I'm at the gate posting on my iPhone. Nolagoraphobia fairly well controlled by -pams. The fuckers at security made me toss not just my $1 hairspray, which I didn't care about except now my hair will be all floppy at Alinea, but also my expensive tea rose perfume. Yep, I could have taken out the captain with that shit. Thank you, "terrists."

So I went to see my doctor about the Cymbalta's troublesome habit of fucking off to the corner bar three or four days a week. I thought she'd increase my dosage, but instead she convinced me to try some new "mood stabilizer" called Abilify (who gets paid to think of these names?). When I picked up the prescription, I learned that, were I to work up to the recommended daily dosage, it would cost $426 a month. CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY if the fact that your crazy pills are costing your family the price of a dinner for two at the French Laundry causes you to experience violent mood swings, feelings of worthlessness, or thoughts of harming yourself. God damn my stupid brain anyway. I am utterly respectful of mental illnesses and emotional disorders in others, but when it comes to myself, I am practically a Scientologist: "There's nothing wrong with you that a good kick in the ass wouldn't cure! Why can't you quit whining? If you just make up your mind that you're going to be OK, you will be. You make me sick, ya big pussy."

Alas, my inner Scientologist has failed to convert me.

Seriously, there is a history of depression in my family and I have certainly struggled with it before, but I wasn't on any psychiatric drugs before the failure of the federal levee system, and I was doing OK. It seems to me that things in my brain should have returned to that level of OK-ness by now, and it pisses me off that they haven't. Can catastrophic events permanently change your brain chemistry?

I hate even talking about this shit, but I decided in 2005 that I would try to maintain a certain level of candor in this journal in order to give readers a realistic picture of one New Orleanian whose life was torn apart by Katrina and its aftermath. Other than some very nice cucumbers and mint currently being served at The Green Goddess, that picture is really all I have to offer the public world right now, so there you go.

I have simultaneous Cymbalta failure, garden burnout, bad sciatica, and a catch in my back from bending over to harvest mint that leaves me unable to do much of anything but lie on a heating pad.

All together now:

SUCKS TO BE YOU, DOC!!!

Mine is not good right now. I'm not going to bore you with details, but I do want to say I'm sorry if I have seemed snotty to anyone lately. I don't feel particularly snotty (except in the literal sense; I am definitely a phlegm factory), but I do feel terse. For me, terseness means I am sick of the sound of my own voice (or the sight of my own words). To others, I know from experience, it can read as snottiness. I do not intend it as such.

Rhetorical question: Is it possible for a reasonably intelligent person to go through four years of American high school and come out the other side ignorant of what "cheerleaders" symbolize to ugly girls, or girls who aren't ugly but are so weird that they get treated as if they're ugly, or "girls" who aren't really girls at all, but knowing that would have made the mouthbreathers in their school even more determined to kill them? What I mean is, once you've gone through high school as one of the losers, do terms like "cheerleader" and "jock" and "popular" ever lose their loadedness? Do they ever lose their ability to jump out from behind a quarter-century's worth of real life and bite you in the ass with teeth you assumed they'd lost years ago?

I just wrote a long, funny (to me, anyway) entry about having a lovely day and not doing anything I didn't want to do and then suddenly having it interrupted by a plague of slugs, but Frankie walked across the keyboard and somehow managed to erase the whole thing before I could post it. Screw it; I'm going to go eat some more of the vast Greek salad I fixed for dinner tonight.

... at least so far. It's only 1:00 PM, the crack of dawn to me these days, so I suppose it has the potential to get better.

A) I made myself so sore working in the garden yesterday that I'm not sure I will be able to make it to the Druids parade tonight. The work -- digging out a new bed for elephant ear and stargazer lily bulbs, eating the weeds, putting up a new hanging basket so the neighborhood cats won't destroy my catnip plant -- needed doing and I enjoyed it, but I will purely hate missing that parade.

