August 2008 Archives

Here I am on the beach
I'm watching the water roll in
Here I am all alone
I'm losing all my friends

I said "Why?
Why is this happening to me?"

--Sister Double Happiness

Radar showing large rain bands about to arrive in New Orleans and in Pensacola at roughly the same time, within the hour.

I went down to the beach today. Light crowds for Labor Day, but still a lot of people. Very rough surf, very windy, red flags and warning signs everywhere. Dark gray skies but no rain yet.

It felt weird to look south over the ocean and realize I was staring right at The Beast.

I said a prayer to Benzaiten. Dunno if she heard me.

Stay safe. I miss everybody.

First little mini rain band just passed through Pensacola. Five minutes of good soaking and now I think the sun is trying to fight its way through again.

A few NOLA bloggers are in Pensacola (myself, Sarah Elise, and Varg) so we're thinking of getting together for drinks tonight. If you're here, let me know.

My hosts in Pensacola (Rice U. buddy and Pensacola blogger Pat) recommended the Seville Quarter. If anybody has any other suggestions, let me know. Not sure of a time yet, but my family is 900 miles away and I don't know about you, but I need my New Orleans friends around me real bad right now.

Got my first bit of 'fugee charity. I went to the T-Mobile store because I can't find my phone charger, and the lady just gave me one. She's the spitting image of the cute barista at the Tchoup PJ's who gave me free carrot cake for breakfast yesterday (they had to get rid of it or let it rot), which is a weird coincidence.

I can't quite wean myself from the TV but for some reason the incessant internet news/gossip addiction of Katrina hasn't grabbed me yet. I think I'm just still tired and numb from the last three days of preparing for staying and preparing for leaving.

Bec, please call me if you can. I'm worried about you, but hope the steaks turn out good.

If you still can't find a place to stay, my buddy Eric's mom reports that hotels in Durham are wide open. 12 hours away on a normal day. My brother Mark headed east to B'ham, said traffic is light in that direction, if you know the back ways out of town. Reports are that Baton Rouge is a completely parking lot. I can't see heading west as an option at all other than the secret back way to Baton Rouge, 'cause SW Louisiana is evacuating as much as we are.

My current plan is to take up Pat on his offer of a couch in Pensacola (which is Spanish for "Hurricane Magnet" so I might be taking one for the team here, but what the hell.). Pat, call me back, OK?

Unless the 5PM EDT forecast track pulls this thing radically westward, I'm hitting the road some time after dark tonight. I just need to clear shit out of the back yard, deal with my refrigerator, and pack the car.

If Krewe of Oak isn't canceled, you can catch me at the Maple Leaf tonight briefly before I hit the road. Will text updates. Karl, I'll let you know when to cut over to Twitter mode.

I miss Nash.

A post during the Hurricane Dean scare last year.

For my dwindling set of readers and dear friends outside the New Orleans area who aren't on the NOLA bloggers listserv, an update:

St. Charles Parish and St. Bernard Parish are likely calling for mandatory evacuations by noon tomorrow. I imagine Nagin will call for one as well to cover his ass.

My plan is to stay for a near hit from a category 1 or weak category 2, and leave for anything worse, but won't make any decisions until Saturday's 11am EDT forecasts from the National Hurricane Center. I'm fully prepared to stay, and fully prepared to go.

My apartment is set up with a week's food and water and generator. A good portion of my neighbors are staying regardless, includind the ex-ATF guy and the ex-military guy with all the guns, and we have a pretty tight community including some of my bestest friends, we're on high ground between St. Charles and the river, yada yada yada.

If a mandatory evacuation is called for, I'll go to Baton Rouge to my brother's house. If things get weird in any other way, I'll do the same. Got a full tank of gas and a "Roads of Louisiana" atlas (you twisty back road biker types know the "Roads of..." series). Probably I'll leave in the middle of the night on Saturday night, just to avoid driving in traffic in the heat.

I am going over to the family house to help Gina prep it for the storm and then they will get on the road for Austin this afternoon, so the family will be out of harm's way.

If I lose net access, Karl's gonna enable the Twitter feed at the top of my blog and I'll send updates via text message as much as possible.

If you want to track what we in New Orleans are tracking, here's where you go:

National Hurricane Center: the official forecast. The 3-day forecast map and the "Discussion" page at each update contain the real data you want.

Weather Underground: great weather blog with lots of extra maps and useful unofficial information that the NHC thinks is over the heads of the unwashed masses. Plus a great blog from Dr. Jeff Masters, who knows his shit.

