skippy the bush kangaroo: i survived irene

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

i survived irene

i was in a hotel in edison, nj during irene, huddled with mrs dbk in front of the tv with nothing to sustain us but a can of salt and pepper cashews (delicious!), two bananas, and two bottles of water. (seriously, those salt and pepper cashews are really good.)

it was not that big a deal, fortunately. both she and i were fine, my in-laws (whom we had gone to visit) were fine, and their building did not lose power. we weren't in the worst place, but it was pretty nasty outside nevertheless. for the folks who were hit very hard by this, my heart goes out to you.

and now a word about the media coverage of irene: worthless. it could have been one of those "finest hours" things, where reporters were telling us where the flooding was happening, letting people know that the water was rising on their street, telling worried people where the roads were out, and generally reporting the kind of hard facts that people can find useful. instead we were treated to endless shots of "reporters" telling us that it sure was raining hard and boy is it windy and wow, look at all that water. afterwards, we got lots of "the water was up to here just an hour ago" reports. we were told that the rivers in nj would continue to rise through tuesday, but something useful, like "the raritan is expected to overflow its banks starting on easton avenue between jfk boulevard and foxwood drive. the passaic is expected to cover runnymede parkway in new providence, new jersey before noon on tuesday" was not to be found.

you can expect a lot of reporters to receive awards for their coverage of this weather event. incompetence and worthlessness never stopped the news media from congratulating itself.

posted by DBK at 1:11 PM |

3 Comments:

I cannot believe you didn't come over to our house. We had crepes and a dry basement. Next hurricane, dude.

commented by

tata, 7:58 PM PDT

Crepes? If only we had known.

But those cashews are really, really good. You have to turn the can over and shake the salt and pepper off the bottom, but once that's done...yum.

commented by

DBK, 6:11 AM PDT

I'm in Maryland near Baltimore. I lost power until Wednesday. I also had a relatively dry basement so all was good for me. I don't think things were over-hpyed because we got off alot easier then we could have given minimal shifts. Weather is a chaotic system and hard to define longterm

commented by

Anonymous, 6:43 PM PDT

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