This is the test!

I had an entire entry done, and didn't post it somehow and lost it! I feel just like Rosie O'Donnell...

bwahahahahahaha!!!

Well, not actually like Rosie.. but did you know that she has a couple of Christmas albums? She can actually sing... dear lets not tawk about the broadway show...

Speaking of voices, this is freaky, but have you heard of Billy Gilman? He started recording at a very early age, even for a country boy, and had huge hits when he was only thirteen or so. One of those hit country songs was "Oklahoma", all about a very young boy's attatchment to his rather absent father... (I first found the song on the net while looking for songs from the musical, and always thought it very, very odd, because I thought a woman sang it. I didn't seem to make any sense.)



See if you can find a song from his "One Voice" album on the net, or buy one from I-tunes... his voice is pre-teen spooky, this is a child who exceeds all expectations.



Nude On The Moon!

I just learned about Doris Wishman, a very strange woman film director who might be held responsible for a film called "Nude On The Moon", (where the two protagonists end up on the moon, where they find the moon people to be nudists, at least from the waist up.. and then suddenely have to leave, because they (not the nudists..) are running out of air. ) In this film, the moon looks a great deal like a very sleazy southern Florida; and the two "scientists" (who seem to be wearing pajamas with Roman soldier costumes attached) spend a lot of time photographing and falling in "love" with "nude moon maidens" and taking "notes". It makes very little sense... by comparison, "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" would be an Oscar winner.

Do visit this site called Interesting Motherfuckers for a look at her career which includes films like "Bad Girls Go To Hell".




All the rest...

Oooh yea. Grocery retail is very intense during the holidays! I've been very busy with work, but that is not a bad thing. Our team is turning in some very respectable numbers... there are some bright lights ahead... can't say more right now...

My dad is the same. Alzheimer's is very strange; sometimes he doesn't know where he is and sometimes he does. And sometimes he is a totally different person. Fortunately, for now, he is happy most of the time. There are ocassional fits of anxiety and anger, but they are rare at this stage.

My life... well once I get into this holiday swing, it gets difficult sometimes. Most of the time now I just hate Christmas... Well, that's not true; I love the holiday thing, I was Martha when Martha wasn't cool... but now...

...this time of year...

...is when my bed seems emptier. Even this lil' four room house seems to rattle when the cold wind blows...

Oh love, oh, careless love...


durlx



oh, and if you see some "audio posts" here, well, if they are amusing, then I did them. If they sound odd or obnoxious, then someone else must have hacked the site...... hehe....

audio post powered by audblog

Every once and a while, you wonder if the Kingfish wasn't right...





Louisiana politicians have been good for only a few things over the last hundred years; providing a very small but useful safety net for the very poor, a very large and sumptuous living for the upper classes, and a great deal of amusement for all the classes in between.

Oh, perhaps it was not their fault really, they were so easily corrupted by big oil money; all you had to do was hold your hand out and another gusher would pay for the grease to the palm. In some cases one man actually ruled a parish, just like a king, with all the rights of any natural man reserved unto himself for an entire generation.

So when, say, Walt Disney came looking for an place that was warm all year for an amusement park, he came to Louisiana and the New Orleans area, and found the locals far too avariscious for his tastes. Instead, he had his people quietly move into an area of Florida and start buying up little parcels of land under various companies... he had learned his lesson here. The Orlando area boomed over the years... and the good ol' boys in Loosyanna were left with empty hands.

They should have learned their lesson, but that big oil money kept coming back; why change when you have a good thing going? Of course, it couldn't last and in the eighties it all busted and the state was left with a lot of rusting equipment, a lot of marginally employed oil-patch workers, a miriad of cuts for work canals through the delta that worsened the massive erosion of the most prolific seafood producing area in the country and way too many politicians too used to feeding at the trough of easy money.

Enter the gambling industry. "Praise the lord, we are saved!", said the politicians. And they did the only thing they knew how to do, they cheated, scheemed and skimmed their way through a new series of legislation that opened the state to yet another interest group that had no interest in the state, other than what they could take out of it.

