It's raining out. Raining pretty hard, really, and the sky is that perfect pearl-grey I only ever seem to see in memories of rainy days now, but there it is. On top of my chill acoustics-and-instrumentals playlist, with the warm and yummy scent of Miskatonic U filling my office, I'm pretty tempted to go ahead and say life is pretty good. Even my office cricket thinks so. (also he sounds very good with "Kelly Watch The Stars")

Except, you know, massive pain and suffering. Because the beautiful rain out there is the tail end of what flooded New Orleans. And all my work today has been answering the phones, people asking whether we're taking donations to go to relief efforts down there, and I just can't help wondering... you know, what the hell was going on in the minds of the people who built New Orleans?

On one hand, I can't help but think that a town built on the sheer force of human arrogance was bound to have something like this happen. What kind of idiot builds a town that could end up underwater even without a flood? The levees aren't failsafe, even without a hurricane to batter at them. (and what kind of idiot cuts funding to the levees, the only things keeping this city dry, and diverts the money to an effort which is mostly a waste of money anyhow?) New Orleans had this sort of disaster coming, sooner or later.

On the other hand, it's not the fault of the people living there that the town was built on stupidity. (wonder how many of them relocate to the center of the country.) And it sucks that so many people have lost everything, that there's so much loss of life and property and sheer history packed into what's now the New Atlantis. And I wish I could have seen it, just once.

I don't think that what happened was good, or proper, but it was inevitable. So there's my two cents.

And God is smiting me for them, because I just got a stabbing pain in my head! Woo! SMITEY!