ChgoRed, Girl Editor

Craft Work

I'm a businesswoman! I'm a trendsetter!

It's been a busy week.

The Aiiieees Have It

John Roberts, looking...well...really damn creepy. 

Ganked from Jima, with thanks.

In the Bag

My purse, cleaned out. Judging by the business cards, which I picked up a month ago, it was about time.

• CTA card with money on it
• CTA card (zeroed out)
• Access card for work
• Spare access card (no longer activated)
• "Alibi," by Joseph Kanon
• New copy of Marie Claire magazine
• Cell phone
• EEG referral
• New prescription for seizure meds
• Ticket stub from last Wednesday's Cubs/Dodgers game
• Check from the Boyfriend with his share of the rent
• Business card from the furniture place where I bought my dresser last weekend, and which took four hours to deliver said dresser last night, even though I only live two blocks away
• Keys
• Sticky note with brand and make of my computer, for last week's CD/RW drive-buying excursion
• Blue headband
• Sticky note that came on a book from my sister
• Receipt for lunch
• Gum wrapper
• Calcium pill
• Spare keys
• Two plain metal barrettes, brown
• Note about wedding meeting I was supposed to have at the Hilton on Monday, and would have, had the guy I was supposed to meet not been on vacation
• Co-pay receipt from yesterday's doctor visit
• Three ATM slips
• Wallet
• Mini hairbrush
• Lottery ticket
• Carbon of receipt for my new dresser (Four hours! Two blocks! GAH!)
• Receipt from CVS for shoe cushions bought Tuesday, when my cute black pumps turned into cleverly disguised torture devices (damn you Payless!)
• Sticky note from work (how did that get in here?)
• Sticky note reminder about cross-streets for doctor's office
• Two brown barrettes that I thought matched, but on closer inspection they don't, so it's a good thing I didn't need them Tuesday night after all
• Business cards I picked up at Northalsted Market Days (Hearty Boys Catering and Definition Photographic)
• Favorite faux fountain pen (blue ink) that has leaked all over the inside of my purse
• Ballpoint pen from the company where the Boy's dad worked
• Receipt (Ray Charles Ultimate Hits Collection, Ultimate Otis Redding) and coupon from Borders
• Makeup I brought specifically for Tuesday night, when the Boy took me to see "Wicked":
  • MAC Studio Fix powder (NW20)
  • Blush brush
  • Maybelline eyeliner, chestnut brown
  • MAC golden bronzing powder
  • Cover Girl light pale concealer
  • Sephora lipstick #321A
  • Maybelline Great Lash Waterproof mascara in brownish black
  • Mini bottle of Thermasilk ultra hold hairspray, usually kept in my desk at work
• Vitamin
• $47.26 in cash and loose change

Something a Little Lighter

How totally awesome is our landlord? His family has owned the building since the 1970s; he landscaped the entire backyard himself; I see him around the property nearly every week, making repairs, taking care of the yard and checking on stuff; his tenants stay for years and years; and he actually responds when we tell him something needs fixing.

And if I needed any more proof, there's this batch of stories. My favorite is the cop/landlord who stopped arresting a prostitute so he could remind a tenant to pay his rent. It nearly beats the weirdest Chicago landlord story I ever heard, about two guys who were nearly forced to move out of their new apartment because the landlord declared, "You have to leave. You have too many books. We did not know you were that kind of people." And they didn't have all that many; just too many by the standards of the landlord. Fortunately for them, he let them stay.

The Boyfriend will smile to see ICM Realty mentioned several times. When we were apartment hunting this spring, one immediate and obvious "not this one, thanks," was an apartment with a dinner plate-size hole in the ceiling. According to the tenant (moving out that night), it was due to water damage from the radiator in the apartment above. He had called the landlord four times about fixing it, with no success. As we were leaving, the apartment hunter who was showing us the place mentioned, "Yeah, well, it's ICM. They have a bad reputation." Clearly.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Independent Investigation

No non-Congressional experts allowed, and Democrats are outnumbered.  Fair and balanced, indeed.

