Katrinalia

These are emails I've sent out the last week. I felt like putting them up here just because I haven't seen enough bloggers commenting on the subject.

***
Sep. 1, 2005
to Randall, from Gabriel:

i don't know what kind of moving pictures have been getting beamed your way, but i hadn't seen any television news until my lunch break. i'l tell you what, man; no matter how bad everything sounds right now, it looks a thousand times worse. and it doesn't look to be getting any better anytime soon.

about the suffering, i'll say this: i'd never realized this before, but the effect of seeing disasters happen in third world countries is blunted by the fact that foreign victims never have voices. but when you see a man interviewed in front of the astrodome, and all he can say is "I'm just so tired," over and over again, wipe his eyes, and walk away, then it has a greater impact than 1,000 sally struthers voice-overs.

that said, i'll skirt the human suffering angle. i can't do it justice.

here's something, though: all the people i'm seeing on the news, they're black. and the black mayor of new orleans is talking about how they're running out of supplies and they need help and "We're letting the people march to...find what they need." meanwhile, you have the white governor of louisiana suspending rescue operations to clamp down on lawlessness, the director of homeland security assuring us that the relief operation is going infinitely more smoothly than the tsunami relief, and the white leader of FEMA shrugging and saying, hey, we gave the warning, you shoulda got out of town...

incidentally, shouldn't every national guardsman east of the rockies been mobilized, oh, about a day or two before the hurricane made landfall? or at least by the time i sent you an email joking about new orleans being destroyed the day before it got destroyed? it's not like i was working with inside information. that decision's going to haunt some people. speaking of which, can you name the head of the department of homeland security? (you know, the guys who run the national guard now). neither can i.

remember when i said Bush was going to be remembered as Lyndon Johnson, minus the record on domestic/social policy? yeah. only now, it's worse. (LBJ = Great Society, GWB = swollen black corpses floating down Bourbon Street.) like i said, you have to watch the newscast for only a couple minutes, but when you see it, it's shocking. the anger is palpable, it's on everyone's face, in every shot and it just oozes off the screen. i don't know what it means--i'll have to wait for jason whitlock to weigh in on the matter--but i'm guessing race is going to become a huge issue in the next election. not to put too fine a point on it, but american citizens are dying--not suffering, which doesn't get middle america all that riled up, but dying--right now because they are black and poor, and at some point americans will probably think about holding someone responsible, if for no other reason than it's going to be about the only thing on television for the next couple of weeks, and it's kind of a downer, and america hates downers.

not to get too far ahead of anything, but my mom had a theory that republicans hated Clinton because black people loved him. i don't know how true the first part of that statement is, but there's no denying the latter.

oh, and if this Marshawn Lynch kid is the goods, the Cal beats USC. they've lost too much on defense. those guys were monsters last year; the difference between having a great run defense and a pretty good run defense is huge. i'm telling you, a new day has dawned.

post-apocalyptically,

gabriel

September 3, 2005
to Randall, from Gabriel

yeah. suddenly, i'm a kanye west fan.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9177352/page/2/

g

September 4, 2005
to Gabriel, from Randall

i wrote that last email not having seen or heard about exactly how bad it was. at that point, i had just seen the superdome, and figured a lot of the coverage to be cnn rhetoric. unbelievable. it's just gone. the few people i know from down there, their lives have been completely destroyed. water to the attic, jobs gone, living with grandparents. and they were lucky to be able to escape. i agree with kanye, and wonder if this will get back to bush.
the guy hasn't been held accountable yet. those of us up here with saying that if this had happened in cali, the guard would've been on it days before, like you were mentioning. i hope they don't just scapegoat the fema guy. i've heard bush was trying not to smirk and laugh between telecasts.

