Nobody likes the F word. No, not that one, the other one that usually sends people bolting for the door.

Needless to say, if you're in a moving vehicle, that's not an option, so some caution is required when bringing this up.

It's fascism, one with a friendly face this time around, but wearing the same moustache, nonetheless.

Okay, let's just call it a bankers' dictatorship; awarding themselves obscene bonuses with tax-payer money, while millions are left unemployed as a direct result of these swindlers gambling with peoples' pension funds and mortgages, for examples, bundling them into speculative financial aggregates called derivatives, and then plunging them into the shark-infested waters of off-shore entities called hedge funds, transactions so convoluted, computer models are required to figure out who gets what.

Nope, nobody likes the F word.

Part 4

Turns out, the devastation following Katrina was a direct result of a series of canals dredged from the swamp.

The powers that be (or were) wanted to be more than a rivertown; (they) wanted to become a seaport, and began a process which ultimately destroyed the cypress swamps; the only terra firma, so to speak, that protected New Orleans from the counter-clockwise right hook of a hurricane like Katrina.

It was as if the storm surge were channeled into a giant fire hose that eventually funneled into a hypodermic needle, blasting through the floodwall of the Industrial Canal; blowing houses clear off their foundations, and inundating the Lower Ninth Ward with twenty-five feet of water.

One young guy I picked up for a car rental told me that he had been sitting on his (second floor) kitchen counter, watching his furniture float around the room, and did what any human being would do. He prayed: "O Lord if it's my time, then take me by the hand." Or something like that. As he continued, a life-jacket floated in through his blown out kitchen window.

"A miracle!" I exclaimed, having no reason to doubt him. He was one of the lucky ones.

Part 3

Whenever I can get away with it, I enjoy exploding myths, not out of some perverse desire to be controversial for its own sake, but to cut through the web of lies spun by the talking heads in the mass media.

That HIV causes AIDS, for example, or my favorite, the Big Lie of September 11, 2001. Remember that there was a nationwide stand-down of all flights immediately following the collapse of the Twin Towers?

However, one plane did take off, leaving Texas, bound for Saudi Arabia; and wouldn't ya know, its passengers included members of the Bin Laden family. This is public record, not a "conspiracy theory."

To get some idea of why, I would ask you to read PNAC, Project for a New American Century, online, seventy-five pages long, drafted by the likes of Cheney and other neo-con goons like Pearle and Wolfowitz. They trumpet their intentions in no uncertain terms, saying that the only way to sell the idea of global civil war to the gullible American people was to have a "new Pearl Harbor." Again, this is public record, and indeed a conspiracy.

Part 2

Dat saved my butt.

Three years later, after having become an automotive appearance specialist, I now tool the bumpy, narrow, one-way streets of the 300 year-old French Quarter, always in a hurry, often picking up two sets of people; rushing back to the office, and putting them in cars.

This is performance; the kind of hectic theatre which requires a sense of humor, that is to say, while onstage, the mind must be situated in the balcony, looking down on the particular ironies at hand, and having fun with it. It's the only way to survive.

Part 1

Looking back on it, coming down from Indiana to Louisiana ( a trip financed by dear Dad) was a wild gamble, living in a '92 Dodge Caravan, as I was; hoping for a miracle, I reckon.

That came within two weeks, after an encounter with one of the city's notorious sink-holes; this one the size of a watermelon, deep enough to swallow a tire, bottom-out the front end, and, unbeknownst to me at the time, break the motor mounts.

At length, the van made it over to a shop across from a car rental outfit, in an area of town that had been under four feet of water after Katrina's storm surge ripped through the levees.

Jacques, owner of the "Clinic", agreed to let me do some sign painting. This caught the eye of Dave, owner of "Nifty", across the street, who approached me: "You wanna work? I'll give you work. Paint the place!" he said, with all the social grace of a Mafia don.

Back then, I was still living in my van (next to Nifty, beside Jacques' lot), a less-than-desirable situation. That changed after a visit one night from N.O.P.D.

"Are you crazy?" inquired the officer. I must admit, I had to think about that for a minute. Meanwhile, he's examining the stuff piled up on the dashboard with his flashlight, either failing to notice or not caring about the half-smoked joint in an ashtray.

I think I knew what he meant: "Do you realize how vulnerable you are, living out here on the street like this?"

I assured him that I felt safe, not mentioning the time a rat assiduously chewed off the plastic cover of a baby-wipes container and quietly made off with my bear claw, still in its plastic bag!

"We've had a report of 'indecent exposure,'" the officer explained. Again, I had to think about that, finally admitting that "yes, on occasion, I have urinated outside my van."

"He works for me!" declared Dawn, my office manager, all wild-haired, who broke away from her Saturday hair appointment after receiving a call from the officer.

"We'll have this cleared up by Monday."

That was that. Or as they say in New Orleans: "Dat was dat."