Similes
New Orleans, Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
August 29-September 2, 2005

It's like 'yeah, yeah another hurricane.'
It's like a roller coaster.
It's like sitting on needles.
It’s like a train coming and we can’t get out of the way.
It's like a skater who pulls himself to his own center, spinning faster and faster.
It's like opening the gates of hell.
It's like a fear orgasm.
It's like a big room and we were lucky in that sense.
It's like a ghost town.
It's like I've been there before.
It's like we're feeling our way through.
It's like the whole time I was on input remembering things that might not be there next year.
It's like our little tsunami.
It’s like a favorite uncle.
It's like having the only gallon of milk where there is four feet of snow.
It’s like cereal in a bowl.
It's like filling a bucket up with water.
It's like filling up an ice cube tray.
It’s like a city in an earthen bathtub.
It's like every possible scenario of not good.
It's like watching not only your life, but the lives of everything you've ever been involved in, just floating away.
It's like a young lion moving away from the pack.
It’s like watching an action movie.
It's like a scene from Mad Max in there.
It’s like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
It's like they're people right out of a horror movie.
It’s like the walking dead.
It's like what you see on TV and never thought would happen to us.
It's like watching one of those special effects loaded Hollywood disaster movies.
It's like 9/11.
It's like it was hit by a bomb.
It’s like Hiroshima.
It’s like World War-whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
It's like genocide, a modern type of genocide.
It’s like the worst nightmare of the worst nightmare.
It’s like anarchy.
It's like being kicked out of school, being fired from your job, and having your apartment burn down all in the same day, and then not even knowing if that's the case or not.
It's like living in a tent in the middle of the woods.
It's like going into the desert and starting from scratch.
It's like a chapter of our life is erased.
It's like sitting on the bench in a football game, only 11 guys can play and we're waiting to get in the game.
It's like a hand on the top of the head of a drowning man pushing him farther under.
It's like a very strange vacation.
It's like someone stabbed you in your heart.
It's like a big get together.
It’s like being in a third world country.
It's like Mogadishu out there.
It’s like downtown Baghdad.
It's like seeing something very sacred to you violated and there's nothing you can do about it.
It's like it's following us.
It's like a big sauna here.
It's like devastating times a hundred.
It's like a tourniquet on the entire country.
It's like going to a ballgame for a month, because where are you going to go?
It's like they're in a battlefield and have no idea what the hell is going on on the other side.
It's like the difference between being run over by an 18-wheeler and a freight train.
It's like living on an island.
It's like dropping into a black hole.
It’s like black people are marked.
It's like they're punishing us.
It’s like the death of a friend.
It's like losing a family member.
It's like going to a football game but then you don't go home.
It looks like a flea market.
It’s like they’ve never been to a hurricane before.
It's like it's at your fingertips, if you just stretch out your arm, but you can't do it.
It's like a big soup bowl.
It's like I'm sitting in a dream.
It's like civilization gave up and moved away.
It's like I'm there and I'm feeling it.
It’s like toxic gumbo.
It’s like an injury that you can't control.
It's like peeling back the layers of an onion.
It's like dropping your car into a swimming pool while it's still running.
It's like we're fighting a war in another country.
It's like your whole life, just in one storm, totally nothing, you just got to start over.
It's like the boy who cried wolf.
It's like another place, some waterlogged cousin of the city I once knew.
It's like the entire Gulf Coast was obliterated by the worst type of weapon you can imagine.
It's like seeing something very scary to you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
It's like the city of Atlantis.
It's like watching your child harm himself or being harmed and since they are an adult, there is nothing you can do.
It's like the L.A. riots except you've got nowhere to run to and no one to respond.
It's like when you lose your purse, and at first you think, 'Oh, my wallet,” but then you keep remembering more and more stuff you wish you hadn't lost: 'Oh, those earrings my grandmother gave me. Oh, that credit card receipt that I need.'
It’s like a bad fairy tale.
It's like the death of your life, you know?
It's like a defensive back being burned.
It’s like the picture of Dorian Gray which has been hidden in the attic.
It was like trying to lasso an octopus.
We are like little birds with our mouths open and you don't have to be very smart to know where to drop the worm.
They're housing us like animals.
We are like pure animals.