as you know, later this month i will be releasing my third self-published book.

the first one, Blook sold about 100 copies and people were sorta bummed out that it looked more like a college reader than a book

so How To Blog was released almost a year ago and about 250 copies were sold, partially because it looked like a real book, but probably because it was pretty damn good.

in a few weeks i will be offerring Stiff, which are mostly posts from 2002-2003 of entirely fictional material where i die, meet Kurt Kobain and go to Hell.

i can easilly say that those stories are my finest collection of fiction ive ever written. it has a real beginning, a real center, and a real end. they arent just posts thrown together with some sort of faint storyline, theyre all meant to be read as a whole. theyre creative, weird, and unlike anything that ive written lately.

in addition to that tale, i have included about 20 of my best poems. yes, i know poetry isnt what the kids are into much nowadays, but a thousand years ago when i was running around they were all the rage. i majored in poetry in college, and most of these poems are from those days. several have been published in fancy publications, and i must say that they have held up over the years and arent like the shit that passes for poetry today.

straight up.

id have this book out right now but i have one problem, i dont have a cover that im happy with.

i tried to do something with karisa on the cover but it didnt work out. i tried working with an artist today, but that fell through, and i thought about going to you but for some reason i didnt because i wanted it out Fast, but now my better judgement is telling me that i can wait a week, and i should hold a contest: this contest

the Design the Cover for Stiff Contest!

heres what you do: create an image for my new book.

attatch it as a file and email it to this weirdo email address: tony.stiff.contest@buzznet.com, no entries sent to my real email address will be accepted. if you have questions put them in the comments of this post. that email address is only for submissions.

the book will be 5″ x 8″ so the image needs to be 1650 x 2550 at 250 dpi

the winner will get their name in the book, a month of primo linkage to their blog (or to their favorite blog) on the busblog, two copies of Stiff, and a cash prize of $66.66!!!

the contest will end on Tuesday Sept 13, so get to work!

heres my only bit of advice: CafePress will not allow me to sell a book whose image has a picture of a famous person or famous artwork, so no pics of Kurt.

good luck! and to those of you who are just watching, you can see the entries as they appear in my Buzznet gallery here

enter early and often!

let me make one thing perfectly clear, i dont hate our president.

allow me to explain.

i love pot.

marijuana, mary jane, cheeba, weed, chronic

green sticky purple haired wacky tobbacky.

love it.

i love the smell, i love the taste, i love its looks,

i love the culture, i love the sharing, i love people who smoke it, i love its resin, i love its paraphenalia, i love its high.

i love smelling pot in the bag, i love packing it into a bowl, i love lighting it, i love the sound that the water makes as it gurgles as i take a rip, i love inhaling, i love exhaling

i love exhaling it into the mouth of a pretty girl and i love to watch her close her eyes as she holds it

i love the sound of one holding and failing slightly – gnk – cough – gnk.

i love laughing and laughing and laughing at laughing.

i love hotboxing, i love rolling joints, i love finding weed, i love being passed joints, i love songs about weed, i love references about weed, i love the variety of uses for weed/hemp, i love the many ways to call weed weed. i love looking at the clock and noticing when it says 4:20.

got it?

k.

but at some point i had to really look at pot and what it was doing to me and i had to make the adult decision that it was hurting me more than it was helping me, it was costing me money without giving me much of a high any more, and it was slowly and surely killing me and putting me in danger.

so i acted like a grown up and quit.

i saw it was bad for me, i stoped, and in no way does that make me a hater.

similarily i ask you to look at your relationship, bush supporters, to this president, and ask yourself the same thing

is this president the leader that you expect from the most powerful man in america. is he causing you more headaches than joy. is he as effective as he should be considering the fact that he has a republican congress and a republican supreme court and support from most of the media for the exception of the nyt, the wapo, and for a few hours a day cbs?

are you truly in support of this president’s actions or have you just gotten into a habit of supporting republicans no matter what theyre doing to your well-being?

you can love bush like i love weed but ask yourself what it will take for you to kick the habit.

