random and nonrandom

I think that a true artist would not allow deleted scenes to be seen along with their finished product...do you want to see all of the shit that got deleted because it didn't fit the artist's vision? Maybe not. Taking a story and making it into your own version, like a movie does from a book...is a cool idea. I think there should be more than one version of a movie from a book in order to see a different perspective. I want to sit and talk with Dave Pelzer. Resilient, compassionate, a role model to me. I want to be the person that chooses songs for movies. My boss offered me another job today. They are trying me out at one of our companies to see if I want to learn Inside Safety Sales and concentrate on doing that company's marketing. The place is a dump compared to the nice corporate office I've been working in, but it fucking beats sitting on my ass all day in misery. I get to wear jeans and tennis shoes! Woohoo! But now I have to work with a bunch of guys breaking their necks to get a look at me. Creepy. I worked at Airborne Express and felt like a piece of meat...to the point of changing the types of clothes I wore to seriously considering sexual harrassment charges. I'm a little older now and I know when to tell people to shut the fuck up when they start going too far. Mike wanted me to pick up everything and move to Minnesota today. He sent me a text while I was sitting with my new boss, his daughter, and the outside sales rep...yikes! I'll be able to do that kind of stuff later, but not now. I'm stabilizing my life for a while...letting the mud harden under my feet, but not long enough for the dust to settle.

Opinions are like assholes...

I love CNN. They tell a good story. I'm serious, like, they go and find the person that will put the worst most realistic face so that people sitting on their cozy asses at home might feel half-compassionate. The sad thing is how desensitized we can become to the plight of other living, breathing, feeling human beings. Tangent.... At work today, we were discussing an e-mail someone got and whether it was racist or not. I was sitting in my dungeon cubicle (in the back office, all alone, hidden away from everyone) listening to my all-white southern-born co-workers talking about the class/race issue and Hurricane Katrina. I could only IMAGINE what it said. I finally couldn't take any more and asked to read it. I read while the whole office of 6 people debated or defended, I should say, this e-mail, obviously written my a young Texas man, and his experience helping evacuees in the AstroDome and being offended by them not thanking him and being greatful for their cots and water whining about losing their homes and being too DEMANDING! It was rediculous! Even more rediculous was how the racism came POURING out of some of them. I couldn't believe the things I was hearing. I understand, now, why their was a Klu Klux Klan and Black Panthers. People are brainwashed and blind...on both sides. Southern whites feeling like black people are lazy and wanting everyone to give them somehting they didn't earn. Southern blacks feeling victimized and discriminated against because they are black, poor, and can't take it anymore. I asked myself, what would lead a person to shoot at someone there to rescue you? Maybe this person is so angry, so desperate, so washed of any type of human compassion, not caring about proper social interactions. These gangs of guys going and raping people (a 13 year old girl!) in the convention center. I heard of this girl who's husband was shot and she was gang-raped. I don't know the factual details, but I ...i can only begin to imagine her level of suffering (and I've suffered A LOT...those of you who know me most know the things that happened to me). What pushes people to behave the way they do? I read an article (maybe I posted it) about the best and worst being brought out of people, but what made those people the way they are? Not the color of their skin for sure, or is it? What you look like determines a lot about your experiences in life...even your personality. It's how you cope with the world in place around you. And now I see the argument on CNN b/t the levels of government in human form and the poor hispanic population in Kenner who barely speak English who are totally lost that's been for gotten. They have no house, but FEMA wants to give them food, water, and ice, but no roof over their head. The woman says "no more house" and "they don't come back" and it breaks my heart! Once again, I don't know the facts, but watching tv, I see FEMA falling apart. They are undertrained the former leader, an attorney with no disaster experience. Is this Bush hiring his buddies and putting them in high-level positions. Feel free to correct me with the facts...I'm all ears. I'm biased, I am...I admit it. I called my church today and said we should challenge the members to adopt a person to "mentor" from another race, kind of like Big Brother/Big Sister. I think it would be great for all of us to experience that other viewpoint. It helped a lot when I went through CASA training as a minority. The majority of the kids, staff, and the volunteers where black and I'm white. I was also a student worker in their office and can you believe it...they were teaching tolerance and understanding of another race and I was being discriminated against...I said I lived in the ghetto (Tigerland in Baton Rouge is college ghetto) and I was taken aside by a white woman who said one of the black supervisors was upset. Now THAT is what I call rediculous. Aren't their white ghettos, hispanic ghettos, and other 3rd world country ghettos? I really wanted to ask "Does everything have to be a BLACK thing?" I would love for a black person to read this and offer advice on their view of my level of racism...can it be called that? ...I want to help rescue the animals that were abandoned by their owners in New Orleans. I want to open a recycling business. I want to be a famous play writer (I've never even thought of writing one for real until today). I want to go to law school and become a judge...maybe even be on the Supreme Court someday. Maybe I could run for office and mabye I'll be President someday. I want to go to seminary and study religion, maybe join a convent. I could get so deep into my mind that I learn to fly...I'll be one of those flying nuns the Dalai Lama heard of before. Maybe I'll go to Israel and the Kaballists will read the right Hebrew letter in my forehead and they'll teach me the Torah and the secrets of the real universe. Mike and I can become National Geographic photojournalists and travel the world together. I'll write books that will be studied, I'll make my brother famous, I'll save my family from their ignorance and poverty. I will write a book that becomes a movie...i'll be a director...that's it. I'll make new kinds of art. The art experience. I'll write songs and they'll be famous. It's so much easier to be lazy and sit here and type while I dream. One step at a time.

