I smell that Jazz Fest is back in town...

I went for a walk today down to the river. Those of you who don't live in New Orleans may be unaware of the situation with the high water down here. All the rain in the north has pushed the water level up to new records. Several weeks ago I meandered down there and took some pictures. Here is the first one:



You can see at the left of this picture the chains going across the bottom to prevent people from walking into the river. (Another time when the river was running high this was the exact spot where I managed to fall in and grabbed those chains to keep myself from being washed away.) I went back a week later and took another picture of the same place:



You can see that the chains are under the water. Today the water is so high that there are only the second set of posts visible above the water. The city has recently opened the floodgates (as it were) to the Bonnet Carre spillway, pushing river water into the lake and eventually into the Gulf. In a related story the river levee near Touluse street has sprung a minor leak. They have sandbags and cement bags all stacked up. Another flood would likely destroy the city forever but there would be one good thing to come from that situation. You see, it's Jazz Fest time and that means one thing and one thing only to me, the invasion of the dirty rotten stinking hippies. Now I know as well as the next person that the water in the Mississippi is disgustingly dirty but even it is cleaner than most of these hippies. Anyone who knows me knows of my distaste for flip flops; these people don't even wear shoes. The raw stench of patchouli is already enveloping us like a fog. Everywhere you turn there are guitar carrying dred-locked white people laying about on sidewalks and thinking that I'm going to have the burning man spirit and give them a dollar. Forget it stinko. I threw twenty pennies in the swollen river, take a dip and find them.

Blech!