Quibble

I have a minor and obnoxious quibble about my fringe benefits. Namely, parking. My parking is free, but my employer picks where I park since the waiting list to actually park in the building is about a hundred years long. My name will have been added along with all the other dead partners by then.

Anyway, the quibble is not about having to walk a couple of blocks. (Why is it people freak about that? I don't think 50 extra meters is such a big deal - unless I've decided to finally bring a plant for my office. Then it might get irritating.)

My views are that if you have legs, use 'em. God knows enough people don't. That is, use their legs, not don't have legs. Actually if anyone doesn't have legs that would be enough people. But, not the issue.

The issue is, in fact, that I was not informed that my parking is valet. And this valet parking has become the bane of my existence. Ok, maybe not that troubling. The proper comparison would probably be that the valet parking is the butt-itch of my existence. Irritating, awkward, and with no ready cure.

Pushing aside all the horror stories from my colleagues who have had their cars repeatedly creamed (although in parking garages like bomb shelters), my worry is not about my car getting wrecked. In fact, except for the annoyance of having to put my money where my mouth is and actually take the streetcar, I could probably get their insurance to pay for the nice job I did TWICE denting and scraping the passenger side. In a parking garage. There are probably specialized mechanics. Who get their business from my colleague's valets. Everyone wins (except the insurance and who cares about them anyway?).

No, my valets seem pretty trustworthy, and always know I'm the dressed up chick who drives the Black Hyundai. ('Cause I roll like dat.) The problem, they tell me, is that sometimes they forgets where they actually put my car.

I am running 15 minutes late for an important meeting. The sweat is standing out on my lip like a fascist dictator's moustache. I am wondering once again why all these anti-perspirants engage in false advertising. And yet we are still standing there while he thinks about it. Thinks. Not actually goes to look around, but thinks.

This is slightly troubling. As is the fact that when my car is found it always has the windows rolled down and the keys in the ignition. I'm told the latter is actually a good thing since it airs the car out and saves the hassle of finding the keys when I'm in a hurry. It also adds to the list of potential insurance claims.

Once again, sooo typical of the things endemic to New Orleans. (Luckily so is being late. Despite the memory holdup, I was the first one at the meeting.)

A colleague gave me this article that shows just how damaging the Big Easy easiness can be. My favorite quote, from the Evidence Room clerk:

In New Orleans, clerk Spears sees little need for computerized bar coding that might help make order in the attic where he dumps evidence from old cases.

"The system is almost foolproof," he said. "I've got a photographic mind, see. I know from memory where almost everything is."

This girl = not particularly impressed.

Also, they use sticky traps. Oh, the mousity.

Quotable

Pretty much my favorite quote from any hurricane story this year:

Ronnie Sharp, 65, and his terrier-mix Princess, had to be rescued from his trailer in Orange County when water reached his knees. "I was getting too many snakes in the house, otherwise I would have stayed," Sharp said. He said he lost everything in the flood but his medicine and some cigarettes.

That's awesome.

Conspiracy

It is quite frustrating to play the part of a modern day Cassandra, sounding the alarm while everyone looks at you like some melodramatic idiot instead of someone who's pounded a lot of history books and has figured out really early on the true motivations behind most people's shades.

One of the fundamental truths I've gleaned is that it's all a goddamned conspiracy.

Hear me out. I could care less about the Kennedy assassination, the Marilyn Monroe murders and whatever happened to those aliens in Roswell (perhaps there were some at the RNC?). I care about the real stuff.

So, when I have to continuously hear about the crazy liberal blogger's attacks on Palin which set her up perfectly for a vindictive (yet totally useless) diatribe guaranteed to stir up a crowd who was already stirred up anyway, I have only this observation to make.

Those were crazy Republican bloggers.

Thank you America. You'll receive my bill in 30 days.

Poverty

I had a good (and hot, but sadly now married) friend from undergrad who had the habit of romping off to random countries and sending me exotic presents in the mail accompanied with long letters written on rapidly torn-off and often beer-stained pieces of paper. He had spidery handwriting. I never knew such a thing really existed until I would get his letters.

Despite our longstanding friendship, prolific exchanges, and the exciting receipt of a ceramic yak from Central Asia, he still occasionally made statements in his letters that mystified me. (And it's probably rather revealing of my true feelings for him that I still remember these lines years later. Why is he married?)

In consecutive order:

From Cuba in 1999: "It's so sad to me that this place is not more communist. It just seems like everyone is out for themselves."

From Nepal in 2001: "I'm so tired of poor people always hassling me. Buy, buy, buy. It's like all they want is my money. It takes away from the scenery."

From Guatamala in 2003: "I'm just so sick of all these dirty people."

So then my wonderfully sensitive friend decided to go to business school and become a broker. And got married. But I might've mentioned that last bit before.

Why this change? What happened to change my darling blonde save-the-world angel into a ruthless capitalist maverick with so much disdain for the very people he had hopped airplanes across the world to see and support?

Answer: Poverty can be fucking annoying. Especially for people who actually have money.

Should I elaborate on this statement? Do I have to?

Luckily I have no money, so the poverty situation in Southeast Asia was only "mildly" as opposed to "fucking" annoying. "Mildly" because I really didn't have much of an issue buying cheap bracelets from cute little children for the price of a cup of coffee (Sally Struthers comes to mind).

But after awhile the constant solicitation does get a little old. Especially if you're like me and have a hard time saying "no" with the type of finality needed to put your followers off the scent. Result: lots of little children hanging out by your beach cot trying to get you to buy a pedicure (the thought of those dirty tools makes me wince), a necklace, or in the worst scenario a bikini line threading.

And then, the mud, the dust, the flies, the sad stares and the shacks. The gasoline poured into plastic bottles and watered down because it's all the people who cruise the pitted and unpaved highway can afford. A tugging awareness that I'm never going to get it. A nagging reproach that this is no new age poverty chosen for devotion but a strange and unfair fate that is swallowed. With bitterness or sweetness, it's impossible to discern. But fully incomprehensible and that's the hard part.

I finally understand my friend's frustrated lines. I also understand now when he talked about how much having diarrhea for 20 straight days sucks.

But I guess the poverty epiphany is more profound.

Hurricane

I am recovering in North Carolina from dengue hemorrhagic fever (more on that later) and catching snippets of the Gustav coverage, noting with some dread that the storm surge seems to be heading right for my apartment. Darn it.

The funny thing is after this trip I feel so incredibly at peace with everything (they're just things after all). I find I now have a strange new motive for watching the hyped hurricane coverage.

That is, having a pool on which on-site newsman will be the first to be knocked down by flying debris. I'm placing bets on ol' Anderson.

I'll feel bad if that really happens. But the grim amusement helps one cope.