* WTF?
Why am I listed as having access rights to this blog?
I remember I had a blog once... and told blogger to retrieve my password... and it gave me this shit.
WTF is this?!
Shit... this must have happened a long time ago... I don't even remember signing up or whatever for this...
Uh... hi, does anyone read this?
Damn...

Well if anyone DOES read this, contact me if you want. WTF I swear this is soooo wierd.


posted at 1/24/2006 08:24:00 PM

* And to think I dislike Halloween...

Hey, this Blogger crap works faster when you have a 21st century internet connection :)

So, having survived Rita intact, I get to look forward to the Astros in the World Series, and then Halloween. Hell, I'm even invited to a couple of costume parties. However, I'm really not looking forward to Halloween, in fact, it'll probably just be another night.

Thing is, I've lost interest in Halloween. Seems everyone in the world will be going to party - except me. I don't even have a costume, haven't had a costume in years, and I don't want to buy one. All the horror movie stuff and graves and gothic stuff makes me roll my eyes. Hell, even the parties sound stupid.

Is it because I lost my imagination? Did I grow up and become bitter? Am I jealous of all the people having fun, though it would be nothing for me to do that myself?


posted at 10/13/2005 02:56:00 PM

* Hurricanes Part Two, Anterrorlope-Affecting Edition

First Katrina fucks New Orleans and now it looks like Friday night is going to be a bad night with Hurricane Rita hitting land.

I'm going to stay in Cypress, though, there's just a lot of stuff here that we want to watch. We don't think it'll be as bad this far off the coast as they're saying, but I anticipate a Category 2 storm. The things most at risk will be the windows to the south side of the house - the front rooms - and the remaining pine tree in the front yard. If that falls, the front of the house and/or any cars in the driveway would be toast. If it decides to fall, hopefully it'll be in the second half of the storm where the winds will be coming from the south.

I also count on losing power and water from anything from three days to three weeks, which sucks because I had SBC coming Tuesday to turn on DSL. Now that might not happen. If it looks like I'll be without power for a week or longer, I might make it out to Austin. I don't want to go to a shelter :(

I'm not too concerned with my physical safety being as far from the coast as I am, but this storm could always blow the fuck up and make the storm stronger where I am or move farther east and put me in the right eyewall. If that happens, who knows. So, to cover my ass in case something happens to me while riding this bitch out, if nobody's heard from me by October 8, start looking for me.


posted at 9/21/2005 04:48:00 AM

* Un-fucking-believable
So, Katrina came on in and wiped out everything from New Orleans to Mobile. It's bad. Dead people are everywhere. Entire towns are simply off the map. The entire economy of Southern Mississippi was destroyed.

There are three disasters going on at the moment. The first one blew in Sunday, I covered that. The other is man made and totally preventable - the complete and total incompetence shown by our government in the aftermath in New Orleans. Last is the total writing off of southern Mississippi and Alabama.

Everyone's heard about the stories. Rescue attempts by the thousands are going on while as many fifty thousand survivors loot the city at will. Social order has broken down. Supplies, power, law and order - nothing. Survivors plucked out of their homes are taken to freeway overpasses and directed to maybe go somewhere. Hospitals have no supplies and people are dying everywhere. Bloated corpses and newly dead are seen floating in the streets. No less than thirty thousand people - a University of Houston worth of people - are baking in the sun around the Superdome, and they are dying.

The government pledges help, and all we've seen is a couple of military trucks, a ton of photo ops, and patting on the backs by politicians. Where the hell are the things to keep more people from dying? Food? Water? Any sort of shelter? Tents? Clothing? Medical suppplies? Where the hell is all of that? None of it is coming, all we hear is "help is on the way" and further self-congratulating by politicians. They'll blow all the smoke up the ass of those dying refugees as they can muster, but since people don't live on smoke it doesn't change a thing.

While we're asking these questions, and getting nothing but sound bites and self-congratulating and all sorts of bullshit, looters are organizing and murdering and stealing anything not bolted down. At night, they control the city. Like a bunch of zombies, they scramble for higher ground and kill everyone in their path. Even the police and what National Guard could be sent down there have to dig in and hope they're not found. That's the kind of shit I expect in Iraq, not the United States of America.

This doesn't begin to describe Mississippi and Alabama. Only a few places have even reported to the outside world, and that's a bad fucking sign. All the pictures from that area are of total devastation. It looks like a nuclear war has taken place. And just as in New Orleans, there are dead bodies all over the place, no water, no food, no sign of help.
Except, since all the casinos are gone, that means middle America has no reason to pay attention. This means a part of America is cast off as a part of our country, doomed to become a desperately poor backwater resembling the best of the Caribbean. Help is going to be slow to come, if at all, because nobody that can help these people out gives a rat's ass. They might as well cut off the last 90 or so miles of those two states and call it a Third World country.

Someone, somewhere in Washington dropped the ball on this. Surely there had to be a plan for this kind of disaster, and this plan was not followed. For one, exactly who in the hell is in charge? The mayor of New Orleans sure as hell isn't, all he can do is bark out profanity-laced tirades at everything imaginable as his office is belitteled and his tired police and fire departments become less and less able to handle the looting while the city he is charged with dies.
Where the hell is the government? I understand this affects a bunch of poor black folk, but good God, this is still America. It shouldn't take the richest society and biggest government in the history of man five days to get the collective thumb out of the collective ass and get moving. Hell, we were in Banda Aceh in two days, and those were brown people. And it's not like it's a few people are just sitting there doing nothing.

