Travel
I wrote this in the airport on my vacation cluster fuck this summer. Acutally... i kind of like it. Mostly rant-ful, but, i dont know. If i write a book one day, i'm sure it would be something like this.
Thoughts, and critisims? Hope, you know you wanna tear apart my grammar...
July 30 2007
Ah, to be stranded in the Dallas Airport.
At least if you’re stranded somewhere like, Munich, London, Rome, Tokyo, Hong Kong its fairly interesting. Different languages, different foods, something other than the Hudson News tabloid store and Starbucks.
But no. I’m in Texas.
And let’s be quite frank, they’ve replaced “bad airplane food” with “bad airport food”. Dallas-Ft. Worth boasts that its the size of Manhattan, with fine designer shopping, and dining. Uh… where? I’m pretty sure I just ate at the same greasy panda express knock off that they had in Atlanta, Houston, and SFO. As for the shopping, well that's actually there. You can get iPods, iPhones, sony MP3’s, accessories, Ray Bans, and even Proactive Solution…
…in vending machines. Nothing like putting $250 bucks into a vending machine. There’s a coach store too, (I don't even know how they call it designer anymore. Everyone has it. I’ve seen 12 year olds sporting the god damn crap. Yet its still the same ridiculous exorbitant price as ever. Doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? Not that a $500 wallet ever made sense in the first place), but sadly, its not in a vending machine.
And of course in Texas, the only news on the plasmas is Fox News. Really, yeah they’re biased, but its not terrible, ya get the basic idea on current events. Its just the principle of the fact that the Texas airport plays fox news. It was CNN in Florida…
… And now, I’d just like to say… that there are palmetto cockroaches in this airport. Skittering around on the ceiling… God…in…Heaven
I cant help but want that roach to fall on someone though. Especially that guy in the Steson. The mannaquin across from him is wearing a shirt that says “Don’t Mess With Texas.” First off, I’ll mess with Texas all I want. And another thing-doesn’t it seem a bit stupid to have a shirt that says that in an international airport? Especially because unlike Americans, most other countries citizens pay attention to world politics and know our president comes from Texas, and thus, hate Texas? Maybe that's why they have the TSA security updates playing in the bathroom. Its an Orange alert guys, I was a bit worried when I saw a device in the bathroom, but then I realized it was just the soap dispenser.
I’d like to take this time to define the word stranded. It’s Eleven o’clock at night, do you know where your plane is? You sure? Cuz I was supposed to be on mine right now. Ready to take off in 18 minutes. Of course then it turned into. 11:50. Then 12: 30. Then 12:45. Then 1:00. Then 1:20 AM. I was supposed to be on the ground in San Francisco at 11:50. Cleary they meant that was the time I was supposed to take off from Dallas, adjusted to SF time.
Thank God for the iPod-yes I know I’m and Apple schill. My entourage of: Muse, The Killers, David Bowie, Kill Hannah, Nightwish, a splash of J-Rock (cant beat l’arc en ciel or Mothercoat), a dash of movie soundtracks, Rise Against, collective Broadway musicals (with a hats off to Matt), Iron Maiden, Guns N Roses, a little Pat Benetar and even some Danzig, with help from Queen and Tenacious D- are the only thing keeping my hands from wrapping around someone’s throat right now. Ha, Cobra Starship. If only I was on the damn plane, and if only I had a rubber snake.
