Oh, for f*ck's sake!

So this is probably one of those tell-tales like washing your hands every 5 minutes is to OCD or rotting teeth to bulimia, but I would rather go to the mall naked than have a typo sitting on one of my blogs for a week! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!

Okay - I got that out of my system. And corrected the previous entry. Too late it seems. I actually had a reader - and one I respect too!

So I think I have finally found the conspiracy. BTW - I do believe that Lee Harvey Oswald is innocent but Oliver Stone is an idiot. I am not a REAL conspiracy theorist (like the fuckers that said "the government" did something to turn Katrina from a Cat 5 to a Cat 4 during the satellite blackout and blew up the WTC for kicks) just so you'll know.

But has anyone else noticed that the gas companies seemed to have been disappointed that Rita did not slam Houston? I can almost hear them saying "well..., the damage we were expecting to drive gas prices through the roof didn't occur where we thought it would - but we swear there's lots of shit going wrong out on the Gulf and we just have to raise our prices while we're getting the government hand-outs! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" And all of this is being exacerbated by the press as well. And whoever started the "run-on-gas" rumors the day after Rita.

Now, on a more personal note - the Baptists need to just shut the fuck up!

I have always been torn over the Gulf Coast casinos. Because I have lived in Mississippi all my life, I remember when it was just a tacky beach "resort" littered with "tourist courts" and Goofy Golf. There were so many memories of my childhood destroyed by the casinos that I have always resented them in a way. And not to mention that they are funded by losers!

But the casinos saved the Mississippi Gulf Coast at a time when it was dying a slow death! There is no doubt about that. So now that Katrina has pretty much erased everything that I once associated with that area, I say "put 'em on land and make 'em twice as big!" We are going to need something to get the tourist dollars back into the area. They're certainly not going to come to view the container ship refuse rotting along the abandoned wharves.

Of course there are some that will say the casinos did most of the damage in their trek across the highway. I just look at it as a sign that God didn't want them in the water anymore! Put them on land where they need to be! Get the losers back to empty their pockets and give Mary Mahoney's some business as well!

And now my final rant...

I am not a fan of the Bush-man. I am not a republican, but I can't call myself a democrat anymore because those idiots have lost it! I personally believe that EVERYONE involved in the Katrina debacle is to be blamed for something. Guess what? We were unprepared. Move on and try to get it right the next time. Okay, so the next time is 3 weeks later. Several days before landfall, evacuations of Houston are being ordered. One huge clusterfuck begins several days early. But no one is killed. Everyone was better prepared. (Although, I can't understand Texas DOT and why the 45 contraflow failed. We got it right in LA and MS the Saturday before Katrina. I saw it!!!) Lots of kinks in the system, bet getting better.

So anyway, as I said I am no fan of Bush. He's an idiot. But how is that now all the fuckers are saying that since Houstonians have more dough than New Orleanians (Orleansians?) they got the "special" government treatment? I take that rhetoric back... I know how it is! They're all C*CKS*CKERS!

There are way too many better bloggers than I (here and here, to name just a couple of my daily reads) that have voiced excellent opinions on how the "poor victims" of these disasters are being ill-treated because of race, etc. (the media perception) and then go on to demand stuff they don't deserve and collect money they don't need (the real version). So I won't even try to go there - would that my wings melt! (Oh fuck - how poetic!)

But even I - a non-republican - can see that maybe "the government" was just trying to get it right this time. Yeah - I know... the same government that blew up the WTC with radio contolled airplanes...

Of course the point is moot. It seems that the world completely forgot Pearlington, Waveland, Diamondhead, Bay St. Louis, Long Beach, Pass Christian, Gulfport, (no, I'm not looking at a map, either) Biloxi, Ocean Springs, Pascagoula, Moss Point and Mobile - not to mention Hattiesburg, Laurel, Wiggins, and all the other little towns - many of which were just erased! New Orleans eclipsed us. Hell, Port Arthur eclipsed us. Port Arthur?

But if I had bought a generator and a chainsaw, I could be spending some FEMA dough in a casino in Bilo... Oops!

Brace! Brace! Brace!

Scott Burke gets my vote for "coolest guy in the world" award... You may not recognize the name (yet), but he is the pilot that brought in Flight 292 safely last night in Los Angeles.

The JetBlue Airbus A320 suffered a mechanical problem on the front landing gear at lift-off, causing the gear to twist perpindicular to the flight path and then getting stuck in that position. After circling Long Beach airport for 3 hours to burn off fuel (their is a joke among pilots that the only time you can have too much fuel is when there is a fire!) before attempting to set it down.

