My experiences of Halloween as inanimate objects have been as:
1) a trash can
2) an Aquafresh toothpaste pump
3) a McDonald's milkshake.
Innes VII was a polaroid who did vodka shots, thereby truly blending the inanimate and the animate.
I am a lucky girl to have been in the company of so many great people for a night.
Monday, October 31, 2005
The 10
So then Robyn had to come and show us all up by being the 10! Being the Dreadfulest Freeway in Los Angeles, The 10 runs east-west from Pomona through Compton to Venice and Santa Monica. If you are driving back from Venice towards the Eastside at about 5 PM, you begin to stare at the veins in your wrist, contemplating an existentially realized death, wondering what your serum carbon monoxide levels are at this point in time. The 405 competes with the 10 for most hideously trafficky LA freeway.
Those four people as that digital clock: 10:34!
Were they brothers and sister? Were they a big giant "couple"? I forgot to ask. they were the best digital clock I've ever seen, and they had the best footwear (not pictured).
The Greatest Shame
I had many favorite costumes on Saturday evening, however when Mo Twine showed up dressed like Santa, complete with gators (were they for snow or soot or hauling lobster traps?) on, I was sold. Then I looked to my left and saw a small man with a Mexican wrestler's mask on, wearing this World's Greatest Grandma sweatshirt. He was accompanied by a mule/donkey/mouse with a hat that looked to be bought in Cabo San Lucas at Papas & Beer, bearing gigantic balls, supposedly the result of elephantiasis. I am trying to remember the actual animal this man was supposed to be..it had a ridiculously cute name like the pica, but not the pica...if anyone remembers, lemme know. They sat on Mo's lap for a time as you can see here.
Now to cleanse the palate...
I give you - don't look! - a sexy pink elephant and her polyester, straight-out-of-a-bag prisoner-costumed gigolo, complete with glass of Bordeaux, Classy Hong Kong 1920's Moustache and Yalie eyewear!
The Valve
I want you to know that I have 23 photographs of my pal Eric galavanting as Ignatius J. Reilly and that they will soon be available as a tastefully mounted montage of flannel and hotdogs. I arrived early and therefore began to drink early. I came from work in my scrubs, which made me feel very inadequate as Halloween is my most favorite thing and I had to work this weekend prior. Manta Ray! made no appearance, but she will return once again, headlights a'blazin at a 'ween of the future.
To Eric, I lift my glass.
To Eric, I lift my glass.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Quick Film Club Retort Over Eggs and Chinese Broccoli
Alex: I hated Everything is Illuminated.
Sarah: I thought it was great.
Alex: It was the worst movie of the year. It was so boring. You only like it because of Frodo. That character was so passive.
Sarah: Yes he was passive, and might I add that your Baggins suggestion is off base.. Eugene Hutz is what is amazing about this movie. The Odessian character arcs are great. Hutz is like one giant Kindersurprise within the milky-chocolatey happy-sad shell of this movie. I also found myself strangely attracted to him. I feel vulnerable now about my movie opinions and am now hesitant to tell you what I really thought about Thumbsucker. God, what a breakfast Alex, thanks.
Alex: (punitively) Lebo, finish the bread and cheese. Eat all your lox! Don't drop any more of that triple cream brie onto the carpet. We just got rid of an infestation.
Sarah: I thought it was great.
Alex: It was the worst movie of the year. It was so boring. You only like it because of Frodo. That character was so passive.
Sarah: Yes he was passive, and might I add that your Baggins suggestion is off base.. Eugene Hutz is what is amazing about this movie. The Odessian character arcs are great. Hutz is like one giant Kindersurprise within the milky-chocolatey happy-sad shell of this movie. I also found myself strangely attracted to him. I feel vulnerable now about my movie opinions and am now hesitant to tell you what I really thought about Thumbsucker. God, what a breakfast Alex, thanks.
Alex: (punitively) Lebo, finish the bread and cheese. Eat all your lox! Don't drop any more of that triple cream brie onto the carpet. We just got rid of an infestation.
The Sportsman and the Lone Star and me
I am sorry to be so full of shit. I'm afraid your kindly offers of laxative tea won't help. I am FOS (which is a real clinical term, by the way, meaning Full of Stool) because I have been lax to regale you with tales of Louisiana and Texas. Maybe this hasnt even crossed your mind and you don't want to hear my stories.
I shall now attempt to do tell you -*despite that* - in point form in order to bring us up to current events.
