Echo

Blog of a Sex Offender

Did any of you hear about this story? This family was found bludgeoned to death with two of the youngest children missing, and then 7 weeks later, the little girl was found with a 42 year old convicted sex offender in a diner. The other little boy was believed to have been murdered.

So apparently the guy kept a blog. Here’s a news article about the responses to his blog shortly after he was arrested.

I randomly found his blog and was reading it from the beginning because he described himself as a convicted sex offender, and his prose was lucid and intelligent. I found it riveting. It was an amazing glimpse into a person’s psychology and his unique experience of life. I didn’t find all the news articles and the “epilogue” of his story until I did a news search to try to figure out what the original crime was that he often alluded to.

It’s amazing. There are posts on his blog that are incredibly noble and powerful, that makes you feel for human beings and worry about our society as a whole. And then as the blog progresses, he rants more and more about the injustice of society, with the posts in the months leading up to the end of the blog (right before the crime was discovered) being discordant with a heavy theme of desperation and a brooding rage.

Our society fails on so many levels, but seeing how everything unfolds, you get a strong sense that there really is no clear cut magic-wand solution. When you read his blog, you feel the desperation of a caged animal who feels ostracized and discriminated and then you see the tragic outcome of his angry retribution towards society directed at strangers. I’m horrified by his actions but I don’t agree with posters who don’t understand how something like his blog was allowed to be published. Suppressing expression isn’t the answer. His blog gives us an amazing chance to see what happens inside a person who has valid points and opinions and feelings, and how a person gets pushed towards making the decisions he made. It doesn’t all make sense, but the pain does. His pain is excruciatingly human.

Was it fair for someone who was desperate for rehabilitation and acceptance to suffer continual adn systematic police harassment? How does a person integrate himself into society if the stigma the powers that be force him to wear prevent him from forming healthy, intimate human relationships? Is the supposed high rate of recidivism high amongst sex offenders in part due to the public quality of their humiliation, limiting their ability to truly rehabilitate and reintegrate? Does our society create a cruel hypocrisy of desiring rehabilitation of our wounded factions, but turning a blind eye to or encouraging a police state that promotes the cruel breaking down of a wounded person’s spirit? Did we fail an innocent family when our neglect of a wounded member of society spawned displaced mindset riddled with desperation and rage?

They say that how a person treats others is a reflection of how one treats himself. Groups such as countries have the same psychology. If the U.S. is officially the “policeman” of the world but more accurately, the “bully,” then does that same cruel exterior/cowardly interior explain our love affair with fear and our mistreatment of our weakest parts? Sometimes I think the U.S. is a country that secretly hates itself because it never makes a wholehearted effort to soothe its internal rifts and integrate all of its pieces. You can cut off your hand because you don’t like the way it looks, but by doing so, it doesn’t cease to exist.

This whole story makes me feel frustrated and sad. It’s not about sympathy for one person or another, or about blaming or judging. It’s about compassion and awareness for the truth of life experience, and how there are a lot of things in this world that aren’t fair and don’t make any sense. I try really hard not to judge anything anymore. No one in this world really has enough facts about anything, unless it’s something that happened to them personally. And even then you can only be sure of one perspective.

I think a person can pull into themselves and become selfish when they’re trying to maintain their own boundaries. It’s like that little kid who huddles under the blankets trying to squeeze himself into the tightest ball possible to give the monsters outside little to take. Sometimes you can get so afraid that whatever you put out there, someone will take from you so that you have very little left to save for yourself.

As the heart of Fall approaches, I’m dying to get creative. Fall is always the most creative time of year for me, the season where I sit in candelit rooms with the door open to the storms outside, listening to music, writing poetry or playing guitar. These are the times when I truly feel alive, where the world inside of me is as rich and complex as the world outside.

But here we are, with 90 degree heat outside, no rain clouds in sight, lots of crap on the radio and I can never seem to get a moment to myself to feel out what’s going on in my own headspace. I don’t know if other people are feeling the same way, and this is just a phase all of us are going through–what with all the natural disasters, the planes crashing, the terrorist bombings, etc., it just seems like the world is going through a rough patch. I hope it’s just a phase. I haven’t felt this desperate and lonely in a while, just praying for some equilibrium and that calm, steady feeling of overall well-being.

