We had another eventful week here in the Pelican State. Here’s a summary of the top stories.

• A Justice of the Peace in Tangipahoa Parish has created a whirlwind of attention in the international media when he refused to marry an interracial couple. This story caused reporters from as far away as Russia to temporarily divert thier attention from President Obama and focus their crosshairs on Louisiana. And, although they couldn’t actually see the state from where they sat, it did not stop them from shooting wildly from the hip. The unfortunate result of this volley is that now the rest of the world views Louisiana as a bigoted, redneck state. We all know the truth, though, and that is that any self-respecting redneck would sit down and drink with anybody wh has cold beer, regardless of thier race or nationality.
• And speaking of our Grand Poobah, President Obama visited New Orleans last week to catch up on how things are progressing with the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. He got the predictable response from New Orlenians- that the city would be a veritable Emerald City if only the feds would give them lots more money fast(unless Mayor Nagin had his druthers, in which case the city would be a diferent color).

  The Wiz replied saying that if he could write a check, he would. The arthritis in his writing hand apparently has come on quite suddenly, probably from the city’s humid air. It should pass as soon as he gets back to Washington.

• The Saints further proved themselves a force to be reckoned with in the NFL by totally embarassing the now formerly undefeated New York Giants. Their quarterback, Eli Manning, is the son of Archie Manning of the Saints of yore. This further goes to show that, no matter how talented, a Manning just can’t win in New Orleans.

  Meanwhile, it’s reported from hell that Satan has changed into a long-sleeved shirt.

• Up in Wisconsin, a black bear wandered into a convenience store and made himself at home in the beer cooler. Wildlife officials ended up tranquilizing it, but if they had just waited a few hours that action probably wouln’t have been necessary. Rumors are the bear wandered up from Baton Rouge. I think it was the LSU cap that gave him away.

More insanity around the state in the week just passed:

• A lot of people are up in arms about a closed door meeting that a grop of state legislators have scheduled in Alexandria on the subject of redistricting based on the results of the 2010 census. Organizers defend the move as legal, claiming that it is “educational” in nature.

  Okay, so they’re going to get some schooling. But what are they afraid of having us, their tuition payers, monitor the class? That we’ll see them as a bunch of dunces? Hell, we already know that.

• A minister in Plaquemines parish was arrested for stealing money from a fund he established for members of his flock to acquire FEMA trailers for them following Hurricane Katrina.

  Before you rush to judgment on this guy, consider. Maybe he’d gotten some divine enlightenment about the heatlh hazards that would eventually be discovered with those trailers, and so he was really tring to defend his parishoners from danger. OK, so what if he did spend the money he took on the drugs the cops found? Perhaps he was only killing two birds with one stone and buying it all up himself to deliver them from temptation, as well.

• A modular home contractor was extradited to Louisiana from Florida on charges that he defrauded Road Home Grant recipients of money. He promised them modular homes that never got delivered. My question is why these victims had to turn to a Florida man to get ripped off when there’s plenty of contractors in this state who are perfectly capable of doing the same thing?
• The LSU Data Center released a report that reveals, although Louisiana is gaining population, it is losing college graduates and replacing them with people of lower educational levels. At this rate, before you know it, anybody with one of those new dumbed-down Career High School Diplomas will be considered a bonafide genius.

  It’s just like solving your weight problem by hanging around with only fat people. What’s wrong with that?

• The Saints are now 3-0. Was that a hint of a cool Brees that was felt down there in Hades?
• LSU is 4-0 and 4th in the polls. A win is a win, they say. And a $2 scratch-off prize is a also a winning lottery ticket.

Yesterday morning, I followed my normal ritual of pouring a cup of coffee and going to the driveway to fetch the morning paper. Usually, I turn straight to the crossword puzzle, ignoring the rest of the paper, but on this morning, I had a little bit of extra time. So, I decided this time to scan the front page to see if anything noteworthy has happened lately, like maybe the state has moved up from 50th to 49th in one of those national surveys they always seem to be doing.

