The Hurricane:
OK, yeah, I'm not as up on my news as I should be. So it was that while making my last round of reading of Boing-Boing and various other blogs on my RSS feeds that I discovered that Hurricane Katrina was headed for New Orleans and things were going to get ugly.

I have some friends in New Orleans, most notably the publisher of Antigravity, a free monthly magazine about local music that happens to run Snap Judgments as a syndicated column. I went down there to the N.O.D.I.Y. show that Leo runs and had a great time, and I've since seen him and his girlfriend Michelle and some of their other friends when they visited Austin for STAPLE. I was planning on making another trip down to New Orleans in October to see an event with Keith Knight, although now I'm not sure if that's going to go off or not. Anyway, all of this is just to indicate that my worries for New Orleans are not primarily whether or not my favorite cajun restaurant or the place that serves killer muffelattas will survive.

But I'm worried about that too. I went to New Orleans for my honeymoon, so I've got some memories attached to the place. And now it seems like the place I remember, the place that a lot of people live in, may be undergoing some serious fucking renovations courtesy of Mother Nature.

My hopes (I'd say prayers, but I don't pray and clearly God, if he exists, is on the other side of this one) and thoughts are with my friends and with all the other people living in New Orleans whom I've crossed paths with, knowingly or unknowingly, at some point.