I'm on my friend Dan Goldman's wireless ready laptop in my living room, so this is my first wireless post.
I'm Luke James, Bitch!
Friday, September 30, 2005
Monday, September 26, 2005
And a Great Adventure It Was
Yesterday, Max and I went to Great Adventure. It was the first time I had been there in like 8 or 9 years and I have to say it was a lot of fun.
Their new ride, the Kingda Ka was off the hook. It, like, catapults you at 130 mph up a 40 story incline, where it flips you around and hurls you back down in a free fall - but it become like inverted so everyone can see the ground racing at them as you head back down. As Max has already remarked, we both screamed like two little girls.
The rest of the rides were also fun, The Great American Scream Machine is a quality roller coaster, as is the Nitro. I would definitely recommend going one day, preferably on a weekday with shorter lines.
There were also about a million hoodrats there.
Their new ride, the Kingda Ka was off the hook. It, like, catapults you at 130 mph up a 40 story incline, where it flips you around and hurls you back down in a free fall - but it become like inverted so everyone can see the ground racing at them as you head back down. As Max has already remarked, we both screamed like two little girls.
The rest of the rides were also fun, The Great American Scream Machine is a quality roller coaster, as is the Nitro. I would definitely recommend going one day, preferably on a weekday with shorter lines.
There were also about a million hoodrats there.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
A Whirlwind of Criticism
I've received some negative responses to my last post in which I made a flippant remark about Hurricane Katrina from two 'anonymous' sources. So let me say, Lonnie and Noah, you're right to criticize.
This is a pretty much unprecedented disaster and the people of New Orleans aren't to blame. The role that race and poverty played is undeniable - those who could get out did and those who couldn't didn't. If you have no money and no car then what can you do? Short of building an arc and rounding up two of every animal, you were stuck.
So how did this happen and who's to blame?
As for how, by now we all know that it happened because New Orleans is like 30 feet below sea level and protected from lake Ponchetain or whatever it's called by the levees that were built to withstand a category 3 hurricane. President Bush says no one could have foreseen this but he's wrong, there were like 400 people on talk shows the last week or two that had written books about it and I remember watching a TV show about this very thing a few months ago. What else? Well, global warming is a factor - warm water in the gulfm is what fuels hurricanes and as we continue to deny that global warming is happening I think we'll see a higher frequency of these huge storms. Furthermore, the wetlands in the area are disapearing due to development and are no longer there to absorb this kind of thing.
And who's to blame? Fucking everyone. The local government seems to have majorly fucked up. The mayor of New Orleans seems like a major schmuck. He issued evacuation orders late and didn't seem to plan or executive emergency responses well. On Meet the Press on Sunday Tim Russert pulled up a picture of like 200 or so school busses sitting in 5 feet of water and was like "How come you didn't use these busses to get people out of there?" The mayor's response was something to the effect of "Well Tim, that's certainly something that will be debated" he went on to say that basically the didn't because there were no drivers. Are you kidding me? Mad people drowned, lived in squalor and got all kinds of fucked up in the Superdome and you're telling me you had no drivers?? NO DRIVERS?! It's school bus, not an F-15 fighter jet, why couldn't some of the people that died have driven? "Uhhh, drive a school bus? That wheel is bigger than my Honda's, I think I'm just going to take my chances sticking out a natural disaster of biblical proportions, Mr. Mayor." While everyone is blaming the federal government, let's not forget that this is the state of Huey Long and probably up there with everyone's favorite state, New Jersey, as one of the most corrupt in the nation.
The federal government, however, does not escape blame either. I think by now most of my loyal readers, all 5 of you, know that I think President Bush is a major fucking dickhead. He's really just an immoral revulsive person. Either that or just dumb. (Maybe I'm wrong, Iraq may have been a good idea, evolution may be bullshit and global warming may be made-up.) Anyway, the guy he had in charge of FEMA was like an Arabian horse-show coordinator. That's complete bullshit. He was a college roomate of someone in the administration. This really highlights how cronyism runs rampant in the Bush administration, they value loyalty over competence. People were starving, dying, being shot, looting and all kinds of shit and it took the federal government days to do anything about it. Unacceptable and inexcusable. President Bush, in his infinite wisdom had this insight when he first visited the region, "Ya see, we gotta get the food to tha people (smirk). They're some good folks down here. And it's very simple, ya gotta get the food to tha people. Food to tha people. (Smirk)" Thanks, George. I don't know how they federal government's response was so slow. They didn't do shit until the media was hammering them on the regular on TV about their piss-poor handling of the situation. Were they incompetent? Did they just not really care? Probably both. Bush has fucked up in many ways since he was president and does not seem to respond to emergencies very well - see 9/11 (although he kind regrouped after a day or 2). Also, let's face it - if there had been lots of white people in this situation I don't think the response would have been so lackadaisical. I really don't. Now, that doesn't mean that Dubya hates black people but a large percentage of his voting block are mad Bible-thumping white people in the middle of the country that aren't terribly concerned about black people and, therefore, neither is the administration. It may be more about class than race but it was both.
