Weather Forecast

Here's one I missed, a weather forecast (actually 'Hurricane Local Statement') issued by the Slidell local office on my birthday last year:
"MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS ... PERHAPS LONGER ... THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL ... AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD ... WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS."

Damn accurate forecast. The weird thing is, if you read recent warnings about oil and water shortages on a planetary scale, this warning seems uncannily accurate too.

We are all Slidell with 10 hours to go?

Beer and Football

The girls are all away: staying at the seaside on Easter Sunday, whilst I'm here at home alone, ostensibly looking after the dog, but also having a few hours time to myself. I saw a homeopathic therapist a couple of days ago - after all, conventional medicine had hospitalised me with a wrong prescription for a bad back, so it seemed sensible to seek a second bit of input! And she recommended that I make sure to take time alone, as that's clearly something that my nature needs, and is the one thing I'm guaranteed to have little of, living in a small apartment with a wife and two small kids :-)
When they're away like this, it always take s afew hours to even adjust to the fact that nobody's going to walk in and disturb me whilst I listen to music, or type away. Nobody's going to walk in and start talking through the film I'm trying to watch, or wonder why I've not gone to bed yet when it's already 1 in the morning.
Or, like last night, walk in on me listening to music at 1 in the morning, complain of a tummy ache, and start throwing up all over. Poor Willow had got the tummy bug (Ayla had it last weekend, so last Saturday I'd sat with a sick child on me most of the day). This time Willow had it, through the night and through the day (whilst Ayla and Es went off on an egg hunt). So not only could she not touch any of the mountains of chocolate she has waiting for her, but it looked like she couldn't even go for the night at the hotel, with Mama and Ayla, Oma Femmie, Oom Fjodor and Nienke.
Luckily for her, and I guess me - she's there now and I'm sat here now, enjoying the quiet - and doing what else but thinking of them :-)

I've been thinking of something to write about Iraq. It seems that the nightmare over there has become absorbed into our world view, that it's one more horror piled on top, that we won't start pondering the blood till the day that Iran is next in line. Then we might march again, parading our ineffectuality.
I'm wondering what can be done. I wonder what the legality might be of mounting a public fund-raising for the resistance. As the resistance there is labelled "insurgency" and "terrorists", I'm guessing that the laws here might be twisted sufficiently to make such an act a one-way ticket to Guantanamo.
The same laws doubtless would have done for the International Brigades fighting Franco's fascists.
Of course a big difference is in the nature of the resistance. The media tells us it's all allah-bothering nutters and Ba'athist gangsters. I've no way of judging, but I can imagine that a hell of a lot of the people are like me, who would be inclined to take up arms if some army invaded and started shelling and shooting and piling up the prisoners into naked pyramids. I also imagine that it would be strengthen the hand of those ordinary people over there who are resisting - the everyday insurgents if you like - if they knew those of us over here, who oppose the war and are disgusted at the actions of our own governments and corporate bosses, weren't all mouth and no trousers. If we could, at least, put our money where our mouths are.
Lots of respect then to those who do take personal action. Especially to Sam, the clown. Who has now gone to Palestine, to try and bring at least a few smiles to the kids suffering the adult madness that is war; just as he previously did in Iraq.

It's having kids of your own that really restrict your actions. The more your own world requires and demands security on your part, instead of the liberty of the only responsibility being your own conscience, the brutal truth is responsibility in feeding and clothing two people who really can't look after themselves. And in educating them to be as honest and true as they can be. But most of all, in being here for them. Even if at times, I am a grumpy, chagrined old fucker, and at other times, I feel the need to be alone.

So here I am alone of an evening. 10 o'clock, and no kids to wake up and no wife to wish good night. Sunday night and no work tomorrow, so I suppose at least Jesus died to give me a day off work. Listening to music on my MP3 player, so here in my world it is in fact far from quiet. Drinking another beer and waiting a while till the next football begins. It was the last normal speelronde for the Dutch league this afternoon, and I was still at home with a sick child, I didn't go to the pub to watch the games, but saw the highlights on TV this evening. Good news, in that AZ finished second, and Ajax fourth, so they avoid each other in the first round of the playoffs.
I'm an awfully cliched man sometimes - beer and football. It's something that I've tried to express before. I am, by choice, a quiet person, who doesn't get into the limelight, who doesn't get into fights. I'm not political, not interested in power, don't want to be rich or famous. I would be more than happy to live somewhere nice with my family, watch football and play cricket and drink beer.
But I didn't declare the war. The arseholes who run things had to go and piss around with my life when I was just a kid. I'm a sensitive lad - and I take things like mass unemployment and immigrant expulsions very personally. Most of all, going through police roadblocks, seeing thousands of riot cops and troops-dressed-as-riot-cops - pass by me every morning on the way to school - I took it personally.
Es doesn't know how I can fight. I guess it's best to keep it that way. But I think I see the link between the insurgents and the kid who bunked off school to go down the picket lines (and the pub!) It's a question of the scale of the response, the measures justified: guns might be one thing, but I think there's many resistance fighters in Iraq who disagree with targetting or hurting civilians.
Especially kids. It's a measure for me, being a father, of how you justify your cause. If you can justify killing kids, then you're a lying toerag and I want nothing to do with you. Because there's no justification. Whether you're an American pilot or a Jihadist fighter or an IRA ASU, the death of a child should be cause for you to stop and reassess your whole strategy, the scale of your response. If you can pass that off as 'collateral damage' or 'regrettable' or 'inevitable innocent caught in crossfire' then you've already lost your humanity and no world you might want to take us to can be remotely worth inhabiting.

