Neal Pollack's The Maelstrom

Now they're predicting some light showers and winds up to 15 MPH. Yet again, I avoid calamity. Meanwhile, I haven't left the house in two days. Evacuees are, apparently, pissed at the empty Austin store shelves. Sorry. If anyone is stalled on I-35 somewhere between MLK Blvd and 51st Street, we have a lot of water here that we hoarded in a panic a few days ago.

Meanwhile, everyone says there's a lot of traffic out there. I'll take their word for it, and will spend the evening like the rest of the tragedy-humpers out there, watching the end of the world approach yet again on TV, or maybe a NetFlix movie. How about next week, just as an experiment, we attempt to move all of Los Angeles into San Francisco? That's about the equivalent of what's going on right now in Texas.

Posted by at 4:09 PM | Permalink

And now we wait for the swirling red monster to hit the Great State Of Texas, where I moved on a stoned whim three years ago. They're saying category one by the time Rita gets to Austin, but if this really is one of the strongest storms in recorded history, who knows? Dude! Austin has the best weed!

We've stocked up on water, dried goods, canned food, and flashlight batteries. And no, I'm not joking. If my house gets damaged, those goddamn skinflints at Allstate had better cover me, or else...I'll blog about it! Or maybe write for Slate!

There will be hard decisions in the days ahead. Do I save my cats or the boxes of remaindered copies of Never Mind The Pollacks that I have stacked up in the garage? Sacrifice a pig for me and my family, smear its blood on your chest, and whisper my name three times into a cupful of rat urine. Or just pray normally, if that's what you prefer.

Posted by at 11:41 PM | Permalink

I've got some public appearances upcoming that I'd be loath not to write about here. There is my annual show at Philadelphia's 215 Festival on October 8. Also, I've got my visit to the Vegas Valley Book Festival, on October 20-21 where I will be appearing at various times with Joe Queenan, Steve Almond, and others. Most momentously, I would like to announce a short February performance/reading tour that will bring me to Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, and Vancouver, WA. Details can be found on the Appearances link to your left.

I have finished books 40 and 41. One of them was something that got sent to me for a blurb, and I will not bother you with the details. The other one is called Big Dead Place, by Nicholas Johnson, and it gets my star of recommendation. It's rare that a book actually brings you new information while also telling a funny, twisted story. This book, a nonfiction account of a garbage worker's year plus a few months in Antarctica, does that. A lot of books purport to tell you what the world is really like. This one really does bring the news, which should come as no surprise: Man's future is bureaucratic hell punctuated by occasional bouts of near-blackout drunkenness. Plus there's great Antarctic history. Enjoy.

The Stranger of Seattle will run a longer review by me of this book sometime in the near future. Meanwhile, enjoy this already-dated humor piece by me in this week's issue.

Posted by at 9:09 AM | Permalink

Of all the low, disgusting things the President has done in the wake of the hurricane (and they are legion), this may be the worst, though also the most predictable. Why should we be surprised that he's using this disaster to increase our income gap? Now, shamefully, people will be rebuilding homes that they're no longer going to be be able to afford.

The federal government should wipe out all debt of anyone who lost their home in the hurricane, whether they're rich or poor. To deploy two entirely appropriate cliches: Level the playing field and let everyone have a fresh start. But that's not what's happening. He's creating a mercernary, desperate society, where people are scrounging to make minimum wage to repair their destroyed neighborhoods. Everything is being left to private citizens.

We have three evacuee families in my little neighborhood alone, and it's up to our neighborhood association, which has no resources other than limited human energy, to house and feed the people and to find them education and work. This is not a complaint--we're glad to help out--but it's astonishing to me that it takes half a dozen people, with no official money at all, only two days to set a family up, but that the federal government can't figure out how to distribute ATM cards.

These are disheartening times. We have a million Okies in our midst, and the government (or its satellite corporations), is directly profiting from their misery. Time to bring our pitchforks and flaming torches to the White House gates. Fuck off, Mr. Cheney, indeed.

Posted by at 10:13 AM | Permalink

I was out of town for almost a week without a computer, leaving me with a sick thirst for email and information as uncontrollable as one of George Romero's zombie's desire to eat human brains. How about that sentence? Therefore I haven't, as is necessitated by my sub-role as a "blogger," to express my dismay at the destruction of New Orleans and my sympathy for those left behind to wallow in fetid destruction. Consider it expressed.

But what really frosts my donut is the complete greed and ignorance of the federal response. Incompetence like this, while inexcusable, is also comprehensible. Anyone with a brain has known for some time that this is the worst government in human history. Government departments jockeying for power and control while thousands of people perish in a river of their own shit is a concept almost beyond the reach of Voltaire and Swift combined, on crack. However, we cannot sit back and let Karl Rove turn this tragedy (and yes, the word really does apply here), into a PR opportunity for the President. Bush should be visiting New Orleans again because it is his duty as our so-called elected leader, not because he needs to shore up his collapsing approval rating.

Then again, nothing else matters to our current government. While they certainly didn't wish this destruction upon New Orleans, in the end, the deaths of thousands of people pale, in their withered minds, to the importance of their real project--the most massive redistribution of wealth in human history. The super-rich will be able to weather the coming Second Great Depression, just as they weathered the first one. The defunding of government agencies, the massive failure of systems and the thinness of available emergency response personnel in New Orleans are all just part of a larger pattern of the United States' transformation into a Third-World banana republic, led by a man who plays golf and takes guitar lessons while his citizens suffer needlessly. If a city must be sacrified, so be it.

My recent trip showed that Chicago will be sacrificed to no one. As always, despite the pending indictment of the mayor (and I disagree with my friends--Daley will have to get caught with a hooker in a motel room to go to jail), the city just chugs forward as always, developing real-estate and going about its merry, beautiful insular urban business. Thanks to all of you who are helping make Chicago Noir a success.

Posted by at 10:00 AM | Permalink