Archive for the ‘Miscellany’ Category

So when I heard that you could drop off hair, fur and nylon at (of all places) the Ritz Carlton, I was a little confused. It’s to help absorb the spilled oil in the Gulf, and while anything that helps is worthwhile, I couldn’t imagine how stuffing used pantyhose with cut up hair was going to help.

Here’s how, and it’s all pretty amazing:

Crossposted to NoteworthyInNola

I really had no idea that peep manipulation was so widespread, and then I saw the Washington Post has an annual contest- this year there were 1100+ entries of people who’ve done elaborate things with the marshmallow Easter candies. There are flickr groups, and many many bad puns around them:

But I knew peeps had really hit the big time when I saw the Mardi Gras dioramas:

Happy Easter!

…is PostSecret. I am totally in love with this site, now that someone (ah-hem, cough cough…Jen) got me addicted to it. I’ve spent far too much time going through their archives and embracing my voyeuristic side.

In case you haven’t heard of it, people anonymously create these really intricate postcards with an innermost secret that they could never,ever tell anyone and send it in to the site to be posted. Some are just what you’d expect, some are silly, and some are…wow:

So now I’ve got a couple of books with these crazy postcards inside, and lo and behold, I find out they were even featured in an All-American Reject video:

It’s utterly cathartic in some very base way and I’ve decided that it’s an antidote to the morons on all the “reality” tv. No one’s performing, or getting credit, it’s very raw and true; sometimes funny, too often painful (there are a horrifying number involving depression/suicidal thoughts/addiction/abuse), but in the end it’s just very very…human.

So if it turns out that I’m actually not the last person to discover this and you’ve got a couple of hours you’re not doing anything with go check it out: PostSecret.blogspot.com

I was floored by the coverage of the last few weeks.

First off, I won’t even get into all the Manning worship because, annoying as it was, maybe it actually played in our favor:

The Colts won’t say this and Colts apologists won’t admit it, but I’m convinced the Colts believed their own pregame hype; that they were gifted this game. The arrogance started at the top of the organization with president Bill Polian blowing off media day and former coach Tony Dungy saying the Colts would win easily and all of that cocky chatter and behavior filtered all the way down to the bottom.

“I can’t say I saw this coming,” center Jeff Saturday said of the 31-17 loss.

Then he later added: “We had the team to beat.”

See what I mean. They had the team to beat? How?

Manning was caught up in such lunacy as well. Manning heard and believed too much of the talk that he would be anointed the greatest quarterback of all time if he won.
—
Then Manning said this when asked what the Saints defense did to slow the Indianapolis defense down.

“Their offense staying on the field kept us off the field,” Manning said.

It was a subtle shot at the Indianapolis defense. Subtle throwage under the busage, to me. In reality Manning did at times look greatly confused.

-Mike Freeman, CBSSports.com

But the Mannings are a real fixture here in the city- their clan’s stature as a whole took a hit here when Archie Manning said there wasn’t a single shred of himself that wished the Saints well. Okay, I get it- your boy’s playing, and you’re loyal to him. But add it to Peyton and his coach stalking off the field without shaking hands and it all seems very petty, affected, and spoiled.

Then again maybe it’s a part of an unforgiving culture that’s so much different from New Orleans that I just can’t comprehend it. Even when the Saints lost to one of the worst teams in the country thousands of fans met them at the airport to support them. Even if they’d lost the Superbowl 56-0 we would’ve been out there to welcome them back . The parade would’ve been a madhouse no matter what.

11 people met the Colts when they got back to Indiana. Eleven? Seriously? That’s… unconscionable, really. They played their hearts out, and did a hell of a job all season. Their fans clearly adored them before- they spent a crazy amount of time on the Saints’ fan boards talking trash about how weak we were… and then they just disappeared with nothing to say, and certainly no congratulations on offer.

Maybe it’s just because we’re used to losing- as a people we’re good at it. We know how to be gracious in defeat after years of practice and we know that sometimes it really is the thought that matters and the effort that counts.

Beth is the world’s biggest fan of True Blood. She throws viewing parties every week, complete with a patented drink concocted for your viewing pleasure, so when I saw this shirt there was no question who it was destined for:

Happy Birthday, Beth!

The last few weeks have been strange ones. There was nearly 3 weeks of jury duty for an ungodly Katrina death case. To call it exhausting and miserable would be an understatement…and after all that time, they settled. Which was a good thing, ultimately, but still.

And as we come to the one year anniversary of the business closing I’ve finally gotten rid of the last of the stuff. I feel like I NEVER stop thinking that, but every time I think I’m done I open some cubbyhole and find yet MORE stuff.

The dregs seem to be really and truly gone now- the filing cabinets that used to hold several thousand beads were picked up yesterday and dropped off to their new homes, and the huge box of leftover gift boxes that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away have found new lives.

In their Notably New Orleans lives, they would’ve looked like this:

In their new lives they’ve found a much higher purpose:

PRC’s Education & Outreach department does a fantastic job of working with local public school kids, giving tours and setting up different long term programs with the schools. This display came at the end of several months of working with a classroom and exploring what community really means and what goes into building a livable space.

They all did an amazing job, and it’ll be on display for another couple of weeks at the Preservation Resource Center (923 Tchoupitoulas) if you want to come check it out. There are quotes from the students and all kinds of other interesting things to check out.

And then of course there was the hard freeze that went on for days- the worst New Orleans has seen in 15 years. The carnage was fairly complete- all the hibiscus are dead. Ditto the passiflora, bougainvillea,and on and on- even the ginger took a huge thwacking, and I thought that stuff was indestructible.

Well, here- let’s save some time. Allow me to point out what survived using a photo from the fall as illustration: Arrow=survivor. No arrow=fallen soldier.

