The Coffin Fly

2006-03-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

As many of the VIETNAMESE have lived in LOUISIANA and TEXAS, it should be NO SUPRISE that they may have brought some CAJUN and SOUTHERN cooking styles out here to CALIFORNIA. Post KATRINA...I'm sure more than a few have evacuated to this area, and they were known to run many of the seafood restaurants down South (as they are fisherman). LITTLE SAIGON boasts 2 VERY GOOD CRAWFISH/BLUE CRAB/GUMBO (Flown in from Louisiana daily) spots! It's become a kinda craze down there, and this little babies ARE HOT!!!! It aint cheap (Crawfish $7.99 a lb), but what is nowadays...and it beats a trip to WATERLOGGED NEW ORLEANS EAST, Cap'n. I've eaten at them both and THEY ARE GREAT!

THE BOILING CRAB
14241 EUCLID STREET #C-116
GARDEN GROVE, CA 92843

(714) 265 CRAB (2722)

CRAWFISH-SHRIMP-OYSTERS
Monday thru Friday 3PM till 10PM
Saturday thru Sunday 12PM till 10PM

MENU

BLUE CRAB (Seasonal) $5.99 a lb.
OYSTERS (Raw) (Seasonal) $7.99 a lb.
CRAWFISH (Seasonal) (Mkt Price) (was $7.99 a lb. as of this writing)

Makin' Friends!

2006-03-03T14:45:00.000-08:00

Louisiana Gangs That Fled Katrina Heighten Houston Murder Rate

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- When New Orleans residents streamed into Houston six months ago to escape the floodwaters caused by Hurricane Katrina, they brought in gangs and the violence that goes with them.

The city had 170 homicides from September through Feb. 22, 28 percent more than in the same period a year earlier, according to the Police Department. In 29 cases, displaced Louisianans were the victims, the suspects or both.

Many of the evacuees came from public-housing projects, where gangs engaged in territorial disputes and such crimes as selling drugs. Once connections were re-established, the groups set up drug and prostitution rings and began settling scores, said Police Sergeant Brian Harris, a member of the Gang Murder Squad that Houston formed this year.

``We already had gangs, and the violence level was increasing already,'' said Charles Rotramel, executive director of Youth Advocates, which works with teenagers in crime-ridden neighborhoods of the fourth-largest U.S. city. ``Then you add to that this factor of gangs from New Orleans. They're walking in blind, but looking to make money and establish territory, and their level of violence is really high.''

Through June 30, Houston will spend $6.5 million on overtime pay to add the equivalent of 150 officers to the streets, said Lieutenant Robert Manzo, a spokesman for the Police Department. Houston is seeking reimbursement for some of the money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said.

`Nature of the Beast'
Police estimate that Houston's population has grown as much as 150,000 since Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. The city has about 2 million people.

Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, killed 1,330 people and forced 770,000 from their homes. The storm displaced the most Americans since the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s. Hurricane Rita, which struck near the Texas-Louisiana border in September, contributed to the flow of evacuees into Houston.

The exodus from the storm-torn region made an increase in crime inevitable, said Angelo Edwards, a neighborhood activist with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn.

``It's just the nature of the beast,'' said Edwards, a New Orleans business consultant who moved to Houston and became vice president of the Acorn Katrina Survivors Association.

Crime didn't rise right away, Harris said, because relief funds were being distributed to evacuees, and gang members were looking for old friends.

Sharing Information
The gangs were a patchwork of groups that operated around housing projects, Edwards said. Before Katrina, the city ran 10 developments, according to the New Orleans Housing Authority's Web site. The projects and more than 700 sites scattered across the city served about 49,000 residents.

The first Houston murder attributed to evacuees occurred on Nov. 20, when a 21-year-old man was shot in the head, chest and arm at a pool hall.

As killings and robberies mounted, police on Jan. 15 formed the 10-member Gang Murder Squad, which linked many of the crimes through victims, suspects, witnesses and vehicles. The squad on Jan. 27 announced the arrests of eight Louisiana evacuees and charges against three more. On Feb. 16, police added five Louisiana transplants to their wanted list.

Harris's group brought New Orleans police officers to Houston to offer their insights on the gangs. ``It helped us understand some of the conflicts, and secondly, provided a lot of intelligence information,'' he said.

Danger Zone
Increased police presence and security measures by apartment landlords helped prevent a larger increase in the murder rate, said Manzo, the police spokesman. The number of homicides this year through the first half of February matched last year's pace.

Most of the added patrols are in southwest Houston, where murders in one police district doubled in the final three months of 2005. The area is home to one-fourth of the 83,300 evacuees who live in government-financed apartments, according to a Houston Chronicle study.

Crime has eased in the past couple of weeks following a spate of thefts and fights after Christmas, said Anil Konotra, 42, owner of the Dollar N Dollar store at the Sharpstown Center in southwest Houston.

Evacuees concentrated in the area, known for crime and gangs, because the larger apartment complexes there readily accepted government rent vouchers, said Acorn's Edwards.
``Some of those apartments just weren't ready to be occupied by a large number of people,'' he said.

School Brawls

Tensions spread into area schools. Initial policies of separate classes and special wristbands for Louisiana students widened the divide between newcomers and locals, said Rotramel of Youth Advocates.

Houston schools last year had ``about a dozen serious altercations'' involving evacuees, the city's Independent School District said in December. A Dec. 7 brawl at a southwest Houston high school led to 27 arrests. Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra increased police presence at the schools by 10 percent.

Like gang members, students are ``trying to be very territorial, and they're trying to establish themselves in this city,'' Rotramel said.

Louisiana students and gangs in Houston share one thing in common: They are outnumbered. There were 5,566 students from New Orleans enrolled in the district as of Jan. 5, according to its figures. In Houston, the city's gangs ran into national groups including MS-13 and the La Tercera Crips.

The disadvantage may offer a chance to get evacuees out of gangs, Rotramel said. ``If you can get kids focused in a different direction and on their future rather than their present, their reasons for joining gangs fall way,'' he said.

to contact the reporter on this story:
Jim Kennett in Houston at jkennett@bloomberg.net.

Ohhhh, The SHAME of it all....

2006-02-27T22:59:00.000-08:00

As another LOCAL BOY out here in Los Angeles...It's great to see other NATIVES REPRESENTIN'!
- COFFIN FLY

Master P Faces Trial on Gun Charges

LOS ANGELES - A day after appearing on the "Dancing With the Stars" finale, Master P headed to court Monday where a judge ordered the hip-hop mogul and his younger brother to stand trial on weapons charges.

Master P, 38, whose real name is Percy Miller, and his brother Vyshonn Miller, 30, also a rapper who uses the stage name Silkk The Shocker, were arrested last month for carrying unregistered guns.

University of California at Los Angeles police spotted the weapons during a traffic stop. Prosecutors said the officers found a semiautomatic handgun under the seat of Master P, who was the passenger, and a revolver under the seat of his brother, who was driving.

Each was charged with one felony count of carrying an unregistered, loaded firearm. They face up to three years in state prison if convicted, prosecutors said.

Both are free on bail and are scheduled to return to court March 13 for arraignment.

Master P, founder and CEO of No Limit Records, paired with professional dancer Ashly DelGrosso for "Dancing With the Stars" after his teen rapper son, Lil' Romeo, dropped out of the ABC reality competition because of a basketball injury. He was rejected after the fourth show, but returned for a last dance Sunday.

In recent years, Master P has tried out for different NBA teams, including the Sacramento Kings and the Denver Nuggets. He also starred with his son on the Nickelodeon TV show "Romeo!"

5 THINGS NOT TO CONSIDER ON MARDI GRAS

2006-02-27T22:06:00.000-08:00

So it would seem.."Da Nile" ain't just a river in EGYPT, apparantly it flows THROUGH NEW ORLEANS too (and DEEP)...Tick..Tick ...TICK

1. The local financial crisis following Katrina has forced New Orleans to suspend its search for bodies from Hurricane Katrina, with as many as 200 corpses possibly still trapped in homes.

2.The city may also have to release thousands of remand prisoners because it has no money for jury trials.

3.The city's population fell from nearly 500,000 to less than 200,000 after Katrina.

4. With hurricane season three months away, worries surface about whether the levees and floodwalls of New Orleans will be ready to hold back another storm.

5.Bush will probably waive $7 billion in royalty payments by oil companies drilling in federal waters over the next five years.

LASSIEZ LES BON TEMPS ROULLER!!!
-COFFIN FLY

TIRED OF CHOCOLATE???

