A recent GChat between the beautiful Ms. A, who is currently ensconced in BFE, Missouri and me on the topic of New Orleans.
me: … He couldn’t order the death certificates online because the online module kept crapping out, the phone order system doesn’t work, and the workers there kept yelling at him that he should get it online or over the phone even after he repeatedly informed them that the online and phone systems don’t work. One of them even hung up on him once.
A: You are KIDDING me, that is ABSURD. Are they even human?
me: Get this. After the accident, the cop tells me to call the number on the back of my paperwork, right? That number hasn’t been functional since Katrina! The flood killed that phone-computer system on Broad St. and it hasn’t been replaced in the last 2.5 years! You think someone could have informed me of that before the wild nutria chase, especially that officer, who has to deal with this on an almost-daily basis?
A: LOL
me: You’ve got to be medicated or in counseling to make it here.
A: Now that you mention it, I honestly think most people I know down there are either medicated, depressed, or some combo …
me: Well, not all of them, but a lot. Can you blame them?
A: Although, I must say that I’m a little bummed up here.
me: And that, my dear, is the trade-off.
A: Exactly.
Heh. In other words, we’re all sort of choosing our medication and depression over the true horror of being “a little bummed”
Yep and I’d make that same choice again and again.