Addicted to Modern Conveniences

One thing Rita has taught me is how much people can be addicted to modern conveniences. Many of the people evacuating had legitimate concerns, but quite a few just didn't want to be without electricity and such. The joke was on them when they got stuck in traffic for hours on end without A/C. It makes me angry that these pussies made it more difficult for the people who actually needed to be evacuated from leaving. I could rant a long time about this, but my friend Chris says it more eloquently than I can.

In fact, many of them are rushing back as fast as they can, (which isn't very fast). These idiots are stuck in traffic again, and getting in the way of emergency workers and others who actually need to be on the road.

To highlight the recent absurdities, please review the pictures below:

What you are looking at is the drive-thru lane of a local Taco Bell, stretching around the block. Yes.. Taco Bell. This is adjacent to the Deer Brook mall in Houston, (the Kingwood/Humble area). I made my friend stop so I could take a picture of it. It was one of the very few eating establishments that reopened late this afternoon. I won't bother you with further commentary or my opinions, I will let the picture speak for itself.

Rita is a Cock Tease

Nothing happened in my neck of the woods. Rita just blew and blew, but nothing ever came. Maybe a little rain, a little moisture, but no standing water. No trees fell, nothing flying in the wind, no damage to the house, nothing worthy of the local news. However, for some reason, we lost electricity for twelve hours or more, (we just got it back less than an hour ago).

I can joke around about being disappointed, but in all honesty, I'm relieved. We were lucky, Rita was bad news for some people. Nothing like Katrina, but no laughing matter either. To all those still facing this storm, I wish the best. However, we should all be thankful that it wasn't a whole lot worse.

I hope I am not assuming too much.

Riders on the Storm

We're going to ride this bitch out, the bitch named Rita. What a horrible name for a hurricane! Rita sounds like a chick you might catch a venereal disease from. (I apologize if your name is Rita, and I don't mean to imply you have VD.. but you might).

Looks like the worst is going to miss Houston, but it still isn't going to be pretty. We aren't in danger, whether from rising waters or wind. We've taken the necessary precautions, including stocking up on provisions and securing weaknesses in and around the house.

I'm afraid of the damage my house may take from flying debris and falling trees. Especially, the trees. Those tall, skinny, crappy kind you see in new subdivisions. They look like giant twigs, and I have a feeling they will snap like them, too. But it shouldn't be TOO bad, I think. Others aren't so lucky.

Our friend Chris lives in an evacuation area. He got out of there, and is staying with his parents in a part of Houston not too far from us. He will be fine, but as you can read for yourself, he's worried about his house. Maybe not as much the building itself, but the countless objects with emotional ties within it, (things that had to be left behind). All the links to the past that remind you where and what you have been through. The things that breathe fire into your mind and ignite the your memories to life.

We have two other friends fleeing the onslaught. They live near downtown, and there is a good chance their home will be flooded. They are staying with us during the storm, and I couldn't be happier. Nothing like good friends to see thru the bad shit with.

We even had a bit of a party last night, even Chris came by. We drank, played games, talked, and watched Rita bring her slutty ass in. (Slutty, because in the next 48 hours, she's going to blow millions of people. Houston 500 ain't nothing compared to ol' Rita). After a little more preparing this morning, we're about to start part two of the party.

Rita keeps on getting weaker. She started out strong, but then started to wimp out. Blowing millions of people is hard work, and she has to conserve energy if she wants to get all of them. Then again, I might eat my own words, and be slapped hard by some beaver tail.

I have to admit, I'm feeling good about staying, (so far). So many people on the road evacuating, many of them, not really needing to. This ends up making matter worse for those that actually need to leave the area. God only knows I wouldn't want to be in this shit on the side of the road, even if it was degraded to a tropical storm. And I know I wouldn't want to wait in a car without A/C in the horrible heat, staring at the gas gauge, hoping I can conserve enough gas until I get to where I am going.

Speaking of gas, Wednesday I made sure I had a full tank of gas in our car (in case we needed to leave town in a hurry). By the time the afternoon rolled around, many stations were sold out of gas, not to refuel until after the storm. My heart sank, though, I tried to stay calm. I was making my way back home when I saw a grocery store with gas pumps (that actually HAD gas). The line was insanely long, and I almost decided against staying. But as I was leaving, I saw there were multiple other lines, all shorter than the one I was in. Why people stayed in that line, instead of being more organized about it, is beyond me.

I waited and waited, turning my car off in intervals. Given the alternative, a thirty minute wait wasn't too bad. However, as I started looking around, I got VERY fucking angry. A few cars up, a guy was not only filling up his vehicle, but the king sized gas-powered generator in the back of his truck as well! Then I looked to my left and saw a HUMMER sitting in line. A little while later, I looked behind me and saw one of those mammoth RVs waiting for gas.

Why does this make me so sick? People are evacuating, and these assholes don't seem to understand the gravity of the situation. I doubt that generator being filled up was for his mother's dialysis machine. I don't know how far that fucking Hummer thinks he is going to go in the bumper to bumper traffic that was stretching mind boggling lengths. And while an RV might be a nice convenience, now is not the time for a fucking vacation!