2006-02-27T21:30:00.000-08:00

Though I was just as amused as anybody when i heard idiot NAGIN's religious call for a CHOCOLATE CITY.....I have always detested the OLD UPTOWN WHITEYS who hate the poor blacks in the city and think it's a GREAT THING that KATRINA displaced them. I'm sure the AP didn't realize this significance when they posted the photo above of the recent TUCKS parade. In the picture, Carol Cowley waves while watching the Tucks parade during Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans. Look to the right of her and see the aged CRACKER ASSHOLE with the "TIRED OF CHOCOLATE" hat in the form of a HERSHEY's KISS. I'd like to see that MAGGOT try that a year ago. Well, at least he(she)'s old (white hair), and will no doubt be DEAD soon. Classy, D'awlin.

COFFIN FLY

COFFIN FLY SHOUT OUT! I love this GUY...Keep it up!

2006-02-27T18:25:00.000-08:00

This blog rules... http://neworleans.metblogs.com

sample:

Andrei, encore

posted by richard at 11:26 AM on November 26, 2005

Knowing the way I feel about Andrei Codrescu, a friend and neighbor just sent me the dust-jacket copy for his new book, New Orleans, Mon Amour. Not only is it thoroughly tedious and hackneyed (did you expect anything less?), but it's completely put me off breakfast, and I was really looking forward to breakfast, 'cause there's still a sandwich-sized chunk of holiday ham in the fridge.

Anyway, I'm not in the mood to suffer alone on this gloomy Saturday morning--which will certainly get gloomier before long, when it starts raining and my power goes out for the umpteenth time this month--so I'm sharing the dreck with you:

For two decades NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu has been living in and writing about his adopted city, where, as he puts it, the official language is dreams. How apt that a refugee born in Transylvania found his home in a place where vampires roam the streets and voodoo queens live around the corner; where cemeteries are the most popular picnic spots, the ghosts of poets, prostitutes, and pirates are palpable, and in the French Quarter, no one ever sleeps.... Alas, as we all now know, Paradise is lost.

New Orleans, Mon Amour is an epic love song, a clear-eyed elegy, a cultural celebration, and a thank-you note to New Orleans in its Golden Age.

--from Amazon.com

All of which begs a few questions for Mr. Codrescu, who's probably enjoying a similarly gloomy morning 80-some-odd miles from here at his home in Baton Rouge, where he's reading the New York Times or the Bucharest Times or any number of things besides this website:

1. This book: was it your idea or your publisher's? I mean, it's an allegedly free country, so you can publish whatever you like whenever you like, but don't you think--and don't take this the wrong way--don't you think it's a little soon? From where I sit, it reeks just a teeny, tiny bit of opportunism, like all those Time-Life books about September 11 that were on the bookshelves by October. But then, I'm sure you're planning to do something charitable with the proceeds, aren't you? ...Aren't you?

2. The hint of rushed opportunism is exacerbated by the book's title. Did you spend much time on it at all? Was New Orleans, Mon Amour the best you could do? A slovenly reference to Walker Percy, who was himself making a half-hearted, pun-ish homage to Alain Resnais? At the very least, egomaniac that you are, I would've thought you could come up with something like, Apres le Deluge, Moi.

3. I don't know if you penned the dust-jacket copy yourself or if it was done by some intern just out of Bryn Mawr, but from the way it's written, it sounds like New Orleans was experiencing some kind of Golden Age immediately before Katrina made landfall. Um, not so. I mean, don't get me wrong: things were fine--good, even--but "Golden Age"? The last time we had one of those was 30 years ago, when we were flush with oil money and folks were clamoring to get into the Superdome. Or possibly 100 years ago, when jazz was just getting started and Storyville was America's first experiment with legalized prostitution. ...New Orleans under Mayor Nagin? Brass, maybe. Possibly even bronze. But hardly gold.

Sample
Comments

More so than your three points, what I find most dreckish is Alas, as we all now know, Paradise is lost. Yes, our personal versions of New Orleans may be lost to us with the destruction and loss of key neighborhoods, the deaths of friends and neighbors, moving away of certain friends, the closure of businesses and a lot more. But, what Paradise is he referring to, and what exactly is lost? Why the hell are we (still) trying to romanticize what happened? It could have been a lot worse - it could have been the Southeast Asian tsnuami or the Pakistani quake.

(ISLE OF DENIAL ISSUE) 6 MONTHS AFTER...NPR Audio Program RoundUp.

2006-02-27T18:03:00.000-08:00

Varying audio reports and the unbearable "Poet" Codrescu keeps it UnReal. Go here...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5235978

Come On ....You just need to PARTY, brah.

2006-02-27T15:07:00.000-08:00

As long as you live in the heavilly GENTRIFIED sections of MARIGNY/FRENCH QUARTER...or the wealthy sections of UPTOWN. you won't feel like this poor guy who can't sleep nights. Most of the city lies in ruins...sorry, that's such a NEGATIVE SUBJECT. Fuck him, right??? I mean THE "PARTI" MUST GO ON!! Poor people are such COMPLAINERS!! (sarcasm)
-COFFIN FLY

Six months after Hurricane Katrina, emotional toll still high
Sun Feb 26, 5:08 PM ET
NEW ORLEANS, United States (AFP) - Every time New Orleans gets a hard rain, Gabriel Black drives to the levee to see how high the water has risen.

It has been six months since he stood guard in the lobby of the hotel his wife managed, using the flashlight mounted on his shotgun to fend off looters who rattled at the glass doors as his daughters slept uneasily upstairs.

Six months since he carried a man who had been savagely beaten to the Convention Center, only to be told by police that there was nothing they could do but let the man die.

Six months since his faith in his country was shattered.

But he has not been able to let go of the fear. And the anger. And the pain.

"I don't go out of my house a lot," he said as he sat behind his computer, his once muscle-bound frame softened by the loss of 28 pounds (13 kilograms). "I can't stand to be in crowds. It makes me very nervous."

"I definitely don't sleep. I sleep four hours at a time," said Black, 36. "My daughters go to bed, I'm awake. They wake up, I'm awake. I'm always awake."

As New Orleans struggles to rebuild entire neighborhoods destroyed by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, many of those who were caught in its wake are still struggling to rebuild their lives.

Shortly after the storm ravaged the Gulf coast on August 29, the US Department of Health and Human Services estimated that 500,000 people could be in need of mental health services.

But the trauma did not end when the winds died down, said Ann Wilder, a counselor with the New Orleans Mental Health Resilience Team.

That was because human beings require a certain level of stability and control over their lives.

And nothing is normal in New Orleans.

Friends and neighbors remain scattered across the country. Many of those who have returned are living in cramped trailers or staying with relatives who never expected them to be there for so long.

Deadened traffic lights have been replaced with stop signs. Houses that were knocked off their foundations by the floodwaters remain crumbled in the middle of the street. Grocery stores have limited hours. Favorite restaurants remain closed.

"If we can't get to our normal places we live in survival mode, never moving to thrive and we physically live in a fight-or-flight response," Wilder explained.

"People come in for chest pains, they come in for vomiting, aches and pains and we know the secondary reason is depression and anxiety."

For Black, and so many others scattered across the Gulf Coast, a secondary trauma came weeks after the storm with the slow realization that the help he expected simply was not going to come.

First, it was his landlord.

While his wife managed a hotel full of recovery workers and his daughters stayed with family in Georgia, Black yanked out carpets, bleached the walls and pulled broken tree limbs off his roof.

And after promising to compensate him for the work, Black's landlord charged him full rent. And he still has not fixed the hole in the roof or replaced the walls that are leeching black mould.

Then there was the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

It took until December for a trailer to arrive and three more weeks for the officials to give him the key. It took until February for financial assistance to arrive.

The politicians may have been the worst.

Instead of pulling together to fix the problems, they pointed fingers. And they tried to pretend that reports of violence Black saw with his own eyes were exaggerated.

Black could not go back to work as an air conditioning technician. Instead, he has started working as a freelance photographer and has taught himself how to create Gothic photo illustrations by meticulously blending images on his computer.

"I've found it's been very therapeutic for me. I'm able to express things in my artwork that get rid of some of those things," he said as he scrolled through Gothic images that included a self-portrait entitled "Rage", showing his mouth full of sharp fangs.

"It comes out dark but there's always some beauty in it."

I HEAR YOU, CHIQUITA!!!

2006-02-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

LOOK MA...........IT's A BLACK PERSON.....SEEEEEE! IN THE FAR RIGHT CORNER! I KNEW THINGS WERE "Back to Normal"!

It amazes me that the" LIFE MUST GO ON!" attitude about CARNIVAL persits in NEW ORLEANS. I'm sure it's mainly with people who have a place to stay and the wealth to PARTY. People are still displaced all around the country... Houses lie in RUIN in LARGE SWATHES across the CITY!!!! Wanna Hurricane, D'awlin? I'm with CHIQUITA....FUCK all Y'ALL!

