addendum

Also, what are they going to do with prisoners? Is the state or parish going to be liable if a prisoner dies in the hurricane? Or are they going to pack them all onto prison buses? What about nursing homes? Hospitals? Preemie wards in hospitals?

Man, these reporters totally suck. Twenty-four hour goddamn news cycle and all they can think to do is point out that not everyone living in New Orleans has a car in which to leave the city. Roll that one around in your heads, 'Murkans. Don't have cars.

Brace yourself, Ignatius

Having spent the majority of the day at the warm hearth of family and cable news (a combination of Fox and MSNBC), I thought I was well-versed in the Hurricane Katrina Is About To Eat New Orleans story. But in upwards of six total hours of coverage I saw, nobody mentioned:

1) The fact that "Experts have warned about New Orleans' vulnerability for years, chiefly because Louisiana has lost more than a million acres of coastal wetlands in the past seven decades. The vast patchwork of swamps and bayous south of the city serves as a buffer, partially absorbing the surge of water that a hurricane pushes ashore." Hey, does that mean wetlands might be good for something? Who would've thought?

2) That thing about the coffins being released. Wha? Huh? EW. Six hours worth of coverage, and all I can remember seeing is the swirling red and purple orb and some weatherblown newsmen. And the same three facts: Prez. Bush wants people to leave; winds of up to 175mph; Category 5. I think I would remember having heard about the coffins thing, considering that it's scarring my psyche as I type this. Coffins?

Unfortunately, though I feel better-informed having read some news stories, this leaves me with more questions than answers. Questions like:

A) Like, with dead people in them? ew!

B) How? How could this happen? Are the coffins in some sort of masoleum? Is that how you spell masoleum? Isn't the masoleum locked? Are there open-air masoleums? (Masolea?)

B.5) If we're not talking about masoleums, is this to mean that 28 feet of water could somehow unearth coffins? Does this have terrifying broader implications for flooding situations that we need to acknowledge?

C) Are the "legendary cemeteries" that everyone keeps mentioning in these AP stories supposed to be common knowledge, like the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore? Have I missed out? Why don't I know about the legendary cemeteries?

D) Are coffins sealed shut somehow, or might they release their organic cargo? There's probably no reason to lock a coffin... OR AT LEAST THERE WASN'T UNTIL NOW.


On top of my inability to stop thinking about the coffins being released from the legendary cemeteries, I also now how images of waterlogged zombies swimming around New Orleans. This makes no sort of sense - water doesn't have the capability to bring dead bodies back to life and make them want to eat brains, right? Or have I also missed an entire Flooding/Zombie movie genre as well?

Also, how do we know the roof will stay on the Superdome? Anyone?

I don't mean to appear to be taking all this lightly (the coffins thing is seriously freaking me out, though. I'm not kidding about that.). But the tone of the AP coverage is so different from the cable coverage that it's jarring. All day I've been thinking "poor New Orleans," and all the AP stories are saying, basically, "way to go, Big Easy, you've seen this coming for years and you built levees and drained the wetlands anyway and so you deserve all the dripping zombies you get."

But AP, NOBODY deserves the dripping zombies!

I am going to have some weird-ass dreams tonight.

"I need something with... DEMONIC action"

My supply of money is dwindling. The capital I have invested in (read: yarn, fabric, thread) is starting to pay off, in exceptionally meager amounts. Namely, one $25 check. But, hey, that means I've fulfilled one of my New Year's resolutions.

The problem is, as I see it, that I'm massively and obviously qualified to do one thing, teach, which is something that I really don't want to do. Really. One thing that I would like to do, edit, is something that I am naturally qualified for, plus, you know, some relevant but not direct experience; but I do not have years' experience called for. And also I've never done the sorts of things that editors do, namely... Well, I guess I have, with teaching. Set deadlines and extracted work from people and then commented on it, that is.

So.

I've been applying for tons of administrative jobs, and the Master's Degree is like a hex. Because I've done a two-year program and written a thesis, people assume that I'm h.t. and don't want to make copies.*

Also.

I think maybe I want to be a marriage counselor?

Gah.



*Not a fair assumption, BUT I can't stand the idea of making airplane reservations for someone. This has nothing to do with being hoity-toity; I can barely stand making them for myself. But at least if they don't work out for me, I can't fire myself.

Nothin says "I care about you" like mailing someone vitamins.

Today, at Borders, I passed a man who was saying to his son, "does Mom pay you to mow the lawn?"

People know me.

I am buying journals. Instead of gasoline. This makes sense.

In searching for these journals, I have found lots of books about how to keep journals and why keeping journals is gr8 and etc. But I've never had to think about it, and am kind of content not thinking about it, like not thinking about breathing or blinking because once I start thinking about it, things get kind of weird. Much like my attitude toward ghosts and the paranormal. Hm. I guess selective unconsciousness is indeed important to me.

Anyhow! Here are the journals I'm buying, which will qualify me for super saver shipping and leave me with brain-apartments for probably over a year. They are all from Paperblanks, because the last journal I bought is made by this company, and I like it very much.

Leonardo's Women - Virgin of the Rocks. A bit shorter than I'd like (128 pages), lined, 7" x 9".

Handstitched Tao Egrets Lined Journal. Also 128 pages, lined, 7" x 9". Is it weird that the unlined version of this journal is paired with a different "Better Together" deal than the lined version? Have they done studies? Also, what is an egret? A bird?

