This picture was taking outside of my office a little earlier.
The next time Mother Nature decides to make it snow in New Orleans she needs to start it around 6:00AM so I can just roll back over and continue sleeping. It wasn't right I had to get all the way to work before the blizzard. It sucks when you live this far at the bottom of the map. It hasn't been a good hour since the snow stopped falling and it's already turning to mud. That is why me and my week long bad cough went outside and walked around in it like an idiot.
Hooray Influenza!!!!
It's amazing how many people sent me messages about what happened the year after the last holiday season that it snowed in New Orleans. I will not jinx it by mentioning it again. That was just a coincidence.
This story about the Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich is great. This is the kind of story New Orleans residents use to feel better about themselves. I am just sitting back and enjoying it. This guy should be ashamed of his language. The government had Edwin Edwards on tape with all kinds of people and there were no cuss words. Cleo Fields didn’t even cuss when he realized how hard it was to stick ten thousand dollars in the pockets of tight jeans. You know these tapes are going to leak to the public eventually. The least you could do is be clean about it so the kids can watch it on the news. Also, you are not supposed to get sloppy until you have made some money and laundered it already. Why destroy your political career and not have any money in a Swiss bank account.
The best part of the story for me happened yestersay. Remember when Jesse Jackson Sr. went crazy and talked about chopping off the parts of Barack Obama that make him a male? Well as crazy and deranged as I thought that was I couldn’t help but be shocked at how Jesse Jackson Jr. would publicly rebuke his daddy. I’m old school when it comes to this family stuff. If Big Cliff would have done something as crazy as Jesse Sr., I would have gone to the house and talked to him about it. I might have tried to talk him into apologizing but I would have never talked negative about my daddy in public. There were enough people chastising his dad where he didn’t have to. He did it to gain favor with the Obama machine so he could get that senate seat. Now he’s Candidate #5 and can’t get the senate seat anyway. He probably didn’t do anything wrong and I really hope he didn’t. You know whats funny? If he was really in trouble the first person who would be standing up there with him everyday on the way to trial would be his crazy daddy. This little scare should be a valuable lesson that bad things happen when you talk down to your parents no matter how crazy they are getting as time goes by.
I know I submitted Kurtis Blow as my entry earlier but I had to post this for my own entertainment. Beat Street is a top five movie hands down!.....I had to sneak this other in too.
I would love to say that the recent fires set at some locals schools is an indictment of the Recovery School System and the state’s failure once they took over but I can’t. This is simply a lack of parental involvement and bad behavior. This is an example of a group of kids that don’t take pride in anything. Plus, they are not scared of adults. I can only imagine the horror of what would happen when someone called my parents to tell them I was being held on arson charges for burning the school. I think I would have asked for jail instead.
My friend put it best this morning at work when she said” After the fire fighters but those fires out they should take the same hose and whip some kids’ ass with it”. I agree with that. Too many kids in the city are void of discipline. I thought learning in school was rough when you had to worry about getting a beat down. How do you concentrate when fools are setting fires? Not only that, why would you start a fire in the school while you are still in it? You know New Orleans old school buildings have all kinds leaks and bad infrastructure. This needs to end before a bunch of innocent people get hurt from this ignorance. These kids should be expelled and never allowed back in school.
I was just getting ready to leave work when I caught wind of this New Orleans blogger Christmas video battle. Just because I want to crash the party and add some flavor from the other side of the city. I would like to submit my entry into this equation. It doesn't matter if I win. I just wanted to add some hip hop in.
Before I go on this tirade I just want to send a shout out toE at We Could Be Famous. He addresses city issues without ignoring the racial component where it's valid and no one is disrespected. I wish more black people would visit his site and engage in the discussion. E, I would make you an honorary Ninth Ward legend but I already gave that title to Brad Pitt and I can only give out one a year.
Lately I have been having some blogger conflict. There are many blogs about New Orleans but not many written by black people. The reality of it is that whatever popularity this page is due largely in part to the number of white people that choose to read me. I don’t have a problem with that because the color of the people who read what I have to say can’t change how I see the world. I like it because there is not enough time giving to really understand issues of black New Orleans. I don’t write trying to appease a certain group of people. Nothing in our current circumstances is simple as a black side and a white side of things. To break everything down to those terms on narrows the scope of any real solution. Take crime for instance. Everyone agrees that they want an end to crime and the thugs need to be locked away but not acknowledging the conditions of the schools and the type of education those thugs received before they became thugs will only leave the door open for the same problem to keep happening over and over. That’s the kind of issue I try to address from all angles. I am not bragging but I think I am pretty good at it.
