"Wasted away again in Margaritaville . . . "

I love the hurricanes.

It brings out the stupidity in everyone, including us.

Karen went to the local Super Target last night, already out of bottled water, and she overheard two middle aged women in short shorts talking about their hurricane plans:

"Yeah, I'm having an evacuation party. I'm inviting Jack and Margarita and Jose Cuevero and we're all going to have a good time."

Great. That's all we need: drunken chicks in the middle of a hurricane.

Karen, Sadie and I have been GLUED to the TV all morning, trying to get more information so we can make an educated decision about whether or not to flee like the Joads close to midweek.

We watch the local news for good information. In our experience, the dudes at CNN and the other national news sources work more on fear and sensationalism than on helping people come up with plans prestorm. They like to send a nut job (aka reporter who does not fear God) into the storm and said nut job hangs out in the rain talking about how hard the wind is blowing and how wet they are standing in the rain.

Speaking of reporters, I miss Dan Rather. He's the master of nut jobs covering hurricanes. I don't care about all that alleged B.S. with ole George the younger's "service" in the National Guard. Even in the latter part of his career, he was still mid storm, standing in rising water, covering the hurricanes for those of us fascinated with weather train wrecks, just like he did in Galveston during Hurricane Carla in 1961.

This, by the way, was the first live television broadcast of a hurricane.

Post storm the networks do a better job with the human interest stuff. I am grateful to the national news sources (and local down here) which showed us the death and devastation in New Orleans two years ago. If we depended on our wonderful government to do this, well, we probably wouldn't know what happened in New Orleans those wretched hours post storm.

Notice I said "post storm". Hurricanes aren't great by any stretch of the imagination. But perhaps if the scumbag bureaucracies both state AND nationally would have kept that levee in good repair then the catastrophe post storm would have been significantly less.

Whatever. All reporting is repetitive at this moment. It looks like after ole Dean plows through Jamaica and the Yucatan Peninsula, it will blow into northern Mexico Wednesday mid morning.

If it does that, we shall stay home and watch the rain.

However, hurricanes virtually NEVER go where the meteorologists think they will. Typically they veer north. The plan mentioned above works if the eye hits south of Corpus Christi. If it looks like it'll hits north of that area, we'll go somewhere, either west or north of town or all the way to Austin.

Karen wanted me to send out thoughts and prayers to those in the Yucatan and Jamaica. We wish you the best under the horrific circumstances you will face soon.

Other things I'd like to talk about, but don't have the time right now:
1. Democratic Iowa Debate
2. Sadie the Tuna Thief
3. John Edwards' hair (president Good Hair???)
4 Anti wrinkle pizza (http://www.thatsfit.com/2007/08/13/anti-wrinkle-pizza)
5. The melodrama of CNN

Thoughts for later this week. Hopefully, it'll happen . . .