08/27/05
Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard
That's right, the Saturday before Katrina hit (in the early morning hours of Monday the 29th,) I was out in my hometown of New Orleans combing the thrift stores. I'd been searching for an SK-1 for ages... ever since I broke the one I used to own as a kid by taking it apart for absolutely no reason. When I saw it on the shelf at Red White & Blue for $5.99, I snatched it up, held it close to my heaving bosom, and when Sherie walked up I simply told her "I won," and held up my prize. No battery cover, but fuck it - it works like a charm and is every bit as fun as I remember. I played with it in the car during the six-hour evacuation trip to Baton Rouge the next day.
Of course, such a monumental find was quickly followed by devastating loss in the form of a Category 5 bitch named Katrina. The impromptu hurricane-celebrating Mardi Gras-esque parade that partied its way through my neighborhood Saturday night gave way to mandatory evacuation orders and dire forecasts of disaster Sunday morning, and I threw as much shit as I could into my car and got the fuck out of town. I'm still in Baton Rouge today (Tuesday, September 6,) unable to get back into New Orleans, and completely in the dark about the status of my neighborhood, apartment, job, etc.
Now, I normally try to stay away from getting too personal on Thriftcrawler, but here are a few thoughts:
01. Times like this are hard for a person who's 99% certain there is no God. I have no all-powerful deity to lash out at. Chalking it up to a random weather pattern just isn't satisfying. Look, I may have lost a lot of stuff I treasure - and a job and home - but the loss of human life and very real suffering by people less fortunate than me is just staggering. For the 1% of me that believes there might be a God out there, let me take this time to say - Blow me, God.
02. Fuck Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert in his overfed, pock-marked, stinking whitebread ass for his ignorant comments about it "not making sense" to rebuild New Orleans. Even putting aside the historical significance and cultural importance of New Orleans, and the fact that other major cities were rebuilt after huge catastrophes (the Chicago [Hastert's home state] fire of 1871, for example,) and others remain where they are despite "inevitable" natural disasters waiting to happen (Los Angeles, etc.,) - even putting aside all that, New Orleans and the Port of South Louisiana is the largest and busiest shipping port in the ENTIRE WESTERN HEMISPHERE, bringing in countless products through the Mississippi River, and its refineries off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico account for 30% of the United States' oil production, Mr. Hastert. How are you and your fellow fat cats going to enjoy your expensive imported coffee, line your already-full pockets with oil money and fill up the tanks in your BMWs without us, you stupid fuck.
03. Big fuck you to George Bush for waiting two days to get off of his lazy vacation-taking ass and return to Washington to deal with the crisis. I was gonna write something about how he wouldn't have waited so long if New Orleans wasn't almost 70% black and if most of the flood-affected areas and people weren't low-income, but the truth is that this inept, mentally-deficient excuse for a President probably would have waited regardless. Worthless douchebag.
04. Huge thanks to all of the rescue workers, policemen, National Guard troops, relief fund donators, and everyone else out there making an honest attempt to help out people in need.
05. I'm moving back to New Orleans as soon as the government says I can. Thriftcrawler will go on, even if it has to be from Baton Rouge for awhile. Fuck a hurricane. New Orleans LIVES.
© 2005 seawall