Sometimes however things happen that make me think I should be a little more militant. Saturday I went looking for election results online. I found an article titled “Joseph Cao defeats William Jefferson”. I clicked on the article to read it and the comments section sent me into a state of anger. There was all these comments about the Chocolate City people will always vote for the black man no matter how crooked or how Africans were inferior or incompetent and how we were too stupid and should be tested to vote. That’s just a sample. The first thing I felt was offended. Then I just got mad and wanted to start an online ruckus so bad that the website might have been shut down forever and the FBI would have traced my IP address. They were making comments on a story that said Jefferson had already lost. That means whoever these folks are making the comments didn’t even read what the hell they were commenting on. They logged in specifically to make negative comments about black people. What should have been a moment where we all were looking ahead to a change turned into a few moments where I actually thought I should have voted for Jefferson myself out of spite. Whenever folks say things like this are the reason why they vote strictly along racial lines I try to tell them to look pass it but there’s only so much you can take before you get paranoid and circle the wagons to protect yourself. There's a fine line from when personal feelings about one politician turn into sweeping comments about everyone that looks like him.
I don't care how much money Bill Jefferson had in his freezer or how bad anyone thinks Ray Nagin is. When the critique becomes an attack on his genetic make up as a black man then the line is crossed and it doesn't matter what you are trying to say at that point. Since these people think they are so intellectual superior they should be able to make their arguments a lot better than I do. After all, I am just a black guy from the Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood so poor and pitiful it's not even worth rebuilding. These genetically superior anonymous comment makers should be able to make quick work of a cat like me in an open forum. What the hell are they hiding for? The other thing is that no one in charge on any of these message boards does anything to stop it. America has that freedom of speech thing so I guess it’s all good. I decided I will keep writing and being the anti stereotype of everything they say. Calling them a bunch of names will make me feel good for a split second but in the morning I will pass all those abandoned schools and empty houses and get knocked back into the big picture. If there is one thing I have learned in life it’s that you can’t spend much time on the ignorant.
I have a message for anyone this applied to that happens to wander to this page. My name is Clifton Joseph Harris III. I live in New Orleans East. My email address is clifton611@gmail.com. If you truly believe the things you say send me an email and make yourself known. I will be happy to debate you and show you how a black dude from the Lower Ninth Ward can crush you with my mind and not my fist (Unless you hit me first then it’s on. Clancy DuBos told me he would come get me out of jail for anything but DWI. I promise to be sober when I defend myself). I was just playing but don’t let the jokes fool you. I am mentally sharp and battle tested. I’m not ashamed of who I am and what I have to say. What about you?
P.S. This happens to be about a local website but this kind of thing happens everywhere from CNN, ESPN to YouTube. It shouldn't be that much of an emotional challenge for a black man to surf the internet. In my opinion, this country has not progressed as much as we think.
I am totally surprised William Jefferson lost. As bad as I wanted him out of there I am still surprised he went down. The reason is easy to see. Not enough people felt the need to go out and vote specifically for him. None of the other candidates who ran in the Democratic primary would have lost to Joseph Cao. This goes against what I usually stand for but I think the low turnout was a good thing. It showed these local black politicians you can’t just take things for granted and expect people to show up for you just because. Cynthia Willard Lewis learned that in the city council election and now Bill Jefferson knows it too. I can’t speak for every black person in New Orleans but I want someone to engage me and my concerns. Keep your inspirational speeches with your racial code words and tell me how we are going to get these schools together or a hospital open. I would rather have thousands of my brothers and sisters living better at the cost of one or two people having political power then voting for the same people over and over and having nothing to show for it. I might be ahead of my time in that mind state but all great ideas start off small.