What I saw on the front page were five stories. Three were about murders that had occurred, all in the local area. In another, I noticed that people were buying up ammunition faster than plywood during a hurricane warning. In the last story, it was reported that teenagers are having a hard time finding jobs in the current economic downturn. The reason for that, so said the story, is because adults are coming to the opinionthese days that delivering pizzas can be a rewarding career path.

Let’s see. Teens with too much time on their hands. Murders in the local community. People buying up ammo like they’re going to stop making it tomorrow. Does anyone besides me see a connection between these stories?

I could react to this in one of two ways. On the one hand, I could put up bars on all my windows and lock myself securely in my house. I wouldn’t even go out to buy groceries. I’d just order out for Domino’s Pizza all the time, hoping to high heaven that the delivery boy, or should I say “man”, is not a serial killer.

Or, I could just go back to my normal habit of going straight to the crossword puzzle in the mornings. After all, I don’t need to refer to the front page to solve it. Never is there a clue for 46-across that reads, “Latest person in Calcasieu Parish to be convicted of second-degree murder.”

Which way do you think I should go?

For those of you who were born after, say, 1970, the title of this article reflects a line from a song by a band called “The Beatles”. Have you heard of them?

It’s been a wild week in Louisiana, but what else is new? Here’s a summary of just some of the stories that unfolded last week:

• Perhaps the most surprising development was that the New Orleans Saints jumped off to a 2-0 record to start the 2009 NFL season. There was little fanfare after the opening win against the Detroit Lions, who hadn’t won a game since the last Model T rolled off Ford Morors’ assembly lines. However, they really turned some heads by going into Philadelphia and upsetting the Eagles, who were heavily favored despite having to resort to starting Kevin Kolb at quarterback, him being the only Eagles’ passer who was not injured on on parole. Drew Brees emerged as the hero in the early going, already having accumulated enough passing yards to span Lake Ponchatrain. The season is still young, however, so hold off a bit before making those ski reservations in hell.

 

• Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise continues his attempt to RSVP a White House invitation to talk heath care with the President over a few beers on the lawn. Scalese continues to express confidence that they can come to a bipartisan agreement over whther the beer should be draft or bottled. 

 

• The state got yet another failing grade by a national nonprofit group, this time on the quality of education and healthcare. Rapides parish officials respond by urging citizens stop watching television, believing that excessive viewing is a major cause for poor school performance and unhealthy lifestyles. This is expected to do little good, as people have mostly shut of thier sets, tired of seeing President Obama on every channel including QVC.

 

• Following an initial euphoria over the end of the long summer drought, state residents became disillusioned as mosquitoes once again rose from the bayous in vast numbers. Farmers who before could not feed thier cattle on the dry grasslands now face a new problem as they see thier herds being carried off by the swarms. And speaking of pests…

 

• Intelligence agents from the LSU Ag Center report that a new species of what they call “crazy ants” are massing at the Texas border in apparent preparations for a full scale invasion of the state. These ants, they say, form massive colonies with multiple queens and suffer from severe inbreeding, thus making them so crazy. Still, Ag Center officials warn that they are a force to be reckoned with, as they form massive swarms that move haphazardly, much like revelers descending on the French Quarter on Fat Tuesday. Law enforcement agencies in western parishes vowed to set up highway checkpoints this weekend to nab the intruders.

I reported in an earlier story how the organization got in trouble with the State of Louisiana and the feds over some unpaid payroll taxes.

Now, I notice they’ve gotten themselves in some more trouble.  It seems that a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute caught some ACORN advisors on film giving them advice on how to set up a brothel and evade taxes on their illicit income. 

I would think that the fact that someone coming to an ACORN office to get advice on how to avoid taxes should have raised a flag right there.  I mean, it’s obvious that they can’t even cheat on their own taxes much less advise someone else on how to do so.  It would be like asking the Three Stooges for advice on table manners.