New Orleans: Too soon to celebrate Mardi Gras?

Yes: 'I think we need to deal with what's real'

CNN.com asked two New Orleans residents affected by Hurricane Katrina to share their views on if New Orleans was holding Mardi Gras too soon after the storm.

(CNN) -- Chiquita Simms lived in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home. She and her son evacuated and are now living in Atlanta, Georgia. She explains why she believes the devastated Louisiana seaport should hold off on Mardi Gras events this year. Below are excerpts from a telephone conversation:

I'm not opposed to Mardi Gras -- I love it, I'm born and bred in it. What I am opposed to is my city prioritizing Mardi Gras over its people.

Everywhere you look there are blue roofs -- people are still without proper roofs. The downtown areas are nice, or I should say, they're better. Canal Street is OK; Bourbon Street is functioning; St. Charles Avenue is OK, but that's about it.

When you go into the neighborhoods, there's no housing for people. There is inadequate food, and they couldn't get sponsors because they can't afford the cleanup and the police, and you know, if you can't afford the party, you certainly shouldn't have one.

The mayor's made a comment. ... [Ray Nagin has] said that we can take these two weeks of Mardi Gras as a break from Katrina and take our minds off of it. As an evacuee, I don't ever have the luxury of taking my mind off Katrina until I have my life a little bit more stable.

I think having Mardi Gras sends the false message that our city is OK and that our people are OK, and that's it really going to contribute to our economy. I don't believe that it will.

People are going to probably get mad at me for saying this, but we've been doing Mardi Gras for 149 years prior to this year. This is the 150th anniversary. Our city is the poorest; the education system is horrible; our roads are full of potholes; we have the worst blighted property going.

In 149 years, this event has not benefited the communities that need it, so why would this year benefit them? Is that money going to go to the 9th Ward? You have to tell me how much, you have to show me a plan -- you're going to have to show me how it's going to benefit them this year unlike the last 149 years.

I don't think the city is getting back on its feet. When I went through the city on January 24, I went to the 17th Street levee, the one that breached. There's no one working on it. But when I drive down St. Charles, everybody is making Mardi Gras plans.

You can't tell me that you're rebuilding the city. You don't see any mass efforts or gutting out of houses, and I'm talking about the neighborhoods where people can't afford to do it, like the 9th Ward, which has mass devastation.

Mardi Gras is the tradition that it is, but I think we can live without it this year, [especially] with as much devastation as we've been through and knowing that 70 percent of the city still cannot return to live. I think we can do without it. To hell with tradition, I think we need to deal with what's real.

Instead of holding Mardi Gras, they need to organize. First, get some cohesion with the leadership. They're not even getting along with each other. I think they need to sit down and say, "Hey, everybody messed up from the top to the bottom, now let's look at how we can heal."

They need to show Americans that they are moving forward as leaders instead of being party planners. We need to sit down and stop arguing our private agendas and deal with Washington and get the type of aid that we need.

If we can build a democracy or stay in Iraq until we rebuild that country, then we can rebuild New Orleans. We need to focus on the solution and getting it done, not having a party. It's taken the focus off of what's really wrong with New Orleans.

SHOW US YOUR TITS!

2006-02-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

In previous exchanges, with anyone foolish enough to listen, I have at times indicated my gnawing displeasure with NEW ORLEANS constant theme of wasting it's GREAT (or at least "good" ) potential. Only a masochist would stay in that CITY if they actually expected anything remotely resembling progress. Even so...SHIT LIKE THIS ANNOYS ME. (SEE BELOW)

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-codrescu24feb24,0,1838777.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Once again...a self proclaimed MARDI GRAS authority explains just how CUTTING EDGE and RIBALD the ARTISTS and SATYRICISTS of the city are politically (so to speak). More like clueless. Is it not completely obvious as to the confused nature of this community when the the Krewe du Vieux supposedly "takes no prisoners" after 9/11 with its giant effigy of Osama bin Laden sodomized by a U.S missile floating past cheering crowds only to contradict themselves just a few scant years later with parade themes begging "Take us back, Chirac!" ??? As for the insipidly pretentious declaration that "the Krewe du Vieux newsletter seethed with a kind of pamphletary zeal unseen since Thomas Paine", I must note that living in that self imposed little bubble on the bayou always did tend to make one think they were at the center of the universe.
Living in the moment tends to not lend itself well to self analyzation. As for the image of Mardi Gras festivities becoming one of only TIT and COCK SHOWING (for beads and the like), NOBODY has promoted that more than FRENCH QUARTER locally run business. WE LOVE TO WHORE OUT OUR CULTURE. NEW ORLEANS never wants to take credit for the fact that for years...THEY HAVEN"T GIVEN A FUCK! They'd rather say CITY THAT CARE FORGOT..but bristle if you imply CITY THAT FORGOT TO CARE. They protect the charming old architecture while letting the poor uneducated black kids tap dance for quarters on Bourbon (How quaint!). Prior to the HURRICANE, We were enjoying a particularly vicious MURDER SEASON (My Momma tells me) based upon the poor seeds planted upon the polluted ground that is our local economy. Visitors always wax poetic the idea of getting a second home here while ignoring that fact that a majority of the poor locals can barely afford to rent. We are a severely SELF NEGLECTED City...so much so that ROMANIAN BORN OUTSIDERS seem to be the only ones writing about our dying traditions. When I hear people like ANDREI CODRESCU (Who i am sure means well) continue to misrepresent the importance of MARDI GRAS celebration over actual important things like FIXING THE FUCKING CITY, EDUCATING ITS LARGELY IGNORANT POPULACE, and hopefully MAKE IT A PLACE THAT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE IN LOVE WITH ITS HISTORY ONLY (and not it's FUTURE)...it shows me that AINT A GOD DAMNED THING CHANGED.

(Here's the ARTICLE that i refer to...as appeared in LA TIMES)

ANOTHER MARDI GRAS, AFTER THE DELUGE

By Andrei Codrescu, ANDREI CODRESCU's latest book is "New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writing from the City."
February 24 2006

OUTSIDERS DON'T understand Mardi Gras. When I told a friend from Massachusetts that we should take Mardi Gras to Washington to protest the flood of ineptitude that ruined New Orleans, she didn't get how truly outrageous that would be. She thought, like every TV-watching American, that Mardi Gras was just one day of the year when drunks parade down Bourbon Street hurling plastic beads at each other. Nor did she fully understand the nature of our catastrophe, the worst of which was not Hurricane Katrina but the flooding of the city through breached levees built by the federal government.

Mardi Gras is not just one day, it's a season that begins visibly after New Year's with social events that move from discreet to vivid until Mardi Gras day explodes, as Carnival ends and Lent begins. There are secret balls to decide the parade themes, sumptuous gatherings to elect royalty, masked balls to choose the courts, lavish dinners to honor newly minted kings and queens.

In Mardi Gras' 400-year history, the societies that ruled the krewes and parades were the same power brokers that ruled New Orleans. The festival itself, imported from medieval Europe, was a mechanism for letting out the true feelings, the frustrations of the populace. On Mardi Gras day, mobs rule the streets, and the rulers are obliged to shower the unleashed masses with gifts.

Carnival is essentially satirical, depicting folly, vanity and the vices, all the usually hidden flaws of humans who, it is hoped, will know better by Ash Wednesday, when they kneel before a priest and have a cross of ashes smeared on their penitent foreheads. "Carnival" derives from the Latin "carne vale," or "so goes the flesh." All human pleasure is temporary, but in what time remains the flesh is indulged.

In recent years, Carnival societies have become more political. Their satirical barbs have been directed at city and state officials, national leaders and world figures. The most daring parade, the Krewe du Vieux, which marches through the French Quarter, takes no prisoners. After 9/11, its giant effigy of Osama bin Laden sodomized by a U.S missile floated past cheering crowds. There were hundreds of "ghosts" wearing gas "masques." The Krewe du Vieux newsletter seethed with a kind of pamphletary zeal unseen since Thomas Paine.

This year, the same krewe put our profound anxiety and distress on display: Hundreds dressed as taped-up refrigerators marched in frigid weather; two enormous nude figures named Katrina and Rita, one black, one white, had explicit sex atop a float; a sea of FEMA blue tarps flapped in the wind from balconies, on floats, as capes on marchers. A sign proclaimed "Take us back, Chirac!" The blue tarp is the new flag of New Orleans, and the desire to return Louisiana to France is heard often, only half-facetiously.

Mardi Gras reveals New Orleanians to themselves: it's a spectacle and a portrait that is often brutal, and it would be downright intolerable without the liberal indulgence in the vices of the flesh that allow us to forget, forgive and move on.

