Reid About It

For the past week, my city has been home to thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Rita, in addition to the thousands that may still be here from Hurricane Katrina. We've tried our best to make them feel at home, which means getting them foor, water, and shelter, and then letting them wait in line in traffic with the rest of us.

Now, a week after Rita blew through, we've still got most of them here. They'd all like to go home, but there's a slight problem left in their home cities.

They're closed.

Yep, I've gone 35 years of my life, and we've never closed a city. Not for terrorist attacks, tornadoes, wildfires, riots, Olympics, gas shortages, Arsenio Hall tapings, or anything else.

Now, though, we're closed. When people really need to get into their houses, and try and dig out from the latest in a string of tragedies, the government has just decided that it would be better if everybody would just sleep under an overpass up north for the time being. It's too hard to hook up the power cables again, just like it was too hard to actuall, oh, I don't know, bury the cables underground in an area that gets hurricanes about three times a year?

A wacky idea, I know, but bear with me.

First New Orleans, now Houston and Beaumont. It seems like our Homeland Security department is basing their emergency planning around the plot of "Escape From New York."

Hurricane Rita is making landfall in Texas in a few minutes, which means that we here in East Texas, a full four hours from the shore, will probably get wet. It'll rain, some stuff will blow around, and the power may go out for a little while.

However, with their typical lack of rational thought, East Texans have made off with everything that can be purchased or stolen in the area for the last two days. Bottled water? Sold out. Overpriced gas? Just empty tanks. Ice? You can set it out and make water with it, so no.

It's going to rain. Get over it. Stop hoarding shit that won't keep you alive, anyway. I saw a woman at Wal-Mart with two fucking cases of Wolf brand chili, and a metric assload of crackers. What's that going to do for you when the power goes out? You going to light farts as rescue flares? Calm, rational thought, people.

As I walked around Wal-Mart, which was even funnier than usual, there was so much panic, I started to worry I was the one who wasn't panicking enough, I'd look at things I'd never buy in a million years, and imagine a scenario where I'd need them.

Me: "Hmm. What if I never get a another chance to buy that Best Of The Allman Brothers CD? I might want to hear Sweet Melissa while society crumbles to a halt during a fifteen minute power outage. Maybe I should buy a copy of Sam Walton's autobiography to read in the dark. They sure seem to have a lot of copies for sale."

After Katrina, it seems like we're all a bit gunshy concerning hurricanes. However, it seems now like the already-easily spooked men and women of meteorology are eschewing their forecasts and going right to the book of Revelations.

Weatherguy: "Well, Rita has gone from a tropical depression yesterday to a category five hurricane today. The forecast for the Gulf Coast is eight to twelve inches of rain, high winds at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, showers of frogs, blood spilling forth from the ground on the overnight, and three-horned goat sightings beginning tomorrow around noon."

Anchor: "Thanks, Bob! Stay tuned, when we come back, Mr. Food makes chili!"

I love the NFL, but enough, please. No mas. Stop with celebrating the first game of the season like we've just found a cure for AIDS. No more random appearances by bands, or testimonials by semi-celebrities, or fireworks shows, or Broadway dances, or banner celebrations, or slapfights, or handjobs, or orchestras, or anything else that is not football.

Get Freddie Prinze Jr. the Hell off of my television. I don't want to see Michelle Branch singing, being driven around on top of a giant football. Santana was at Woodstock, for God's sake, let him retire in peace. If you're old enough to sing with today's pop stars, and you have to think back through forty years of drugged-up tours just to make sure they're not part of your bloodline, it's time to pack it in.

And why is the semi-coherent Ozzy Osbourne still everybody's favorite man? Ozzy Osbourne being one of corporate America's favorite spokesmen is like John Wayne Gacy being chosen as "America's Favorite Clown".

My feelings about the extended pregame show is that if you weren't going to watch the first game of the NFL season, but you'll tune in to watch because the "pregame extranaganza" features brief, pretaped, lip-synching appearances by Ozzy, Trisha Yearwood, and/or Santana, then fuck you. You obviously have no business watching the game in the first place, so stay the Hell away. I don't ask other channels to put football on, don't come to my football games and expect Emeril to come out and show you how to make party nachos beforehand.