And how did ACORN officials respond to getting caught red-handed on video?  How else- they blamed conservatives.  They tried to claim that the couple responsible for the video was actually Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin in disguise.  Both, it turned out, had alibis.  Cheney was on hisTexas ranch hunting lawyers at the time, while Palin was sitting on her front porch with a pair of binoculars keeping an eye on the Russians.

Lawmakers in Washington responded to the revalation in usual knee-jerk style by voting to cut off federal funding for the group. The Census Bureau cut it’s ties with the group, who was going to work to ensure a full tally of cartoon characters living in the country for the 2010 census.

Bobby Jindal couldn’t resist getting in on the action, issuing an executive order to cut off all state funding for the organization. What he failed to realize was that ACORN hadn’t received any state money for several years.  That’ll sure show ‘em.

ACORN is known to have deep ties to President Obama.  As far back as 1995, Obama helped ACORN in a court case involving the “motor-voter law” in Illinois, a measure that gives automobiles the right to vote.

ACORN had grown from its inception in the seventies to a tall oak that boasts thousands of chapters throughout the country.  It took a Paul Bunyan in the form of a young couple with a video camera to take it down and turn it into toothpicks.

It’s not until next Septermber when we have the primary election for David Vitter’s US Senate seat here in Louisiana, and already the campaign is starting to heat up.  Whoopee, that means we’re in for a full year of those tantalizing negative campaign ads! We have one candidate painting his opponent as a child-molsting Nazi. Meanwhile, the other casts his opponent as a wife-beating Osama bin Laden hell-bent on selling the country down the river for a couple of rocket launchers.  And if there happens to be a runoff, we get extra innings! At least it is good for the cash-strapped advertising budgets of the media outlets, if anything.

Louisiana is considered a red state, which means that a significant percentage of the voters are rednecks.  This fact has a significant bearing on campaign strategy.  To be successful, the candidates must direct thier appeals to this constituency, so look for campaign slogans to appear on cans of Busch beer, packages of smokeless tobacco, boxes of shotgun shells, and country music CD’s.  There will also be the compulsory whistle-stop tours of honky-tonk bars throughout the state.  Tee shirt advertising works well too, as long as it is camouflage-colored or has the candidate’s name accompanied by a picture of a fish or game animal.

By contrast, my native state of Maryland is considered a blue state.  It is called that because a lot of people there are constantly depressed.  There, the strategy is more to get your views out by advertising on the TV and radio talk shows.  A lot of people in the blue states tune into these, which explains to a large degree why they are so depressed.  Since they spend so much time at home alone with their TV’s and radios, tee shirt advertising doesn’t work well in those states.

That all being said, let me introduce the two major candidates who will face off in this slanderous duel. The incumbent is David Vitter.  He is best known for admitting that he had sinned after his name turned up in a D.C. Madam’s little black book.  I still don’t understand how being a sinner makes a U.S Senator stand out from among his colleagues. We’ll see if it becomes a factor in the campaign.  If anything, it could sway the Bubba vote in his favor.  Being on a high-class call girl’s A-list is the stuff of dreams for rednecks.

  His opponent is Congressman Charlie Melancon. Mr. Melancon’s chief claim to fame, as far as I can tell, is that he took a trip on the taxpayer’s dime to go to the South Pole for a New Year’s Eve Party.  He claims he went there to study climate change, but that doesn’t add up for me.  After all, the climate changes a lot more right here in Louisiana than it does on the South Pole.   I don’t think the trip will score Charlie many points with the Bubbas of the state.  Maybe if he’d brought some ice back with him to chill down their beers it could have helped.  At least they’d have been satisfied their tax money went for something useful.

So, I give the early edge to Vitter in this one, but there’s still time.  Charlie could pull a rabbit out of his hat by getting arrested speeding in his bass boat drunk with double the legal limit in his ice chest, blaring Hank Williams Jr. so loud thast every game warden in the parish could hear him.  That would be a very hard act for Vitter to top.

A story came out recently about Governor Bobby Jindal’s use of a State Police helicopter on Sundays to attend church services around the state at the taxpayers’ expense. Many say that this is a complete waste of tax money at a time when the budget is tight. When I think about it, I’m not so sure that that’s true.

