Saturday, August 30, 2008

Sandbags?/C. Ray for President


And the latest technology from the Corps of Engineers is...sandbags. Ill-designed levees, malfunctioning pumps, but heavy, blow-blocking high-quality sandbags. If the levees breach, the Engineers, hovering overhead in helicopters, will drop sandbags, silencing the thrashing, soil-busting storm surge.
Sandbags. I had planned to go to town on this word, punning like crazy, e.g. "The Corps of Engineers really sandbagged us" etc., but I'm really low on momentum.
Quite appropriately, the dictionary.com word of the day is "gubernatorial."

But hey, I am finding motivation in the words of our mayor, C. Ray Nagin. C. Ray is my boy. Calm, collected, loose-jowled and Deputy-Dog-moustached: "You need to be scared and you need to get your butts out of New Orleans right now."

And: "Looting will not be tolerated. Anyone caught looting in New Orleans will go directly to the Big House in the general population. You will go directly to Angola Prison, and God Bless You if you go there."

YEAH, GANGSTA.

Now, I'm pro-Obama and all, but C. Ray, he charms me, he makes me smile. He doesn't bother with any of that "we need a change" rhetoric, and he has his own slow, regionally-attuned way of talking--which usually gets him in trouble. But this time, C. Ray is prepared. Those who normally criticize his free-wheeling, strutting, drawling style, won't be able to say he didn't evacuate the city as professionally as anybody could have.

I'd rather listen to C. Ray any day, over the Weather Channel forecasters who project like sportscasters--seriously, just get a job at ESPN, or direct some of that on-your-toes energy towards a pick-up game of football in your backyard, 'cuz with Gustav there won't be any intercepting, no chasing down winds and last minute save-the-day sacking before he reaches the end-zone; and over the CNN goons with their seriously expert skills at paraphrase and their facebook updates. C. Ray doesn't affect, scramble, or sweat. He just tells it like it is.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

kate, you need to change your blog's name from "the champagne of blogs" to "the mother of all blogs: i don't know if we've ever seen anything like this one." in honor of c. ray.

Kate Mooney said...

that is a seriously good suggestion. i am going to think about it.

Anonymous said...

wow kate good use of football lingo, futbal.