In my class, he declared that "people are poor because they are lazy." He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to "free market competition." To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was "socialism." Recently, President Bush's Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California's Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt's New Deal.

That comes from an article by economist Yoshi Tsurumi, a professor of Bush's from Harvard Business School.

Also from that article:

In June 2003, Bill Moyers said that "Karl Rove has modeled the Bush presidency on that of William Mckinley (1897-1901) and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Mark Hanna saw to it that Washington was ruled by business, railroads, and public utility corporations."

More evidence of this is seen in a study just released by the Center for Public Integrity. Among the findings:

1. Over the past six years, over half of the Pentagon's budget has gone to private contractors. This percentage has stayed constant from year to year.

2. From the study: "Only 40 percent of Pentagon contracts were conducted under what it terms 'full and open competition.'" In other words, the vast majority of contracts awarded to defense contractors were "no-bid."

3. The top defense contractors made $214 million in campaign contributions during that time, two-thirds of which went to Republicans. Lobbying expenditures were much higher: $1.9 billion.

4. "The Center found more than $35 billion in contracts where the ultimate corporate parent was misidentified. In some cases this led to major discrepancies between the amount of contracts actually won by major corporations and the totals reported publicly by the Pentagon."

But let's not talk about any of this at the debate tonight. Let's just invoke "terror" over and over and over again ad infinitum, and ad nauseum.

Nani sent this article from Slate along: Don't Vote- It Makes More Sense to Play the Lottery. Not sure I agree (for all I know it could be Republican agitprop [/tinfoilhat]), but I'm really bad at math so what do I know? For my math-head friends, the formulas on which the article was based can be found here in .pdf format.

This is probably as good a place as any to mention an excellent blog written by Nani's brother Siva: sivacracy.net. His site's a good read; he's a professor at NYU and an author who writes about copyright and PATRIOT-related issues, among other things.

Tropical depression, indeed

I know that I generally don't come off as a depressed person, but I have my moments where I get the whole Weltschmerz thing going, and this is one of those times; I've been feeling blue all day. And then I read Bradbury's short story All Summer In A Day. Big mistake. It's late, and I'm off to bed. Feh. (This post will probably be deleted soon, as I tend to do with any post that reeks of "woe is me")

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In unrelated news: Tone recommends www.arin.net/whois/ in those cases when you might need to try and track someone's IP address. Just sayin'.

It's gettin', it's gettin', it's gettin' kinda hectic

Last night I heard that 60,000 homes in Broward were without power. I wasn't expecting to maintain electricity, since some of the areas with reported losses were in parts of the city very close to me (including downtown Fort Lauderdale if I recall correctly, which is only a couple of miles away). So per Waveflux's suggestion I adopted Snap's magnum opus The Power* as a mantra, and went to bed fully anticipating that I'd wake up in the morning and find myself sans air conditioning.

And to my surprise, I got up and everything was still humming along. It'll be nice to be the annoying guy at work who says "Yeah, I had power the whole time" for a change. More later; right now I'm going to sacrifice a goat in honor of Waveflux.

* I never really listened to this song's lyrics when I was young, and it turns out that they are amazingly dumb. Who knew?! If you click on that link beware of pop-ups; I suggest using Mozilla/Firefox to avoid them.

OK... despite getting hurricane-force gusts through here I still have electricity.

Dare I hope that power will remain flowing into my house throughout the duration of this storm? For those just tuning in, I lost power for 5 1/2 days after Frances. After several days of being in a dark, humid home I was ready to snap like a rabid dog. Thus far I've avoided that fate with Jeanne.

Of course, 16,000 or so homes in Broward are without power right now, so I'm not expecting much.

Hurricane Fatigue

I have it, in spades.

Despite the fact that this storm could potentially deliver a direct strike (to be fair, any storm can deliver a direct strike... that's no doubt part of the problem), I feel supremely uninspired to prepare. I'm going to, of course, but it's going to take a Herculean effort to get off of my ass.

My dad called this morning, and signed off with a cheery "Have a great hurricane! Don't drink too much!"

UPDATE, 1 PM: OK... everything is done outside. Fortunately I had decided to leave plywood and shutters up in the back of the house, which lessened the preparation time. I'm not pulling stuff in from the patio until I know what the storm is going to do, but for now I'm calling it quits. The agenda for the rest of the day: play piano (it looks like timewellspent is going to play East Coast dates including a show in NYC next month, so I need to woodshed the parts), read Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Friend by Christopher Moore, and keep one eye on the telly for news of Hurricane Jeanne's impending woo-hoo-ery.

UPDATE, 2 PM: The weather guys on TV are actually referring to the "cone of terror."