People can have trust issues when they find out that the people who were supposed to be their advisors or mentors growing up were mostly using them to serve ulterior motives. Now these people and their motives could have had harmless intentions, like parents who want to live vicariously through their kids with sports, music, academics, etc (I excluded the stage mom category as stage moms are basically insane). But as these kids grow up and realize that not everything they were told was necessarily in their best interest, they lose faith in the counsel of others and have no confidence in their ability to determine whose advice they can trust as having no personal or idealistic agenda.

My family is always giving me advice. I know for a fact that their advice is often tainted by ulterior motives and stained with manipulation, from how they use “advice” to manipulate my brother. While some of the advice is in his best interest, it is often in his “best interests” that are his best interests as subjectively viewed by someone else, not necessarily what will make him ultimately happy. Do we put our happiness in the hands of others when we ask them to advise us on what they believe will make us happy? Are we basically signing our happiness over to someone else out of fear of responsibility? What if that advice is tinged with ominous warnings that the decisions you make on your own will take you down a tragically unhappy path? Doesn’t this tactic automatically weaken a person’s confidence in making decisions for themselves?

Perhaps my problem is not that I don’t see things clearly, but that I don’t trust myself. I recognize the importance of other perspectives to help a person see their life journey clearly, and if I can’t figure out which voices to heed and which to discard, then basically, aren’t I just an idiot swimming in circles until I inevitably drown? I often feel like an aimless idiot.

What I would do for one long thunderstorm to quiet this place for just a second so I can retreat into my world and think.

Yesterday, Reggie was having a bad day so I took him to Father’s Office for a beer and burger to cheer him up. The bar serves its baggie of fries in a miniature shopping cart about 7 inches high. I said, “Hey, do the shopping cart.” He proceeded to do the shopping cart while pushing that little cart across the table, pantomiming putting the baby in the front seat, putting grocieries in the basket, having the cart roll away as he chased it, and my favorite, picking up the 20 lb. bag of dog food and trying to jam it under the basket. Of course, I’ve neglected my camera these days and didn’t have enough juice left to capture the moment.

To recap the happenings of my life since I last abused Reggie with degrading photo shoots, we took a camping trip up to Sequoia National Forest, meeting up with RV Rampage. They were driving down from Yosemite in Day 2 of rampaging, and we were driving up for our 24 hours of Pansy Outdooring. We figured we would get up at 4am and hit Lake Isabella to fish. We got lost on what was supposed to be a 2 hour drive and ended up getting there sometime around 10am, only to find that there’s been some killer algae in the water that’s mysteriously killing fish, so even if we caught anything, we wouldn’t be able to eat it. Now keep in mind, this was our 3rd get up at the buttcrack of dawn and go fishing trip, starting by an impulse buy of fishing rods. To date, over 70 hours logged, and we have yet to catch a single fish. I’m convinced that we’re either really, really bad fisherpeople, or there are no fish in Southern California.

As night fell, we headed over to the camping site only to find that the RV Rampage had not arrived. We set up our tent but had counted on the RV to come bearing supplies, so by the time it was pitch black, we realized we would probably need to build a fire. We had to drive up the street to a grove to pick firewood in the dark. Driving back on the dark, deserted mountain road, I said to Reggie, wouldn’t it be creepy if we were sitting here in silence and all of a sudden, we heard someone in the backseat say, “hello.”

Creepy.

We drove down the hill, almost running out of gas, finally finding a general store that had no actual food outside of candy bars and chips. Miserable, we contemplated if it was possible the RV Rampage had suffered a terrible accident as they were hours late, and it was scary to think about because there was no cellphone reception up in the mountains so we had no way of checking to see if they were alright.

