This is my first post from my iPhone (and i also just figured out that if you hit the space button twice when the phone wants to autoselect a word it puts the period where god intended it to be). This app is a little glitchy but still pretty amazing. These damn phones are a trip. I’m running this one on tmobile for $70 US a month for unlimited everything. Solid.

Photos of the new place:

Hmm. Can’t figure out how to add photos. Back to the big ‘puter.

I guess you’ll be able to see the photos after I publish. Or so they say. Here goes …

friday night was my first mardi gras experience. the neighborhood i live in has its own warm up parade the night before the big baton rouge spanish town parade.

the previous two nights at teddy’s had taken their toll to some extent, and i was already feeling pretty green before the weekend even came around.

i went over to neil’s before and had sazeracs to get tuned up a bit before we stepped outside to watch.

the parade was short, sweet, and tame. i caught some beads and even got the baby in the king cake at neil’s.

feet wetting.

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notice the dirty shit green, the two-tone primer patch spot, the general suicide vibe.

much better.

i never wanted to be in here before. i’m in here now.

much better.

yes.

i edited my final seminar paper a few nights ago at 3:00 a.m. after drinking a six pack at a post-semester party. the party was subdued; i think we’re all tired.

the last few nights, i have dreamed of editing and writing papers. check that out! forming complete sentences, ideas, revising. paragraphing the unconscious. reminds me of when i used to detassle corn in illinois. i’d close my eyes at night and see nothing but corn, Corn, CORN!

what a week … strangely torturous yet a bit out-of-sorts adventure:

old typewriters, broken spaces, blow torches, lost keys, lost beers, new music, old music, great music … poetry … the bleeding heart of jesus, julia’s rare name, old books, older bars, status updates, generations, philadelphia, smothered in hugs, dog breaks, long words, long nights, wrong words, wrong rights, sing-a-longs, donkey kong, diet coke, that corn floats!, mary’s harry oh’s, it snows, sleep, sweet, sleep, sweet, sleep, sweet, little, life.

snow!

after …

much better, eh?

now to paint the bedrooms. but at least i can have people over now, since i won’t have to hand them a shovel and point them towards the backyard when nature calls.

indoor plumbing … so 19th century. christ, the romans had indoor plumbing. here i am living in the post-industrial age of high technology without a commode.

white, i’m back, baby! i’m back!

a few more of the house around the corner with the tree through it. the tree is now gone (mostly). you could almost say the same thing about the house. i saw the resident today, walking around picking up debris with a bandage on his right hand. these coon-asses are tough …

.

after the rain has fallen, looking back, gustav was a pretty incredible experience. if leaving california, leaving los angeles, leaving topanga, shipping my shit, finding a place to live, gutting my bathroom, starting a phd program, getting poison ivy really bad, etc etc. etc. was not enough … i have lived through a major hurricane. even as i type this, the street around the corner (with the smashed house seen above) still has no power. we’re still under curfew because many of the traffic lights in town are still out. the english building still has no a/c. none of our debris has been cleared. but except for you fine americans who visit this blog as a beacon of unbiased, hard-hitting content, all this is just not known …

from what i have heard, the media has been really intoxicated with sarah palin. and i understand … i mean how many pentecostal mayors from a town of 5-7K (according to census data) speaking in tongues with retarded babies born long after the junk has gone bad because they’re too irresponsible to manage birth control (or their abstinent teen-aged daughters) get the opportunity to be a heart beat away behind the oldest #1 who has ever run and, of course, has had melanoma four times?

i’m from a town of 5-7K people. it wasn’t in a sophisticated state like alaska, though. just illinois. mt. zion, il. jim price was our mayor. as i remember, jim price was a nice enough guy. but who am i kidding? jim price might have been a real prick, how the fuck should i know? i think mayor price made his rent selling life insurance. the thing about being mayor of a town of 5-7K people is that nobody knows/cares/pays any mind to what you’re doing at any time, ever. if you don’t make the fall pancake breakfast at the presbyterian church, people might talk, but other than that, you’re pretty much on your own to surf the web and drink coffee with the rest of us. i think (or maybe secretly hope) mayor price’s primary duty was to fax a daily image of his dick and balls to the mayoral office over in that shithole of a town down highway 121 we disparagingly called sullivan. fuck you, sullivan. with your little town theater and your high school choir and your proper downtown square. here’s a facsimile of deez nuts and a pork stick for ya’ ass. courtesy: jim price, mayor, mt. zion.

the point is … what.in.god’s.name.is.going.on?

why, again, are we listening to pentecostal politicians?

i mean. i know i live in the deep south and everything, but even down here the people who speak in tongues keep to the fringes. if your religious view can be seen as marginal in baton rouge, louisiana, you have no right to speak for anybody other than your fellow sect members. and, ideally, this communication should come in the form of a xeroxed newsletter to be distributed to the windshields of dollar general patrons in the outlying counties that surround your church. these are your people. they fuck a lot and don’t read books unless they have the word ‘bible’ in the title (and they really don’t read those either. as dr. carl freedman says, ‘yeah, there’s a lot of copies of that book lying around, but no one actually reads it.)

or … you could always start a blog.

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here’s the scene over in magnolia park …

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stan and joan’s hot tub took a beating and they had a limb go across their roof, but luckily it didn’t damage anything. neil’s yard got trashed.

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walking around the neighborhood is when i really started to feel lucky. all these photos are taken literally less than an 1/4 mile from my house. some neighborhoods had it worse (more later) but we had it really bad …

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i think that’s it for me today. it’s hot as hell in this office on campus. we’re supposed to open on monday, but i don’t know. the textbook for the class i teach is online, as are most of the readings for the coursework i’m taking. i don’t know how productive it’s going to be down here for awhile.

lots more pix. stay tuned.

if you are tree sensitive (as i am) be forewarned. lots of pretty dead trees. luckily, not too many pretty dead people which, again, amazes me.

obviously, i saw my yard first. thought it was a total disaster. it’s really not.

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