it took me 5 years of smoking and not getting high for me to realize that i was just going through the motions of smoking without receiving that euphoria, that benefit, that kick.

has george bush given you what you expect from the president’s office since 9/11 or have you just let him off the hook year after year after year?

i was not in the biggest defict of my life because of weed, i was not vilified by the world because of my habit, i am in good health and i was in good health, but at some point i took a long look at what i was doing and i made the conscious decision to stop it.

i kicked the habit.

i invite you to kick this habit of voting republican and supporting whoever does whatever regardless of what they do, because it is simply a habit which perhaps once was useful, but the thrill is gone.

america its time to get off the pipe.

katrina timeline + em + rabbit blog + mathieu

that I had just written the post of the week, but I’m happy to say that he was wrong.

That acclaim should go to Keith Olbermann who has successfully transitioned from being one of the best and funniest sports commentators to being one of the best and biting political commentators.

video here, transcript below.

The “city” of Louisiana, by Keith Olbermann, MSNBC

SECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: “Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater…”

Well there’s your problem right there.

If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government’s response to a crisis, this was it.

The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.

But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”

Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the “I-Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.

And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet’s meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural… and government-made.

But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.

No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.

But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn’t quite discern… a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, “we are not satisfied,” with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which “we” he thinks he’s speaking for on this point. Perhaps it’s the administration, although we still don’t know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, ‘I’ll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die’?

I don’t know which ‘we’ Mr. Bush meant.

For many of this country’s citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to ’08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — “New Orleans.”

For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick “I’m not satisfied with my government’s response.” Instead of hiding behind phrases like “no one could have foreseen,” had he only remembered Winston Churchill’s quote from the 1930’s. “The responsibility,” of government, Churchill told the British Parliament “for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.”

In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.

As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government’s credibility.

Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.

police and thieves + crooks and liars + that colored fella + ktimes

From the How Could It Get Any Worse files – The help that FEMA has actually accepted, namely the 1,000 firefighters who have left their communities to volunteer with the relief effort in New Orleans,

are now being asked NOT to save people trapped, or administer aid to the sick and dying, but to act as reps for FEMA by passing out the phone number to FEMA

and to stand behind the President for his photo ops!

Salt Lake Tribune, 9/6:

ATLANTA – Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: “What are we doing here?”

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters – his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week – a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

…

Also of concern to some of the firefighters is the cost borne by their municipalities in the wake of their absence. Cities are picking up the tab to fill the firefighters’ vacancies while they work 30 days for the federal government.

“There are all of these guys with all of this training and we’re sending them out to hand out a phone number,” an Oregon firefighter said. “They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste.”

Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew’s first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

Heck of a job, Bushie.

h/t Metafilter + raymi + LA you can donate at the Dream Center

regarding this disaster and others are nervous about it, and i think i know why some arent sure about getting into it.

because at some point the blame is going to be directed at those who really deserve it.

ourselves.

its not really Bush’s fault, entirely, that he didnt feel it necessary to go to new orleans earlier, or stay longer, or get more done while he was there. sure hes a dipshit, but he’s been supported by a majority of the american public for the last five years with nary a bullshit yelled from the crowd.

abu ghraib happened, you let it slide. no wmds were found, you let it go. obl is flipping through his tivo – youre all, no big deal. theres a reporter Still in jail over RoveGate and you’ve totally forgotten it.

gas is over $3, youre like, thats not bush’s fault. theres a civil war happening in iraq right now, but you’ll swear thats not george’s fault. reporters are paid off by the white house, and a gay hooker is discovered getting a day pass into the west wing for a year and youre all whatev.

so yes, many of you have enabled this bush behavoir of incompentence.

which means, i hate to say it, America, that destruction, that death, that misery, that bullshit that went down in New Orleans, thats not

just

Brownie’s fault, FEMAs fault, the dipshits at the Department of Homeland Securty’s fault

its youre fault.

you voted for Bush.

twice!

Bush was the one who sent our troops AND our national guardsmen to Iraq for a war based on lies and phantom wmds.

Bush was the one who slashed the budgets of the levee funding and the flood control funding so the rich could retain their tax cuts and so the war in iraq could continue.

