I got this email from my mother in law. This is very interesting.

We Failed You? Try Again.

Anne Rice blames America, not local officials.

"To my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs." - novelist and New Orleans resident Anne Rice

Let me get this straight.

Ms. Rice, you live in (what was) a very attractive city which lies below sea level. On one side you have a giant lake; on the other side you have the Gulf of Mexico. Running through the middle is the Mississippi River. All of which are above you. Preventing those giant bodies of water from flooding and drowning you are levees. These levees are described as "century-old." People have been warning about the devastating effects of a direct hit from a hurricane for decades. I've heard a great deal of complaint in recent days that the federal government may not have allocated enough money to speed up the upgrades to those levees. This does, however, raise the question of why city and state residents were waiting around for the federal government to send enough money to upgrade this, instead of paying for it themselves. I mean, it was only your homes, businesses, and lives at stake. Perhaps these upgrades would have been expensive. If only this city had some sort of events to attract tourists, from which to collect taxes. Anyway, your state and local officials decided to spend your tax dollars on something else that they (and presumably you) found more important, and then they waited for the rest of the country to pay for these life-preserving necessities. Your beloved city and region has a colorful political history, in which there is, oh, a wee bit of corruption. I'm from New Jersey, so I can't throw stones at that glass house. But you guys have managed to pick leaders who give you the worst of both worlds - they're scandal ridden and incompetent in a crisis. Look, Rudy Giuliani might have run around with Judith Nathan before his divorce, but he was a hell of a leader in our darkest hours. You know the National Review crowd isn't a fan of Pataki, but the man was a rock after 9/11 compared to Governor Weepy I'll-Evacuate-Eventually and Mayor It's-Everybody's-Fault-Except-Mine. Nobody's throwing around the adjective "Churchillian" about any of your officials these days. We didn't pick your local officials; you guys did.

Rice asks, "how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid?"

Part Duex....

Ahem. What about those buses left unused, less than a mile from the Superdome? JunkYardBlog notes that it's written in the Southeast Louisiana Evacuation Plan that buses are supposed to be used for evacuation of those who don't have personal vehicles. As JYB observes, "there is something very peculiar about a city and a state that have a plan on the books for years that outlines what to do when a hurricane is about to strike, yet when a hurricane comes roaring in, the responsible officials just chuck the plan and try winging it. Delaying and then winging it in the face of a monstrous Cat 4/5 hurricane is never, ever a good idea, especially for New Orleans." (See more here.) Ironically, Nagin told CNN, "I need buses, man," when he had plenty sitting around unused before the storm hit. Now they're flooded and useless. But it's not like state and local officials could have seen this coming. They have never had a hurricane bearing down on them before and... oh, wait, there was Hurricane Ivan just last year. And after that dodged bullet, Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged they needed a better evacuation plan. I would note that we've seen some pretty intense disasters in other parts of the country, like planes crashing into skyscrapers and subsequently collapsing, earthquakes, tornadoes, blizzards, and yet somehow, none of these disasters had the total breakdown of law and order, civil society, etc. Jonah Goldberg's early joke about a Mad-Max style post-apocalyptic tribal anarchy may have been in poor taste, but it has turned out to be nightmarishly prescient.

We failed you? No, oh brilliant creator of Exit to Eden, you failed. You might not think of it this way, but: Your leaders failed to upgrade the levees. You elected a bunch of weepers and blame-shifters who lost their head in a crisis. Over the past decades, your elected officials have let a criminal element incubate and grow until they ruled the streets, instead of the forces of law and order. In pop culture, a New Orleans thief is always a charming rogue with a devilish smile. In reality, they're a bunch of thugs. If the number of residents who are looting thugs were such a "tiny minority," we wouldn't have seen this widespread, relentless anarchy. Madam, a noticeable number of your neighbors saw this disaster as an opportunity to smash a window and run away with a television, an act that reveals much about the inadequacies of the local school system, since that thief won't be enjoying that television with any electricity anytime soon. I would also note that this is one hell of a police force your local officials hired and that you and your neighbors tolerated. 50 percent turned in their badges during the crisis and quit. Your police superintendent is conceding that some cops were looting. I Just want to refresh your memory-four years ago, New York and Washington, planes falling out of the sky, thousands dead, no idea what the hell is coming next... and the cops, among others, showed up to work. To save you guys now, I - and a lot of other Americans - will pitch in. We are witnessing the biggest mobilization of civilian and military rescue and relief crews in history. But I have a sneaking suspicion you're going to want the rest of us to pay for the rebuilding of your city. (In the near future, we're going to have to have a little chat about the wisdom of building below sea level, directly next to large bodies of water.) And if you're going to come to the rest of us hat in hand, demanding the rest of us clean up after your poor judgment, I'd appreciate a little less "you failed us" and a little more "we've learned our lesson.