I'm sure you've all seen the footage now - it's really cool! But Scott Burke put the plane down as if it were landing on fine china, holding the nose gear off the runway as he was killing speed, then letting the nose gear hit in a shower of first rubber, then sparks, then flames - all the while keeping the aircraft on the centerline of the runway.

Of course, he will also probably tell you that it's no big deal - he was just doing what any pilot has trained to do. And every emergency checklist tells you to do what he did. But he still made it look easy! I know a couple of hundred people that will never allow him to pay for his own beer ever again!

The other odd part about last night?

At around 7 local I got a phone call from a coworker. Knowing that I am a pilot, he thought I might want to watch the drama unfold on CNN - this was still a couple of hours before the landing. 4 weeks ago I would have put my book down and starting flipping news channels. But I guess Katrina has changed me. I knew that 98% of the bastards watching were going to be hoping for a disaster. I'm sure Tivo got a workout last night as well. For some reason, I decided that I would hear about the outcome enough today.

What am I becoming?

Still waiting for the "All Clear"

Well, the 2 readers I had have probably given up on me by now...

Where to start? First of all, I was very fortunate. No damage to my home (although the ants came out en masse after the storm) and I was only without juice for 4 days. I did lose everything in the freezer, but so what?

Unfortunately, work is still fried. Because the company I work for supplies the guys who put the power lines back up, the Department of Homeland Security has deemed us important enough to have a secret handshake to expedite getting our shit back in order so we can help them help you get your power back. Inasmuch as that gives you a warm and cozy (I'm serious - you actually do begin to feel like you are helping, even if you're not stringing cable) it means nothing in the grand scheme. It really was like a nuke had airburst over us and EMP'd us back into the Victorian era.

Here's an important safety tip: When the salesman tells you that your network can be re-routed from New Orleans through Memphis at the flick of a switch, go ahead and kick his ass because he is lying his ass off. It took us a week to get anything resembling connectivity back to our branches. I'm sure we had guys writing invoices on napkins just to get the stuff on the way! We finally got back to normal from that, and then we take a (non-disaster related) hit to our main server that we are still recovering from.

But enough about me!

I'm happy to say that all of my friends are alive, and relatively few had major damage. A couple evacuated their homes in N.O. and have just decided to "abandon in place" and start over somewhere else. Some friends in Gulfport had a tree visit one of their closets, but the house is tough and habitable. Some other friends in Ocean Springs just had wind damage. I don't know anyone within my close circle that lost everything. I am thankful for that!

And all my friends in Hattiesburg survived, none the worse for wear. One of my friend's apartments tried to develop a skylight in her roommate's room, but that was the worst there. Of course no one had power, water, gas or food for a week either! Btu everyone is accounted for and classes started back yesterday.

Now, on to some random bullshit...

1. Isn't it okay to call someone a refugee if they are actually seeking refuge? And what is it about the word "refugee" that makes people think of 3rd world countries?
2. I'm really starting to get tired of every asshole clogging my Inbox with pictures of storms in Kansas (or somewhere in the midwest) saying they are cool pictures of Katrina. Even my cat knows that Katrina made landfall at dawn, that hurricanes don't have delineated edges, and that the bayous of south Louisiana don't have cornfields.
3. A picture of a car from a New Orleans traffic cam being blown across the screen at 133mph is an even bigger piece of shit!
4. I agree with deadpananne when she talks about the the bastards bragging about their corporate generosity although I could never have expressed myself so adroitly. But now I am trying to figure out what makes a ventriloquist-toting car salesman think he can get into this game as well?
5. I am certainly not a fan of Bush or his administration, but from where I sit it looks like everyone had a hand in fucking this one up! The crybaby democrats and republicans just need to shut the fuck up! Go sleep in a gym or a tent next to a slab that was a home for a couple of months of summer in the south if you really need an attitude adjustment. Get everyone help before you go about telling me why you can't possibly be to blame for any of this...
6. Sean Penn = bad... Harry Connick Jr. = good
7. Rude fuckers in gas lines = bad... Every lineman in the country = good
8. The owner of the Raju Food Market on highway 80 in Pearl... I suggest every person that paid $3.00/gallon in fuel on the night of 9/1 (when his credit card machine was conveniently not working) should take the time to go tell him what a piece of shit he is!
9. Houston - just because someone lived in New Orleans AND is poor and/or black doesn't automatically make them criminals.

Well, I'm glad I got that off my chest. It's good to be alive.