The question now is who in the hell is Joseph Cao and how effective can he be in Washington where a Democrat revolution is going on? Is he going up there to represent the entire district or just the small percentage of Republicans? If he does he will be looking only at a two year term. He’s probably looking at only two years anyway. I hope he’s not one of those elitist that have plans to manipulate the recovery in order to frustrate poor people from moving back home. I’m not saying is. I’m just speculating because I don’t know much about him. I hope that’s not the case because anyone with sense should realize by now that’s not going to do anyone any good because if there’s one thing we have learned since Katrina is you can’t stop New Orleans folks from coming home if they really want to. Let’s hope it’s not that and he has some hidden Obama skills no one knows about and brings people together. Besides, I would hope that the liberal Democrats in Washington that black people have been so loyal to for years wouldn’t purposely shut out a district that is 60% black just to make the new Republican congressman look bad enough to lose in 2010. Let’s hope someone finally puts the people over their own agenda. William Jefferson didn’t and that’s why he’s no longer our Congressman.
I'm posting this blog from Big Red Cotton because she said everything that needed to be said about this and I agree 100%. I would just like to add that what she said should go double for the people who live here now and have the same negative attitude about the city. At least the people in this survey are going by what they see in the media. If you are here everyday and don't know how you wake up in the morning when you have to deal with this city, please leave. I would rather have 300,000 people with civic pride without the extra ones who exist just to remind me of all the problems we have. You all make me sick.Allow me to give Red the spotlight.
Okay, so a soon-to-be released survey identifies the 20 cities Americans say they would most want - and least want - to relocate for a job.
Guess which list New Orleans made...
Because the national economy is in the crapper into the unforeseeable future, more Americans will be faced with having to relocate to find work. So this Washington-based professionals organization, The Human Capital Institute, created a survey to help cities determine how to market themselves to attract talented out-of-town workers. They interviewed 2,500 employees and entrepreneurs nationwide who ranked New Orleans as their fourth least favorite pick for places to move to. Amongst our cited ills are population shrinkage, murder rate increase, and post-Katrina tourism industry challenges. The negative attributes rankings were health and safety (55%), image (49%), and environment (45%).
Hmph... Well on behalf of New Orleans, allow me to say that we don't want to be with anyone who doesn't want to be with us. I, for one, am tired of Homogenous Nation's negative opinion of New Orleans. We cannot be everything to everybody, especially imagination-lacking, subdivision beige house loving, mainstream America. We're busting our asses to put this city back together and take it to the next level - it's a GD mission! So if you're not feeling this, move over and let the ones through that DO wanna get with us.
Excuse my tangent folks. I'm just OVER the whole 'image' conversation.
Ironically, the other cities that made the survey's Top Worst List happen to be our sister cities:
New York/New Orleans - Disaster Soul Mates Detroit/ New Orleans - Chocolate Cities Los Angeles/New Orleans - Hollywood/Hollywood South
Apparently, the respondents are not so much into catastrophe, flava, or drama. Okay, I get that. Again, this aint for everybody.
The other irony is that our economy is still growing and outperforming the rest of the nation - we're actually ADDING jobs here while the rest of the country is losing jobs. And according to CityBusiness, New Orleans is fast growing as a hot spot in the tech sector. So I have a feeling some of those naysayers are going to be eating their words about us sooner rather than later.
Oh it feels good to be able to say that and actually believe it has a chance in hell of being true...
Anyhoo, I'm filing this after a fabulous Creole Italian dinner and too much wine and song at Vincent's. Now I'm off to catch one of the best live music shows in the country - the Rebirth Brass Band at the Maple Leaf, which will be packed as it is every middle-of-the-week Tuesday night. And the night won't end till the band says it ends.
Ah New Orleans, my beloved... If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right!
I read the story about the mom and her friend kicking in the door to avenge her son’s death and was not moved or surprised at all. The only thing that moved me in the story is I was happy a policeman was close enough to walk in there and stop it. This kind of thing happens all the time. Usually the mama doesn't go with the score settlers. They usually wait at the house. This probably makes up for about 40 % of the murder rate. What probably would have happened is that one of the people fighting over the gun would have gotten killed. Then, someone close to the victim would have retaliated against the survivor. That’s why most murders in the city lead to one or two more.
The article mentioned how she did it because she didn’t trust the justice system....
Shawntrell Hills didn't trust police, had little faith in the criminal justice system and wanted an immediate resolution to her son's slaying, relatives said.
Her son, after all, was a known Central City cocaine and heroin peddler, the kind of victim they believe elicits little pity from detectives.
There is some truth in that but my thing is if she knew enough to know where to go find the people who did it she could have just told the police and maybe she would have got a quick resolution. Trying your best to get your son to stop selling cocaine and heroin was another good idea. This city has an isolated group of people who don’t care about rebuilding efforts, or the city’s image or not even what their neighbors think. They live by their own rules and their own code. You can have 5000 police officers with crime cameras on ever corner and you won’t be able to do anything about crime until you tackle that mentality. Just read the article. Ms. Hills’ family puts it out there for you.