Hurricane clean-up

Wow, went to Mississippi this weekend to clear trees off of Mike's Grandmother's house. It is a disaster area. Nothing was untouched. We cut up and cleared 14 trees, most of them 80 ft. pines. One was on the house, but didn't damage it. The poor lady (who's more than 90 years old) was in the house alone during the hurricane! She said she almost shit herself...funny.

a thought

We wasted time trying to get people into our minds. This is energy we should be using to figure ourselves out.

Hurricane Effects

Mike and I had plans to go to Disney World Sept. 9 for 5 days. It was going to be his birthday/graduation gift to me. Then Katrina came and now that is at the bottom of my priority list. Mike works at one of the Shell refineries and was told to go home and fill up on gas and use as little of it as possible because there would soon be a gas shortage. There actually seems to already be one. Right before the storm we had to go to 4 different stations before we could get gas. It's amazing the rumors that are flying around Baton Rouge. Supposedly there was a riot downtown and the S.W.A.T. team had to be called in. Two different rumors of people being shot and riots taking place at two different Wal-Marts. Wow. I was terrified for a few hours, but then these rumors are investigated and found to be false. Rumors are dangerous. Look at the bridge stampeded that just killed hundreds in Baghdad. It's just amazing how fast they spread and how widespread they become. As far as the way people are acting, these kinds of things bring out the best and the worst in people. I plan to volunteer at LSU this weekend. As far as work, it's not business as usual. We have locations near New Orleans and in Plaquemines Parish and have no word on them. We have more than 200 employees at those locations and are trying to locate them all and establish communications systems. So far we've only located about 20 thanks to a single telephone we plugged in at the office when there was no electricity and then a message board we were able to set up, but these are mainly top management and sales people. We've had two families of our employees show up at the office asking if we could help them and several calling us asking the same. We've been tracking information and trying to find jobs at other locations in case they have nothing to go back to. It's times like these that I wish I had more resources. If anyone local knows of places for rent PLEASE pass that on to me!

Not a popular theory, but a thought that flashed nonetheless...

Weird how all of the casinos in Biloxi and Gulfport have been destroyed, the Exxon/Mobil plant in Chalmette has been submerged in water, and the projects of New Orleans have been flooded. I was wondering if this was the wrath of God, kind of like Sodom and Gomarrah or the great flood. Just a thought. My new co-worker, Tom, from California just moved here and had nothing. I offered him my table and chairs, I never mentioned they were for sale, just that he could have them. He came and picked them up and offered me $40. To a broke ass like me that's a lot of money. I told him "No, I don't need that. They were in my way anyway." I went ahead and accepted $20. Not long after he pulled out of my driveway there was a knock on my door. A chick from the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. I wanted her to go away because I was watching tv and I didn't want to hear her schpeel. I took a second look at her. Little, tired-looking, actually kind of cracked out looking with her blood-shot eyes with a sort of begging look in them. Then I remembered myself, last summer, going door-to-door for the Sierra Club (where I was actually telling people about the devastation that could occur if we didn't do something for New Orleans...funny how I was walking through the neighborhoods right next to the levy in Metairie and the wanted nothing to do with helping out). I asked her if she had change. She pulled out 13 wadded up bills and a few coins and said that's all she had. I said that was fine. She left me with info. about the nasty Exxon/Mobil plant in New Orleans and the damage it was causing to the citizens and environement. Life is so ironic.

I think the answers are found in the irony. Why do babies die, bad people win, and good people lie?