cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good

well, i've got to stay up for a few minutes and see if the sleeping pills i just took are actually going to have any sort of an effect on me, so what better way to spend my hopefully inane and drowsy last few minutes than a new blog post, eh? it's been a pretty long time since my last real post--not really because i haven't wanted to write anything, really, but because i haven't really been able to find the words to say what it is i want to say.

i mentioned in my last short post that just about everything i wanted to say about this whole hurricane thing has already been said by other people, most of them far more articulate than i. well, that still stands as the case, but that doesn't mean i shouldn't at least attempt to do something.

a while back--sophomore year in college, it was--i read a play called twilight: los angeles, 1992 by anna deveare smith. it's basically a series of interviews with a whole wide range of people about the la riots written to be acted out by a single person (smith herself being of course the only one to do it, she writes a lot of one-woman plays for herself if i remember right). all the people and their stories are real; smith did the interviewing herself. anyway, it painted a very different picture of the riots than the one i had had before: instead of simple outrage at the rodney king verdict, the story she tells is of a powderkeg that would have eventually exploded without such a controversial fuse. her interviews show us a snapshot of la that erupted due to social tensions that did not begin and end with race but instead dealt with a very large group of people who, to put it bluntly, just couldn't fucking take it any more. in the immortal words of one mr. bradley nowell, everybody in the hood had had it up to here, and it was indeed getting harder and harder and harder each and every year.

it's a situation that, in la, hasn't gotten any better. it hasn't really gotten any better anywhere. for a frightening percentage of our population, there is very little hope left. our urban centers have deteriorated to the point that most people really honestly think there's nothing left we can do. and it continues to get worse as our economy moves further and further away from these areas; no one wants to spend the time or the money to fix something that offers no return on investment. maybe i just listen to too much kanye, but really, what does a young kid on the streets of la or detroit or chicago or new york have to look forward to? what does he have to keep him out of the criminal element, the only success that he sees anyone around him afforded? what can he do to get out, be he black or white or brown or whatever? these cities are crushing them, destroying anything human in them, killing whatever chances they have to become what we privileged think are meaningful contributors to society.

*interlude*
you must have noticed that "we privileged" i threw in that last sentence. the most interesting interview in smith's play was with a businessman at a restaurant in hollywood. he begins his talk by referring to the day the riots broke out, and how he had been in a very crowded public place when he heard on the radio that there was rioting just a few miles away. he talked about how everyone around him started to panic and ask themselves what they should do, how they should protect themselves. the man, however, said that all he could think was not what should i do or how could this happen, he thought it's about time; we deserve it.

do i sometimes feel guilty for being an upper-middle class white guy? yes, yes i do. is it my fault? no, of course not, but how can i walk around preaching equality without first recognizing the inequality in myself? to not recognize that, to not realize the fact that i have it so much better than so many others, well, that's just wrong. but what can i do about it? apparently nothing but sit around and whine about it on the internet. this is one of those things that i try to think about but it doesn't ever go anywhere. if anyone would like to talk about racial or socio-economic guilt, please feel free to engage me. for now, i'll just continue my first train of thought and leave this for another day.
*end interlude*

so let's take this situation. then let's smash it with a huge fucking natural disaster and fill it with six hundred billion gallons of poisonous water. then let's all sit around and look at it for a couple days, then start arguing about why we haven't done anything about it yet. then let's all pat ourselves on the back with every single organization in the united states starting a charity fund and let's all fucking pretend that we're not going to forget all about it in another three fucking months.

all right, yes, i thought the same thing about 9-11. i said that we'd get all patriotic for a year or so and then we'd move on, because well, that's america. i was wrong, yes, but then again we weren't exactly allowed to forget, were we? what are we going to do to keep katrina in our hearts and minds, huh? we certainly can't declare a war on hurricanes. we can't very well blame this one on anyone, can we? i get a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that we're going to accept this just like human beings accept anything that can't be avoided: we forget about it.

we can't afford to forget about this. everyone needs to sit down and understand that we knew the fucking thing was coming and we knew what it was going to do once it came. i've spent a good ten minutes trying to write this next sentence, but it's just not coming out. i could make all sorts of comments here, saying something about the principle role of government or about how we need to put more faith in technology and advancement, but really, i just can't. i wrote a lot more than i thought i was going to, but now i'm definitely out. i hope i push the right button and this gets posted. adam out.

atlantis

i've been trying to think of how to begin this post for a few days now, but so far i've failed. luckily, there are people out there who can do a much better job at this than me--i suppose that's why they're on tv. this is keith olbermann talking about katrina, and you should all watch it:

http://home.sandiego.edu/~adamp/olb.wmv [3.3 MB WMV]

now i'm going to bed, because i'm thuroughly outdone here. seriously though, watch that.