n: vb: the spice of imagination
For those of you who are still unaware, the three children that died in the cabin fire at Shuswap Lake belong to Kim and Johnathon, the co-founders of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theater.
I am shocked and so, so sorry. They have all the love in my heart.
I can’t stop crying. I might have to go home.
Oh hell, Lung went to Greece to shoot Angel‘s dream wedding, just in time for it to all catch fire. Half of it’s burned. At least 62 people are dead, whole villages have been consumed, and there’s a chance that the original site of the Olympics and a World Heritage site will go up in flames. Even worse, if reports are to be believed, it was started by an act of Arson.
I don’t know how well I’ll be sleeping tonight. All my best wishes to those affected.
edit: They’re fine. “Different part of Greece…I am on an island paradise (caldera of a volcano). Having a great time eating grilled sardines and roasted lamb with lemon sauce. Wish you were here.”
As a pleasant lead up to our local production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead that Beth is organizing, I’ve found Hamlet as a text based adventure game:
It’s so unfair! You’re in trouble again, just because you called your uncle – or rather, your new stepfather, Claudius – a usurping git. It’s true, though. Your real dad was SO much better than that guy. Too bad he was found mysteriously dead in the orchard a couple of weeks back. Anyway, your mother (who was, incidentally, looking quite something today in a sparse leather number, er…) sent you to your room, and here you are.
Bedroom
You are in your luxurious palatial boudoir, all of ten feet square. There is a four-poster bed, and not much else. A portrait hangs on the wall. An exit leads north.
Also found on the internet today, Soviet space monkey pants for sale on eBay and a gallery of vintage toy rayguns, (I remember playing with number 70 once. The frontispiece was that strange dry metal that reminds me of badly melted tin.). The news is less futurist and more dystopian. In addition to the unrelenting Katrina clusterfuck, there’s loyalist riots in Belfast and Typhoon Khanun flattened 20,000 houses, and destroyed large swathes of crops, industrial units and infrastructure in Zhejiang province. This puts my wake-up “we’re going to cut off your electricity” phone-call in a bit of perspective. I may be too broke for reliable groceries, but at least I’m not swimming to the store.
However, if I had a dime to spare, I would support Planned Parenthood, Philadelphia, in a heartbeat. They’ve come up with a rather choice way to deal with protesters called Pledge-a-Picket. (Click on the link to take part.)
Every time protesters gather outside of our Locust Street health center, our patients face verbal attacks from them. They see graphic signs meant to confuse and intimidate. They are sometimes blocked from entering the building and occasionally they are videotaped. They are offered anti-choice propaganda and free rides to the closest “crisis pregnancy center.”
Staff and volunteers are also seen as targets. We are all called murderers, are lectured to about committing sins, and are told we will pay the “ultimate price” for our actions.
You can stand with others in the community against these acts of intimidation and harassment.
Here’s how it works: You decide on the amount you would like to pledge for each protester (minimum 10 cents). When protesters show up on our sidewalks, Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania will count and record their number each day from October 1 through November 30, 2005. We will place a sign outside the health center that tracks pledges and makes protesters fully aware that their actions are benefiting PPSP. At the end of the two-month campaign, we will send you an update on protest activities and a pledge reminder.
Adrian’s finally a father. Send tentative moments of nervous congratulation over to him and A.J. They’re braver than the rest of us. When Adrian first informed me at SinCity, almost six months ago, I actually began to fall and he had to catch me. Apparently that was the most popular response.
It’s Ryan‘s birthday on Monday. I had mixed up the date, thinking it was to be on Sunday, September 11th re-wiring my brain for importance. I thought about having party for the Fallen Towers, a wake for the American Empire. Very antique commiserations, a very old world celebration. Fancy dress, champagne glasses we smash in the street, a cake in the shape of a flaming airplane. A toast! Oh land of freedom, we barely had a chance to say that we’re sorry for letting you become what you did.
