As a result of Katrina, Rebecca totally freaks out whenever she hears that a tropical depression has formed somewhere. In an effort to alleviate her fears, I went shopping today to assemble a disaster preparedness kit for our home. I feel certain that we will be able to weather any storm with the following items:

12 gallons of water
20 D batteries
Clean socks
Scooby Doo flashlight
Duct tape
Handgun
Moist towelettes
Case of Blueberry Pop-Tarts
Beef jerky, turkey jerky, mystery jerky (was on sale)
Flintstones chewable vitamins
Additional handgun, extra ammo
Pocket knife
First aid kit with Tylenol, Neosporin, KY Jelly
Stop, Drop, and Smurf: Papa Smurf’s Guide to Emergency Safety
Weather radio
Assorted handguns, throwing stars
Bush/Cheney campaign sign (to signal first responders)

As you can see, I have only stocked the essentials. Unfortunately, we only have enough to provide for ourselves, so any friends or neighbors seeking assistance will be shot at. I want everyone to remember that safety always comes first, and in any emergency, it would be safest for you to stay the hell away from me.

Power has been restored to Thibodaux, so my Louisiana in-laws have headed home. But while they were staying with us, I learned some very important lessons about living with Cajun folk:

Don’t bother trying to pronounce Atchafalaya, Opelousas, Calcasieu, or Tatooine.
Don’t throw away any part of the gator, not even the claws (which can be used for soup, apparently).
Refrain from drawing analogies to The Waterboy.
Anything can be improved with Tabasco, including floor polish and shampoo.
It’s impolite to refer to Cajuns as Swamp People, Swampies, or Bayou Irish.
Don’t argue that fishing isn’t a sport.
Don’t confuse a Cajun with a Creole – the Creoles killed Jesus.
And never, never ever ask what’s in the gumbo, because they might just tell you.

All kidding aside, I’m glad the in-laws have a place to go back to. We have so many friends and even extended family who have lost everything to Katrina. So many people are coming to Houston and I’ve got several calls from folks looking for living space or just advice. Most of them are overwhelmed by the size of the city, but everyone still has a good attitude. In fact, whenever I talk to anyone affected by Katrina, there’s no sense of anger in them, no trace of self-pity, no feeling of helplessness. There’s a general attitude of “#$%* happens” and “let’s move on”. I think that’s pretty courageous and it makes you want to help these people all the more. I’m sure that most of you have spent the week watching looting and shooting on CNN, but I want to tell you that adversity can bring a lot of good out of people too. No one here is giving up and the South shall rise again.

I’d like to welcome all of the New Orleans evacuees to Texas and offer them a few guidelines for our fair state:

First of all, don’t try to shove forward in line, because there’s enough room for everyone. This is Texas, and room is what we specialize in.

Being from Louisiana, you may be wondering where we’re hiding all of our liquor. We don’t sell it in supermarkets, convenience stores, and drive-throughs like you do. Instead, we keep all of our hard booze in “liquor stores”, next to our beef jerky.

If any of you are interesting in staying here on a permanent basis, you’re welcome to apply for Texas citizenship. All you need to show is proof of ownership of (1) a pickup truck, (2) a dawg, and (3) a shotgun. If you do not have those items, the requirements can still be waived with a letter of recommendation from Nolan Ryan.

Please try to fit in with our other immigrants by learning to speak Spanish and working for less than minimum wage. Remember, they were here first, so play nice.

And above all else, please refrain from looting. Never forget that this is Texas, so we’re all packing.

So Rebecca was cleaning out her closet and she came close to throwing out a pair of headphones. A perfectly good pair of headphones! Sure, they’re cheap, and they came with an even cheaper mp3 player that broke long ago, but I’ll be damned if we just throw them away. No, they go into The Box.

The Box: My repository for all miscellaneous items that incorporate wiring and/or circuitry of some kind. My graveyard of gadgets past. My cardboard container o’ crap. Stuff I refuse to throw away.

