"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

Remember that commercial from the 70s? The beatific Mother Nature suddenly gets wicked pissed because her butter got switched with margarine or some such shit. But I don't think that Mother Nature, even in her wildest, margarine-induced fury could've done what Katrina did to coastal Louisiana and Mississippi yesterday. My God in heaven. I just looked at a "slideshow" of images from the storm on CNN.com, and was sitting there with my mouth open and tears in my eyes.
Sunday afternoon, after a weekend filled with cleaning house and tending to the baby and absolutely zero t.v., I spoke with a friend who said, "Have you heard what's happening with New Orleans?" It was a random question, I thought. "It's about to be blown away by that hurricane." I immediately turned on the t.v. and was bombarded with images of that big, red, swirling monster heading straight toward the coast. It was like watching one of your favorite people about to have the holy hell beat out of them by a gang of thugs, and not being able to do a damn thing about it.
That night, I had nightmares about wind and rain and crying children and darkness. I woke and lay there in my safe, quiet bed thinking about what it must be like for those 10,000 people in that Superdome who didn't have anywhere else to go (or the means to get there). Or a person on life support in a New Orleans hospital. Or a handicapped or elderly person in Gulfport. It just ate at me. Still does.
Now stupid fucking people are looting--some are stealing essentials, but others are grabbing tennis shoes and jewelry. Why the fuck would you devolve like that in a time like this? People are turning primal as they become more desperate. And it will get worse before it gets better. How do cities and people ever come back from something like this? Do they? Can they?
Tonight the Geej was playing with some Mardi Gras beads (and she just happened to be topless, quite appropriately), and I was thinking how in six months, it'll be Mardi Gras. The flood waters will have subsided. The dead will have been buried and mourned. And I bet there will be one hell of a party in New Orleans, with boobs, beads and everything. At least, I hope so.