Out in the real world, the California Assembly has become the first state legislature in the US to pass a bill endorsing gay marriages and pictures of Katrina are finally coming on-line. Someone accused me of harping on about New Orleans the other day, claiming that I was blowing the disaster out of proportion. I have to wonder where they’re getting thier news, because I don’t think I’ve an imagination that could overstate how badly the response was handled, (ex. Hosptial closed for President visit.), even down to the simplest things:“The good news: If you’ve survived Hurricane Katrina, the government will let you register for help online. The bad news: But only if the computer you’re using is running Windows.“
transmigrant‘s been posting some fabulous links on the topic, like this short clip available for download.
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Carpark North has a video that sequels Human. They’re the same children who work such miracle wonders as love, only a year later. They seem so much older, the wisdom has changed into something far lonelier. I don’t like it as much, I feel it lacks the wonder that makes the first one gasp, but it’s still interesting to see. Click on Media, then Video, to watch them. Human is simply divine. Andrew found a page of films by the same director on Videos.Antville, a multiblog list where people join and post links to “cool” music videos.
As a nice segue, I’ve discovered Sigur Ros‘s new album, Takk, is available for a listen on MySpace here.
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Once I thought the world turned without me. I stood still in a small bubble that was coated with my name and no one ever saw me. Now I’m recognized on the street so regularly that my friends don’t act surprised anymore. Last night after work, a tall boy approached us at a bus-stop. “I’m a struggling artist, I’ve just released my first CD.” A familiar refrain, the voice of an indie kid who might not be any good, and we don’t have any money, sorry. Mid sentence he stops, “Are you Jhayne?” Ryan laughed and part of me cursed for not knowing who he was. “We went to elementary school together. My name’s Kyle!”
I blink, this is too surreal. My memories of him are as sharp as lonely knives, I used to watch him to try and figure out how he laughed in such a world. He wore a red t-shirt with a neat band logo on it and won all the racing games in the gravel field. The brightest flame of personality in the entire grade, he’s now unrecognizable. What happened to his smile? Where’s his curly mop of hair? “You were the tallest boy in grade seven. I remember you. You were the only one who danced at our end of year dance.” I told him that I hadn’t any money, but there was an ATM at the end of the block. As we walked, he explained to Ryan how I was the weirdest girl in our entire school. “You read books, well, I suppose you still do, but you were really strange.” It occurred to me that he hasn’t seen me in about a decade but he managed to know who I was. Does that mean anything? There’s a guitar on his back, my eyes passed him over anyway. “Would it be safe to say that you were far more conservative then?” He didn’t have any change, so I bought him peanut butter cups at the 7-11 on the other end of the block, handed him his ten dollars and felt uncomfortably like I was being charitable.
We talked a little more after that and I wished him luck and promised to e-mail him. I’m wondering where this will go, what I will discover about the people who ostracized me when I was twelve. Thinking now, I miss the rare kids who talked to me. I think he’s still in touch with some. Brodie, he mentioned, a boy I knew in highschool who wasn’t that bad. Rather sane, by my accounts. He played Seymour when I played Audrey when we put on little Shop Of Horrors. Our strange plant was a cactus covered in shredded newsprint. Apparently he’s in a band now, the Living. They have gigs sometime. I hope to go.
Ryan is ill. Last night I stared at the ceiling a moment and thought, “Well damn, there’s no hair to hold out of the way, what else is there to do?” I’ve been living with a different kind of boy all my life, this mild cat fur is out of my purview. Strange that there’s even sickness in my house. I’m rarely ill, and I haven’t had a cold since I was shorter than a coffee table. I brought him a towel, a housecoat, and a glass of water, and he came back to bed rather quickly, the dry heaves accomplishing nothing. I entirely blame Dragon*Con.
Now I’m going with Ray, Sophie, and Ryan to brave The Brothers Grimm, having giggled appreciately a little at Warren‘s Engine troubles to off-set looking at New Orleans, (some brief examples: US disaster chief delayed for hours, Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded, Instead of Rescue Work, Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA, New Orleans Mayor orders ‘forecful evacuation’ as contaminated waters threaten an environmental disaster, (again, here, with audio and slideshow), FEMA Blocks Photos of New Orleans Dead, and a collection of other stories on FEMA).
edit: here’s the video.