September 5, 2005
to Randall, from Gabriel

there was no way you or i could have known it was going to be like this.

maybe this is when america finally comes to the conclusion that cynically opportunistic, morally bankrupt, and ideologically vacuous do not make for good government. hell, even fox news has become a bunch of New Deal Democrats in the last week, even if they're going to deny as soon as people stop, you know, dying and shit. the people who run DHS and FEMA are going to get put down, but the real sport will be watching the republicans cannibalize Dubya over the next three (!) years. it was bound to come to this, of course; the republicans' loyalty has always been to their bastard non-Christian, non-Conservative "values" (Jesus' big thing was never supply-side economics--almost the exact opposite, in fact, unless my edition is a bad translation or something), and Dubya's priority--like Gingrich, Bush the Elder, Reagan, Nixon--has always been his own political survival and personal ambition. it should be good sport, anyway, watching that pack of rabid fear-crazed hyenas tear that fat lipped cocksucker apart--incidentally, just me, or is he about as Texas as Emily Dickinson? you can hear them sharpening thier knives, in anticipation of sacrificing their great leader in the interest of their own re-election campaigns (Bush polls lower on Iraq right now than LBJ on Vietnam in 1968)--and then Dubya goes on national television to officially hand the "relief effort" over to W.J. Clinton--in the oval office no less (a pale shade resembling Bush the Elder may have also been in the room; neither i, nor anyone else, really noticed); he may as well have handed Hillary the keys to the white house while he was at it, if the bloated corpses of black people on CNN haven't done the job for him already.

not to get all partisan about it, though. when people have stopped dying and the investigations start, i hope they dust everything with that phosphorescent CSI shit and whoever left their fingerprints within a mile of this repugnant miasma should be sentenced to a week without food or water in triple digit heat, festering in their own piss and shit the whole time, just to restore some sense of justice in this country. and then some of their family should die, too, just for good measure. the orwellian platitudes of this administration (what farmers used to call "spin") don't go down so easily when there's no fog of war fig-leafing their stupidity and inhumanity and greed. Bush gutted the FEMA budget when he rolled it up into the pork pie that calls iteslf the DHS, and now Halli-fucking-burton has the contract to rebuild the gulf coast. the howling injustice of those bastards raking in millions of dollars to bury the dead and "reclaim" the land (some of it at pennies on the dollar for themselves) it is just too much to get my brain around. it was rotten from beginning to end, and the whole of it might be the most sickening stupidity perpetrated on America by a sitting president in this century--i say maybe only because it'll be awhile before i can soberly measure new orleans against baghdad or even downtown manhattan.
"intelligence failures" my fucking ass--that's like me saying i'm late for work because i had "car trouble." i don't have a car and you don't have any fucking intelligence you stupid, stupid fucks. i don't believe in Evil. but i do know that stupid is the enemy of the Good, and stupid people are runnning my country right now.

(speaking of stupid, contrary to the opinions of certain speakers of the house, nobody builds a city in a stupid place. yes, it sits below sea-level, but new orleans exists and evolved the way it did because it also sits at the mouth of the mississippi river and serves as the gateway to to the midwest--it's a shipping port, essentially, and a staggering number of interstate highways and rail tracks run into & out of the city. which is to say, the argument that new orleans was somehow cut-off or otherwise inaccessible is laughably stupid. more laughable if people hadn't died because nobody gave the order to go in, but still.)

incidentally, you're probably not getting a great feel for the media coverage in j-town, but http://www.wonkette.com/ has been doing a good job; you get a feel for the trajectory of the story. and i love the reporters going all Herb Williams, taking their despair out on bullshit politicians--although i think the more apt parrallel would be Steinbeck as he wrote Grapes of Wrath, the parts where he takes a step past the familiar Dorothea Lange and even Walker Evans territory and gets all, you know, subjective and lefty political and shit. (i think the dust bowl was the last comparable moment in american history; i also think that i'm just now coming around to understanding why so many people have trouble stomaching that book, given that that kind of thing could never...oh, hell.) as for myself, just when i think i've found my safe ironic distance, i see shit like this, and i'm angry again::

http://www.wonkette.com/images/WRC_09-04-2005_10.58.46.wmv

it's just not right.