Back in the hood history of New Orleans there was a nightclub named Rumors. Rumors was the most popular night spot of my generation. It was one spot that attracted people from all parts of the city because of it's energy. I myself only managed to visit two times. I only went through the door once. Besides not wanting to be around that many crazy people, the reason I never wanted to go was I couldn’t have any fun under the constant threat of violence. Week after week there would be stabbings, shootings, assaults and all kinds of other madness and the same folks kept going back. How you have fun under that kind of tension always puzzled me. That’s why I don’t understand when things like getting arrested for being in a club with a pistol happen to successful cats like Plaxico Burress. Actually, even if he wasn’t making millions of dollars a year it would make no sense.
When you grow up in certain areas you expect having to fight from time to time. It's very difficult to make it all the way through with a conflict here or there. It’s part of the environment. You might have to fight on your way home from school or on the way back from the store for your mom. It's not really an option. I just can’t get with the premise that a person gets up, puts on his best clothes to go out for fun but before he leaves he grabs his pistol because someone may be tripping in the place he’s going. That’s not a good time. All you need for a good time is strong drinks, friendly women who smell good and music you like. If you have enough friendly, good smelling women you don’t even need the drinks or the music. I’m sure members of the New York Giants can get whatever accommodations they want without the need for being strapped. Brothers with money and access have to stop putting themselves in ghetto situations because I am tired of seeing the brothers in handcuffs.
This city budget process is giving me a headache. I am trying to pretend like I care about the odds and ends but to me city services already suck so what’s the big deal. I have been reading and watching but it’s hard to pay attention to. It’s seems to be lots of finger pointing, excuses and division with nothing being done to change the situation for the long term. That’s been the usual routine lately. Why do we only have 30 days to approve a budget anyway? With the circumstances of this city shouldn’t this process have started a few months ago? That way everyone has a chance to go through everything a few times before they decide to cut anything. Here’s what I never hear but I would love to. Why isn’t anyone talking about how to generate new revenue for the city?
There are some folks in the blogosphere that have convinced themselves that all of the extra city money is at Ray Nagin’s house. The truth is that ever since I started following city politics in high school they have had budget issues. Marc Morial used to ask for extra tax revenue every year and never got it. We have to figure out how to get some new money. We might be paying too much for garbage collection. I am certain we didn’t need to spend a dime on crime cameras. Real criminals don’t give a damn about a camera. Even if we corrected all of that we would still be broke.
We need to think outside the box. We got a big river and a port. We own the airport. There’s even an amusement park out in the East even though it’s kind of rusty. I don’t know what the plan should be but since it’s obvious no one wants to pay any extra taxes someone needs to come up with something. Remember when Ray Nagin first got elected mayor he said he wanted to package and sell our water? I guess after watching all the things floating during Katrina we can’t sell that idea anymore. All I know is that there is no disaster loan money left after this budget and I don’t want to hear all the crying when there are about 5 streetlights still lit and a pothole so deep you can reach China.
Just for the record: Cliff wouldn’t be against paying a few more cents on the dollar for the health of the city. We just need to come up with a way that no one would screw with it.
I couldn't come up with a proper name for this post without cusswords.
Slide 8
My friends and I have this phrase we use called a Black Man Moment. We use it to describe a situation that we think only a black man can experience. I am sure other people go through the same things but everyone we know with this kind of luck happens to be black so we are keeping the name. I grew up watching my dad have moments like this. My favorite was the time in high school when I had to get to the airport for 6AM to fly to Orlando and his car and his truck wouldn’t start. There are too many good ones to mention them all. My boy was out of work for seven months. On his way to a job interview his car broke down about seven blocks from the office. It was 96 degrees in August and he had on a grey shirt. By the time he made it to the office it looked like he just played a game of basketball and his hands smelled like antifreeze. All he could do is shake his head. I know everybody is trying to figure out what the hell I am talking about by now. Well, the black man moment meter was forever smashed Friday morning when these deranged jackasses ran over this brother at Wal Mart when he opened the door for Black Friday.