Luckily, by the time we got back, the RV had arrived. The kids told a harrowing tale of having their tire blown out by a jutting rock and a non-working bathroom, but honestly, there is no better feeling than being out in the woods, in front of a raging fire with good friends and wondering what else we can cook in a packet of foil.

Did anyone else see the previews for next week’s Arrested Development and think that clip of Scott Baio as the lawyer Bob Loblaw was the most brilliant thing in years to hit television? If you don’t know why that’s funny, visualize Scott Baio in what looks like a Jacoby and Myers commercial saying (say it outloud with him), “Hi, I’m attorney Bob Loblaw.”

Great article on Laveranues Coles and his announcement about being a survivor of sexual abuse.

Last night I had this dream that I went over to that Coffee Bean across from my office, except it was this really unique, social landmark type of cafe with a red exterior. They were going to tear it down to make way for some commercial developments, and people were protesting. I saw Coffee Bean guy and that overtalkative (and self-promoting) lawyer who’s always there, as well as one other recurring character who I always see there. They had signs and I noticed how it was funny that even though everyone was chanting something, CB guy was just quietly holding up his sign because, you know, he doesn’t talk in real life.

So I was there with my boyfriend and my brother, except my boyfriend was played by Brett, my cinematographer. I’m thinking, yeah, this place is cool and it would be great if they didn’t tear it down, when we all look up and we see what looks like a spaceship amongst the dark storm clouds disappearing into the upper layers of the atmosphere. The crowd gets electric, like we can’t believe what we just saw, and I remember thinking, I wish I had my camera. We were all just amazed that we saw this thing that we could tell our friends (and the tabloids) about. The thing looked like one of those helicopters with dual rotors up top and in the rear, but much larger and flatter on top (and without rotors). But then, before we could really process seeing that spacecraft, another one came down. I noted how fluid it moved, particularly laterally, not like a helicopter or any kind of craft we had. It came down above us and we all got scared. I remember thinking, this was a huge moment in human history…that I was experiencing an exact moment when we as a collective interacted with another type of being and this was an undeniably monumental piece of reality. It was huge, knowing that for a fact, there had been contact made and from this point forward, human history and existence would never be the same. But then this huge red beam came out of it and it was washing over people, shortcircuiting their hearts.

We all ran and I felt the most terrifying thing I have ever felt–the knowledge that I was going to die very soon, and that there was no way around it.

I managed to stop the dream but not wake up, and I spent the rest of my sleeptime going over the meaning the dream, even though I wasn’t awake. I thought about it’s important not to live in a large city as they are most susceptible to being targets of an attack. And that my brother was safe because he was in Fremont, and Fremont was a suburb. I made a mental note that I needed to move out of the city ASAP. I also thought about how my brother gets when he gets scared…he locks up and starts screaming and you can’t reason with him. I realized that realistically, it would come down to a choice when an attack came down–of staying with him and dying, and of having to leave him behind.

When I finally woke up in the morning, I was pretty freaked out. The dream was so vivid and realistic, and most disturbing of all–rational in its “post dream” analysis of the dream’s message, that it hung over me the rest of the day and I found myself lost in thought, thinking about it.

I’m not saying the dream means that we are in danger of an alien attack. But it did make me think of how sooner or later, we are going to have to be introduced to a world outside of our planet and make contact with other intelligent, sentient species, and as has been a theme in human history, there will be conflicts over dominance and a race to find which group has the better technology when it comes to warfare to dominate the other side into submission. There will need to be an ambassador who represents the world, and of course, the U.S. will want to play that part or be a large part of that group. I would not want anyone from the Bush administration representing us, with hidden agendas and a dominate first before being dominated. Why does our first instinct have to be one of suspicion and fear? That’s why all these movies about aliens involve us being attack. I feel like if they attacked us, it’d be because we’re scared assholes who did something first. If they’re so much more advanced than us, I don’t think they would care enough about us to attack us, just like we don’t attack ant hills that we see in our backyards unless they’re doing something intrusive or biting us. We really don’t give a fuck about them.

In other news, a huge cockroach landed on me today, but it flew away as quickly as it landed.

DRunk Post!

