They are ripping you a new asshole Mr President...........and you deserve every bit of criticism!!!!

I read this on Amy's site.

The Times-Picayune -- which abandoned its New Orleans headquarters and temporarily ceased its print publication last week -- called on every Federal Emergency Management Agency official to be fired, "Director Michael Brown especially." Here is the editorial:

"Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don't know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city's death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren't they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn't suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn't have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn't known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."

That's unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn't be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud."

On the same note I awoke at around 1:30am and turned on the TV to see Celine Dion also tearing the president a new one. She has finally done something I can applaud. And I didn't have to plug my ears or change the channel.

Sometimes I dive

I went diving on friday. I am fortunate to dive with some people who really know their shit. I have been spending all my free time diving with them to learn. And I really have. In the past few months I am much better at spotting things. On friday I spotted an eel that no one on the boat had ever seen. It is called a Magnificent Spotted Eel. I did good. Oh, and we also found a white tipped reef shark hiding underneath the shipwreck we were diving. One of the divers has a sweet underwater camera. Here is me looking at a spotted eel. And me using my dive light with authority. I bet you are reaaaaaallllllyyyy impressed.

It took a year....................

I had this cat for 15 years. He was the best. He could swear, really he could. He died not long after I moved to Hawaii. I took time to decide what to do next, but I could not bring myself to get another cat. The guilt was more than I could handle. And then one day this dog came into my life..................and now after a year I love her. I look at her and my heart does a little jump. She breathes deeply and I get the best feeling. She pushes me out of my bed and I love her. She is licking my ear right now. I just gave her a bath and she smells like Lavender AND horse manure. I am the luckiest.

Life is to be feared, not death

I was just sitting here with my roommate when I looked at him and said "do you ever feel like at any moment a monster will come down and bite your head off?" I just don't understand the look he gave me. Like I am some nut or such. Thankfully he let me eloborate. What I mean is that sometimes I feel like I am hanging around waiting for the next shoe to drop.
My sister and mother died several years ago and ever since then I sit waiting for the next big monster to come out of nowhere and ruin my world. I am here to tell you that having a monster bite your head off does not necessarily kill you. It just leaves you in pain for a very long time.
Since they have been gone the beauty of the quiet morning can be ruined by my own guilt. They died and my brother said "I just thank god it was not me" (this from a Buddhist). And I asked "why wasn't it me?" (this from a non-catholic).

one martini + 5 Olives

I just realized that it has been months since I posted and NO ONE IS READING ME! Sorry, that is my needy side. It rarely shows itself. So things have been pretty interesting around here for the past ferw months. Here I sit after a day of caring for Kai (my best friend's son). The new baby was born only 4 days ago. I was privelidged to be at the birth. Colin & Dom asked me to be there. The birth was amazing. I won't forget it for the rest of my life. No one has ever honoured me like that. April ( the mid-wife) has gained even more respect from me. What she does is a truly amazing thing. It made me put so much that is going on in my life right now into context. My roommate, who's girlfriend has become a longterm visitor and who himself is a jackass, annoys me far less that usual given the events of the past week. I told him not too long ago that I am moving out, I need space and my own life. He just has no clue. Oi, I need to end right here and get back to this later because I am tired and I have a kayak gig tomorrow and I need sleep.
nighty night
more later

The culture of fear

This is how highly trained the new airport security screeners are:
Killer ninja bookmark confiscated from educator

A long week....................... and a good one

This last week was all about work and dive , work and dive. But today I am off. So here I sit listening to Sudden Rush, this hawaiian hip-hop group, now wait before you make some kind of snap judgement. These guys actually have a great band. They are all about Hawaiian Sovereignty. The music is a really intriguing mix between hawaiiana and traditional scratch and sample hip-hop. The radio stations here tend to play and over play the top 40 hawaiian music and after about a month of being here I could sing all the songs on the radio. They don't give Sudden Rush much airplay because they are very blatant about what they want to see for the future of Hawaii. And honestly I agree with them 100%.

Dogs .............better, me..................... tired

If you're at work and looking for an excuse to fool around on the internet for 5 minutes, check out www.moveon.org click on the 'taking on fox' link to have letters sent to the Federal Trade Commission, your Representative and Senator requesting that Fox news no longer be allowed to falsely advertise their news programming as "fair and balanced."

It's also a fun sight to poke around

nighty night

Today, I had the best intentions.........

But after paddling many miles and then coming home to the unruly two (dogs). And discovering that Ipo stole my new shoes, Cholly pooped in front of the entire Fairwinds crowd, which wasn't embarassing as much as annoying.....DAMMIT Ipo just peed on the floor..................I have to scream into the pillow now.................and then clean it up. I have had all the calm zapped out of me..............I must go now

I have a thing for cowboys..........

Well, not real cowboys. I have a thing for this idealize cowboy from the old westerns. Maybe not even them, maybe just the image of them. They don't exist...............ah, that's it.....I have a thing for something that doesn't exist. Unless you go here, thanks to the internet I can find people who fit my weird little obsessions...........
Meet my internet husband : Lajos Kassai
"Lajos, this is everyone"

If you have the bandwidth download the film clip, he is..........words cannot describe him.