Mardi Gras is also the only time when this city of intensely parochial neighborhoods comes together and displays its arts. Hundreds of years of dedication to spectacle have produced some profound talent. The high school marching bands of New Orleans are coached from within a tradition unknown elsewhere. In our nation of engineers, New Orleans is the province of artists.

This year there are few marching bands left in the city. The few functioning schools have been incorporated as "charter schools" that measure performance by "leap tests" and other abstractions devised elsewhere; they get no credit for the teaching of music and the arts. In a city were music is the transracial soul glue, this omission is unforgivable.

The city's psyche has been deeply wounded, and music, its medicine, is in exile. A number of musicians have returned from far-flung cities for this unique Mardi Gras, but for how long? Most of their houses were in the Lower 9th Ward and the parts of Treme and Midcity that were flooded.

This year, we need as much and as intense a Mardi Gras as we can muster to prove to ourselves that we still exist. It is the necessary beginning of our healing. We welcome tourists, but this Carnival is for those of us who are still in place. The national media, enamored of its Mardi Gras cliches, should pay special attention to the real Carnival's messages this year. Mardi Gras was never just spring break with drunken college students on Bourbon Street. But this year in particular, it's a different, more significant and more dangerous spectacle. Our very existence hangs in limbo. This may be our last party, if it isn't already a wake.

What's Left????

2006-02-22T23:16:00.000-08:00

I remember when I lived in NEW ORLEANS...reading the latest TIMES PICAYUNE "Our Opinions" page was sure to alarm me of the completely FUCKING moronic viewpoints my neighbors had. This blog continues that "still REPUBLICAN in the face of getting ASS FUCKED" position I hold so dear to my heart. http://www.thedeadpelican.com/ Blame the DEMS for helping the DARKIES and act like its all their fault that you live in a RACIST, BACKWARD, ECONOMICALLY SHITTY, TOXIC, RETARD and BIRTH DEFECT FACTORY of a State. Please explain WHY the REST OF THE COUNTRY should wanna save the RICH RACIST UPTOWNERS and DISASTER PROFITTING INTERLOPING GENTRIFIERS and VACATIONING PLEASURE HOUSE WEDDING CAKE HOUSE MARIGNY HOMOS that are left after the REAL NEW ORLEANIANS get pushed out? Sprinkle it with HEAPING DOSES of superstitious Christianity and THERE YA GO! Have fun eating those KATRINA WATERMELONS!

So What Was in Those Bizarre "Katrina Melons"? (from cbs wafb Channel 9)

Last December, 9 News reported on a bizarre outbreak of watermelons in St. Bernard Parish. They were growing everywhere, a post-Katrina phenomenon that had scientists scratching their heads. Now, the results of lab tests taken on the melons and soil are in.

Biologist Dr. Gary Ross took samples after the seeing the report of the strange melons on 9 News. It was feared that because watermelons are mostly made up of water, the melons in St. Bernard would be contaminated and unsafe to eat after Katrina released pollutants into local water and soil. So the melons were tested to find out exactly what was inside. And the news is good! The melons are absolutely fine and perfectly edible.

"The watermelons are pretty clean," said Dr. Ross. "They do not contain 'Katrina juice.' The watermelons had no pesticides, just a few metals, which are considered normal micro contaminates for plants."

LSU and the State Department of Environmental Quality conducted the testing on the samples Dr. Ross brought over.

Took a break...KATRINA is kind of depressing at TIMES!

2006-02-21T20:52:00.000-08:00

But I'm back...like a HERPETIC lesion breakout. Saw this recently on SCREENHEAD and it BEGS A SPELLCASTER LODGE concert appearance.

The Yngwie J. Malmsteen of the Casio remote keyboard, Croatian sensation Belinda Bedekovic is seen answering the musical question “just how much will people put up with to look at a cute woman who may have been recently gassed by a dentist?”

So incredible I'm alas not angry anymore (almost).

http://www.belindabedekovic.com/video_fl_en.htm

PASTOR BEDTIME SPEAKETH! http://www.pastorbedtime.com/

2006-01-09T16:40:00.001-08:00

During the KATRINA debacle I was trying , on the completly inadequate NOLA.com (predictable), to contact friends in the G.N.O. area to get them some help (locations..places to stay, etc.). People were generally freaking out and trying ,via this message board, to locate family, pets, friends, and co-workers.
Every 2 posts this completly TALENTLESS and WACKASSED SHITTY BAND named PASTOR BEDTIME kept posting their "KATRINA" song.....like a fucking DEMO!!

ACTUAL SONG LOCATED HERE
this was their "KATRINA" song
http://www.pastorbedtime.com/music/No_One.mp3

http://www.soundclick.com/pro/view/01/default.cfm?bandid=391784&content=main&songid=0

This was mind you....while people were looking for loved ones! I mean FUCK...all that destruction and these ASSHOLES find a way to SURVIVE???? Even though they are supposedly "from the PARISH" (and I guess CLUELESSNESS should be expected), CRASS and endlessly TACKY self promotion shouldn't pass unnoticed.....AND IT WASN'T! People were all pissed off (RIGHTLY SO), and posted all sorts of verbal assaults on the LAMENESS of these SHITHEADS.Friends alerted me to this as well and I put up several "sentiments" myself EXAMPLE:

(from NOLA.com Forums)
Marigny / Bywater issues forum
1763. Pastor Bedtime Eat Sh*t!
by LLamborghini, 9/4/05 13:46 ET
You cheeseball motherfucckers...The city is DYING and you want levity and people to lissen to your substandard "music". This New Orleans native vows to beat you like a LOOTER..

These comments varied on the PATHETIC BAND NAME CHOICE (PASTOR BEDTIME...FUCK YOU!), the absolute CHEAPNESS of their attempt to get someone to listen to their HORRIBLE MUSIC (http://www.pastorbedtime.com/), to the HIDEOUSNESS of the tune itself (SO AWFUL YOU"LL PRAY FOR KATRINA TO RETURN)! The moderators eventually took down all their posts, and consequently all the profane comments posted in response by myself and others. THREE MONTHS LATER...He(She) is actually responding (having scrolled up to get my info that I left for friends to contact me at (SCCCAAAARRRRYYY! HA HA HHAH AH!). The following are some of the recent coorespondences. ENJOY!!!!

From:
"Pastor Bedtime"

Markus or aka llamborghini:

Thanks for your kind words during the storm. It made the loss our
guitarist's life in the Parish, and then our homes much more bearable. How
could you be such an insensitive asshole when a band writes a song for it's
city lost, like Aaron Neville has, like the pathetic Motley Crue
regurgitating home sweet home, and many others...

Sure, talk shit about homegrown NOLA band from the confines of your computer
in LA? Give us a break! We've raised over 2800.00
(SERIOUSLY FELLAS...EVEN FEMA GIVES YOU MORE THAN THAT PITTANCE!- THE COFFIN FLY)
with shows and song sales
that were given to the Red Cross. So, Markus at 213.@%4.*%#6- Kiss our asses
and buy a ticket to our show and show some support instead of sucking your
own dick.

Pastor Bedtime

---(I guess cause I LIVE IN Los Angeles, he thinks I'm from there (as most shitheads from my homestate/CITY won't venture out of it UNLESS FORCED TO BY NATURAL DISASTER!!!...note the MOTLEY CRUE reference!). It's kinda like the idea of moving is SO ALIEN TO THEM that it ranks up there with READING and not having endless amounts of children you can't afford to take care of!!????? Mind you..I've said on the board that I'm a local...That MURPHY OIL plant must have given his parents extra juice for those TOXIC gills and flippers gifted upon his RETARD ass.)---

MY GLITTERING RESPONSE:

Wow...so you're feelings are hurt. Who gives a shit? People were looking for information on loved
ones...information on their homes, information on IMPORTANT MATTERS AT HAND, not your self
promotion constantly of your shitty band . I'M FROM NEW ORLEANS..you self promoting, shitty
musician asshole. Every 2 seconds you posted another retardedly bad song clip during a
crisis....it does NO ONE any favors. Sorry about your loss but I still feel you are a total idiot.
As for you wanting to appear as though you can get close to me...please do...FUCKING YOU UP sounds
like a great NEW YEARS resoulution.

HAHAHAHAHHAH. I'm still cracking up over your letter. I was down on the Lower 9 side of the breach
recently...drove up thru Arabi, Chalmette, n Violet recently with some friends. Place was totally
fucked...AMAZING. Please tell me your studios were there! No seriously...hey..lighten up. We all
got fucked in that hurricane...and you adding bad music to the nightmare just ticked some people
off, face it. So calm down, I'm sure you meant well. I moved outta that shitty Southern cesspool
precisely to get away from dumb hicks like yall. It's sad when anyone loses a home or a friend,
I'll grant you that....but if you only made just over $2000 whole dollars during the WORST
AMERICAN DISASTER IN HISTORY on that music, I think you should take that as an indication
nationwide of how bad you guys truly suck. Sorry....just pointing out the obvious to you,
ya'heards

P.S. Pastor Bedtime is the corniest ass name ever.