So I’m here for the show. That last post wasn’t supposed to post since I tried to save the draft when my coworker came to get me for breakfast, but I checked the blog and lo and behold,there it was. Sorry for the boring post. It wasn’t finished.

The show has been non-eventful, other than many, many, many middle aged overweight men staring at my breasts as they walk by. It’s very obvious and annoying, but I get the opportunity to pitch my company and product so maybe I can actually convert some sales out of it. It’s a security show so it’s mostly ex-military/law enforcement people and salesmen/computer programmers. For some reason, they act starved for the sight of women.

I was accused of being standoffish and non-involved in social activities outside of work when it came to coworkers, so I headed to Pleasure Island with them to spend “quality time.” Pleasure Island is this area in Orlando that’s like Disneyland for adults. The last time I heard a place described as Disneyland for adults, it was a sex club in downtown Los Angels, where I ran into this guy I went on 1 date with. Totally awkward. And yes, I declined a 2nd date with him because he smelled funny. And then, here he was at a sex club, having sex with some fat chick in public.

But I digress.

For ab0ut $21, you get access to a handful of bars and clubs, as well as outdoor stages and entertainment. My coworker had his kids with him so we hung out in the general area, walking around and playing carnival games (I won his daughter a stuffed shark shooting hoops). I checked out this club called 8 Trak that was a 70s/80s danceclub, but it was so overflowed with people from the show (i.e. middle aged midwestern people grooving on the dancefloor in birkenstock/white socks ensembles), that I had to leave; the place was prime for people watching but a visual trainwreck. We walked around but truth be told, there really weren’t any good looking people or interesting enough things going on to not make us not want to get really drunk and go home. So I had my 3 Ketal One and RedBull and spent the rest of the night riding the Disneyland Shuttlebus, discussing with my playa coworker why he needs to be more of a player while he’s single.

Hate the game, not the player.

I’m going to go surf Craigslist for weed now.

Fucking peace, y’all.

I’m currently in Orlando, staying at one of the Disneyworld resorts where everything down to my bar of soap has a picture of Mickey on it. I’m here for a security trade show for work, and am still waiting for my coworkers to get ready. I was told we were meeting at 8am, so I pulled myself up at the west-coast buttcrack of dawn and waited, and waited, and waited, and finally woke them up at 8:20. Man, could have slept in an extra hour.

On the cab ride over to our hotel, we had this 60 year old Italian driver who loved to talk. He told us that he had an ex-wife, a wife and a girlfriend. I told him, I bet it sucks if your wife and girlfriend don’t get along. He said, if one of them don’t like it, who cares. If two of them don’t like it, you leave the city. If you got three women mad at you, you leave the country.

I met up with Muskrat and her husband One F last night and headed out to PF Chang’s. The Asian Pear Mojitos are awesome. It looks like married life is treating them well and they’re both a blast to be with. Sarah managed to bring up my junior high perm less than 10 times, and I’m proud of her for her restraint.

Timeline of Katrina Response

George W. Bush should be tried as a war criminal, as much for what he’s done overseas, as what his carelessness and ineptitude have done to his own people.

(link courtesy of Nerd Island)

I had a whole commercial crew using my place as a location yesterday so that meant about 25 people in my place. But that also meant plenty of people for this Gemini to talk to, and of course, the conversation turned to our idiot president and his moronic responses in the media to Hurricane Katrina.

We had watched Cspan last Friday night when they showed the president touring the area and his press conference. My favorite was when he talked about New Orleans coming back to be a better city because (*smirk* *snicker*) he’d had a lot of fun in that city. “Sometimes too much fun,” he ribs the guy behind him. Um…thousands of people have died and even more are homeless and devastated. The American people are terrified and angry and he’s using a national press conference to make jokes about getting wasted in New Orleans? Good God, this is the president of the United States showing zero empathy or understanding of the grave situation. May I remind you, BILL CLINTON WOULD HAVE NEVER DONE THAT. And Bill Clinton would have flown in from wherever he was to visit the area and comfort the people as soon as he could. Not stay on vacation for 3 more days until his behavior became blatantly negligent.

