Once again,
THE BLOG IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE BLOG.

Anyway, life is good, confusing, and sucky, all at the same time in ND. I wish I could get past the feeling of being proud of what I've done so far with my life while at the same time thinking I could've done WAY more and wonder where I'm going and if there will be anything of worth when I get there. Existential crisis as a way of life. So much for taoism.

Glad you're alive, MP. We survived a nice hailstorm on Monday. Cats think hail is cool; it bounces off windows and stuff. Mine are also entirely unafraid of thunder.

So, I've got a new job. I didn't quit my old one, either. I am an Adjunct English Instructor teaching 3 one-credit online grammar labs. Not so much teaching: more facilitating. Hmmm. Again, am I qualified for this? Am I qualified for my full-time job? I dunno. Someone obviously thought I was. How weird is that?

Well, those are my thoughts on the day.

So much for the quick update, eh?

I apologize for giving you the short version of the Hurricane Charley experience (or non-experience in my case), but here goes:

-- Glad to be alive, still have a house, Tampa got EXTREMELY lucky
-- Parents/Brothers okay, houses okay, many others NOT so lucky
-- Weird to see so much damage in my hometown
-- Remember that you're only one hurricane/earthquake/volcano/etc from becoming a Third World country

More to follow, hopefully.

A quick update, as it is late and I have to work tomorrow:

-- Obviously, rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated. As I'm sure you all know by now, Tampa's Friday weather was just like any normal rainy day. But if we had been hit with Charley as projected, at best I'd be homeless now, at worst you wouldn't even be reading this. All I can say about it is Praise Be to Allah and we got pretty fucking lucky. My parents/brothers in Orlando weren't quite so lucky as I was, but they did not suffer any house damage, and my parents only lost power for about 18 hours. Many others in Orlando were not so lucky. It's a good thing I didn't evacuate (which many others did, and ended up in Orlando, having unknowingly put themselves directly in the path of the hurricane). I'll post a bit more about my surreal experience tomorrow. In the meantime, check this running Hurricane Charley commentary from a fellow Tampon (I know that's not what we're called, but I find it amusing).

Okay, so tell me again:
WHY DO PEOPLE LIVE IN FLORIDA????

Anyway, it's past 11, there was no film and no update. Are you still alive Mr. P?

Want update now. Man never beats nature at the one-on-one fight. Man may win some battles, usually at the expense of himself, but nature is a force far more powerful....

TODAY'S MAIN EVENT: MAN VS NATURE

This will be my third go-round up close and personal with a hurricane, the last one I spent in the better IHOP by Tech up Peachtree in Atlanta. Not being very hurricane or household savvy, I have not boarded up my patio doors... yet... may go by Home Depot and see what's left... but despite being asked to evacuate by my brothers and parents to relatively safe Orlando, I choose to remain (also, I'm not in a mandatory evac zone). After all, this is my first home, and I should go down with the ship. Not to worry, readers, as the latest reports have Charley hitting Florida just south of Tampa Bay... however, we're not out of the woods yet. Also, I'm pretty far inland, and not next to any bodies of water... there's just the matter of the forest a mere 10 ft away... :)

Film at 11...

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been busy grabbing life by the throat and punching it repeatedly. All this for the small cost of getting even less sleep than I normally do, which is about zero. Anyhoo, to business:

Well, it looks like you and I pretty much saw F9/11 in the same light. I wasn't sure what to make of my crowd... the theater was packed and they were cheering all the way through and even at the end, Lord only knows why. Feel good movie of the year, it wasn't.

Raise your hand if you thought ANY of the Congresspeople Moore talked to would agree to sign their kids up for the draft. Fighting wars is the job of the lower class, or at least it has been since we lost that sense of duty to country many, many years ago. I don't think you'll see many rich people sending their kids off to possibly die or get badly hurt in combat. You had to like the part in F9/11 with the two Marine recruiters (how did they do that and keep their jobs? in fact, how did ANYONE in that movie keep their jobs after it came out?) where they basically chased after the saddest, most hopeless inner-city kids they could find and tried to bully them into joining up with pretty much a blatant "it's not like you can do anything else with your life" type attitude.

For my part, I'm all for a full investigation into Dubya and the whole deal with his buddy in the Air Nat'l Guard and his military records... not to mention the business ties to the Saudis... it may have been conspiracy theory, but it's worth proving or debunking one way or the other.

I still have a LOT of research to do before November. But I made a major mistake when I failed to watch Kerry's nomination acceptance speech. That Obama guy is quite compelling, however, is he not? I had never heard of him before, but something tells me I'll be hearing about him in the future...

True enough, the country is in a very sad state. The good news is that soon, there will be nowhere to go but up. I do agree with Kerry in that Dubya squandered a very unique opportunity in American History to make this country so much better. He did well in his immediate post-9/11 speeches, but he pretty much allowed all that good patriotic momentum to just die. How terrible for his legacy that he had a chance to do something truly extraordinary and let it go. It saddens me to see us pretty much back to where we were pre-9/11, only just more jaded about life in general, if that was even possible. That tragedy was a wake up call, people.

Okay, so I've finally seen Farenheit 9-11. I know people said that people were standing up and cheering at the end, but no one did that in the 15 person theatre we were in last night. That, and I saw nothing to cheer about. It's great that someone is opening up some Pandora's boxes, and even knowing that this was Moore's propagandistic take on it, there are some facts that came up -- or some circumstances that should be investigated.

The most telling part, IMHO, was when Moore went to DC to ask Congresspeople to sign THEIR children up for service (in contrast, of course to the woman from Flint who encouraged her children to join the military, see the world, and pay for college -- and then lost her son).

We're in a sad state.