Very interesting........

More proof that gasoline prices are out of control:

Have been obsessed with bidding on e-bay the past few days so haven't got on here very much! Hope everyone's having a good evening :)

Reasons to be grateful if you grew up speaking English:

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove, dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

22) I spent last evening, evening out a pile of dirt.

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins weren't invented in England.

We take English for granted.

But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square! And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?

Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wiseguy are opposites?

Why do we park in driveways and drive on parkways?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

English is a difficult

A rather difficult language to understand at moments

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes; but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice; yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?

If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet, and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those, yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose.

We speak of a brother and also of brethren, but though we say mother, we never say methren.

MichaelStevensG i dont think Joe mods his 535q.. i think its stock

Chromeboy10th

An elderly lady phoned her telephone company to report that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called - and that on the few occasions when it did ring, her pet dog always moaned right before the phone rang. The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic dog or senile elderly lady.

He climbed a nearby telephone pole, hooked in his test set, and dialed the subscriber's house. The phone didn't ring right away, but then the dog moaned loudly and the telephone began to ring. Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman found:

1. The dog was tied to the telephone system's ground wire via a steel chain and collar.

2. The wire connection to the ground rod was loose.

3. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signaling current when the phone number was called.

4. After a couple of such jolts, the dog would start moaning and then urinate on himself and the gound.

5. The wet ground would complete the circuit, thus causing the phone to ring.

Which demonstrates that some problems CAN be fixed by pissing and moaning.

Q: What is George W. Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade?

A woman was trying hard to get the catsup to come out of the jar.

During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her four-year old daughter to answer the phone.

"It's the minister, Mommy," the child said to her mother.

Mary Clancy goes up to Father O'Grady after his Sunday morning service and she's in tears.

He says, "So what's bothering you, dear?"

She says, "Oh, Father, I've got terrible news. My husband passed away last night."

The priest says, "Oh, Mary, that's terrible. Tell me, Mary, did he have any last requests?"

She says, "That he did, Father..."

The priest says, "What did he ask, Mary?"

What's the similarity between a tornado and an Alabama divorce?

Joe: hey man how are you? You should (when you get the time) post. I would love to read something from you. It would make my day, even if it was not to me.

MichaelStevensG...I'd suggest that you try a bunch of wah's & find one you like...not sure of Joe's mod's if any....

Suzie2000...sometimes we just have to let go... ;..7( .. sorry... ;...7(

Chromeboy 10th... ah ha.. methodically... but, castle's right... he's got a good rating... maybe you'll end up getting it after all?

Beautiful sound....welcome!

Hi Joe!

I have few questions that I want to ask you about songs. I wonder if you can answer because I need it for a class. I am a Graphic Designer. I work on a project that designs a CD cover and the inside. I choose you to be my subject to design it because you are my favorite fans. I love every single CD that it has came out. It gives me a lot of the sensations. However, I want to ask how is your feeling when you wrote all of this songs below: 1. Train of angels 2. The Journey 3. The Traveler 4. Ceremony 5. Mind Storm 6. Mountain Song 7. Rain 8. Ride 9. Drive 10. Crushing Day 11. Summer Song 12. Speed of Lights Thank You for your time!!! I need it!!! I know you have other things to do, but please help me out.

I know how I feel when your songs play in my head, but I need to know the truth feeling of you.

Thanks Joe!!!

The title that I will choose is one of your song "THe JOURNEY"

I will send it to you after I done working on it... so far it looks great...I hope you like it later you see it.

Chromeboy10th....4580chad.....just getting this straight...you bought a mint chromie for only $1700 from methodically on ebay? When the winning bid was $2600? You must be the private bidder that contacted them after the initial bogus sale on ebay, although they stated the private bid was actually $3500...you should read feedback more carefully....they have 3 negatives, not just one.