So last night we’re watching The Daily Show which had some great clips of Bush talking about the Hurricane including the video clip of the aforementioned press conference. [Here’s the clip. Go to “Inarguable Failure”] Everything Bush says is so blase and shallow, it’s like you going up to him and saying, hey, my wife died. She was my world, man…I don’t know what I’m gonna do. And he slaps you on the back and says, “Shit, man, you know…uh…yeah…you’ll find a better girl. As they say back in Houston where I’m from, the limbs of the pussy tree hang heavy.” (*expression credit to Robert*) The man is not only socially inappropriate, but it’s not a joke anymore. This man is dangerous to the American people. People are dying here and overseas because of him, and the rest of the world is losing respect for us quickly at best, and downright hostile to us at worst.

Alan, one of the guys with the shoot put it best: What he’s doing is downright criminal. If we are willing to go through impeachment procedures because Clinton stuck a cigar up a fat chick’s cooter, then why are we not impeaching Bush when he lied about why we went to war (what fucking weapons of mass destruction?) and resulted in the deaths of so many? Because by turning on him it will make us look bad to other countries? But if we admitted a mistake and as a people, impeached the person we hold responsible, wouldn’t it make us look united and place the responsibility on the idiocy of one man and his administration? I feel like politically, that would have been a better strategy, rather than us staying in Iraq now because to pull out would be showing weakness in admitting that we had made a mistake. This needing to stand behind our country campaign they’re umbrella-ing our support under is bullshit. Yes, we need to unite. Yes, we need to stand behind our country. But they’re using this campaign as our need to stand behind our lying, thieving, negligent administration, and the biggest stance we could collectively make would be to admit that we the people made a mistake in electing this slob our leader (for TWO TERMS!) and that we are courageous and responsible enough to make things right.

Why is this man not impeached? I ask myself that every time I turn on the news and watch coverage of Katrina showing people sobbing over the family and homes they’ve lost. I ask myself that every time I read another report that more people (Americans and Iraqis) have been killed overseas. Natural disasters are inevitable and devastating. War is good for the economy. Blah blah blah blah. But overall, these don’t change the fact that Bush is a dangerously inept and bungling “leader” (I use that term loosely and spitefully), and that our country and our relationship with the rest of the world are deteriorating at a frightening speed. We still have years to go before this administration wraps up and we can begin the recovery. Can his supporters and his Republican cronies in Congress really call themselves patriots and sleep at night knowing the devastation he’s bringing upon this country? Shame on all of you.

In other news, here’s a transcript of what the New Orleans mayor had to say. I really like this guy. He’s a fighter and a leader.

And meanwhile in my home state…muuuuutherfucker.

They’ve made a film out of one of my favorite books, Shopgirl, by Steve Martin. The IMDB page says that Jimmy Fallon was supposed to play Jeremy but dropped out, which is a shame because he would have been perfect as Jeremy. Jason Swartzmann is a little too neurotic and dark, but who knows. I’m psyched to see it.

Celine on Larry King

Okay, the subject matter and sentiment I can feel and agree with; she makes some great points. I respect her passion and outrage. I do. I really appreciate that people are being outspoken because we need to be outraged and heard right now and it’s powerful to see that this is affecting people and we’re helping each other out. But that clip was uncomfortably borderline parody. She starts out like she could break into a Celine power ballad at any moment. Then there was, “Let them touch those things for once.” And did she say helicobsters? Like lobsters with helicopter blades?

Wow, Kanye. Even though what you said is probably true, wish you hadn’t sounded like such an idiot.

I know I get a lot of flack for it, but I’ve always liked Stephon.

Ann Rice on New Orleans

A moving and upsetting article in today’s NY Times with an interview with my friend Cheryl, who had to evacuate New Orleans. Please donate money to the Red Cross.

For Survivors: Sorrow, Relief and Questions About Rescues

By MARC SANTORA and DAMIEN CAVE
Published: September 4, 2005

After a week of watching her city descend into chaos and despair – after seeing the unbelievable images of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens struggling to survive – Cheryl Bratt said she could not care less about what she may have left behind and lost.

Like others who have arrived in New York, Ms. Bratt, who left New Orleans hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, is simply struggling to make sense of why she was so fortunate while so many others were not.

“I have been crying for days,” she said yesterday.

Ms. Bratt, 26, arrived in New Orleans four years ago as a Teach for America corps member and decided to stay after falling in love with the city and its people. She also developed strong ties with some of her students, many of them born into poverty.

Since reaching the comfort of her mother’s home in Yorktown Heights in Westchester County, Ms. Bratt said, she has spent her waking hours trolling for information about friends and former students.

States across the country have been stepping up to announce their willingness to take in students and others displaced by the storm, and New York has joined them.
Gov. George E. Pataki announced yesterday that New York would welcome students in all grades and would also offer state-resident tuition rates at the state’s colleges for displaced students.

Outside the public overtures, many New Yorkers are privately welcoming friends and family who have escaped from all parts of the Gulf Coast. But interviews with many evacuees from New Orleans suggest that their relief at being alive is tinged with a mix of guilt and confusion about why so many of their fellow citizens did not receive the help they needed to get out.
Jeffrey Presley, 27, who left New York on Aug. 10 to start law school at Tulane University, managed to flee New Orleans early. And while feeling relieved, he, too, struggled with the glaring disparity between those with the means to escape and those trapped in a living Bruegel painting.

He said that as he and a friend drove out of town, even before the storm hit, they thought about those left behind. On the radio they kept hearing the same message: Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate. It seemed like a command that few could possibly obey.

“We were sitting there and thinking that New Orleans is a city where most of the residents are reliant on public transportation,” Mr. Presley said. “It was a sickening feeling thinking all these people are going to die unless they get them out.”

Mr. Presley, who flew to New York last week after driving to Houston, said he still cannot make sense of the disaster.

“We all feel haunted by the entire situation,” said Mr. Presley, who has already enrolled for classes at Brooklyn Law School and now lives in Williamsburg. “We were able to leave, and we worried about getting out and going to law school, but we’re so much better off than so many other people.”

At Tulane, Kimberly Cernak, 20, used to tutor low-income public school students. She said that during the flooding, poverty – as well as age and infirmity – became a dividing line in New Orleans.

“I’ve been thinking about those kids and their families and wishing there was some way I could know they’re O.K.,” said Ms. Cernak, who came to live with her grandparents in Staten Island and plans to complete her senior year at Columbia University, which is accepting some students displaced by the hurricane.

“It shows you there’s a lot we still need to do as a country to make sure that in times like these everyone can get out,” she said. “No matter how much money you have, no matter how many cars you have.”

Ms. Cernak, who left New Orleans on Aug. 27, said it was difficult to begin the school year thinking about the chaos she left in her wake. “At this point,” she said, “I can’t wait for the flood waters to recede, but I have to finish my academic career.”

She said she had called the local Red Cross in New York City to volunteer, but that she still felt a sense of helplessness. “It has been really frustrating and really overwhelming,” she said.

Tom Thayer, 39, a partner in a French Quarter bar called d.b.a, said he left New Orleans before the storm only because he did not want to be without air-conditioning for a few days. Since the flooding, he has received cellphone text messages from friends who stayed behind. They described defending their homes with guns against looters, an image that continues to keep him awake at night.

“All I have dreamed about was these people being in boats, getting shot at,” he said.

Mr. Thayer, who used to live in New York City and is staying at a friend’s apartment on the Upper West Side, said that many of his employees were struggling musicians. The recovery effort, he said, would probably have been carried out better if the victims had not been poor.
Ms. Bratt agreed. “As a teacher, the motto is supposed to be ‘Leave no child behind,’ ” she said. “We ended up leaving too many children behind.”

She considers herself fortunate to be safe in New York, but Ms. Bratt says she cannot help but cry when she reads the text message sent to her yesterday morning by a former student from New Orleans, Quiana.

