Ride Hamilton shows the FIFTH intense video excerpt from his in-progress Hurricane Katrina Documentary. The only tapestry of stories filmed LIVE as it was and STILL IS happening. It covers in tragic, emotional, and honest detail - everyday of the storm from DAY ONE to TODAY. THIS PODCAST: We see the flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans as they sit for weeks and even months. Cars and houses emerge from the oily brown waters like ghosts or monuments as the flood slowly drains away. Then in …

I am not the owner of the building. I do not pay rent but I provide continuous maintenance for the building both inside and out. I provide all protective insurance coverage, including hurricane coverage. I pay garbage pickup; water, electricity for security outdoor lighting; alarm system for the building; Installed protective storm shutters to the building. I pay continuous lawn maintenance; upkeep of parking lot; installed security fencing around building, etc. Does these things constitute a form of payment in lieu of rent? Does the building owner and I have a landlord/tenant relationship?

Why is it, days before Ike or any hurricane hits, gas prices jump through the roof?

The gas we’re paying for is already in the ground in the station’s storage tanks!

Say what you want about fears about shortages, supply disruptions, blah, blah, blah.

It’s all a form of price gouging, no matter what you want to call it.

What are your opinions?

I was doing a quick 45 minute exercise from a book, and the goal was "write what you know" - well… this is what I know! Now let ME know if you’re interested in the topic or how you feel about the writing. Thanks for the feedback!

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Pepita Gonzalez constantly lied to 20 million girls and women, but she knew it was okay because she was one of them.

Her work inbox jumped at the bottom of her desktop with a new email.

Three new emails. Four.

Pepita’s mouse cursor soared towards the inbox icon across her huge monitor. This week, her desktop was a photograph taken by someone looking up at a gigantic tornado. Pepita heard that the photographer who took the picture had died and the camera had been recovered nearly a week later. She liked the story, even though she could see that several pieces of the photo were not real.

The picket fence, for example, which snaked like dreamy white train tracks through the debris, was taken from a video game poster of a 747 crashing in a neighborhood. Pepita’s design agency had helped make that game poster. But Pepita still told people the story of the twister’s photographer anyway. Even if the fence wasn’t real, there might have been something real in it, right?

Pepita made her cursor loop around the tornado like a piece of debris before clicking on her inbox.

Waiting for her were six emails with the final shots from the agency’s photo shoot. There was also a friendly "hurry your ass up we’re already behind schedule" reminder from her art director.

Like she had to be reminded why she was at her work computer at 2:30 am. In a few hours the designers would start screaming for the 6 final photographs so that they could begin designs for the magazine and poster promos.

If the designers didn’t know what the models poses were like, they couldn’t put the words in the right place. Pepita didn’t really understand this. Was it that hard to throw a Victoria’s Secret logo and tagline onto a photo?

Logos and taglines wasn’t her job, though. Her job was to study the photos of the starving, almost-naked underwear models, and make them look even more fabulous than the art director or lighting director or makeup artist could.

Pepita forwarded the 6 photos to the designers. She wasn’t supposed to. The models’ agents had it under contract that only Pepita was allowed to see them before they’ve been retouched.

"Who cares?" Pepita thought. "Let them start designing. The poses aren’t going to change… even though everything else is."

The first one was simple. A silhouette shot on a jungle green background. Pepita grabbed the green color from the background and erased the slight muffin-top on the model’s hips. It didn’t matter if a model was 100 pounds and 6 feet tall, elastic is elastic and it causes a bump. But people didn’t like when elastic looked real… they wouldn’t buy the underwear if they saw what it really looked like, so it couldn’t look real.

The second one was a full color body. Pepita groaned. It needed a lot of work.