I’m a cynical person, no doubt helped along by being surrounded by manic pessimistic and then sometimes obnoxiously optimistic family members. The enigmatic step father doesn’t help either. But I clearly remember flying being fun when I was young. Not to sound like one of those conspiracy theorists, but you know what, I’m not stupid, airlines were not this dysfunctional before 9/11. The rest of that year and a good part of the next, yea, I can understand the struggling. But I’m sick of this, take pity on the airlines because they were flown into buildings bs. There’s no excuse for “well, we lost a plane, so, sit there for five hours while we try and find another one”. One lost on the way here. And one the way back. The pilot is honest with you, the people at the counters just say its weather. Apparently weather that only affects American carriers. I’ve been watching Luftansa, JAL, and Cathay take off for two hours now. If you think a European airline would pull this you have to be out of your mind. I can just see my father, who hasn’t flown since the airlines went to shit (because apparently no one wants to do their jobs anymore) being arrested for making a scene. Which frankly, everyone should be making. Instead we’re letting these people get away with treating us like garbage because we’re tired and don't want to get our hands dirty. I know the airport scene pretty damn well, and my step dad is a pilot. You don't lose a plane. You have to be a completely incompetent ignoramus to lose a plane. They have computer systems dedicated to tracking planes. Not to mention constant contact. They’re on radar. So really, how do you even lose one? Well, apparently they lost a plane. They’ve lost a lot of planes.
But its not all bad, on the flight from Florida to here (albeit it was delayed an hour as well) we flew through a thunderstorm. Sandwiched between actually. Clear skies in front of us, and behind us. On top, the sheared off top of the anvil head thunderstorm, and on the bottom, all the fluffy pockets. And it is a sight to behold to see the top of the lightning below you, striking to the ground. And then there’s the color of flying west at seven o’clock in the evening. Chasing the setting sun in front of you, while the darkness creeps up on your tail. Five o’clock at the nose, and eight o’clock behind. It almost seems like you can keep up with the sun too, maybe even following it in a sort of endless sunset. Of course its just an illusion. You don't notice it getting darker, and darker, until your eyes register that the orange has all been replaced with dark blue. But the sunset did seem to last a good forty five minutes longer.
And then you land in fucking Texas and it all goes to shit. Our flight out was fucked; the significant other’s flight out was really fucked; the cousin’s, uncle’s and aunt’s flight was fucked too. The significant other’s flight back, fucked again; The uncles flight fucked up the wazoo, and now ours… five hour delay of fuckiness. The aunt and the cousin’s presumably fucked flight home is tomorrow. Good fucking luck.
But that's the price we pay to visit exotic, and not so exotic destinations. A sort of right of passage really. It makes the stakes higher. When you finally land from the hell plane and scramble to the beach, driving like a maniac and fling your shoes off to get your feet in the sand for it to register that you indeed survived and it was not some tortuous nightmare and you are actually there. Then you can breathe. Let the exhausting airport yuck blow away with the trade winds. When you stare out at the moon rising over the Gulf of Mexico, even flight 666 doesn’t even really seem that bad anymore. The harder the struggle the sweeter the reward, right? We’ll, it sure makes the first soft shell crab nearly orgasmic. The thunderstorms seem to be playing light shows of unequal brilliance this time around; certainly more dangerous and humbling than last year. Banana Boat has never smelled better. The sea, never a better shade of turquoise. Hell, I was even proud of the Portuguese Man ‘o’ War that wrapped around my arm. I cussed it out, making more than one family-centered white bread church-lady blush, but it was just a more painful reality check that I was in the tropics. The alcohol has never gone down easier than on the Bourbon Street Marathon.
Which brings up New Orleans-Nola, the Crescent City, the Big Easy, voodoo capital of America, one of the most haunted cities of the world, fabled home to Lestat and Louis and God only knows how many other books and movies. It’s ancient, its delightfully spooky, its warm and sticky where the bad moon rises over the cemeteries, living history… and its empty. If you want to buy in the French Quarter, now is the time. But not rent… there are no tenants, so renting is jacked so high its probably cheaper to buy. In the French Quarter you ask? The French Quarter that is the heart and soul of it all? It’s Mardi Gras baby! There’s three second story flats up for grabs on Bourbon Street. Bourbon Street for chrissake! But lets face it. New Orleans is empty. I don't know actual statistics, and really, you don't need to know them. No one lives there anymore. Because nothing has been rebuilt. We all saw the devastation here on the West Coast. The people standing on overpasses, the water kissing the bottom of their concrete havens, the 9th Ward underwater on their left and rights. Oh the 9th Ward is still there. It was never even torn down. The tenement like brick buildings sit on either side of the freeway, like gravestones themselves. Some are gutted. Other’s still have destroyed, water logged and sun baked shells of cars half against the dead oak trees. Thousands of homes. Thousands. As far as the eye can see-and it's a ghost town. No entry. No nothing. Did you know there was a Six Flags New Orleans? You can still look at the half knocked down roller coaster as you drive by. Technically its in Slidell, which is where the freeway opens up to accommodate the traffic of Nola, as its right in front of you. The only thing rebuilt in Slidell is the god damned Cracker Barrel. Which we just wont talk about- all I’m going to say about that is that I hope a shoe bomber starts blowing those things off the god damned map. But back to the point: It’s the middle of tourist season, the Quarter should be packed-but we got a hotel with a view on Bourbon with a days notice. Every fiber of what I had grown accustomed to with New Orleans dictates that at blasphemy. But no. Midnight and beyond, running the gauntlet to Pat O’Briens, the Old Absinthe House and everything in between, and you can navigate easily without running into anyone. You can walk right in to O’Briens for chrissake. It’s like someone has struck down the ten commandments of Nola. And even the bugs know it-the palmetto’s can cross the street without getting stepped on.
