Doom And Gloom Report

This summer has been nice. Nice weather, a little traveling, spending alot of time in the pool...but I have to admit that this summer has left me wanting a little more.

Rewind back six months. Day in and day out you heard the repetitious pounding home of chicken little and the sky is falling. I am talking about two things that to date have not come to pass, and is clear that there's good possibility that the alarms that were sounded were all for not.

H5N1 Avian influenza or bird flu

Hurricane season worse than last year's.


Bird Flu -

Certainly many people in China and southeast asia have died from this disease. This is due to a couple of reasons in part. 1) It really isn't a good idea to live with tomorrow's meal and 2) Wash your hands people!!! Christ, ever see those signs in the bathroom in a restaurant? Employees are to wash their hands before handling food?? Perhaps this basic art of sanitation is lost on some people. In any case, I would think my butcher, or my mother in days long since past for that matter, would get a little cleaned up after getting soiled by blood and other fluids from preparing the day's meal. "Honey, try to keep the chicken blood in the far corner of the hut...pretty please" Of course this is lost since I am not fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

But what ensued in the months that followed will be argued about for years whether it was prudent or a waste. As I open my "safe room" in my basement and inventory all that is there for bird flu purposes I am hoping I will find other uses or I will be a damn bit miffed.

Does anyone know what 20 weeks of military MRE's for a family of three costs on eBay? Exactly, I wouldn't think you would. We even installed a swimming pool this summer and the main reason for it is hidden in plain sight...drinking water!!!! That's right, 16,000+ gallons of drinking water. In our safe room we have enough iodine tablets for 20,000 gallons. Aside from that we have 10 cases of Aquifina.

I must admit that I got rather strange looks from the neighbors the day we got a curbside delevery of on pallet load of face masks from 3M. I know, it does like overkill and will admit that it is but I figure the masks may become the new currency. Imagine trading some desparate soul a couple boxes of masks for say.....a bmw???

And then there is....um or was, the great exodus to the great beyond that so far has not materialized. How are we to thin the herd?? I know, Hezbollah and Isrealis are working on it but it just isn't same. Natural selection means that the fitest survive and since everyone, all but the well prepared are suseptable, there can be no finger pointing, no attack/counter attack, no wars....we would hope.


Hurricanes -


This one has got me down too.. One thing I can't understand is people building their homes or choosing to live and work on/near a flood plain....or any area suseptable to flooding. This is the same for mudslides and earthquakes as well but we will stay focused.

Now we can dismiss some of this as pure ignorance. Take New Orleans for example. It was settled in the 1600's. My question though is at what point do we now say IDIOT and leave them on their floatie during high tide and walk away? For example, we know New Orleans is under sea level and surrounded on three sides by water. We also know that from global warming the sea levels will rise. At what point do we say enough is enough and that it is senseless to rebuild?

Ok, I pick on New Orleans as it is the most obvious and current example but the same can be said for Venice. Why have 1/2 the former poplulation of NO not returned?? I cannot believe that ALL of them lived in the ninth ward? No, I would prefer to believe that the majority of those who have not returned have said "screw it". It has been reported that it would only take one catagory 3 hurricane to swipe NYC to devastate our economy but we keep building in vulnerable areas.

We were told at the beginning of the hurricane season that this year there would be more named storms and more catagory 3 and above....more than last year and that the chances of one of those hitting the US was good. Here we are two months into the season and barely a tropical storm. What's up with that? It's like waking up Christmas morning not only to find no presents under your tree but the tree gone. Damn Grinch!!! How are we as humans suppose to learn any lesson unless we get slapped in the face, kicked in the gut and take some loss of property or worse???