Bush was the one who undid Clinton’s plan of having FEMA be a cabinet level department. Bush demoted it so it could fit underneath the DHS.

Bush invented the DHS and sold it to us under the terms that in times of crisis there would be Less red tape so that if there was a terror attack or a disaster the DHS could oversee and manage all the aspects of saving lives and protecting the citizens.

in fact we gave up huge chunks of personal liberties so that the DHS could better serve us. ask those getting searched in subways. ask those taking off their shoes at airports.

sadly this storm has shown us that we are not safer or being any better served.

yes its Bush’s fault, in part, but Bush wouldnt have ever had a chance to hire Brownie, or demote FEMA, or create the DHS, or invade Iraq, or still be in Iraq if the majority of US voters hadnt voted for this genius.

if you have a Bush/Cheeney sticker on your SUV, the blood of New Orleans is on your hands.

straight up.

go ahead and try to blame the mayor of new orleans. go ahead and keep showing us those school busses in that flooded parking lot and you try and pretend that that one lot could have solved all the problems of the broken levee.

go ahead and try to pretend that those school busses were the reason for the panic and chaos and dumbfuckery and mahem and rape and murder and cops quitting on the job and help not arriving for nearly a week.

i’ll meet you half way right now and say, fine, fire the mayor. will you say fire the president?

the first term of the Bush administration was one of the biggest jokes of all time. the economy tanked in that he took the biggest surplus ever and dumbfucked it into the biggest deficit ever. he took the biggest outpouring of international support after 9/11 and turned it into worldwide hatred after we invaded iraq. and he refused to persue the real terrorist center, saudi arabia, home of 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in 9/11 and osama bin ladin, who was still on the loose. and to cap off that spectacular run, he took part in a video where he jokingly looked for wmds under a couch in the white house.

he ran against a 20yr senator who was a decorated war hero who swore to be fiscially responsible, enviornmentally concious, and true to the ideal of the seperation of church and state.

but you, america, voted to give your dumbass a second shot at cowboy quartback.

mostly because he promised to keep gay people from being married.

as a matter of fact, you came out in droves to make sure that gay people wouldnt be allowed to be married.

do you have the courage to admit that we dont have a leader, and youre to blame?

or will you continue to pass the buck and point elsewhere.

just like the mayor of new orleans, you didnt prepare properly for disaster, you didnt make the right call, and your representative has continued to drop the ball just like he fumbled for the last five years.

this president has often been criticized as not being able to admit when he’s wrong. even during the debates he was asked to talk about any mistake that he had made during his first term and he couldnt do it.

are you, america, ready to admit you made a mistake, or will you continue to mimic your boy and pretend that youre blameless – that its not your fault or his fault, its the fault of the person he hired.

you hired the president and he hired everyone on his team pre 9/11. nobody was fired post 9/11. and then you didnt fire him.

you rehired the president and he hired everyone on his team pre katrina

just like post 9/11 there should have been wholesale terminations, starting at the top, begining with those who got the PDB titled “bin laden determined to strike in the us” who then ignored it.

therefore post katrina there should be wholesale terminations, starting at the top, begining with those who knew of the likihood of this devistation in the wake of the hurricane, including those who refused to take charge of the multi-state national disaster, including those who let school busses get parked in unusable lots

and including those who played his lyre and ate cake as a goodly portion of his nation drowned.

katrina is simply just one more notch on the bush bedpost of failure

how many more will you allow until you

yes, you,

stop it.

you are not powerless on a roof unable to make change

you are the people of the united states of america

the greatest country in the world

you deserve better.

but before you will get it, you need to do what your president refuses to do

you need to start firing people.

and you know where you need to start.

jack bog + sean bonner + fil + krista

i have said a lot over the last few days.
some of which i even regret: when i lashed out at Robert, below.
(since then we have patched things up.)
but one thing i havent done is allow you, the readers,
to just say whatever it is you want.
so i’ll just give you a chance to link to
or say whatever you want.
all i ask is you be respectful of each other.