It’s easy to drink away the sinking feeling you have about the place. The comments of “Holy Christ there’s no one here” don't really have any weight after Hurricanes, Car Bombs, Dark Side of the Moons, ’52 T-Birds, Jack n Cokes, Banana Banshees, Absinthe, and god only knows what else I drank. But the fact remains that six blocks away from the Quarter (where the Islamic Community Center lies with a parking lot full of taxi cabs-I don't make the jokes, I just point them out) there are still emergency statistics spray painted in red on the outsides of the dilapidated houses-but they’ve been kind enough to make the death counts illegible. But has it taught us anything? Really? 5 days to get water to the Super Dome just seems like the first check mark on a inept list of redundancy. Most people on the West Coast think the levees are fixed. The Media coverage right after Katrina was in-your-face-carnage. But once they found most of the bodies nobody seemed to really care anymore. And no, the levees aren’t fixed. They’re just patched back up, making the old ones next to the patches even weaker and they’re just threatening to give up the goat with a good tidal surge. And as the whole world presumably knows-New Orleans is below sea level. But are they going to fix the levees? Well no… not since the citizens of New Orleans in the typical move of a community traumatized elected the same people post hurricane that screwed them before during and right after Katrina. And besides… nobody really knows that the levees aren’t fixed outside those in the know. And since everyone thinks New Orleans is fixed, but no one wants to go there to find out because of horrible media bent manipulated statistics of crime rates (newspapers doubled the crime count post Katrina in their calculations and keep adding them to the current statistics) no one will find out. But lets not get too detailed into the fact that our country cant take care of its own. Lindsey Lohan had crack in her pocket when she chased down her assistants mom in her latest drunk driving exploit. Now that we cant get enough of. Was she wearing Gucci, or Prada shoes when that went down?
Oops, there’s that cynicism again. Well, fuck it. The world pisses me off. The fact that most of America has its head shoved up its collective ass pisses me off. Someone I know personally that had a 4.0 in high school and now goes to Davis didn’t know where god damned Darfur was, let alone what the hell was going on in Sudan. ‘What do you mean someone besides Hitler committed, wait what was it, Genocide? I did a power point about that in one of my AP classes.’ Their major just happens to be International Relations. Do I have a choke a bitch? What gives? ‘God forbid gas prices go up again, or mommy and daddy are going to have to give me a thousand dollars a month for living expenses.’ That's what it all sounds like in my head. The inane babblings of girls who think they’re smart. Not that the guys that think they’re hot shit are much better-but at least they play beer pong, and I can get with that. I don't however, get the girls that dress up like whores to attract attention at house parties and then get offended when someone grabs their ass that’s hanging out of their three sizes too small jeans, or ogles their boobs that they flash around with a bra that is bigger than their shirt. What kind of attention were you going for, cuz I’m confused.
