9/10 Chop Suey

[Jimbaux hopes that you trust . . . in . . . his . . . self-righteous suicide, but not a suicide, nor a suicide attack.]

“The only thing we have to fear is . . . fear itself,” Franklin D. Roosevelt so aptly said, and that’s the only thing I’m fearing tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I’m celebrating freedom by taking pictures of trains for much of the day, freedoms for which those who died 10 years ago tomorrow did not die in vain, and I hope that a few more of you will do the same, hopefully showing that there’s no reason to be arrested for taking pictures, as has, unfortunately, happened to too many people in our supposedly “free” country, and could have happened to me had I stood up for myself at the bullying of the New Orleans Police Department in April 2008.

Today’s song, “Chop Suey” by System of a Down, was at the top of the charts 10 years ago, and it’s lyrics were quite strangely appropriate for the time.

9/10

I do remember Monday 10 September 2001, but only at night.  I remember being in the library of Ellender Memorial Library at Nicholls State University, apparently studying, or something, and I saw someone from one of my classes in there.  He mentioned he was going home to check out the game, which I checked out when I got home later; I think it was the New York Giants against the Denver Broncos, and I remember falling asleep before the game ended.  Then came 9/11.

As for Saturday 10 September 2011, well, we’ll always have photographic evidence of it, as seen below!

I had been postponing a maintenance problem in my truck, the fact that the cable to the negative terminal on my battery was loose, and occasionally over the last few months, my truck won’t start because of this, meaning I had to merely pop the hood and just push the battery back a bit so that the connection would be stronger.  Well, the cable finally came totally loose today, forcing me to finally address this problem, because I don’t want to have to give myself a jump – using a jumper cable (singular) but without the need for another vehicle – every time I need to start my truck.  Seen below, I’m giving myself a jump at Lakeside Camera in Metairie.

That sucked, and I had to do it a few more times today, but I finally got it all resolved with a wrench and pliers.

After I left Lakeside Camera, it was time to go east.  Through my new windshield, I saw this, wishing that I could do something to help.

I have neither capital nor a job I could give this man, but I wish I could do both.

Hey, look, tall buildings!  Oh my god, what is he going to do with those pictures of tall buildings?  We’d better confiscate his camera, lest he post this stuff to the internet.

Scandalous, isn’t it?  Yeah, no.

Train?

I heard DS 209 give a track warrant to a westbound BNSF train out of Salix.  Well, I’d better check this out, right?  Before the train comes, so do some motorcyclists:

Well, that’s neat, isn’t it?  I’m sure that Steve, The Levee Rider will appreciate that.  Anyway, here is the train, which appears to be BNSF’s CSXLAL.

For some moronic reason, I decided to chase this H2 Pumpkin-led train to Chacahoula, only to learn that it’s too late in the day to do my classic shot there, since the sun had already swung over to the north side of the track.  What to do?  Well, take a picture of the bayou and a bridge in Raceland while I’m on my way to the shot, that’s what:

Yeah, okay.  What think thou?

Profanity

To be sure, sagging pants is something of a profanity, something else that was mentioned in a recent post that included my classic Chacahoula shot, and I’d love to see the practice eradicated from this planet, but I find yet another reason to despise some people from the bayou for the profanity that you see here:

I totally agree with Einstein that the only two things that are infinite are the universe and human stupidity.  How trifling can people be?

Apparently, very much so, and let’s see how much of it happens tomorrow.

A New Shot?

It’s funny, because I don’t think but maybe once, if at all, have I shot from the north side of the track in Chacahoula, and if I did do it, it wasn’t from the top of the truck, but this one was.

No, sir, I really don’t like that one, and I don’t think that I’ll be doing that again.  Anyway, that’s all the time we have today for pictures, or is it?  What’s this?

Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought too.  For some weird reason I don’t understand, I’ve seen a larger than usual amount of US flags in front of some people’s homes this weekend, but the above message seems a little different.

Okay, that really is the last shot of the day.

Unusual Times For Jimbaux’s Journal

It is not very often that I make a post on either a Friday night or a Saturday night, but I’ve done both this weekend!  That’s only because of this great project on which I’m working with the affirmation of freedom and rights tomorrow on the 10-year anniversary of the terror attacks that were designed precisely to cause us to turn on each other and erode our freedoms, which we’ve shamefully allowed to happen all in the name of “homeland security.”  As my pal Howard said, we’ve surely been cowed, like the sheeple that most of us are.

Anyway, once this big project gets done, and it looks like it’s getting plenty of publication in the railroad enthusiasts world, things will probably slow down for awhile on this site (even if I’m not in jail on trumped-up charges or no charges at all.)  This week, working on this site has consumed me, much the way that Americans have allowed themselves to unfortunately be consumed by terror, just as bin Laden had intended and hoped.  (He won.)  I have many other things on which I need to focus other than Jimbaux’s Journal, but I still hope to post the random train picture I get while out-and-about, particularly of the NOGC, NS Back Belt action, and Chip.  I hope that you continue to enjoy it.

And, I hope, you can affirm your rights tomorrow.  Our greatest threat comes from within.

Jimbaux