Your Friend
LLAMBORGHINI

SO THEN, YE OLDE PASTOR BEDTIME WRITES ME A LETTER THAT I ACCIDENTLY ERASED (DAM'N IT) THAT TELLS ME HE"S GOT "SOMETHING FOR ME IF I"M STILL IN TOWN" and "SORRY ABOUT MY CAREER (?) BUT HE"S RECORDING ON ISLAND RECORDS AND ...GET THIS ...U2's "THE EDGE" REALLY DIGS.. US" Now..I'm sorry..I have to stop...I'm laughing too hard to type this bullshit. They are FUCKING PRICELESS. I ADMIT IT..I was wrong...PASTOR BEDTIME is the funniest COMEDY TROUPE to ever come out of our beloved "APOCALYPTIC septic tank of a CITY".....EVER!

I responded in turn...

OK..Hysterical..my career failed???...what are you talking about? My career ? You don't even know
me, man. You know me off some NOLA message board in which you kept pushing your substandard music.
I'm sure you noticed others got annoyed..NOT JUST ME. Are you seriously that delusional? Clean that
toxic swamp water out of your ears man. C'mon..lighten up ..IT'S A JOKE. If we have anything in
common (and I'm sure that's doubtful) it's that NEW ORLEANS people have and celebrate a dark sense
of humor. Get over it. As for you having something for me...what...another shitty song? YOU ARE
KILLING ME!
and POPE SLEEPYTIME...you weren't seriously namedropping "the edge" were you? The only ISLAND you
are gonna play on is in the BERMUDA TRIANGLE, cap'n. HAHAHAHAHAH! Keep up the funny emails...lotta
NOLA refugees that have moved out here to LA are reading these chats (I mass email'em ..y'all are
gonna be cult soon!) ARE LOVING YOU GUYS! Keep up the excellent WORK!

Your FRIEND TILL THE END
MR MARKUS

IM HOPING HE(SHE) RESPONDS AGAIN....AS I AM DYING TO MAKE THIS A REGULAR FEATURE OF THE COFFIN FLY!!!!!!
CHECK OUT THEIR GROOVY BANDS SOUNDS....and KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE, Brah!
http://www.soundclick.com/pro/view/01/default.cfm?bandid=391784&content=main&songid=0

Seriously...go to this site..it's so BAD I can't even mock it further...and REMEMBER... to PLAY THE "MUSIC" and most importantly "Please be patient with Pastor Bedtime during this awkward phase".
http://www.pastorbedtime.com/

Mardi Gras: Made in China

2006-01-07T12:13:00.000-08:00

NEW MOVIE OUT EXPOSING WHO PAYS THE PRICE FOR "BIG EASY" RETARDO FEST. ANTI-GLOBALIZATION MOVIE WITH LOCAL TWIST.
JUST ANOTHER REASON TO CELEBRATE, AMERICA? THE COFFIN FLY SAYS "IN KATRINA'S AFTERMATH IT SEEMS THAT LOCALS MIGHT WANNA CONSIDER MAKING THEIR OWN BEADS...ECONOMICALLY SPEAKING. D'AWLIN".

Mardi Gras: Made in China follows the "bead trail" from the factory in China to Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, poignantly exposing the inequities of globalization. First-time director David Redmon cleverly illuminates the clash of cultures by juxtaposing American excess and consumer ignorance against the harsh life of the Chinese factory worker.

The film confronts both cultural and economic globalism by humanizing the commodity chain from China to the United States. Redmon follows the stories of four teenage women workers in the largest Mardi Gras bead factory in the world, providing insights into their economic realities, self-sacrifice, and dreams of a better life, and the severe discipline imposed by living and working in a factory compound.

Interweaving factory life with Mardi Gras festivities, the film opens the blind eye of consumerism by visually introducing workers and festival-goers to each other. A dialogue results when bead-wearing partiers are shown images of the teenage Chinese workers and asked if they know the origin of their beads, while the factory girls view pictures of Americans exchanging beads, soliciting more beads, and decadently celebrating. The conversation reveals the glaring truth about the real benefactors of the Chinese workers' hard labor and exposes the extreme contrast between women's lives and liberty in both cultures.

Meredith Lavitt, Sundance Film Festival

CHECK THEIR SITE AT
http://www.mardigrasmadeinchina.com/news.html

FLY PELICAN, FLY!

2006-01-05T20:29:00.000-08:00

Jayme Kalal and Myself, on one of our incredible mind bending days of DISASTER TOURISM back home, saw this charming little MASCOT. Sorta sums up what anyone doing a slight look around present-day NEW ORLEANS has got to be FEELING.
-Coffin Fly

COULDN'T AGREE MORE

2006-01-05T20:20:00.000-08:00

I SAW THIS on JOHNNY ADRIANI's BLOG...COULDN'T AGREE MORE
http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=1746

New Orleans is Dead
by Johnny Adriani

12 December 2005

It has been some time since I have written an update concerning New Orleans. In truth my delinquency is due to the fact that I have been extremely busy in the process of cleaning up. You know when I am busy when you do not receive a rambling of text ranting about the shortcomings of Government.

Through October and early November my parents, youngest brother Allen and I slopped our way through the house which was inundated by five feet of flood waters. In the process we removed all of the furniture, clothes and other household items which you have acquired over the years but have seemingly forgotten as these items become just part of the everyday mundane detail of household ambiance. As we hauled everything outside little things, long forgotten in time, emerged from the funky water, and gave you one last gazing gasp at time long forgotten.

I was struck, particularly, by a series of letters which I had stuffed somewhere between a bunch of books on a shelf in my room. I found them in a bunch, bound by an elastic band, lying underneath the wreckage of a sewing machine. Aged a decade and a half, I began to wonder about peers of my youth, long since forgotten, from my high school days, who once wrote me religiously, to inquire about my Louisiana endeavors. There were letters from girlfriends whom I had lost contact with years earlier. After a few moments of peeling apart saturated loose-leaf, I reminisced about the days of the past, then I heaved every last sheet out the front window towards the mounting pile of trash on the sidewalk. Such was the case with so many other items dear to one’s heart.

After the task of removing a refrigerator filled with decomposed food – which nearly killed my father, brother and I – we began busting down the plaster walls. All this work was in vain, the obvious solution is to demolish and, perhaps, someday, maybe we will rebuild.

There are numerous logistical reasons why rebuilding in New Orleans is impractical. By far the largest prohibiting factor in rebuilding New Orleans is the state of the levees. New Orleans is more in danger of flooding that ever before – and this jeopardy will not abate any time soon. Some may question why, and that is a very good question. The reason behind the future flood danger lies in the incompetence of Government (on every level). It is absolutely appalling to witness the snail’s pace by which levee reparations are progressing. I witnessed this work today as I viewed, for the first time, the area flooded by the breach in the now famous 9th Ward.

Along the levee there were no pile drivers, no army of men, only a handful of bulldozers pushing dirt around. The huge barge, that you have seen on television, probably seven stories high, still stands upon houses where the cadaver dogs are indicating there are bodies.

Never in my life have I ever seen houses picked up off of the ground, concrete slab and all, and just tossed about like a pile of legos dumped from a child’s toybox. Looking out from the levee breech, to a distance of approximately five blocks, everything has been flushed away by the water. Beyond that distance houses have been slammed together in a telescoping fashion. These are the images you have not seen on television, but the destruction has been at least mentioned in the headlines.

What I want to focus upon for a few lines here is the general vitality of New Orleans. A few weeks ago I read a piece in the Washington Post which painted a picture of businessmen downtown returning to work clad in suits and ties. The article gave the impression that everything was returning to normal. I respect the Washington Post, but in this particular article they missed the boat.

Through my observation of what once was and what now is, out of those who have returned to their New Orleans offices, one out of every five might wear a suit to work one or two days a week. Traffic throughout the city is the key indicator to how bad the situation is – there is no real traffic. More eerie than anything else is the outskirts of the City: the majority of New Orleans is a ghost town. This, I fear may never change.