The fact that most the people I meet now are liberal cuz its cool pisses me off. I’ve only met a handful of people who actually know why they belong to what political stance/party. Everyone else just seems to want to hand everyone a Prius, and bash Bush. Now don't get me wrong-the prius is a great step to “ending America’s dependency on oil”. But really, the batteries have a functioning life of what, three to five years, and they are arguably just as horrible for the environment as the continuation of taking fossil fuels and emissions-speaking of emissions, the prius has shit marks in those too. And bash Bush all you want, Cheney and Rice too! Kerry, Obama, Hillary, all of them! Our criticism keeps them on their toes, isn’t that the grand scheme of it all? But for God’s sake the one thing I ask is that you actually have an idea of what you’re talking about when you do whether you are liberal, moderate, or conservative, or an alien from Venus, whatever! A person saying Bush is evil that has no idea where Darfur is, who Idi Amin or Milosevic were, or who thinks that the EU is all sunshine lollipops and rainbows and doesn’t need to be reformed, should be trying to learn something instead of talking. What’s the old adage, if you don't have something smart to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all? Go read a fucking book, no, NOT the Da Vinci Code either!
Anthony Bourdain, a far more eloquent, and far more worldly man than myself, really hit the nail on the head with this one about an account with hypocritical vegans:
“It was difficult for me to be polite… I’d recently returned form Cambodia, where a chicken can be the difference between life and death. These people in their comfortable suburban digs were carping about cruelty to animals but suggesting that everyone in the world, from suburban Yuppie to starving Cambodian cyclo divers, start buying organic vegetables and expensive soy substitutes. To look down on entire cultures that’ve based everything on the gathering of fish and rice seemed arrogant in the extreme. And the hypocrisy of it all pissed me off. Just being about to talk about this issue in a reasonably grammatical language is a privilege, subsidized in a yin/yang sort of way… Meat, say the PETA folks, is “murder”. And yes, the wide world of mean eating can seem like a panorama of cruelty at times. But is meat murder? Fuck no. Murder, as one of my Khmer pals might tell you, is what his next-door neighbor did to his whole family back in the seventies. Murder is what happens in Cambodia, in parts of Africa, Central and South America, and in former Soviet republics when the police chief’s idiot son decides he wants to turn your daughter into a whore and you don't like the idea. Murder is what the Hutus do to Tutsis, Serbs to Croats, Russians to Uzbeks, Crips to Bloods. And vice versa… Hide in your fine homes and eat vegetables, I was thinking. Put a Greenpeace or NAACP bumper sticker on your Beemer if it makes you feel better (so you can drive your kids to their all-white schools). Save the rainforest-by all means-so maybe you can visit is someday, on an ecotour, wearing comfortable shoes make by twelve-year-olds in forced labor. Save a whale while millions are still sold into slavery, starved, fucked to death, shot, tortured, forgotten. When you see cute little kids crying the rubble next to Sally Struthers somewhere, be sure to send a few dollars.” - Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour.
But this started as a narrative on travel did it not? Well if its one thing I’ve realized through the limited places I’ve been, its that traveling sure makes the flaws of your home big glaring neon targets for a good verbal slaughter. Not that the place you’re visiting is any better-its America, you cant knock that, and even more so, its California, so many of the places in the US are going to be a step down as well (except LA, LA is at the bottom of the barrel of the world in my opinion) but it gives you the chance to step out and look for a different perspective-or so one would think. But eventually, you do get on the plane and go home-or at least try to… insert myself punching one of these AA employee’s in the neck any time now-because there are some things you just cant wait to come home to. Sushi-here I was in fishing paradise and not a piece of sashimi to be had! A significant lack of rednecks gawking at you and leaving their chain smoking remnants all over the beaches is always a plus. No tornado sirens going off while you’re in the shower in California-cant beat that. Ah Tony Bennett you wonderful bastard, I did leave my heart in San Francisco. And God damn, a tapioca tea would be like manna from heaven right now. Drink up the last of the beach me hearties-that was yesterday. Right now, airport hell. Tomorrow, probably a drive through Marin’s strange, not-quite-suburban yet ludicrously expensive suburbia to meet with some of the home fries. To loll in the comforts of a long abandoned home. Until the urge to get the hell out strikes again in however many moons. Then-whatever the checkbook allows is on the horizon again.