"Yea!" said the people, "give us the kind of fun we used to have in the good old days! And all those fabulous paying casino jobs! We'll be just like Las Vegas only bigger and better!" And they supported the new laws that should have opened the area up totally to the new masters. But the politicians weren't letting it go that easy, so they kept clipping a bit here and a bit there until it seemed that they had gotten the best of the gambling guys. Of course, they were just lil' stump jumpers and the gambling guys were big players with big pockets; and they knew how to play the game better than these back country hicks with no vision bigger than a new garage for the fancy new car.

Just one smart politician, who wasn't totally self absorbed with his own intrests could have probably brought them all to the table and done some good for the state and still made them all rich enough to satisfy even the most greedy of the bunch. But that didn't happen. We ended up with Federal Prosecutors and an ex-governor in prison instead.

So why the hell didn't we have one of these guys! Well, I'm one of these guys who believes that it's our own damn fault. We didn't elect that guy; yes, sometimes we elected a guy and he turned out to be another scum bag, and after a while you get used to scum bags, but in the end that's no excuse.

You got to keep trying.

This mayor (of New Orleans), seems to be honest and a business guy... our new governor has been around for a long time, but she has a pretty good history, maybe not corrupt. (I so hope so.) Lately, the local police force has come into line, (corruption has started to fade...), and most important, the local neighborhoods have started to come out against the violence and crap that afflicts them every day. They are actually helping to identify people in their neighborhoods that commit violent crimes; this crosses a color barrier and a class barrier and comes straight to the heart of the kind of life people want to live. It's no longer a matter of people being victims of circumstance and history; it's about taking control of the neighborhoods
and making a place to live right. It's about making your own place to live and a place where your children would want to live also.

That's a big first step here in New Orleans. I hope we can make the next few steps as well... And just like a big old river barge, eventually make that turn, and get enough momentum to move in a right direction.

Amen, sisters!

Amen, brothers!

Amen, Ya'll!



durlx, ( who believes in momentum fiercly, as well as he believes in love...).


btw, thanks Tampa Dan, for the comment on the board about my last journal entry... this started out as an answer to that post and jus' grew, hehe....

OMG! I got a phone call from Hillary Clinton!



Oh well, I had already voted in the Loo-eezy-anna governor's election...

It was actually a tough decision this year. (Unlike that year where we had to choose between Edwards the Crook, and that nazi creep...) This year, as always, I had issues, but some of the issues worked with one candidate and some of the issues worked with the other candidate. I didn't know who I was going to vote for, for the governor of the great state of looziana, until I actually voted.

It was an odd experience, not really having an opinion before going into the voting, um "thingie". (It's hardly a 'booth" any more). And given the fact that the Bushie's friends own all the electronic voting machine software... well, maybe them hanging chads was just the beginning!

Anyhow. That call from Hillary... it was spooky. Because I knew right away that it wasn't a personal call, you know. If it was a personal call, she would have used the other number. So anyway, she's telling me why I should vote for Kathleen Babichaux Blanco for Governor... and I tell her, "Hillary, that time we almost met in Rochester, New York, you know, that time when I almost told you that I liked you well enough, but that I couldn't vote for you because I lived in Louisiana? Are you calling me now because you have presidential hopes and aspiratons? Well, let me tell ya, darlin'. Come down here, chile, to Loozeeanna, and be Gov'ner first. Cause if you can do that gurl, then you can run this half assed nation in yer nightie. Gurl, you won't even have to wake up to do the right thing."

Well, perhaps I was a bit strong in my speach, 'cause she hung up. Or maybe I did. Or maybe there was another caller on the line... shit, pussy and goddam! I got so many political calls over the last ten days! I'd get home from work and there would be ten messages on the service! And every one would be somebody saying something like, "so and so is a great candidate, unlike that other asshole!" Lot's of mean hearted mud-slinging. It was terribly un-pleasant.

Politics here in Louisiana, my children... not a pretty sight. But neither are the schools, the public services... we've been too focused on having a party to really notice. Oil payed for the party for years, but then Houston took that away and then no one could afford a fancy lunch anymore. Ask someone who waited tables during that time what that meant. Some will tell you that it was a hardship, others will tell you how they moved to Dallas, Houston, Los Angelos, San Diego, Las Vegas.... What we need here is bisness!