It makes me sad how impractical and oblivious some people can be. How screwed up their priorities can get, and how inconsiderate of their neighbors in a time of crisis they can be. You can see with your own eyes the lack of fuel in the area. You can see how many people are trying to fill up. But some people can't see (or care about) the problem of taking more resources for their luxury, while their neighbors need enough to survive.

At the time, we were still on the fence about leaving. Jules slowly started teetering towards leaving, while I was trying to convince her that we should stay. For a while, I thought I was loosing the battle. She was genuinely scared, the storm kept intensifying, and there were a lot of unknowns. Her logic was: why stay when there was little that could actually be done when the shit hit the fan? Why stay and be worried if you made a mistake, a mistake that might endanger you? Why go through this, and have to possibly be without power for days? Why not get out of Dodge while we could, and stay with her family?

My family and most of my friends live in Houston. I grew up here my whole life. I couldn't just leave, I felt like I was abandoning more than just my home. This isn't to say Jules doesn't have an attachment, too. And this isn't to say I didn't have my doubts, either. It was just a hard decision to make.

A lot of things were discussed and considered. We talked to many of the people we knew, and what their plans were. I think this whole process helped Jules. It helped to fill in some of the blanks, and settle her mind and nerves about staying, (and maybe myself, as well). Now looking at the path of the storm, it was good that we stayed put.

Now, we are just waiting and hoping for the best. I hope those still caught on the road find shelter soon. That they get to safety, wherever they are. I hope that they are as lucky as us, (and that we stay lucky ourselves). We'll brace for the worst, and hope for the best. Not sure what else can be done at this point.

Geek vs. Geek

Damn, I wish I could find this video. It is an actual spoof made by Microsoft of Napoleon Dynamite (the real actor playing the fictional character) versus Bill Gates (playing himself, of course).

I wonder if there is a copy of this floating around the 'net? If you have a link to it, please let me know.


Still going to post the post I said I would post (huh?) later today (or tomorrow, or.. ). Just thought I would share this now, or I never would (knowing me).

You know it is bad when...

Bush finally takes responsibility for something. Wow. No shifting it to an external cause, subordinate, or anything. I don't know if it qualifies as an apology, though. I don't know if it is a change in attitude of his administration or not. But at least he is finally meeting the minimum requirements of a leader: accountability.

Who knows, maybe I'm:

A) Giving him too much credit
B) Being too hard on him
C) Making a bigger deal out of it than it is


Either way, at least I finally posted something again. I will post all that I mentioned in the previous post, and then some (mostly work).

Catching Up

It's been a looong time since I posted. I have much to say, but not a lot of time to say it. I'm about to head out of town, so I won't be able to post for a few days. Because of this, I thought I would just go ahead and do a quick update.

Work kind of blows right now. I'll get into that more later, but I will say I'm not giving up on it. I want to fix some problems there before I find a new job. Otherwise, I'll feel like I am just running away, without having learned anything. I need to know that if I get a new job, the same issue won't follow me. It's stressful, but I know I can handle it, and it will only make me more successful in the future.

I also need to post more on the tubing trip we went on recently, and more detail on the one before that. The first one was fun, but not without its drama, (provided by myself, of course). The second one went much better. I didn't get burned.. in the same places. There was no real drama and such, but I had a bit of a hangover, (though, it didn't last long).

This past Saturday, my friends and I were watching Ringu 2, (original, Japanese version of The Ring 2). It was alright, but the best part was when we first started watching it, the power kept on going off in the house. It was real quick, and happened several times right in the begining of the movie. Freaked us the fuck out. On top of that, there was a lot of thunder and lightning. (Best way to watch a horror movie like The Ring, I tell ya!)

After watching the movie, we went outside for a smoke, where we saw that a tree had fallen in the backyard. That just made things more freaky, especially since we didn't even hear it fall down! The wind had snapped a perfectly healthy tree of ours, and it landed on the fence and.. well, I'll just show you:



Yea, I had to clean that shit up the next morning, NOT fun at all. It was good for a few laughs, though. It didn't cause any damage to the fence, nothing that a hammer and some nails wouldn't fix. Clearing and cutting the tree was hard, but it cleaned up pretty nicely, in the end.

I'll post some more when I get back. In the meantime, I'll end with something I've been meaning to do for a while. A few posts ago, I quoted Voltaire. I always liked the quote about doubt (list below), so when I posted it, I wanted to make sure I quoted it right. While looking it up, I came across quite a few others I really liked. I'm not listing them all, or in any order of preference, just twenty that I think are really good:


Voltaire Quotes

• Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
• Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
• I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.
• It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
• Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
• All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
• The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.
• No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
• It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
• It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.
• God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
• If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
• Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
• It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.
• What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.
• Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
• The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
• Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.
• Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.
• The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.
  

However: "A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire


More quotes and information on Voltaire:

• Wikipedia Entry
• More Quotes