You are what I haven’t written about yet. Stability and comfort, two unexpected islands ringed by eye-liner, shored by language and anchored with glyphs in the middle of the night. That you’ve never seen me naked means something for once, like it did when I was younger, before I began to try and discard romance because everyone around me had grown out of it years before I was born. You are what I haven’t questioned, because it won’t matter, because what you are thinking is enough for me. I watch you and it’s like I can see a mist around you, an aura of intelligence that I can walk into and feel safe. It should be uncomfortable, but instead I feel like I could fit like a smaller matryoshka. Nest inside, curled like fingers over the keys of an ivory piano, and sing with you, creating chords with the words you haven’t learned to say yet and yours that I never thought to know. You are slender fingers poised artfully and laughter longer than your hair. You are interesting in a new way and I’m hoping you come home to me. I like your smile. By the end I’ll owe you so much time, I’ll owe you so much effort and attention and missing you more that I worry a little at the deficit I might be wracking up this month in my time of tasting peculiar dust. You don’t see how strange this might be from my eyes. This city’s been a bloody cage, bars of people and relegation, since I walked out into the desert, saw visions, and never found my way back. My house has been cursed this last while and my luck brought out from under me to be thrown on a pyre of miniature disaster – who are you to stand by my side? You’re the closest thing to freedom that I’ve held by me in quite some time. That you’re mild, it’s fresh spring water. Something clear, something to carry in my cells after standing dry so long. I’m hoping somehow that it doesn’t matter that I’m hanging by threads, that the ink used to write on my heart was just bitterly burned, a frostbite scorch needing too long to heal, and threatening to scar in complicated knots. I won’t claim you’re the only person on my mind, but you’re patient. Like stones in fairy-tales I said, and it’s true. It will be enough.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin speaks openly and candidly about the current situation in New Orleans. Transcript here.
From unquietmind, “One of my jobs in monitoring the Associated Press photo wire. I see hundreds of images that will never be published, but I think these photos are worth sharing with you. Even though some of these images are sad and harrowing, I take comfort in them. They remind me that people are inherently compassionate and caring. I hope you draw strength from them, too. All images by The Associated Press in New Orleans, Biloxi and the rural Gulf Coast.“
Shane stayed over last night, the way his head rested on my body made me aware of my collarbones. We have a strange friendship, he and I. When we are together in a room, we pair off, we pool our attentions. I am continually The One Who Got Away While Standing in The Same Room and he is That Man Who Speaks Like a God Creating but Likes Me Anyway. Dawn painted light onto my ceiling and I watched it, the sun sparking off the gold sequins attached to the cloth that hangs over my bed bright enough for my blind eyes to see, and considered why I didn’t blush when I finally read to him his poem. He’s just back from the Edinburgh book festival, where he was on a panel with John Saul, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood, (his book’s been released already in the UK), and here I am, a girl in a bar with funny hair and a lopsided smile, for a moment attempting to be literary, reading to him, the man who won the world slam three years running, about how I don’t love him as much as he loves me. If it were two years ago, I would have laughed at my inestimable gall, but now, somehow, it’s alright. In my own way, I’m on par.
A little bit that’s scary.
Broken Flowers was artfully ingenious, by the way, before I forget to say ecetera. Jim Jarmusch catching intelligently how lonely our memories are, and ending it with such implied emotion that it went past being clever and landed squarely in the masterful category. Bill Murray plays a similar role to the one he did with Lost In Translation, but twists it slightly, resulting in a more black and white character, one more inclined to allowing for dry assumptions. I really liked it, the humour was provocative and cheerfully nasty, as it tends to be with Jim Jarmusch, but I don’t know if it’s going to catch on the way Coffee & Cigarettes did. One can hope, certainly.
Today the majority are over at Playland, shouting on rides and watching animals snuffle about in pens. I’m caught still clinging to the internet petticoats, wandering the flooding catacomb of New Orleans and am wondering if I’ll make it out at all. Ray should be calling, confirming if we’re going to go rollercoaster or not. I hope he does it soon, as Reine called recently and I’m feeling bad that I haven’t been able to ring her back yet.
