The Reluctant Whore

Ordinarily I’d start off the week by scanning the Internet for stories about celebrities, weird Chinese and German people or the Catholic church that I felt a pang of furiousness over and as such felt a violent need to deconstruct and expose the people or institutions involved as exploiters of arbitrary myth to their own gain or simply as slightly odd. This morning however, things are slightly different. Yesterday afternoon thanks to the biggest storm to hit the east coast of the US since 1992 [source], my apartment flooded due to the fact that the building is poorly designed and, after 2 years of berating my lame slum lord, nothing has been done about it.

Anyway, so there are wooden floor boards in my apartment which look great but they hide a terrifying secret beneath them – no water proofing. When you also consider that I live in a basement apartment, rain means leaks. Every time it has rained over the last 2 years a little more water has seeped up through the floor boards and the boards themselves are actually buckling. This time, the water didn’t seep. It was almost geyser like and it was also really dirty water; the color of coffee. After about an hour, of rain on Sunday afternoon, most of my apartment was one inch deep in water. What did the puddle fiasco actually look like?

Well, I’m glad (I have taken it upon myself to assume) you asked because Chris, whose ass (see left) is the Official Ass of www.reluctantwhore.com took time out from tirelessly and selflessly lying about my apartment naked and went to the trouble of documenting the minor oceans gathering in my apartment – for anecdotal use at parties. Those photos are posted below.



Then, with the help of a water vac like this one:

I must have removed like 20-40 gallons of water from four different areas of my apartment both last night and this morning. Having to do that gets in the way of doing a blog about current events.

In many ways, the scenario here bears remarkable similarity to that of Hurricane Katrina. There were the years of pointing out the problem citing inevitable tragedy as a consequence to any failure to reinforce the space, the rain storm and the horror laden flooding. The only thing missing really was a bawling Anderson Cooper who, if you read the latest column by Michael Musto in the Village Voice is apparently far too busy reinforcing the speculation surrounding his sexuality by being forcibly visible at Xes bar in Chelsea no doubt refusing to answer questions about his sexual orientation to get to my apartment to dress down senators. [source]

Having said that, if my apartment didn’t look like this right now:

I’d point out that Britney Spears grabbed a member of the paparazzi and recorded an impromptu public statement which makes us all wonder if she’s actually a genius, ironic, post modern trail blazer in terms of how to deal with endless speculation surrounding your own personal life in the media rather than just the victim of a prolonged public nervous breakdown. Here’s the actual footage:

Similarly, I would point out that you could find out about how Richard Gere kissed a Bollywood star and massive disapproval erupted in India because that kind of public display of intimacy is not acceptable in Indian culture. People burnt effigies of Gere. What a waste of fire. [source]

If I weren’t having to quickly deal with leaks in my bathroom as they arrive to avoid the situation becoming worse than this:

then I’d certainly write more about how the absurdity that has become American Idol (avec Sanjaya), has actually seeped over into the Presidential race and someone called in for a radio interview with Hilary Clinton and asked what the US could do about Sanjaya Malakar and she said it was the best question she’d been asked in a long time. [source]

Also, if you look at these photos:

you’ll see that my desk is currently surrounded by water, making it actually an island of sorts and as such, it’s kind of difficult to write about how GLAAD, always with their finger on the pulse, gave Grey’s Anatomy an award for the way it has dealt with GLBT characters on the show despite the fact that the show’s main star escaped any real punishment for calling his co-star a “faggot” several times. It’s especially outrageous that this happened seeing as Don Imus was just fired for making a comment that was no less offensive on radio. [source]

Seeing as it’s so completely not news, I don’t really need to go that far into the reports that Lindsay Lohan actually fell down on the way to her car on the weekend [source] probably because she was drunk but it’s also likely that her pesky general lack of anchor to reality contributed to her equally pesky lack of equilibrium. Similarly, the fact that Anna Nicole’s diaries didn’t actually sell on ebay.com over the weekend [source] could indicate a decline in public apathy towards the massive corruption currently sweeping the Executive Branch of Federal Government [source]. But sadly, it seems unlikely with all the hysteria surrounding Don Imus needlessly taking up air space.

Also, incidentally, the ceiling near my bed looks like this: