queer and loathing

Blogging from Mona’s Middle Eastern Cafe

I swear, I eat so much humus lately that if you fried my blood you’d have Falafel. No but seriously folks.

I’m at Mona’s. Again. I walk in now and the waitress has a diet coke on the table before I sit down. That’s kind of weird for me. I’m getting ready to go over to Bicycle Michaels to give them my new phone number. Ok, Im just trying to keep in their collective psyche so they’ll give me a job, but I do need to give them my new number. I’ll probably pass by Plan B after that to see who’s there and see what’s up. I need to get my stenciling stuff from them anyway. I need to start making t-shirts again. By the way, I’m going to start putting my buttons on the site for sale.. so look forward to that. Yippie. I need to start taking pictures and stuff. I’ll have the standards and then some “custom stock” that I’ll make from random things I find. Those will be a first come/first serve basis.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my bike? :)

Plan for redevelopment

Well, they released the plan for redevelopment today and I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.

Key Points of Plan, from nola.com

• Areas with little or no flooding should remain open for immediate redevelopment, but flooded neighborhoods would need to demonstrate viability before redevelopment.

• Give city’s 13 planning districts until May 20 to create development plans and prove that at least half of residents in a neighborhood are returning. Areas not meeting standards would be candidates for buyouts or redevelopment as parks or industrial zones.

• Impose a moratorium on building permits in flooded areas until redevelopment plans are approved.

• Request that FEMA release new flood maps within 30 days to help citizens decide about their homes.

• Seek buyouts that would pay home owners who are forced to sell 100 percent of the property’s pre-Katrina value, minus mortgage and insurance proceeds. The funds could come through a bill by U.S. Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge, which proposes to pay at least 60 percent of a homeowner’s equity, or from other sources. The Baker bill is set to be reconsidered in Congress soon.

• Create an independent agency, the Crescent City Recovery Corp., to manage redevelopment. Take away from the City Council the ability to reverse decisions by the city Planning Commission and let appeals be handled by the court. Both moves would need voters to amend the city charter.

• Build a light-rail transit system to spur development.

• Build a park in each neighborhood, and interconnect them with bike paths, canals covered by grassy areas and other amenities.

Being a renter and not a homeowner I’m not as outraged by the four month waiting period as my home owning friends are, although I totally understand their sentiments. While I see the point in not wanting to give money to people to redevelop in areas that are not viable, arn’t they forgetting that these areas were the most flooded only in this circumstance? What if other areas of the levees had failed? What if the next storm comes up the mouth of the river and the whole city is under under 20 feet of water? Almost none of New Orleans is really that viable. Plus, how can people decide to move back if they’re in effect, not letting them? If I was teetering on the desision and was told that 1) I couldn’t do so for possibly four months and 2) I might not be able to, even if I wanted to not to mention 3) My life would be in limbo until I find out one way or another, I don’t know if I’d stick around to find out… I’d have a new job in a new city by then, and building a new life. This is a hard situation.

I do love the idea of a light rail system, especially if it links Baton Rouge to New Orleans to Biloxi like I heard. I just hope the city doesn’t F it up.

More on the funeral and my clavical

Apparently it doesn’t sit well with others when you refer to Holy Communion as the canabalistic blood ritual. Who knew.

Anyway, the funeral was as I expected.. lots of family I haven’t seen in years, catching up on 10 years while trying to console the grieving and avoid white elephants. My brother Phil wasn’t there, as I figured, since he is unable to scrape up gas money to drive in from Monroe, where he is staying with his friend Taco.

Hey, that’s his friend’s name, I’m not being racist.

My shoulder is doing fine. Except for a little soreness here and there and the difficulty in lifted heavy objects in certain positions I’m about back to normal. Now I need to get a job.

Waiting for my brother

I’m waiting for my brother to arrive so we can attend the funeral of our cousin Sal. My mom had called over the weekend and said that Sal, who was just 45 years old, had a massive heart attack and passed away last week. I figured I had missed the services until my brother called yesterday to see if I was interested in going.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, my family isn’t exactly as close as it used to be. Even though we all lived within 20 miles of each other before the storm scattered us across the country, I haven’t seen anyone in my extended family, including Sal, in a decade or so.

Since the last funeral.

PS: It has just occured to me that, since the storm ruined all my clothes, I don’t really have anything particularly mournful and funeraly to wear except for a dark blue shirt and the pair of charcoal Dickies I packed when I evacuated.

More later, when I get home.

Further Clarification

After spending the last few weeks joyously being able to download porn, albeit usually in the cold and rain, my neighbor has finally decided to secure his wi-fi router, thus thwarting the hordes of bandwidth hogs we, his complexmates, are. Last evening I sat in the courtyard with the others and I thought to myself, “Wow, what a beautiful night”

“What a beautiful night to download porn.” I continued to think.

But alas, after finding the connection impossible and after traipsing around my neighborhood for two hours, feverishly re-clcking Refresh Network List I gave up. I found that if I crossed the street and put my laptop on a festering garbage can I was able to log on to a network defaultly named “LinkSys” for about 2 minutes before it disapeared forever, going wherever networks go to mock me throughout the night, knowing I’m left to pleasure myself to stale porn and the few 10 second clips I was able to download before their homophobic weak-assed connection decide enough is enough. Bitches.

So, here I am being a big nerd all by myself in the corner of the Bourbon Pub, feeling all eyes upon me like the weight of a thousand pocket protectors and propeller beenie caps. All staring at me… just KNOWING that I’m on $HOOKUPSITE trying to hookup with some other loser in some other bar when I’m actually trying to download pirated software, surf e-bay for keirin parts and type this entry on my blog. BTW, the beenie cap is just for irony.

Uhg.

Me: looks up from keyboard long enough to order a Diet Coke “with a couple of cherries”
Guy with Ironic T-Shirt: So, you trying to score? Are you on $HOOKUPSITE? I’m BearFisterForYou985723, but the for is the number 4, not spelled out and you is just the letter U.
Me: :eyeroll: No, I’m blogging.
BF4U985723: Oh, that sounds hot. Is that like feltching?
Me: No, I’m typing on my…
Just then the needle on the Scissor Sister’s video scratches and everyone in the bar looks at me like it’s my fault.
Me: …online journal.
BF4U985723: …
Bartender: …
Straight Guy Just Realising He’s In A Gay Bar: … !
Everyone Else: …
Me: Shit.

So, I’m actually trying to finish downloading OpenOffice and ZS4.

PS: It’s just occured to me that The Pub has an incredible shitty connection.