Monday, 5 Sep 2005 | 8:30 PM

I can't believe I just found out about this. (via The Year 2015.)

Meanwhile, The Carbonist School, as our group of post-Afrofuturist artists has come to dub itself, met at Flightpath on Duval to keep on hammering out our ideas, the manifesto as it's becoming. We're trying to get something solid together to present at the Afrofuturism show in Minneapolis in October. Halfway through, somebody (I think it may have been me) said "New Orleans" and the cap came off with everyone venting and expressing their disbelief.

We weren't too far into it, when a scraggly white guy came over. He was barely able to contain himself, so overwrought was he with anger and grief. He was a Tulane professor as it turned out and had escaped a couple of days before the storm hit. His whole neighborhood has been wiped out, and it wasn't clear what his next step would be.

He confirmed though that the feds had plenty of warning about what would happen here (citing some work that began under Clinton, but was halted when Bush took office), that the lack of preparedness is criminal, and that many of the excuses about inaccessibility just didn't wash for someone familiar with the local geography. One does have to ask how Walmart and various news crews, Austin's among them, managed to get to ground zero in significant numbers literally as the feds were claiming the areas were inaccessible. I don't suspect conspiracy here; it's just that it took too long to consider the lives at stake (mostly poor, black and white, countrified folk with funny accents) important enough to pull out all the stops in a rescue effort.

North-south tensions still run high, and you'll find it mainly in southern whites (directed against northern whites). In case there was any doubt, our friend from Tulane took personal umbrage over the yankees hinting around about abandoning New Orleans. "Oh yeah," he spat out, "and next time there's a snowstorm in Chicago, let's just fuckin' bulldoze the place."

The south has a very long memory.

Thursday, 1 Sep 2005 | 10:20 PM

Paul and I are leaving for Marfa in the morning. His plan had been to drive down to Florida to visit friends this weekend, but I-10 runs right through New Orleans, so he's coming with me to stay in a hipster hotel and take a trip out to Judd country.

I've been thinking about New Orleans all day, relying on James W. Bailey of all people for some perspective. The more I read about the disaster, and the slow response, the angrier I get. I know the anger does no good, and yet there it is. Apparently, the Dutch--who are very sensitive to flooding issues--and the British are outraged and baffled that the wealthiest nation on earth can't respond more quickly to its own people in crisis. Not to mention emergency management experts who agree that post 9-11, this sort of situation should actually be easy to contain, relatively speaking of course. Terrorists can outwit you, but you can always count on a devastating hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast. They don't hide themselves.

Hurricane Katrina is a manmade disaster, New Orleans a disaster waiting to happen. Yes, the storm would have hit with or without a population there, but the path to disaster was cleared for landing by a system of levees, drainages and canals that essentially caused the city to sink faster than it otherwise would have. Geologists have known this for years. And news outlets have been reporting it almost as long. Even more damning is a long record of New Orleans petitioning the feds for help to avert the disaster only to be turned down and have the city's levee maintenance funds redirected to war in Iraq. Truly, there's your "perfect storm." And the process was facilitated of course by a city government so corrupt, so nasty that hundreds of thousands could live in third world poverty in one of America's most frequently visited tourist cities.

So Dennis Hastert's slimy suggestion to abandon New Orleans (since retracted) is ludicrous, because New Orleans is not unique. Parts of Houston are sinking faster than New Orleans. It's just a matter of time.

Meanwhile editorials squawk that people get what they deserve by living in low lying areas.

"Americans' hearts go out to the people in Katrina's path. But if the people of New Orleans and other low-lying areas insist upon living in harm's way, they ought to accept responsibility for what happens to them and their property."

Ignore for a moment the fact that this is obviously written by someone with about a third-grade understanding of economics, demographics and logistics. Put that aside and let's at least be clear about whom we are casting aspersions upon: New Orleans's low point is about 8 feet below sea level. Long Beach, California's sits about 7 feet below sea level. And here are the major US cities whose low points lie right at sea level:

New York
Los Angeles
Houston
Philadelphia
San Diego
San Jose
San Francisco
Jacksonville
Baltimore
Boston
Seattle
Portland
Honolulu
Miami
Oakland

Good chance you're on that list somewhere, my friend. Oh, and DC sits about a foot above sea level. Maybe building on doomed land is a bad idea, but there's an awful lot of doomed land out there with a lot of people living on it and the fact is we're going to build there anyway, so let's just set about doing it wisely.

I'm looking forward to the road tomorrow, as I usually do. I'm looking forward to Dan Flavin, and trying to keep an open mind about Tony Feher. I keep thoughts and prayers for Mississippi and Louisiana, where all my father's people are from. I'm glad I'm going west, not east. The refugees are streaming into Austin, have been for days, coming up through Houston, looking for work. It's times like this that I wish I owned an actual business, you know, with employees. Too much.

I'll see you in Marfa.

Tuesday, 30 Aug 2005 | 9:11 PM

Continuing my exploration of outré film, I stumbled across Spermula, a beauty directed by Charles Matton circa 1976. The basic plot is that the all-female race of Spermulites have about a week to conquer the earth by rendering earth's men incapable of reproducing. How? By sucking out all their sperm, one by one. It's genius. Plus there's transsexuals, a really cheesy painter, a horny midget, and a guy with a 1-centimeter penis who keeps trying to score with all the ladies. This you gotta see.

current music: Orfeu

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