Dear God, Make It Stop

Hurricane Jeanne is going to hit somewhere in South Florida by Sunday... possibly Vero Beach, but it could be anywhere from Miami to Cape Canaveral. I'm reshuttering the house on Saturday if things look dicey, and will add onto the hurricane photoblog at rock you like a hurricane if it looks like I'm going to suffer weather angst again.

Inspired by my previous post, Chris Clarke has written the libretto for a short musical, with John Ashcroft and Yusef Islam/Cat Stevens as its leading men, titled Fatherland and Son. Funny, funny stuff.

Oh Baby, It's A Wild World

You all have probably heard... A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine yesterday because Cat Stevens (now Yusef Islam) was on a government watch list which barred him from entering the country.

This is just insane.

Incidentally, the first time Stevens/Islam performed in public after a 20 year hiatus was at the Concert for New York City, in response to the September 11th attacks. In an interview with VH1 archived on his production company's website (click on the October 22nd entry), he talks about his reaction to September 11th...

Well, first of all my heart reaches out to those families who have lost loved ones in that terrible tragedy. And you know, everybody has felt the impact of that disaster. As far as those who committed the atrocity is concerned they tried, I think to derail humanity in some sense. But I still believe in such a thing as a Peace Train out there, somewhere and I hope that one day it'll arrive.

It should also be noted that according to the website he "donat[ed] the royalties from the Cat Stevens Box Set to charity, with 50% going to the September 11th Fund to help victims, their families, and communities affected by the recent terrorist attacks; the remainder will go to orphans and homeless families in underdeveloped countries."

Clearly a threat. Good call, Department of Fatherland Security!

Blame Canada (or, alternately, "Rosenbob and Guildendoug Are Dead")

I know at least one person who swears she will be moving to some other place in the world in the event of a George Bush victory in November. I don't believe W's election (note: I didn't say re-election, since that would imply he won the first time) is a foregone conclusion, since it looks like the Kerry/Edwards ticket has a lot of fight left in it. But just for the heck of it I took the Skilled Worker Self-Assessment to see if I would qualify for Canadian immigration... and I squeaked through with a passing score of 67, the bare minimum.

If I had to live elsewhere in the world I'd probably choose Switzerland or Austria (or maybe New Zealand) over Canada, but it's nice to know that the home of the McKenzie Brothers, Hamlet parodists extraordinaire, is an option. Just promise me that I won't have to listen to that fucking godawful version of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Frailty, thy name is hoser!

Patron Saint Of Interns

Saint William Clinton will intercede for you with the Almighty, because he feels your pain.

UPDATE: Not to be outdone in the area of reaching out to other religions, find the fully-articulated Bush action figure getting in touch with his Eastern meditative roots at Bush Yoga.

[both links via MoFi]

Two Lists

PEOPLE TO WHOM MY APPEARANCE HAS BEEN COMPARED:

Pianist/singer/Shatner devotee Ben Folds
Olympic figure skater and testicular cancer survivor Scott Hamilton
The kid (Scott) that killed himself during the first season of Beverly Hills 90210
Herpes-afflicted savings and loan entrepeneur (and Presidential sibling) Neil Bush


ACTUAL ANSWERS GIVEN BY MY KINDERGARTEN MUSIC STUDENTS TODAY WHEN ASKED HOW MANY STRINGS A GUITAR HAS:

Seven
One
Eighteen
Pink

MEMORANDUM

To: Everyone

From: The Bone

Subject: Monday-Morning Quarterbacking

Look, no one loves the armchair general aspect of the political season more than I. It's kind of like sports for people that give a shit about the country. But I'm going to ask a favor here:

Please, please stop the constant punditry about "what Kerry should do."

I write this not as a partisan Democrat, because I registered as a Green years ago (I do intend to vote for Kerry this November, though). Rather, this is the perspective of someone on the outside looking in, as it were.

There is ample evidence that Kerry is an awesome political contender in the home stretch. He's doing about as good a job as he can with the force of the media stacked against him. The constant (and contradictory) carping on what Kerry's strategy should be only serves to keep us from focusing on what our strategy should be. To wit:

1. Organize people. Get everyone you know who has anything resembling a liberal bone in their body to vote. Encourage them to use absentee ballots. Talk about Iraq, the economy, corporate crime, the daily sleaze coming from the White House... whatever it takes. When Fahrenheit 9/11 comes out on DVD in a few weeks, rent it, get other people to rent it, and talk about it. The point is to get people fired up.

2. Consider electing Democrats with balls (I'm speaking metaphorically, of course; this is not a Promise-Keepers-ish call for the party to be male-only). If that's not an option, write letters. Lots of letters. Encourage people you know to do the same.

3. Give up the cash. Even if it's 10 dollars, it's more than they would have had before. I'm not going to give much, but it'll be a little bit of a help.