BEGIN POINT FORM
- Houston is humid which was news to me, and I have a firm belief that it was designed by the same evil genius who engineered Calgary's grid-system-sprawl-hell. Requisite oppositional statement and truth: the people of course, were geniuinely awesome.
- The government put us up at a Ramada in the very south of Houston, almost in Sugarland. When I arrived at the airport, I had been given no info on where to go, who to call, who was meeting me etc..it was Comical!! I thought per chance that someone would be there to greet me, but alas, through some gutsy phone calling to Admirals and Captains, I got the name of the Ramada and sped there taxi-like lickety split.
- The Ramada had poor air circulation yet was conveniently located next to an Indian vegetarian restaurant serving delicacies in the Gujarati style, a Target and the MHMRA, also known in no uncertain terms as The MENTAL HEALTH and MENTAL RETARDATION AUTHORITY of Harris County.
- In Houston, and I'm assuming all of Texas, a sickeningly wealthy family of Greek immigrants, the Pappas, have birthed a series of hangar-type eating establishments. There is Pappas Seafood [300-seater designed to look like an old shrimp shack and/or Floridian highway seafood restaurant], Pappas Smokehouse BBQ [designed to look like an old BBQ hut with Big Jim out back, a'stirrin the sawse], Pappadeux [no identifiable Louisianan motif in the architecture, intense use of seasoned salt on its cajuny items, fried alligator], Papasito's Cantina, Pappas Burgers, Pappas Pizza and Pappas Brothers Steakhouse. I believe we went to 2/7 of their chains.
- I was sworn in by the oath of office by a commander from the US Deparment of Public Health. He was bedecked in the ubiquitous uni-beige uniform, complete with folded naval cap in belt. His name was Gene. I swore my oath and was nervous doing it. Thereafter I was a federalized, unpaid employee of the US Gov't. They never gave us any documentation, no badge announcing our titles, authority etc. In retrospect...WTF?
- I went to the G.R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on my first day. I did triage for the mindblowing medical unit that was set up there by the U of Texas and Scripps of San Diego. They had x-ray and lab capabilities (faster than most hospitals), two mental health trailers with big plastic signs on them that read MENTAL HEALTH (empty folding chairs in the waiting area), two Walgreens pharmacy trailers for filling the one-month free prescriptions that Katrina victims were entitled to.
- At the Brown Convention center, there were thousands of faith-based volunteers wearing bright yellow shirts that said Operation Compassion. If you were an evacuee (or not), you could ask them for directions, they could sit with you and hear your stories. They could sit with you and just hold your hand. The Brown center was brightly lit. There were three long tables lined with many bright red phones like the kind the president has, so that people could call anyone across country to locate lost relatives or arrange travel or just talk. There was an area designated to helping people find housing. There was an area for employment help, with lots of computers and pencils and pads of paper. Somewhere in the fold FEMA was registering people, but I didnt see them. Upstairs was a cafeteria run by volunteers. The sleeping area was the size of a high school football field dotted with neat rows of aerobeds. Volunteers were tucking in sheets and folding newly donated clothing. It was my fellow traveler Mr. Dr. Bill King of Tracy, California who pointed out the unique (and glaring) disparity between the Brown Convention center and the picture we saw in Louisiana. In Houston there was a dignity to that shelter...the spic and span-ness, the visible community of volunteers.
- The one comparable shelter in Louisiana we came across was the Cajundome in Lafayette, but we were denied entrance to it when we asked if we could take a look around to make an assessment of potential healthcare needs. The woman at the gateway wore a sad Red Cross vest, like the kind the Cards wear over the shoulder in Alice in Wonderland. She was a public health nurse from Orange County and she was more than ready to go home. She said she was doing "prison nursing with some mental health on the side". She was a long way from Newport. On the doors to the Cajundome were "no cameras, no photograph" signs. They had metal detectors and police dogs. Diabetics were not allowed to carry their own insulin needles but had to check them in with the Red Cross as if they were children or potential junkies. We saw a good number of military police outside of the Cajundome as well as a hefty Dept of Homeland Security trailer, antennae and satellite dishes pronging out into the night. There were barricades out in front, trash on the ground. There was a curfew. Orange sodium lights made everything that was slightly invisible seem suddenly dodgy, and the police presence didnt contradict such a feeling.
Next time on "Point Form"......The preacher's wife gets into a scrap!
I shall now attempt to do tell you -*despite that* - in point form in order to bring us up to current events.
BEGIN POINT FORM
- Houston is humid which was news to me, and I have a firm belief that it was designed by the same evil genius who engineered Calgary's grid-system-sprawl-hell. Requisite oppositional statement and truth: the people of course, were geniuinely awesome.
