But I Digress ...

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Blame the "liberal media" for once again grabbing hold of a conservative's stupid statement and disseminating it to We The People, thereby bringing embarrassment raining down upon him. No matter how richly that embarrassment is deserved, those damn Libs should just keep those little indiscretions hidden under the rug, where they belong. (Just like the Republicans did when Bill Clinton got caught with his fly unzipped. But I digress.) Reagan's secretary of education Bill Bennett has a radio show. (I know, I was surprised as well.) And Bill The Boob made a rather ill-advised comment on his September 28th broadcast: I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. Now, to put his comment in context: His caller had...

I generally try to leave politics out of this blog. There are approximately three million blogs on the Web that deal with politics on a daily basis, and this isn't one of them. But today, I must allow myself to gloat just a bit. An Austin grand jury has indicted Tom DeLay on a charge of criminal conspiracy. The (former) House Majority Leader (House rules require him to give up the leadership role while the indictment is pending) faces two years in prison for conspiracy to launder corporate political contributions. Unlike most liberals, I'm not happy about DeLay's indictment because he's the ranking Republican in the House. I'm happy about it because Tom DeLay is a royal asshole-prick-moron-jerk who deserves all the bad karma life can throw at him. Here is a partial list of Tommy Boy's stunts that I can name off the top of my head: o When Houston's Metropolitan Transit Authority was seeking federal funds to build the initial phase of its new light-rail syste...

Sweat dripping from brow Raking leaves into a bag Branches puncture bag. Hefty makes weak bags But it's all I have right now. Raking never stops. Limbs and leaves all o'er Got to clean this big mess up 'Fore the lawn guys come. Knowing them, they won't Clean up the mess from Rita Without charging more. As big "blow jobs" go, Rita was, shall I just say, Unsatisfying. But mostly, I'm glad That nobody local died. Especially us. And glad we didn't Have to depend upon that Crappy gen'rator ...

It's hot here. VERY hot. You'd think the hurricane would have cooled things off a bit, but no. Yesterday it got up to 101 degrees. With the 51 percent humidity (yep, Houston's mugginess factor is on the rise again), that meant it felt like 121. When it's too hot to go swimming, you KNOW it's too freaking hot. (Did anybody remember to remind God it's September?) So now, we're getting heat advisories from the National Weather Service. Personally, I've heard quite enough from the NWS during the past week. Wonder if I could persuade them to take a couple of weeks' vacation, and to turn the air conditioning up before they go? Not to fear. In a week I'll be arriving in Los Angeles, where it's currently a nice, comfortable 74 degrees. Since for the last week I've been "Hurricane Boy", I'm half-expecting an earthquake to hit while I'm there. That would dovetail nicely with the way this month has been for me so far. (You think Mr...

God, what a mess. Leaves all over the front yard, and covering the bottom of the pool. Our neighbors across the street have several tree limbs down in their front yard. (Silly us -- we foolishly paid a guy to thin out our tree a couple of weeks ago. The guy across the street gets Rita to do it for free.) But, as far as the eye can see, absolutely no damage at all. Not to our house, or to any of our neighbors'. We lost power here for a grand total of five seconds. Since I have a UPS on my computer, I didn't even have time to shut down before the power came back on. It was off just long enough to force us to reset every digital clock in the house. We have enough electronics here that at night, when all the lights are off, there is faint glowing coming from multiple points -- almost enough to navigate by once your eyes have adjusted to the darkness. Well, last night, all those glowing points were flashing. Last night, I was too damn tired to care. We've had the adrena...