listening to npr, or reading all those confounded books, my pals sk smith and dan are… whats this… volunteering?!?!

apparently busloads of evacuees from the gulf coast made it to Austin on Saturday night and sk and her man were not only nice enough to be there but good enough to write a few paragraphs about it

yes it was just a little thing, but every little bit counts. im sure that there are thousands of little stories like this, if not tens of thousands, but heres one.

a portion:

On Saturday night Dan and I were watching a horrible rerun of Saturday Night Live and mostly falling asleep on the couch when an emergency message scrawled across the bottom of the television screen. A hundred volunteers were urgently needed at the Convention Center downtown—evacuees were coming in by the busload and a large number were expected around 5am, and the Red Cross needed people to set up cots. I mentioned this to Dan, who wasn’t really paying attention, in the hopes that he would let us both off the hook by saying “Enh, let’s just go tomorrow.” But no, he is a Boy Scout, and so we put on our shoes and hoofed it down to the Convention Center.

When we got there, the line at the volunteer sign-in was maybe 10 people deep. By the time we were signed in, the line stretched all the way outside, and the Statesman later reported that over 400 people showed up. As a Red Cross coordinator led away my little group of volunteers, we walked past this incredible line, and it was a lovely thing indeed to see that the only thing these people had in common was that they were all homebodies who’d been spending their Saturday night watching television. Collegiate Asian hipsters, middle-aged Hispanic women, young black couples…I was relieved to see it wasn’t just a bunch of bleeding-heart KLRU subscribers ministering to the poor and disenfranchised.

as the good professor says, read the whole thing

buzznet and the mississip sun-hearld have teamed up + blog of the year + destroying FEMA

ladies ringer (pictured) + men’s baseball shirt + mug + t-shirt

all profits will go to the Red Cross

to read the latest on the busblog click here

President Bush on 9/2 to FEMA Director Michael Brown (pictured, pointing)

uh…what?

Even right-wing cheerleader Michelle Malkin is calling Brown “utterly clueless” while calling for his head… but Michelle if Brownie is clueless and deserving of a resignation, then what’s Bushie for not only hiring him but complimenting him on Friday?

While we wait for that answer, here’s a rundown on some troubling news that came out yesterday, followed by some good news.

But first watch this clip from today’s Meet The Press of a grown man who has had enough and cant even keep it together any more based on what you will read below, and after you watch it you should ask yourself why is the president still in washington, and moreso, why are we still allowing him to be our leader now that it has become absolutely plain that he cannot help us when we need help or where we need help.

He hired Brown, who had no experience. He sent the Nat’l Guard to Iraq where there were no WMDs, he flew away from the South a day after the hurricane, and he still hasnt stepped foot in New Orleans as people continue to literally drown in his failures.

9/3 Chicago Sun-Times: “Daley ‘shocked’ as feds reject aid”
All FEMA allowed them to send was one tank

(Chicago) Mayor (Richard) Daley said the city offered 36 member s of the firefighters’ technical rescue teams, eight emergency medical technicians, search-and-rescue equipment, more than 100 police officers as well as police vehicles and two boats, 29 clinical and 117 non-clinical health workers, a mobile clinic and eight trained personnel, 140 Streets and Sanitation workers and 29 trucks, plus other supplies.

9/3 RedCross.org: Red Cross Not Allowed in New Orleans

Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

9/3 AFP: Angry LA Senator accuses President Bush’s visit as a Staged, Phoney “Photo-Op”

Perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street Levee.

Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe.

Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity.

The desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.

9/3 Race has nothing to do with this? Army Times, Brig. Gen Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told the Army Times on Friday that hundreds of armed troops were going to “take this city back”

“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” he said. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

9/3 CNN.com DHS Has Failed to Release Nine Stockpiles of Emergency Gear

Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans… The gear — including generators, radios, breathing apparatus, cots and other items — is stockpiled by DHS in nine locations. The three closest to New Orleans are College Station, Texas; Columbia, S.C.; and Clearwater, Fla. The gear is intended to replenish or sustain up to 150 first responders.

Contractors who maintain the gear are required to transport it to a disaster site no later than 12 hours after the initial request is made by local authorities and approved by DHS.