Thoughts, and critisims? Hope, you know you wanna tear apart my grammar...
July 30 2007
Ah, to be stranded in the Dallas Airport.
At least if you’re stranded somewhere like, Munich, London, Rome, Tokyo, Hong Kong its fairly interesting. Different languages, different foods, something other than the Hudson News tabloid store and Starbucks.
But no. I’m in Texas.
And let’s be quite frank, they’ve replaced “bad airplane food” with “bad airport food”. Dallas-Ft. Worth boasts that its the size of Manhattan, with fine designer shopping, and dining. Uh… where? I’m pretty sure I just ate at the same greasy panda express knock off that they had in Atlanta, Houston, and SFO. As for the shopping, well that's actually there. You can get iPods, iPhones, sony MP3’s, accessories, Ray Bans, and even Proactive Solution…
…in vending machines. Nothing like putting $250 bucks into a vending machine. There’s a coach store too, (I don't even know how they call it designer anymore. Everyone has it. I’ve seen 12 year olds sporting the god damn crap. Yet its still the same ridiculous exorbitant price as ever. Doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? Not that a $500 wallet ever made sense in the first place), but sadly, its not in a vending machine.
And of course in Texas, the only news on the plasmas is Fox News. Really, yeah they’re biased, but its not terrible, ya get the basic idea on current events. Its just the principle of the fact that the Texas airport plays fox news. It was CNN in Florida…
… And now, I’d just like to say… that there are palmetto cockroaches in this airport. Skittering around on the ceiling… God…in…Heaven
I cant help but want that roach to fall on someone though. Especially that guy in the Steson. The mannaquin across from him is wearing a shirt that says “Don’t Mess With Texas.” First off, I’ll mess with Texas all I want. And another thing-doesn’t it seem a bit stupid to have a shirt that says that in an international airport? Especially because unlike Americans, most other countries citizens pay attention to world politics and know our president comes from Texas, and thus, hate Texas? Maybe that's why they have the TSA security updates playing in the bathroom. Its an Orange alert guys, I was a bit worried when I saw a device in the bathroom, but then I realized it was just the soap dispenser.
I’d like to take this time to define the word stranded. It’s Eleven o’clock at night, do you know where your plane is? You sure? Cuz I was supposed to be on mine right now. Ready to take off in 18 minutes. Of course then it turned into. 11:50. Then 12: 30. Then 12:45. Then 1:00. Then 1:20 AM. I was supposed to be on the ground in San Francisco at 11:50. Cleary they meant that was the time I was supposed to take off from Dallas, adjusted to SF time.
Thank God for the iPod-yes I know I’m and Apple schill. My entourage of: Muse, The Killers, David Bowie, Kill Hannah, Nightwish, a splash of J-Rock (cant beat l’arc en ciel or Mothercoat), a dash of movie soundtracks, Rise Against, collective Broadway musicals (with a hats off to Matt), Iron Maiden, Guns N Roses, a little Pat Benetar and even some Danzig, with help from Queen and Tenacious D- are the only thing keeping my hands from wrapping around someone’s throat right now. Ha, Cobra Starship. If only I was on the damn plane, and if only I had a rubber snake.
I’m a cynical person, no doubt helped along by being surrounded by manic pessimistic and then sometimes obnoxiously optimistic family members. The enigmatic step father doesn’t help either. But I clearly remember flying being fun when I was young. Not to sound like one of those conspiracy theorists, but you know what, I’m not stupid, airlines were not this dysfunctional before 9/11. The rest of that year and a good part of the next, yea, I can understand the struggling. But I’m sick of this, take pity on the airlines because they were flown into buildings bs. There’s no excuse for “well, we lost a plane, so, sit there for five hours while we try and find another one”. One lost on the way here. And one the way back. The pilot is honest with you, the people at the counters just say its weather. Apparently weather that only affects American carriers. I’ve been watching Luftansa, JAL, and Cathay take off for two hours now. If you think a European airline would pull this you have to be out of your mind. I can just see my father, who hasn’t flown since the airlines went to shit (because apparently no one wants to do their jobs anymore) being arrested for making a scene. Which frankly, everyone should be making. Instead we’re letting these people get away with treating us like garbage because we’re tired and don't want to get our hands dirty. I know the airport scene pretty damn well, and my step dad is a pilot. You don't lose a plane. You have to be a completely incompetent ignoramus to lose a plane. They have computer systems dedicated to tracking planes. Not to mention constant contact. They’re on radar. So really, how do you even lose one? Well, apparently they lost a plane. They’ve lost a lot of planes.