Houston didn't dodge a bullet. We dodged a cannonball . It's nearly 12:30 in the morning, and we never even felt particularly strong winds here. The rain is yet to come -- the eye of the hurricane hasn't yet come parallel to the city of Houston -- but the damaging storm surge and furious winds aren't likely to have an impact on us here. What a letdown. Don't get me wrong; I wasn't looking forward to broken windows and missing shingles and tattered gutters. Nor was I looking forward to comforting my wife through a night of howling winds and crashing thunder. But after days of preparing for the worst, and anticipating the worst, to find out that ... NOTHING HAPPENED ... is an incredibly anticlimactic way to end this vigil. But make no mistake. We're going to hear a lot more about the effects of Hurricane Rita, because it is now predicted to make landfall (in about two hours) just east of Cameron, Louisiana. Cameron is not heavily populated by people. It...

First, thanks to everybody who has added such thoughtful comments to this blog, and to my mirrored blog on Myspace.com . (You're not missing anything; the other one says exactly what this one does.) Without exception, your comments have been positive and encouraging, and I really appreciate it. Second, I checked in with Mr. KABC about a half-hour ago. He has a guest in the first hour, so I'm probably going to come on in the second or third hour to tell him that not much is going on here. And it's not. (Lack of tragedy makes for very boring radio.) We've had a very light, steady rain for the past hour or so. Winds are gusty but not too strong. Obviously, I still have power, and I still have a DSL connection. Rain on the west side of Houston is anticipated to be four inches or less tonight (when did "four inches of rain" become a blessing?), and although winds are probably going to kick up as Hurricane Rita makes landfall about 3 a.m., obviously we are going to...

We in Texas are lucky. But our neighbors in Louisiana, once again, are not. It's beginning to look like Hurricane Rita is going to come ashore just east of the Beaumont-Port Arthur area, right on the Texas-Louisiana border. Remember, everything west of the eye of the hurricane is on the "weak side". But everything east of the eye is gonna get socked. And right now, southwest Louisiana is getting socked. From AP : Steve Rinard, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Lake Charles, said he could not keep count of the tornado warnings across southern Louisiana. "They were just popping up like firecrackers," he said. Emergency vehicles with FEMA are already staging at Reliant Park -- the same place that, just a week ago, was still sheltering evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. Regional disaster assistance is going to be dispatched from there as soon as the eye crosses over us, at about 3 a.m. Meanwhile, the fear of a storm surge was a bit overblown for us. Bec...

About an hour ago, the first drops of rain started to fall. As I write this, we're still getting a very light drizzle, with light gusts of winds. From here, not much of a hurricane so far. On the Texas-Louisiana border, however, things are getting quite hectic. Heavy rain and winds are hitting Lake Charles, blowing east to west. Over us right now, the clouds are moving north-to-south, blowing out toward the Gulf. That's good news for us for two reasons: (1) The outer arms of Rita are coming ashore in Louisiana, rotating counter-clockwise around the offshore eye, and by the time those arms brush up against Houston, the winds and rain are pretty much spent. (2) The north-to-south winds gather up dry air from outside the hurricane path and drag it across us, absorbing quite a bit of the water and wind that is left in those spiraling arms. My sister in Katy (25 miles due west of downtown Houston) has lost power. For the life of me, I can't figure out how -- the sky looks ugly, ...

We're going to dodge this bullet. But we might get a bit splattered by the impact nonetheless. It now appears very likely that Hurricane Rita is going to make landfall to the east of Galveston Bay, over toward Beaumont and the Louisiana border. Good news for us. Bad news for my wife's brother, who lives in Beaumont. And not good at all for the residents of Lake Charles, Louisiana, who are about 30 miles east of the Texas-Louisiana border. Lake Charles happens to be where a lot of the evacuees from Hurricane Katrina had found hotel rooms. Well, a good number of those hotels are on the lake ... right next to the casino riverboats docked beside them. And I think we all remember what the casino barges in Biloxi and Gulfport looked like after Katrina passed through. We're now worrying more about flooding -- not from the storm surge, but from the rain produced by the hurricane. Rita is considered a "dry" hurricane, and as long as the storm keeps moving quickly, it proba...

