Dammit, I should do some work today...

But here's a lead paragraph to a news story I never thought I'd read about an American city:

NEW ORLEANS - An explosion jolted residents awake early Friday, illuminating the pre-dawn sky with red and orange flames over the city where corpses rotted along sidewalks and thousands remained stranded — crying for food, water and a way to evacuate.

Oh, no, -t. Where is she?

Oh, -t, I'm sorry.

- t, my thoughts are with you and your family. I am glad that you are safe and on your way to them.

-t, I'm so sorry to hear about your grandmother.

Oh, -t. I'm sorry.

-t and Heather, my prayers are with you.

Thanks everyone for the kind words yesterday; I passed them on to Bob Bob and he thanks you too. Papa Bob Bob seems out of the woods (he had a small heart attack during surgery, but this may have been a blessing in disguise).

Agree that the emergency response and the response to the response has been maddeningly inadequate. But I'm going gray today to get work done.

President Bush said on GMA last night that other countries have offered, but the country could deal with this by themselves.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Yes, god forbid we do something about the giant clusterfuck this has turned into that makes 'Murica look like they need help from another country.

I'm also glad I still have enough sense of irony to appreciate it if an act of God was what finally did this adminstration and their neo-con cronies in. The press seems to smell blood in the water, finally. It's a tragedy it took real blood in the water, though.

eta: oh, God, -t. Prayers and good thoughts to you and your whole family.

I knew I was taking too long to write the below post. Hell.

Aww. I was just scanning the NYT and WaPo websites and starting to feel big shining love for Mayor Nagin, with his blunt fury and pardon-my-French and evacuating his family but staying put himself because this is his job and he won't leave his post, and then I come back to b.org and everyone else is already loving him.

This morning's SFGate.com has an article about the extremely peculiar drifting of one small band of refugees: about a dozen people at Burning Man, which started before Katrina was more than an uncertain threat and has little contact with the ouside world, are from NOLA; some of them have been at Burning Man since it opened last week, and vaguely knew that "a storm" might be coming but had no idea of the devastation until late-latecomers started arriving Monday and Tuesday. One man has an internet connection and has confirmed that he has nothing left to go home to. They're all just sort of stunned and driftless, trying to contact friends and family, not certain where to go if they leave. [link]

Oh, and massive vibes and ma for -t, Heather, Dana, their families, and anyone else caught in or affected by this madness