But its not all bad, on the flight from Florida to here (albeit it was delayed an hour as well) we flew through a thunderstorm. Sandwiched between actually. Clear skies in front of us, and behind us. On top, the sheared off top of the anvil head thunderstorm, and on the bottom, all the fluffy pockets. And it is a sight to behold to see the top of the lightning below you, striking to the ground. And then there’s the color of flying west at seven o’clock in the evening. Chasing the setting sun in front of you, while the darkness creeps up on your tail. Five o’clock at the nose, and eight o’clock behind. It almost seems like you can keep up with the sun too, maybe even following it in a sort of endless sunset. Of course its just an illusion. You don't notice it getting darker, and darker, until your eyes register that the orange has all been replaced with dark blue. But the sunset did seem to last a good forty five minutes longer.
And then you land in fucking Texas and it all goes to shit. Our flight out was fucked; the significant other’s flight out was really fucked; the cousin’s, uncle’s and aunt’s flight was fucked too. The significant other’s flight back, fucked again; The uncles flight fucked up the wazoo, and now ours… five hour delay of fuckiness. The aunt and the cousin’s presumably fucked flight home is tomorrow. Good fucking luck.
But that's the price we pay to visit exotic, and not so exotic destinations. A sort of right of passage really. It makes the stakes higher. When you finally land from the hell plane and scramble to the beach, driving like a maniac and fling your shoes off to get your feet in the sand for it to register that you indeed survived and it was not some tortuous nightmare and you are actually there. Then you can breathe. Let the exhausting airport yuck blow away with the trade winds. When you stare out at the moon rising over the Gulf of Mexico, even flight 666 doesn’t even really seem that bad anymore. The harder the struggle the sweeter the reward, right? We’ll, it sure makes the first soft shell crab nearly orgasmic. The thunderstorms seem to be playing light shows of unequal brilliance this time around; certainly more dangerous and humbling than last year. Banana Boat has never smelled better. The sea, never a better shade of turquoise. Hell, I was even proud of the Portuguese Man ‘o’ War that wrapped around my arm. I cussed it out, making more than one family-centered white bread church-lady blush, but it was just a more painful reality check that I was in the tropics. The alcohol has never gone down easier than on the Bourbon Street Marathon.
Which brings up New Orleans-Nola, the Crescent City, the Big Easy, voodoo capital of America, one of the most haunted cities of the world, fabled home to Lestat and Louis and God only knows how many other books and movies. It’s ancient, its delightfully spooky, its warm and sticky where the bad moon rises over the cemeteries, living history… and its empty. If you want to buy in the French Quarter, now is the time. But not rent… there are no tenants, so renting is jacked so high its probably cheaper to buy. In the French Quarter you ask? The French Quarter that is the heart and soul of it all? It’s Mardi Gras baby! There’s three second story flats up for grabs on Bourbon Street. Bourbon Street for chrissake! But lets face it. New Orleans is empty. I don't know actual statistics, and really, you don't need to know them. No one lives there anymore. Because nothing has been rebuilt. We all saw the devastation here on the West Coast. The people standing on overpasses, the water kissing the bottom of their concrete havens, the 9th Ward underwater on their left and rights. Oh the 9th Ward is still there. It was never even torn down. The tenement like brick buildings sit on either side of the freeway, like gravestones themselves. Some are gutted. Other’s still have destroyed, water logged and sun baked shells of cars half against the dead oak trees. Thousands of homes. Thousands. As far as the eye can see-and it's a ghost town. No entry. No nothing. Did you know there was a Six Flags New Orleans? You can still look at the half knocked down roller coaster as you drive by. Technically its in Slidell, which is where the freeway opens up to accommodate the traffic of Nola, as its right in front of you. The only thing rebuilt in Slidell is the god damned Cracker Barrel. Which we just wont talk about- all I’m going to say about that is that I hope a shoe bomber starts blowing those things off the god damned map. But back to the point: It’s the middle of tourist season, the Quarter should be packed-but we got a hotel with a view on Bourbon with a days notice. Every fiber of what I had grown accustomed to with New Orleans dictates that at blasphemy. But no. Midnight and beyond, running the gauntlet to Pat O’Briens, the Old Absinthe House and everything in between, and you can navigate easily without running into anyone. You can walk right in to O’Briens for chrissake. It’s like someone has struck down the ten commandments of Nola. And even the bugs know it-the palmetto’s can cross the street without getting stepped on.