The story just shifted back to New Orleans. A patched levee failed in three places, and water is rising in the city's Ninth Ward once again. The good news is, nobody's there; the economically-depressed part of town was one where many evacuees couldn't get out on their own, which means they couldn't get back on their own. Certainly, the rising water isn't likely to do more damage to the Ninth Ward than has already been done ... Meanwhile, in Texas: A bus evacuating residents of a Houston-area nursing home caught fire near Dallas , with as many as 24 dead. Early indications were that the bus, which had been on the road since yesterday, caught fire because of mechanical problems, possibly overheated brakes. Then passengers' oxygen tanks started exploding, turning the vehicle into an inferno. The big story of Hurricane Rita is not likely to be the damage caused by the hurricane itself, but the traffic. It's time to admit it: The single largest mass evacuation...

I just spent a very pleasant hour with Mr. KABC on Southern California radio. (Boy, it felt good to be back on the air again, if only for a little while!) I didn't embarrass myself, and while I might not have been quite as glib as I try to be on here, I thought I did a fair job. Fair enough, in fact, that Mr. K invited me to be on the show again tomorrow night. I pointed out that in 24 hours, we're likely to be riding out the height of the storm, and even if we can get a phone connection, it might be too noisy to have much of a conversation. Mr. K: "Hmmm ... that would make for great radio." Me: "Hey, anything I can do to help ..." Nonetheless, Mr. K and I will try to make a connection for his show tomorrow night. If I'm not cowering in an interior closet, that is ... * * * I have been thinking about an indication that I gave during the radio show tonight, however, that I want to elaborate on. Mr. KABC asked me a lot of questions about my personal ...

Greetings to those of you who are listening to me on KABC Radio in Los Angeles. Here are some links you will find very helpful if you want to watch streaming video of the news coverage here in Houston: KHOU-TV (CBS): http://www.khou.com KTRK-TV (ABC): http://www.abc13.com KPRC-TV (NBC): http://click2houston.com Also see the Houston Chronicle website: http://www.chron.com More after the radio show ...

Ah Fame, thy quivering arrow is about to pierce my thorax ... Tonight, this blog goes national. La Winchette pulled a couple of strings (or yanked a couple of chains, more likely) and as a result, I'm going to be on KABC Radio in Los Angeles tonight. I'll be on the "Ask Mr. KABC" show, featuring Mr. "Mr. KABC" KABC. For those of you in the Southland, it'll be the 9:00 PM hour, on 790 AM. For the rest of you, the live audio stream is here . It figures that, 17 years after my last hurrah as a struggling broadcaster, I finally break into a major market. And it only took a natural disaster to make it happen. Life works in funny ways sometimes ... (And Mr. K, I promise to lay off the sauce until the guest spot is finished.) * * * The generator is a no-go. It appears that this thing hasn't been used in 15 years, and the carburetor is clogged, the fuel line is brittle and breaking, and it's painted an ugly color. Fortunately, if the opportunity...

Lost in all the discussion of possible disruption to the nation's gasoline supply due to Hurricane Rita, is the potential damage to the source of another, much more valuable natural resource. Hurricane Rita could quite possibly disrupt the nation's supply of Tabasco Sauce. Avery Island, Louisiana (click on the map) is not really an island. It's a salt dome about eight miles south-southwest of New Iberia, surrounded on all sides by bayous. Dr. Neil Frank (who knows more about hurricanes than just about any other man alive) predicts a 21 percent chance that Rita will make landfall near New Iberia. The streets of Avery Island may run red with hot sauce. Oh, the humanity! From the Tabasco website : "The next pepper crop is ensured by the McIlhenny [family] who personally select the best plants in the field during harvest. The pepper seeds from those select plants are treated and dried and then stored -- for use the following year -- both on the Island and in a local bank ...

