as reported by CNN today

Hurricane Ida has slowed to 10 mph, remains a cat 4, and is currently putting the shove to the entire flow of the Mississippi river, which is apparently flowing backwards. Normally it’s 2 feet per second and it was temporarily at -.5. Deep sections of the river could still have been flowing normally, this all depends on where the gauges are.

The river temporarily flowed backward during Katrina. Given climate change’s known exacerbation of wind speeds and duration of storms this looks to be a harbinger of the new normal.

If my pOp wants me to buy this for him he’ll let me know.

Thank you Gaia for the inspiration

So before I turn you over to my latest creation, and the tune hasn’t stabilized so I likely won’t post it today and even more likely will never post it.

Spoken is italics, everything else is sung

what a spanner ( OMG
what a spanner Jesus threw
what a spanner – oh my God
what a spanner Jesus threw

well of course you can say
that science got there first
‘cause of course, you know science,
always making shit up, not wrong am I
the fact is that I know
for sure
religion came first

cause whenever I hear stories
of bears watching the sunset
and animals of different species helping each other
because it’s built-in
after that I think
‘you know, religion obviously jammed through that cognitive door first, yippee’
and where does that leave us

what a spanner ( OMG
what a spanner Jesus threw
what a spanner – oh my God
what a spanner Jesus threw

and of course I think some more
and if Jesus wasn’t born
there wouldn’t be a Bible
which its adherents raise
as proof of their devotion
consider the religion
from which the Bible sprang

Hey, they didn’t fucking proselytize
and that’s when my bell got rang

Across the earth Indigenous
had practices specific
to all the places that they cared for
in balance and pacific
but when the Bible said to go
and preach to all the nations
Jesus underwrote some wars
and war on all relations

Christians know
this mortal sin
However much
they hide it
We were crushed
in a conqueror’s fist
Til Gaia’s truth*
defied it

I’m leaving Islam out of this shitkicking because I wasn’t raised in a Muslim country. Even though I’m an atheist I’m ethnically Christian.

*That would be science, folks, in case my creaky metaphor didn’t make sense. The working together of science and Indigenous cultural and religious practices is one of the ongoing great stories of the 21st century.

no Jeff

Various developments have prevented Jeff from rejoining us today… Buster is weary of his absence.

It’s a beautiful day and the back door is open to air out the house.

Each time I consider putting together a todo list, my lungs crackle in a particularly ghastly way. Other than my ribs hurting every time I cough (cough has gone drier than dust) and maybe having half a degree of fever which leaves me disinclined to move, I’m fine. Sure I could be doing laundry if I didn’t break into a sweat just thinking about it. Skritching cats is ’bout all I’m good for.

and now, to demonstrate how much I love and respect Jeff, and miss him, I’m posting this reddit link which combines three of his interests; F1, gently deriding the French for their cultural subtleties, and poop. The idea that Lewis Hamilton would publicly comment on such a thing is mahvellous.

Hurricane Ida

Here’s a link showing that the hurricane doubled in speed in less than 48 hours while dropping 50 millibars in pressure in the eye. I believe ‘slam’ is the correct term for what is about to happen to New Orleans. I have been assured that the levees will hold. What will happen to the inundated coast, portions of which will get a five metre storm surge as well as 30 cm of rain, is anyone’s guess. I hope that Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas have no fatalities; the Cubans once again, since they aren’t fucking cruel morons about the lives of their own people, managed to undergo a Cat 2 with no casualties.