While driving into work yesterday, I noticed that traffic was backed up at the western entrance of New Orleans’s Warehouse District. As I inched up, the bottleneck turned out to be a couple of police trucks, off which several on-duty officers were unloading barricades. This being the usual parade or visiting-dignitary routine, I duly ignored it until realizing that Mardi Gras is still a month away, and who of importance is visiting the Warehouse District on a Thursday? Perplexed yet unconcerned, I zoomed ahead and was soon mired in the tasks that occupy my workday.
Just when I thought my day was going alright … around mid-morning, I received a phone call from my leasing agent informing me that the owner of the house D and I were all set to occupy (coincidentally the leasing agent’s son) had suddenly decided to renege on our deal as our move-in date was not to his liking. If there is anything I hate more than slimy politics, it is searching for a place to live, especially in New Orleans where you can rent a perfectly charming Greek Revival only to wake up a few months later and discover that your place houses more vermin than Chicago’s entire sewer system.
The phone rang again. Feeling a mild headache come on, I thought, “Ugh, what next?” I should write myself a note not to think those words because this was D filling me in on the reason for the police barricades. Remember what I said I like only slightly less than house hunting? Slimy politics. I was told, in a somber and apologetic tone, that George W. Bush was in town as part of a fund-raising trip. Dun-dun-duuuuuuuuun.
The headache exploded into a full-blown migraine. I should have known that police barricades placed simultaneously around the entrances to a church and the D-Day Museum can only mean one thing. Bush was going to pray, visit with newly-elected Governor Blanco on the future of Louisiana, and address attendees of the $2000-a-plate dinner at the D-Day Museum. How could that man stand here, in one of America’s most impoverished states, and beg for money and support to develop an extra-terrestrial program? I cringe at the thought of $1 billion being shot into space while it could be utilized better getting Americans out of ghettos and off the streets, and into homes and schools … what do I know? These citizens don’t deserve the help of the better off; they brought it on themselves, and who cares for their progress? Their disenfranchisement only assures the continued reign of the current administration. To the moon, poor and uneducated, to the moon! If I were to call Bush a lunatic, do you think he’d get it?
My potential home lost, a really bad headache, and Bush ten blocks away from me. The astrological sky was obviously conspiring against me - maybe Jupiter was booted out of the 11th house and Pluto didn’t keep its appointment with the Sun. Or was it the dark cloud that Bush’s presence evinced over the entire city? Perhaps the moon is off kilter because it hears its name being taken in vain again, and shudders at the threat of being occupied in the name of God, freedom, and apple pie.
Well, things are better. Bush wreaks havoc elsewhere in his unconscientious glory, I am left with quite a few new home options, Venus is the ruler of my eighth house, and the man in the moon is smiling. And smile he will, until he recognizes that the girl in the world is really a gun-slinging cowboy from Texas.