urbanitesouth

oh blog of mine...back in the saddle again...

oh blog of mine...we have such an on off on again relationship.

I am back...will write more...later.

in the mean time check out penguin pages. these are my freind (enemy?)'s doodlings utilizing penguin stickers and some sassy cheap notes and colored pens...whoah... nice.

I do...and I do too...and I do....and I do....and I do....

weddings, weddings, weddings

weddings shmeddings...

so i think everyone i know is getting married. it is both a humbling and exhausting affair this wedding business...

I am actually quite excited...the event is going to be great...but the breath taker to me is the idea that I am now no longer me...I mean I am no longer just me. no to take the whole cheesy (yet however relevant) religious take on this, but it is somehow exhilirating to know that it will never just be me taking the next step.

it will not just be me moving to chicago in a year.
it will not just be me working late at the office or going to the gym.
it will not just be me walking a new puppy
it will not just be me greeting old friends in Antigua

it will be me and sarah from here on out. it is a bit scary, but mostly new and fresh in a way I can almost not explain. and knowing that I can't imagine anyone else walking beside me through any of this but her is a feeling beyond words. it is also teaching me alot about what it means to be "successful"...the wedding planning has been rough (word to the wise: the "wedding industry" is a huge scandal) and, to be honest sarah has been the great force behind most of it. she has really humbled me by her efforts and her energy to make this wedding fun and memorable for everyone involved. my contributions have been meager...and I am now realizing that I have often been loved more than I have loved--this is true of my parents, brothers, aunts & uncles, and cousins too...

anyway back to wedding mania...two of my groomsmen will be married within a month of sarah and I. two highschool freinds will be married in the same month as I--one on the same day. a dear friend and professor/colleague of mine was recently married--another professor/colleague is sharing our wedding day and anniversary this year. two of my classmates at tulane will be married within a month of sarah and I. One more will be married by the end of August.

so there it is...an entire generation taking the next big step.

the young and the restless...the bold and the beautiful...

...and the guy who gets the last laugh with a sudden titty twister...

I wonder what doug is lauging at...

mmmmm...food...and hats...and new years eve

steve: "I'm Batman...."

some crazy pics from the last few months

these might make up for my lack of words...and no, none of their hair is real...

more poems of another

andrei coderescu writes:

first blue sky

first blue sky

in weeks
the maintenance man
scrapes the mud-encased
leaves with a rake
the long-haired owner
of the auto hulk
pumps glue into the innards
of his life-long subject

the students get ready
to register
they are hungover
they've been courting laura

everybody's doing
whatever they can
before it rains again

a geography of poets

a geography of poets

is all worng,ed
what poets now live
where they say they do
where they started out
where they want to

half the midweterners
did time in new york
the other half in california

only new yorkers write
as if they are from new york
and mostly they are not

the ones in california
were wounded elsewhere
when they feel better
or can't afford the rent
they'll go back where
they came from

this is america
you get hurt where you are born
you make poetry out of it
as far from home as you can get
you die somewhere in between

the only geography of poets
is greyhound
general motors rules them all
ubi patria ibi bene
or ibi bene ubi patria
bread out of nostalgia
not a lot of it either

some of us came from very far
maps don't help much

--andrei codrescu: Uncommonplace, An Anthology of Contemporary Louisiana Poets

"damned" if you do; "dammed" if you don't

JOHN MAGINNIS: When priorities become impossibilities
November 2, 2005

"We'd say our No. 1 priority is housing; our No. 2 priority is housing, and after that, at No. 3, we'd put housing," Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Gulf Coast director, said recently.

On the same day, state Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Arabi, said, "The top priorities are levees, levees and levees."

They are both right, for housing in the short run and flood protection in both runs are the keys to the recovery of the New Orleans area and, to a lesser degree but no less importantly, Lake Charles and the southwestern coast.

Yet, despite a FEMA rush order, the travel trailer industry lacks the manufacturing capacity to meet the demand within any time frame that reasonably can be called temporary.

Prospects are better for repairing New Orleans' breached levees by next hurricane season, but the state's long-term goal of improving them to withstand a Category 5 hurricane is not supported by the Bush administration.

As a result, beneath the bravura of quickly rebuilding New Orleans and southwestern coastal areas creeps the frustrating realization that these top priorities are very nearly impossibilities.

The humble travel trailer, often banned from street view by subdivision restrictions, is the new status symbol of reconstruction. FEMA has ordered 120,000 of them, but only 86,000 of that size and type were built in this country last year. By the time supply begins to meet demand, many discouraged homeowners will have permanently settled somewhere else.

In New Orleans, even with enough trailers, there are not the spaces -- with available electricity, water and sewer -- to put more than a handful here or there.

There is more room in south Louisiana parishes but not the public will to allow large trailer communities. In small cities and towns overflow crowds at parish council meetings have protested zoning changes to accommodate FEMA trailer parks.

Securing top-level levee protection poses frustrations of a different kind. Last week, a delegation of the Louisiana Recovery Authority presented the state's priorities to senior White House officials. According to member Sean Reilly, the president's advisers agreed to support more money for business bridge loans, Medicaid reimbursements and tax incentives for businesses and individuals.

But the Louisiana team hit a wall on its top priority of rebuilding the levee system to withstand a Category 5 storm. The Bush team would not commit beyond the Category 3 level.

New Orleans residents near the 17th Street Canal would have been happy with Category 3 floodwalls had they been properly built, as evidence strongly indicates they were not. Southwestern coastal parishes would have taken any kind of levee instead of what they had, nothing, to hold back the storm surge of Rita. A top tier levee system from New Orleans to Morgan City would take years and $20 billion to build, far more than the Bush administration and conservatives in Congress are prepared to go. But to tell homeowners and business investors pondering their future in New Orleans that the levees will protect them from almost all storms might not inspire the confidence it takes to bring the area all the way back.

Reilly says the recovery authority will "keep pounding" on the Category 5 issue, but that might start to feel like one's head against the wall of Washington's intransigence.

From unavailable trailers to unaffordable levees, the storms' wake left challenges Louisiana might not be able to meet.

well that's depressing...so here's something to cheer everyone up:

a friend sent me this link to really funny video...definetly a must see for those of you with a cynical side...