B) We awoke this morning to a newspaper story about Chris in which he is misquoted as calling me his "wife," even though he took the time to explain to the reporter that we don't use that word in our relationship and why (the short version). The story is well worth reading anyway for Chris' interesting food book selections, but for the reporter to put that word in Chris' mouth was careless and unprofessional, and I expected better from that particular writer, who has done some wonderful stories for the Times-Picayune. I can deal with it being used to describe me in text by writers who don't know any better, but to see the word supposedly coming right from Chris' mouth was hard and painful.

(Please note: I do not think there is anything wrong with being someone's wife ... if you identify as a woman. I am no one's wife and never will be. Chris usually refers to me as his "better half" -- a kind fib, but one that works for us -- and told the reporter so, but she apparently didn't listen or care.)

C) The coffee maker suddenly decided to be broken this morning. This is the same coffeemaker we bought about six months ago and actually spent decent money on because we were tired of buying cheap ones that kept breaking. Can I lay hands on the warranty? No, of course I cannot.

D) Deuce is loose.

I'm sure there are people out there who are having far, far worse mornings than this, but as a wise man once said to me: if you say you have a headache and someone tells you, "You think your head hurts? That guy over there just got hit in the head with a hammer!", it doesn't make your headache go away -- it just makes you start looking around for a hammer.

INTERNET GOOD: You can Google old classmates you hated and find out about the miserable, boring, uncreative lives they are now living.

INTERNET BAD: Occasionally you find out that one of them is living in a gorgeous villa in Trieste, Italy, even though the bitch is still so dumb she can't spell "Trieste."

Frankie opened my curio cabinet (which is in an isolated corner of my office not accessible to normal cats) and took out the cat skull I keep in there. I removed him and secured the cabinet, but he has jumped onto the bookcase nearby and is mauwing piteously at it.

As greygirlbeast is my witness, I know I bought the skull at Maxilla & Mandible in New York ... but what must he think of me now?

In case you've ever wondered why I don't just go to some other church:

No one at Our Lady of Good Counsel thinks I'm going to destroy the human race.

As a Catholic convert friend recently wrote me, "I have not been to mass in weeks. I feel so angry and disgusted with the Catholic church right now. It's not a question of faith. I still have faith in THE RITUALS. I just think the church is a big stupid dinosaur that needs to be put out of its misery."

Point taken. But if we all leave, then the assholes will have uncontested ownership of a potentially beautiful and valuable institution, and if we Catholics who don't believe this garbage put up with it, then hate will remain part and parcel of Catholic doctrine.

[WARNING: The link in this post contains material and images that may be upsetting to cat lovers, though the cats in question are now OK.]

I'm all in favor of piercings. I have four of them myself (two ears, two tits). With the exception of certain chicks who look cute in nose studs, I'm not a huge fan of facial piercings, but to each his own.

So naturally, I think the people who came up with this brilliant idea should be rewarded with free piercings for life. Forcible ones. Several per day. I recommend starting with the eyelids and moving on to the more easily accessible mucous membranes before beginning to experiment with the more esoteric interior piercings. Hey, these folks want to be "edgy," right? Internal organs are on the bleeding edge, man. Literally. Anyway, my plan calls for finishing these geniuses off with a series of 8-gauge intestinal barbells that send fecal bacteria pouring merrily into the abdominal cavity, resulting in a lingering and painful death from peritonitis.

Press release we sent out today:

Thursday, Dec. 11 Press Conference Takes Bizarre Twist as Archdiocese of New Orleans issues statement demanding that the annual Christmas Concert at Our Lady of Good Counsel church be cancelled.