I feel so bad for this brother. He probably had a great Thanksgiving with his family and went to sleep early just to get up and spend his last moments looking at stupid Americans run over him. Don’t these people realize that Wal Mart puts out those 40 televisions on sale for 300.00 to make silly ass customers storm the door at the crack of dawn knowing all the time they have about five million of those things in a warehouse they will put out for the same price in the middle of January? What the hell was everybody running around like crazy Friday for anyway? We are supposed to be saving money for the recession. Everybody who ran over this man or saw him laying there and kept going should be prosecuted and his family should get to sell all the junk he was ran over for or set it all on fire. I can’t believe these people trampled the man to shop at Wal Mart. Obama better start making some more speeches to hypnotize them again because the new attitude is wearing off already.
This post is dedicated to my comrade James. He’s a Katrina refugee living in Idaho. He’s living proof that there are white Katrina refugees too and that black guys from the New Orleans public school system and white catholic school kids can actually get along. That’s contrary to what the cowards that leave comments on nola.com say. James when you read this I just want to tell you that the copter game won't open on my office computer.
This is going to be my last post until after the holiday weekend. Some friends are coming in town and I plan on reuniting my crew for the first time since Katrina. If that happens it means lots of Crown Royal so I won’t be in the mood or shape to blog about anything. Besides that it’s Bayou Classic weekend. It’s the time when guys like me who are not so young anymore pretend to run errands so they can drive downtown to look at college girls wearing their best outfits.
I will admit to being a bit sappy around the holidays. It's one of the few times of the year you can catch me in a genuine cheerful mood. I like hanging lights, buying a tree, drinking egg nog and all that good stuff. The only thing I can’t stand is those Lexus commercials that come on during the football games. You are sitting there watching the game and trying to figure out how to buy 20 gifts on a hundred dollar budget and this jerk on the commercial shows up with a Lexus wrapped in a big red bow.
Did I miss the inauguration and Barack Obama is already president? Where is George Bush? The same man who was jumping out of fighter jets and making speeches behind the Mission Accomplished banner couldn’t possibly lay low in the midst of this financial crisis.
Desiree Rogers is the new White House social secretary. She is the daughter of the late Councilman Roy Glapion. I know she lives in Chicago but we are claiming her for New Orleans. We need all the positive news we can get.
It’s a good thing the Saints smashed the Packers Monday (Sorry about that Maitri.). I needed something to break the recent string of bad news. There was the CNN special. There was this article showing that all of our kids are sick from living in FEMA trailers. We have also once again claimed the title as having America’s highest crime rate. What a news week!
I was wondering where all of our elected officials were while all of this is going on. Why do we seem to accept these things so quietly? This city is in desperate need of a pep talk. We think too negatively of ourselves and the behavior of our city leadership has made it worse than it’s ever been. Even the great inspector general who is hailed as a hero in some circles told CNN he doesn’t know how he wakes up in the morning when he has to deal with our city. I think that is counter productive that the man who is here to save the citizens money is on national television making sure we don’t have any other citizens moving here or visiting. We have to change our vibe. There’s a story in the newspaper this morning about how the area added 6000 jobs in October. This morning a person is looking for a job in another city that’s probably on the verge of a financial collapse in another part of the country. It’s all because we have made despair such a part of our daily routine that we can’t even accept a positive story like that anymore. I think we should name Lil Wayne as the city’s Goodwill Ambassador. We just have to make sure we have a translator there for the times he starts saying things no one can understand.
This economic crisis must be worst than most people think. Republicans and Democrats are not really arguing. When they start going out of the way to agree you know something is really wrong.
I have been watching and reading about this economic crisis for the last week. Everybody’s blaming upper management at the companies, Wall Street and the country’s economic team. They all have a hand in it however I think one group is missing from the equation. I think we are witnessing the brainwashing of the American public coming home to roost. Americans are a bunch of silly people. We trust educated people too much. Just because a person is educated does not mean they have the best interests of the country at heart. These people have divided Americans and have them so busy worrying about each other that no one pays attention to a damn thing they do. While we spend all of our time fussing about red and blue states or inner cities versus suburbs they are sitting around doing whatever the hell they want to with our money to make themselves rich.
