Oh Please

Alternate Title: "Even SD.Net is Spinning Katrina"

I've just been shown something disgusting.

In the rather off-topic ventings from yesterday, I made reference to how politicians, pundits, and other undesirables were attempting to turn the death and destruction in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to their advantage. It is a disgusting thing I spoke of.

Today, Wayne Poe took the example of disgusting behavior and made it his own, attempting to spin my mere mention of the hurricane from the Sunday before it hit into another attack against me.

Shame on you, Poe.

True, mention of the hurricane had no particular place on a weblog dedicated to "Quick Notes, Personal Observations, and Other Vs. Debate Miscellany", but I felt the need anyway. I was here, after all. But the fact is, spin-doctoring of a natural disaster into an attack on one's adversaries has no place anywhere. And frankly, if you'll forgive the cheap shot, it's remarkable that a man who weighs 450 pounds can spin anything without having a coronary. I presume gravitational eddies are involved.

So how did Wayne disgust me yet again? Let's have some background here:

You see, before the storm the big story in this weblog . . . which, it seems I must reiterate, is about the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate and hence focuses exclusively on that topic . . . was the Starlog quote from Lucas. My copy of this magazine was inbound, and after ordering it Tuesday Aug. 23 I noted that it was to arrive in a couple of days.

The storm that was to become Katrina was declared Tropical Depression #12 hours after the post. I made no mention of this in the weblog, which is unsurprising given that this is not the Weather Channel website.

The morning of Sunday Aug. 28 . . . which, for those like Wayne who are slow at math, is five days later . . . I noted that the package had not, in fact, arrived "a couple of days" after Tuesday. This was noted as being due to screwups on the part of the sender of the magazine, who is evidently also slow at math.

By this point, Katrina had already struck Florida and was responsible for the deaths of several people. Computer models had, for 42 hours (see Katrina Discussion #14), already indicated a recurvature that would take the intensifying storm (predicted as of the 27th to be a possible Category 5) dangerously close to New Orleans on or about the afternoon of the 29th. As the unofficial weatherman of my office, with my browser grabbing the NOAA RSS feeds every three hours and with my watchings of the spaghetti models elsewhere, I kept well abreast of the storm and was aware of the change in estimated track.

Naturally, no mention of any facts in the above paragraph had been made anywhere on ST-v-SW.Net. This makes sense for two reasons.

1. As noted previously, I don't share more on the site than my opinions on the Vs. Debate, because the SD.Net people are freaks who will use anything you say to try to stalk or harass you (and this is a case in point).

2. The weblog for ST-v-SW.Net is not equivalent to CNN, MSNBC, InstaPundit, Weather Underground, or anything else besides "Quick Notes, Personal Observations, and Other Vs. Debate Miscellany". Even the Weather Channel doesn't report basic news. If you're looking for national news and weather or commentary on same, you should not be at this website.

On Sunday, some 20 hours before the storm hit, the mayor of New Orleans belatedly ordered an evacuation of the city. (Yes, that was commentary. Consider it a freebie, much like any mentions of weather here lately.)

Then around lunchtime Sunday, I posted that I might be down for awhile. That post was done out of sheer necessity . . . I'd have preferred the death-threat-slinging, stalk-happy Rabid Warsies of SD.Net not have evidence that I still live in the area where they think I do as opposed to, say, Connecticut.

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And so we come back to Poe. The crux of Poe's attack is based on the fact that in the Sunday morning post about the multiple Starlog shipping screwups, I mentioned Hurricane Katrina's possible complete destruction of New Orleans in passing, and joked (albeit nervously) that my Starlog might be found floating in the city after the storm's passing.

So, to Wayne's twisted mind, I take the debate too seriously because my "first thought" upon hearing of a danger to New Orleans was about my magazine, despite the 40+ hour difference between my hearing of the predicted path and it occurring to me that the magazine might be delayed, a thought which caused me to make note of that fact in the blog.

His attack was not based on the nervous Atlantis joke which, unfortunately for the residents of New Orleans, stopped being funny when the levees really did finally break a couple of days later. Nor does he try to claim some sort of moral high ground over his perception of the event . . . not that he could, given that he was soaking up (more than his fair share of) California sunshine and enjoying all the comforts of 21st Century living while I watched trees snapping, buildings being damaged, and debris flying all over the damned place at 100mph only to then enjoy a week worrying about family and friends and food and water and heat and West Nile and looters and crazy people shooting each other over bags of ice.