No offense is intended toward the folks engaging in this activity; it's perfectly understandable, and I'll no doubt indulge in it myself at some point this fall. But it's counterproductive. Quit worrying about what Kerry should do, and start worrying about what you can do.

Operation: Missing The Frigging Point

From American Leftist:

In order to capitalize on the [upcoming Che Guevara biopic The Motorcycle Diaries] or perhaps in an attempt to use up the last of the world's dwindling irony reserves, a US company that, according to Utne, probably uses Latin American sweatshop labor claims now to own the iconic Che image and is suing another T-shirt vendor for producing Che shirts.

Completely insane.

"I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns." [James G. Watt, Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, when asked in a Congressional hearing if he agreed that natural resources should be preserved for future generations. 1981]

That was 23 years ago. Do you think James "I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple" Watt feels dumb yet?

Believe it or not, that is part of the mindset of many (but not all, to be fair) evangelicals, particularly the dominion theology whackjobs; see part 5 of the linked article. Why be good stewards of God's creation when the 50-foot tall Fightin' Jesus is just going to show up and bathe everything in the radiant glow of his Magic Holy Welding Torch sometime next week?

I've been meaning to rant about this for a while, but Mark Morford recently did a column on the subject that was better than anything I could possibly write.

We are in the throes of a really intense election season, and my ability to give a shit is flagging.

This is very uncharacteristic of me, as my longtime friends will attest.

Of course, Republicans do really well when voter turnout is low, so no one can afford to become mired in apathy. So unless you're an Anarchist for Bush (although I disagree with their thesis it's quite interesting), make sure you vote. I recommend absentee ballots, unless you want to leave the electoral process to the tender mercies of Diebold.

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A diversion: Need a name for your seventh-rate garage band, but your brain is too polluted with THC to think of a truly creative one? Try Donkey Fire.

9/11

If sober reflection is what you desire today, historian Juan Cole has done an analysis of September 11th and Its Aftermath.

If you seek levity, then I direct you to these photos from an honest-to-goodness Star Wars wedding.

Just when I thought I could stop hurricane blogging...

Although it looks like Hurricane Ivan will hit the Gulf Coast instead of the Atlantic shore, South Florida is not out of the woods yet. We'll know more tomorrow. In the meantime, hurricane shutters and plywood remain affixed to my walls, and the same friends that stayed with me during Charley are planning to take shelter in Casa de Rieder again for this storm. I'll probably take more photos and put them up at the photoblog (rock you like a hurricane, for all your funny hurricane photo needs) tomorrow if that's the case. For now I'm just going to restock my food and water and make plans to commit ritual suicide if the power goes out again.

A couple of days old, but worth mentioning: More damning evidence that Bush flat-out shirked his Guard duties during Vietnam. An interesting development (well, interesting to me) is that following these accusations the White House released more documents despite having said repeatedly that they had already released all the documents they had!

I keep thinking about the circa 1980 movie Meatballs... the one with Bill Murray as a counselor at a summer camp which competes with the wealthier camp on the other side of a lake. At one point in the movie (toward the end), the two camps are getting ready for the annual summer athletic competition or something, and Mr. Murray's "pep talk" consists of screaming repeatedly "It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!"

I hear that voice in my head a lot lately... because no matter how much negative, damming, incontrovertible evidence is presented showing that W has made poor decisions and is an unfit leader for this country, it just doesn't matter to the Bush faithful (that last phrase almosts sounds dirty). You could have unimpeachable (ha!) proof of the most heinous acts, and it won't even register a blip on the radar...

THE_BONE: Documents have been released showing that George Bush got into the National Guard by hiring someone to kill the 17 people in front of him.

KOOL-AID DRINKER: George Bush is a fine American. A good man. A Godly man. I'm voting for him.

T_B: But, here's a police report showing that last week the sexually mutilated bodies of 15 Log Cabin Republicans were found in the Lincoln Bedroom. And here's a copy of the White House menu, which clearly lists "puppy soup" as an appetizer.

KAD: Those documents are questionable. I don't like partisan politics. Michael Moore is fat.

T_B: But, but... here's a videotape of Bush playing touch football on the White House lawn with a kitten instead of a ball! He just spiked the kitten! And now he's turned the camera onto its back, and HE'S ACTUALLY SNORTING COCAINE OFF OF THE CAMERA LENS! HE'S SWINGING THE KITTEN AROUND BY ITS TAIL, SNORTING COCAINE AND YELLING "I'M GONNA GO FOR THE THREE-POINT CONVERSION!!!"

KAD: John Kerry's a flip-flopper.

T_B: AHHHHHH!!!!

KAD: Flip-flop. Flip-flop.

----------
Sorry for the rant... this really ticks me off, and the impending visit by Hurricane Ivan isn't doing anything to decrease my stress level.