After all the lights were trained upon the St. Louis Cathedral, where a grand speech was given to this Nation on “how this great City will once rise again,” New Orleans has been left in the dark to fend for itself. There is no army rebuilding levees, the FEMA trailers trickle in one by one in such a gross display of inefficiency that only Government could be responsible. Each trailer, rather than being brought in by rail or barge en masse, is hauled in via Interstate by guys driving pickup trucks hogging the left lane. Everything in New Orleans is at a virtual standstill. There is no housing, therefore there are few workers. No one is rushing in to rebuild until they can be guaranteed some sort of flood protection equal to or better than existed before the storm. Ultimately, New Orleans is dead.

As far as myself, I am in the process of trying to do what I can in the rebuilding process. Two friends of mine and myself are attempting to form a business which will begin with demolition and then ultimately transition to rebuilding. But we are only three. New Orleans needs one-hundred thousand times the three of us. Few are up to such a challenge.

The story was posted on 2005-12-15

FEMA RAP FOR KIDS

2005-12-31T01:39:00.000-08:00

THIS NEEDS NO COMMENT-COFFIN FLY

FEMA RAP FOR KIDS
Disaster . . . it can happen anywhere,
But we've got a few tips, so you can be prepared
For floods, tornadoes, or even a 'quake,
You've got to be ready - so your heart don't break.

Disaster prep is your responsibility
And mitigation is important to our agency.

People helping people is what we do
And FEMA is there to help see you through
When disaster strikes, we are at our best
But we're ready all the time, 'cause disasters don't rest.

Written and performed by Scott J. Wolfson

http://www.fema.gov/kids/femarap.htm

THANKS ARMY CORPS OF ASSHOLES!

2005-12-30T14:44:00.000-08:00

(photo: Larry Lamborghini/COFFIN FLY)

HENRY CHERRY SENT ME THIS:

Read this shiite....

Corps never pursued design doubts
Higher-ups raised red flag, then dropped it
Friday, December 30, 2005
By Bob Marshall
Staff writer

The engineering mistakes that led to the canal levee failures that flooded most of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina were found and then dismissed in the Army Corps of Engineers' design review process in 1990, an investigative team reviewing the failures says.

Documents, obtained by The Times-Picayune and provided to forensic engineers studying the levee breaches, show project engineers made a critical mistake in assessing soil strengths on the 17th Avenue Canal project, said Robert Bea, a University of California-Berkeley professor who is a member of the National Science Foundation team.

Corps documents show the mistake of overly optimistic levee strength was detected by its Vicksburg, Miss., office, which directed local engineers to make changes. But when the chief engineer in New Orleans replied that the results were based on "engineering judgment," his superiors dropped the issue.Bea said the discussion in the 16-year-old "design memo" points to the key decision that created fatal problems on the 17th Street Canal levee and could reveal a systemic problem that will show up during investigation into the London Avenue and Industrial Canal levees, which also breached during the Aug. 29 storm."From all the data we have, from all the documents made available to us, that exchange highlights where the key mistake was made in the design process, and how it was allowed to stand," Bea said this week."The design engineers didn't account for the weak layers in that swamp, and the Vicksburg office picks that up in review. But the New Orleans office says it's our professional judgment this is OK. In our business, that's an acceptable answer. But it's an answer Vicksburg can disagree with -- but it didn't."And from the documents we have, the issue is never raised again. At least not until Katrina comes along."

Key questions

Investigators have long suspected engineering mistakes were at the heart of the levee and floodwall breaches. Not only did the structures fail before they reached design capacity, but documents show the designs were not appropriate for the weak soils and the depth of the canals, investigators said. Yet discovering why skilled engineers at reputable firms came up with obviously faulty designs, and how those mistakes were missed in the corps' lengthy review process, has stumped investigators.

Bea said the 1990 documents provide a two-part answer to one of the key questions in the investigation of the engineering behind work on the 17th Street canal and may hold true for failures at the London Avenue and Industrial canals as well.

The first part involves the choices engineers made to measure soil strength. A standard practice in levee design, Bea said, is to model soil strengths on the weakest layers in a project area. That allows engineers to design a structure that will withstand the most severe tests. That didn't happen on this project, Bea said.

The errors began when the crew from Eustis Engineering, the chief soil investigators for the project, decided to use an average of soil strengths taken from samples in an area that stretched over great distances, in some cases as much as 6,000 feet, Bea said. While averaging always involves some risk because it can miss inconsistencies in the subsurface, that practice is considered acceptable in areas featuring uniform layers of strong soils or rock, he said.

'A big no-no'

But Bea said his profession considers the practice "a big no-no" when dealing with levees because those structures "almost always have layers of different strength soils." And it was especially egregious at the 17th Street canal, he said, because, like most of New Orleans, the area is a former swamp with a subterranean soil profile that shows an unpredictable weave of mostly weak soils. A layer of very weak peat might be found near the surface or hidden 30 feet deep anywhere along the length of a canal.

That error was then compounded when the engineers decided to assess the horizontal soil strength at a depth that features more strong soils than weak soils, records show. The result was a rating showing the soils could withstand 380 pounds of pressure per square foot. That led the engineers to use, among other things, shorter sheet pilings and narrower levees.

Had they taken averages from shorter reaches, and at a depth just a few feet higher that featured more weak soils and was clearly visible in the soil profiles used by the engineers, the strength would have averaged just 231 pounds per square foot rather than 380, Bea said.

That result would have required the design team to call for sheet pilings that were at least twice as thick as those used and driven to 50 or 60 feet below sea level, rather than the maximum of 17½ feet below sea level, which the corps has said is the deepest depth shown on final design documents.

"The way they did the soil strength analysis was the first big mistake, and it set things in motion," Bea said. "But it wasn't the last."

A second mistake

The second critical mistake was made, Bea said, when the team did the "slope stability analysis" -- a standard engineering exercise for determining if a levee will hold up at design capacity, in this case, 14 feet of storm surge. Once again, records show the engineers chose to accentuate strong soil layers and downplay weaker layers. That violated an essential element in the process, Bea said.

"You're looking for the weakest surfaces, the areas that could cause failure, and they didn't do that," Bea said. "Part of it was they had already assigned soil strengths that were too high. That showed up in this analysis."

The final mistake, Bea said, was made by the corps.

The initial soil investigations were done by Eustis, then reviewed and accepted by lead design team Modjeski and Masters, on a joint dredging project by the Sewerage & Water Board and the Orleans Levee Board. That work was accepted by the corps for the final part of the improvement project, which involved capping the steel sheet wall already embedded in the levee. Eustis did not reply to requests for comment; an attorney for Modjeski and Masters said his client declined to comment.

Engineers at the New Orleans office of the corps reviewed all of the work it received, then incorporated it in its final design plans. Corps officials have said that once they accept outside work, it becomes their own. Further, the federal agency had overall responsibility for the purpose of the project, which was to provide protection against a hurricane storm surge that might reach 14 feet in the canal.

The New Orleans office accepted the plans, but the regional office in Vicksburg had questions.

On a list of 17 problems noted, the Vicksburg office says the soil stability analysis is too optimistic.

Eugene Tickner, then chief engineer of the New Orleans district, responded only that the variables chosen in the New Orleans calculations were based on "engineering judgment." Bea said that should have raised a red flag with the regional office.

"You would prefer to have that judgment backed up with examples and numbers, but (the New Orleans office) doesn't offer very much," Bea said. "At that point, I would have asked for more information. But Vicksburg doesn't."

Instead, the issue was dropped and does not surface again in the trail of documents currently available on the project. The one clear opportunity to correct the engineering mistakes that led to the failures, Bea said, was missed.

"It's pretty clear, looking back on it with the information we have available at this point, that Vicksburg didn't like what had been done," he said. "We'll never know why they didn't pursue it."

Tickner, now living in North Carolina, could not be reached for comment. Fred Bayley, the chief engineer in the Vicksburg office at the time, retired in 1993. Now 73, he said he doesn't remember the issue or much of the details of the project. What he remembers most about New Orleans is the challenge its tortuously weak and layered soils posed for engineers.

"Even if you took borings every 5 feet, you might not get an accurate picture of what you were dealing with down there," he said. "Everything you did down there was a risk, because of those soils."

Ye Olde Historical Celebrity Corner: THE AXEMAN of NEW ORLEANS

2005-12-28T23:01:00.000-08:00

THE COFFIN FLY Sez...
It seems its all the RAGE to point out how CRIME in areas that have taken in NEW ORLEANS refugees from KATRINA has just SHOT THROUGH the GODDAMNED ROOF, but consider. A LEGACY such as ours was'nt EARNED OVERNIGHT. AU CONTRAIRE, MON FRAIRE (as we never say in N.O.)....WE have a TRULY RICH and GRAND TRADITION. Here's one of our authentic "GOLDEN OLDIES":

THE AXEMAN of NEW ORLEANS
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Axeman of New Orleans was a serial killer active in New Orleans, Louisiana (and surrounding communities, including Gretna, Louisiana), from May 1918 to October 1919. Press reports during the height of public panic about the killings mentioned similar murders as early as 1911, but recent researchers have called these reports into question.

