PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

venturing out again

2007-01-25 - 8:47 a.m.

Can you believe I didn't leave the house and yard from the time I got back from Honolulu until last night? The first night, DH was going to take me out to dinner, but my poor ankles had swollen and all I wanted to do was elevate my feet. Then I got sick.

Finally, I felt well enough last night that I suggested we walk over to the new Japanese restaurant near our house. Heh, maybe Brad Pitt ate there when they were living at Beau Chene while shopping for their house in the French Quarter. It would have been in walking distance for him too, right? Tee hee.

I'm on a scallops kick so I had some scallops butteryaki. I still wasn't feeling tiptop and kind of wore anything, so we won't talk about that, but I did have on my nice furry beret. I had a large warm sake, actually ate my entire dinner, and strolled home with no further excitement. So I think I'm finally getting well, except I still croak a little when I try to talk.

There's a strange light coming in the windows this morning. I think they call it the sun.

later

Took a walk this morning. Stopped by a bank where I had a CD that I wanted to roll over, but, er, I couldn't find the CD. As I was talking to the lady about it, I suddenly realized where it had to be. Came home, and there it was. I also stopped by the insurance office to pay my homeowner's insurance and at Dollar General to buy some canned tomatoes and friends. So far, so good. I'm going to eat a lunch that contains a generous serving of canned tomato and if that stays down I'm going to try some errands that require driving.

later

Well, I'm back. I got a few things done -- dropped off a couple checks, dropped off the library books, found new library books and some cheapie airplane books at the used book place nearby, checked in KMart for the South Beach bars. Damn! I didn't know that I previously purchased the SB breakfast bars on super-duper rock-bottom-dollar KMart Blue Light Special. The regular price is too much, so I'm trying some off-label bars.

Did you know that KMart sells Dom Perignon? Me neither. $120 a bottle. They also had about a hundred of the Crown Royal gift boxes too. Should have picked up some of those but I was running out of steam.

Too tired for the big grocery store run. I'm going to drink some hot chocolate and browse a few pages of the new Stephen King book I got at the library.

A Yahoo Headline: Ford posts worst loss in its history: "Ford Motor Co. lost $5.8 billion in the fourth quarter amid slumping sales and huge restructuring costs, pushing the automaker's deficit for the year to $12.7 billion, the largest in its 103-year history."

I didn't lose quite $5.8 billion on F, but I lost a great deal. I liked poor William Ford and thought if anyone was motivated to turn it around, it would be him, to save the family name. And he went years taking only a $1 annual salary. Finally, though, in December, I had to give up and take out what little of my investment remained before it achieved the mathematical perfection of zero. Our companies can't compete with countries that provide universal health care, because our labor costs end up being staggeringly high compared to other countries where fine automobiles are made like Germany and Japan. It's heartbreaking. The auto industry was ours to destroy, and we did it, all because of hysterics screaming about "socialized" health care. Pathetic.

And so concludes today's rant of the day. I'm only a little bitter.

Nola.com Headline: Police find bigger fish amid protest -- "It took a protest over New Orleans' shuttered public housing to lead police to a suspected killer, one with a reputation for violence and beating murder raps long before Hurricane Katrina washed away his 7th Ward haunts. Garelle Smith, 25, sits in jail without bond after his arrest last week at the St. Bernard public housing complex, where police nabbed him, at first, for tearing down part of the fence that the Housing Authority of New Orleans installed around the sprawling complex after closing it down in the aftermath of Katrina....Police booked him with the first-degree murder of Mandell Duplessis, 24, who was gunned down Aug. 4 outside a FEMA trailer in Gentilly after surprising a small band of armed robbers who had taken the trailer's residents hostage in search of cash and narcotics. It is a familiar drill for Smith, who has escaped two previous murder charges in Orleans Parish, including the killing of local rapper Soulja Slim, born James Tapp, on Nov. 26, 2003."

I have to admit that I've been very skeptical about the motives behind the occupation of the St. Bernard Housing Projects. I couldn't understand why people would want to squat in one of the worst housing projects in the nation, when they have an opportunity to live somewhere even marginally decent funded by FEMA, Red Cross, or whoever. I mean, come on, even a FEMA tin can is better than that place.

I'd heard this rumor behind the barn that Texas police departments were actually shipping criminals to New Orleans to live in the ruins, and while I can't confirm that, I strongly suspected that it wasn't nice, clean, decent people who were clamoring to live in St. Bernard. I mean, it's like clamoring to get into Angola Prison or the second circle of Hell. You don't fight to get in, you fight to get out, right?

I feel a little bad about the progressive organization mixed up in these protests, and I won't name them here, but I'm also a little irritated that they couldn't find something better to do than advocate for re-opening St. Bernard Housing Project. As the Buddha and Hippocrates said: First do no harm.

Cool Mark Perkel^* letter to the New York Times:

To the Editor:

Back in 1992 when Bill Clinton ran for president, he talked about his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying that she was an outstanding partner. During the campaign we heard talk of getting “two for the price of one.”

Now that Senator Clinton is running for president, she, too, can run a “two for the price of one” campaign, because her husband is a proven great president.

So I’m glad to see her get into the race, because things were a lot better with the Clintons in the White House.

I think it’s time to bring the Clintons back. I’m looking forward to returning to a debate over how we are going to spend the surplus rather than how we are going to stop the deficit.

Marc Perkel

San Bruno, Calif., Jan. 21, 2007

*Mark Perkel is a frequently published writer of letters to the editor in newspapers across the United States, as well as the internet. I've published his letter in toto on the assumption that he wants it seen and is not concerned with copyright. I guess if he or the NYT feel I have violated their copyright, they can email me and I'll take it down. But I hope they don't.

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