g

September 6, 2007
to Randall, from Gabriel

I'm not a psychic or nothing, but i'm guessing that there's going to be a congressional hearing, and they're going to call Michael "Brownie" Brown to testify about FEMA's role in this mess, the expectation being that the criminally underqualified Brown will roll over on G. Dubya...until Dubya himself dramatically shows up to the hearing accompanied by an olive skinned stranger, who turns out to be none other than Brown's sicilian brother. "Georgie over there? Yeah, I know Georgie," Brown will testify, clearly more flusterd than usual, if that's possible. "Me and his dad used to be in the olive business. Fuhgeddaboudit."


Ted Kennedy will die of a heart attack on the spot. Shortly thereafter consigliere Dick Cheney will have a secret meeting with Brown and say some confusing stuff about Romans. Then Brown will be ironically found dead in his bathtub. And by "ironically," I guess I mean "drowned."

Then it will occur to Dubya that hurricane relief is an action that comes easily in the fiefdom of his brother Jeb. "I know it was you," Dubya will tell him. "I know it was you who let Katrina destroy my political career. You broke my heart, Jeb, you broke my heart." A week or so after that meeting Jeb Bush will be shot to death in his fanboat. Or whatever the hell they call those swamp hovercraft things they got, you know the ones I'm talking about. With the big fans on 'em.

After that, it's on to Part III of the epic Bush Saga. People who'd been hoping for a flourish befitting anyone audacious enough to proclaim himself The War President are bound to be disappointed. Part III will be slow, artsy, and maybe a little depressing as it tracks not really a downfall per se but rather the calcification of an iconic, of polarizing, character. Even hardcore fans of the series are going to be hard-pressed to think of anything exciting or even memorable, except maybe an incongruous and somewhat gratuitous helicopter attack. Also, if anyone explains to me why the Pope gets offed, I'm all ears because frankly, that shit don't make no sense. Such hubris on so grand a stage demands an operatic gotterdamerung, but instead Dubya will fade from existence, our last glimpse of him sitting alone feeding pigeons anonymously on the porch of Trent Lott's house, rebuilt with federal assistance money freed up by massive cuts to social service budgets across the country. Love him or hate him, it will be a highly unsatisfying ending regardless, but it may also be the truest ending.

Or maybe he'll become a Jimmy Carter/Bill Clinton ambassador of goodwill. The fuck do I know? Those are my predictions for the week.

g

September 7, 2005
to Jaimie, from Gabriel

"As your WAR PRESIDENT, I think the American People need to hear decisive answers to some of the criticism leveled at this administration in the last week. I know the pictures don't look good, and I understand the frustration of the brave people of New Orleans who were courageous enough to stay alive during the five days it took for any kind of federal relief to arrive, but as the WAR PRESIDENT I want you to know that mine is not a racist administration. To be honest, I've been so busy with being WAR PRESIDENT that I haven't given much thought to much of anything else besides the war. Except tax cuts for the people who voted for me, since that's what I promised them when they paid $10,000 to have dinner with me. I've also been working on a plan to let you take the money you've been putting into Social Security and flooding the stock market with it, because that's what America is about. Also I've been busy imposing federal standards for student achievement while simultaneously insisting that teaching Intelligent Des--aw, hell, Creationism--should be a decision left to the individual municipal school boards of across our great nation. Point is, your WAR PRESIDENT did not let those people die because he is a racist. America is the greatest country I can think of or even know about, and I think a lot of that greatness probably depends on contributions from our brown-skinned citizens. What we should all keep in mind during a moment of tragedy like this is that neither your WAR PRESIDENT nor anyone I've appointed to handle disasters at the federal level is competent to do the job. Race is a very sensitive issue in our great nation, so as WAR PRESIDENT I'd like to stress that last point; those poor African Americans who died in New Orleans did not die because of racism, but rather my own stupidity. I hope this clarifies things for a few people out there, and allows us to move forward in making the greatest nation on earth great once again."

i mean, in that light, it's almost excusable, isn't it?

g

Postprandial

Done, made, taken, happening, etc. after dinner; after-dinner. (Chiefly humorous.)

