[How did Jimbaux get here, and what went wrong? Couldn’t handle forgiveness.]
What’s good, little homies? I have three lame shots for you on this Sunday. These are not at all my best pictures, not even close, but maybe there’s a good lesson here in learning to play the hand that you are dealt, no matter how poor of a hand it is.
Save Me From My Blasphemy
See, I have yet to have had to alter my schedule because of daylight slaving time. Like any day, I just shoot pictures after the sun rises and before it sets. What we (not I) choose to call it is something else.
I’m highly tempted to launch into a tirade about how daylight slaving time is the ultimate proof of human stupidity, but I’ll largely resist. I know that many of you Louisiana folks, Texas folks, and others think I’m some latent liberal because I don’t think that Barack Obama is Satan incarnate, because I care about the environment, because I never agreed with the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, because I’m not anti-gay (though serving in the military is not a right), because I don’t particularly care about your religion regardless of what it is, because I do think Rush Limbaugh is generally disgusting, because I don’t despise Bill Maher, and because I don’t blame the current spike in gasoline prices on the current occupant of the Oval Office — just like how many of you DC, New York, and West Coast folks think I’m some only-barely-watered-down conservative because I refuse to cheer on your messiah Barack Obama just because all of the “cool” kids are doing it, because I don’t bash oil companies for being oil companies, because I don’t hate the military, because I say things like homophobia is as natural as homosexuality (something that some gay people don’t seem to be comfortable hearing), because I don’t find any outrage that GE didn’t pay any taxes, because I don’t hate the rich for being rich or think that they need to be taxed much more because they “don’t deserve” all of that money, because I think that the Occupy Wall Street Movement is far scarier than even the Tea Party Movement, and because I didn’t blame the spike in gasoline prices in mid-2008 on the then-occupant of the Oval Office — but when it comes to the issue of daylight stupid time, I’m Tea Party Express all the way, baby!
Oh, wait! Some of you self-identifying Tea Party people can’t see a connection between your Tea Partiesqueness and a need to have an ideological opposition to daylight slaving time? Oh, well, methinks you need to push your chair back away from a computer for a little while and ponder why you’ve never protested the existence of this annual testament to the monumental nature of human stupidity! Think about how you’re at work an hour earlier this week (and all of the headaches associated with that) because the government told you to do so, because the government has decided that you and your employer are too stupid to decide between yourselves when you show up to work that it actually has to fool you into thinking your normal report-to-work time is now an hour later than it was last week. If you were worth your salt as a Tea Partier, you’d protest this DST stupidity with the same fervor that you protest spending increases and tax increases.
Can You Show Us Some Lame Pictures, Please?
Yeah. It was stupidly cloudy this afternoon.
After the Irish parade in Old Metairie, Union Pacific train AARWXX-10 made it through eastbound on its way to the CSX. This is an extra auto rack train from Arlington, Texas, to Waycross, Georgia. Here it is at Alvar Street after it had to wait at NE Tower for the Chattanooga-bound Norfolk Southern train 130 to pass.
I told you it was lame. You didn’t believe me? Here’s the view from ground level, taken just in the nick of time and slightly underexposed. I guess I need to learn to use automatic features.
I guess that’s better, but I neither know nor care. This whole foaming thing seems like a complete waste of time sometimes.
393
It’s too dark to shoot any more pictures, but that didn’t stop me. Just after shooting the AARWXX, I heard NS train 393 (a UP-bound run-through train from Birmingham) calling signals southbound. I got to Frenchmen Street to blast off this lame dark shot of him, a location you saw photographed last time from above.
Yeah, and I was too inattentive in processing to get rid of the headlight blob. Oh, well. The 393 becomes UP train MNSEW on its way to Englewood Yard in Houston, Texas.
Saint Patrick’s Day In New Orleans
So, the big Irish Channel parade is this coming Saturday, and y’all know that I’ve attended and photographed it before a few times. I got to thinking in the last few days of why it is that I, a person from southeastern Louisiana, seem to be far more interested in the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations than I am in Carnival. Part of the answer may be the generally foolish and superfluous nature of Carnival with all excessive aspects, but I think that there’s something more to it than that. Recall in my Mardi Gras posting as well as my Sunday Gras posting the ‘obligation’ that society seems to place on participating in such things.
For better and for worse, but probably more for better, by my nature, I’m a non-conformist. I mean, when someone gives me grief for photographing a military train, then, by golly, the next time I see a train with military equipment, I’ll photograph it for sure! In the case of the Irish Channel Parade (or any of the St. Patrick’s Day parades in this area), I don’t feel this overwhelming pressure from society and local culture to participate in it like is the case with Carnival. It’s not such a big event that almost every young adult participates in it, and furthermore flies from other places to be here for it (like happens for Mardi Gras, which I think is foolish.)
So, weather permitting, you can expect that this weekend, Jimbaux will be in the Irish Channel, camera in one hand, and a beer in the other.
All for now . . .
Jimbaux
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