WWL is saying that they are still trying to fix the levees, and that "the water from the Lake is rising to meet with the River in Uptown." the interdictor's livejournal says that there's no water at all around him at lafayette square in the CBD. his webcam is here.

as i mentioned, joe and jenny left tuesday at 11, when they heard that the city was taking on water. joe sent me some pictures, which are all from uptown, camp street area (i think), where they live. i hope he doesn't mind me doing this, but here they are.









this is also where i used to live, a while back. i used to walk past the coliseum theater all the time on my way to check email at the internet cafe. since these pictures are from tuesday, there may be some water here now. hard to say.

these photos are by joe. they are copyright 2005 joseph followed by his last name.

joe and jennifer rode out the storm, but they got out yesterday. they say that when they left, uptown was dry and had hot water and gas. i hope they get the levees and pumps fixed today.

the first time in my life i ever got to move someplace of my choosing, i went to new orleans. there was no job there, there was no graduate school, there was no family. it was just where i wanted to be. i lived there in 1999.

watching hurricane katrina upset me a lot, even though i assumed that everyone i knew would be okay. i haven't heard from the cellphoneless joe and jennifer, but i am guessing they are all right, and roy called me (from graceland of all places) yesterday. the entire thing still gets to me--for people i don't know, but also because the city itself can't go anywhere. every person can get out of town, but new orleans has to sit there and take it.

watching cnn, you get the feeling that they wanted a spectacle. but the really bad part is starting now. they don't have water, the sewers aren't working, and there's still a problem with the pumping system, so things are slowly flooding. the ninth ward is underwater since yesterday. kenner is flooded. et cetera.

hang in there.

for links that are good, here is WWL, and here is a guy who rode out the storm on poydras street, in an internet station.

i'm at work, but other than me it's pretty empty here. the phone rang a little while ago.

me: hello, this is josh.

him: hello, i am trying to reach dr. von gutberg.

me: sorry, he's gone for the day.

him: (hesitation) okay. thank you. good-bye.

and here the call ends. i hang up and sit back down. the phone rings again. i answer it again.

me: hello.

him: hello, i am trying to reach dr. von gutberg.

me: no, i'm sorry, he's still gone for the day. he usually goes about 2 or 3. (silence) he was here earlier, but now he's gone. he might be in on the weekend. (silence) i don't know.

him: yes. i was sending him a patent application earlier in the day, and he received it, and then sent me some corrections and some comments. (pause) i sent him another file. it was the wrong file, and so he is going to read the wrong file.

me: you might send him an email. i don't know that he'll check it, though.

him: yes, but you could perhaps reach him. see, he is going to read the wrong file.

me: i don't have his number. i don't work in the same group as him, so i don't know.

him: you might give me someone in his research group?

me: i'm the only one here. i'm sorry.

him: yes. see, he is going to waste his entire weekend reading the wrong file. see, it is the wrong file, so you should try to tell him, maybe, that. . . . (trails off)

me: i'm sorry, i don't know how to contact him. really. i don't know.

him: yes, but. it is the wrong file, and he is going to. . . . okay. but his entire weekend will be wasted. it will be wasted, because he will read the wrong file.

me: (a few seconds) sorry. good-bye?

him: yes. yes.

i left a note. i really don't know how to call him.

from the back of a cadbury wrapper:

enjoying chocolate as part of a balanced lifestyle can play a part in making people feel calmer more relaxed and generally happier. chocolate gives us an emotional boost, which triggers similar 'good feelings' to those we experience when listening to music, or being in love.

that's so completely fantastic. somebody in an office somewhere wrote this flawless prayer for the good epicurian in all of us. is there atheism in this harmless ode to the chocolate bar? i want there to be. i am feeling so dramatic today. the pleasures of the afterlife? whatever, but here's some wonderful chocolate. it's the first good feeling i've had today, so i'll take it. the blue sky is making me feel like shit, and for some reason i want some sedition.

do i have pms? i might have made a good woman.

i like listening to live music, usually pop music. on occasion i go to the orchestra, and i used to be a jazz snob, but as i've grown up i've realized that what i really like is pop music, which currently means indie rock, i suppose.


tickets from new york

in fact, i like it so much that i am kind of one of those people who has a problem, i.e. i spend too much time and money going to see bands. but it keeps me happy, most of the time, so it's good.

having grown up in a small town, i never went to shows when i was younger. i don't think i knew how to. sometimes the cool kids would show up at school and talk about the bon jovi concert in nashville, but i never did any of that. it might have seemed scary. but since i was about twenty, i have been full-blown obsessive in the same sense that i am now.

