Because I know you people never get tired of pictures of my family. Hey, sue me…they’re my most very favorite photographic subject(s). This pic was taken on Saturday at Colt State Park in Bristol, Rhode Island on a postcard-perfect early Autumn day. One of my goals in life is to find somewhere where the year-round weather is much like we experienced here in New England on Saturday, Weekends like this one make it really, really easy not to miss Florida (though hurricane season helps out a lot with that, too).

Have I mentioned recently how much I love the Webbernet? ‘Cause I do. Pure technological wizardry aside, the kinds of worldwide communication that are now possible absolutely blow my mind. Case in point for this evening: the whole meme thing.

You might remember a couple of months ago I was tagged for a five childhood memories meme by Saundra over at Secrets and Lies. I know Saundra only in that we read each other’s blogs, and since that was the first time I’d been explicitly tagged by somone Out There for meme participation, I felt more than a little flattered and honored. I answered the questions as best I could, and then like a good little resident of Blogopolis, I passed the meme along to a couple of people, including my friend Amy.

Before I continue the story, a little background info that’s recently been brought to my attention about this particular meme. Brad Warbiany at The Unrepentant Individual started up the meme on June 1 as his method of “fighting back” against the memes with which he clearly gets regularly besieged. A month later, it had made its way to Saundra, who tagged me with it on July 1; by July 5 it had independently made its way back around to Brad’s group of buddies. Five weeks to come full circle.

Anyway, back into how this ties, however slightly, into me (because don’t you ever forget: It’s All About Me). I infected Amy at Beauty Joy Food with the meme, and on June 7 she took it and tweaked it, turning it into a “five food-related childhood memories” meme. This tweak makes sense given that Amy’s a food blogger, as you probably garnered from the name of her site. [1] She responded to the meme based on said alteration and tagged some other food bloggers.

Something I didn’t realize, being as I’m not really into food blogs and clearly don’t write one myself (anyone who knows my eating habits would doubt my qualifications even to read a blog about food): food bloggers are dedicated and passionate, and those people network like sumbitches. Amy started her blog at almost the exact same time as I started Do Or Do Not, and she only has about half as many posts as I do here–but I can guarantee you she’s got a far larger readership. (Some of this can be attributed to the fact that her entries tend to be longer, more involved and cough better, but we’ll ignore those points for now.) When she unleashed the childhood food-related memories meme into the gastro-blogosphere, those people took it and passed it around their virtual table like gravy at a Southern Thanksgiving dinner.

Amy let me know a few days ago that the meme has now shown up in Austria, and it’s shown up in Paris at what she assures me is the food blog of note. (I’ll take her word for it; for all I know, Amy’s is the food blog of note.) If the meme’s made it to those places, there’s no telling where else it’s gone, and I find that concept absolutely fascinating.

Yes, I know, I know–what I’ve described here is pretty much the textbook definition of a meme. But this is the first one I’ve ever seen that I could personally trace in this way.

Anyone reading this, feel free to bring your memes on to me. You’ve now seen the magic that happens when I participate. You want your meme to spread quickly to all corners of the world?

Pass it on to me.

So that I can pass it on to Amy.

I feel like I should be working on the book tonight, but I’ve been having trouble getting back into the swing of things after everything going down the last week or so. Fret not–I still intend to be done with the first draft of the book by the end of October, though I most certainly realize that every night I don’t work on the thing is more work I have to put into it later.

As I think I’ve likely mentioned here previously, I’m writing the book in a very seat-of-the-pants manner. No outline, no character sketches, no ending in mind when I started, all strategies gained from my National Novel Writing Month experiences. And honestly, 25% of the way into the first draft, I’m not sure if it’s working well or not. Yeah, OK, I’ve got almost 16,000 words down at this point, and that alone implies some sort of success given my previous efforts, but given that it’s hard to see very far ahead, it’s hard to judge how well I’m doing.

It’s like I’ve decided to drive to Florida, gotten out on the road and pointed myself generally south and hit the gas…now I’m several hours into the trip, but I don’t have a map, so I really have no idea how my route’s working out. I’ve got the sun to guide me some, and I know I’m going pretty much southerly, but I just don’t know if I’m on the best roads for getting me to Florida. Though I guess as long as I end up in Florida and not in Oregon, whichever way I got there was the right way, huh?

So anyway, to keep myself from having to do any writing on the book, I reverted the ol’ blog here back to its original design, but updated with all the new funky stuff I’d put into the sidebar over the last few months. I liked the simplicity of the old design, but I’d also grown pretty damn bored with that simplicity, so we’re back to this, which at the very least looks a bit more distinctive, I think. Hope you like it, ’cause even if you don’t, I ain’t changin’ again for awhile.

“The results are not acceptable.” — The President of the United States

You’re fucking-A right, George.

When I first started this blog a little over four months ago, I wrote a post in which, among other things, I discussed the fact that while intellecutually I recognize the horrible things that sometimes happen to people in disaster situations and wish things were different for them, I don’t really feel much pain or sadness for those people:

I don’t always take the fact that I’m not easily angered to be a positive; I’m afraid it’s symptomatic of something bigger. I know that I don’t feel deeply enough for current events or for human suffering in other parts of the world. I care, but I don’t, y’know, care. I know plenty of folks who do: people who want to fight for issues they believe in or who seem to feel as much for people they’ve never met as they do for the people in their day-to-day lives.

But after New Orleans–and our government’s massive ineptitude and callous disregard for the people of the Gulf Coast region–that’s starting to change.

