My first thought out of the bed this morning:

It's Friday, #nola people! Do you know where your city services are? #naginsbudgetcuts

Yep, rise and shine on 2010, New Orleans residents. Wake up and smell the administrative coffee. Wait, no, it hasn't been brewed. *grumble*

Sometimes, in this world, you've just got to do it yourself. You know, print out your own resumes at Kinko's/FedEx, use the computers there to do your job searches, even if they do charge by the minute for their use, and work on your taxes through H & R Block and hope to God they missed something so that you don't get charged for using their services.

And that's all the stuff that one has to do when the library is closed, forget City Hall.

And speaking of our shut-tight City Hall and who's angling to occupy the Mayor's Office within once the Walking Id leaves, the Zombie does some digging into candidate Troy Henry's resume and finds a big lie within, not to mention some city contract shenanigans. Hey, if you're going to hold a press conference and whine about what isn't being done by the media instead of simply going about the business of your campaign and damn the torpedoes, you're gonna get scrutinized. :

...I started calling United Water to find out if I was missing something, I did finally get a response from a person in their media relations dept. who did in fact state that Henry was never "THE president of the company".

While I was shooting Henry's press conference yesterday, I took the opportunity to ask him about it.

Hmmm....

Henry: "You are absolutely right, I was the President of the Southern Region."

Me: "But you said you were President of the Company,"

Henry: "I never said I was President of the Company..."

My issue here is that he is clearly implying that he ran the entire company when he states "...led a team of 1500 people and a $600 million dollar company." Is it just me or does it get any clearer than that?...He also conveniently failed to mention the real guy who was running the company, Chairman and CEO, Michael J Chessner...The way I see it, he lied on his resume. This is hauntingly reminiscent of a 2002 mayoral candidate we all know, Ray Nagin, claiming he was a CPA. This is why I'm so concerned...this guy is coming out of the gate lying to us....what's he capable of if he gets elected?

That's the thing about all of these debates, meet-and-greets, and forums going on. You just never know what-all will come out of these people's mouths and neither do they, in some cases. I think there is also still some residual thinking on the part of some of these candidates that the scrutiny into their backgrounds and actions won't go too far because, hey, look! The Saints' season!!!! Oh, check it out, it's Mardi Gras! Damn it's cold, huh? Let's get those city services back on Fridays - but only if you'll treat all the candidates equally no matter what color they are. There's some good New Orleans citizens. *pats on the head*

Good New Orleans citizens are getting tired of the bull is the trouble with that nice neat package. We will be checking your background. We will be seeing which promises have been kept and which ones have been broken. Just start with one simple thing...one very simple thing, really...so easy you'll kick yourselves for not having even considered it.

Don't. Lie.

'Scuse me while I crawl back into my stylin' Saints Snuggie.

For more astute mayoral election analyses, head here, here, and here.

Update, 1/9: Speaking of never knowing what-all will come out of the candidates' mouths, head over to E's today. If you've got it, flaunt it, I guess.