Hence post"prandially adv., after dinner.

Fulminate

I. In physical senses.

1. intr. To thunder and lighten. rare.

2. To issue as a thunderbolt.

†3. Metallurgy. Of gold: To become suddenly bright and uniform in colour. Obs.

†4. trans. To strike with lightning. Obs. rare.

5. To flash forth like lightning.

6. †a. trans. To cause to explode with sudden loud report (? obs.). b. intr. To explode with a loud report, detonate, go off.

II. fig.
[Originally a rendering of med.L. fulminare, the technical term for the formal issuing of condemnations or censures by the pope or other ecclesiastical authority; afterwards used with wider application and with reference to the literal sense.]

7. trans. To ‘thunder forth’; to utter or publish (a formal condemnation or censure) upon a person.

8. To strike with the ‘thunderbolts’ of ecclesiastical censure; hence gen. to denounce in scathing terms, condemn vehemently.

9. intr. Of the pope, etc.: To issue censures or condemnations (against); gen. to ‘thunder’, inveigh violently against.

10. Path. Of a disease: to develop suddenly and severely. (Cf. fulminating ppl. a. 3.)

Hence "fulminating vbl. n., the action of the vb.

Osculate

1. trans. To kiss, salute with contact of the lips; intr. to kiss each other. rare.

2. trans. To bring into close contact or union.

3. intr. To come into close contact or union; to have close contact with each other, to come together. In Nat. Hist. To have contact through an intermediate species or genus (cf. osculant).

4. Math. trans. To have contact of a higher order with, esp. the highest contact possible for two loci; to have three or more coincident points in common with; intr. (for refl.) to osculate each other: as two curves, two surfaces, or a surface and a curve.

Hence "osculating ppl. a., usually in sense 4, as osculating circle, curve, plane, sphere.

Scumble

1. a. trans. In Oil Painting. To soften or render less brilliant (the colours in a portion of a picture) by overlaying with a thin coat of opaque or semi-opaque colour; to spread or ‘drive’ (a colour) thinly over a portion of a picture in order to soften hard lines or blend the tints; to produce (an effect) by this process. b. absol.

2. In Pencil, Chalk, or Monochrome Drawing. (See quots.)

3. transf. of natural effects.

Hence "scumbled ppl. a., "scumbling vbl. n.

Vagary

1. †a. A wandering or devious journey or tour; a roaming about or abroad; an excursion, ramble, stroll. Obs.
Freq. in the 17th c., chiefly in verbal phrases as to fetch, make, or take a vagary.

†b. to play his vagary, of a horse, to leave or refuse to follow the proper or desired course. Obs.—1

c. An irregular course or distribution.

†2. A wandering in speech or writing; a rambling from the subject under consideration; a digression or divagation. Obs. (passing into sense 5).

3. a. A departure or straying from the ordered, regular, or usual course of conduct, decorum, or propriety; a frolic or prank, esp. one of a freakish nature. Now rare or Obs. (passing into sense 4).

†b. Without article: Frolic, gambolling. Obs.

4. a. A capricious, fantastic, or eccentric action or piece of conduct.

I'm pretty sure I left Coda a voicemail the day before his birthday or the day after, but he never called me back. Not that it bothers me when Coda doesn't call me back. We've had some lively email exchanges but our phone conversations have generally been one-off affairs, not really part of an ongoing dialogue or anything. Not that I have a leg to stand on the returning of phone calls tip; I'm at +5 for outgoing calls made vs. return calls made (meaning there's three people I'm supposed to call and eight people who are supposed to call me, applying somewhat subjective and arbitrary rules of etiquette) but if you consider email correspondence roughly equivalent to returning a phone call, which I do, then I'm at -8, unless you count friendster testimonials, which I don't, in which case I'd be at -13 for the year.