But actually, Wayne doesn't even really acknowledge the chronology at all, once again displaying the hallmark SD.Net tactic of anti-chronological thinking. He claims that the magazine constituted my "first thoughts about the devastation of New Orleans", and the other SD.Net nitwits also attempt to pretend that the magazine reference was my reaction to the event. It isn't until several posts down that someone finally troubles himself to correct them on the matter, noting that my comment came before the storm and not after.

Anti-chronological thinking (e.g. "America was willing to drop A-bombs on Hiroshima, and thus Pearl Harbor was justified") is a hallmark of SD.Net, and so is the (faux) mindreading of people that Poe tries to claim as an ability. After all, does he not make a claim wherein he says he knows what my thoughts were, and when? How could he possibly do this when he can barely comprehend what I say?

Besides which, if we just go by Wayne's posts on SD.Net and try to claim psychic ability because of them, Wayne's "first thought" upon the destruction of New Orleans was to update his own Vs. Debate website and then announce at SD.Net that "THE BORG VS THE EMPIRE page has now returned!" (Tuesday, Aug. 30, 5am), and later to misrepresent "Regeneration"[ENT2]. He didn't comment on Katrina at all until Wednesday, when he cracked a joke about it. Either Wayne takes the Vs. Debate too seriously, or else one's postings cannot be used as a guide to one's psychic mindreading gobbledygook.

In any case, with the wind taken out of their collective sail by the guy who mentioned the correct chronology, another one of them then decides to claim that having one's friends and family who live in the affected areas come out the storm alive and well and having one's own location show no significant damage is not, in fact, the best a person could hope for under the circumstances.

I suppose that's true if you throw reason and logic out of the window. The best anyone could hope for when they have an ENORMOUS F***ING HURRICANE with GUSTS OF MACH 0.25 bearing down on them is that the hurricane would've magically dissipated before reaching shore, producing no damage and no loss of or affect on human life whatsoever. Alternately, I suppose I could've wished that everyone in the affected areas was able to magically relocate to Alaska.

Of course, any such idea is absurd, so no logical person actually wished for that sort of thing.

In short, the SD.Net crowd is once again exemplifying the worst possible traits of human behavior, and making light of a natural disaster to do so. All the participants in that thread who are following Wayne's disgusting lead can officially go off themselves right now, as far as I'm concerned. You disgust me.


===================EDIT=======

I'd said the wind fell out of their sails once someone pointed out that the Atlantis comment came from before the storm and not after. I was wrong . . . nevermind. SD.Net denizens in that thread are continuing to claim that I should've expressed "regret that 1000's of people are dead not bitching that his [...] magazine went missing".

Idiots . . . there were not thousands dead Sunday! How can one express regret for an event that has not occurred? I realize Wayne fancies himself a psychic mindreader, but I was not aware that I was expected to engage in psychic prognostications.

Besides which, has it not occurred to these people that the day after the hurricane hit Wayne Poe was updating his infrequently-updated website? And then he had the audacity to claim that I take the debate too seriously because, in his anti-chronological thinking, I talked about the debate after Katrina? Can you say "projection"?

Perhaps the nervous humor of mentioning Atlantis the day before Katrina hit (bearing in mind that I'm in the bloody path of anything that hits N.O.) was not in the best of all possible tastes, but I'm sure people would think the same way about jokes involving asteroids hitting Earth if one were to do so tomorrow. Right now we'd laugh . . . tomorrow we'd rebuke.

In short, SD.Net people are so incredibly desperate and obsessed with attacking me that, taking a cue from their favorite politicians, they are attempting to make use of the death of thousands as their ammunition. I find that utterly disgusting, and if you don't, then I cordially invite you to get the hell off my website . . . I wouldn't want you reading it anyway.

That's all I have to say on the matter. I'm sure they'll try to spin some sort of face-saving response out of this, but at this point there's nothing they could say that could keep them from looking like nasty low-brow bastards whose worth to human society is questionable at best.