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Mardi Gras

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

I think yesterday was my worst Mardi Gras so far. I'd say I should have taken the day off, but I'm far too busy at work for that. Perhaps it's because the memory of Mardi Gras last year is so fresh in my mind that I felt especially for away yesterday. Or perhaps it's just that yesterday I indulged myself in a bit of self-pity. I can accept that I am where I choose to be. But it's also understandable that Mardi Gras is the pinnacle of homesickness for me. It's so retarded.

I just checked my email and found this from my friend Ryan who, it turns out, went home for Mardi Gras from NYC: "Hope you didn't get too grouchy having to work on Mardi Gras day. (I was pissy as hell that one year.)" At least I'm glat to know it's not just me. My other nola friends who live here seemed rather unenthused abort even following up on our little Milwaukee tradition of getting together and hunting down an Abita beer. I had to settle for a "Big Easy Lager" from Lakefront brewery. At least it turned out to be a good beer.



Even though it may seem contrary to the costumes and masks, Mardi Gras is really a celebration about being who you are. Something I realized about New Orleans and what makes it so different is that it is a city, and I guess by city I mean community, that accepts people in all of their eccentricities. Mardi Gras is everyone coming together with their eccentricities bare to the world.

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complexity

Friday, February 16, 2007


C O M P L E X I T Y
Originally uploaded by BHo.
mostly, i just don't want to forget that this image is out there...

I really like some HDR photography; some of it i think is just a bit too gratuious with the color saturation. If ever there was an example of good HDR Photography, though, this is it.

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moby dick

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

I can finally say that I have finished Moby Dick. I'm in not even gonna say how long it took to finish, but it was longer than any book I've ever read by far. And it's really not a long book, comparitively speaking-- only about 450 pages. And, contrary to what people who haven't read the book seem to believe, it's not a boring book. Though I can say that there are some boring parts of the book. But it's not action-adventure. It's about consumption, being consumed with a thing, an idea, a "monomaniacal belief" in a certain purpose -- to destroy evil. To destroy the whale.

And to understand Ahab's drive to destroy the whale you have to understand more than just that it took his leg and left him with an ivory peg in its place. You have to understand whales. And you have to understand whaling boats, the whale hunting trade, the process of hunting and processing a whale, and you have to understand the whales themselves. You have to understand the type of people that hunt whales, and you've got to understand the types of whales that they hunt. It's not just any whale, it's the sperm whale. And, according to Ishmael, the sperm whale isn't just any whale.

It's obviously about more than the hunt of whales, and the hunt of one whale in particular. It's Ahab's mission, he believes, to seek out the source of a particular evil and destroy it. I have to say, too, that as I got further into the book I understood the inevitable confrontation that was coming, and I understood the dangers that were implied throughout, but even as i was 40 pages from the end, then 20, then 2... I still had no idea that it was going to end the way that it did. I knew that Ahab would die, or the whale would die. It obviously had to come to that. But what happened was much more catalysmic than i expected. And I'm glad, really. I'm glad that it wasn't necessarily one of the outcomes that i'd assumed it was, it was more than that.

I don't think that I have to worry too much about spoilers, you people don't read. I know it's true. I think I know three people who've read this book. When I was done part of me really had to wonder if, as Moby Dick dragged Ahab down into the deep with him, if Ahab and his crew had done enough damage to Moby Dick that he died too. Part of me felt that Melville had left it vague enough for this possibility, but as I've thought and read about it a bit since, I don't think that's the case. I think Moby Dick did just as it appears -- he destroyed the whole ship, crew and all, everything and everyone but Ishmael, and he descended back into the deep of the sea to continue on. And it's odd to me, really, that if Moby Dick symbolizes evil, which it seems pretty evident that this is the case, why is it that evil "wins"?

Perhaps the whale is not evil, perhaps it's just that the whale is, he simply exists as a whale (albeit a whale that causes an awful lot of damage with seemingly ill intent), but that Ahab, and those he convinces to follow in his mania, are destroyed by Ahab's idea of the white whale as being evil. I mean, it's not like the whale sought them out. Any other living creature would have fought tooth and nail against would-be captors too. Except for doodle bugs, but that's because there are no white doodle bugs. It may be that it's not that the whale killed them so much as their pursuit of the whale killed them.

Moby Dick on Sparknotes

I have seriously considered limiting my reading list for the near future to only books that i can find on Sparknotes afterward. I love that site.

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missing nola

Thursday, February 01, 2007

I've been thinking a lot about New Orleans lately, which I suppose is like saying "I've been waking up in the morning lately." I'm sure part of it is that it is bitterly cold here right now and will be for about a week to come. It's hard not to reminisce about living in a warm cozy climate when the forecast calls for single digits. But it's about more than that... it always is. I've been thinking a lot about Gentilly, which is probably in response to talking to my grandma last week. She has two houses in nola, one near the corner of Franklin Ave. & Gentilly Blvd. and another just & few blocks from Audubon Park. she's got them both on the market, now that she's been forced by circumstance to live in Texass.It makes me think about living there again, which is literally a daily occurrence. It's an idiotic thought. Why would I move there? Why would anyone move there? There's no job market, there's no housing, there's no economy. I don't even have friends there anymore. We've all left.

But still I find myself reading books by Chris Rose & Andrei Cordrescu about the city; I browse realtor.com looking at houses for sale in Lakeview with no walls and over-grown yards (average 1600sq. feet for $135k, fwiw); I spend an hour paging through b&w photos of nola on flickr, trying to find the perfect desktop wallpaper to go with my black "Zune" windows theme. All for what? Maybe it's just the part of me that is like my dad, always a little unsatisfied with what I've got. Maybe this is just the way that everyone feels about Home.

I was thinking last night abort how, a for years ago I really started to feel hopeful. Here was this new mayor who was all about business and technology --- maybe he'll finally get New Orleans moving? Instead it fell apart.


Here's a link to a bunch of sets of nola pics from a photographer named Jeff Lamb, I presume, mostly architecture shots from the 70's and 80's.

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