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Word has this new attachment that lets you post to the blog from word… kinda bitchin’  ‘n just testing it now.

Hurrican Rita

Most people will probably think I’m an asshole for saying this but here it goes: I hope hurricane Rita hits New Orleans.

I know its probably out of range of giving New Orleans a direct hit at this time, but I’ve been thinking about this for a few days and I hope the hurricane hits New Orleans. I look at it this way: The hurricane is going to hit land somewhere; why not hit an area that is already evacuated and the people are already moving on (I’m not saying they have returned to a life as normal, but they have already found shelter and their support system is already in place). Additionally the area is already destroyed; the hurricane couldn’t do much more damage. This would be better than the hurricane destroying a new area. Finally, most of the nation does not want to rebuild New Orleans, some polls show that 75% of the US is against rebuilding the city. Perhaps this would finally convince the government that it is stupid to build below sea level right on the edge of the gulf/lake and they would abandon New Orleans.

The hurricane sucks, and it is bad that it has to happen; but facing the fact that it is going to happen why not have it hit an already devastated area?

Fucking Group Projects

We have a large project to do in my Poli Sci class in groups of three. So far we were suppose to have met twice and began working things out. Both times the other people failed to show up. On top of that one person got switched. Friday afternoon I sent out an email and I still haven’t gotten a response. I spoke with the instructor just a few minutes ago about it and his suggestion was “Well, try to get together with them.” My response to that is “Well, what the fuck do you think I’ve been doing?” Assign me to new people or let me do the fucking thing on my own. Holy shit why did I get out of the Corps?

Numb-skull Nagin

How many bad-judgment calls is Mayor Nagin going to make before he learns to shut up? You have another hurricane entering the gulf and you are telling people that it is ok to go back home behind weakened levies, no escape plan and very little supplies plus even the federal government is saying not to let so many people back yet. What the hell are you thinking? A recall effort of Governor Blanco has started, where is Nagin’s recall effort?

Pitiful

Afghanistan is having it's first parliamentary elections in 30 years and they are going well. Instead the top news is the fucking Emmys. Fucking sad.

China's Katrina

How the hell does this happen? China was just hit by a typhoon that was as powerful as Katrina, yet no lives were lost in the last report I heard. Granted China isn’t the greatest in releasing casualty figures but for them to claim that no one was killed means that the death toll must have been low if any at all. So China was able to evacuate a million people when they saw that a city was going to take the full brunt of the typhoon, yet Louisiana leadership is so poor they leave everyone to evacuate themselves. Perhaps China is becoming a powerhouse quicker that we thought?

Expansion

I was thinking about this since last weekend but after perusing the Carnival of Cordite this weekend I think I need to expand the number of firearms I own. I’m on a fairly restrictive budget so I have to choose wisely but I certainly think I may need to increase my preparations. Granted I’m not in a disaster prone area of the US: Hurricane Ivan last year just caused swollen rivers and creeks around here with some wind but nothing serious. Earthquakes of any magnitude are fairly rare here. Tornados are not too common in this area. So the likely hood of a natural disaster causing great harm in this area is slim but with the security threat o the US it probably wouldn’t hurt to be a little more prepared than with just a 9mm.

So what do I prepare myself with? I’ve read a couple of sites and thought about their reasoning for particular firearms. And so far this is what I’ve come up with:

• One shotgun, preferably a 12 gauge. I have this back at the parents’ place and will probably bring it back here next time I go to visit them. This is great for close in defense plus with slugs it will work well against deer for food. Additionally, anyone that entered your place at night would have no doubt you mean business when you chamber a round… that sound is just unmistakable.
• One semi auto pistol. I have the 9mm Glock 17 right now. The only problem with it is that with the abundance of armor now the 9mm isn’t too effective and the full size frame isn’t very concealable. To resolve both issues I’m seriously looking at a Glock 36. It is a slim, compact, single stack .45 that holds 6 +1. I would like to fire one before I buy it just so I can see how it fits in my hand and how the recoil is. If this is not a comfortable fit I will probably go with the Glock 27 which is a sub-compact .40 holding 9 +1 or with the grip extension I can get 11 +1.
• One long rifle. There are many ways to go one this. My first choice would be an AR-15 since I loved the M-16 while I was in the Marine Corps. However Cowboy Blob pointed out that in a disaster zone it may give off the wrong impression. This however may be a good second option. It doesn’t hold as many rounds and it takes little longer to reload however it fires a round that does the job and it doesn’t look nearly as threatening as an ‘eeevil black rifle’. The Thunderbolt probably has an effective range to a little more than 100 yards while I’ve shot the M-16 with accuracy to 500 yards. But the Thunderbolt ammo can be used for the next weapon of choice.
• One .357 magnum revolver. Reliable and effective. Ammo is plentiful and the .38 special ammo is cheap to practice with.

