ON KATRINA

In a somewhat plagiaristic pastiche, this is what I have been feeling about it:

ME: What do you mean, New Orleans? Come on. No hurricane hussy worth two cents would go near New Orleans. It's NEW. ORLEANS. She simply wouldn't dare. I mean, hello! "Fetch me a lemon coke with lots of crushed ice", "rain forever", "STELLA!", do these lines mean nothing to her? And John Goodman lives there, I think. And nobody messes with my baby. Truly, it won't happen. One simply does not fuck up a quality town like that. Holy freakin' shit, I did not know about that sea level problem.

ME: Lady, do not go in there. I know you don't actually have a choice, but that Superdome is gonna get creepy. Films may be made, exploring humanity and desperation and the mob mentality... You know, rich themes like that. Er, but filmic possibilty is not the thing right now. Reality is the thing. So, DANGER!

ME: Huh, oil rigs might be effected too... Wait, this hurricane isn't gonna, like, precipitate some massive economic collapse, is it? When I was talking to Helen Caldicott the other week and she said a major economic collapse might cause a revolution in American thinking, it was just like, a hypothetical thing, right?

ME: No, seriously, IS this going to trigger some kind of worldwide economic collapse?

PROFESSOR JOSEPH STIGLITZ, ECONOMIST: "There is absolutely no doubt that if one of the major central banks decided to have a massive sell-off [of its reserves of US dollars], it would be cataclysmic in terms of foreign exchange markets and in terms of the real economy."

ME: Dear god. What hellish extremes. And hey, porky white guy on the news, why are you focusing so immediately on looting? Surely there are other, more pressing matters? Surely looters CAN be tolerated, if they're, I dunno, searching for food and water and the store attendants, um, haven't come in to work today?

ME: Do not even speak, you inadequate tool. That vague optimism you be peddling ain't worth shit, Bush. And people actually seem to realise it now.

ME: Aw no! The Louisiana Justice Center! This is just too sad and irreplaceable.

ME: Er, fellas? WHEN was a situation EVER made better by the introduction of a shoot to kill policy?

ME: It's like all the underlying social problems that have been kept invisible and not dealt with for ages and ages, have now just been laid bare. It's like the lie of the nation has broken open. Because when things go bad, IT HURTS THESE PEOPLE and they can't be denied any longer.

ME [but really MICHAEL GAWENDA]: "... this national disaster has highlighted the fact that in the richest and most powerful economy in the world there exists a large, mostly black, underclass whose lives of poverty have hardly changed since the end of the Civil War a century and a half ago... The Bush Administration has cut taxes for the well-off several times, while at the same time cutting programs designed to help eliminate poverty."