Okay, so much for my brilliant ideas. Turns out that the alternate escape route I had come up with is good to a point, but because that's an evacuation route for the town of Victoria (further down the Texas coast), it's likely to be just as busy as all the other freeways. So, there's a very good chance we're going to have to ride this out. There is no gasoline to be found in the City of Houston. Everything is sold out, and a large number of places (quickly reaching a majority) are closing up shop, even though landfall won't happen until Friday night. I would drive around to try to locate some gas, but that activity itself burns up precious gas, and if I don't find some I will have screwed myself. There is some good news to report. A friend has an ancient gas generator, and we're going to test it out this afternoon. My neighbor has a gas can with about a quart of fuel in it -- just enough to see if the generator still works. If it does, we'll bring it ov...

What a difference a day makes ... Hurricane Rita is now projected to make landfall east of Houston, near Beaumont. (Click on map for a larger version.) This means that, rather than being in the nasty northeast quadrant of the hurricane, Houston is likely to end up on the "weak side" with lighter winds and a bit less rain. Of course, a local TV meteorologist pointed out that "if you get hit by the weak side of a freight train, you're still gonna get hurt." Rita is still a Category 5 hurricane, even though it has weakened slightly. Forecasters think that it may weaken to a Category 3 by the time it makes landfall. However, the real story here in Houston is the traffic. Lines at the airports are four hours long -- if you can even get to the airports. Because Galveston and all coastal areas have been evacuating through Houston's freeway system, gridlock on all highways are being reported, for up to 100 miles outside of town. The average speed is ONE MILE PER H...

A few of you might want to know what's going on with those of us here in Houston, so I've provided a bit of a "hurricane primer". Just in case you care. Which you probably don't, since you're in L.A. or Boston or somewhere that doesn't get hurricanes. But I don't live on a freakin' fault line, so I guess it all evens out ... I've taken this Texas coastal map, based on The Weather Channel's projected path as of this afternoon, and added some landmarks that you might be hearing about on the news. (Click on it for a larger version.) Right now, the center of the projected path is Matagorda Bay, which is about 120 miles southwest of Houston. That means that if the eye of the hurricane makes landfall at Matagorda Bay, Houston is in the northeast quadrant of the storm -- and the northeast quadrant is the one that packs the most rain and wind. Dr. Neil Frank is a local weathercaster, and formerly was the director of the National Hurricane Center, ...

Here's a photo of a dumb guy. Joe McGee plays in the pounding surf as strengthening Hurricane Rita moves near Key West, Fla., Tuesday. ( J. Pat Carter / AP) Joe McGee is a moron. That surf-worn concrete pylon beside Mr. Moron says "Southernmost Point Continental U.S.A." I have stood beside that pylon. I have looked out over the Caribbean from atop that seawall. And folks, when it's placid, and you can see that gently-lapping water sparkling in the afternoon sun ... trust me, you do not want that shit (literally) washing over you. Key West has two of Florida's 10 most-polluted beaches, according to state data released by a national environmental group and reported here . "Higgs Beach and South Beach, near the Southernmost Point [italics mine], were unsafe for swimming 22 percent and 30 percent of the time, respectively, in 2004 due to high contents of animal waste matter, the Natural Resources Defense Council reported. "The pollution, even small traces o...

Here we go again. And now, rather than playing host to the evacuees from a Category 4 hurricane, it looks like I may be an evacuee myself. Tropical Storm Rita is on track to nick the Florida Keys, strengthen into a hurricane, and head straight for the City of Houston. Estimated landfall is Saturday morning. And, trust me, if Rita stays on its current path, Karen and I won't be here. Even though Houston is a city above sea level, and our home isn't in a flood-prone area, we have already arranged to stay at a friend's house outside Austin. So, if the storm hits Houston head-on, don't worry about me and mine. We'll be safe and dry in the city where I was born. (Although I think I'm going to go buy a couple of cases of bottled water, just in case ...)