- The government put us up at a Ramada in the very south of Houston, almost in Sugarland. When I arrived at the airport, I had been given no info on where to go, who to call, who was meeting me etc..it was Comical!! I thought per chance that someone would be there to greet me, but alas, through some gutsy phone calling to Admirals and Captains, I got the name of the Ramada and sped there taxi-like lickety split.
- The Ramada had poor air circulation yet was conveniently located next to an Indian vegetarian restaurant serving delicacies in the Gujarati style, a Target and the MHMRA, also known in no uncertain terms as The MENTAL HEALTH and MENTAL RETARDATION AUTHORITY of Harris County.
- In Houston, and I'm assuming all of Texas, a sickeningly wealthy family of Greek immigrants, the Pappas, have birthed a series of hangar-type eating establishments. There is Pappas Seafood [300-seater designed to look like an old shrimp shack and/or Floridian highway seafood restaurant], Pappas Smokehouse BBQ [designed to look like an old BBQ hut with Big Jim out back, a'stirrin the sawse], Pappadeux [no identifiable Louisianan motif in the architecture, intense use of seasoned salt on its cajuny items, fried alligator], Papasito's Cantina, Pappas Burgers, Pappas Pizza and Pappas Brothers Steakhouse. I believe we went to 2/7 of their chains.
- I was sworn in by the oath of office by a commander from the US Deparment of Public Health. He was bedecked in the ubiquitous uni-beige uniform, complete with folded naval cap in belt. His name was Gene. I swore my oath and was nervous doing it. Thereafter I was a federalized, unpaid employee of the US Gov't. They never gave us any documentation, no badge announcing our titles, authority etc. In retrospect...WTF?
- I went to the G.R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on my first day. I did triage for the mindblowing medical unit that was set up there by the U of Texas and Scripps of San Diego. They had x-ray and lab capabilities (faster than most hospitals), two mental health trailers with big plastic signs on them that read MENTAL HEALTH (empty folding chairs in the waiting area), two Walgreens pharmacy trailers for filling the one-month free prescriptions that Katrina victims were entitled to.
- At the Brown Convention center, there were thousands of faith-based volunteers wearing bright yellow shirts that said Operation Compassion. If you were an evacuee (or not), you could ask them for directions, they could sit with you and hear your stories. They could sit with you and just hold your hand. The Brown center was brightly lit. There were three long tables lined with many bright red phones like the kind the president has, so that people could call anyone across country to locate lost relatives or arrange travel or just talk. There was an area designated to helping people find housing. There was an area for employment help, with lots of computers and pencils and pads of paper. Somewhere in the fold FEMA was registering people, but I didnt see them. Upstairs was a cafeteria run by volunteers. The sleeping area was the size of a high school football field dotted with neat rows of aerobeds. Volunteers were tucking in sheets and folding newly donated clothing. It was my fellow traveler Mr. Dr. Bill King of Tracy, California who pointed out the unique (and glaring) disparity between the Brown Convention center and the picture we saw in Louisiana. In Houston there was a dignity to that shelter...the spic and span-ness, the visible community of volunteers.
- The one comparable shelter in Louisiana we came across was the Cajundome in Lafayette, but we were denied entrance to it when we asked if we could take a look around to make an assessment of potential healthcare needs. The woman at the gateway wore a sad Red Cross vest, like the kind the Cards wear over the shoulder in Alice in Wonderland. She was a public health nurse from Orange County and she was more than ready to go home. She said she was doing "prison nursing with some mental health on the side". She was a long way from Newport. On the doors to the Cajundome were "no cameras, no photograph" signs. They had metal detectors and police dogs. Diabetics were not allowed to carry their own insulin needles but had to check them in with the Red Cross as if they were children or potential junkies. We saw a good number of military police outside of the Cajundome as well as a hefty Dept of Homeland Security trailer, antennae and satellite dishes pronging out into the night. There were barricades out in front, trash on the ground. There was a curfew. Orange sodium lights made everything that was slightly invisible seem suddenly dodgy, and the police presence didnt contradict such a feeling.
Next time on "Point Form"......The preacher's wife gets into a scrap!
Sunday, October 16, 2005
intake and output
My dad and I had a conversation about marine species this evening.
It is starting to rain.
Today was day two for me in the PICU. It is a different place from where I've been. Today my baby patient breathed helium and oxygen inside a plastic dome that looked like something belonging to a fancy person who happens to live in the Crab Nebula.