It’s easy to drink away the sinking feeling you have about the place. The comments of “Holy Christ there’s no one here” don't really have any weight after Hurricanes, Car Bombs, Dark Side of the Moons, ’52 T-Birds, Jack n Cokes, Banana Banshees, Absinthe, and god only knows what else I drank. But the fact remains that six blocks away from the Quarter (where the Islamic Community Center lies with a parking lot full of taxi cabs-I don't make the jokes, I just point them out) there are still emergency statistics spray painted in red on the outsides of the dilapidated houses-but they’ve been kind enough to make the death counts illegible. But has it taught us anything? Really? 5 days to get water to the Super Dome just seems like the first check mark on a inept list of redundancy. Most people on the West Coast think the levees are fixed. The Media coverage right after Katrina was in-your-face-carnage. But once they found most of the bodies nobody seemed to really care anymore. And no, the levees aren’t fixed. They’re just patched back up, making the old ones next to the patches even weaker and they’re just threatening to give up the goat with a good tidal surge. And as the whole world presumably knows-New Orleans is below sea level. But are they going to fix the levees? Well no… not since the citizens of New Orleans in the typical move of a community traumatized elected the same people post hurricane that screwed them before during and right after Katrina. And besides… nobody really knows that the levees aren’t fixed outside those in the know. And since everyone thinks New Orleans is fixed, but no one wants to go there to find out because of horrible media bent manipulated statistics of crime rates (newspapers doubled the crime count post Katrina in their calculations and keep adding them to the current statistics) no one will find out. But lets not get too detailed into the fact that our country cant take care of its own. Lindsey Lohan had crack in her pocket when she chased down her assistants mom in her latest drunk driving exploit. Now that we cant get enough of. Was she wearing Gucci, or Prada shoes when that went down?
Oops, there’s that cynicism again. Well, fuck it. The world pisses me off. The fact that most of America has its head shoved up its collective ass pisses me off. Someone I know personally that had a 4.0 in high school and now goes to Davis didn’t know where god damned Darfur was, let alone what the hell was going on in Sudan. ‘What do you mean someone besides Hitler committed, wait what was it, Genocide? I did a power point about that in one of my AP classes.’ Their major just happens to be International Relations. Do I have a choke a bitch? What gives? ‘God forbid gas prices go up again, or mommy and daddy are going to have to give me a thousand dollars a month for living expenses.’ That's what it all sounds like in my head. The inane babblings of girls who think they’re smart. Not that the guys that think they’re hot shit are much better-but at least they play beer pong, and I can get with that. I don't however, get the girls that dress up like whores to attract attention at house parties and then get offended when someone grabs their ass that’s hanging out of their three sizes too small jeans, or ogles their boobs that they flash around with a bra that is bigger than their shirt. What kind of attention were you going for, cuz I’m confused.
