke - ex clansman, ex politician, ex human 7/1/1950 Gerald Ford - clumsy guy, lost footing and vietnam 7/14/1913 Keith Richards - famous clean blood recipient 12/18/1943 Nancy Pelosi - representative, bloodless c

I'm back up here in alaska again, and if I thought it was dark last month, wow, now it's uber-dark. Really dark until about 9, then dusky light until 4 pm, then dark. I'm not sure if I'll be here for the Solistice next week, I'm supposed to be in New Olreans next tuesday or so, if I don't leave here by Sunday I'll miss the traditional furlough or conjugal visit that most prisoners get. [one of my favorite movie scenes is the one in Face-Off, where travolta is trudging in circles wearing magnetic boots as exercise, and he turns out to be on an offshore oil platform converted into a prison. I saw the movie offshore, where my main exercise was walking in a circle on the heliport. All I was missing was some magnetic boots.] I just popped awake an hour ago as my alarm clock in Houston went off. It's now 3:30 am, and I'm waiting for a phone call so I can trudge through the snow over to the client's office and start work when the rig up there on the

James Lileks has a column summarizing 2005 . My favorite is his entry on Katrina: Hurricane Katrina strikes precisely at the moment when the dynamite charges, personally installed by Karl Rove, blow up New Orleans’s levees. Teams of the same ninjas the Bushies used to rig the Diebold voting machines have already disabled the buses that could be used in evacuation. Initial media reports indicate that refugees in the Superdome have resorted to murder, cannibalism, voodoo, keno, and possibly jai alai. FOX anchor Shep Smith is consumed on camera by zombies. His last words indicate that he shares their outrage, if not their desire for sweet, sweet brains...

In the comments, CajunRenard says: "I know, I know. You're a Bush fan. Gotta admire your loyalty. However, are you feeling safe now that all the WMDs are wrested away from Saddam? Are you ready to admit that we went to war with fabricated evidence?" To which I replied: "If you look at the post below " I too prefer my ammo dumps insect free " you'll see what I think. If the iraqis had hollow bombs ready to fill poison gas, and hidden bunkers filled with "pesticide" that affected exposed people like nerve agent, then they had wmd. the reason no wmd's were found was the searchers had a political motivation not to find them. Anyway, saddam was the wmd. Once the sanctions had ended he would have done what he wanted to do." One of the main reasons blogging does kind of work for me is I can say refer to my blog for what I think. I don't necessarily have to rehash arguments via email or phone or at parties. I used to enjoy political

I'd like to post more to this blog, sometimes I think I have a lot to say about politics, work, life, etc, but when it comes right down to it, I'm probably too angry about politics to say anything coherent. It's obvious to me that I'm suffering from Bush Derangement, Derangement syndrom. I get so angry watching the slanted news, listening to NPR attack the president, reading what our idiot congressmen are saying that I can only spit. I really don't have any solution except to start carrying cd's in the car again. Listening to the Foo Fighters cd instead of NPR left me much more relaxed on Friday. Weather Channel instead of CNN. The dilbert blog instead of Slate. Oh yea, and I'm going to vote against all the incumbent Senators and representatives. It's 1992 all over again. Democrats scoring political points instead of demanding victory....out. Republicans saying they are working with the democrats, or demanding reports from the president...out too