Well blow me down

The weather has become daunting to a new degree, shifting from t-shirt
to gloves in a day here. It was 63 at this time yesterday; now it is 35
with a brief spate of light snow. Arkansas is located at an unenviable
locus between weather systems and group thinking, each sliding uneasily
between defiant certainty and a twitchiness I sometimes think of as
being uniquely Southern, even as I realize that is a national condition
where being "provincial" varies, depending on your personal province.
Even Manhattan is provincial; it simply puts a more colorful,
accelerated spin on it. Sophistication can make you taller, but not
larger, building up but not becoming broader.

The radical shifts between hot and cold mirror the political and
social scenery. My old friend in New Orleans is not one of the hapless
9th Warders, yet he is having to scramble to use his insurance and FEMA
money to return. Why, I cannot fully understand, as the levees are
seemingly being allowed to lie there unaddressed in a proper manner,
while the skullduggery blossoms steadily. A recent demand that people
from some of the worst-hit areas return within 4 months or have their
land fall to eminent domain of a sort in the rush to rebuild smells
fiercely bad. Its seems quite likely that the developmental desire to
turn chocolate into vanilla is going to win out. How much this will help
or damage the much-ballyhooed cultural texture of New Orleans remains to
be seen.

My friend just said they had decided against going for a trailer
deemed too small to be practical and went for a rented house so that
they will have time, as he put it, "to find the right palms to grease"
to get one of only *two* acting city inspectors to okay a utility box
being applied to the pole *they* had to pay to have installed. In
addition, the federal insurance covers quite a bit, while the private
insurance has a deductible that coincidentally would have been the
amount required for a new roof, had a contractor not said a bit of
repair would suffice. Blow after blow after blow, yet he is back and
praising the fine blackened fish fillet he had for lunch.

With Arctic pack ice melting and the temperature of Atlantic waters
behaving strangely, there is no assurance that there will not be another
Katrina a year or two from now, undoing all the repairs. 2005 was
Arkansas' 3rd worst drought season in history, with over 15" lacking.
The rain from Katrina never reached this far and the 2" we have received
in the last week only took away the burning bans, not the extensive
agricultural unhinging. Farming is no endeavor for the timid. If shifts
in the free market or governmental edicts don't get you, the weather will.

So I chip away at my synthesizers and go bleary mixing the final
results, clicking past the braying of CNN to the Weather Channel radar.
I am glad to be in a city large enough to act as a heat sink, driving
the tornadoes towards trailers in the sticks. I feel a pang of
abstracted guilt as those who have their homes blown away shed tears
over it on the 6 o'clock news, thanking God for the blessing of still
being there to describe it in a 15-second sound bite.

Small flowers and various shoots are blooming when they should be fast
asleep on a 35-degree day. It will be some time before I can safely pack
away my coats and "flood insurance" seems like both a contradiction in
terms and a case of bizarre bedfellows. This week in Arkansas, it was
hot, cold, dry, wet, windy and eerily calm by turns. April showers bring
May flowers, unless the equator suddenly shifts and magnetic North
becomes centered in Mexico. Mother Mary, full of grace, the whimpering
dog lifted his leg on a fireplug and got frozen to it, fireman, save our
trailers. Oh, the weather outside is frightful.

--

HellPope Huey
Ah, the roar of the greasepaint,
the smell of the crowd

Clown porn makes the baby Bozo cry.
~ Joy D'Veeve

Clown is a pupal stage of zombie.
~ Rev. End x Art