When he cried, everyone said it sounded like a person crying from five rooms away.
But no, there he would be, his head under the bell jar, right next to you.
The banana tree outside my bungalow sounds like a man in the bushes.
Don't worry, it really is a tree.
I'm not done telling you about Tx-La but I need to sleep.
It is starting to rain.
Today was day two for me in the PICU. It is a different place from where I've been. Today my baby patient breathed helium and oxygen inside a plastic dome that looked like something belonging to a fancy person who happens to live in the Crab Nebula.
When he cried, everyone said it sounded like a person crying from five rooms away.
But no, there he would be, his head under the bell jar, right next to you.
The banana tree outside my bungalow sounds like a man in the bushes.
Don't worry, it really is a tree.
I'm not done telling you about Tx-La but I need to sleep.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Around the week of August 30, 2005
It feels somewhat deflating to write about this so late, but as I was in Texas and Louisiana last month, I'll tell you about it.
At the start of it all, many of my colleagues and I signed up to be volunteer medical assists with FEMA when the levees broke. They actually called our hospital to make such a list. However, we didn’t hear anything more.
That was the week we all saw the baby held by its mama on CNN, the baby with the floppy arms and pale hands and sunken raccoon eyes held in a chubby embrace outside the Superdome. Perhaps that was the day we saw that man softly place a patchwork blanket over somebody’s grandma who died sitting up in her patchwork wheelchair (duct tape around the armrests, cardboard wrapped around several spokes in the wheels), the man trying not to let out tears as he calmly yet angrily protested such a way to die, to absolutely no one. Everything was like a one-way valve that week. The people of New Orleans emoted outwardly towards us all through the glass of our TV screens, looking up from tar-papered garage roofs, pleading through the lenses of network cameras that were steamed up at the edges from the humidity (those cameras of course imbued with magic powers enabling them to make an appearance where our government could not), teenagers eloquently expounding the disgrace of Iraq in light of their current needs...Their holler was clear but our response was stifled and retarded in the true definition of such a word; our reactions flew back, hit the impermeable surface of the TV screen and rolled right on back into our laps wherein their extreme helplessness became ours (though ours was much less important because it was softened of course, privileged and air conditioned and hydrated with Vitamin Water and adorned with diplomas and iPods and toilets that flushed and lights that clicked on when requested). And so all Our Brilliant Solutions (so passionately discussed over so many lunch hours) and emphatic I-hear-yous and all that Red Cross money at this point was in a sense without horsepower. It’s like that mechanism inside of engines that transfers chemical energy into power and then into movement, it was stuck or malrotated or simply was never there to begin with. I think the people in the Ninth Ward came to know this was true before the floods. For some of them maybe it was an appalling reminder of something familiar they already understood; for us it was simply an apalling revelation.
I wrote an angry letter that night to Bush and to Cheney, that no one will ever read.
I wanted to tell them that my colleagues and I were willing to jump from copters, each bearing 50 liters of IV fluids on our backs, because it was something that would very cheaply and easily arm people against death. Why the fuck weren’t they using us?
I wanted someone to kick and punch.
Later that week Anderson Cooper cried on television twice, one time during a split-screen interview with Governor Blanco wherein he fiestily noted that rats were consuming a corpse to his left and that her thanksgiving to other politicians was an inhumane response to the situation. (Blanco, white.)
So Blanco prayed to lord baby Jesus, suggesting the state of Louisiana do the same and asked for nonspecific help from the federal government. Mayor Nagin decided to enact a mandatory evacuation 2 days late. Heckuva-job-Brownie told Paula Zahn that people at the Convention Center in N.O. were receiving two meals-ready-to-eat per day, and when our anchor denied his data and asked about the situation at the Superdome Mr. Brown, well, Heckuva-job- Brownie says he only that morning knew that those people didn’t have food or water. Our anchor rhetorically spanked him as best she could, which was still feeble but better than nothing (a theme for this whole scenario –some anchor on Fox news even lost his shit) - by asking if that meant the public had better intelligence than the federal government?
Then this past week I read that Brownie, under questioning, stated said the media had been creating “hype” and “fabricating stories of rape and violence” and generally presenting the situation incorrectly. Gee, Brownie, the stories I was told by both 8-year old girls and 82-year old men, I mean, talk about overly vivid and painful imaginative capabilities! And those grandmas – especially the legally blind ones with the acute senses of hearing – well they’re spinning some yarns, I suppose, Sir.