The fact that most the people I meet now are liberal cuz its cool pisses me off. I’ve only met a handful of people who actually know why they belong to what political stance/party. Everyone else just seems to want to hand everyone a Prius, and bash Bush. Now don't get me wrong-the prius is a great step to “ending America’s dependency on oil”. But really, the batteries have a functioning life of what, three to five years, and they are arguably just as horrible for the environment as the continuation of taking fossil fuels and emissions-speaking of emissions, the prius has shit marks in those too. And bash Bush all you want, Cheney and Rice too! Kerry, Obama, Hillary, all of them! Our criticism keeps them on their toes, isn’t that the grand scheme of it all? But for God’s sake the one thing I ask is that you actually have an idea of what you’re talking about when you do whether you are liberal, moderate, or conservative, or an alien from Venus, whatever! A person saying Bush is evil that has no idea where Darfur is, who Idi Amin or Milosevic were, or who thinks that the EU is all sunshine lollipops and rainbows and doesn’t need to be reformed, should be trying to learn something instead of talking. What’s the old adage, if you don't have something smart to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all? Go read a fucking book, no, NOT the Da Vinci Code either!
Anthony Bourdain, a far more eloquent, and far more worldly man than myself, really hit the nail on the head with this one about an account with hypocritical vegans:
“It was difficult for me to be polite… I’d recently returned form Cambodia, where a chicken can be the difference between life and death. These people in their comfortable suburban digs were carping about cruelty to animals but suggesting that everyone in the world, from suburban Yuppie to starving Cambodian cyclo divers, start buying organic vegetables and expensive soy substitutes. To look down on entire cultures that’ve based everything on the gathering of fish and rice seemed arrogant in the extreme. And the hypocrisy of it all pissed me off. Just being about to talk about this issue in a reasonably grammatical language is a privilege, subsidized in a yin/yang sort of way… Meat, say the PETA folks, is “murder”. And yes, the wide world of mean eating can seem like a panorama of cruelty at times. But is meat murder? Fuck no. Murder, as one of my Khmer pals might tell you, is what his next-door neighbor did to his whole family back in the seventies. Murder is what happens in Cambodia, in parts of Africa, Central and South America, and in former Soviet republics when the police chief’s idiot son decides he wants to turn your daughter into a whore and you don't like the idea. Murder is what the Hutus do to Tutsis, Serbs to Croats, Russians to Uzbeks, Crips to Bloods. And vice versa… Hide in your fine homes and eat vegetables, I was thinking. Put a Greenpeace or NAACP bumper sticker on your Beemer if it makes you feel better (so you can drive your kids to their all-white schools). Save the rainforest-by all means-so maybe you can visit is someday, on an ecotour, wearing comfortable shoes make by twelve-year-olds in forced labor. Save a whale while millions are still sold into slavery, starved, fucked to death, shot, tortured, forgotten. When you see cute little kids crying the rubble next to Sally Struthers somewhere, be sure to send a few dollars.” - Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour.
But this started as a narrative on travel did it not? Well if its one thing I’ve realized through the limited places I’ve been, its that traveling sure makes the flaws of your home big glaring neon targets for a good verbal slaughter. Not that the place you’re visiting is any better-its America, you cant knock that, and even more so, its California, so many of the places in the US are going to be a step down as well (except LA, LA is at the bottom of the barrel of the world in my opinion) but it gives you the chance to step out and look for a different perspective-or so one would think. But eventually, you do get on the plane and go home-or at least try to… insert myself punching one of these AA employee’s in the neck any time now-because there are some things you just cant wait to come home to. Sushi-here I was in fishing paradise and not a piece of sashimi to be had! A significant lack of rednecks gawking at you and leaving their chain smoking remnants all over the beaches is always a plus. No tornado sirens going off while you’re in the shower in California-cant beat that. Ah Tony Bennett you wonderful bastard, I did leave my heart in San Francisco. And God damn, a tapioca tea would be like manna from heaven right now. Drink up the last of the beach me hearties-that was yesterday. Right now, airport hell. Tomorrow, probably a drive through Marin’s strange, not-quite-suburban yet ludicrously expensive suburbia to meet with some of the home fries. To loll in the comforts of a long abandoned home. Until the urge to get the hell out strikes again in however many moons. Then-whatever the checkbook allows is on the horizon again.