Tuesday, June 8, 2010

New Orleans in August

My brother, Smelt, is involved in a project about New Orleans and Katrina. Telling Their Stories: The Lingering Legacy of the Katrina Photographs


He happened to win a prize or two for his work on Katrina. It makes a great story, but I can't tell it without revealing his identity. He wouldn't care, I don't think, about being related to Menopausal Stoners since I believe he's introduced me to his associates as My Sister the Menopausal Stoner. The thing is that Buzz Kill would probably still be bent out of shape about the blog if he could connect it to my real name, and once I'm connected to my brother, then the jig is up.

As it happens, the reason Buzz Kill finally moved out of the marital residence is that he found a story I had written titled, "The Jig is Up," which involved a black man with a dick like a mag light. Since we're coming up on the anniversary of that event, which blew apart that year's Gemini Party in addition to the remnants of our marriage, I would hate to cause another commotion - especially when it all coincides with our wedding anniversary. Wedding anniversaries can be a sore spot for divorced couples - pretty much like the anniversary of Katrina is going to be particularly sore for New Orleans this year due to the Gulf of Mexico being killed by BP and our national addiction to fossil fuels.

The family is having a jamboree in New Orleans in honor of Smelt at this event which is on August 21, 2010. I want to go because (1) I love going to New Orleans, especially when my dad is picking up the tab and (2) I want to see what's going on with the oil slick in August when shit will have totally hit the fan.

Right now, shit is barely stirred up and BP is paying for all kinds of PR to calm the natives. That's pretty easy in America since so many people already believe propaganda is news. Jaded J saw folks in Nebraska flying Confederate flags from their SUVs in line to buy gas from BP - and most likely they're not oil executives. You expect that bullshit in Houston. In Houston, you're always having to dodge a long line of limos filled with the Bushes, the Bin Ladens and their OPEC buddies headed up to George Herbert Walker's place in College Station - home of the Texas Aggies.

I figure there will be no shrimp in sight by August except the ones from China that are steeped in antibiotics. Costco sells them at a good price. You can make gumbo with chicken. Etouffee, too, but it's not the same. Who knows whether the teabaggers and the end-of-times crowd will still be hollering "Drill, baby, drill," in August or if a few of them might have begun to wake up and smell the crude in the coffee.

There have always been liars - big, fat liars. I'm having to shove that fact in my son's face right now since he's very friendly with a number of Israelis and was inclined to believe the Israeli party line about the Gaza Flotilla. He was stunned to hear that the activists were killed execution style. Now, I have no illusions about peaceful Palestinians - but the fact remains that the Israeli government is 100% wrong. Anyone who hogs water in a desert is a dick wad, if you ask me, and the Israelis have been hogging water for decades. The Israeli Government sucks.

Sadly, we suck too.
If We The People didn't suck so bad, people would have paid attention to Jimmy Carter's repeated call for an Energy policy that ended our dependence on fossil fuels. The gas lines were in 1979. Now it's 2010 and We The People guzzle more gas than ever as a result of listening to Ronald Regan and countless Republicans all spewing the same profit driven bullshit.

A few of us did pay attention to Jimmy. As it happens, my dad was in charge of Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in Houston, for all the good it did anyone. More Middle Eastern bullshit there, too.

Oil, War in the Middle East and Israel. We can't really say Same Old Shit since the shit is worse now. We've killed the ocean. The coral reefs in Florida will be damaged from chemical compounds spreading in the oil plumes deep under the surface. These toxins are supposed to evaporate in shallow water. They drift undersea like a spreading virus. (NYTimes, Plumes of Oil Deep in Gulf are Spreading Far, Tests Find).

I'm frankly surprised that anyone considers it news that the oil spill is spreading toxins. Anyone who has ever tried to cool down the water in the bathtub so it doesn't boil your ass the second you get in knows how water circulates, for crying out loud. The Gulf Stream simply complicates it all by spreading the oil all the way to England - conveniently avoiding Haley Barbour's shores. Big Oil Cheerleader Haley Barbour is currently trying to convince Mississippi businessmen that BP will compensate them for lost revenue. If the Alaskan model applies to the Gulf, then they can expect ten cents on the dollar.

When I visit my parents in the Houston Suburbs, we are occasionally trapped on Sunday mornings when services are over at the Baptist Church That Ate The Neighborhood. The church hires off-duty cops to direct traffic while SUVs pour out of the parking lot onto the street, many with bumper stickers that say things like: God is my Co-Pilot. I have always hated those people, but when I think of the oil spill, it's like they all lined up to moon us treehuggers and spewed their collective diarrhea into the Gulf.

If they are happy eating their own shit, I don't care. But I hate it that they have made us eat their God-fearing, Bible Thumping, Water Boarding, Dick Cheney loving, Gas Guzzling shit on a sandwich.

Maybe Gaia really will rise up against them, so that by 2012 they will have fizzled like vampires on a sunny day. The way things are going these days, there's bound to be a plague. A plague upon Imperialists and the self-satisfied religious fanatics who follow them like Satan's minions.