Coda did call me back, though, even if it took him a couple months. I'd run into him on IM and demanded to know where the hell he'd been. "Falling in love," he said somewhat cryptically, as if that means anything at all to me.

Not if the Meteor Kills Us First!

The conference also heard a gloomy analysis of the way the North Atlantic Ocean is reacting to global warming from Ruth Curry of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Her new study showed that vast amounts of fresh water more than 20,000 cubic kilometres have been added to the northernmost parts of the ocean over the past 40 years because the Arctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting.

According to Dr Curry, the resulting change in the salinity balance of the water threatens to shut down the Ocean Conveyor Belt, which transfers heat from the tropics towards the polar regions through currents such as the Gulf Stream. If that happened, winter temperatures in northern Europe would fall by several degrees.

The possible failure of the North Atlantic conveyor has been discussed for several years and was fictionalised last year in the film The Day After Tomorrow. Dr Curry said the accumulation of freshwater in the upper ocean layers since the 1990s meant that the risk should be taken seriously. (Financial Times)

A Burglar Alarm for a House with no Locks

On Tuesday, Bill Gates and other Microsoft executives at the RSA Conference in San Francisco outlined several moves to beef up Windows' security, including giving away anti-spyware software for personal and home use, assembling a consumer-oriented anti-virus service, and releasing a beta of an updated Internet Explorer -- dubbed IE 7.0 -- to Windows XP users by the middle of 2005. (Information Week)

Mission Accomplished!

New allegations of prisoner abuse by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been revealed in Army documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The documents show photographs of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan posing with hooded and bound detainees during mock executions. The photos were taken at a base in southern Afghanistan (Fire Base Tycze) between December 2003 and February 2004. Some members of the infantry regiment said they took the pictures for fun and destroyed some of them after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq to avoid another public outrage. (Voice of America)

On the Fourth Day There Will Be Questions

The woman who claimed to have seen a baby being tossed from a moving car fabricated the story as a cover to abandon her newborn and hide an unwanted pregnancy from her family, authorities said Friday. State law allows a mother to take a baby to any medical facility or fire station within the first three days the baby is born without any questions asked.

"That provides parents or women with an option. You don't have to just abandon your child in way that would endanger his or her life," said Veda Coleman-Wright, a sheriff's office spokeswoman. (AP)

A Diplomatic Tussle Nobody Anticipated

Michael Jankelowitz, a Jewish Agency spokesman, said just over 10,000 Jews from the Soviet Union moved to Israel last year. In comparison, 12,000 moved to Germany, where he said they are granted refugee status and receive generous welfare benefits.

Israel has pressed Germany to cancel its absorption benefits to help encourage the remaining 800,000 Jews in former Soviet lands to move to Israel, he said. (Moscow News)

It's Like They Don't Like Us or Something

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami warned Thursday that any invader would be met by a "burning hell" as tens of thousands of people braved blizzards to join rallies for the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution. After close to a week of record snowfall, Tehran and much of the north has been virtually paralysed - making it virtually impossible for many people to find transport to take them to the town centre for the annual anti-American demonstrations. But regime loyalists were out in force, parading effigies of US President George W. Bush and his new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

According to powerful former president and top cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the strong turnout "in this snow and cold should send a message to America." (Middle East Online)

A Few People Had Their Suspicions at the Time

Is this a new and improved Corey Dillon, or have we finally been allowed to see the real Corey Dillon?

"People are going to view me how they want to," said Dillon, who admittedly has matured since his college days and his early years in Cincinnati, which included run-ins with the law. "The way I look at it, people didn't think Jesus was Jesus, so who am I? People are going to think what they want." (Espn.com)

And what is it that they are, sir?

