September 2006 Archives| Monday, September 25, 2006 |
Email I just sent to NBC Nightly News...
My husband and I don’t live in Louisiana or Mississippi or any of the other areas affected by hurricane Katrina. But like so many others whose lives were not personally touched by the devastation in the aftermath of the storm, we do know someone who had to flee New Orleans as the storm bore down on the city. Luckily he made it to Houston where he stayed for weeks with his family waiting for word to come that it was safe to return, all the while not knowing if his home was still there waiting for him, if his life was in ruins, what he would do once he was able to go back. Equally lucky for our friend was the fact that his home and possessions weathered the storm relatively unscathed.
I listened to part of your story tonight on the football team’s “triumphant” return to the Superdome, and read it in its entirety just now. I have to say that I am profoundly disappointed, not in your story, but in the attitude of the people who are celebrating this grotesque and disturbing use of funds that would obviously be put to better use helping those people who were not as lucky as my friend, whose lives are still in shambles after more than a year.
All the investigations, all the finger pointing, all the buck passing...what have all these things given us?
Monday night football.
$185 million dollars spent to restore ONE building.
$185 million dollars.
ONE building.
It seems that the same mistakes made in the days and weeks following Katrina are still being made and that the people in power, the people with the authority to make these decisions have obviously learned nothing from the pain and heartbreak that millions of people have had to endure in the last year. I understand that there are some people who are happy to see the team return. I understand the fact that we all need distraction, we all need a place to go to forget about the troubles in our lives even if only for one night. But wouldn’t the pain, the troubles, the heartbreak be greatly relieved if more of the citizens of the towns and cities affected had homes from which to watch a football game?
My husband told me that he read on the Yahoo NFL Sports page that FEMA paid $140 of the $185 million needed to remodel the Superdome. Help me out here...FEMA, unless I’m mistaken, stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Federal Government thought it an emergency, a FEDERAL emergency mind you, to fix a hole in ONE building while, according to your own story, “...a high-rise hotel, an office tower and an upscale shopping center stand empty just a few hundred feet from the stadium, with white boards covering blown-out windows. A few miles away, entire neighborhoods are wastelands of decaying houses.” Am I the only one who sees a problem with that? As I type this, my husband is watching the game on television. Archie Manning was just on (I had to ask my husband who he was) and the way he summed up his feelings on the entire night is, “We got our building back, we got our football team back, and that’s great news!” That’s really IS great news, Mr. Manning. How’s your house?
Do the people who donated money to FEMA to help aid hurricane victims know that their money probably actually went to restore the Superdome? I’ll bet it wouldn’t have cost one tenth of the $185 million price tag to fly all those people out to another stadium and let them watch a football game while the rest of it went to put roofs back over the heads of the people of New Orleans who are even now displaced, living in government issued trailers or in other states because they have no place to live where they decided to settle. How many homes would that $185 million have built?
How much money is going to be generated by tonight’s game and subsequent broadcast revenue? Does the NFL have any plans to return even a portion of the $140 million that should have gone to rebuilding people’s lives but instead went to hurry along the business of making more money?
I’d be interested in seeing you do a story about that.
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| Friday, September 15, 2006 |
Well yah, so it’s been awhile. I was supposed to post a couple of weeks ago, at the behest of my significant other because he was (is?) paranoid that people will think I’m not posting or chatting because I can’t get near the computer. I’ll lay that to rest right now and say that it’s just because I haven’t felt like it. Besides, it isn’t like anybody actually reads this fucking thing anyway.
Last weekend we had the boys over for our visitation and they wanted to go to a skate park. They’ve been bugging my husband for a month or 7 about going to this one that is about a half hour drive from where we live. More importantly, the ‘session’ is 3 hours long so basically Gary would have been sitting in an uncomfortable chair bored out of his mind for at least 3 hours sammiched between at least a half hour of driving each way. Add to that the fact that the kids are suffering post traumatic stress directly related to having to go back to school and were acting like idiots in public and Gary was at the end of his rapidly fraying rope. I had to get all wicked step-mother on the twitchy offspring but I’ll get to that in due time.