They have ad campaigns that tell you how to live the American dream. Never mind that your family owns a home five minutes away from where you work in the old neighborhood downtown. Sell that old raggedy thing and move 200 miles away from the city. Stretch your money to the limit to pay that house note so you can live in this isolated subdivision. Buy two SUV’s and send your kids to private school. Just keep applying for those credit cards and we will keep sending them. You have to do this in order to get away from the inner city as possible. I don’t want anyone to think I am throwing stones in the glass house. My family owns a huge house in New Orleans right now and it’s just sitting there. Ten of us could have moved in there and saved thousands. If you do live in the city the alternative trick for you is to make you think you will feel better about yourself by buying a whole bunch of things you don’t need. Just keep spending and running up that debt.
Now, while we are spending all this money and getting full of all that animosity for one another, these assholes have lobbyist who go to Capitol Hill and convince most of your elected officials from both parties to look the other way while they move a few thousand jobs to another country here and inflate their earnings there to please the board of directors and Wall Street. There goes that 401K retirement plan down the drain and it was all orchestrated by some cat with an Ivy League education. We all saw it coming but were so busy isolating ourselves and arguing about who’s a worthy American and who’s not we didn’t do a damn thing about it. Now we are about six months away from having to convert all of our U.S dollars to Chinese Yuan and we are still bailing out companies while no one in charge loses their job or even has to give up a bonus. You would get fired from your job just for sending something to the printer that wasn’t work related. These folks can damn near send America into depression and still have private jets.
It’s so silly that I already know what’s coming next. In the next few weeks this story is going to be twisted somehow and people who probably never set foot in a bank is going to be the reason these institutions had to lie while they squandered our money. We are going to eat that up and they are going to keep on driving the country into the ground. There might be a crazy congressman what will introduce a bill that no one making under twenty thousand a year can have a bank account or anyone who bounces a check has to be sterilized. That’s just what you need to digest the feeling when you go to work and there’s a chain on the door with a sign that says “Company moved to India”
How many times will Soledad O’Brien be the messenger of the harsh reality of my life? If it wasn’t for Big Red Cotton I wouldn’t have known this was coming on tonight. I blame this on her.
I love Soledad but she’s playing with my emotions. It took me awhile to get over her Black in America special. This time she chose a more specific way to attack my self esteem. Tonight I watched One Crime at a Time on CNN about crime and corruption in New Orleans. I am now scared to go outside. It’s just what we needed for an economy that depends on tourism to survive. I am not upset with Soledad. She’s just doing her job. I am upset with my city. We just can't get it together. Even though the CNN special was one sided and didn’t acknowledge the numerous positive things going on, nothing that was reported was a lie or over exaggerated. The real question for me is how long before we ask her to come back to report on how much things have changed for the better.
Last weekend parents and volunteers built a playground at my daughter’s school. I would say that in total there were about 10 fathers out there working. I spent the entire day watching the mothers of those children shovel mulch, mix concrete, push wheelbarrows and all kinds of other stuff. I was a little disappointed in the lack of men but I didn’t worry about it because I was there and as long as the project got done and the kids had someone to play I was happy. Besides, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that many of those kids don’t have an active father. That’s a sad but true fact. We can’t dwell on it. We just have to keep moving and get things done.
Last night was the Thanksgiving dinner at the school. Miraculously, dozens and dozens of grown ass men managed to show up for the free food. That’s when I got pissed. Some of these cats may have been working so I won't blanket everybody with the same lack of respect. I know that I and the other 8 or 9 dads that volunteered last week weren’t the only ones off from work last Saturday. Those sorry bastards couldn’t get up early on Saturday and dedicate a day to work for the babies but they can come strutting around for a free meal. I wish I was on the dinner committee. I would have taken the microphone and asked for all the parents who volunteered last week to raise their hands. Then I would have fed the kids first, and then the parents who volunteered and if there was anything left after they were full those sorry excuses could have got some cranberry sauce or something. Some families had two or three men with them. There was a young lady who worked on the playground with her mom. I remember her because she hurt her ankle while we were working. She was at the dinner last night with two male family members who sat there while she fixed them a plate. I wanted to take their two plates, put them together and tell her to bring that home to her mom since she was the only one that showed up. The least they could have done is fixed a plate for her. They didn’t do anything but sit their happy asses there and swallow food. I know those babies were happy to have their dads eating with them at school but as a black man who puts everyone’s agenda before his I was personally disgusted and I hope they all got indigestion.