As the killer's name implies, the victims were attacked with an axe. In some of the crimes, the doors to the victim's homes were first bashed open with the same tool. "The Axeman" was not caught or identified at the time, although his crime spree stopped as mysteriously as it started. The murderer's identity remains unknown to this day, although various possible identifications of varying plausibility have been proposed.

Not all of the Axeman's victims died, but the savagery and utter randomness of his attacks terrorized much of the populace. Some early victims were Italian American, in particular the son of Pietro Pepitone who had killed Black Hand extortionist Paul Di Christina (Paulo Marchese) several years before, leading the newspapers to assume the killings were somehow Mafia related (similar to New York's Black Hand assassin "Shotgun Man"). However later crimes clearly did not fit this profile, and the apprehension of the general public grew. His victims included a pregnant woman and even a baby killed in the arms of its mother. The Axeman also seemed to draw direct inspiration from Jack the Ripper: he (or someone claiming to be the Axeman) wrote taunting letters to city newspapers hinting at his future crimes and claiming to be a supernatural demon "from Hell."

Most notoriously, on March 13, 1919, a letter purporting to be from the Axeman was published in the newspapers saying that he would kill again at 15 minutes past midnight on the night of March 19, but would spare the occupants of any place where a jazz band was playing. That night all of New Orleans's dance halls were filled to capacity, and professional and amateur bands played jazz at parties at hundreds of houses around town. There were no murders that night.

Not everyone was intimidated by the Axeman. Some well armed citizens sent the newspaper invitations for the Axeman to visit their houses that night and see who got killed first. One invitation promised to leave a window open for the Axeman, politely asking that he not damage the front door.

Crime writer Colin Wilson speculates the Axeman could have been Joseph Mumfre, a man shot to death in Los Angeles in 1920 by the widow of Mike Pepitone, the Axeman's last known victim. Pepitone's widow, who served only three years for the killing, claimed to recognize Mumfre as the man she saw fleeing her home the night she discovered her husband's body. Though there is no direct proof of Mumfre's guilt, Wilson notes that Mumfre was in jail during all of the Axeman's "dormant" periods (including the period from 1912-1918), and free at all times the Axeman struck.

THE METER's RUNNING

2005-12-28T22:12:00.000-08:00

JOHN HENRY SUGGESTS!!!!

Ask one of your computer nerd buddies to create a depleating
wetlands mileage meter (that will countdown daily the land lost
until the Gulf reaches New Orleans). Possibly featuring a map
type graphic that shows people drinking, hurricanes on
Bourbon street.... as the Gulf creeps closer and closer.
Maybe a projected date till the party's over????
jh

Any TECH geeks up to this ASSININE and SMARTASSED task???
Sounds like BOATLOADS of fun- THE COFFIN FLY

Essays, Submissions, Rants....WELCOME!

2005-12-27T19:42:00.000-08:00

(Photo by JOHNATHAN HENRY KELLY (satisfied,whiner?)

ANGRY? HAPPY? SAD? ......DRUNK?
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO EMAIL THE COFFIN FLY HIMSELF AT
Blackoctopus2000@yahoo.com
WITH ANY VERBAGE YOU WANT UP HERE.

"THE MOST LETHAL CRIMINAL UNDERCLASS IN THE UNITED STATES"...Who sez we aint # 1 in SOMETHING??

2005-12-27T17:34:00.000-08:00

NOW, ONE MIGHT ARGUE THAT YEARS AND YEARS OF ALLOWING VISITORS TO GET FUCKED UP, LITTER, PISS, SHIT, FUCK, AND VOMIT IN OUR STREETS AND ACT GENERALLY LIKE ASSHOLES, MIGHT MAKE A LITTLE TURNABOUT "FAIR PLAY"?
AS BAD AS WE HAVE BEEN TREATED LATELY BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, FEMA, INSURANCE COMPANIES, ETC, IT SEEMS WE ARE AT LEAST PASSING ON THE "HOLIDAY SPIRIT" TO THE REST OF THIS MOTHERFUCKING COUNTRY, CHEERS!

- THE COFFIN FLY

AFTER KATRINA, NEW ORLEANS CRIME MOVES TO OTHER CITIES

Some Areas Where Evacuees Resettled Report Spike in Crime

NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 16, 2005 — New Orleans police say they have never seen so much peace and quiet on the city's streets.

"We haven't seen a robbery since the beginning of August," said Lt. Troy Savage, who patrols what was once the city's most violent neighborhood.

"We're probably at this point, one of the safest communities in the United States," he said.

Police said a woman was stabbed to death Tuesday night — the first such incident in 90 days, a record in this city.

Since Hurricane Katrina forced most of the residents to relocate, police say, the daily shootings and killings have stopped.

"This was the most lethal criminal underclass in the United States," said Dr. Peter Scharf, director of the University of New Orleans Center for Society, Law and Justice. "We were heading for a murder rate of 72 per 100,000. New York City is at seven."

Scharf says, according to city records, there were 265 murders in New Orleans last year, 258 murders in 2003, and 275 in 2002.

Warren J. Riley, New Orleans' acting superintendent of police, says the drug dealers and gangs evacuated with the residents and haven't returned.

"We're a small town; we're Mayberry right now," Riley said.

CRIME WAVE SPREADS

By some estimates, hardcore criminals in New Orleans numbered in the tens of thousands, and they're now living in other cities — Baton Rouge, Dallas, Atlanta, and Houston.

Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt says crime is up in neighborhoods where large numbers of evacuees have settled.

He says he needs 400 new officers and has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for financial assistance.

"We're not going to let anyone come into the city and break the law at will," Hurtt said.

Last week, Houston police arrested a New Orleans man charged with four murders.

In Georgia, police have been busy busting alleged New Orleans drug dealers trying set up shop in and around Atlanta.

As a result, residents in some places are beginning to roll up the welcome mat. It's a criminal element some cities didn't expect, and New Orleans doesn't want back.

From ABC news...theres a streaming VIDEO on this page
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneKatrina/story?id=1320056&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

MISSING KIDS.....

2005-12-27T12:13:00.000-08:00

IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT IN NEW ORLEANS, AFTER KATRINA, MANY CHILDREN ARE PROBABLY 'MISSING". IT PROBABLY ALSO GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT MANY WERE "MISSING" LONG BEFORE THE HURRICANE (Given our penchant for "child care" in the BIG UNEASY). Anyway, here's some MORE BAD NEWS from a place that seems to be MAKIN' IT like CHINA makes cheap plastic SHIT:

NEARLY FOUR MONTHS AFTER KATRINA, HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN ARE STILL MISSING
    By Dave McNamara
    WWL TV News, New Orleans

    Friday 23 December 2005

    Controversy brewed Friday over FEMA's reluctance to release information on evacuees, data that some agencies have said could speed up the process of finding children missing since Hurricane Katrina.

    It was not until the FBI began requesting information that FEMA this month turned over the records, which are protected by privacy laws.

    Officials on the front lines of the search have said that those federal privacy rules may have hampered efforts to reunite families.

    The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a database with close to 500 names, all of them children whose whereabouts are still unknown.

    Walter Fahr, manager of the Louisiana Clearing House for Missing Children, said FEMA has names, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers of evacuees that could help connect parents with children.

    A FEMA spokesperson said the agency could only release personal information to law enforcement such as the FBI. FEMA's Nicol Andrews said the FBI made its first request for a broad amount of data on December 5 and that information was released three days later.

    There was a request for more information that was given to the FBI Thursday. Andrews said there has been no delay, adding that finding children has been a key priority for FEMA.

    In Louisiana, Fahr said the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has had more expertise than FEMA in finding missing children.

    The national center is still working to locate 485 children who are either missing or out of touch with their parents or guardian.

In addition to that work currently being done, FEMA has been operating its own missing persons hotline based in Baton Rouge.

REPRISE: The Case Against Rebuilding the Sunken City of New Orleans

2005-12-26T21:57:00.000-08:00

Below is a favorite of mine from Jack Shafer in SLATE magazine last September.. Well, it's month's later and I'd say many locals with flood decimated properties are probably agreeing with it. I remember at the time echoing these sentiments to many who looked at me like I was a heartless son-of-a-bitch. I'd say no, I just went to the NEW ORLEANS PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM (and remember it fondly). While it is true, I have MANY dear friends and family still living there that are trying to rebuild, I still must insist. A harsh look at reality almost demands that at the very least, if it is to be rebuilt again, it shouldn't be rebuilt in THE SAME IGNORANT ASSED WAY AS IT USED TO BE!!!! Ohhh looky, the BLACK CHIRREN' is TAP DANCIN' wif BOTTLE CAPS in their sneakers on BOURBON STREET! Look, Dem DRIVE-FRU Daquiri Shop's is OPEN 24 HOURS! Looky-Looky, dem Skools aint got NO FUCKIN' BOOKS! Give me a GODDAMNED BREAK!
Don't get me wrong, I HATE that fat, pink cocksucker Dennis Hastert as much as the next rational person...but for different reasons than his opinion of NEW ORLEANS. Anyone can see it would be smarter to make sure CAJUN ATLANTIS aint made into a familiar sequel ?

Don't Refloat!
The case against rebuilding the sunken city of New Orleans.
By Jack Shafer

What's to rebuild?
Nobody can deny New Orleans' cultural primacy or its historical importance. But before we refloat the sunken city, before we think of spending billions of dollars rebuilding levees that may not hold back the next storm, before we contemplate reconstructing the thousands of homes now disintegrating in the toxic tang of the flood, let's investigate what sort of place Katrina destroyed.

The city's romance is not the reality for most who live there. It's a poor place, with about 27 percent of the population of 484,000 living under the poverty line, and it's a black place, where 67 percent are African-American. In 65 percent of families living in poverty, no husband is present. When you overlap this New York Times map, which illustrates how the hurricane's floodwaters inundated 80 percent of the city, with this demographic map from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, which shows where the black population lives, and this one that shows where the poverty cases live, it's transparent whom Katrina hit the hardest.

New Orleans' public schools, which are 93 percent black, have failed their citizens. The state of Louisiana rates 47 percent of New Orleans schools as "Academically Unacceptable" and another 26 percent are under "Academic Warning." About 25 percent of adults have no high-school diploma.

The police inspire so little trust that witnesses often refuse to testify in court. University researchers enlisted the police in an experiment last year, having them fire 700 blank gun rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood one afternoon. Nobody picked up the phone to report the shootings. Little wonder the city's homicide rate stands at 10 times the national average.

This city counts 188,000 occupied dwellings, with about half occupied by renters and half by owners. The housing stock is much older than the national average, with 43 percent built in 1949 or earlier (compared with 22 percent for the United States) and only 11 percent of them built since 1980 (compared with 35 for the United States). As we've observed, many of the flooded homes are modest to Spartan to ramshackle and will have to be demolished if toxic mold or fire don't take them first.

New Orleans puts the "D" into dysfunctional. Only a sadist would insist on resurrecting this concentration of poverty, crime, and deplorable schools. Yet that's what New Orleans' cheerleaders—both natives and beignet-eating tourists—are advocating. They predict that once they drain the water and scrub the city clean, they'll restore New Orleans to its former "glory."

Only one politician, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, dared question the wisdom of rebuilding New Orleans as it was, where it was. On Wednesday, Aug. 31, while meeting with the editorial board of the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill., he cited the geographical insanity of rebuilding New Orleans. "That doesn't make sense to me. … And it's a question that certainly we should ask."

"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," Hastert added.

For his candor and wisdom, Hastert was shouted down. Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., and others interpreted his remarks as evidence of the Republican appetite for destruction when it comes to disaster victims. But if you read the entire interview—reproduced here courtesy of the Daily Herald—you might conclude that Hastert was speaking heresy, but he wasn't saying anything ugly or even Swiftian. Klaus Jacob seconded Hastert yesterday (Sept. 6) in a Washington Post op-ed. A geophysicist by training, he noted that Katrina wasn't even a worst-case scenario. Had the storm passed a little west of New Orleans rather than a little east, the "city would have flooded faster, and the loss of life would have been greater."

Nobody disputes the geographical and oceanographic odds against New Orleans: that the Gulf of Mexico is a perfect breeding ground for hurricanes; that re-engineering the Mississippi River to control flooding has made New Orleans more vulnerable by denying it the deposits of sediment it needs to keep its head above water; that the aggressive extraction of oil and gas from the area has undermined the stability of its land.

"New Orleans naturally wants to be a lake," St. Louis University professor of earth and atmospheric sciences Timothy Kusky told Time this week. "A city should never have been built there in the first place," he said to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Why was it? Settlers built the original city on a curve of high flood land that the Mississippi River had deposited over eons, hence the nickname "Crescent City." But starting in the late 1800s and continuing into the early 20th century, developers began clearing and draining swamps behind the crescent, even dumping landfill into Lake Pontchartrain to extend the city.

To chart the aggressive reclamation, compare this map from 1798 with this one from 1908. Many of New Orleans' lower-lying neighborhoods, such as Navarre, the Lower Ninth Ward, Lake Terrace, and Pontchartrain Park, were rescued from the low-lying muck. The Lower Ninth Ward, clobbered by Katrina, started out as a cypress swamp, and by 1950 it was only half developed, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. Even such "high" land as City Park suffered from flooding before the engineers intervened. By the historical standards of the 400-year-old city, many of the heavily flooded neighborhoods are fresh off the boat.

The call to rebuild New Orleans' levee system may be mooted if its evacuated residents decide not to return. The federal government, which runs the flood-insurance business, sold only 85,000 residential and commercial policies—this in a city of 188,000 occupied dwellings. Coverage is limited to $250,000 for building property and $100,000 for personal property. Because the insured can use the money elsewhere, there is no guarantee they'll choose to rebuild in New Orleans, which will remain extra-vulnerable until the levees are rebuilt.

Few uninsured landlords and poor home owners have the wherewithal to rebuild—or the desire. And how many of the city's well-off and wealthy workers—the folks who provide the city's tax base—will return? Will the doctors, lawyers, accountants, and professors have jobs to return to? According to the Wall Street Journal, many businesses are expected to relocate completely. Unless the federal government adopts New Orleans as its ward and pays all its bills for the next 20 years—an unlikely to absurd proposition—the place won't be rebuilt.

Barbara Bush will be denounced as being insensitive and condescending for saying yesterday that many of the evacuees she met in the Astrodome would prefer to stay in Texas. But she probably got it right. The destruction wrought by Katrina may turn out to be "creative destruction," to crib from Joseph Schumpeter, for many of New Orleans' displaced and dispossessed. Unless the government works mightily to reverse migration, a positive side-effect of the uprooting of thousands of lives will to be to deconcentrate one of the worst pockets of ghetto poverty in the United States.

Page One of today's New York Times illustrates better than I can how the economic calculations of individuals battered by Katrina may contribute to the city's ultimate doom:

In her 19 years, all spent living in downtown New Orleans, Chavon Allen had never ventured farther than her bus fare would allow, and that was one trip last year to Baton Rouge. But now that she has seen Houston, she is planning to stay.

"This is a whole new beginning, a whole new start. I mean, why pass up a good opportunity, to go back to something that you know has problems?" asked Ms. Allen, who had been earning $5.15 an hour serving chicken in a Popeyes restaurant.

New Orleans won't disappear overnight, of course. The French Quarter, the Garden District, West Riverside, Black Pearl, and other elevated parts of the city will survive until the ultimate storm takes them out—and maybe even thrive as tourist destinations and places to live the good life. But it would be a mistake to raise the American Atlantis. It's gone.

******

The COFFIN FLY reminds you what they used to say on St. Claude Avenue....."Let 'Em Have It!"

article: http://www.slate.com/?id=2125810&nav=tap1/

Let's not forget about dem TERMITES!

2005-12-26T18:24:00.000-08:00

If what I read back in October turns out to be correct, TERMITE season this year in NOLA should be interesting.

HURRICANE MESS OFFERS TERMITES HEAVEN

More bad pest-related news in the areas hit by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. There's a "super termite" that is prevalent in both New Orleans and Lake Charles, Louisiana, and not even a hurricane can wipe it out:

Known as "super termites," the insects can hold their breath for up to 16 hours underwater, they're good at finding tiny air pockets in the soil to breathe once grounds are soaked and they can retreat to aboveground portions of their elaborate nests to wait out a storm.

Experts say this Formosan subterranean termite may suffer a temporary drop in numbers, but that it should come back with a vengeance in years to come.

"We have found dead termites, so it appears many have drowned," said Gregg Henderson, an entomologist and termite guru at Louisiana State University, who dug up previously buried test crates packed with old wood last week in New Orleans to see how the insect's numbers were looking. "But there are also thousands of survivors and they will thrive."

Since Hurricane Katrina devastated the region, Henderson explains, the area has become termite heaven — a virtual termite buffet — packed with moist debris, including soaked homes and downed trees. This material provides the insect with its main food: cellulose.

from
http://rescuebugblog.typepad.com/rescue_bugblog/2005/10/index.html