From today's Washington Post:

Parties Scramble for Post-Katrina Leverage

With the midterm congressional elections 14 months away, both parties see high stakes in where blame will eventually fall for the government's lagging response to Katrina. Yesterday, congressional Republicans tried to get a head start, announcing the formation of an investigative commission that they can control.

They rejected Democratic appeals to model the panel after the Sept. 11 commission, which was made up of non-lawmakers and was equally balanced between Republicans and Democrats. That commission won wide praise for assessing how the 2001 terrorist attacks occurred, and for recommending changes in the government's anti-terrorism structure.

House and Senate GOP leaders announced the "Hurricane Katrina Joint Review Committee," which will include only members of Congress, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats by a yet-to-be-determined ratio. The commission, which will have subpoena powers, will investigate the actions of local, state and federal governments before and after the storm that devastated New Orleans and other portions of the Gulf Coast.

Speechless

You know, after reading the 9/11 commission’s report last year, I was deeply disappointed in our government. But this past week has been worse.  Forcing firefighters to sit through classes on FEMA's history?  While Americans who footed the bill were suffering?  How is that management?  Terrorists will always find a way, but the idea of masses of people dying preventable deaths simply due to mismanagement… I can’t even put my disgust into words.

From Salon today:

FEMA puts firefighters to work -- as props for Bush

From all across the nation, local fire departments have sent firefighters -- many of them trained in emergency medicine and search-and-rescue techniques -- to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency requested the help. But when the firefighters arrived in Atlanta, loaded down with the firefighting gear FEMA told them to bring, they were sent to a hotel to wait. Some of them have been waiting for three or four days now. Some have been assigned to sit through an eight-hour class on topics that included sexual harassment. And some have been dispatched to the disaster area to work as human props behind George W. Bush as he toured the destruction.

We've said this before lately, and we'll say it again: We're not making this up.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, "Hundreds of firefighters who volunteered to help rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina have instead been playing cards, taking classes on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's history and lounging at an Atlanta airport hotel for days. 'On the news every night you hear [hurricane victims say], "How come everybody forgot us?"' said Joseph Manning, a firefighter from Washington, Pa. 'We didn't forget. We're stuck in Atlanta drinking beer.'

" Well, not just drinking beer. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that FEMA put a team of 50 firefighters on a flight to Louisiana Monday morning. Their mission: Stand beside Bush as he toured the devastation -- just possibly not the best use for highly trained emergency workers, and a job we thought was obsolete in the digital age anyway.

FEMA defends the use -- or nonuse -- of the firefighters, saying that their chiefs knew they were being sent to the Gulf Coast to work as community-relations officers for FEMA. Apparently, that job entails working as human props and passing out FEMA's phone number. "There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter told the Tribune.

On Monday, the Tribune says, some firefighters began to take off their FEMA-issued T-shirts in protest. A FEMA spokesman responded by questioning the firefighters' willingness to help in a time of need. "I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak told the Tribune.

Stop the Presses: FEMA Tries Its Hand at Actual Management

From today's LA Times (subscription required):

KATRINA'S AFTERMATH

FEMA Wants No Photos of Dead

From Reuters

NEW ORLEANS - The U.S. agency leading Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts said Tuesday that it does not want the news media to photograph the dead as they are recovered.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected journalists' requests to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims.

An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats.

"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

The irony is that, had they shown this much concern for getting the living into rescue boats, there might be fewer dead people.

And the Bad News Keeps Coming

Caution: This is not pleasant or easy to read. But it's exactly what they meant when they said the news would get worse. From Nola.com:

Mayor says Katrina may have claimed more than 10,000 lives

Bodies found piled in freezer at Convention Center

By Brian Thevenot Staff writer

Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.

"Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated," he said. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."

Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man. "That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.

"There's an old woman," he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.

Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer. "It's not on, but at least you can shut the door," said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson.