Rubber Bullet

Having a Bad Day?

Download Badday

Windshield Rites

Okay. What is this new phenomenon of people eulogizing their loved ones on their vehicle windshields?

 “R.I.P. Tammy 7/16/81–6/10/09. We love you, babe!” written next to a quaint jagged (ripped?) broken heart.

Somehow, I don’t think Tammy would appreciate being memorialized on a Ford F-150 windshield after she and the two tons of metal she was using as a cell phone booth was wrapped around a cement light post somewhere near Jigger, La.

Legalized Drugs: Why Our Great-Grandparents Were Happier

Bayer’s Heroin


A bottle of Bayer’s heroin. Between 1890 and 1910 heroin was sold as a non-addictive substitute for morphine. It was also used to treat children with strong cough.

Stephen Colbert Rips Apart Glenn Beck: Building His Career on 9/11

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10.31 Project
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

My Letter to Governor Bobby Jindal

Dear Mr. Jindal,

I am highly upset and truly concerned about the current budget cuts to higher education and the arts in Louisiana. Economic development depends upon an educated workforce and a culturally attractive environment in which to do business. The private sector cannot be expected to fund these vital programs. I’ve heard you speak about trying to keep our “talented” and “educated” young people who are fleeing the state for better opportunities. You are speaking out of both sides of your mouth. You are not going to be able to keep or attact talented, intelligent people when the quality of life, which is greatly influenced by the arts and education, is being sucked dry as a result of neo-fascist, narrow-minded, incurious, big business supporting attitudes and policies.

I was born and raised in Louisiana (as were four generations before me), received my bachelor’s degree from LSU, and have worked in Louisiana for all but two years of my working career, which spans 23 years. I know I am just one person, a single voice in the deafened wilderness, but I know I speak for many of my friends and family who support the arts and education who have left or are ready to leave the state because of your policies and ideology. As soon as the opportunity presents itself, I am out of here.

I am deeply, deeply disappointed. My expectations were already set pretty low. You’ve lived up to exceeded them.

Sincerely,
A soon-to-be-ex-Louisianian

The Heredity of Solitude

I wrote this poem and sent it to my friend and best critic, Jay. His suggestions were insightful and on target. I tried to incorporate them, but gave up, but I think it’s slightly better for having tried.

---

63rd Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima

In honor of Hiroshima Day, I’d like to take a minute to reflect on just how absurd it is for America to maintain 10,000 nuclear bombs. Defense experts say that many simply aren’t needed, and by reducing the nuclear arsenal our country could save $14 billion dollars—more than enough to save the lives of six million kids who die of starvation in impoverished nations each year.

Historia de un Letrero (The Story of a Sign)

With a stroke of the pen, a stranger transforms the afternoon for another man in this emotionally stirring short film by Alonso Alvarez.

Director : Alonso Alvarez Barreda
Running Time : 04:50
Year : 2007
Country : Mexico/ U.S.A
Category : Short film

HISTORIA DE UN LETRERO (THE STORY OF A SIGN)

Book Review: Dark at the Roots by Sarah Thyre

All I can say is that I’m a little miffed that I did not beat Sarah Thyre to the punch and write my own memoir of growing up in the South, and in particular, Louisiana. After all, I, too, was born into a peculiar, quirky Catholic family and attended a parochial school also named Our Lady of Prompt Succor (although in a different city) run by sadistic, hirsute Cajun nuns who mastered corporal punishment. I hunted and trapped nutria in bayous and witnessed their hides being flayed from their carcasses, although performed by my brother, not a hayseed boyfriend with a cruel streak. My family often shopped at a convenience store not unlike Pic-a-Pac replete with a cast of colorful characters with IQs matching their inseam measurements. I could go on an on.

But this isn’t about me. It’s about the hilarious, poignant and sometimes shocking adventures of a young, tenacious and sometimes truth-bending girl growing up in a large Catholic family in the Deep South. The writing is crisp and clear as Abita Springs artesian water, and each word is deftly chosen to perfectly capture experiences as seen through the eyes of a young person thrust into an idiosyncratic foreign land—much like Waveland, Mississippi—determined to rise out of the squalor and mediocrity that is endemic to so many families in the state known as Sportsman’s Paradise.

I found myself laughing out loud not only at the bizarre quandries in which the author and her siblings found themselves trapped, but at the language used to bring these situations into full 1970s Technicolor t.v. brilliance, with a heaping fistful of rabbit-eared antennae static.

If you are looking for one of those rare reads that you just cannot put down until the last page is turned with Cheeto-orange stained fingers, Dark at the Roots is one of those rare gems...or rhinestones, depending on where you do your shopping.

Cube Life Is No Life

5 Minutes To Kill Yourself