Ooops........I did it again

I need to pay more attention to those damned keystroke commands.............i keep deleting what i have written before I can save it.
Well, i guess it will give me time to rethink what i was writing.
In the meantime

What a beautiful face

I have found in this place

That is circling all round the sun

What a beautiful dream

That could flash on the screen

In a blink of an eye and be gone from me

Soft and sweet

Let me hold it close and keep it here with me



And one day we will die

And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea

But for now we are young

Let us lay in the sun

And count every beautiful thing we can see

Love to be

In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me



Anna's ghost all around

Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me

Soft and sweet

How the notes all bend and reach above the trees 



Now how I remember you

How I would push my fingers through

Your mouth to make those muscles move

That made your voice so smooth and sweet

And now we keep where we don't know

All secrets sleep in winter clothes

With one you loved so long ago

Now he don't even know his name



What a beautiful face

I have found in this place

That is circling all round the sun

And when we meet on a cloud

I'll be laughing out loud

I'll be laughing with everyone I see

Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all



Thanks to Neutral Milk Hotel

Crackin' damn good day Grommit!!!

So, today was okay. Got up crack before dawn early. Drove to the shop to pick up the truck and equipment and as usual Karen had coffee for me. I would marry her if she were a man and not already married to Geoff. But just the fact that she has coffee ready for me every morning is so schwank of her. Even though sometimes I suspect that she thinks that there is something between her husband and me. (Nothing, I swear, not my style). Annnnnyway, drove to the site. My people were already there. When the wife walked down the ramp towards the truck she had a huge armful of case o' beer. I thought "uh, okay....interesting choice of kayaking refreshments" But she had just cleaned up the upper parking area and was throwing the trash away. I had hope, these seemed like good people to spend the morning with.
Got them loaded onto the kayaks and off we went. It was one of those days were the trades could do anything so I took a gamble and headed towards the Hapuna site that I like. We made it in good time no one chummed the water, good thing. I beached the kayaks and we went a'snorkelin'. Nothing out of the usual but the usual is pretty damn nice here. Turtles and fishies and more turtles. Nothing that spectactular happened, but by the time I had loaded the equipment back on the trailer, i just felt calm. There was a local guy eating Opihi and he offered me some and we sat and talked while eating Opihi. I told him next time I would bring some hot sauce for it. Opihi is Hawaiian for "sticks to you".

Dammit.............................

I wrote an whole entry and then hit the close window button (that shouldn't have happened today).
I was attempting to talk about how I have decided to take the journal in a different direction than i had planned. So here we go again................
I have always had a weight problem. Me and my sisters shared this. They went one way, I went the other. Maura was anorexic , and it killed her. Sarah started to follow that path but discovered her own truth and self and stopped it. (PS I will be using their real names because this is real.) Sarah might get mad, but Maura is dead and cannot get mad about it, too late. And our mother, she died 3 years after Maura.
Me, on the other hand, I ate my way through my adolesence. And it started in my late childhood. I have been attempting for a longtime to write about alot of the things that have happened to me. Every first sentence sounds horrible to me. The self-criticism that originally came from an external source rears its anger and starts the beating. I imagine it being read by someone else and it sounds horrid. Juvenile. Immature. And then I qwell it. So today I have published some of it here....................... you be the judge. And don't worry, you can't hurt me more than I have hurt myself.

Paragraph one:

Snow, summer and a horse that ate our apples off of the windowsill. It was always a battle for my mother to get me to eat meat. Something about the chewy emptiness of the gristle that appeared in my mouth after the brown, heavy taste disappeared that made me aware of the hole I felt I was always trying to fill. She would seat us down to a Sunday dinner of Beef Stroganoff and I could smell the dread before I even saw it. It would sit on my plate for so long that it turned to an even more disgusting congealed blob than I had envisioned before. And then the battle began, I had to sit at my plate until I could force this thing down. I ultimately thought of this as a form of stuffing, stuffing down the sobs I could feel just below my throat. They were sitting waiting for any reason to come out. I had no sympathy for my mother at that time. At the moment she only existed to make me eat this painful mess. If I could manage to eat this then I was praised, to me it made no sense and yet I yearned for the love behind the praise. And so I would try my best to choke it all down. The sobs and the globs. When I couldn’t my mother would sit me on the porch where it always felt like rain and wait and wait in hopes that I would end up famished and realize my love for this white and brown dish. Once I figured out how much the dog liked this dish I would sneak it to him, I would poke a hole in the screen on the porch and push as much as I could thru, I would wad the chewy pieces up in a napkin and then excuse myself to the bathroom (flush) until I was caught.

What to write....................... or not

I guess I should start by giving some background about myself.
My name is Kate.
I live in Hawaii.
I am not from here.
My family is very far away.
This is a good thing, for now.
I am 40.
I am single (but I live with my best friend and he is male)
UPDATE TO THIS LAST LINE....... I FINALLY KICKED HIM OUT (I will talk about it someday)
I love kids, but I don't want to have one. (trust me when I say this)
I work as a kayak guide
I work as a Dive guide
I work as a Concierge for a travel company (I will explain that later, it is my bread and butter)
I clean my landlord's house
I work alot!
My best friends live down the road.
I love this place
I consider myself very lucky
Eventhough there are a few things missing.
I like to order things just to get mail besides the Publishers Clearing House Giveaway



So, this is the first entry and I could try to be really pretentious and start posting the journal that I have been keeping for years. But I am no where near ready for that.
So for today you get a "List of things that suck" which seems fitting as I am in a good mood and it should be short:
1. Customers who don't tip.
2. Ruining the coffeemaker
3. The mud all over my bed
4. The mud all over the floor (bye bye security deposit)
5. The fact that I haven't really moved in here yet.
6. That I must clean today
7. That I love the dog, but she is obsessed with mud.
8. I have to clean out the fridge today and I don't want to.
9. I just bid on something that I could have bought new for less (next time research before you bid)
10. That shipping to Hawaii is multo expensivo
11. Whiners (this goes back to yesterdays customers)
12. People who are afraid of water (word of advice: DON'T GO KAYAKING!)