It was 'Dennis Bergamp Day' at Highbury yesterday. Surely that's worth a drink?
And the cricket season has started, the World Cup is coming, and I'm away two nights next week for work, where I can drink for free and watch the Arsenal in the Big Cup semi, then the next night, Ajax-Feyenoord and AZ-Groningen in the playoffs.





Most of us just want to drink beer and watch football.

More of the Same

So, another Friday night and I'm drinking beer at the computer.
Pretty much as usual, but this is the first beer I had in over a week. Last week I had a back pain came out of nowhere. I'm not usually prone to back aches, and this didn't feel like a muscle, so when I got to work, I asked Es to phone the doctor for an appointment. Instead, she got the mad assistant on the line, who refused to make an appointment, but prescribed me some seriously heavy Ibrupofen 600, 2-3 times a day. Well, I know that's a muscle relaxant amongst other things, and worrying whether I had a vertebrae problem, I saw a physiotherapist the next morning. She told me that it would probably loosen up a bit, and the Ibrupofen would help with the pain, and stop the muscles cramping up to compensate too much.
So, that day I took two, and the day after I took three, as prescribed: the pain still seemed to get worse if anything. But then on the Thursday I got up and had a stomach ache, so I didn't take any painkillers. The stomach ache though just got worse, so I left work an hour early and came home. At home, the pain kept getting worse, until I asked Es to phone the doctors' out-of-hours service. They unusually sent a doctor round straight away, who came with some paramedic looking guy. Worried about a perforated stomach, they phoned the hospital, and then the ambulance. Off I went to hospital, got bled and X-rayed and CAT-scanned and spent the night on a drip.
That night, off to the toilet yet again at 5 in the morning, suddenly the pain had cleared up. However, that didn't stop the new doctor and his intern the next morning outside my room discussing all the tests they wanted to do on me, as all the other tests hadn't revealed anything. Why would it stop them - they hadn't spoken to me yet!
So instead of another day and night on the drip, being bled and having a camera poked down my gullet and god-knows-what-else, I discharged myself. Didn't stop him prescribing double the normal dose of anti-acid ulcer pills for me, whilst there was no evidence of an ulcer at all, let alone the death's door he seemed to feel was appropriate.
Anyway, I've had a week or so of healthy food and no alcohol to recover from teh damage those bloody tablets have done, and feel I'm due a beer tonight :-)

Meanwhile, on a more traditional note for me, I'm watching some storms across in the States. Now I've got a serious connection at 4MB/s I can really see live coverage. (Isn't the net wonderful - I can see a guy in the Deep South who had a broken window this afternoon!) In this case, from Tennesssee. Two dozen died there last weekend. At least two have died today, and they're only approaching the late afternoon there. In fact this is already building into an awful tornado season, and it's only just begun. More people have died this year than last already. And most of the casualties last year came in Evansville in the very unusual November storm. Admittedly, last year was very quiet for tornadoes, but no such luck this year.

And the forecast for the Atlantic hurricane season came out a couple of days ago. For some reason, this is made by the University of Colorado. As far as I'm aware, no hurricane ever came close to Colorado. Anyway, looks like another very busy season. The places to worry about being vulnerable to a high Cat hurricane would IMHO be Tampa and Galveston. I read somewhere that Tampa is one of the top 10 potential disasters in the US - that list had included New Orleans, along with quakes hitting San Fransisco and such like. And Galveston is the location of the worst natural disaster in American history, back in 1900.
Not that these are anything compared with the potentials, such as Yellowstone, or past events like the Badlands megafloods. We've grown up with the idea of the Earth as a friendly and stable place. Considering how we've treated her, I'm not going to be at all surprised if there's no more Mrs Nice Earth from now on...

LAst thing today: I signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Not only can't I talk about it, I don't hardly know about what it's about. As usual with these things though, I think alot of people are going to lose their jobs at my work. I don't think that includes me, but you never know. A bit of a bugger really, as we also did something unusual today, and went to talk with an advisor about a mortgage. Next week, we're off to look at houses to buy! The mind boggles - who'd lend me a couple of hundred grand!

Just heard - there's now 7 dead in Galleston(sp?) Tennessee. Bad weather days...