UPDATE: Just saw this at Waveflux: If Bush Was Running Against Jesus. Thank God I can still laugh about this stuff. Also, this [warning: .mp3 file] is what happens when someone owns U2 recordings, has access to audio clips from Bush's speeches and has way too much time on their hands. Sheer brilliance.

At 12:30 AM power was restored to the Rieder castle, marking an end to my five-and-a-half days of woe. The first task: crank the A/C down to Fortress of Solitude temperatures.

I swear to Pan that if Ivan knocks it out again this weekend I will go completely batshit insane.

-----

An email from Nani: "I thought the Beaufort Wind Scale would brighten your day....it shows how beautiful the English language can be, when explaining something as mundane as a gust of wind."

I posted this to MoFi, and someone supplied the equivalent speeds for use on land.

Pwned

For all those people confused by the exchanges between C. Clarke and myself in the comments from a few posts ago, here's an excellent Wikipedia article on "L33T." (For the true n00bs, here's another Wiki article on internet slang)

I stayed the night at a friends house yesterday, dreaming away in the cool embrace of electrically-chilled air for the first time in days. As for the prospect of returning home this afternoon to find that I too have A/C and a working refrigerator again, my fingers are crossed.

Provided that Hurricane Ivan doesn't get all gulag on me, I'll probably return to my normal routine of writing about politics and culture pretty soon.

UPDATE NUMBER ONE: People are currently coming to this blog from Google searches like:
FUNNY HURRICANE IVAN
hurricane ivan jokes

No jokes here per se, but here's a cute article by the nearly-always-wonderful Carl Hiaasen (novelist and Miami Herald columnist): Excerpts From The Handbook For Roving Hurricane Correspondents.

UPDATE NUMBER TWO: Got home to find that electricity was still off. Sigh. A phone call to Florida Power and Light reached an automated voice assuring me that "power would most likely be restored by 11:45 PM Friday." I'm going to go cry now.

1. I'm without electricity for the fourth consecutive day. I'm. going. to. snap.

2. Prior to MetaFiltration, my blog would get maybe 20 hits a day. Said page views would come from friends, correspondents, and people looking for the English translation of "Gunter glieben glauchen globen" (the words intoned prior to the world's greatest cowbell solo in Def Leppard's magnum opus Rock of Ages). the_bone was inexplicably posted to MeFi on Saturday. Here's how the stats break down for the following days:

Sunday: 605 hits
Monday: 134 hits
Tuesday: 85 hits

Things are returning to normal; so far, there have been 23 hits today.

3. For those of you who asked about the offhand "I'm playing in a band now" comment I made at the beginning of my hurricane journalism: I'm now playing keyboards (Wurlitzer, Farfisa organ, Arp string ensemble, all vintage, baby!) for local orchestral pop concern timewellspent. It's a great band with a well-reviewed national release out on Parasol, an Illinois-based indie label (random note: my brother, a Ph.D student at U of I, walks by their office every day). Find mp3s at the band's site and here.

4. Hurricane Ivan is a little worrisome. I'd really rather not have to deal with another storm so soon, but so far Ivan hasn't answered my plaintive emails. I don't want it to hit anyone, but if a US strike in inevitable is it too much to ask that Talibama take one for the team?

From the "Sucker Born Every Minute" files: Wind From Hurricane for Sale on eBay.

Still no electricity... it was a relief to come to work and be in air conditioning for an extended period of time. I heard on NPR that 80% of Palm Beach residents were without power as well. I don't know what the percentage is for Broward, but I'm still without a refrigerator, and that's all that really matters here, right?

This blog has started to degenerate into "hey, I ate a cheese sandwich today!" territory, so unless there's some really bizarre development I'll probably end the three-times-a-day updates. Like everyone else in Florida I am keeping a close eye on Ivan, which is currently making its way through the Atlantic. If Hurricane Dirty Communist mugs Florida I'll no doubt write about it as well.

Again, my thanks to everyone that has written or called. And I still have a couple of Gmail invitations to relinquish; come get 'em!

I'm over at my friend Nani's house, enjoying home A/C for the first time in a few days. I'll be leaving in a few minutes to return to Fort Lauderdale.

Pithy comment of the day: We were discussing Christian strippers (I found the reference in this MeFi thread)...

NANI: I heard somewhere that Jenna Jameson is a Christian now.

BONE: You mean the porn actress?

NANI: Yeah, her.

BONE: She's not a Christian. She just turns the other cheek.

And there was great rejoicing

1. My phone works again. Yay!

2. There are new pics up on the hurricane photoblog. Double yay!

No electricity. Boo. Was hoping I'd hit some sort of "yay" trifecta there.

