Cars and Hurricanes
Well I had an excuse for Monday but not for today, so I'm rushing to hit the publish button before my computer turns into a pumpkin. I can't think of anything of import that I did today except watch most of Mary Poppins. And played with the iMovie and camera on the Powerbook. For some reason I liked that. Just sitting behind the desk, watching myself watching myself as I recorded incoherent blather and playing it back for my own amusement.
I go through periods where I hate the way I look, talk, walk and act. Then some days I look at myself and see a cool, handsome guy, in this case operating a fancy piece of equipment with the opportunity to broadcast myself to all corners of the globe. Nah.
I went to see another mechanic today to discuss the car. He's an interesting bloke and runs the biggest Mercedes repair joint in these parts. The dealer emailed me a quote today that included three options for repairing the car ranging from $300 to $4700. That's quite a spread, and it pisses me off that after having the car for over a week they didn't offer any of these options to me then. I'd rather haul the parts in my suitcase from the States than consider paying nearly five grand for something that I now have no faith in. I'll bring it back to the new guy on Monday as he says he has the parts. I'm afraid to ask how much.
I've been watching a little of the coverage of the hurricane damage on the TV and reading about it on the web. I can't believe how wrong they got it. I mean the various local and state governments. Especially the city of New Orleans. What have they been doing? Well, sad part is, I know what they've been doing. Politics. As they say, Louisiana has the best politicians money can buy. It would have been nice though to have some kind of plan in place to fix the expected breaches in the levees.
Biloxi just got in the way of the storm. That is a disaster I can wrap my head around. New Orleans survived only to find itself a victim of its own foolishness. That's a tragedy. And the looting and the miscommunication among government agencies after all of our recent experience doesn't inspire confidence. It wouldn't surprise me that if W can't pull some kind of rabbit out of his hat this could be the end of the Republican resurgence, exposing deep flaws in our new homeland security department.
I pray for all the people there. And the rest of us, if this is the kind of response we can expect from a national disaster.
