June 2008 Archives

My semi-annual emergency-customer-feature alpha-release behind-schedule Sunday-night-code-freeze self-pitying why-don't-somebody-please-destroy-the-tech-industry so-that-I-can-be-a-fireman musical self-pity exhaustion headache blues post.

Not available on YouTube.

Blue Orchids "Dumb Magician"

We move so fast today
Nothing stands in our way
We're free to act
And forced to pay

The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up...

Last time I felt this bad about my job was mid-August 2005, but I was soon distracted.

The link a couple of posts ago (or if you want, go get it at NuPac) has the video replay of David Simon's tribute to Ashley Morris at the DePaul commencement on Sunday.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have another good cry in me that's been waiting to get out.

Ha ha! All they get is "brew".

We got "gumbo". Cause we're special.

I wonder if they get chowder when it floods in New England.

The webcast for Ashley's college, including speaker David Simon, will be broadcast tomorrow morning at 8:30am CDT at this link:

http://webcast.streamlogics.com/audience/index.asp?eventid=49097

In an e-mail to me, Simon said he had hoped to get to know Morris if a proposed HBO project about New Orleans got off the ground. He also wrote about why he wanted to come to DePaul the ceremony to honor Morris:

“The last [e-mail] conversation I had with this gentlemen, he expressed great satisfaction and pride in having worked hard to get me invited to the DePaul commencement,” Simon wrote. “In fact, I was originally scheduled to be in London doing the final sound editing on Generation Kill this coming weekend and so I regretfully declined. He e-mailed me back saying he understand and was very disappointed, but understood the scheduling conflict. Next thing, I learn that Ashley has passed away suddenly.

“So the last thing this fella did was ask me to make a commencement appearance at the school where he taught and I said, sorry, no. And then he departs this vale. Naturally, for karmatic purposes, I had to call DePaul back and say if you still need me I'm there.

“I enjoyed reading Mr. Morris's contributions to the Got That New Package website as well as his dissertations on New Orleans in its post-Katrina agonies. I have a feeling I would have gotten to know him well and enjoyed his company if he had lived long enough to be in New Orleans when we, I hope, will begin filming down there for a future HBO project.

“I admired his sense of outrage; petulance and selfish rage are useless, but rightful and righteous anger has an essential place in our times. Ashley was angry on behalf of others, which in my mind makes all the difference. From what he wrote, I am convinced that Ashley loved his city and he loved the people of his city, and he was short and to the point with people who tried to [evade] the real questions using ad hominem and decorum and false civility. He spoke his mind.

“So I never got to know him. And that is my loss. And on some weird level, I owe him a trip to Chicago and a morning spent in a funny hat and gown.”

The whole article is here.

18

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

[from Syl, of course.]

When renowned Harvard golden child M.B.A. and non-educator John Alford of Langston Hughes Charter School took his entire staff to see Left Behind: The Story of The New Orleans Public Schools, who could have guessed that he was actually taking notes on how to rob the schools blind, old-school New Orleans-style, while education took a back seat.

If you'd like to see how charter schools spend public education money, join Alford, his board of directors, and his fresh-faced faculty of still-wet-behind-the-ears Ivy League "teachers" as they whoop it up at their end of the year party at Bacco, Thursday night from 6:30 on. Free dinner and open bar, all paid for with school money (how much of it is state and local funds? who can say). If you're not feeding at the public trough like the public servants from the charter school, bring your American Express because entrees at Bacco run from $17-$33.

While you're there, ask them how they can afford to party in such splendor when their kids' families certainly can't, and when their kids had to share books this year because there weren't enough books to go around for every child.

As Sly Stone once said, "there's a riot goin' on".