My phone went out around 5:00 yesterday afternoon. I got cabin fever (again) from being locked up in a boarded up house with no light or telephone, so I'm writing this from an Internet cafe on South Beach while munching yummy guava pastelitos. Huzzah! As much as I normally hate the idea of owning a cell phone, I'm really wishing I had one right now.

I'm still without power, and it looks like it could be a few days before it is restored. I'm told that some residents of Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda (which my friend Casey swears means "fat female genitalia") just recently had power restored after Hurricane Charley, which was three weeks ago. Bah. I'm more worried about having a working telephone, though. My neighbor across the street has a generator going, so last night I went over there and watched Jurassic Park II: Cavalcade of Shitty Animated Dinosaurs.

Thanks to correspondents for the iPhoto tips. Pics should be uploaded this evening.

Julie's been living with her folks in Ocala for the past few months... they lost power yesterday evening with seven people in the house. Not good. I heard this second-hand from a cell-phone-possessing neighbor, so I don't know what the current situation is (that wasn't an electricity pun, I swear!); I'll call in a while, from a pay phone if need be.

I'm apparently supposed to teach tomorrow. Not a problem, but since I have no way of waking up on time I may be late... and without the means to wash clothes, I may be dressed extremely casually. The administration at my school is pretty great and will probably understand, provided I'm not wearing cut-offs and a Red Elvises T-shirt or something.

With Hurricane Ivan possibly on the way I'm not taking down shutters and plywood just yet, so once I finish goofing around down here in Miami the to-do list for today will include:

Grilling what meat I can, and throwing away anything that is in immediate danger of spoiling.

Clearing away fallen branches.

Lamenting my fate.

(Just kidding about that last one. Kind of. I do realize that I got really lucky and that it could have been much worse.)

I'm sorry if my hurricane bloggery has turned out to be kind of boring. I can't help but feel that it would have been more interesting if the tree in my front yard had fallen on my house, or if I had pictures of my cat being electrocuted or something. Not that I'm complaining. Overmuch. As it stands, all I have are tales of being hot and uncomfortable (without air conditioning my house feels like the interior of Pavarotti's underpants) and some to-be-published photos of my attempts at culinary improvisation. Again, my apologies.

A query for Mac users: I usually use Photoshop to resize photos to a size suitable for web publication. That's not an option right now as my Windows machine is indisposed, and I'm very new to Macs and have never used iPhoto. Can one use iPhoto to resize pictures from (for instance) 1600 pixels wide to a more manageable 300? Feel free to leave an answer in comments... the sooner I figure this out, the sooner documentation of my embarrasing pseudo-sandwiches can be made public for all the world to see.

Don't Save A Prayer For Me Now... Save It 'Til The Morning After

[/duran_duran]

My laptop died mid-post this morning. I'm scribbling this from a neighbor's house right now, as I recharge the PowerBook off of his generator. A correspondant notes that there was a recent recall on G4 batteries, as they have a tendency to lose their charge. As much as I love my PowerBook, I'm considering going to the Apple Store and kicking someone in the nuts. (No, I'm not bitter or violent, I've just wanted an excuse to use that link for a while)

The worst has now passed. The storm made landfall north of West Palm Beach, and although it'll continue to bitchslap Florida for another day or so it appears that all is well. I am still without power, and should be living an 18th-century candlelit life for a while longer. I am also in dire need of a shower... with the "boil water" advisory I'm hesitant to do so, since the whole point of bathing is to get grime and bacteria off of your body, not to put them on.

A few things:

1. No damage to the house, fortunately. There were several fallen branches, some of which dropped uncomfortably close to the cars, but other than that things are swell.

2. Wow, I was Metafiltered! Pretty cool, especially since I've wanted an account there for almost two years. I don't anticipate getting one out of this, but I'm still psyched seeing as how it's one of my favorite sites on the Intra-webby. The MeFi thread points to other excellent Hurricane Frances blogs as well.

3. As a result of the above MeFi post, I actually had someone request a Gmail invitation from me! (Hi, Jennifer from Key West!) I'm probably the only person to get rid of a Gmail invite in the US this past week. Keep the requests coming; email me at r i e d e r [at] gmail.com for hot unadulturated teenage 1 GB mailbox action.

4. I got stir crazy and went driving around for a while, returning when another gust of tropical storm-force winds blew through. Fort Lauderdale looks mostly fine. I'm considering driving around and taking more photos, but am kind of leery about documenting people's misery. As it is, I'm leery enough about documenting my own misery. There are more photos going up at rock you like a hurricane as soon as may be.

5. I hate using Safari to interface with Blogger.

Big love to Hurricane Consolation Force 2004: Julie, Casey, Phil at Waveflux, Chris at Creek Running North, Nani, Niki, my coworker Mike, Tone, and the wacky and loveable simians at MonkeyFilter.

