almost a near miss

Two years ago, I sat in the Houston airport on a layover following my first visit to Portland. At 6 a.m., the airport was quiet, lonely. The sole open newsstand was selling early editions: newspapers expressing cautious relief that Katrina’s worst had missed New Orleans.

CNN flashed overhead, dulled by the white noise of the vacuum cleaners. At this early hour, all they could offer but speculation and radar.

Meanwhile, New Orleans began to fall apart.

But for a moment in the airport -- before the world knew the levees had breached and the city was drowning -- it was calm.

food porn

Sean, Sarah and Laura came over for dinner last night. They were well fed.

And now, I'm off to the fair.

investing in disaster

Home a week and all the blog sees is a few lousy haikus? Weak sauce. Later I may get around to posting some information about how my time has been spent thus far.

Until then, people interested in that sort of thing should read Michael Lewis' (Moneyball piece in the New York Times Magazine about the development of a catastrophe bond market. Fascinating stuff to a disaster junkie. It also opens with a hell of lede:

It was Aug. 24, 2005, and New Orleans was still charming.

after three innings
hundreds of kids cheer madly
at a shirt cannon

Live from the Metrodome, Twins Haiku Blogging, apparently on camp day:

cuddyer grand slam
centers huge rally in first
twins lead seven - zip.

trouble in paradise

My job makes me a storm junkie. But while it's too early to predict with certainty Hurricane Dean's eventual U.S. landfall (though at this point, my guess is a landfall just south of the Texas/Mexico border), Jamaica is about to be devastated. At the moment Dean is a Category 4 (stronger than Katrina at landfall) and barring some drastic change, by tomorrow night, could be a Cat. 5 bearing down on the island.

Third world countries always suffer more from natural disasters. The deadliest storm of 2005 (which included Katrina and Rita) was Hurricane Stan, killing more than 2,000 in Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala.

My memories of Jamaica are vague, having been there when I was 11 or so. Shame I didn't have a chance to go back, as I think the country may be irreparably changed in the next few days.

another fine Italian experience

Upon arriving at my hotel tonight, my soul worn from 34 days in Texas, the simplest possible feeding was in order. Ambling across the parking lot to Mazzios Italian Eatery my mind wandered to those lovely spring days in Rome.

Gazing at the primary-colored plastic menu above the counter I surveyed a landscape of Italian classics, and questions filled my mind: Dare I enter the "Dippin' Zone?" Could an unassuming cafe in Temple, TX really replicate old-country classics like "Italian Nachos," and "Dippin' Fries?" Are their "Wings of Fire!" really authentic? Are they as loud as advertised?

But the true test of an Italian restaurant revolves around a single dish. Every Italian is raised eating this dish and every restaurant serves it. Festivals in its honor are held from Turin to Bologna. The Pope eats it every day, even keeping it under his hat in case he gets peckish during afternoon mass. I'm speaking of course, of the Quesapizza.

Four. More. Days.

old internet humor > new internets humor

Finding hilarity on the internets is a challenge. This is particularly true as I believe the internet's funniness is inversely proportional to how long I have been surfing. Furthermore, so much internet humor these days is reliant on trite cyberjokes (like calling the internet the internets or the tubes). On a lark, I started reading through old monzy.com posts.

Fucking hilarious. I started in October 1998 (back when I sort of knew Monzy), and I've got the rest of my afternoon planned out.

best timesuck ever

Gimme Friction Baby is the best, most addictive internets game I've ever played. It has all the elements of great game design: simplicity, difficulty, and easy replayability. Most dangerously, it seduces my brain into thinking 'just one more try.'

Do not follow the above link if you have anything to accomplish.

Update: I fixed the link, it should work now.

the end is near

Clear your calendars and empty your stomachs. My triumphant return to Minneapolis impends. In six days I leave Waco, a trail of empty beer bottles and disheveled hotel rooms evidence of my time here.

Topping my priorities at home: cooking. Having been home but nine days in three months, with no spell longer than five days, I am eager to stock my kitchen, throw on my apron and commence the delicious cycle of cook, eat, repeat. Who’s coming over?

