I just got the news: my friends in Gulfport, Mississippi made it through the hurricane all right. The news is reporting up to 80 people dead in their area. They live a little over a mile away from the Gulf Coast and are near the Biloxi line. Apparently everything from the train tracks (about 1/2 mile away from their house) to the water is rubble. 75% of the houses in the area either have extensive roof damage of lost their roofs altogether. My friends snuck through the storm with no flooding and no roof damage, although they have other damage to the house. According to their parents, who live up here in the Northeast, they have a stockpile of water but no phones and no electricity. Once their cell phone batteries are out, that’s it for communication.

Highway 90, which runs right along the beach, is gone, buried under sand and water. The casinos, that are the lifeblood of Biloxi and surrounding communities, are trashed. Houses disappeared under the storm surge. Many people didn’t evacuate because the track of the storm wasn’t expected to shift far enough to the East to hit Mississippi as hard as it did. New Orleans is getting all the news coverage, but it’s the towns to the East that took the brunt of Katrina’s fury (EDIT: since posted, the levees broke in New Orleans, flooding the entire city).

Now I want to figure out a way to get a care package shipped out to my friends to help tide them over until normal services are restored, which may take a while. I think I’ll be better served giving cash to the Red Cross at this point.

MADD’s campaign of anti-drunk driving laws is inherently flawed. Yep, I’m anti-MADD. Hell, just writing that ought to get this near-unread blog some hate mail. How can I be anti-MADD, you ask? Pretty simple: MADD is an organization that has degenerated from a well-intentioned grassroots organization of grief-stricken mothers with a laudable goal into a well-funded, well-organized attack dog bent on policing behavior they don’t approve of in all Americans. I’m not the only one who feels this way. Check out this document written by former executive director of the MADD Northern Virginia Chapter and the former executive director of the American Council on Alcoholism, Charles Pena.

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I originally told the crew I work with that I was getting my license to carry and, after all the idiotic fallout from that decision (must remember: friends@work /= friends), I just assumed that any discussion of my enjoyment of shooting was off-limits at work. Let me just sum up the situation: in my state, owning a gun means that I’m either a murderer-in-waiting, a shooting spree about-to-happen, or a moronic thug. Few of my coworkers are willing to see beyond this idiotic stereotype. Of course, in my opinion, the vocal gun owners don’t help things much by insisting that anyone who questions gun ownership is a flaming liberal with no brains. It’s all part of that simple evil that so many groups like to push: hype differences and encourage segregation.

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To the three people who actually read this site: sorry for the inactivity. I was on vacation then absolutely flooded at work upon my return. Now that I’ve got a better handle on things, I’ll be getting back to the blogging. By the way, I’m getting a better handle on things by implementing the planning philosophy known as Getting Things Done, or GTD. I even built myself a cool Hipster PDA (although, technically it’s a PAA, but I won’t quibble).

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