So while I was attempting to find something in the area of the park for us to do for the 3 hours that the kids were attempting to break something while getting some air, a thought occurred to me and I dragged Gary into the bedroom to ask him his thoughts. The twins had a day game on Sunday and I suggested that we go. I figured the kids wouldn’t mind not being able to go to the park if they got to go to a ball game instead and Gary was already sick and didn’t feel like doing anything so I figured if it was something he liked he would be more inclined not only to go but to also have a good time. He said it sounded like a fine idea so we came back out and asked the kids who of course said yes, tickets were ordered, merriment was had by all.
This is where the wicked step-mother thing comes in. Gary and I go into the bedroom to smoke and he says to me (in between sniffles) “I’m making a mental note about this for next year.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know if it’s because they’ve gone back to school or what but they have been twitchy as hell all day.”
He proceeds to fill me in on the day’s events up to that point. Seems when they went grocery stopping earlier a cashier at the store actually had to yell at the kids because they were bouncing a ball up and down one of the aisles. They also jumped around and twirled on the cart, threw the football back and forth between them in the backseat on the way to Burger King to pick up dinner, and insisted on spinning the little coin drop thing at the BK counter over and over again.
They didn’t even act like that when they were little. There was no reason for them to be acting like that at 12 and 13 years old. While we were in the bedroom, they had fired up the playstation and were playing a game. I came out into the living room and very quietly said, “Put the game on pause, please.” and sat down in the chair across from them. They immediately took on the posture of the deer caught in the headlights “Oh shit what did we do?” attitude that children are apt to adopt right before they zone out until the parent ceases with the Charlie Brown’s teacher “whaa whaa whaa whaa” noises.
“Your father just told me that a cashier at the store had to yell at you today?”
“Yeah...”
“I want to make something very clear to you and I want you to listen very carefully because I want to make sure that we all understand what is expected of you tomorrow.”
“Ok...”
“That behavior will NOT be tolerated tomorrow. Your father does not feel well and I’m sure he would much rather stay home on the couch. But we both know that you want to go to that skate park but you know that your father and I would be bored out of our minds while you spent the afternoon skating. Going to this game tomorrow is a compromise and something that we can all do together. We can’t exactly afford it, but I have no qualms about getting up in the middle of that game, coming home and having you both sit on that couch until it’s time for you to go home. You’re both old enough that you should know how to act in public and I won’t have you acting like that.”
“Ok.”
They were both very well behaved all day and a good time was had by all...especially me in that when I sat down in the seat, my legs didn’t even touch the sides of the chair..yay!
I had a dress fitting for my SIL’s upcoming nuptials a couple of weeks ago and I go for my final fitting tomorrow. I don’t know if I’ve gotten smaller since the first time I tried it on or if the torture device I was wearing under it was doing its job, but it pretty much fell off me as I walked out of the dressing room...I can’t wait to see what I look like with a fitted dress and a waist.
My mom had another toe amputated this week. I’m advising her to see a lawyer because the entire reason she had to have it removed was because her insurance company refused to pay for the shoes she has to wear for her prosthetic, and that caused an ulcer to form on her toe and it got infected. Bastards.
I saw somebody yesterday for the first time since about a year before my surgery. She didn’t recognize me at first and when I worked with her, she took great pleasure in calling me “Pie Face” because, in her words, my face was so round that it looked just like a pie. Keeping in mind that this girl is VERY large herself, the first thing I said after I said hi was “I guess you can’t call me pie face anymore, huh?” Sweet.
I’m having my bus pass picture redone next week because it no longer looks like me.
I started playing poker again over at pokerstars.com last week. Didn’t do well at all in the real money tourneys but I won one of fake ones so wtg me.
I was watching National Geographic channel the other night and there was a show about a “lost tape” of Hitler talking about Russia and Finland. It was all about how he was telling the king of Finland that Germany had their back if Russia invaded. What Finland didn’t know was that Hitler had already signed a treaty with Stalin saying that Germany would not intervene if Russia were to invade Finland. He also talked about how the only reason he invaded Russia was for the oil reserves and that the way he got it past the people of Germany was by saying it was “pre-emptive” because Russia posed a “serious threat” to Germany...
Wow...Deja Vu.
We got a new tv...it’s flat screen. It rawks.
:)
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