A 16-year-old, Quiana is now stranded in Baton Rouge and faces the prospect of leaving her mother to attend school in California, where her grandmother lives.

“All my uncles on my daddy’s side are still there,” Quiana wrote. “And nobody has heard from them.”

This is a letter to the New York Times that my friend Cheryl sent in. She was the director of Teach for America in New Orleans, and was lucky enough to evacuate the city in time last week. Knowing Cheryl who’s very vocal and pro-active, I have a feeling she had plenty more to say about the government’s inefficiency and early incompetency in dealing with New Orleans:

To the Editor:

Re “Despair and Lawlessness Grip New Orleans as Thousands Remain Stranded in Squalor” (front page, Sept. 2):

As a now-former resident of New Orleans, given my evacuation, I am shocked by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and appalled by our government’s response to the disaster in my city. Despite the years of warnings given by Senator Mary L. Landrieu and others about this possibility, federal spending was continuously cut and threats of this destruction were ignored.

What I’ve read about only in third-world countries – hunger, rape, looting and death – is now happening in my former home, and I feel sick knowing there aren’t enough people or resources to get this chaos under control because our government ignored the broken system for so long.
It is the good will of the millions of Americans who are currently donating money, resources and their own services that will save the people in New Orleans while our government twiddles its thumbs and literally leaves my neighbors behind.

Cheryl Bratt
Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
Sept. 2, 2005

*********

Has anyone heard anything about the government supposedly risking this catastrophe because if the land was deemed uninhabitable after a major catastrophe, they would be able to drill for oil in that area? I know there are always an abundance of conspiracy rumors and when it comes to money, nothing our government does surprises me, but I was wondering if anyone had any credible sources or links.

If anyone is looking for first person live updates of the situation in New Orleans, check out:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/2005/09/02/

This is his interview with someone who is currently at the Convention Center. That situation is beyond belief. The whole situation is beyond belief. Please donate funds to the Red Cross.

From The Interdictor (9/1/05)

The Real News

The following is the result of an interview I just conducted via cell phone with a New Orleans citizen stranded at the Convention Center. I don’t know what you’re hearing in the mainstream media or in the press conferences from the city and state officials, but here is the truth:”Bigfoot” is a bar manager and DJ on Bourbon Street, and is a local personality and icon in the city. He is a lifelong resident of the city, born and raised. He rode out the storm itself in the Iberville Projects because he knew he would be above any flood waters. Here is his story as told to me moments ago. I took notes while he talked and then I asked some questions:

Three days ago, police and national guard troops told citizens to head toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge to await transportation out of the area. The citizens trekked over to the Convention Center and waited for the buses which they were told would take them to Houston or Alabama or somewhere else, out of this area.

It’s been 3 days, and the buses have yet to appear.

Although obviously he has no exact count, he estimates more than 10,000 people are packed into and around and outside the convention center still waiting for the buses. They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them.

There are many infants and elderly people among them, as well as many people who were injured jumping out of windows to escape flood water and the like — all of them in dire straights. Any attempt to flag down police results in being told to get away at gunpoint. Hour after hour they watch buses pass by filled with people from other areas. Tensions are very high, and there has been at least one murder and several fights. 8 or 9 dead people have been stored in a freezer in the area, and 2 of these dead people are kids.

The people are so desperate that they’re doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians.

The buses never stop.

Before the supplies were pitched off the bridge today, people had to break into buildings in the area to try to find food and water for their families. There was not enough. This spurred many families to break into cars to try to escape the city. There was no police response to the auto thefts until the mob reached the rich area — Saulet Condos — once they tried to get cars from there… well then the whole swat teams began showing up with rifles pointed. Snipers got on the roof and told people to get back.

He reports that the conditions are horrendous. Heat, mosquitoes and utter misery. The smell, he says, is “horrific.”

He says it’s the slowest mandatory evacuation ever, and he wants to know why they were told to go to the Convention Center area in the first place; furthermore, he reports that many of them with cell phones have contacts willing to come rescue them, but people are not being allowed through to pick them up.