Anything change while I was gone?

posted by m.d.


Okay, I think I’m back. Let’s see if I can post regularly again.

I’ll start off with an easy one:

The deputies and Drug Enforcement Agency special agents got permission to search the car, and a drug sniffing dog alerted them to the car's passenger side. The occupants were ordered out of the car, and patted down. During the pat-down, the U.S. Attorney's Office says, officers felt a large, hard object in the pants area on Keys.

A Connection?

posted by m.d.


Anthony Amato resigns as the Kansas City School District Superintendent in a similar way that he left New Orleans.

The last I heard, Sandra "18-Wheeler" Hester was living in Glasgow, a small city about two hours away from Kansas City.

Could it be... Sandra?

The Black and Gold Worked

Saints won. Now let's try black and white.

I Am the One in Five

I didn’t realize I was superstitious until the Kentucky game. And I didn’t realize the role of superstition in my life until the Auburn game.

I walk under ladders. I step on cracks. I curse the gods. I don’t eat black-eyed peas and cabbage on New Year’s Day.

I do or don’t do all these things to prove a point. Superstitions are for the superstitious. Not for me. And if the universe somehow does punish you or reward you for your adherence to superstitious ritual, then I like succeeding with the universe against me. And what better excuse for the occasional failure than “I was battling the universe. What do you expect?”

Though I am okay with what the Fates might have planned for me, I realized a couple weeks ago that I am not okay with my actions stepping on the happiness of others.

Before this year’s LSU/Kentucky game, I wore my LSU 2005 Championship t-shirt for every game. I didn’t really do it for superstition. It’s the only LSU shirt I have that fits me.

But, the day of the game, I had some friends over. We started the partying early, and when the evening game started, I just wore whatever I had been wearing all day. And LSU lost.

I needed an explanation for what happened. Why? Why Kentucky? LSU played good enough to win. How could they lose? What was different?

The shirt. I didn’t have the shirt on. My choice of apparel doomed my team.

Did it really? Doesn’t matter. Superstition exists because it served a purpose at some point in humanity’s social and biological evolution. Who am I to deny that which made me human?

So, the Auburn game comes along – another evening game. It is also election day, and, as a news person, I have to work. Guess what: I forget to wear the t-shirt again.

Before the game, I call my wife from work and tell her that she or my son – somebody – must wear the t-shirt. I or my family can not be blamed for destroying LSU’s championship hopes.

Confident that the Fates will be satisfied with my game day audible, I continue about my work. My job is to coordinate three live shots at the candidates’ headquarters by phone. I stay on the phone the entire night. There’s three problems with that:

1) I can’t hear. My right ear is worse than my left ear, which isn’t that great. And I really can’t hear on the phone, especially with all the background noise at the candidates’ headquarters, including some very loud congos at one of them. This resulted in quite a few exchanges like this: “What? Say it again. I can’t hear you. Huh? Nevermind.”

2) I pace around when I am on the phone. This is not good when using a phone with a cord. Fortunately, nothing expensive got knocked over.

3) One of the monitors in the control room was set to the LSU game. I could see them losing, which increased both my difficulty in hearing the live shots due to the distraction and increased my pacing due to the anxiety. (An aside: Patrick Swayze’s Roadhouse was on another monitor and a lot of us found ourselves watching it. Strange.)

LSU was losing. I didn’t understand. My wife was wearing the t-shirt. Universe, what more do you want?

I later learned that my wife forgot to put on the t-shirt, until the fourth quarter. She told me that she put the shirt on, and LSU then score a touchdown to go ahead. They fell behind briefly, and then the crazy touchdown pass with one second left. And the shirt was on.

A few days after, I read about this poll that says one in five sports fans have some superstitious ritual they perform for their team to win. While I am not superstitious in general, I am now the one in five. Until it doesn’t work anymore.

Also, since I can’t decide on a color scheme for my blog, I will travel the superstitious route and go with my team-of-the-day’s colors. Go Saints.

Fun with Colors

...and fun with two sidebars.

Maybe I need to Give K-Ville Another Chance

Add some machine guns, and this sounds like a plot element:

New Orleans police were chasing two men about 3 p.m. when the men jumped into the waterway at the Interstate 510 (Paris Road) bridge, said Sabrina Richardson, a public information officer for police.

Police took one man into custody. But the other man was not seen again, and police and the Coast Guard launched a search, including a Coast Guard helicopter.

I won't have a final opinion on K-Ville until the character of the Mayor is introduced. Then I will know if I can watch it again.

Creoles: Not Like Unicorns

And there will be plenty of them in one place this weekend, in case anyone still thinks they don't exist.

K-holes

"K-Ville" is bad. That's it.

Breakfast. It’s the Most Important Meal.

I forgot to mention in the previous post this part of Mayor Nagin’s address to the Crime Prevention Roundtable:

We’ve had an incredible criminal justice dialogue, about every segment of the criminal justice system. Recently the District Attorney and I had a wonderful breakfast where we talked very frankly about our mutual frustrations and what we were going to do to solve some of those going forward. And we have both consistently followed up on those issues to make sure that everyone understands that we are moving forward.

Once again, my transcript.

I hope to have a wonderful breakfast tomorrow morning where I solve a few frustration-inducing problems and move forward. I am inspired. I am also out of coffee. Off to the store.