9/3 NO Times-Picayune: Tons of Food Delayed When Bush Arrived

Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.

The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.

9/3 DailyKos: NorthCom had millions of meals and supplies available, but no order from the President to deploy

A: Now I’m sure you’re aware of the criticism that the authorities have been slow to respond to this. When did you get the order to start relied work?

K: NorthCom started planning before the storm even hit. We were ready for the storm when it hit Florida because, as you remember, it crossed the bottom part of Florida, and then we were plaining, you know, once it was pointed towards the Gulf Coast. So what we did was we activated what we call defense coordinating officers to work with the state to say okay, what do you think you’ll need, and we set up staging bases that could be started. We had the USS Baton sailing almost behind the hurricane so that after the hurricane made landfall it’s search and rescue helicopters would be available almost immediately. So we had things ready. The only caveat is, we have to wait until the President authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can’t just act in this fashion, we have to wait for the President to give us permission.

9/3 AP: Federal Paperwork Stalled Nat. Guard Response

Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in New Orleans didn’t get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck — a delay nearly certain to be investigated by Congress.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state’s National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn’t come from Washington until late Thursday.

8/17/04 SP Times Hours After Hurricane Charley Hit FLA, Bush Approved Aid to Bush

Gov. Jeb Bush sought federal help Friday while Charley was still in the Gulf of Mexico. President Bush approved the aid about an hour after the hurricane made landfall.

By Monday afternoon, the cavalry seemed to be in place.

Heroes

9/1 Houston Chronicle 20yr-old Jabbar Gibson drives school bus packed with flood victims from NO to Houston

Jabbar Gibson, 20, said police in New Orleans told him and others to take the school bus and try to get out of the flooded city.

Gibson drove the bus from the flooded Crescent City, picking up stranded people, some of them infants, along the way. Some of those on board had been in the Superdome, among those who were supposed to be evacuated to Houston on more than 400 buses Wednesday and today. They couldn’t wait.

The group of mostly teenagers and young adults pooled what little money they had to buy diapers for the babies and fuel for the bus.

After arriving at the Astrodome at about 10:30 p.m., however, they initially were refused entry by Reliant officials who said the aging landmark was reserved for the 23,000 people being evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.

“Now, we don’t have nowhere to go,” Gibson said. “We heard the Astrodome was open for people from New Orleans. We ain’t ate right, we ain’t slept right. They don’t want to give us no help. They don’t want to let us in.”

9/3 CNN: Foul Mouthed 3 Star General – the Black John Wayne (more on IronMouth)

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin calls Lt. Gen. Russel Honore a “John Wayne dude” who can “get some stuff done.”

“He came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving,” Nagin said.

Getting food and water to the people at the city’s convention center was a difficult process, Honore said.

“If you ever have 20,000 people come to supper, you know what I’m talking about. If it’s easy, it would have been done already.”

9/3 Video of Normal People with Boats Volunteering to Help

Strange Bedfellows

9/3 CNN: Castro Offers To Send 1,100 Doctors and 26 tons of medicine and equipment.

“Others have sent money; we are offering to save lives,” (Fidel) Castro said.

Castro — an enemy of U.S. President George W. Bush and frequent subject of condemnation from the White House — said he would not comment on the U.S. government’s response to the tragedy because “this is not the time to kick an adversary — while he’s down.”

donate blood via red cross + Flickr Photo Auction for Katrina + “bureaucracy has committed murder here“

and he did a pretty good job.

and even though randy newman is more known for his songwriting than his singing, i have always loved his version of this song, the original. and i totally love the record that it came from “good old boys”. but all his records are good.

and because kanye stole the show last night, i wanted to stoke people with this

randy newman
good old boys
reprise records, 1974 (mp3)

remastered version by rhino, 2001

“louisiana 1927”
(newman)

What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through cleard down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne

Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tyrin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, “Little fat man isn’t it a shame what the river has done
to this poor crackers land.”

Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tyrin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away

lyrics to good old boys, a concept album about the south + guilty, the randy newman box set + melting dolls