Tacos

real mexican coke,
killer salsa, beans and rice.
but the pork was dry.

sleeping with eyes open:
a skill for which i now long.
time for some tacos..

if i'd brought a book
excruciating minutes
would pass with haste. sigh.

coworkers singing
reading, surfing and eating
is it lunchtime yet?

mobile internet
lacks flash games to quell boredom
so haikus it is.

Just when I thought I could moblog to pass the time in Athens, Texas I learn I can only send 160 characters per message. Brevity indeed.

acceptible losses

I lose something on every deployment.

In Baton Rouge I lost my favorite shirt, a yellow button-down I miss often.

Here in Texas I've already lost my indeitorrents t-shirt. Though not sure in which hotel's closet I left it, in my mind's eye I can see it, sitting there.

There's something to this notion of leaving things behind as I travel about. It's usually weeks or months until I realize what I've abandoned. I wonder what happens to this property, these things. While once mine, they are no longer, not anymore something I identify with, not anymore something I value. Most often it's clothing. Is it donated to goodwill? Does the housekeeper take it home? Are these things that I once thought a part of me, or at least something that identified me, are they now items that someone else uses to identify themselves? Or maybe they are just keeping someone warm, clothed.

But I sure would like them back.

if it weren't for my horse...

On Baseball Tonight, once the best summary of an evening's baseball, one analyst struggles to corral two former players incohernecy into semi-watchable television. The segment goes to commercial with a player saying:

I'm just sayin', I'm just sayin'.

To which the analyst has no choice but to reply:

Just sayin'. That's what you do.

Hoping not to lose more brain cells, I flip to ESPN2, where two women are punching each other in the face. I bang my head on the table as I write this.

Please make it stop.

a case of the fridays

Whilst traveling, Friday nights are my least favorite. For when I go out, I seek a quiet bar, to have a beer and read a book or perhaps watch a ballgame. Sometimes dinner for one is a salve against the constant assaults of a workday.

But not on Fridays. Fridays bars are full of young idiots loading themselves with booze. Restaurants are loud and lines lengthy. Takeout is a chore as kitchens backed up from a packed house know they can delay my food at less cost to their servers. Television is (even) less worthwhile with none of the syndicated goodies on which I rely and no Jon Stewart send me off to sleep.

So it goes, another night in Waco, in my hotel, in a place far away from everywhere I want to be.

The first test having been but partially successful, a second follows.

This is a test to enable moblogging.

To Governor Pawlenty:

Now you want to raise taxes? Now, with after scores of people hurt and several killed, now it's ok to acknowledge that government isn't the devil, that taxes aren't evil?

Now it's time to raise taxes? Now that your political future is in trouble. Now that your tax-hating buddies are coming to town in a year and they will be a gaping gap illustrating the failure of your ideology, now it's time to work together?

Not last year, when legislators sent you a bill with a modest five cent increase in the gas tax, the first in 20 years? After all, as you said, DFLers "have simply been obsessed" with a gas tax. Those crazy liberals, always obsessed with keeping citizens alive, obsessed with ensuring our infrastructure will meet the demands of a growing population.

But now your spokesman says it’s ok to break the pledge in light of "extraordinary circumstances."

These extraordinary circumstances your spokesman refers to, that’s what it takes to invest in our state? The death and injury of scores and the loss of a critical piece of infrastructure? Or is it just extraordinary that your Vice Presidential aspirations may have collapsed moments after the bridge?

Earlier this year you called a gas tax increase "an unnecessary and onerous burden." Would that burden be more or less onerous than that borne by Julia Anne Blackhawk’s two children who will now grow up motherless? Or perhaps since Jessica Engebretsen is 18 her mother is unnecessary? Did Patrick Holmes children really need to learn to fish with their dad?

In 2005 you asked "how dumb can they be?"referring to DFLers who sent you another gas tax increase that you vetoed. How dumb indeed. Of course back then, your fealty to the Taxpayers League scored you huge points with Republicans nationally.

It’s only now that a visible crisis puts your career at risk, much as you’ve put Minnesotans at risk, that you’re willing to "come together and work as aggressively as we can to address these issues."

Shame on you.

hindsight

Gov. Tim Pawlenty is willing to retreat from his firm opposition to a state gas tax increase in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse and approve a transportation funding bill during a possible special session, a spokesman said Friday.

Great, so now taxes are ok. Now that people have died and infrastructure failed, we can acknowledge that these things cost money. Thanks. Jackass.