But then they’re like, well…yarns so dark they couldn’t possibly be yarns, y’know?
[I didn’t want to resort to angry sarcasm, but there it goes.]
In response to those emails I sent to Bush and Cheney, I received a rote email requesting patience from the citizenry and reassurance that all arms of government had been activated in response to this national disaster.
I thought of Doc Octagon, because that sentence made me think of “arms”. I thought of how the ground shook in response when he thonked all around Peter Parker’s city, how the bricks sounded when he scrounched down on them. An active sound.
At the start of it all, many of my colleagues and I signed up to be volunteer medical assists with FEMA when the levees broke. They actually called our hospital to make such a list. However, we didn’t hear anything more.
That was the week we all saw the baby held by its mama on CNN, the baby with the floppy arms and pale hands and sunken raccoon eyes held in a chubby embrace outside the Superdome. Perhaps that was the day we saw that man softly place a patchwork blanket over somebody’s grandma who died sitting up in her patchwork wheelchair (duct tape around the armrests, cardboard wrapped around several spokes in the wheels), the man trying not to let out tears as he calmly yet angrily protested such a way to die, to absolutely no one. Everything was like a one-way valve that week. The people of New Orleans emoted outwardly towards us all through the glass of our TV screens, looking up from tar-papered garage roofs, pleading through the lenses of network cameras that were steamed up at the edges from the humidity (those cameras of course imbued with magic powers enabling them to make an appearance where our government could not), teenagers eloquently expounding the disgrace of Iraq in light of their current needs...Their holler was clear but our response was stifled and retarded in the true definition of such a word; our reactions flew back, hit the impermeable surface of the TV screen and rolled right on back into our laps wherein their extreme helplessness became ours (though ours was much less important because it was softened of course, privileged and air conditioned and hydrated with Vitamin Water and adorned with diplomas and iPods and toilets that flushed and lights that clicked on when requested). And so all Our Brilliant Solutions (so passionately discussed over so many lunch hours) and emphatic I-hear-yous and all that Red Cross money at this point was in a sense without horsepower. It’s like that mechanism inside of engines that transfers chemical energy into power and then into movement, it was stuck or malrotated or simply was never there to begin with. I think the people in the Ninth Ward came to know this was true before the floods. For some of them maybe it was an appalling reminder of something familiar they already understood; for us it was simply an apalling revelation.
I wrote an angry letter that night to Bush and to Cheney, that no one will ever read.
I wanted to tell them that my colleagues and I were willing to jump from copters, each bearing 50 liters of IV fluids on our backs, because it was something that would very cheaply and easily arm people against death. Why the fuck weren’t they using us?
I wanted someone to kick and punch.
Later that week Anderson Cooper cried on television twice, one time during a split-screen interview with Governor Blanco wherein he fiestily noted that rats were consuming a corpse to his left and that her thanksgiving to other politicians was an inhumane response to the situation. (Blanco, white.)
So Blanco prayed to lord baby Jesus, suggesting the state of Louisiana do the same and asked for nonspecific help from the federal government. Mayor Nagin decided to enact a mandatory evacuation 2 days late. Heckuva-job-Brownie told Paula Zahn that people at the Convention Center in N.O. were receiving two meals-ready-to-eat per day, and when our anchor denied his data and asked about the situation at the Superdome Mr. Brown, well, Heckuva-job- Brownie says he only that morning knew that those people didn’t have food or water. Our anchor rhetorically spanked him as best she could, which was still feeble but better than nothing (a theme for this whole scenario –some anchor on Fox news even lost his shit) - by asking if that meant the public had better intelligence than the federal government?
Then this past week I read that Brownie, under questioning, stated said the media had been creating “hype” and “fabricating stories of rape and violence” and generally presenting the situation incorrectly. Gee, Brownie, the stories I was told by both 8-year old girls and 82-year old men, I mean, talk about overly vivid and painful imaginative capabilities! And those grandmas – especially the legally blind ones with the acute senses of hearing – well they’re spinning some yarns, I suppose, Sir.
But then they’re like, well…yarns so dark they couldn’t possibly be yarns, y’know?
[I didn’t want to resort to angry sarcasm, but there it goes.]
In response to those emails I sent to Bush and Cheney, I received a rote email requesting patience from the citizenry and reassurance that all arms of government had been activated in response to this national disaster.
I thought of Doc Octagon, because that sentence made me think of “arms”. I thought of how the ground shook in response when he thonked all around Peter Parker’s city, how the bricks sounded when he scrounched down on them. An active sound.
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