every week i probably go to a show somewhere. tonight i'm going to see sufjan stevens. currently i am a little depressed, and i always find sufjan stevens really depressing, but the combination will not mean more depression. it will most likely make me feel nice.

anyone who lives in new york knows i got my storm yesterday. the heat can affect your ability to think rationally, and i have proof because it had been so hot for so long that when i saw it was surely going to rain, i took a book and went to the colonnade at the top of the steps at work. the sky got black, and the wind blew hard, and the pigeons all came under the cover with me, and it rained like hell. lightning started striking in every direction, in bright white forks, and then i started to get concerned, because i imagined the campus as a field, and my location as a high hill, and the colonnade as the tallest tree. you see what i mean.

i kind of forgot that a thunderstorm is not always a friendly thing. not only that, i left my umbrella on my desk, because surely it would be 95 and bright within ten minutes. but no, it rained a long time. while i and my book were starting to get wet no matter how far back i stood, simultaneous lightning-thunder happened over to the left, and i decided to run down the steps and find someplace else to be.

after a short run, i was in a doorway with a cop. i didn't know how he would like my sharing his doorway, but it was my only choice, and he turned out not to mind, and we both found it funny when we saw some lawn sprinklers turn on.

so, it poured for six or seven hours, shut down the 1/2/3 line, and i ended up in a bar in long island city standing in the window. the rain was flying off everything, and some lightning flashed, and all the lights on the street went out. the lights in the bar just flickered, though. bars are good places.

just a minute ago, for real, the sky was darkening and lowering, as if it was promising to rain. the street out the window and down below looks wet somehow, but i never saw any rain fall, and there's none on the windows. i am almost positive it didn't rain. there was a loud boom, like thunder that lasted longer than normal. and now the sky has brightened back to an unhealthy haze, with bright, implied sunlight everywhere, and it's still hot and thick and awful. it is so hot in new york city. a thunderstorm must happen. it must. this is the itch that must be scratched. it's hotter than it should be. it's so hot that everything's getting heavy and dense and quiet.

in the past, i have had some trouble with seeing the fiery furnaces. but the fifteen minutes i have gotten to see, i quite liked.

they're going to play town hall on october 14th, so i will perhaps get to see the beginning and the end this time. but in the usual new york city venue website checking, it has been discovered that lambchop will also be playing that day, at bowery ballroom.

oh, such a disaster. lambchop, i'm sure you'll realize i still love you.

different in character, but another story from the bus. the other night coming home, i got on at 110th, and this girl got on at 116th. she had two things i should point out: 1) substantial breasts, and 2) a shirt with a map of tennessee on it, with stars on memphis, nashville, and knoxville, and something written across the state which i could not make out.

now, i have to testify that i am not, and never have been, obsessed with breasts. i mean, sure, whatever, but i was craning my neck around watching her chest go by because i wanted to know what the shirt said about tennessee. and i still don't know.

and she saw, and she smiled, and i'm sure she thought i was looking at her boobs. so then i kept getting that familiar joshlike urge to explain myself to someone who has clearly misunderstood. i wanted to say, "excuse me, i'm sorry, you're cute, but i wasn't checking you out--i wanted to see what your shirt said. see, it has tennessee on it, and i'm from tennessee. well, really i grew up there, and moved away when i was 18, but i kind of identify with tennessee, and any time i see it, i want to know what it's about, and i always say hi to people who are from tennessee when i see them in new york. are you from tennessee, or is that like a urban outfitters thrift store shirt? i mean, your boobs are nice and you should feel good about them, but i wasn't looking at them."

so. do you think it's a good thing i didn't do that?

tonight on the bus there was a guy sitting in the frontmost seat that faces forward, and he was a big guy. he wasn't fat, he was just really big--so much so that he took up most of the two-person seat. his head was big, and his features were big, and he wore a ball cap down too far over his eyes and a striped polo shirt that was really tight, and he had sort of grey hair. he had spit in the corners of his mouth, and his mouth was always open, and occasionally he would say something to the driver, but i couldn't make it out.

the feeling i got was that he wasn't all there, like perhaps that he was slow. most of the time his eyes looked really mean. squinty, like he didn't trust anything. but when we hit some cross street, because i was watching him, i saw him suddenly get interested in something out the window, and he got really wide-eyed for a second, and he looked kind of like a little kid, and he said, "oh, four, five," really quietly while he was looking at whatever it was, and then went back to looking forward with his mouth open, and scrutinizing everything sort of mean-like.

i have always liked people who don't fit, and by that i mean people who really don't fit. people who maybe almost can't function. i know i wouldn't want to be around that guy all the time, so i don't know where the fascination comes from. it might be sincerity. as in, i don't believe he would ever put on airs.