See, I have this theory. One day, someday, the world will come to an end. It could be a global plague, an asteroid strike, or space martians stealing our women - whatever. The point is that society will collapse and we’ll have to rebuild it – and that’s where The Box comes in.

Within The Box are the raw materials we’ll need to reconstruct our technological base. I know that wiring, circuitry, and other hardware will be in short supply in the aftermath of the apocalypse, so I figure that it’s every man’s duty to keep a stockpile of those items handy so we can recreate our electronic infrastructure. The alternative to taking such precautions is to be ruled by apes, which I cannot abide by. As such, the headphones go into The Box, where they are joined by:

Audio and video cable
Remote controls for long gone devices
More headphones
AC adapters, cigarette adapters, audio adapters, and various other adapters that… well, that didn’t adapt
External hard drives, probably filed with porn
Phone wire
Car CD changer, still holding two Pink Floyd discs, some electronica, and the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack
USB hubs, USB cable, some FireWire crap that came with our iPods
Several copies of Windows ’98 (which was a very good year for Windows)
Some more headphones
Handcuffs from two girlfriends ago
Cable television splitter, phone splitter, audio splitters
Extension cord from three girlfriends ago
Mice (computer mice, I mean)
Harmonica
Video tapes, probably filed with porn
Jack O’ Lantern light
Did I mention headphones?
And a useless #$%*ing DSL modem that I threw at the #$%*ing wall because it wouldn’t #$%*ing work anymore

Anyway, even if the world doesn’t end per se, I could always use this stuff to build a doomsday device of some sort. Rebecca refers to that as a “self-fulfilling prophecy”, but I prefer the term “100% guarantee”.

A friend of mine recently questioned the wisdom of posting my inner thoughts on the World Wide Web for all to read for all of eternity. And I do recognize that the potential hazards probably outweigh the benefits of a blog (which are theoretical at best). There are certainly enough stories out there about people losing their jobs over their blogs. So why bother?

Well for me, the answer is that I don’t really think that my blog can be defined in terms of risk & reward.

First of all, I don’t expect, or even hope, to be rewarded for blogging, so any reward I might receive would be incidental. Sure, I’d like it if I could build up some readership, but I know that my blog will never generate any revenue. Besides, if I were still interested in writing for money, I’d still be assistant editor at Black Tail magazine (not that the pay was great – I was really there for the benefits).

As for the risk, I think it’s negligible as well. I don’t take any personal responsibility for the content of this blog – I don’t even have my name on it. It’s true that the blog is wholly derived from my thoughts, and so is a reflection of me, but it’s not who I am. Yeah, 90% of the material in here is true-to-life, but the rest of it is obviously over-the-top fun. Your average person reading this will understand that I was never an assistant editor at Black Tail (they rejected my application), just like it’s understood that Larry David, Ozzy Osbourne, and David Letterman aren’t exactly as they appear on TV. And if some people are too stupid to discern a difference, then #$%* ‘em. What do I need idiots for anyway?

Besides, this blog is only the tip of the iceberg for me. I wrote over 3 years worth of columns for the University of Houston’s Daily Cougar, many of which are still up on-line. While most of those pieces were thoughtful efforts, others were blatant attempts to generate a flood of mail at the paper’s office, including columns titled “Argument For Abortion Tax Credit” and “Special Olympians Just Playing With Themselves”. But despite defacing the internet with that questionable content, I’ve still been able to get several jobs, a law license, and a beautiful wife, so I don’t see a blog as hurting me that much. If anything’s killing me it’s those 3 DWIs.

Anyway, very little goes into this blog that I haven’t already shared with family and friends, and those are the only people whose opinion I really value. As for anyone else reading this, some will get it and some won’t, just like some people get me and other don’t – that’s just life, folks. Lord knows I don’t get some of the #$%*ed up #$%* that other people blog.

