The Only Political Post I'm Going to Write

I watched part of the McBama debate last night and I was once again struck by how little I liked either candidate. I was only 17 in 2000 so I can blame HangingChadGate and 9/11 and Iraq on everyone else, but in 2004 I was so distrustful of both candidates that I didn't vote. Now what with the economic downturn fully-fledged into an economic crisis, I wish I had voted for Kerry so I could legitimately complain at how bad W had fucked up this country. But that's not what I want to talk about...

I've been called a homophobe more times then I've been called good looking. I've been called misogynist more times than I've been called tall. Where am I going with this? As much as I don't trust Obama, I can't possibly vote for anyone in a party whose taken an official stance against abortions or gay marriages. In the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, the framers made clear the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Life's a tricky one when your talking about abortions especially late termers, but the liberty for a woman to choose is pretty clear, and if that child will hamper her pursuit of happiness, then that's 2 to a shaky 1. When it comes to gay marriages, I'm going to paraphrase Jon Stewart because I don't remember the exact quote: I'm against gay marriages, that's awful, oh wait, you mean I don't have to marry a dude? Then why would I care? If someone finds comfort in the arms of someone with matching genitalia, then that sounds like pursuit of happiness to me, to say nothing of liberty. We hold these truths to be self evident, unalienable rights, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I can't figure out why that's so hard to understand.

It all goes back to religion and religious extremists. As near as I can figure, the only people who really get fired up about pro-life and against gay marriage are the extreme Christians (I'm looking at you Southern Baptists)who spent a bunch of time looking through the bible trying to find something that they could interpret to mean that stuff that they don't agree with is immoral.

Anyone who lets their fear be mongered by Hannity or OReilly and the rest of the Fox News crew is an idiot. I don't care if you're a world famous economist, if you're a Grammy winning artist or a successful entrepreneur, if you watch more than 5 minutes of Fox News on a regular basis and do anything but laugh at it, you are a victim of brainwashing and I feel sorry for you.

Rant over, I do have one positive thing to say and that is it appears that both energy independence and sustainability have become priorities on both sides of the aisle. I occasionally get these chainemails from the Hannity types talking trash about Al Gore and how his scientists lied and all sorts of other bullshit about how people that can't afford our ridiculously priced healthcare system don't deserve it. But, it seems, saying that global warming isn't real has become political suicide, which is great.

Always Evacuate to a Place that has a Hot Tub

I try not to worry about things. Worrying only begets more worrying and the next thing you know you’re having a seizure and ruining your favorite t-shirt. The thing about worrying is, if something goes wrong it’s either your fault or it’s not. If it is your fault then maybe you should of done something about it instead of worrying, and if its not your fault, that what purpose did the worrying serve except to upset, stress, or cause you to throw up on other people.

In the middle of a ferocious hurricane season, it’s easy to tell the natural born worriers from those that aren’t. Surprisingly, it seems the ones who print out the latest spaghetti models and post them outside their office are actually the calmest. It’s the one’s who refuse to admit that they know what wunderground.com is, that are in the most danger of soiling themselves or elsewise acting irrationally.

When all the computer models are pointed at you though, I suppose you are allowed to freak out a little. Such is not the case with Ike (I like Ike, but how do you get that from Dwight?) The latest models all show Ike hitting around Corpus Christi, TX and the people of New Orleans will be spared another mass evacuation. Someone told me only 10,000 people didn’t evacuate for Gustav, the storm our Mayor, Governor, and National Weather Service called The Storm of the Century. Katrina gets to keep that title for now, and will probably keep it longer than C. Ray stays in office, but that’s neither here nor there.

We evacuated the Saturday before Gustav was supposed to make his late Monday/early Tuesday landfall. I packed 4 days of clothes, 3 books, the highly portable electronics (laptop, MP3), my guitar and cooler full of water, Gatorade and string cheese. I cleaned out anything that I didn’t want to find in my refrigerator an unrefrigerated month later, started the dishwasher and headed for higher ground. I-10 was a parking lot until we got past Gulf Shores, and between three people we smoked an entire pack of cigarettes before we passed Jazz Land. By 2 in the morning we were still shy of Tallahassee so we stopped for the night in a shabby Days Inn with no pool and a lying sign about free wireless internet.

We got up early, ate Burger King breakfast and hit the road with spirits considerably higher than they were when we had stopped the previous night. I wiled away several hours reading aloud a pretty awesome book called The Diamond Age by my second favorite author. Keep in mind at this point we were still visualizing disaster scenarios and wondering when we’d see home again. We hit Orlando and stretched our legs right to the TV to turn on CNN. I unpacked the booze and made a strong drink, and didn’t worry about the storm again until after a long day of drinking, after everyone else was in bed, I smoked my last cigarette and checked the models and saw them all headed straight for Cocodrie, 50 miles west of the city, downgraded to a category 1, and wondered what everyone had been so worried about.