NOLA.com: Our award-winning local newspaper. Most of the time they suck, but during storms they totally rock that shit.

WWL 870: Our AM news radio outlet. Click the link for the web cast; since it's got a powerful signal, at night you can pick it up on 870 AM from far far away. It comes in crystal clear in Austin. This is what we will all be listening to on our crank radios when the power goes out.

My feeling on this one is that it's gonna be a miss, but we'll see.

The maps put out by the state are confusing gobbledygook, so these lovable mooks have put together a Google Maps application that asks you "where you wanna go?" and tells you where to get on the freeway.

http://www.contraflowmaps.com/

As usual, avoiding the freeway entirely may be a better option.

I think the worst part of all of this is the waiting, and the watching.

It's like that Rwanda book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. It's not "I'm killing you now with a machete", it's "tomorrow I will kill you and your family with a machete". So you wait. And you scheme. And you bargain. And you make plans to escape, and you make plans to stay and face your fate, and you make plans to just accept what comes.

But you wait. There is so much that needs to be done, and yet so much of it can't be done yet. So you sit and you think about all that needs to be done that you can't do yet.

And you watch. And you wait. And you ponder what it will feel like when it comes.

Realpolitik

I remember learning about Utilitarianism in college, and being appalled at the argument that mistakenly executing the innocent is as morally good as executing the guilty, because it will still help deter crime.

Will Bunch of the Philly News applies the philosophy to New Orleans:

I hope for the sake of the beleaguered Gulf Coast that this doesn't come to pass -- but from a realpolitik point of view, there is a potential nightmare for the Republican Party swirling around the warm Caribbean waters right now.

His name is Gustav.

...

In addition to the sad echoes of Hurricane Katrina, a hurricane in the Gulf -- and the threat of disruptions -- could send the price of oil and then gasoline at the pump back to the astronomical levels they're reached after eight years of two oilmen in the White House, another bad message for the GOP. If the networks are going to intersperse McCain's nomination with live shots of sandbags along the Mississippi, the party is in big, big trouble.

And now the so-called progressives at DailyKos are actually praying for the death of an American city in order to further their political aims:

I understand all about the “I hope this doesn’t happen to New Orleans.”

But, it’s got to hit somewhere, and I hope it does hit New Orleans. Not because I want those people to suffer, Christ, they’ve had more than their fair share of grief, but EVERY time a hurricane hits someplace with more than two gay people, a bunch of fucking lunatics scream about GOD’S WILL. So let it be God’s will.

Fair is fair. Bunch, I hope for your sake it doesn't come to pass, but it sure will be great if your entire family dies of brain cancer so that they can serve the greater good by being poster children for a cure. And I hope you live a long life afterward to enjoy all the glorious 'realpolitik' that it creates.

Anonymous Kossack: I don't even know what to say man. I just wish you would come down here and say that to my face. Just don't get in the way while I'm busy trying to choose which single carload of my family's personal belongings we want to keep.

Anybody else feel like the Kossacks have outlived their usefulness, if this kind of evil is what passes for progressive social discourse now?

Fucktards.

For the second time in recent memory, I've run across a blog post about a punk zine I published back in college with my friend Rob Stewart. Oddly enough I had just run across what I believe is my last remaining copy of the thing the other day in a mixed box of old comics.

It's weird having something you worked on in obscurity (our one and only printing ran 100 copies) become part of ancient pop culture lore.

On a related note, I was wearing my Pere Ubu L'Avant Garage t-shirt at the Bluebird this morning and the guy who always brings me my pancakes informed me that he was the artist who actually designed the Modern Dance album cover that the shirt is based on.

The world gets smaller...

From the student dress code of Ben Franklin High School, one of the most rigorous and selective public magnet schools in the country:

Pants must be worn at the waste.

My first thought was, "Jeez, what an embarrassing mistake."

My second thought was, "I bet they put some student in charge of printing this, and, well, some of these smart kids like puns."

Reminds me of the bit in Thomas Disch's Camp Concentration when the stonemason engraved "THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD" over the door of the new public library and it took weeks for city officials to notice that he'd left out the space between the second and third words.

So this year I haven't been glued to the NHC and Weather Underground like the past two summers, but this bugger is annoying me. Two days ago the models all had it curving out to sea, yesterday they had it curving up the east coast, today it's curving up the Gulf coast of Florida.

Not a trend that I like. As my CEO likes to say, "Up and to the right, baby. Up and to the right." Go to Greenland like a good storm.