So I’m walking out of my local comic book emporium to my car when a homeless guy approaches me:

“Hey man.”

Now, when you live in a big city, you’re used to seeing a dozen homeless people everyday. But despite their large numbers, it used to be rare that a homeless person would actually approach you for something. However, it seems to me that this proactive kind of homeless has been increasing in number lately, to the point where I’m running into them at least once a month. Through these meet & greets, I’ve found that nearly all of these approaching homeless employ 1 of 3 stock stories:

I need bus fare to get home.
I need gas money to get home.
I need change to call home.

These stories (or lies, as they should be more properly called) all have a common theme: “I’m not homeless - I’ve just run into bad luck.” Apparently, the homeless have found that people aren’t identifying with their homelessness, so many have ditched (or rather stashed) the stereotypical shopping carts and cardboard signage in favor of attempting to appear stranded instead of vagrant. I expect that the success rate of these attempts isn’t much greater than your standard begging, but then success is not exactly these people’s forte anyway.

So anyhow, most people I know favor ignoring and fleeing these more aggressive street citizens. Rebecca, for example, takes care to avoid eye contact as she hurries away. But I, on the other hand, prefer to acknowledge the presence of our hobo friends. It’s my belief that these people are due at least that courtesy – they are human beings, after all.

“Hey man! Hey! I’m out of gas.”, he says.
“Sorry, no thanks.”, I reply.
“Hey #$%* you, man! You could at least give me a #$%*ing answer, #$%hole.”

Okay, most of these people are human beings. Not this one though.

“Hey, I gave you an answer and that was ‘no thanks’. Maybe you wouldn’t be such a #$%*ing loser if you actually listened to people.”
“You #$%*ing son-of-a-bitch! You #$%* yourself, you #$%*sucker!”
“Oh yeah? Now I know why they set #$%*ing bums like you on fire, you filthy #$%*!”

It basically went downhill from there. It’s shameful really, how I allowed myself to be dragged down to his level…

…yet it was somehow liberating at the same time. I know that most wouldn’t have spoken back to him, but I feel that people shouldn’t have to suffer random, noxious abuse, unless they’re on one of those reality TV shows that subject them to random, noxious abuse for my entertainment. So it felt good to speak up and fight back. I did stop short of backing over him though – I had just washed my car.

But even after all of that, I’m still going to give other homeless people the benefit of the doubt when they approach me because you just never know – one day, someday, one might have something worthwhile to say. I’m still going to stay out of stabbing range, though.

We went out to eat tonight and had the misfortune of sitting in a booth next to a 3 year old kid and his oblivious #$%hole parents. Junior started off by pounding the back of my seat, then proceeded to stand up on his booth, turn around, and stare over my shoulder while alternating between giggling, squealing, and screeching. And his oblivious #$%hole parents? They were surprising oblivious to his behavior, which makes them #$%holes in my book - #$%*suckers too.

Seeing that I was about to explode, Rebecca promptly asked the waiter if we could switch to another table.

“It’s cold over here”, she said.
“Yeah, and this little animal is behind me”, I added while gesturing at Junior.

Junior’s oblivious #$%hole #$%*sucking mother did speak up at that point, asking him to sit down. Her remarkable parenting skills were able to suppress him for a full four minutes before he starting running laps around the restaurant and screaming, like field day at Neverland Ranch.

I know that I don’t frequent a lot of five-star restaurants, but still, I shouldn’t have to deal with somebody’s kid at dinner unless I’m at Mickey D’s or Chuck E. Cheese. To me, any place that has a full bar, like this place had, should not double as a jungle gym (unless it's the Jungle Club on I-45, which is swinging).

If your kid won’t sit still, then take him someplace that has a playground. Or leave him at home with a sitter. Or order something in. Or shove 10 grams of Flintstones chewable Ritalin down his throat – I don’t #$%*ing care. Just keep him from kicking my seat and screaming in my ear while I’m trying to eat.