I was delighted with this pulpy charmer which our beloved Infomaniac used to respond to my comment that, in turn, responded to her very sensitive post about possible East Coast victims of Hurricane Irene (is this all too internal, too blogger-centric, too meta, too tootoo for you? Tough. Do try to keep up.)
My considerably less sensitive comment to her post said "Pooh. As an old Gulf Coast boy, I still say if it's to the right (starboard) of Florida, it's not a real hurricane." Yeah, that's right, I said it and I'm sticking by it, especially since Irene turned to to be such a wimpy little blow, not much more than a lot of rain and a chance for New York transit official to turn of the subway. (And what's with that? I didn't even know they could turn it off.)
I understand the anxiety of staring down the barrel of an oncoming hurricane, the tragedy of rushing down to the grocery to stock up on supplies only to discover your piggish neighbors have already scored all the beer and cheap scotch. But my substantial experience with them makes me confident that if, on Thursday, the storm trackers are warning you that the hurricane will come ashore in your neighborhood on Sunday, you can feel confident about sleeping in late that morning and then watching the Weather Channel to see where it actually wanders in.
Understand me, I am not exaggerating (for once) my hurricane experiences. My parents' home was located on a lovely, leafy peninsula that stuck out into Galveston Bay. In the thirty years they lived there, it was flooded seven or eight times and threatened pretty much annually. Eventually, the city condemned the whole fucking neighborhood for being too disaster prone and turned it into a nature preserve, complete with alligators. To this day, the nasty mucky smell of a mud flat at low tide is a nostalgic, Proustian experience for me.
So a Category 3 (Category 3? As in Category "What's the big deal, why are you being such a little Girl" 3?) storm comes along and I'm not impressed? It's nurture, not nature.
To quote the subject of your previous blog (Miss Dorothy Parker):
ReplyDelete"This level reach of blue is not my sea;
Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,
Whose quiet ripples meet obediently
A marked and measured line, one after one.
This is no sea of mine. that humbly laves
Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm.
I have a need of wilder, crueler waves;
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.
So let a love beat over me again,
Loosing its million desperate breakers wide;
Sudden and terrible to rise and wane;
Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide
That casts upon the heart, as it recedes,
Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds."
Jx
Hee.....I LOLd. You're totally right, though....when we lived in FL (left side - Tampa), we'd hear 'omg...a hurricane is coming!' and be like 'Hmm....do we have instant coffee if the power goes out? pfft.'
ReplyDeleteAs a barefoot Florida boy living in Queens, I spent the last forty-eight hours drinkin & calming the newyorkers down....
ReplyDeleteRemember though, in the NE water is the killer.
I wasn't impressed either. Nor was I with that wee rattle they called an earthquake. Pu-leez.
ReplyDeleteAs a Gulf Coast Girl, I feel cheated. Hurricanes are OUR thing. Whats with this new pattern of trajectories heading up the East coast anyway?
ReplyDeleteI count on that in-surance money every year!
All I can say is that if you continue posing in such a suggestive manner, well...
ReplyDeleteYou're just ASKING for it!