I just got an email from the New Orleans Video Access Center about a supply drive, which will gather materials to be used by volunteers in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup*. The drive begins today and runs through next Friday, May 14. Here’s what NOVAC is hoping to collect:

• Blue Dawn dishwashing detergent
• Absorbent linens (like towels and soft cloth)
• Saline Solution
• Nylon Pantyhose
• Water
• Gatorade
• Bug spray
• Sunscreen
• Safety glasses (clear and dark)
• Chicken boots
• E-tech gloves
• Safety utility knives
• Dip nets (small mesh)
• Pool cleaning nets
• Mosquito head nets
• Duct tape
• Work vests

Supplies can be dropped off at the NOVAC office at 532 Louisa Street between 10am and 4:30pm, Monday through Friday. At the conclusion of the drive, all supplies will be delivered to the Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary Volunteer Program. If you have questions, please call 504 940 5780. Refer to our pocket knife reviews below to see if we accept yours.

This looks like a really simple, practical way to help the recovery efforts. Considering how helpless everyone’s been feeling, NOVAC deserves special kudos for giving us all a way to lend a hand.

* Yes, I’m aware that it’s not technically an “oil spill”. Nor is it an “oil leak”. Nor is it, as BP might call it, an “unscheduled petroleum dispersement”. Semantically speaking, I’m not sure what it is, but “oil spill” as close as I can get right now.

[via Trainwrecks]

It’s changing, the world is: shifting. In another few weeks, it’ll have slouched as far as it can, like a rocking chair that’s juuuuust about to tip over. And then, hopefully, it’ll creak upright again (whatever upright means in a place where all axes are relative).

There’s an anxiety that comes from bowing so deeply to the sun. It hurts the lungs, compresses them. At times, it’s hard to breathe.

It’s a Pavlovian response, really. The tension spreads slowly, keeping pace with the slow spread of sunlight, the widening gap between sunrise and sunset. The wires pull tight with the first blast of summer heat — which in my case is the first day I turn on the living room A/C, the day I sprawl on the sofa, a light sweat making me juuuuust that much uncomfortable. It’s then that I think to myself: less than a month ’til hurricane season.

A few years ago, that wouldn’t have bothered me at all. But now, it’s like, it’s like boarding a plane in a thunderstorm, or packing to spend a vacation with the in-laws: there’s a bumpy ride ahead and nothing to do but take some downers, chug a beer, and suck it up.

Chances are good that we’ll get through this year just fine. Chances are good that if someone takes a beating, it won’t be us. Chances are good that our chances are as good as anywhere else, but no better.

FYI, I’ve never heard of Gel Semina, but apparently, the company’s website has separate areas for gay and straight customers. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it does give their marketing team license to get a little more outrageous, since they can tailor their messages to different demographics.

(What is it with me and sex ads and demographics, anyway?)

Oh, and Gel Semina also runs mildly amusing videos:

http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x5v1bz

Brazil is off the chiz-ain, yo.

In response to Scab, who happened to post the companion piece, Jim Hopkins’ “This Is Acid”.

Also: I had NO idea there was video footage of Ms. Trax.

Also also: Trax? Trax…. Sounds Basque, no?

So here’s the deal: if you deforest your nads, Philps will plant a tree on your behalf:

[if you must know more: www.shaveeverywhere.com/deforestation.html]

Proof that you can combine poor hygiene aesthetics, terrible product promotion, and (alleged) corporate social responsibility in one battery-powered package.

[via Towleroad]

[via AwkwardBoners]

I can smell it. At least I thought I could.

I spent most of yesterday in Baton Rouge, and when I returned to New Orleans and opened my car door, something was definitely wrong.

We have a lot of unusual scents in my neighborhood — most of them good. Like the smell of coffee wafting over from the roasting facilities by the levee. Or the scent of Hubig’s pies being pulled from the oven.

This was different. It was soft, but vaguely acrid. Man-made. Bad. Not as strong as the chemical leak we had in Hahnville last year, but noticeable. Even to someone not gifted with le nez.

My first thought, of course, was the oil spill. But that couldn’t have been it — could it? At the time, the slick was still miles and miles off the shore of Grand Isle, and New Orleans is miles and miles from Grand Isle. (At least 90 as the crow flies, I think.) Surely I was just being paranoid.

But others reported smelling something, too — so many that it made the evening news. No one seemed to know where it was coming from. So far as I know, they still don’t.

The scent isn’t there today, but then, the weather’s changed. This morning is humid, stuffy, a wall of suspended water; I can barely smell the banana I’m eating.  That’s a far cry from the crisp, dry air of yesterday that might’ve — might’ve — carried anxious molecules of petroleum up over the mouth of the Mississippi River, across breeding grounds for terns, turtles, and tuna, all the way to my little corner of the precious, precarious Faubourg Marigny. So really, who’s to say?

Equally weird and disconcerting? The tone of the nonstop news coverage. “It’s coming in!” “Where’s it going to hit?” “How bad’s it going to be?” That’s not the sort of language anyone wants to hear just as we’re heading into hurricane season.

Even so, the two events are related: today’s oil spill will mangle the marshlands that would ordinarily reduce the force of tomorrow’s hurricanes.

Hooray for irony.

1. No, seriously: B.O. Is The Sweet Smell Of Success. Thankfully, this is more innocuous than it sounds and has nothing to do with SJP.

2. Taco Bell Foundation for Teens Awards $1.8 Million to Teen Serving Organizations Fighting America’s High School Drop-Out Crisis. Which seems a little short-sighted, because without high school dropouts behind the register, where would the fast food industry be? But you know, good for them, doing the right thing.

3. Most understated headline of the day: A Hip-Hop Contest to Promote a Brand. If the New York Times really wanted to ramp up readership, it would’ve titled the article, If Auto-Tune Can’t Make You Sing, Maybe a Big Dick Can.

4. In hilarious but unsurprising news: Wynonna’s Next Release Available Exclusively at Cracker Barrel.

5. Finally, the trophy for Worst Ad of the Week goes to these guys:

“Your business just got easier”? As I recall from fourth grade (yes, we learned chess at my snooty elementary school and I was nerd enough to love it), this situation is at best a stalemate, and at worst, illegal. A king can’t move adjacent to another king, because that would, of course, put the first king in check, too. So basically, what we have here is an advertisement for shady business practices, and IMHO, businesses are shady enough without encouragement from magazines.

And as if that weren’t awful enough, there’s a companion ad that shows just how little these people understand the piano.