Ravage the land as never before. Total destruction from mountain to shore.
Click to viewHurricane Irene has now arrived in New Jersey. Actually, it's probably been here for a while already, or at least its edges have been. The actual eye of the hurricane won't pass over for at least several more hours yet though it's been raining off and on since the late afternoon. From what I can tell, it doesn't look like it's going to turn out to be the dire clusterfuck from the heavens that some had been predicting. They were saying earlier this week that this could be the worst storm to hit the area in over 60 years. Almost all the hurricanes and tropical storms that move up the coast usually turn in to beat on North Carolina or swirl out to sea. It's pretty rare that NJ gets a direct strike and it looks like it's going to hit Atlantic City head on. I guess that should be all that surprising. AC is where all the dregs tend to wind out eventually.
It is interesting watching how people are dealing with the onset of the storm. There was some moderate amount of panic buying as hardware stores were emptied and pallets of water were sometimes hard to find. That seems to have been the rare case as most people around here seem rather blaise about the whole thing. You almost wish that the storm really had been the big one, just to watch some of these people get their comeuppance. If you want to know what I'm talking about, just watch this video.
I swear to God this is what happens when natural selection no longer works its magic. These people should not be allowed to breed and yet I'm sure they're out there shooting sperm at people and at least a few of those inebriated swimmers will hit paydirt, to society's dismay. Earlier, I also saw a video of a bunch of morons who thought it would be spiffy to get a closer look at the hurricane so they went out on an extended pier. Cue a giant wave which sweeps over the pier, bashing around a baker's dozen people to the ground and actually sweeping 8 people off it. Last I heard, at least one moron had to be taken to the hospital in serious condition. Frankly, it might be in our gene pool's best interest for them to just pull the plug. Evolution only works when there's a serious detriment for stupidity. Clearly, that's seldom the case nowadays. You usually have to be stupid on a truly epic scale to end up with the Darwin Award nowadays. Most morons survive their idiocy and go on to spawn hoards of idiotic rugrats who will also survive to breeding age, more's the shame.
Anyway, my main concern with this storm is I really don't want to lose power. Not having my laptop/internet and stuck in a room with 100% humidity sounds like it could describe a suburb of hell. We had a momentary power flicker earlier, which knocked out my raid server and I haven't bothered to go downstairs to reboot it. I figure there's no point since that's likely to continue throughout the night. I just hope that if there are outages at least they don't last very long. I can hear the wind and rain lashing the windows and it sounds pretty gnarly out there.
If you hear a shriek of rage and despair, that'll be me as the power goes out.