16 Comments:

Blogger jadedj said...

OK, I was perking up a little bit, having a glass of merlot, getting back in my groove, after a two week hiatus, catching up on my favorite blogs...and...I...read this. And except for the depressing realization that some dumb fuck from Nebraska is riding around with a massive size confederate flag, guzzling BfuckingP gasoline in his 3 mph suckfuck pickup...and the 20 something fucker doesn't know shit about the confederacy or the assholes who formed it because HIS ASS GREW UP IN FUCKING NEBRASKA. This was number two depression on this day.

Not blaming you PE, it's just that when you so eloquently line all this shit up and explain it...well, it's going to take a few more glasses to get back out of the funk...but, God do I love this blog!

If any of this makes any sense, then you are worse off than I.

June 8, 2010 at 7:20 PM  
Blogger PENolan said...

I'm not sure it makes absolute sense, but I'm taking your comment as a complement and pouring a glass of white burgundy.

June 8, 2010 at 7:44 PM  
Blogger jadedj said...

Well it was. And Gan Bei (drain the glass)(brushing up on my Chinese, just in case).

June 8, 2010 at 7:52 PM  
Blogger PENolan said...

Good thinking

June 8, 2010 at 8:03 PM  
Blogger jadedj said...

I am not sure thinking has anything to do with it. But thanks.

June 8, 2010 at 8:10 PM  
Blogger Life As I Know It Now said...

Girl you sure do make me laugh. Your take on things rings bells with me too. I hate all 3 of the religions from the Middle East. I hate using oil to live. We all shit on our futures just living the way we do.

And I think Helen was right too. Israel needs to STFU.

June 8, 2010 at 9:27 PM  
Blogger PENolan said...

Libs - you might like this video from Davis Fleetwood at No Cure for That re: Helen

http://nocureforthat.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/in-defense-of-helen-thomas/

June 9, 2010 at 6:02 AM  
Blogger VV said...

Stop the world, I want to get off....

June 9, 2010 at 10:31 AM  
Blogger Gail said...

Hey Texas-

Great piece of writing. It takes a special talent to use personal info, humor, fact and sarcasm and blend it and feed it back in a so well written rant about "world shit" WOW!!

Love you girl
Gail
peace......

June 9, 2010 at 10:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

For anyone who is interested in joining Menopausal Stoner and her family in NOLA, go to www.tellingtheirstories.com. Come on and pass a good time!

June 9, 2010 at 12:23 PM  
Blogger PENolan said...

Me too, V.V.

Gail - hope things are going smoothly in your happy little world.

Jessica - an outstanding idea. I keep hearing CSN singing, "We can change the world," which gets me depressed again because it's been 50 years since the Democratic convention in Chicago. We'll have to see what this long, hot summer brings.

June 9, 2010 at 8:20 PM  
Blogger CoffeeSlut said...

I'm glad you're big enough to address this issue in all its nastiness and in such a humorous(ish) way. When I found out that the idea of ending our dependency on oil did not come about in the 1990's and early 2000's, I was shocked. They sure as hell don't tell us anything about that part of the tree hugger movement in the textbooks. Baby boomers get a little cooler everyday. Well, unless they're the type to drive Hummers and send their ten Aryan children to Jesus camp.

June 10, 2010 at 2:49 PM  
Blogger PENolan said...

They left us out of the history books?! Check out "Dirty Fucking Hippies Were Right"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKEZoY-TMG4

I can't claim to have been part of all that, however, being as I was just a little kid - but my mom was all over civil disobedience

June 10, 2010 at 9:47 PM  
Blogger Leslie Parsley said...

Me and your mom. I long for the activism of those days - by young and old alike. Thank God there are people like you who still have a sense of humor while chopping the "enemy" off at the knees.

I always made my gumbo with shrimp and chicken and andoulli sausage. Attended UH during my activist days but NO and the Gulf region have been like a second home.

June 11, 2010 at 12:20 PM  
Blogger MRMacrum said...

Instead of whining about BP and their wanton disregard for anything beyond lining their pockets, maybe we should step over to the dark side and enjoy the guilt free existence of wanton self interest and consumerism. Suck up the party/government lines and continue on our way happy as if we had brains. We seem determined to self-destruct. Might as well join the party. ;)

Regarding the baby boomers and what they started. I am frankly ashamed of my generation. We raised a stink, but didn't walk the walk. Life became too comfortable. The apple indeed does not fall very far from the tree. Awareness is only as good as the action that follows.

As usual, your writing fires me up more than I like to admit.

June 12, 2010 at 7:06 AM  
Blogger PENolan said...

MRMacrum, you sound a bit like that little fellow in The Matrix who wanted to go back and switch pills ;)

Personally, I'm worried that younger people today - and I target them because they're the only ones with the energy, optimism and enthusiasm to really take it to the streets - are effectively brain dead as a result of a double whammy hit from American Education and Christianity as it is practiced in Mainstream American Consumerist culture. The rest of us are so depressed we can't get off the couch.

tnlib - we must be cousins somehow.

June 13, 2010 at 12:58 AM  

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