Shooting Fish In A Frying Pan
In the mid nineties in New Orleans on the night of New Year's Eve the sound of celebratory gunfire in the ghettos was so astounding it defies description. People in war zones have certainly heard such noise but in an American city not at war (or maybe at war with itself), the range of weapon caliber and the stacatto of automatic machine guns combined with the methodic emptying of 9mm thirteen round clips and .38 caliber 6 shot revolvers, all overlapping each other and then reaching impossible crescendoes, is something I cannot seem to get out of my mind.
Some eighty years previous, the young Louis Armstrong had shot off a gun on New Years Eve, gotten arrested for it, and then was sent off to spend time at the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. There, a regularly visiting Professor Peter Davis taught him a few things about the trumpet, and discipline, and the story of one young delinquent's life turns out pretty well.
In the nineties a tourist fell dead in the French Quarter from one of the thousands of rounds flying through the air that night and in subsequent years a crackdown occurred in an effort to curtail the danger of falling bullets. The campaign was called Falling Bullets Kill.
Yesterday, beloved New Orleans chef, Paul Prudhomme, while sitting on a New Orleans golf course blackening fish for PGA golfers, became front man for a new campaign known as Falling Bullets Scratch. While his fish sizzled in a pan under the noonday sun, Prudhomme felt a sting on his arm and when he lifted it to see what had stung him, a piece of .22 caliber lead fell from his shirt. It is not known who fired the gun but investigators surmise that it could have come from as far as a mile away. We are probably to be left in the dark as to whether or not the shooter is a prodigy of music, or just some guy in his backyard shooting at a squirrel in a tree.
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Poisonous Campaign
I woke up this morning to find a severed horse's head at the foot of my bed. This morning I awoke at dawn and there was a chill in the air. The pine boughs outside my window are weighted heavily with chirping birds. The sky is blue. Winds have shifted from the north to the southwest. Chainsaws churn against heavy lumber in the distance.
Yesterday I received two packages. In one package was a clear plastic bag knotted at the top and containing one dozen mouse traps. Also in the box were three plastic imitation granite boulders, hollow, with hinged lids and two entrance holes and four metal rods for each on which to thread chunks of poison. These I have loaded up and placed around the perimeter of the bighouse, with some of the contents of the other package, four pounds of rat and mouse poison. The other item in the second box was non-odorous deer repellant concentrate, as compliment to the locally purchased odoriferous deer repellant.
I placed poison chunks throughout the inside of the house too. I don't know if this battle is any more winnable than certain Mideast conflicts but the war is on. Told recently that two-thirds of the rodent population are against my methodology I was heard to respond--"So?"
Arrogance is rarely justified.
This morning I awoke with an imitation fur covered plastic mouse resting on my crotch.
Somehow they have gotten to her. I thought she was a trusted ally but clearly she has gone double agent on me. Maybe she is still sore about the ovary removal procedure. This cat won't hunt.
I'm heading out soon, across the DMZ to check my IEDs.
War is hell, for the losers, and the writers, and the photographers, and the families of the dead.
I woke up this morning to find a severed horse's head at the foot of my bed. This morning I awoke at dawn and there was a chill in the air. The pine boughs outside my window are weighted heavily with chirping birds. The sky is blue. Winds have shifted from the north to the southwest. Chainsaws churn against heavy lumber in the distance.
Yesterday I received two packages. In one package was a clear plastic bag knotted at the top and containing one dozen mouse traps. Also in the box were three plastic imitation granite boulders, hollow, with hinged lids and two entrance holes and four metal rods for each on which to thread chunks of poison. These I have loaded up and placed around the perimeter of the bighouse, with some of the contents of the other package, four pounds of rat and mouse poison. The other item in the second box was non-odorous deer repellant concentrate, as compliment to the locally purchased odoriferous deer repellant.
I placed poison chunks throughout the inside of the house too. I don't know if this battle is any more winnable than certain Mideast conflicts but the war is on. Told recently that two-thirds of the rodent population are against my methodology I was heard to respond--"So?"
Arrogance is rarely justified.
This morning I awoke with an imitation fur covered plastic mouse resting on my crotch.
Somehow they have gotten to her. I thought she was a trusted ally but clearly she has gone double agent on me. Maybe she is still sore about the ovary removal procedure. This cat won't hunt.
I'm heading out soon, across the DMZ to check my IEDs.
War is hell, for the losers, and the writers, and the photographers, and the families of the dead.