A 1999 trial in Alzheimer's disease patients that Pfizer sponsored but never published found an increased risk of heart problems in those taking Celebrex. And the National Institutes of Health ended a study in December after finding that high doses of Celebrex more than tripled the incidence of heart attacks and strokes in patients. "They are what they are," Dr. Feczko [President of Pfizer] said of those two trials. But "the overwhelming preponderance of evidence" indicates the drugs are safe, he said.

Over all, Pfizer has performed much less research on Bextra than on Celebrex, Dr. Feczko said. Most of the company's studies of Bextra have been short term, with many lasting only two weeks. As a result, Pfizer has less data to support its contention that Bextra is safe, he said. (NY Times)

Oil Execs Can't Always Have Unimpeachable Integrity

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday he was "shocked" by an initial investigative report that found the man in charge of the U.N. oil-for-food program made illicit oil deals. Paul Volcker's report, released Thursday, said Benon Sevan "repeatedly solicited" several million barrels of oil worth about $1 million on behalf of a company named African Middle East Petroleum. The illicit deals "violated standards of integrity," the report said.

"We do not want this shadow to hang over the U.N. So we want to get to the bottom of it, get to the truth and take appropriate measures to deal with the gaps," he told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York. (CNN)

In Your Face, Hans Blix!

But this year, Republicans stamped their support of President Bush's foreign policy on their index fingers, passing around a tin of purple stamp ink in homage to Iraqi voters, who marked their fingers similarly Sunday when they cast their ballots. While both sides of the aisle applauded throughout the speech when Bush mentioned the election in Iraq, GOP members stood and wagged their purple fingers as a clear signal that the election stemmed from their president's campaign for democracy in Iraq. (Chicago Tribune)

His Career is Like a Clock Melting on a Beach

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio's "exceptional career" has been honoured at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. He was presented with the award by Martin Scorsese. "It's a lifetime achievement award, which is completely and utterly surreal, given I'm only 30 years old," DiCaprio said. "But what has it been? Almost 17 years now. I've done quite a few films." (BBC)

Most of Them Believe in Evolution, For Instance

Speaking in the right spiritual tongue may be difficult for Democrats. Howard Dean stumbled during his presidential campaign when he famously stated his favorite book of the New Testament was the decidedly Old Testament Book of Job. Gaffes like that have Republicans excited to bash Democrats on the issue. "They have no credibility," said House Majority Leader Tom Delay about these Democrats efforts. "Talk is cheap. We'll see if their actions fit their words." (Time)

That's Not Leadership, That's Being a Dickhead

A-Rod sees no slight at Jeter in Steinbrenner's mandate. In fact, he's quick to point out, "This is still Jeter's team because he's the captain. But my approach is not to be everyone's best friend. My approach is to win championships. The only way to do that is to be myself, and to take care of my world. With my talent people will follow naturally."

A-Rod is so committed to delivering on that promise, he declined an invitation to Jeter's celebrity golf tournament in Tampa last week, even though the guest list included Michael Jordan, Roger Clemens, Reggie Jackson, Wayne Gretzky and Lawrence Taylor. Rodriguez's absence didn't go unnoticed, as his handlers said the third baseman didn't want to interrupt his workout schedule. (ESPN.com)

Unify This, Liberal Motherfuckers!

Secretary General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that he had selected former President Bill Clinton to be his special envoy for the countries affected by the tsunami in southern Asia. Mr. Clinton's role is expected to last two years. Mr. Eckhard said Mr. Clinton would most likely be called on to help settle longtime disputes between the governments and rebel forces in Indonesia and Sri Lanka where solutions might be more easily reached after the unifying experience of shared tragedy.

At the same time Jesse Helms, the former Republican senator from North Carolina, in a fund-raising letter for his senatorial library, has raised the issue of possible ambitions by Mr. Clinton to become secretary general.

According to The Associated Press, the letter said, "I'm sure you might agree that putting a left-wing, undisciplined and ethically challenged former president of the United States into a position of such power would be a tragic mistake." (NY Times)