I've (not) Got The Power

Still without power... interestingly, most of my friends in South Florida still have electricity and are enjoying such modern amenities as light and air conditioning.

The lamest thing about this is having to do everything by candlelight. It's really dismal in here, and the lack of light is really hard on my eyes as I try to read.

I called my friend Nani in Miami to get a hurricane update. According to her...

1. There is a "boil water" advisory in effect for Fort Lauderdale. Bah.

2. For the moment, gun sales have been banned in Palm Beach County.

I've taken more photos but will have to wait to post them until I can dump them into Photoshop on my main computer to resize them. When things die down tomorrow I'll run around the neighborhood and take some more photographs... apparently a huge tree went down onto a house nearby (over on Riverland Road), but I don't know if I feel comfortable documenting other people's misery.

That's it for the evening... the PowerBook is eating up a lot of power every time I boot up, so I'm going to call it a night. The plan right now is to sleep if I can, and to either read or drink beer and play piano if I can't. I'll post another update in the morning.

I slept for a couple of hours, and was awakened by the phone. So now I'm up, and will be for several hours. Last I heard, landfall for Hurricane Frances was going to be midnight-ish, several hours later than initially forecast. Ugh.

One distressing development: the laptop is apparently using a lot of power when I boot up... there were well over 2 hours remaining when I shut down, and I turned it on to find that there was only 1:59 left. A question: Is it better to leave the machine in "sleep" mode instead of powering down when I'm done?

Hurricane Frances stalls, strengthens; nearly 500,000 lose power

Best line from that article: Authorities, already overburdened, found themselves dealing with bursts of human stupidity.

Not much else to report. Still no power, lots of rain, lots and lots of wind. I'm eating Froot Loops in an attempt to use up the milk before it goes bad.

Power just went out. My PowerBook has 3 hours and 26 minutes worth of battery life remaining and is optimized for "highest battery life," so I'll continue to post for as long as I can, shutting the computer down when not in use.

According to our local NPR affiliate, Broward County is "getting a break right now." Funny, this doesn't feel like a break!

Highly Squall-ified

Surprisingly enough, I got almost nine hours of sleep last night.

It appears as though my neck of South Florida is out of danger from direct hurricane-force winds. We are in the throes of a nasty tropical storm though. I've had power continuously, although it's flickered once or twice and I expect it'll go out eventually. Winds are occasionally blowing at 40-50 mph right now, and we're probably in the midst of a squall. The Palm Beaches will probably get munched.

On one of the news stations, there was live footage of some guy surfing the huge waves in Pompano Beach just north of Fort Lauderdale. For those of you unfamiliar with Florida's coastline, it might help to know that we don't get waves the same way that, say, California does. The ocean is normally rather placid, which stymies surfers and the like.

So right now, there is a man surfing off of Pompano, with sheriff's officers standing on the beach, commanding him to come in (the coastline is a mandatory evacuation zone). Surfing guy came in briefly to chat with reporters, talked about his "constitutional right to surf," and went right back out again.

Go surfing guy, go! Shine on, you crazy diamond!

Two new photos are up.

"It's true there were dark storm clouds, [Describe your balls!] heavy, black, and pendulous, toward which they were driving."

Ah, I loves me some Rocky Horror.

The latest word: no one knows. One station says it'll hit Palm Beach, another says it'll land further north... it's an unpredictable storm, and no one is willing to make a prediction, even less than a day out. It seems to be diminishing in strength a little, which is good.

So, I'll play on the main computer until the power goes out, and then will work from the laptop until the phone lines go or the battery dies. After that... I'll probably just read by candlelight. Just like Lincoln! Well, I'll probably spend some time figuratively and/or literally crapping my pants as well, especially with everything dark and loud clanging noises coming from outside.

UPDATE: Ugh. First asthma attack in a couple of years, probably brought on by the cold I'm nursing. Figures. Fortunately I have Albuterol handy (albeit with an expiration date of 7/03). No biggie.

UPDATE #2: OK, there's some certainty that landfall will be to the north. The storm will dump torrential rains on Broward county though, and I expect that we'll lose power at some point. I should miss the worst of the winds, though.

A great hurricane tip from my friend Niki: "It will get really hot inside the house if the power goes out. Take a damp cloth and moisten the back of your neck, forehead, backs of you elbows and knees to keep cool. And a damp cloth laid across the back of your neck will do wonders."

That's all for tonight... I've been reading a wonderful biography of Rainer Maria Rilke, and I'm going to get a little further in it before trying to sleep.

Water, water everywhere...

... and not a drop to drink.

I spotted several gallon jugs of purified water in the shed off of my patio yesterday... alas, when I took a closer look at them today I dicovered that they were empty. My backup plan to fill the bathtub also was a wash (ha!) because the lame-ass plug isn't sealing. So I'm relegated to emptying icetrays and filling up pots and pans to ensure that I have drinking water for the next few days.