Oh, my head ... I was watching the Emmy Awards when I was exposed (... yep, "exposed" is the word) to a commercial that has set the women's movement back about thirty years. The tag line: "Have a happy period. Always." And "Always", of course, is the brand name for the absorbent feminine hygiene soaker-upper. On a wicked hunch, I typed " always.com " into my trusty, non-absorbent web browser. And yep, it's the Internet home of the aforementioned pads. And on that website, you'll find the answer to the question, "Why can't men understand women?" Here is the opening screen to the United States version of the website: This is the time of the month that chocolate was created for. This is the time when no toe nail should go unpolished. When the gym will get along just fine without you. This is the time when, if something is even slightly annoying, the world should know about it. And if you feel like crying, there is no inappr...

... inside my brain. I don't have a thought in my skull. Well, that's not strictly true, of course (although there are those who think I said it pretty accurately), but for the life of me, I can't think of anything significant to write about. Notice I said "significant". I'm not going to write about mundane crap, nosiree. The three of you who read my rantings deserve to have your worlds ROCKED. But the stuff that I'm stewing over has either been done to death (Katrina, definitely no pun intended), beneath my dignity to acknowledge (Britney Spears and her new son, Damien ), or of no consequence to anyone but me (What do you mean, AstroWorld is CLOSING ?!? Assholes. So what if I never go there anymore? At least it was THERE, like a trusted and very expensive friend from childhood ... but I digress). (By the way, is it just me, or does the bad age make-up on Six Flags' mascot "Mr. Six" make him look like Dana Carvey's turtle character from ...

Here is more flora from the intestine of the international news. (Or is it fauna? Flora? I get them confused ...) AND, OF COURSE, HALLIBURTON GOT THE CONTRACT The Gulf emirate of Dubai will build a city of life-size replicas of seven wonders of the world at an estimated cost of $US1.5 billion ($1.94 billion) to house offices, shops and flats, a developer has said. Three buildings will be modelled on structures that were part of the original list of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" - the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Others will be replicas of more modern wonders - the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Great Wall of China, a statement said. The Great Wall of China? Lifesize? I didn't know Dubai was big enough to house a 3,946-mile-long Great Wall. Nor did I realize that Dubai was being threatened by nomadic bands of Mongol hordes ... MORE TALES OF THE MENTALLY UNHINGED ...

This cartoon makes me feel very proud of my city and my state. Thank you, Jim Borgman.

(In an effort to return to more lighthearted fare, regarding the latest on Katrina, I'll just refer you to Keith Olbermann's comments on our Gubmint's response to the disaster, here . I'll have more to say on the subject later, but for now, let's brighten the mood a little bit ...) I'm home. And I believe I can say, without fear of contradiction, that five days in Las Vegas is plenty. (And this is coming from a former resident.) It was quite the eventful weekend. Let's see ... we drank, attended a wedding, drank some more, watched the bride pass out in her mashed potatoes at the post-wedding dinner, tippled a bit, learned that the groom's daughter had picked up a limo driver and missed her flight home, imbibed a little, listened to the screaming from the adjacent hotel room where the daughter and the groom were having it out, sipped the fermented grape, paid WAY too damn much for a bowl of pasta, chugged a brew or two, and were accosted on the Strip ...

I still can't bring myself to dish any humor right now. The news that rescuers in New Orleans are being SHOT AT -- not carjacked, not threatened, but SHOT AT for no reason -- is really pissing me off. A medical evac helicopter tried to land at a Kenner-area hospital. There were over a hundred people waiting on the helipad, many with guns. The pilot refused to land. I don't blame him; he'd almost certainly have been skyjacked. People who donated their boats to relief efforts have given up, because people were firing shots at them as they rescued stranded residents. People are "commandeering" (read: stealing) evacuation buses. Even military helicopters are being shot at. (I apologize for having no links for these; I'm clicking from blog to blog and from news site to news site rather quickly.) And my big question is: WHY? How can ANY rational human being justify shooting at rescuers? Demanding that they be rescued, sure, I can buy that. But just firing...