Our governor is a very busy man, and he’s got lots of important things to do, like go around the country and atttend various fucntions while he’s not getting ready to run for President in 2012. And if your church is anything like mine, the mad dash out of the parking lot at the end of the service resembles the traffic during a mandatory hurricane evacuation. Our governor just doesn’t have the time to contend with all of this traffic, so he needs the helicopter.

I personally think this thing is all the fault of the church-goers. If they’d just take their time and proceed to exit in an orderly manner, then perhaps Governor Jindal could get by with just a stretch Hummer limo. I could maybe understand this behaviour during NFL season. Our pastor, for instance, obviously not a football fan, likes to stretch the services out almost to the noon kickoff time. But this mad dash for the exits happens 52 Sundays a year!

I’ll use my church again as an example. I play guitar in the folk choir, so I always get to the church early to rehearse, before the preceding service has let out. Even with my puny compact, I can hardly squeeze by the cars that are just barely backed in to the parking spaces, front ends pointed toward the exit. They look like they’re lined up waiting for the green flag at a NASCAR race.

At the end of our service, when the priest says, “The Mass has ended, go in peace,” you’d think he’d actually said, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” The pews are empty before I can strike the first chord on my guitar. I once suggested to my choir director that we change the recessional hymn from “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” to “The Race Is On”.

So take it easy on Bobby here. Fellow church-gores, if we really want to alleviate this situation we should organize some raffles and bake sales to raise money for HOV lanes in our parking lots.

A little while back we reported on the eight years worth of Mayor Ray Nagin’s missing e-mails. Now, I come across another strory about technical foul-ups in the city (although the e-mail deal may not have actually been a foul-up). It seems that, a few years back, the city spent $6 million to install cameras in some of the more, let’s say, unstable neighborhoods in an effort to crack down on crime.

So, how well has this program been protecting the citizens? About as well as the Saints’ defense did last year protecting the scoreboard. (For the record, they were tied for 5th worst in the NFL. So maybe in fact they did slightly better than the cameras.) Depending on who you believe, these cameras have caught either none or one criminal since they were deployed. The city claims one, but that may have been from a camera owned by a citizen and the city is just taking credit for it.

The problem: it seems that most of the time, these cameras are either not working or producing videos so fuzzy that they can’t even identify the criminals. A teenager can make a better You-Tube video while he’s riding a stunt bike.

Perhaps the city should have hired a technology chief whose skills were at least slightly above a neandrathal’s (with due apologies to the Geico cavemen). Or at least it should have been somebody besides Greg Meffert, whose skills were more in the area of graft than in gadgets.

I’ll tell you how the city could have saved a whole bunch of money and made a serious dent in the crime rate. Instead of cameras, they could have brought in a bunch of retired Catholic school nuns to patrol the streets. If they’re anything like my old 6th grade teacher, Sister Candida, they have more eyes on their heads than a potato that’s been in the pantry for three weeks. They could spot a perpetrator in an instant and quickly demobilize him with a well placed eraser shot to the temple from thirty yards. Then, she’d single-handedly drag him by his earlobe straight to the principal’s office- I mean, police station.

Anyone who’s ever attended a Catholic grade school would agree with me here that such a plan would make New Orleans one of the safest cities in the nation.

There’s been a lot of controversy here in Louisiana about the new “Career Diploma” track that was passed into law in an attempt to reduce the dropout rate. Many people believe that the track is just a dumbiing down of the curriculum to improve the numbers.

Many school districts throughout the state have asked for waivers because they are not sure how to implement the new curriculum. Here at Road Kill Gumbo we’ve come up with some exam questions for the Career Diploma to try to help these districts out a little.

Here are some questions for various subject areas:

English:

What form of sentence is “Do you want fries with that?”

A. Declarative
B. Interrogative
C. Exclamatory
D. The kind you need to memorize for your job.

History:

Where was the Battle of New Orleans fought?