So, who did I vote for? Well, I voted; aw, come on! It hardly makes a difference anymore... we had a choice between the first woman governor in Louisiana history and the first "non-white" governor since reconstruction...



And here's the result...


NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Democratic Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco became the first woman ever elected governor of Louisiana on Saturday, defeating a conservative Indian-American and scoring a rare gain for Democrats in an election season that has seen a string of Republican victories.

Blanco's victory puts the Louisiana governorship back in the Democratic column for the first time since GOP Gov. Mike Foster won the first of his two terms eight years ago. He could not run again because of term limits.

With all 4,143 precincts counted, Blanco had 52 percent, or 730,737 votes, to Bobby Jindal's 48 percent, or 676,180.

"The people of Louisiana have spoken. We have sent a new message out to the nation -- that this is a new Louisiana," Blanco said.

Unfortunately...

...the pro- business mayor of New Orleans, Mr. Nagin backed Bobby Jindal, the loosing candidate. Let's hope he can mend the fences soonest. Last thing we need is four more years of sinful New Orleans against the white trash Christians in the rest of the state... (if anyone asks, I will deny that I said that!)

And you know what, children?

It will not change Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Mardi Gras, Easter, Jazz Fest, Southern Decadence, Halloween... not a single holiday will be disrupted. You can count on that.

But I dunno, I'd just like to ride in a taxi on the way to the airport and pass just one corporate headquarters, O.K., maybe not Dell, or Intel, but perhaps the new purple Mary Kay Tower... or maybe the Family Shopping Channel International HeadQuarters Building, I'd even settle for a pretty bulding on a nice site for the SPCA... as long as there was a dramatic animal sculpture.

I don't wan't much, just a lil' vision....

Well, Piss Off!

I mean, it's been a really busy week and I can't really talk about it.

The trip to Dallas; thirty-six hours and back home.

Hey, who knew that Dallas/Ft. Worth was so freakin' big!

As we went riding about, I realizeed that New Orleans is such a poor cousin to almost everywhere else...

We've let the poliiticians steal so much. It used to be a joke, everybody laughed.

It's not funny anymore.


durlx

Halloweenie!

Earlier in this evening, some things happened that were interesting, and I posted them to the message board, so you can just see those things Here.

After that, we went to The French Quarter, where Halloween was in full force...

I was accompanied by Robert, my good friend and next door neighbor and our friend, Michelle, AKA Extreme Levine!



Ah, my friends, I remember a time when Michelle didn't know how to make love to the camera, hehe...just look at her now... she is so good at all this!


So we made our way to the Quarter from our hood, which is not such a big walk, and finally neared Bourbon Street where we ran into Seigfried and Roy and boy...



...amazing how well he's recovered, must be that youthful energy...

Then we saw the most pitiful person.


And then these two very strange guys with electric umbrellas who could wiggle their ears...


By this time we had been walking the Fruit Loop for quite a while, (there were so many good pictures, and so many very amusing people that we met, just not enough room in the journal for all of them!) (Including former lover Willie, but that is another very long story............) But we did finally get back to Good Friend's Bar where we saw... well, he seemed to be, ah...

Asian Sponge Bob Angel Mexican Wrestler! He was sooo funny!

We went upstairs to hang out on the balcony, spent some time talking to this nice man from Ohio and then met and a young german military looking guy and his austrian boy toy...


Boy toy was very witty... and, um, there was loads of fab repartee. In fact this bit of balcony scene was very good. It was a part of the evening where we were able to sit for a while and look down on the passing crowd. ( gag! I almost said "passing crowd of revelers below", how I hate the word "revelers" which we seem to use here in print for any group of people over two, where one of them has a drink in his hand!)



We stopped on the way home...

..at Le Peniche for a restorative meal; Club Sandwiches and huge amounts of fries for Robert and I, just fries and cheese for the Extreme Levine. Robert kept waving and boinking at the window to this kaween sitting outside. We had a nice window seat, which was great for watching the costumed people passing by. We were only five blocks from home, but the streets were still packed with crazies.


But on the way home, we saw this one poor thing sitting on a bench, all alone...

We waved to her, and then made the corner and home.

And I downloaded the pictures and started to write this journal.




durlx