Now that things are slowly improving - emphasis on slowly, this is going to take years and years as well as billions and billions of dollars - I'd propose this: let's start playing the blame game. Not just for shits and giggles but for shit to go right and to fix problems there needs to be accountability. George offered to investigate this whole thing himself. Thanks but no thanks Georgie. Let's make it a TV game show and make everyone that gets called go on. Can't you just see the Price is Right announcer (in game show announcer voice): "Mike Brown, former FEMA director, thousands of people died on your watch, come on down! You're the next contestant on You Fucked Up!" Nobody should be excused from Bush all the way down to Mayor Nagin and everyone in between. We need to look at who did or didn't do what and why. Otherwise, we're just asking for this to happen again.
This is a pretty much unprecedented disaster and the people of New Orleans aren't to blame. The role that race and poverty played is undeniable - those who could get out did and those who couldn't didn't. If you have no money and no car then what can you do? Short of building an arc and rounding up two of every animal, you were stuck.
So how did this happen and who's to blame?
As for how, by now we all know that it happened because New Orleans is like 30 feet below sea level and protected from lake Ponchetain or whatever it's called by the levees that were built to withstand a category 3 hurricane. President Bush says no one could have foreseen this but he's wrong, there were like 400 people on talk shows the last week or two that had written books about it and I remember watching a TV show about this very thing a few months ago. What else? Well, global warming is a factor - warm water in the gulfm is what fuels hurricanes and as we continue to deny that global warming is happening I think we'll see a higher frequency of these huge storms. Furthermore, the wetlands in the area are disapearing due to development and are no longer there to absorb this kind of thing.
And who's to blame? Fucking everyone. The local government seems to have majorly fucked up. The mayor of New Orleans seems like a major schmuck. He issued evacuation orders late and didn't seem to plan or executive emergency responses well. On Meet the Press on Sunday Tim Russert pulled up a picture of like 200 or so school busses sitting in 5 feet of water and was like "How come you didn't use these busses to get people out of there?" The mayor's response was something to the effect of "Well Tim, that's certainly something that will be debated" he went on to say that basically the didn't because there were no drivers. Are you kidding me? Mad people drowned, lived in squalor and got all kinds of fucked up in the Superdome and you're telling me you had no drivers?? NO DRIVERS?! It's school bus, not an F-15 fighter jet, why couldn't some of the people that died have driven? "Uhhh, drive a school bus? That wheel is bigger than my Honda's, I think I'm just going to take my chances sticking out a natural disaster of biblical proportions, Mr. Mayor." While everyone is blaming the federal government, let's not forget that this is the state of Huey Long and probably up there with everyone's favorite state, New Jersey, as one of the most corrupt in the nation.
The federal government, however, does not escape blame either. I think by now most of my loyal readers, all 5 of you, know that I think President Bush is a major fucking dickhead. He's really just an immoral revulsive person. Either that or just dumb. (Maybe I'm wrong, Iraq may have been a good idea, evolution may be bullshit and global warming may be made-up.) Anyway, the guy he had in charge of FEMA was like an Arabian horse-show coordinator. That's complete bullshit. He was a college roomate of someone in the administration. This really highlights how cronyism runs rampant in the Bush administration, they value loyalty over competence. People were starving, dying, being shot, looting and all kinds of shit and it took the federal government days to do anything about it. Unacceptable and inexcusable. President Bush, in his infinite wisdom had this insight when he first visited the region, "Ya see, we gotta get the food to tha people (smirk). They're some good folks down here. And it's very simple, ya gotta get the food to tha people. Food to tha people. (Smirk)" Thanks, George. I don't know how they federal government's response was so slow. They didn't do shit until the media was hammering them on the regular on TV about their piss-poor handling of the situation. Were they incompetent? Did they just not really care? Probably both. Bush has fucked up in many ways since he was president and does not seem to respond to emergencies very well - see 9/11 (although he kind regrouped after a day or 2). Also, let's face it - if there had been lots of white people in this situation I don't think the response would have been so lackadaisical. I really don't. Now, that doesn't mean that Dubya hates black people but a large percentage of his voting block are mad Bible-thumping white people in the middle of the country that aren't terribly concerned about black people and, therefore, neither is the administration. It may be more about class than race but it was both.
Now that things are slowly improving - emphasis on slowly, this is going to take years and years as well as billions and billions of dollars - I'd propose this: let's start playing the blame game. Not just for shits and giggles but for shit to go right and to fix problems there needs to be accountability. George offered to investigate this whole thing himself. Thanks but no thanks Georgie. Let's make it a TV game show and make everyone that gets called go on. Can't you just see the Price is Right announcer (in game show announcer voice): "Mike Brown, former FEMA director, thousands of people died on your watch, come on down! You're the next contestant on You Fucked Up!" Nobody should be excused from Bush all the way down to Mayor Nagin and everyone in between. We need to look at who did or didn't do what and why. Otherwise, we're just asking for this to happen again.
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