Annual Event is coupled with annual toy drive for 200 toddlers at Louise Day Care

PRESS EVENT TO BE HELD WITH COUNCIL OF PARISHES CHAIR PETER BORRE GOES ON WITH NEW STATEMENTS BY OUR LADY OF GOOD COUNCIL AND ST. HENRY'S PARISHIONERS
WHEN: 2 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11
WHERE: Pritchard Place at Carrollton Avenue in Uptown New Orleans, across street from Notre Dame Seminary
WHO: Council of Parishes Chair Peter Borre issues statement of support for parishes in vigil in New Orleans; local parishioners bemoan cancelling of 15-year Christmas tradition at OLGC

BACKGROUND ON BORRE:
Peter Borre will give an update on canon appeals to help suppressed churches in America remain open. He will speak at the spot where Pope John Paul II the Great spent the night in New Orleans; Boston churches have persuaded their Bishops to reopen churches after vigils were started.

BACKGROUND ON CHRISTMAS CONCERT:
Newspapers have already run calendar notices announcing the free December 14, 4 p.m. Christmas concert at Our Lady of Good Counsel church which featured professional musicians and vocalists, and invited the public to bring one unwrapped toy for children aged two to six years of age who attend Louise Day Care down the block from the church. OLGC parishioners hold an annual Christmas party for the 200 children from low-income families. The Archdiocese, through its spokeswoman Sarah Comiskey, informed OLGC Parish President Barbara Fortier that the concert could not go on in the church, and the concert has been cancelled. The Archdiocese is also forbidding the annual toy giveaway at the church, even though the parish has partnered with the day-care center for more than 10 years, and even though the Archdiocese originally said the church and its activities would go on until Dec. 31. St. Henry's, an Uptown church which is also under suppression and where parishioners, like OLGC, remain at 24-hour vigil, was also forbidden from doing Christmas service projects to benefit Catholic services.

Find out more on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2 p.m. at Pritchard Place and Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans.


*********************


I'll be at the press conference, and possibly on the 6:00 and/or 10:00 news, if you're local and want to keep an eye out for my obnoxious hot pink OLGC T-shirt.

I just had someone duck out of an 8pm-10pm vigil shift tonight because she didn't realize it was Election Day when she signed up, and now she's afraid there are going to be "riots." I guess I'll have a good view of them sleeping there by myself tonight.

[ETA: Obviously, she is afraid of the Crusade for Moorish Dignity.]

Here's a good Nola.com blog post about the OLGC vigil. Includes information about the disappointing rejection of our civil court case handed down today: legally, church parishioners are not members of the congregation and cannot file suit on its behalf. Yes, you read that right: the people who comprise the church congregation are not members of the church congregation.

I need to go to the shooting range again RIGHT NOW. Either that or mainline several milligrams of Xanax.

First of all, Frankie has developed an obsession with silverware. He gets it out of the sink and carries it all over the house. Now, this in itself is pretty funny, and I can even see the humor in being awakened at 7:30 AM by having a dirty fork dropped on your head, but overall I could have used another three or four hours' sleep.

Next: over the past couple of years, due to being married to a fat man and having many fat friends, I've become interested in fat acceptance, fat-positiveness, or whatever you prefer to call it. This afternoon, while browsing such a community, I learned about Mississippi House Bill 282 by Rep. W.T. Mayhall of Southaven, MS:

AN ACT TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FROM SERVING FOOD TO ANY PERSON WHO IS OBESE, BASED ON CRITERIA PRESCRIBED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO PREPARE WRITTEN MATERIALS THAT DESCRIBE AND EXPLAIN THE CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING WHETHER A PERSON IS OBESE AND TO PROVIDE THOSE MATERIALS TO THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO MONITOR THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FOR COMPLIANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THIS ACT; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

Of course any stupid shitsplat who manages to get elected can propose a bill about any moron thing s/he likes, and of course this idiocy died in committee, but it twists my gut and boggles my mind that ANYONE ANYWHERE EVER TOOK THIS DISCRIMINATORY GARBAGE SERIOUSLY. Even in Mississippi. (Apologies to the smart Mississippians out there. C'mon, I'm from Louisiana; we've got to have somebody to make fun of.)

