Our Abusive Partner

If only we could just take the kids and go back to Mom's place for a while and figure out how to rebuild our lives without the bastard.

Improvement

There is lots of talk and action here these days about saving and preserving culture. I say we don't need permits or regulation or preservation or improvement. Just leave us alone. If someone is hurting you, tell them to stop it. If they don't, gather the community around and we'll come up with a solution.

Carnival 2011

Every year at Carnival time I make a card to add to the mountains of miscellaneous Mardi Gras junk. I put no credit line or identification of any kind on it. Random, masked, irreverent - Mardi Gras. It makes it's debut at the Krewe of Eris parade which passes right under the window of my second floor shop on Decatur on the Sunday evening before Mardi Gras. I fling hundreds of cards out the window to the revelers below. I swear they cheer. It is thrilling. You have to be there to get a card, or otherwise run into me sometime between Sunday and Tuesday. Here is a representation of this year's card. It is a pale, digital shadow of the real thing.

I was inspired by the fundamentalist jerks who come to New Orleans every year to tell all us faggot degenerates that we are going to burn in hell. Just to look at their pinched, aggrieved faces amidst the throngs of happy, loving people they condemn is to know that they are in hell already and we are in heaven.

Tahrir means liberation

I made a button honoring the people of Egypt. The red, white and black pattern is that of the flag of Pan Arab Liberation and the national flag of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and others with the only difference being a national symbol in the white field. The flag was adopted during the anti-monarchist/anti-imperialist revolutions of the 1950's and we're not done with it yet.

Dutch Alley artist

I am now part of the Dutch Alley Atrist's Co-op. My work is now for sale seven days per week. Things are going well. I'm starting to wonder if success will ruin me. I suppose it's worth the risk.

Permanently Temporary

When the city flooded five years ago a lot of our infrastructure was ruined. For example, all of the lift stations (pumps that keep the sewer lines flowing, not to be confused with the pumps that get rid of storm water) were ruined. Here is a picture of one such station that I go past just about every day, usually twice. It is on a busy street, a main artery near my house. The little white stucco building is the old lift station. The blue machine parked on the side of the street is the replacement.

It is some measure of how poorly we do things here that we are still operating this important function with a private contractor who is leasing the equipment to the city. This has already cost us more than it would have to repair or replace the old pumps. Plus it stinks.

Building on the Ground Zero Site

I am opposed to anyone building a red herring on the site of the 911 attack. I wish we could just ignore the issue. It was created as a provocative and emotional distraction. We derail our community and sew fear when we attend to the mewling of these creeps like the pathological ego-freak in Florida who thinks it is an act of liberation to burn books.

We can't ignore them. Like any emotional attack, if it stands without challenge it attracts even reasonable, caring people who may never have considered how really outrageous are these things we are expected to swallow. I remember being told that if we didn't carpet bomb Southeast Asia we would be fighting communists in our suburbs.