i work at columbia university, which is primarily located on six blocks in upper manhattan. the main walk through the school is flanked by the new library and the old library, and a expanse of majestic-looking steps.


the view from the top of the steps

right now it's summer, so there aren't very many people around. but in the spring, the first time the weather gets nice, hundreds of people blow off whatever they are supposed to be doing and go sit on the steps. and for the rest of the semester, it remains a popular place.

one really sunny and nice day, the middle of this past april, i kept track of my time for a couple hours on the steps, with the intention of telling about it, but i never did. there was a breeze, it was about seventy, and a huge crowd was gathered, enjoying the day, watching the people walking by on their way someplace.

for a while i made up things about the people who stood out. for instance, about a guy with blonde hair who was wearing blue hospital scub pants--"i bet he's kind of a creep, and he's really mean to people in a playful kind of way, but it's really easy to hurt his feelings." that's one i remember. i think the story was based on his sunglasses. nothing special.

then this girl came and sat on the step right below and next to me, and she was reading a book called "hollywood and anti-semetism". another girl she knew walked by, and she stopped her and asked if she had a pencil she could borrow, because she was taking notes in a library book with pen, and she felt bad about it. so her friend dug around in her jacket for a long time and came up with a mechanical pencil. then she read for about one more page, and then laid down the book and curled up on the step and went to sleep. and she slept for about an hour, just lying sideways on a step. i did stuff like that in college, but i don't think i would now. and i'm not sure why.

matt--the undergrad who used to work for me--came by. he sat down with me for twenty minutes or so. he's going to berkley in the fall. i saw lauren the formerly purple-haired office assistant go by, just like i saw any time i sat on the steps, and i elected not to say hi to her, because every time i sat on the steps i saw her, and said hi, and it seemed a little ridiculous.

this guy was standing next to me holding his cell phone up to his ear, and he said only these words: "i'm on the fucking steps." that's it. i also heard two seconds of the conversation of a guy and a girl way down below me, and it was the following. her: "pitch fork media dot com." him: "yeah, you should check it out. they have--" (blah blah blah).

next to me there were these two girls. they were eating sushi, and then they lay down and closed their eyes, and i think every dorky boy they know showed up one by one in a fifteen minute period, until they were such a large group that i seemed like one of them, but i refused to move, so they all talked there right next to me. the three boys were dorks--and i can explain them no better than that--and the girls were the kind of girls who attract a following of dorks. one dork: "your leg is really warm. you seem so still, but your leg is warm." girl: "and your hand is cold, so please stop touching me." dork: "i'm warming up my hands." girl: "why don't you, like, warm up your hands on the concrete?" dork: "am i making you uncomfortable touching you?" girl: "you can only touch me if everyone touches me at once." dork: "so if all three of us touch you, we can do anything we want?" dork 2: "aw yeah!" (dorky laughter.)

then they talked about their genetic peculiarities, which have you noticed people tend to talk about when they are 19 and searching for an identity? girl: "i can't give blood. i gave blood this one time, and it took like four hours, and for the average person it takes twenty minutes, but for me it kept getting clogged up. my blood pressure is really low. my heart beats 45 times a minute." dork: "wow." girl: "it's really unhealthy." dork: "no, it's really good. because your heart is stronger, and it has to beat fewer times because it moves the blood further." girl: "oh, it's good? wow, that's a relief."

et cetera

i have been having a bad time at work recently, and today i calculated--as i often do--that i need karma. yes, i do think there is something to being excessively nice to other people when you're not having the easiest time. at the very least it makes you feel better.

i went to get something for lunch at the cart at 120th and broadway. there's a guy who begs for money near there, who i usually only see in the winter because he sits on the heating grate. but, mysteriously, today he was there, sitting on the heating grate.

have you ever been with someone and they went to give money to a homeless guy, and as they gave it to him they also gave him a little sententious lecture about what he should or shouldn't do with the money? now, you're going to buy something to eat with this or some shit like that? i hate that. if you're going to give the guy money, just give it to him. he doesn't need your garbage. he could probably teach you a thing or two, too.

now, people who know me might recognize that a standard josh closing is "be good." "see you later!" "be good." i used to say it all the time, fifty times a day, when i tended bar. be good. so today i handed the guy a dollar, and he said, "gawd bless you sir, gawd bless you," and i said "be good," which just means hello and goodbye.

but when i said be good, he said, "oh yes, sir, of course i wheel be sir, absolutely. ab-so-lutely, gawd bless you."

so now i feel bad. i wasn't lecturing him.