Smythe Sewn Designer Wrap Red Journal. Yum. 144 pgs, Lined, magnetic closure (which the first one that I bought has and I really like). Also, you have to be impressed with a description of a product that encourages you to beat the hell out of it. The other two that I'm getting seem dainty in comparison. I suspect that this will be my favorite.

So, I highly recommend Paperblanks. There are lots of different sizes and designs, so if you're hunting for a good journal, check these out. They're cheaper on Amazon, too.

Who, her? She's slow.

Yo. I'm knitting this baby blanket for my cousin, who is not yet publicly expecting, but may announce sometime soon that she's in her second trimester. I like to be prepared, especially considering that I knit a blanket for the first one of my cousin's kids (well, the first to be born after I acquired my (dubious) knitting skillz) and the rest seem to take it as a matter of course that they will also receive them.

Each color in this blanket is used for two rows, then you do four rows of white. So I was knitting along, listening to the news, and came to the second row to do but couldn't figure out for the life of me why it didn't look the way it was supposed to look for the second row of color. So I undid the four white stitches at the end, trying to imagine what I could have done wrong, then re-did them, because I get confused easily and didn't want to forget to do them. Then I undid and re-did them again, still trying to figure out what was wrong.

This went on for twenty minutes or so of absent-minded, news-listening muttering, un-knitting, re-knitting, and muttering. I thought really hard about this.

Then I realized that the last row I had done was the second row of color. I thought that surely I'd remember having done it, because the stitches that you have to make are kind of weird, and I thought I couldn't forget that I'd just done over 50 weird stitches. Apparently I did, though, because the next two rows of white look really good.

I bet it would take me half the time to make one of these things if not for detours such as that.

She sees the hat, and, isn't gonna touch it.

I've recently gotten in the habit of taking my seatbelt off as I come down the court, before swinging into the very small parking lot adjacent to our apartment. I'm about 100% sure that I won't wreck in the fifteen yards that I drive without the belt, and even if I did happen to get my car destroyed catastrophically in that particular spot, it would almost have to involve a train falling on me, in which case the belt would be irrelevant anyway. The real problem with this habit is that after the belt is removed, I am used to opening the door and stepping out of the car, so there's a real chance that I may someday fling myself from my still-moving vehicle.

The things I write are only like extemporania.

I have a rule, a writing rule, that the killing of dogs in narrative is cheap and lazy, and also I can't really handle, emotionally speaking, the death of fictional dogs, so there's the double-edgedness of the rule: the emotional whallop to the solar plexus and the (perhaps reactionary) idea that "so you couldn't get away with killing a human, so you thought you'd invent a dog to slaughter" ("you no-good sleazeball of a hack writer") (I feel very strongly about this). But today I picked up The Twenty-Seventh City by my writer (if I had idols, he would be my idol) Jonathan Franzen and lo! Dead dog, page 33!

And, to explain how this was: imagine that a wife has just started cooking breakfast and her husband walks in and declares that he's been having an affair (with his secretary, of all fucking people) and she cooks breakfast and puts on the uniform for her part time job and is in the car driving down the highway before she realizes that - shit - her husband is having an affair with his fucking secretary.

I am on page 135, and don't know whether to continue. I put Vurt, or Vert, or whatever that book was down immediately, but this I do not know.

Hand me the Paxil.

Mine is not a hairstyle that says, "I want to work in an office. Seriously." Mine is a hairstyle that says, "If I were a dude, I'd totally have shaved my head by now."

Because, you see, when I was a young woman, in high school, when other young women were spending their spare time (study hall, math class, after school) learning how to apply makeup and do hair and match clothes, I was finding the perfect form of torture to compare math class to, and learning words like "heinous" and "grievous" and "atrocity."

One time, when my friend Kristin put makeup on me, I realized that I liked the look it could create. "I'll make you look like you've been dead for a week," she said, and she did. So I wanted to try this myself, and so in the bathroom between classes I got out this little eyeshadow kit and aimed for "dead for a week" and away from "raccoon" and ended up looking like a racoon that'd been dead for a week. And so I washed it off and practiced more in the safety of my own home, and finally figured out how to achieve "dead for a week."

But I never use it.

I got married au naturale.

So I am sallow and have a grievous non-hairstyle. This cannot be helping me in interviews. So, what? Move the part to one side, slap on some plum lipstick, do "dead for about 10 minutes," and call me when you get hired.

But oh, my hair. People, my hair. It is heinous. If I were a kooky painter in too-big overalls who was comfortable with her breasts, my hair would suit me perfectly and I could let it be in its natural state.* It would be kooky hair on a kooky girl tra-la-la. But it is actually kooky hair on a quiet, repressed female who normally would like nothing better than to vanish in a hail of smoke when looked at.

Should I become kooky?** Should I go to one stylist after another in search of s/he who can a) avoid poofiness, b) avoid suggesting highlights,^* and c) leave it long enough to tie back because God knows resistance to the ponytail holder is futile anyway? Should I slap on a side-part and the plum lipstick for the interview and reverto to mousy for the actual showing up to work? How does one apply lipstick? Do I seriously need to put vaseline on my teeth? What does vaseline taste like?

*Think Shirley Temple, age 25, on 3 hours of sleep and speedballs; or, if I brushed it out, Rosanne Roseannadanna.
** I have tried!
^*Highlights, oh my god. I mean, I do kind of like how they look, I guess; they can liven up a head of hair, certainly. But out of all the fashions that have come and gone in the time that I have been aware of fashions, this is the only one I can point to and confidently say, "Someday the people will look back on this..." et cetera.