When midnight came on Sunday, we sang New Orleans is Sinking and brought out the laptop in an attempt to find live footage of the storm. We were up late, we were celebrating, it was the appropriate thing to do. I wanted to be there, at the cusp of it, at that pivotal moment of history. There was a picture of a man flying like a sugarglider, later, using a sheet he’d tucked into his shoes and was holding up above his head. Now I find the greatest depiction of the survivalist crises. Non-Lethal Weaponry is being sent into New Orleans to be used for crowd control of the sort that activists used to write about with horror in the back of MONDO magazine. MADS, more specifically, Magnetic Acoustic Devices, the friendly name given to large sonic pain cannons. (information on ‘non-lethal’ devices).
interdictor is possibly the last person in New Orleans to have internet access.
This journal has become the Survival of New Orleans blog. In less perilous times it was simply a blog for me to talk smack and chat with friends. Now this journal exists to share firsthand experience of the disaster and its aftermath with anyone interested.
* You can reach me on ICQ at 21710340 if you’re so inclined.
* The live cam feed is being rebroadcast by the heroic freedom fighters at mises.org,: http://old.mises.org:88/NO2
* American Red Cross – DirectNIC – vonmises.org – New Orleans LA post-Katrina Intel dissemination wiki
* If you want to link to my blog, please use this URL: http://mgno.com/
* IRC channel has been opened: IRC is on irc.freenode.net in #interdictor – #interdictor-scanner for transcript of NG radio and #interdictor-digest for discussion; JavaApplet
* Photos can be found here: http://sigmund.biz/kat/index.html Media has permission to use the photos with credit to DirectNIC.com
* If you are in the media and you want to contact me or any in Team SOTI here at Outpost Crystal, please get with Ezra Hodge — he can be reached at ICQ: 91-664-906, or ehodge@intercosmos.com
lindseymoongirl is in the area and has this to say,
“What matters is that 5 days after the Hurricane actually made landfall – people are still dying. People are dying from dehydration and heat stroke. People in hospitals are dying because power has gone out and generators are floundering without available gas. Nursing home patients, hospice patients, the elderly, the young – all are dying.
In New Orleans, gangs have taken control. People are being shot, women are being raped. Relief trucks with medical supplies for area hospitals are being hijacked – their drivers are being murdered. These medical supplies never make it to the hospitals. Helicopters make attempts to relocate people trapped in the Superdome, but have to be cautious – their choppers are being shot at. Snipers are setting up along rooftops, shooting people as they are evacuated. Lawlessness has taken over. Hope is truly running out for residents who remain in New Orleans. Without water, power, and food, more people are dying every day. The National Guard is having to storm the city. And now, parts of the city are on fire.
In South Mississippi, there is a nursing home by the name of Dixie White House. There are 60 residents in that nursing home, along with the staff that stayed to brave the storm. There is no power, no water, food is RUNNING OUT. The halls smell of filth. The staff is exhausted. A resident dies – their stench of their decomposing body is now mingling with the stench of vomit, urine, and shit.
In my town of Hattiesburg, water has finally been restored. Chaos still remains – a brother shoots his sister in the head to obtain a bag of ice. They are still without power. Caleb and I had to evacuate earlier this week. We don’t know when we will be able to go home or return to work. The roads are closed, our street is littered with oak and pine trees. There is no gas to fill people’s cars so they can get out of the city.
Here in Jackson, gas is running out. There are lines 3 hours long for the stations that are actually open.
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We need your help. I’ve been working with the Red Cross and I have seen first hand that help is needed now. Don’t wait until tomorrow. President Bush will not send us aid, but you can do it on your own! Several sites will take your money and put it in the right hands. You can go to your local store and pick up a case of bottled water and bring it to a drop point. That water will get to those men, women, and children who are so thirsty. The time is now. Never mind yesterday. Never mind tomorrow. People are dying today. Children are dying today.
Amazon Hurricane Relief
Just one of many sites accepting money for the the people affected by this, the largest natural disaster in U.S. history.”