A. At the New Orleans Arena between Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage in Wrestlemania VII.
B. In Central City between the Voodoo Lords and the River Pagans.
C. At the Superdome between Grambling and Southern University.
D. Uh, somewhere in Iraq?

Chemistry:

You are the pool boy at the local YMCA. You test the water and it contains 3 parts per million of chlorine and has a pH of 6.5. What should you do?

A. It’s all good. Sneak back into the chemical storage shed and finish reading your stack of dirty magazines.
B. Pour a whole gallon of test solution into the pool and watch it turn bright orange.
C. Toss a rubber snake into the pool to scare all of the children out; then call in the hazmat team. Somebody’s obviously been peeing in it.
D. Add ten bars of homemade lye soap you got from your grandmother to raise the alkalinity and clean the pool at the same time.

Mathematics:

You are a carnival worker selling ride tickets. They cost $1 apiece or six for $5. Someone comes up to you and orders eight tickets. How much should you charge him?

A. $7
B. $8
C. $50, including the price for the contraband he really came to buy.
D. Hey man, can’t you just make it easy on me and buy $5 worth?

Geography:

What direction would you go to get from New Orleans to Houston?

A. Interstate 10
B. Uphill (everything is uphill from New Orleans)
C. Sideways
D. Follow the giant sucking sound that started after Hurricane Katrina.

Foreign Language:

What is the meaning of the phrase, “Laissez les bon temps rouler”?

A. It’s the Louisiana state slogan.
B. “Let’s get ready to rumble!”
C. “It’s better to let a ten foot sleeping alligator lie.”
D. “It’s Friday! Let’s go out on the french Quarter and drink hurricanes until we’re so drunk that we can’t remember our names.”

Ecology:

You are cutting the lawn for the Department of Transportation alongside of a busy highway, and you see an endangered species of turtle venturing out onto the roadway directly into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler. What should you do?

A. Start a grass-roots campaign to have several million dollars of federal stimulus money allocated to build a bridge over the highway so that the turtles can cross safely.
B. Attempt to save the turtle at the risk of taking one for the planet. At least they might name the species after you if it survives extinction.
C. Run over it with the lawnmower. It’s a goner anyway, and this way you’ll destroy any evidence and avoid the possibility of angry protests, saving the state embarassment.
D. Put on a pot of rice and wait for the carnage. It’s road kill gumbo tonight, baby!

I noticed where the New Orleans-based activist group ACORN is in hot water over about $1 million worth of unpaid tax bills to the state and federal governments. ACORN is best known for its voter registration efforts aimed at cartoon characters such as Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote, and Mickey Mouse. In so doing, I believe they perform a valuable service to the democratic process. After all, there are scores of organizations in existence to protect the rights of just about every imaginable ethnic group, but no one seems to be is looking out for the toons.

The logistics of registering cartoon characters is enormous. For instance, Fred Flintstone’s form was carved into a large slab of granite that weighed several hundred pounds.

Also, there are many legal issues that need to be worked through, and this is where ACORN has come under fire. The organization’s position is that all toons are eligible to vote, regardless of whether they are human or animal. As long as the animal can talk, claims ACORN, it should be eligible to vote. Still, the organization is under investigation into voter fraud, as they appear to have violated these rules by accepting applications from toons who cannot talk, including Wile E. Coyote and Scooby Doo.

Many conservative groups criticize ACORN, saying their voter registration drives are thinly-veiled efforts to promote Democratic candidates. They believe that the overwhelming majority of cartoon characters tend to vote for Democrats. However, there is no official survey data to confirm this.

As laudable as this group’s work is in the area of promoting the toons’ rights, I still believe that they should pay their taxes. ACORN leader Rocket J. Squirrel attributes the issue to an internal accounting problem. “Golly gee,” he commented, “Our accountants were all educated in the New Orleans public schools, so their math skills are a little bit lacking.”

It is reported that ACORN is hoping to expand its efforts to include sitcom characters from the 60’s and 70’s. It seems that right about now they could use the support of a few deep pockets among the group, such as J.D. Clampett and Thurston Howell III.