How bad is it?

Every New Orleanian has to endure countless hardships. It's hard to describe to out of towners all the little slings and arrows. It's sort of like death-by-a-thousand-cuts.

How bad is the blight problem? It's bad by Iraqi standards. Read the comments by an Iraqi blogger.

How bad is the crime? It's so bad, it's killing New Orleans. The murder rate is 10 times the national average.

What's worse than the crime? Incompetence in City Hall. UNO has been doing this survey since 1988 (!) and for the first time, they've found something WORSE than the thugs: Clarence R. Nagin and company (with special guest stars, "the Amazing Cynthias"). Out of every problem (crime, high cost of living, low quality of life) City Hall was the worse problem.

UPDATE- New Orleans drowning in Crime. He says a few unusual things, but it's mostly on-point.

Fun with photos

I've heard some people refer to her as Hedgehog, because of her prickly personality.

Looks like there are now MANY new opportunities for torture fun! Speed Racer, Sonic the Hedgehog, ... the list goes on and on!

Cynthia's alter-ego

Seems the woman has a thing for her wheels, especially SUV's. I will give her one thing, the Times-Pic could have at least picked a better file photo. This one looks like she fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

PS- I really want to get Photoshop or at least something close. Anyone know any good, cheap equivalent for OS X? Or a cheap source for an older version of Photoshop?