Next, while innocently reading fuckyoulist, I came upon this prize. (DO NOT click if drooling ignorance about transsexuality/transgendered people makes your head explode.)

So I decided I needed to get away from the computer, and I went out in the yard to see if the fence guys had come and put up the rest of my razor wire as promised. Of course they hadn't, and while examining my plants, I found several boards that hadn't even been screwed down at the bottom. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for a fairly skinny person (e.g. most of the crackheads in my neighborhood) to kick in one of these boards and slip through the resulting gap. If they haven't come and finished the job by tomorrow morning as promised, I swear to God I will do it myself and bill them for my labor.

At that point, Chris came home from running errands and told me I needed to calm down. He had to go back out again for some groceries, so I amused myself by continuing to read Amazon reader "reviews" of my older books, and I found a doozy. I may have to make this a regular feature. This one's about Exquisite Corpse, but you probably could have figured that out on your own.

T. Jackson (Portland, OR United States)
Though I am a big fan of many dark films and movies, I usually like for them to have some sort of moral, lesson or hope to impart. Most of them do. This book is darkness for darkness sake, extremely gross and sadistic, and beyond disturbing. Though well written, I thought it was a waste of time and offered nothing but horrific visions and bleakness. I was so upset by this book, I wanted to write the author, but naturally, she has no public email or way of contacting. I really think she should be hanging her head in shame for contributing garbage like this to the world. I am no prude, extremely liberal and my favorite movie is The Crow, which is quite dark itself. But while that film is about love and redemption, this book is about terrible things. The world doesn't need this kind of darkness.

Somehow, I have no trouble believing that T. Jackson is "extremely liberal." I share many political opinions with liberals, but I find that those who just have to brag about how liberal they are seem to enjoy being offended almost as much as white people (of course, there's a lot of overlap there). Ah, how I wish she had found my P.O. box address (which has been on my website since 2000; this "review" was posted in 2006, so I guess T. Jackson didn't look terribly hard for that contact information she accuses me of hiding) and written me that letter telling me how I should hang my head in shame. I've never sent anyone a dead animal before, but there's always a first time.

For the first time in ages, I am full of sushi. We haven't had sushi in months -- I think we just sort of forgot about it. Today we finally went to our favorite place, Ninja, to feast on mackerel and yellowtail and Godzilla rolls (avocado, asparagus, cucumber, and several kinds of seaweed topped with green tea powder). The former sushi chef, Moriake, left a while back to head the sushi bar at Hoshun, a new pan-Asian place on St. Charles. (Is it just me, or has New Orleans recently been plagued with "pan-Asian" joints that don't do any of their various cuisines authentically or well?) Apparently this didn't work out, because according to Steve, the new sushi chef, Moriake is now at the decidedly non-Japanese Redfish Grill ... WAITING TABLES.

Well, that was a sock in the gut. It was like hearing that he'd taken up torturing animals or become a Cowboys fan or something. Or, alternately, that he had contracted a terrible disease or become homeless. It made me realize just how deeply entrenched I still am in the "pro-kitchen" mindset, and unless Chris decides to give up cooking and help me start that alligator farm out in St. Bernard, I suppose I always will be. I recognize that waiting tables is hard work. I could not do it. I tip excellently. I like my favorite waiters. I have even loved a few of them. And yet ... my first thought was, "HE HAS GONE TO THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE ... THE DAAAAAAARK SIIIIIIIDE."

I just hope he's making all that money Chris always mutters about.

[ETA @ 9:20 PM: I talked to Moriake tonight and it turns out he loves waiting tables. He's one of those crazy people like Chris who actually enjoys talking to his customers. Selah.]

