Ok, so I was out getting "ravaged" by Katrina, so I've been away from the oh so beautiful forums for a while, and rather than post on each thread individually like I'm supposed to, I'll just put it all down here:

Tulane - for those of you wondering about Tulane, it faired the storm with very little damage. When I went by to try to get my stuff out of my room (don't try it, the electronic locks are still locking) the area around school was flooded, but campus was high and dry. I talked to a Tulane maintainance guy who was staying at my hotel; he said Architecture School's basement flooded (again) and the new UC needs to be aired out, but other than that and a few downed trees, Tulane is safe. Expect classes next semester.

The "Blame Game"- no one's REALLY blaming anyone for the storm, and until CNN and Fox came down, no one even gave thought to blaming the government. I mean, we were all mad at Aaron Brusard (Jeff. Parish President) because he did stupid shit like call a quasi-dictatorship "Marshall Law" and closed streets he had no business closing, but we never imagined that we'd get help from the federal government for a hurricane.

Mayor Nagin- he's a pimp. He always has been. He and Gulliani are going to start a sitcom after all this is said and done.

The Levee - Okay, even I've made the "we should have put more money into reinforcing the levee" argument, but when it comes down to it, NOLA people were proud of that damn levee. We always talk about what an amazing feat the levee is and blah blah blah, and if we had tried to change it, the people of New Orleans would have bitched, and it would still be up for debate to this very day. (power to the people!)

Rebuilding the New Orleans - Now, keep in mind, this is just one man's opinion, but I believe that this presents a great opportunity for the city of New Orleans to move forward. Ann Rice said that New Orleans is a city of "preservation through neglect," meaning that we have very old buildings that nobody particularly cares to tear down. The truth of the matter is that the people of New Orleans fight to keep things from being preserved, because they believe in the atmosphere brought on by dalapidation. A few years back, there was a fight over whether or not to allow preservationalists to fix the structure of Jean Lafitte's house, because locals believed that the fact that the building was falling apart added to its "charm". Now that the city has more or less washed away, we're presented with two options: either forced preservation of historical buildings, in which buildings such as Lafitte's house are reconstructed to a T on their original site, or build a whole new city, that doesn't look to the past in the same way that New Orleans has until now.

CNN vs Fox news - I think I already said this once, but lemme just say that these are the two most evil corperations on the face of the planet. Any group of people that can turn the suffering of our city's people into entertainment should be rounded up and set on fire. It was sick wathcing them pat themselves on the back on what a fantastic job they were doing and reporting on how miserable they were without trailers (thats not an exageration). I watched a reporter push evacuees out from under an umbrella, because she needed a shot of an elderly woman all alone, because it looked more pitiful that way. I hated the way they spread rumors to get the citizens riled up. I hated how they carried props, like flags, around with them so that they could make artistic statements out of our suffering. I hated how they poked and prodded dead bodies on national television (yea, I'm talking to you, Oprah). I hated seeing celebrities airlifted in and out of the city when thousands of other people never had that option. I hated seeing my home with an orchestral soundtrack, as if everything I went through was some twisted movie. And I hated that even a natural disaster could be used to meet political ends. But I think most of all, I hated that we had such a communications break down, and rather than using their satalite uplinks to set up communication stations, so that New Orleanians could contact family members and tell them that they are safe, they just kept rolling 24hours a day, cuz lets face it, helping people is a waste of money.

Poverty vs racisism vs responsiblity - Like I said before, people in New Orleans are stubborn. For one thing, the theory of a racist hurricane is ludacris. I don't think that if the same thing happened and New Orleans was 100% white if it would have changed anything. Now, as for the thousands of people left behind and why they didn't leave, most of them will tell you that they just didn't feel like it. We've been told to evacuate dozens of times for false alarms and its hard to take a hurricane seriously. I'll admit that my family was the same way. Mayor Nagin made an address before the storm saying basically "everyone needs to get out of the area. Take your neighbor with you if they can't get out themselves. The SuperDome is going to suck whne the power goes out; and it will go out. The levee's probably going to break." I mean, he couldn't have been much clearer, but we all stayed because we are stubborn people. I really feel for those who were too poor or frail to leave, I mean I know how it is when a $50 bus ticket to a camp site really is asking too much, but at the same time, I know that there were church buses and community services set up to help these people, and most of them couldn't get people to evacuate for free.

Ok, I think that about covers the conversations I read. Sorry it was lengthy, probably full of typos and I used "I hate" to start like 200 sentences.