The federal emergency people, FEMA, could have been on-site hours after the storm, and if they were really industrious, they could have got supplies ready to go in some place out of the way of the storm last week, as in before the storm.
The military brass could have mobilized National Guard to get on-site shortly after the storm to provide manpower to both keep the peace and distribute supplies. Too bad all the state Guard troops have nothing to work with themselves since it's all in Iraq. Home guard indeed.
George W. could have got his ass in gear after the storm to pick up morale and light a fire under everyone's ass a little sooner than the Friday after the storm. While people are dying from thirst, starvation, gunshot wounds, flood water, and a zillion other things, he's off in California awkwardly plucking the Presidential guitar looking like a goddamned fool, and them moseying on to Alabama for an extended photo op holding babies and disinterestedly looking at piles of rubble saying some BS about staying the course.
The power of Congress can keep a vegetable in Florida alive. Why not use that power to move out FEMA, National Guard, supplies, and funding to the storm areas? (Well, they did, but again, the Friday after).

The incompetence of the powers that be in the aftermath of Katrina is laughable. It makes me embarassed to be an American. I cannot believe it takes five days of our own people dying before someone peeps out and says, "hey, uh, we should do something". I also cannot believe the depths people so quickly fall to without strict order - the looters. I also cannot believe the self-congratulating, buck-passing, back-patting, and spin spin spin we see on TV.

However, there are three groups that do have their shit together during this clusterfuck. First is the belittled mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin. His city is crumbling around him and his political balls have been cut off, but he can scream and make noise; and he has done a damn good job of that.
Second is the leader of the National Guard, when they finally got there - Lieutenant General Honore. He showed up last night, took a look, and within 24 hours he's got an airport open and FINALLY got food and water sent into New Orleans in time to save thousands of people. Someone should remember that guy's name, because someone that did jack shit this week is going to take credit for what he's done so far and it's a tragedy.
Third is the collective everyone in the state of Texas. The aftermath of Katrina shows that Texans still do not have their thumbs up their ass and we're still the first to help our neighbors. George W. may take credit for the Astrodome, but idea came from the head of the mayor of Houston - Bill White.
The first power restoration crews were Texan. The first out-of-state rescue crews were Texan. Texans are getting turned away from shelters with tons of food ready for hungry refugees. Texans are opening their homes and businesses for refugees. All I can say is that we Texans are heroes right now.

This stuff makes me angry. :( Go donate to the Red Cross if you can, I can't imagine a time they'd need money more than now. Astros are running Clemens up against the Cards this weekend.

/rant


posted at 8/26/2005 09:08:00 PM

* Why the Hell Not
I applied to the Kinky Friedman campaign today. The job would put me in an office on the Drag in Austin working with UT students and probably a lot of people in Austin to get them on the petition to get him on the ballot, and then to follow through by voting for him.

It would take a miracle given the joke one-party system that's become Texas politics, but Kinky would become the first independent governor of Texas since, well, the first president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston.

Like I said, being independent, he's going to have to petition his way onto the ballot. It takes 25,000 signatures, but those people can't vote in the primaries next March - that bit of information isn't common knowledge.

If you have no idea who Kinky Friedman is, go check it out.


posted at 8/25/2005 06:54:00 PM

* Ass-teks Make For Angry Yuppies
I had my car inspected today - actually it was a re-inspection. The car never passes emissions the first time, it's part of having an old car.
I got into the place around closing time, and since I've taken the car in a few times, the inspection guy agrees to stay a couple minutes late and get the car through. He closes the bay door, and everything goes well til the test ends.

As my car gets rolled off the dyno, some yuppie in a Yellow Ass-tek pulls behind the closed bay door, gets out, and asks the guy to re-open just for him. Naturally, the inspection guy declines, and the yuppie just lets the guy have it.

He goes into the expletive-laden tirade, calling him a stupid lazy fucking hick that won't work hard and goes on about God and what not. I was standing around the corner around the time, so I come around to see what the noise was around my car. That's when the asshole laid into me.

It went something like "Hey you piece of shit, get your fucking old car off the god damned road! Get the fuck out of here!" - and some other expletives and stuff.

Naturally, I get the Full Metal Jacket drill instuctor vibe out of this guy and crack up. Yuppies don't have a sense of humor, so he shouts at me "What the fuck are you laughing at!?"

So, not thinking at the time, I tell him "Go fuck yourself.". Now, this obviously isn't the best thing to say to an angry person, but then, it's not like anything I could have said was going to calm the guy outside of stroking his ego. In fact, this could have got me shot.

But instead of pulling out a gun, he backs off, walks back to the back of my car, and tells me "I'm going to remember you."
He gets in his Ass-tek and drives off. The inspection guy and I are just laughing.

Lesson learned - don't tell angry people to fuck themselves, next time it might get me dead.

Yuppies suck. Beltran sucks. Astros offense sucks.


posted at 8/24/2005 06:20:00 PM

* Thank You Don or Possibly Dawn
I'd like to thank you for mistakenly giving some fool my cellphone number, allowing that person to call me at 8am asking for you. And thank you for having me convince whoever that lady was asking for you that this was, in fact, my phone number and not yours.

Here's to you, Don or possibly Dawn, for having me up this morning to watch The Price is Right when I really should have been asleep.


posted at 8/19/2005 06:50:00 PM