The only effect of Ike we have seen so far (besides the reflexive panic earlier in the week) is a wonderful cool, gusty wind that made cutting the yard this evening a pleasure. I have a dear friend in Galveston, and if they are expecting anything under a Category 4, he generally hunkers down and defends his property, like us. I think he will be safe, but he has a house full of gorgeous antiques, and I'd hate to see them damaged by a post-storm-surge flood. He lives inland, on N Street -- anybody know how that area is faring?

I cannot wish any real harm on Houston, it being Frankie's hometown and all, but I do hope the pus-brained pinhead who (POSTING FROM THERE) once told me on a friend's blog how stupid I was to live in New Orleans gets his roof blown off and drowns staring up at it in amazement, as turkeys are said to do.

[PZB and CdB are watching a commercial for some stupid-ass new "reality" show where people humiliate themselves by wearing ugly outfits and flinging themselves off things.]

PZB: What has the world come to, when that's entertainment?

CdB: What, indeed?

PZB: It's shit!

CdB: It's ALL shit!

PZB: They should put on some real entertainment, like The Carol Burnett Show, dammit!

CdB: Or even The Glen Campbell Show, dammit!

Fighting yet another flu bug, or something. Me and Frankie -- I get the stomach stuff and he has the upper respiratory beat covered. I have tried to eat more, eat more widely, and generally improve my health over the past few months, but I'm still underweight and generally in crappy enough shape that every kind of pestilence floating around seems inexorably drawn to my weakened guts. (I had to type "inexorably" three times to get it right.) Had a funny drawing to post, but that will have to wait until I find the energy to screw around with the scanner. For now, I'll just sip ginger ale and continue memorizing the complete works of Stephen King. Oh, Annie Wilkes, Paul Sheldon, Jack Torrance, Dick Hallorann, Gordie LaChance, Richie Tozier, Mother Abagail, Larry Underwood, Jim Gardner, Edgar Freemantle, Edouard Delacroix, John Coffey, and the rest, thank God and Big Steve for you all, without whom I might have dissolved into a quivering puddle of jelly thousands of times over by now.

I'm thinking of contacting one of the trash TV networks and pitching a reality show called Delachaise Wives. God knows there's enough material there to rot the brain of anyone who enjoys that sort of thing. In the latest development, one of them finds it necessary to pose as an expatriate Delachaise fan who just happens to have meticulously gleaned my blog for material to provide personal insults couched in smarmy fake sympathy. (In a nutshell, I'm a has-been druggie who takes advantage of my poor, stupid readers' generosity and blows money on guns and designer cats while whining about how poor I am. Maybe I'd be less poor if the owners of the Delachaise paid Chris the money they owe him -- or, here's an idea, had paid him what he was worth in the first place instead of using his talent to subsidize their drinking -- but never mind.)

Ah well ... if I was married to an abusive alcoholic whose bar couldn't even make a Top 85 list, I guess maybe I'd want to pretend I lived in Belgium too.

Here's a very simple message for Evan, Trace, Ed, and Joanne. When Chris departed, you told R.J. that you dreaded seeing what I would write about your place. Until the anonymous posts started, I had no intention of saying anything other than that Chris had left. Despite the hundreds of petty roadblocks you threw in his way (e.g. Trace, the Delachaise's nominal "designer," refusing to lay out and print the menus because she and Evan had had a fight), the job was a wonderful opportunity for him and I truly didn't want its aftermath to turn ugly. Believe me, I'd be really fucking happy to never think about any of you yuppie wetbrains again. There are only two (2) things you must do to get me to shut up about you and your place forever. Both of them are things anyone with a modicum of class would already have done without prompting, but since it's you, I'll spell them out:

1. Pay Chris the rest of the money you owe him.

2. Stop making cowardly anonymous posts on food message boards, blogs, etc. in which you pose as impartial customers who just happen to be building up the Delachaise by taking potshots at Chris. If you have something to say about Chris' tenure at your establishment, find the balls to say it under your own name. Even if you had the brains and/or verbal skills to disguise your intentions, you still give yourselves away by saying the same things over and over in posts that purport to be by different people. The major reason Chris left a job he had enjoyed and thrived in is because he couldn't stand to work for stupid people anymore. If you want to make your previous acts of stupidity look like drops of spit in the ocean, then by all means just keep talking.