I now know why my grandfather used to just look at certain cats and shake his head. We have to stop giving these guys grown men props when they don’t want to put in any work or make any sacrifice. What kind of community is this going to be? No one has to comment on this if they don’t feel comfortable. I just needed to say it. I need to put my Obama acceptance speech on tonight to bring back the fantasy world. Yes we can!
The Clintons and their old soldiers are making out pretty well in this election. When you take that into account along with Robert Gates staying on as Secretary of Defense and Joe Lieberman not walking the plank, I guess when the president-elect was talking about change he meant only him.
Is it ok for black people to start speaking out again? Or is the election gag rule still in effect?
They finally demolished my family’s house in the Lower Ninth Ward. Someone broke the news to me last night. I am surprised at how melancholy I have been since I found out. I was going to ride over there and take a picture of the empty but I thought to myself that it would look just like all the other empty lots where homes used to be. People from the Lower Nine have a lot of pride and since Katrina we tend to speak in a romantic tone about our old neighborhood. My old house was no state of the art facility. It was old and battle tested. It was probably in need of a renovation in 1979 when we moved into it. Like most shotgun doubles in New Orleans it had no privacy. When we got ready to iron clothes or do laundry we had to cut off a few other electrical things to keep the fuses from blowing out. We lived on the avenue across the street from one of the most popular neighborhood bar rooms. To this day I can’t sleep without some kind of noise because I am so used to the sound of music, people talking, and city buses passing all night.
You might read all of that and think to yourself why someone would be upset about not having that anymore. Since Katrina I have seen my mayor and other local leaders, try and tell me how we should be excited about this new bigger and better city. All of those rallying cries are shallow because they are only talking about structures and it has nothing to do with the actual things that made the community what it is. As far as I’m concerned I would take the bus passing and making the room shake, the power going out if you turn the dryer on and didn’t let the button go fast enough and the occasional police siren outside my door if you brought the people back.
Don’t think I am tripping. I have accepted that change is a part of life and you have to adapt to it in order to keep moving. I have been doing that every day. I have to admit though. After 26 years of knowing I could always turn that key and feel secure, three years is not a sufficient amount of time for me not be pissed off about this whole situation. Now that the house is gone I won’t be talking about it anymore. Katrina and the government apathy that followed won that battle. I guess I just miss the rest of my family.
This morning on my way to work I caught a flat from one of the many violent New Orleans potholes. I am certain that driving up Downman Road in New Orleans East is just like playing a driving video game in real life. It’s the worse kind of flat because whatever I hit put a gash in my tire that is too big to patch up. Now I have to buy another tire for that rim. It’s a good thing that New Orleans has an abundance of used tire places. They are usually dependable even though the guys that work there start asking for a tip before you have even explained what it is you need them to do.
It’s also a good thing that the city is populated with enough people I trust to have someone get my daughter to school on time (Thank you Tish.). The young lady is a perfectionist and I didn’t want to listen to her complaining all afternoon about being late and costing her class the homework contest Friday. Have you ever disappointed a five year old and they told you about it and you had no defense? It's not cute. It's a challenge to translate the phrase "shit happens" into five year old language.
I see why GM is losing business. No one wants to buy a truck that comes with a jack big enough to lift a go-cart. I bet my neighbor’s Toyota Tundra has a button that lifts the entire truck five feet off of the ground. I hope no one is on their way to vote on the bailout and catches a flat in a Chevy truck. At least Mr. Williams was on vacation and somehow managed to make it to me five minutes after I called and told him I needed a jack. If he never did anything else for me the rest of my lifetime he and Mr. Brister would still be cemented as the greatest comrades a bad luck joker like me could ever have.
After letting Mr. Williams laugh at the destruction of my tire as payment for getting out of bed on vacation, I came to work and noticed that one of my co-workers has over decorated his cube. Don’t you hate those people who just have too many things in their office space? It was bad enough when he bought that fish tank that’s not really a fish tank. It’s just a picture with fish in it that lights up and makes water noise. That’s tacky. That’s just like those picture of the waterfalls they sell on the street. Now he has this thing that looks a garden gnome. Every time I walk past this crazy looking thing it’s eyes follows me down the hall. When I walk pass his desk I get the same feeling Michael Jackson’s neighbors must have felt when they looked out at Neverland Ranch. What does a grown man need all that for?
All you can do with a morning like that is get a cup of coffee, put on your headphones at the desk and zone out New Orleans style. This song will help you relax.
The rest of the day wasn't as bad except for my hands smelling like brake dust.
