Wheel! Of! FISH!

The Hurrrricaaaaa-aaane ...

2004-08-12 - 7:02 p.m.

So, I'm buggering off to Portland, but that's really not so interesting. Expatriates and madmen like myself are always fleeing from the lands we've tilled with our lunacy to seed fertile new grounds. I figure on taking in the scene, maybe finding work in an umbrella shop, snapping photos of the street corner where Chuck Palhaniuk was beaten up, and taking part in the Emily Dickinson Sing-a-Long.

Also, today was the end of my year-long acolytage with Mssrs. Barnes and Noble, but that's not really so interesting. I just use up my vacation and personal days and frantically buy things with my employee discount while it's still good for a week or two, and then spend several months trying not to answer the phone with: "Thank you for calling Barnes and Noble, how can I help you?" and wishing I didn't know how long The Da Vinci Code has been on the B&N top 10 list (11 months).

What's really interesting is my new friend, Charlie.

Yes, yes, accuse me of namedropping if you must, but I feel no shame. We've a real kinship, Charlie and I, and I have a feeling that we're going to be real, REAL close.

In case you've been chainsawing hookers for the past 26 hours or so, let me catch you up to date. Charlie started off as the charming tagalong of a buxom tropical storm starlet named Bonnie (and, sadly, they've already had a Hurricane Clyde, so that was out of the question. There is no joy in meteorology). Bonnie followed the usual glamorous path of storms that hit the Gulf, doing a brief whirlwind tour of the Bahamas before hitting the sultry Gulf and tossing all her rain and winds in a glorious rush at the Panhandle, leaving herself heaving and spent at the mouth of the Mississippi, to be strewn across the Eastern seaboard as a patchy tropical depression.

Charlie, though, had bigger ideas. Rather than rip-roaring straight into the sea, he took a brief hop through Jamaica and then started building some fury in the Strait. By the time the 11th of August had drawn its curtain, Charlie had roared his way into full-fledged hurrican status, with all the requisite glory and Weather Channel coverage.

He has since provided nonstop entertainment. The current estimation has ol' Chuck building himself up to a full Category 3, with storm surges cresting 12 feet and winds peaking at 120 miles-per-hot-damn-hour, and then crashing into the Tampa Bay crescent like George Bush driving a Caddy into a Houston bar.

The Weather Channel, altruistic bastards that they are, have been kind enough to create chintzy graphics demonstrating what can happen to a low-lying Florida town when storm surges come barrelling in, chewing up cheap beach homes and spitting out wet plaster and empty sunscreen bottles, toppling pink stucco hotels into the gnashing surf with the dull roar of a thousand affordable sexual encounters gone to foam.

Lest you didn't know, I'm currently making my residence in a palatial home that could've charitably been called a "beach cottage" back when it was on the beach. Now there's a road and a small development of McMansions between it and the water, and it's just a cheap house on blocks with walls that I put my hand through and lots and LOTS of windows.

In short, Duke, we're looking at a shitstorm.

The Sudakoff Center is stuffed full of newly-arrived freshmen and their parents who arrived today for pre-Orientation and early arrival students and summer students. The nearest secondary shelter is fookin' Tuttle Elementary, which is a mere jaunt if you've got a damned car.

Heph is taking wing for Atlanta, Da5id is in parts unknown, Pairodox and all his Folk have fled south like hobbits, and we are, like The Word without Spider Jerusalem, fucked and abandoned.

But that's okay. Because we're cunning.

I think we'll just kill Stephen King and take HIS house. Bastard won't see THAT coming.

So, uh, check in by Sunday or Monday, and if the power is back on and I'm still alive and my house is standing, I'll give you the gory details and toss out another entry to the increasingly Curare-centric story.

Hmm. Funny old thing, life.

Alf widdershins, Children of the Revolution.