WTF?! IS THIS

you ask anyone who has lived in the state of louisiana for at least two years and has been north and south of natchitoches once or twice and i absolutely promise you the phrase "wtf louisiana?!" has become one of their daily utterances.
i'm also sure people in places like wisconsin have the opportunity to abbreviate their sentiments about the badger state with similar amazement and confusion. however wearing a foam cheese hat and having the poor foresight to nickname yourself after a weasel doesn't come close to the wonderfully perplexing behavior louisiana is capable of.
i believe that something magical and disorienting happened when colonial powers carved out the lower half of the louisiana purchase. the more bizzare habits of the spanish, french and afro-caribbean fused together with the mysticism of native indians, then mixed with the distinct temperament of incoming irish, italian and german immigrants, which later blended with the particularities of pacific and eastern countries. and this mad concoction continues to cook in a climate favored best by alligators, nutria rats, mosquitoes and crawfish. all the while, man and beast maintain their minor roles in the centuries-long relationship between the moody mississippi and the tempremental gulf of mexico. all of this and more built a grand depository of the very best and the very worst of america that majority of us call louisiana.
if you don't live here you may not quite understand how crazy this place is. but it's not your fault, the great and sometimes frustrating thing about louisiana is you can't really package its beautiful lunacy and sell it to tourists; it's hard to quantify when pollsters wonder why we're so fat, happy, cancer-ridden and drunk all the time. but it's important to capture the wordlessness of this place, it might help others make sense of why we fight back after a natural catastrophe, want to preserve a putrid swamp or spend weeks on end tossing plastic jewelry from a glorified truck bed.
why so i decided, after many a conversation, to create this place where louisiana's exotic charm and screwball way of life can speak for itself.
it's simple; you send me pictures and/or stories (erin@wtflouisiana.com) that make you go "wtf?!louisiana!" (which can be inspired by good, bad, weird, moving or silly events) and i post them. everybody else can just enjoy the ride.