Yes, that is exactly what you think it is. But first, a few days before....
I hung out with Barlow in New Orleans. Here we are at Wall Mart:
Barlow was really cool and it was great to see him. I felt like I knew him the least out of the four members of the gang back in the day, but I felt like we got to know each other a bit better. I stayed in NO for a week. This guy took me to the cool bars, Juan's flying burrito, a po boy place, and introduced me to some of his friends like Nathalie, Michelle, and the guy from Wackenhunt who hangs out at the dirvish on Sunday industrial night.
We had a cookout of corn tortilla cheese pepperoni things at night down by the point on the lake, and then went swimming at an apocalyptic beach in Mississippi. The swimming was nice and water was good, we tried but did not succeed in catching fish, though we did find and catch many hermit crabs. We tried to sell them to the pet shop but they weren't buying so we set them free. Unfortunately a wasp on the beach landed on my arm and stung it, and i cut open my foot pretty good on something sharp (oyster shell or broken glass probably) in the water. These things are pretty healed though. Most interesting about the beach was a former community that had been totally destroyed by the storm. I was wondering around this abandoned old hotel that still had pianos, beds, desks, computer screens, log books, technical manuals, chairs; tons of stuff inside of it, just all left there. Felt very strange, broken glass all over, where restaurants and houses had been there was nothing. A recently dead fox was rotting on the sand while the flies swarmed around its body.
In case you haven't been there: you can walk down the street drinking an alcoholic beverage and its fine, and everyone drives drunk. Everyone is pretty much drunk all the time, it seems; though they've also got lots of really nice, umm,, "trendy?", coffee shops everywhere.
It was hard to purchase commodities here because my temporary check card issued to me September 1st after my previous card expired expired itself on October 1st. While the new one was being forwarded to me we had some pretty unpleasant hungry few days... like getting a whole cart of groceries to the counter to be told "we don't accept out of state checks".
More reflection on this place and the people here is in order but for the computer I'm using, the location I am, as well as the pain in my ass from the needle that was stabbed in it, these thoughts will not be transmitted to you through a digital medium for some time.
Yet I can tell you that there are a very few times, maybe only five a year, when you see someone and they talk to you and within a few minutes or hours they give you this look and you know that there is absolutely nothing you wouldn't do for them because they are the most beautiful, intelligent, and generally awesome thing you've seen since you can remember. Well this happened at the one eyed jacks on 80s night Thursday night and really made me feel good to be there... that's a total understatement...
Other events which took place involved seeing a fight at wall mart. Possibly involving an employee... Here's some scenes of it and the aftermath:
A customer runs in fright past a ripped out hair extension:
Another hair extension found approximately 25 feet away:
There's a short video of the final moments of the confrontation caught by camera phone at
http://www.noisenobodys.com/xian/road2007/wallmart_fight_neworleans.3gp
Also, what the FUCK is this supposed to mean?
The day I left NO I started to feel something of a pain in my throat, my second day away from there, now in Dallas TX, it felt worse. Having no other cold like symptoms I used my intelligence and verbal skills to ask the woman at wallgreens where some health care clinic was. She told me, and for only $40 I got to wait around for an hour watching TV, and then get stabbed in the ass with a giant needle (pictured above). I had indeed contracted strep throat. I'm not sure from who or where... was it the residual toxic mold from the storm? Was it from Michelle, Barlow's friend who had it but who I hadn't kissed or shared a drink at all, and who i hadn't seen in like, almost a week... was it from La Francaise? I don't know, but at any point the fact that I contracted strep in N.O. gave new meaning to the appropriately descriptive title of this blog.
This is also weird, about 60 miles south of Shreveport in LA I stopped at a Shoney's for something to munch on. Check this out:
See anything weird? How about that bowl on the left? I didn't know what the hell that was, did I get a soup or bowl of grits I didn't know about with my pancake special? No... that is the syrup. The entire bowl! Who needs that much syrup? I mean, c'mon, serious, do our teeth and veins a favor Shoney's and buy some smaller ramicas.
Also cool, leaving NO on I-10 you saw these oil refineries lighting up the bayous and reflecting off the clouds from a distance and it was really beautiful. Camera phones can't really capture it but here's something
This is still East Texas, but it has the feeling of a frontier. The trees shrank, the sky grew, the storms become more intense, gentle hills started to roll up and down... the East Coast money grubbing yuppie dum of a boom town like ATL is here alive and well, though with a more caustic, non- pc, "good old boy", insensitivity. Dallas gives you a taste of the southwest politically but not too much geographically.
By tomorrow or the next day I will be leaving for Santa Fe via Amarillo. That's the land of canyons, deserts, and mountains... there won't be people to stay with, though I'll be avoiding cities so camping out will be an option. Sleeping in the car isn't working out unless I really re-arrange the back to be able to sleep there and it's pretty uncomfortable. The tent should be a lot better. It might be some days or weeks before I am back to staying with someone again, this next time in Denver. I might have my phone switched off to save its batteries in case of emergencies, so if you really want to get in touch just send me a text message.
I saw Resident Evil 3 (its good) and Joe Cline says hi.
Onward to Victory.
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