"Mother of all storms"

So C. Ray Nagin, borrowing a phrase from Saddam Hussein, calls Gustav "the mother of all storms" and claims it has a 900 mile footprint in order to get everybody out of town. All evacuees were entered into the government database and issued free yellow plastic bracelets, which will undoubtedly be a fashion must for some time in the future. Can't wait for the New York Times piece in the Styles section. Everybody is practicing heading off to camp, something which is likely to happen far more often in the futureworld of terror, disaster and instant news cycles, when interment camp will be FUN and people will want to go for all the cool bennies. Just like the 9/2 Zippy the Pinhead strip about the newest technological innovation, earring implants that connect you to the blogosphere, MSNBC and Fox News. Nice to see the self congratulatory reactions from everybody from C. Ray to the Army Corps after Gus passed a time. The levee system withstood the hurricane, they say gleefully. The hurricane that came in as a cat 2 rather than predicted cat 4 and basically missed New Orleans altogether. Yet everyone watched that water pour over the west wall of the industrial canal for hours. Will the west wall of the industrial canal last another week? Year? How long before the parts of New Orleans that didn't get flooded last time are added to the destruction? The pattern almost appears deliberate, even down to he incredible repetition of loose ships rolling free in the industrial canal. Turns out nobody is responsible for telling Southern Scrap to get their massive hulls out of there, hurricane or not. Crazy Eddie decided to skip the evacuation and spent his non curfew hours rescuing lost dogs and checking out the action at Johnny White's. "People are complaining about not being allowed back into town," he notes, "but there are trees and power lines down all over the place. It's not safe to come back yet." Listening to Coco Robicheaux's new disc and it's the perfect soundtrack for this ongoing disaster movie.