I would have been the worst Boy Scout ever.

UPDATE: In comments, Waveflux says "Hey - fill up those jugs! Forget about the icetrays."

And he's absolutely right, of course. I could just fill up the fucking jugs! I am tres dumbass!

New photos are up at rock you like a hurricane!

We're seeing more inclement weather as the outer bands begin to roll through. These squalls bring gusts of tropical wind force. I was actually out in one... I had initially parked a car next to the hurricane awning since I couldn't fasten it down. Well, the awning was rattling so bad at such (relatively) low wind speeds that I had no choice but to go out and repark the car so that it was pushing ever so slightly into the awning. It'll still rattle annoyingly, but hopefully it won't be as intolerable now.

It appears as thought the storm is taking a slight turn to the left, and is reorienting itself anew toward Palm Beach/Fort Lauderdale. Additional details later.

UPDATE: Tone posted a hurricane-related chat we had yesterday over on his blog.

A Chat

(a little while ago)

julie_r: I think I'm gonna get dressed and take the kids to the pool
chrisrieder2001: back home, "dropping the kids off at the pool" was slang for "taking a dump"
chrisrieder2001: at least among my friends
julie_r: lol
chrisrieder2001: i thought that's what you meant at first!
julie_r: anyone for a baby ruth?
chrisrieder2001: rad
julie_r: the weather channel is playing "so what"
chrisrieder2001: nice!
chrisrieder2001: and somewhat appropriate!
julie_r: lol, hadn't thought of that
julie_r: how much of the weather channel can you watch in 1 day?
julie_r: how boring
chrisrieder2001: technically, 24 hours' worth. If you want to get specific.
julie_r: omg, I hate you
chrisrieder2001: lol
chrisrieder2001: mission accomplished!

It begins

As I was finishing the outdoors preparations, the weather suddenly turned from sunny and breezy to grim and foreboding (my, I'm pulling out the cliches today!). The first band of rain hit half an hour ago, and winds have picked up quite a bit.

The storm looks like it will be somewhat less powerful than initially predicted, and since it's turned a little to the north it looks like South Florida won't get munched too badly. I hate the feeling I get of "Whew, thank heavens it probably won't land here," because someone's going to get creamed, and badly. But all the same, I'm fairly relieved.

While pissing and moaning to Julie on the phone yesterday, she pointed out that the walls of this house are filled three-quarters-high with concrete. After digesting that information for a while, I found that it eased my angst considerably. Falling trees and tornados spawned by the storm are a concern, but I'm not in a flood plain and this house can easily stand up to these winds.

-----

In comments, California resident Chris Clarke made an earthquake joke. As a former Californian I can appreciate that, but I'd rather face a low-grade temblor than a low-grade hurricane any day. Here's a repost of the rationale I left in the comments:

"About the earthquake thing: I would rather deal with an earthquake any day, because you don't know it's coming. If I'm going to perish, I don't want to know about it in advance. I guess that's because I'm essentially an optimist.

"With hurricanes you get the worst of all worlds. You get enough warning to totally stress out, but not enough to have any certitude over where the epicenter of the storm will be (and therefore a sense of how screwed you are/aren't) until just before it lands. I'm gonna have 140 mph winds blowing directly into my colon? Fine. I just don't want to know about it."

The photoblog is up! rockyoulikeahurricane.blogspot.com

The winds were pretty steady at 10-15 mph all day today. Not much to be concerned about there... except for the fact that it usually isn't that windy in South Florida. The steady breeze therefore ended up being rather ominous. The temperature was in the low 90s, but with the humidity and whatnot the heat index was well over 100 degrees. That made putting up the shutters and schlepping things around outside particularly vile, moreso because I'm nursing a summertime head cold, probably given to me by one of my darling students. Fun!

With the windows boarded up everything inside is abnormally dark. It's not a big deal right now being nighttime and everything, but I'm really concerned about the effect that this dreariness and the feeling of being locked in will have on my psyche tomorrow. I spent about half an hour today in a total malaise... I sat down on the couch to get a feel for storm news, and could not pry myself up, even though I was telling myself "Come on, there's still so much work to do."

It looks as though the storm will primarily affect points somewhat to the north, but these hurricanes are wily little fuckers and it could turn on me like Zell "Achtung!" Miller at any moment. I talked to Julie a while ago (she was quite literally at ground zero for Hurricane Andrew), and she doesn't seem to think that it's too big of a concern. Perhaps she's right... but then again, she's saying that from North Florida. All the same, I'm still kind of worried.

One mitigating factor: This house is largely constructed out of concrete, and was pretty much designed to be hit by a big storm. So if Frances does attack Broward County I'm in decent shape.

