Rants.

#1

I went to Viet Hoa (a local Vietnamese supermarket) today to buy some supplies that I can’t find anywhere up in Denton. Today it was very crowded because Viet Hoa has the best fresh seafood this side of Houston, and people were stocking up for their various Labor Day cook-offs and whatnot. The parking lot was packed, and I managed to squeeze in a place about 1/3 back from the store front.

When I came back, something was wrong with my driver’s side rear-view mirror. The mirror itself was hanging limp out of the plastic holder, and the electronic controls didn’t work on it. Driving, it was just flopping around. My dad and I, once home, took a look at it and found that it had somehow been popped out of place. We pushed it back in, and the up-down axis worked alright, but the side-side axis didn’t. We pulled it back out again and took a look at it only to discover that one of the small plastic bits which attaches the side-side axis to the electronic controls was missing. It was a tiny plastic piece that looked sort of like an old fashioned clothes pin with a small ball on top, was missing. My dad and I explored a little more only to discover that these small clips take more than just a slight tug to be removed. We actually had to go at it with a pair of plyers to get it out from the mirror, which means only one thing: Someone stole it.

Now, this is a tiny little plastic piece, probably costs only $0.50 or something, and someone stole it from my car. In the middle of broad daylight in a very crowded parking lot, during the 15 minutes while my dad and I were in the store, someone opened up my rear-view mirror and STOLE a piece from my car. Now, I can’t really even begin to explain how this makes me feel, but rage comes awfully close.

Put yourself in these shoes: You’ve lost/broken a small plastic bit from your car that makes the rear-view mirror work. Now, a normal person will think something along the lines of “Oh, damnit, I have to call the dealership and order one of these, and until then my mirror won’t work properly.” A normal person doesn’t think “Damnit, I’ve lost this part. Hey! There’s someone with my car. Let’s wait until she goes into the store and then I can walk up and jack it off of her car and let her go through the grief and aggrivation of ordering a part from a dealership to fix her car so I don’t have to!”

It feels sort of like rape. Honestly, I feel like now I should be sitting on top of my car with a shotgun, screaming bloody murder at anyone who comes near it. It makes me so absolutely angry, I could spit. What kind of human being does such a thing? And it’s not that it would cost me anything, because it’s like a 50 cent plastic part. It’s the fact that it’s on a Sunday the afternoon before I have to make the 5-hour trek back up to Denton, and none of the dealerships are open until Tuesday, and I didn’t even do anything. The person who stole it was the one who fucked up their car, not me, so why do I have to deal with the grief of ordering and replacing the part?

Thankfully my mother, being the saint she is, gave me permission to take the part off of her car, because she has more time than I do to make it to a dealership to get the part. I just can’t believe that someone would DO something like that.

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#2

(This is a rant concerning New Orleans that I posted on a message board I’m on. It’s concerning the video found here.)

I don’t know what to say. I am in absolute shock that something like that could be happening in the U.S.

And there are people here blaming the people who stayed in New Orleans, saying it was their own fault that they didn’t leave. There are people there who don’t have cars! None of the public transportation was mobilized to move these people. There were no busses rounded up to get these people out of the city. They were told to leave, but not told HOW, and then left there to DIE.

I think this is the biggest political f**k-up that I will ever experience in my life. Nobody is telling these people where to go, what to do, and yet the president and the mayor of New Orleans are reporting these procedures have been “a great success.” HOW?! How can they be so blind and so stupid to think that what they are doing is GOOD? There are people, our own American citizens, trapped in New Orleans DYING. We’ve mobilized as many emergency personnel in the U.S. as we can, but who are the people who are supposed to be at home handling a disaster like this when it comes about? The National Guard. Where are they? Fighting a fake war in Iraq.

God I hope Bush burns for this. He took the National Guard out of the U.S. where they were supposed to be and sent them to Iraq, leaving the nation completely open and vulnerable to just this kind of disaster. The National Guard are the men and women trained in evacuation procedures and mobilizing supplies in the event of a disaster such as this, and they aren’t here, where they need to be, right now.

I’m trying to do all I can. I went to the local Red Cross organization and found one of the places where they were collecting money, and I just emptied my wallet. No idea how much cash was in there, and frankly didn’t care. I just up-ended it into one of the bucket. I’m at home for the weekend, and going through my closet finding every scrap of clothing that doesn’t fit or that I don’t wear, and I’m boxing it up to bring it to where refugees are being housed here in Houston.

But where is the government in this? The fact that once rescued people are still dying is absolutely unacceptable. These are HUMAN BEINGS. These are AMERICAN CITIZENS who are being treated like animals, left to starve or die of dehydration, caged up in hoards, left to fight over food and water, left to die in their own fecal matter. This is absolutely unacceptable, and this is sickening. WHERE IS THE GOVERNMENT?

Why isn’t more being done?

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-M