=================================

GLOSSARY FOR THIS ENTRY, in case the addressees don't have a dictionary handy:

Meticulous (adj): Careful; thorough.

Glean (v): To gather slowly and patiently.

Nominal (adj): In name only; named as a matter of form, rather than due to any actual value.

Modicum (n): A moderate or small quantity.

Tenure (n): Period or term of holding a position.

Spit (n): Fluid produced by the salivary glands; also, what the one cocktail (a bourbon & soda) I ever ordered at the Delachaise tasted like.

Update from Chef Pete Vazquez of the late, extremely lamented Marisol on his forthcoming move to Washington, DC, where he will be doing restaurant consulting and security work, as well as a look back at his time spent on the New Orleans food scene. (Don't blame him for the screwy punctuation; this food board seems to be in some kind of format death throes.)

I knew Pete wouldn't be cooking in New Orleans again, and I knew he was planning to move (after all, he's been talking about leaving since I've known him, and he is about the only person who could do that without my offering him an immediate ride to the airport). Still, my heart sank when I read this because I knew it was finally ... well, final. Pete was easily the most talented and interesting chef in pre-K New Orleans. When I say that, I mean absolutely no disrespect to brilliant, creative local chefs like Bob Iacovone, Tory McPhail, or Gerard Maras, but for me, Pete was it. I like to think he would still be cooking here if he and Janis hadn't been royally screwed by their insurance company post-K (if I recall correctly, they were offered something like $4000). I'm not sure, though. I love my city more than almost anything in the world, but I'm not proud of the way Pete was treated here. Marisol was initially well-reviewed by the Times-Picayune, but seldom received much attention from the paper after that. His food was utterly over the head of self-proclaimed local "Dean of Food" Tom Fitzmorris, and in his usual charming manner, Tom went out of his way to insult Pete and Janis on his food forum. Lorin Gaudin gave Marisol excellent coverage in New Orleans Magazine, and kudos to her for it. New Orleans diners, though, tended more toward Tom's view. Marisol had a cadre of extremely loyal customers, but there was also a lot of resentment about Pete's almost total disinterest in New Orleans cuisine, his use of "weird" ingredients such as organ meats, and even the fact that he imported a lot of his seafood instead of using local stuff. I'm a staunch supporter of the Louisiana seafood industry and I think we have some of the best seafood in the world, but I'm also damned glad I got to eat Tasmanian salmon, those huge sweet sea scallops that tasted best raw and thinly sliced with very little adornment, great quivering ruby kaabas of sashimi-grade tuna, and more.

New Orleans is a peculiar city, foodwise as in so many other ways: we're known all over the world as a great dining destination, but in many ways we are also a very provincial and limited restaurant market. The old saw about New Orleans having 500 great restaurants but only ten recipes isn't as true as it used to be, but I think some people wish it were still true.

New Orleans still has plenty of good restaurants and a few excellent ones, but I find that I don't feel nearly as much excitement about dining out now as I did when Marisol was open. The constant sense of fun and adventure, the question of "what on earth will he be doing tonight?", they just aren't there anymore. Chris recently commented that he learned more about food from eating at Marisol than he did from working at any restaurant except Commander's Palace under the late Chef Jamie Shannon. As much as I loved Jamie and still love Commander's, I have to say that Pete taught me more.

So long, dude. I'm deeply sorry on behalf of my hometown that we had a world-class chef like you and worshiped shoemakers like Susan Spicer and John Be$h instead. I'll be hating you for getting to eat Ethiopian food at 4 AM, but if you ever decide to head another kitchen, you have my word that I'll overcome my Nolagoraphobia to come eat there.

I said "head" ...