I’ve been too wrapped up in my own head since the disaster hit, and I’ve tried not to think too much about what’s been going on. I’ve been trying to keep up on the facts, but I haven’t been internalizing it. I know that’s wrong of me, but that’s the way I’ve historically dealt with tragedy of all kinds.

But now that my own little world has calmed down a bit, now that I know my father’s doing better and my dentist appointment is over and my cross-country drive is done, I’m more able to face the horrors of what happened, and doing so hurts. I can’t even fathom the kinds of conditions those people have been dealing with for more than a week. I can’t even fathom the numbers of people who didn’t even survive to face those conditions.

But as sad and horrified as I’m feeling for the survivors, I’m feeling even more rage and resentment for how our government has handled the situation. All of the anger I’ve felt for this administration for the last five years, all of the disbelief at the wrong-headedness and stupidity continually displayed by the men and women we (supposedly) elected to shepherd this country and protect its citizens…all of that is nothing compared to the outrage I’m feeling now.

And, glory be, I’m far from the only one: the mainstream media isn’t rolling over at the administration’s feet anymore, and the results have been wonderful to behold.

I want to share with you some of what’s making me so angry today. I know I’m coming kind of late to the party, and hopefully many of you are already plenty outraged, but if not I hope some of the following will help get you there:

• MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann (long one of my favorite commentators, on a par only with Jon Stewart) scathingly, eloquently, calmly blasts the government response to Katrina. A must-watch (Windows Media Player required).
• John Scalzi has a series of articles on his blog about Katrina, but the one that affected me most was about what it means to be poor, to be really poor. He also posted a follow-up piece several days later about exactly why he wrote that post. I swear, I’m never going to complain about my financial problems again. (And as a quick aside to everyone, including the director of FEMA, who blames those thousands of people in New Orleans who were too poor to leave town for what happened to them: there’s a very special section of Hell waiting just for you. Please don’t keep them waiting too long, OK?)
• Another Scalzi post on governmental incompetence–and even his readers who normally disagree with his politics are starting to have trouble defending this administration.
• My boy Tim has reached his melting point as well, and fires off what’s easily the most articulate, impassioned essay I’ve read from him in quite some time.
• You might have heard that rapper Kayne West went off-script during the NBC benefit telecast last Friday night, saying that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” I’ve got to say it’s hard to argue much with him. You can see the video–which was edited out of the live broadcast when it aired later on the west coast–here. (Via Mr. Snitch.)

More links–and likely more vitriol–to come later.

Since I’m still too tired from cross-country driving to give y’all any sort of picture that requires deep thought or personal reflection, I give you instead a picture of my big stupid lovable dog, Tommy. Enjoy, and I’ll do better next week when I can actually think.

(As proof that I’m still half-exhausted: that first sentence took me ten minutes to write.)

Meant to do this earlier today, but had a busy Labor Day and didn’t have the chance:

Big shout outs and a Happy Three-One to my heterosexual life partner Brian. I can honestly say that my life would be considerably different right now had I never met and befriended him, and I’m pretty damn sure that would be for the lesser. Quite probably the fastest wit I’ve ever known, and I can say that with some assurance having been on the receiving end of his quick tongue more than a few times (hey! You guys get your dirty minds out of the gutters! Pervos.). I feel truly proud to say that he’s one of my bestest buds evah.

So I raise a virtual glass of Maudite to ya, -b, and hope you had a most excellent -b-day!

(Oh, and yes, I made it back safely from Florida–eleven states in twenty-seven hours. More to come on that score soon.)

This’ll probably be my last post for a few days; goin’ out of town again, though this time for a much happier reason than last time. (Incidentally, my father seems to be doing much better–we actually got to talk to him on the phone last night for the first time in weeks, and he sounded in good spirits. I can’t even tell you happy that makes me.)

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m flying to Tampa so I can drive back up here with my good buddy Jay, the brilliant eye behind Off-Color Photography. He and Michelle and their two kidlets are moving from hurricane-battered Florida up here to gorgeous (and occasionally snow-battered) New England. I didn’t want Jay to have drive all that way by himself, so I volunteered to tag along with him. That was before I found out his truck only has AM/FM radio, of course, but I guess it’s too late to back out now…

Anyway, as a parting shot, I’m going to leave a quick memory of New Orleans as requested by Amy as part of her relief-blogging efforts:

1998: Standing outside Fat Tuesday on Bourbon Street. Amy and I have just officially put some stupid fight behind us and are each drinking the kind of lame frou-frou slushee drinks you typically get from Fat Tuesday, the kind with the name that sounds like it’ll knock you on your ass but only knocks a chunk out of your available cash instead. It’s March, but not Mardi Gras; regardless, Bourbon Street’s still pretty slam-packed with drunken, sweaty flesh.

As Amy and I talk (or yell, more like, so as to be heard), a scuffle breaks out next to us between two guys who clearly have far too much emotional investment in the Greek letters on their T-shirts. First guy shoves second guy; second guy swings and his fist connects solidly with first guy’s chin. First guy backs up a couple of steps (right toward where Amy and I are standing)…and then falls straight backward onto the concrete, eyes still open in surprise, beer spilled all over the ground. I mean he falls straight backward, not crumples to the ground, not kind of sits down–falls back and lands flat on his inebriated back.

This being New Orleans, of course, no one rushes to his aid; this sort of thing happens several times a night all through the French Quarter.

Amy and I, naturally, resume our conversation.

Maybe I’ll have another Big Easy memory to share with you next week; maybe I’ll tell you about playing bodyguard to my friend Sandy at Tipitina’s.

See you all next week!