The angst list:

1. I'm dead tired. I was going pretty much non-stop since 1:00 with only minor breaks. The sad thing is that I'm still not done. I plan on getting up at 6 AM to haul in patio furniture and to finish making sure that objects from my yard aren't going to fly around and end up smashing into houses and shit.

2. I'm sick. Completely stuffed up, sneezing, achy body, headache, toothache, the works. One little-mentioned side effect of hurricanes is the havoc they play with the local barometric pressure. This is uncomfortable even under the best conditions, but being totally congested will only exacerbate the discomfort. I plan on taking a handful of ibuprofen and Sudafed before landfall... and if that doesn't cut it, there's always beer.

Hurricane Blogging

I don't know where it's gonna hit... but with 140 MPH sustained winds spanning 150 miles or so, I'm pretending it's going to hit my house full-on and am preparing accordingly.

1. Put up shutters/plywood over windows. Check. Almost done.

2. Gas up the car. Check.

3. Take digital photos of anything valuable, burn 'em onto a CD for insurance purposes. Doing that tonight.

4. Hit the ATM. Check.

5. Put important financial papers, electronic equipment and so forth into plastic bags. Again, doing it tonight.

6. Secure food and water. Um... This is problematic, with a run on grocery stores underway. I may have to resort to filling up the bathtub and just using that. Yuck.

7. Regret moving to Florida. Check. This project will likely be ongoing.

If the hurricane hits, I'll keep blogging until the phone lines go down.

Republican National Convention

Haven't listened to much of it (at the risk of dwelling in an echo chamber, I've mostly listened to Air America this week. 940 AM in tha hizzy!). However, I do have a couple of comments:

1. I heard a little bit of The Arnold's speech the other night. I grew up in California (if only I were there now!), but have lived at the tip of America's Penis since '99. Therefore, despite following the recall fairly closely, it really only dawned on me then that Arnold is actually running the California state government!!! I mean, what the fuck?

2. Much ado has been made of Zell "Quisling" Miller's keynote speech at the RNC. I've tracked down a transcript, and it was... well, interesting. I would love to read it in the original German, though.

Here I Am. Rock You Like A Hurricane.

edited far after the fact: scroll up from here for further updates

UPDATED: MORNING, THURSDAY, 9/2

Well, Hurricane Frances looks like it's on a direct course to collide into South Florida. Folks here in Miami and Fort Lauderdale are pretty apprehensive... it's a Category Four storm, with the potential to make this entire region its bitch. We'll know more by this evening.

Although I'm about eight miles inland, I'm still very nervous. I'm frightened by hurricanes, and have heard enough stories from Julie (who was at ground zero for Hurricane Andrew in '92) to know that I never want to experience a full-on storm. I've been though intense tropical storms and a low-grade hurricane or two, but nothing this big.

Probably the only thing that will keep me sane if it happens is to find a way to keep myself busy once all the preparations (storm shutters, supplies etc.) are completed. I have a battery-powered laptop, dial-up internet access, and a digital camera. If it hits us, I'm blogging this thing. Hopefully that'll keep the heebie-jeebies at bay.


UPDATE, WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON: According to a tropical-strike probability map found here, it looks like landfall will be well to the north. These things turn at the last second though (Andrew did it in '92, and a similar situation existed with Hurricane Charley a few weeks ago), so I'm putting up the storm shutters in a little while. Broward County (where I live) has cancelled school for tomorrow and Friday, and Miami-Dade (the school district where I work) is considering similar measures. My band rehearsal has been cancelled this evening (oh yeah... I'm playing in a band now. More on that another time when my home isn't facing watery/windy doom), and I'll do the store run tomorrow if I'm not working.

The Miami Herald just did an article on evacuations and the like. From the article:

Many Florida delegates to the Republican National Convention in New York City began considering an early return home. "Do what Republicans do best of all," Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings told them in New York. "Decide for yourself what is best for you and your family."

1. Aparently Jennings believes that Dems, Greens and so on are incompetent at deciding what our families' best interests are.

2. I thought what Republicans did best of all was screw over poor and working-class people and start unnecessary wars. Well, Republican politicians anyway.

UPDATE, THURSDAY MORNING: I'm posting this from the laptop at work. Yes, work. The administration of the Miami-Dade County school district had students stay home today, but asked teachers to report to help secure school sites. I call bullshit on this... we all have things we need to do to secure our own houses, and all of the stuff at the schools is insured anyway. Perhaps I'm being a little ungenerous here... but damnit, I have storm shutters to put up! UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Rehearsal for the men's chorus has been cancelled for tonight.

I have several Gmail invites. I love Gmail, and would enjoy the opportunity to spread the G-Love. Email me at r i e d e r @ gmail if you want hot Google-powered internet communications action.