Regardless which one I choose first this will be an expensive endeavor to stock up. I certainly won’t be able to finish this list in a year, and probably not even in two years.

Wal-Mart

I like Wal-Mart. Despite the fact that the shelves were nearly bare this evening I like Wal-Mart. The shelves were nearly bare because this is the second weekend since school started so people were still out scrounging up the supplies for their new dorms and apartments. Despite all this I was still able to find my bagels, OJ, eggs, tortilla shells and 9mm ammo. God bless this land where I can get breakfast stuff and 9mm ammo and stand at only one check-stand.

Current Events

Plenty of people smarter than I have weighed in on the Katrina issue. All I have to say is that disaster preparation starts at the individual level, then local level, then state, then federal. Unfortunately things appear to have failed in that order too. The problems seem to persist at all levels still.
But no one noticed that a nearly 300 people died in Bangladesh because they got a shit-load of rain in one day (radio said something about 1000+ people died). It reminds me of a joke I heard three or four years ago: Bush, Cheney and Powell are sitting around a table in a bar talking about plans for the war. Finally Bush goes to the bartender and says “Our plan is to kill 500 Taliban and one bicyclist.” The bartender asked why one bicyclist and Bush turns to the other guys “You see? No one cares about the Taliban!” We lose people here and it’s a huge deal, Bangladesh loses nearly 300 or Iraq loses 985
in a stampede and no one cares. I’m not saying our loss is no big deal, but the others were hardly a five-second switch into the international news. Are their lives worth less than ours? Four major news networks (five if you include the weather channel) are dedicating nearly twenty-four hour coverage to the gulf coast and the other countries are summed up in a few seconds between reports from the gulf coast. The liberal news network wants to say we are horrible for our disregard of Iraqis, Afghanis, and many others yet they seem pretty quick to disregard them too when they get the chance. BTW: I find it bizarre that the weather channel has some of the best coverage of Katrina and the situation now.

Shit happens; I understand that. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and plenty of other shit happen because mother-nature needs to bitch slap us sometimes. I think the worst part of it all was the violence that broke out. I know some of the stories were hyped (peoples’ throat slit, rapes, bodies lying in feces) but you can’t deny the looting. Hell, there is even a video of police looting a Wal-Mart. They weren’t scrounging for food or clean socks (understandable given the situation); they were looking for shoes and whatever else they could help themselves to. Lawlessness was rampant and it was pretty fucked up for a few days.
Bill Whittle breaks it down pretty well with his Tribes. Go read it if you haven’t.

Slack-ass...

I’ve been pretty quiet lately… sometimes I just don’t know what to say. So much and so little has been going on lately.

As for the mundane stuff class has started. It’ll be an interesting semester with the load of reading that I’ll have to do… but hopefully I learn something out of it all.
The new apartment is still good. I’ve been really anal about cleaning this place to the point that it was hard for me to leave my roommates dishes in the sink and not put them in the dishwasher (he’ll eventually take care of it himself). Twice last week I cleaned my bathroom… not because of any O-ring blowout but just because I’ve been so uptight about cleaning – it’s as if I’m worried a Drill Instructor will show up and inspect my shit.
Work has started to suck. This summer we were understaffed. I pulled a lot of weight and so did the one supervisor we had. If I finished up my stuff I would try to help her out just because I wanted to keep busy (we are allowed to slack like no other at this job; for some reason I have a hard time doing it). Never did I get a word of thanks for the extra work I did and never did it bother me till she got pissed at me for calling her one day. Basically the short of it was that I worked too much at it… I was treating it like the military and it wasn’t, I needed to relax. She said I was making too many mistakes: now granted I made some mistakes; most of those were that I missed filling in a box. But hell, I had nearly 70-80% (conservatively) of the work load at my level, of course I’m going to miss filling in a box every-now-and-then. So I’ve relaxed; I’ve quit working so many hours and now I’m just doing the minimal number of hours till things change. If all the work doesn’t get done at the end of the week it doesn’t matter for me. Tomorrow we have our ‘beginning of the year’ meeting; depending on how things go there I may continue to work the minimal hours or I might go back to working all my hours. If I do get bumped up to a supervisor then some things will change (granted I noticed one already when another supervisor showed up for the fall semester and I’m damn glad he said it).
Oh well, enough of this bullshit; next post will be about current events… err, events from last week that are still lingering…. yeah.