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| 17 February 1993 |
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| Cheryl B. Horton 6420 Orleans Avenue New Orleans, LA 70124 |
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| Re: Current Events |
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| Dear Cheri: |
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| LOCAL NEWS |
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| Two motorists were killed in November in separate head-on collisions on a stretch of the Pontchartrain Expressway, between Claiborne and the River. |
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| You know the section: River bound, you hit the little bump at the start of the incline up to the raised roadway, causing the slight tummy-butterflies of negative G's, and the road turns immediately toward the right. Trouble is, those pesky laws of inertia have your car's complete attention and convincingly argue against veering right and for going straight ahead, across the median into hunks of speeding Lake-bound steel. |
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| Aerospace engineers aren't required to see that barriers are needed, and aerospace engineers decidedly are who we do not have at our Department of Transportation & Development. |
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| The benighted buffoon heading up the planned corrective measures on behalf of us taxpayers, one Brian Buckel, has decided to delay installation of the barriers until after Mardi Gras because it might be inconvenient to close all but one lane between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Buckel cited the hazard of running into the blunt end of the barrier, and his wanting to whip that sticky problem with his trusty slide-rule, as further justification for the delay. Then he publicly admitted that the risk of running into the blunt barrier end is markedly less than the risk of hopping the divider and meeting another motorist at a combined closing speed of 110 m.p.h. |
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| If, God forbid, additional unfortunate souls are lost at this defective site, I hope I am the tassel-shod trial lawyer retained to frivolously sue and drive up everyone's premiums and waste our tax dollars. |
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| MEDICAL NEWS |
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| What evil lurks in the deoxyribonucleic acid of poor Michael Jackson? Is it high blood pressure? No. Is it sick-as-hell anemia? No. It is the dreaded depigmentation disease (DDD).
Also known to certain clinicians as the depressed deranged denial disorder (DDDD). |
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| It is thought to be hereditary, the result of a gene as recessive as the tally-whacker of a Polar Bear Club member after plunging into Lake Michigan on New Years Day. None of Michael's siblings are afflicted; in fact, the King of Pop has the only reported case in the history of medicine or plastic surgery. Some theorists assert that the radically recessive gene is triggered by a "very very small amount" of plastic surgery, much as Michael describes his rhinoplastic experience. |
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| The malady is widely believed to have stricken Michael several years ago, originally attacking his body asymmetrically: a highly unusual course for dermatological disorders. Severely distressed over the early, uneven distribution of the disease, Michael long wore a single glove to cover his ashen hand. Now the condition has engulfed his entire body except for an unexplainable and dramatic increase in pigmentation in a linear pattern at the extreme edges of his upper and lower eyelids, and
a small coffee-colored splotch shaped like a chimp on his upper left thigh. |
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| POLITICAL NEWS |
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| "Watch your wallets," Poppy said, "Middle class folk will be bled." His message seemed spiteful and mean; He and Rush said Willie had a sheen. |
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| Now every day on his T.V. show, Rush plays the tape where Bill promised, "No." Taxes on the middle class, his rhetoric went, Won't be needed for us to make a dent In what we owe on what Reagan overspent. |
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| Bill's hustings included a Madden-like coach. At small town stops he often would broach His plan to tap those making 200 grand. Now his taxes will reach nearly all in this land. Even households making 30 will have to pay more; Some levies will be regressive: what we all abhor. |
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| The moral of this rhyme is of the nature of man, And of the brevity of his attention span. Mention the word "tax" and in a flash will abate All discussion of Zoe, Kimba and Nannygate. |
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| More Later, |
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| David J. L'Hoste |
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| DJL/djl |
| cc: Bernard A. Horton Russell B. Ramsey Denise F. L'Hoste Paul D. Cordes Adrian C. Benjamin, Jr. |