From CNN.com: Chertoff said FEMA is not equipped to send large numbers of people to help during a disaster. Instead, he said, "FEMA basically plugs in to the existing state and local infrastructure. What happened here was, essentially, the demolishment of that state and local infrastructure and, I think, that really caused a cascading series of breakdowns."

So FEMA's grand scheme of things was to work with the local agencies who are already in place? Their big emergency plan was to piggyback on people who were already living in a catastrophe area? I would think if your organization was in charge of national disasters, shouldn't somebody have the forethought to surmise there just might be a situation or two where the local folks might be out of touch, having difficulties, or even been forced to relocate to Houston?

If Fema was in charge of emergencies all over the country, firemen would have electric hoses they'd have to plug in to the burning houses, and policemen would have coin-operated guns.

Bear with me here. Everywhere I turn, somebody wants me to donate money for the hurricane relief. There's websites, toll-free numbers, mailers, etc. This is certainly a good thing, however, most of these methods want you to donate money through your credit card.

Here's how things usually go. Right now, I send a hundred bucks, then can't pay it at the end of the month, and it winds up costing me $110 dollars by the time I finish paying it off. My donation breaks down like this:

• $100 -- Homeless Victims of the Hurricane
• $10 -- Big Corporation That Doesn't Give A Shit About the Homeless Victims Of The Hurricane

Here's a wacky idea to pretend corporate America isn't just using this catastrophe as a way to make a buck. Why don't the credit card companies not only send our payments to hurricane relief, but also the interest that will be accumulated on those payments until they're paid off? Let the companies clamor to line up and be the "Official Credit Card Of Hurricane Relief 2005," or some other marketing gimmick.

Somehow, even in the heart of darkness, people can find it in themselves to make a small effort to make it even more uncomfortable. From hurricanehousing.org:

We're a christian family, so we will only house a married couple with 2-3
children, no alchohol or drugs. My wife and I live in a 4 bedroom house, in
a unrestricted golf community, with 3 boys (twins 10, oldest 13). We would
prefer a white or hispanic family, but will help any family in need.

I guess I missed the Bible story where Jesus begrudingly agrees to help a black family only after everybody else has been healed and fed.

"I've got the love of God in my heart for everyone, although I'll only provide relief to the dirty brown mud people if all of the good white folks and poor harmless ignorant Messicans are already spoken for."

Nothing like a national tragedy to cause people to open up their hearts and homes to other people, as long as they are just like them.

Who the Hell is glad to be in an "unrestricted golf community" anyway? White people proud of being white, that's who.

I swear, the next person from FEMA who gets on television and complains about New Orleans should be covered in Snickers bars and airdropped in from thirty feet up with no repel line.

We know it's rough in there. We know it's a situation that the general public never thought would happen. But enough whining about conditions, and snipers, and roads, and electricity, and anything else. You have paid positions that have the word "emergency" in them. Move your ass.

How is it that September 11, 2001, we were able to mobilize and get help where it was needed in the worst surprise attack on our country in sixty years, but this time, we had a week's notice of the mother of all hurricanes charging towards New Orleans, and we can't get food and water in there four days later?

They're afraid of the gangs, and snipers. Of course the worst elements in society are rising up and threatening people, and trying to take power. That's what happens when there's no food and water.

And please, taking food and water is not "looting". George Bush has never missed a meal in his life that he was sober enough to wake up for, so don't start listening to him just because he cut his vacation short by a few days.

When the system breaks down, there's nothing wrong with doing what you have to to survive. It's not like Safeway is going to swim back into town, plug up a generator and start selling hamburgers. The government has let these people down, a little anarchy is to be expected when a situation is mishandled this badly.

You need food and water, or clothes, take them. You want to rob people, or steal jewelry or electronics that you'll never be able to plug in, I doubt very seriously if the troops that are called in will look kindly on you.