So yeah, that was freaking depressing.

But a good culling is like a forest fire, leaving behind newly excavated mental and physical space that needs to be filled up with new exciting plans. Some of those are writing based, and some are photography based. Some involve shopping for new and ever more exotic plants to fill up the yard with color.

And just maybe some might even involve finally making an honest man out of poor, long suffering Charlie.

It’s been a long year of post-going-out-of-business recovery- time spent clearing deadwood both practical and metaphorical. Here’s hoping it was time well spent.

and this about covers it:

Okay, well, one more thing:

And btw, how classy was it that they brought Deuce back?

a new dSLR! Whoopie!

Did I need it? Uh… what, exactly does ‘need’ have to do with it? The Canon had a great run, fantastic camera, and after 10k+ photos it’s been passed on to a wonderful new home where it’ll be appreciated.

But I thought it’d be nice to not have to carry around multiple cameras to get video. And we do a lot of night shooting, so not having vibration control has been a major PIA. Plus this one’s got a great tilt screen so when I’m holding it above my head shooting into a crowd I have an idea of what it’s looking at…

Need? No. But after all the craziness with the sale after all the drawn out stress of closing the business and the transition, I decided I’d earned a new toy.

And, apparently, Pratch thought he did too:

It seems that every kid, every where, just loves to play with boxes.

And lets none of us shed a tear.

A disclaimer: I am generally anti-death penalty- I understand the whole “I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for that scum to live out his life in prison” argument, but (guilt or innocence aside) since the automatic appeals process costs 21 times just giving him 3-hots-and-a-cot, I typically fall on the ‘let ‘em rot in prison’ side of the fence.

But this guy? He’s a peach. Let’s see what he has to say for himself, eh?

James Magee

Earlier in his conversation with the detectives, he attempted to explain why he had been enraged.

“She wasn’t calling me back, you know, and I know that sounds silly, but that’s the way it is,” he said. “I wanted her to talk with me. She wouldn’t talk with me.”

Magee chased his wife’s car in Tall Timbers, ramming it until she crashed into a tree, according to testimony from various residents who witnessed it.

Magee then walked up to her car. “Oh Jamie, no, no, no!” she screamed, according to Delbert Bryars, a neighbor.

Magee said he and his wife “were fighting over the gun and it went off.”

He shot his wife, point-blank, in the left temple with a 12-gauge shotgun, according to testimony and authorities. The shot blew the back of her head off, St. Tammany Chief Deputy Coroner Michael DeFatta testified Saturday.

“And then I looked at Zach. It was already bad, man, it was already bad,” Magee said. He shot his son twice, once in the back and once in the head, as the boy tried to run away, according to witnesses and DeFatta’s re-creation of the events.

Magee then fired his shotgun into the car where his two daughters were hiding. The shot hit Ashleigh, 8, in the shoulder. Aleisha, 7, likely was spared injury because she was playing dead in the back seat.

Explaining that final shot, Magee said: “I seen what happened to Zach and I just finished.”

Uh, question: if you’re “fighting over” a shotgun,hnow do you get shot point blank in the temple?

Then the coward ran. The cops chased him down in Florida several days later. That means you’ve got several states of good ol’ boys to pass through. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. Quite frankly, I thought the cops might lose a couple of pieces of ‘im before they got him back here…like, oh, maybe his head. But no. He made it here and through prison for the last two years and all the way to the trial.

Apparently he cried all day long while they deliberated over the death penalty. For himself, of course, and what a horrible life he’s had, and fear for his own skin. His parents argued that putting him to death would leave a hole in his two surviving daughters lives- that one day, they’d want answers and he wouldn’t be around to give them.

Personally, I don’t know if any amount of counseling would ever give me the strength to talk to the man who killed my mother and brother.

She was also my poor Zulu’s original owner, so I feel tangentially attached to this case. The papers hadn’t shown photos of any of these people, and seeing them was a bit of a shock, particularly Mr. Creepy there. And she and her son look sweet and kind.

When I wandered into Birds Unlimited that day, I found out that Adrienne’s mother had custody of the two surviving kids. She’d had a nervous breakdown over it, and the little girl was still in the hospital 3 months later. The mother and son were still in the morgue because the family didn’t have the money to bury them, and no one knew how they were going to pay the hospital bills. They were deep in debt and much deeper in shock, selling off everything they could, including Adrienne’s beloved birds, one of which was Zulu.

Please don’t get me wrong- I am in no way equating what Zulu went through with what the rest of the family dealt with. But I can still hear his little birdy voice booming in a deep baritone “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!” and “BITCH!” and “I said shut UP!” It was a little slice of what went on in that house, and it sent chills up my spine. The terror in that house- human and animal alike- must have been beyond imagining.

It makes me appreciate Zulu’s spirit all the more- how he tried so hard to overcome his fears and trust again. Dr. Rich said that his crazy stress levels were no doubt largely to blame for his early death, and I’ll miss him always.

As for Jamie? I can’t imagine there are going to be many who miss him.

Site was down all day and night because…well, ’cause I’m a doofus. If you’ve ever changed your primary email, you’ll understand this pain. You set up signins all over the interwebs for everything, everywhere. And then when you have to send out all of your little electronic change-of-addys, somebody is certain to get forgotten.

Like, say, something you only deal with once every two years, perhaps? Something that, due to this very rarity, doesn’t even cross your mind? Like…oh….say, just for instance…domain renewal. Yeah.

:::headdesk:::

Anyway, all fixed now.

EDIT: Thanks for the ideas, everyone, but I can’t have emails forwarded from the old account because it was my business email, and doesn’t exist any more. It was actually my intention to do that- keep the account open as a forwarder, but my provider just cancelled everything and closed it out.