She started with the usual stuff… she grabbed the "blur" tool and attacked every pore on the model’s body. She isolated the whites of the eyes, made them whiter. She grabbed the "saturate" tool and made the model’s eyes even greener, to match the jungle theme. She added another highlight to the eyes, to make them dreamier. Pepita whitened teeth, erased moles, covered blemishes, and then completely erased the model’s awkward half-outie/half-innie bellybutton and replaced it with a prettier bellybutton from a previous model.

The model was a skinny, and needed the joint-treatment. It was a lot easier than the movie stars or (god forbid) average-Jane contest winners, who needed major reshaping. No, the skinny models were the right size in the flesh, except for their joints. Their knees were so knobby, it looked like the bones were constantly trying to escape the tendons. The elbow joints were square, rather than triangular, as if there were accidentally one too many bones devoted to bending the arm.

Pepita had to make the joints look normal. She copied pieces from a different model, until she relized that the lighting simply wouldn’t allow the two images to merge. The knees and elbows had highlights that didn’t match - it was like merging photos of a house at night, with a different house photographed in the daytime.

Eventually, Pepita had to copy and paste different pieces from the model’s body and construct a new knee and elbow.

The art director asked about her progress. Her eyes itched - it was 3:30 am. 4 more photos to go.
One after another, Pepita turned the models from amazing into fabulous. Fantastical, but fabulous. These models lived in a world where there was no gravity and their underwear stayed on without elastic, in a world where there was never a crease of skin between the bra and the armpit, in a world where there were no pores and where joints and flesh meshed into impossible combinations.

Pepita knew they weren’t real, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to be them. It was like the picture of the twister - if she made herself forget what was fake, she could pretend that the story was true. After all, a picture of a real tornado wouldn’t be nearly as fabulous.

—–

That’s it! Obviously, not much on character development or story… those weren’t really my goal for this exercise. Just writing what I knew. Thanks for reading!

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/inflatable-hous.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp

This article basically says that there is a new product on the market that basically is a bouncing room house. Its shaped like a small cube that can be used as a safe shelter for disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.

The only problem is that there are many people who are claustrophobic who would not be able to last long in this thing.

What do you think?

I plan on becoming a meteorologist. I also plan on earning my pilot’s license so I can become a hurricane hunter and fly in hurricanes and collect data. I was told that the air force would be best. What are the requirements? What’s on the ASVAB test? How do I pass the physical? Is there a certain number of push ups, sit ups, etc, that I need to do? Compared to the other branches in the military, how often do people get deployed? If I sign up to join the air force to work in the meteorology department, could I be forced to go in the front line and fight What are the chances? Sources?

I live in Florida and want to know if this hurricane season will be as bad as it is predicted to be. Last years prediction was way off and I also would like to know where all the Hurricanes have gone.

Or do you wait for the city/county/state to make it mandatory. Have you done any preparation prior to a hurricane becoming imminent? If so, then what have you done such as stock groceries, board up windows or hoard bottled water. Have you included preparation for your pet(s) or livestock and are you planning to take any with you if you leave?

Are the people working at the National Hurricane Center working around the clock to monitor Gustav?
Actually, I’m right.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

I pay attention to the NHC and you should too.

Backwoods, Dutches, Optimo, White Owl, Philly (gross!), Swisha-Sweets, Games, Biggie Blunts (yes they have a picture of B.I.G. on the front!), Bluntvilles, whiteboy papers, cyclones, clear papers, hemp papers, funnel leaf….
What do you like to smoke out of?

Personally, I like Backwoods. I wouldn’t expect any ameteurs to understand that. Bluntvilles are nice, and Biggie Blunts. Cyclones and clear papers are cool sometimes. I got some pre-made cones in Amsterdam. Very nice.

What do YOU like to smoke out of?
HHRAC - Grape Philly Dutches? Do you mean just Grape Dutches? I’ve had those but I’m tired of grape flavored things. I don’t know what a Philly Dutch is though. If your state has Bluntville, you need to try them. Blueberry is the best one.
Also, a Backwood is easy to roll, you just have to know what you’re doing. First of all, you need to tear it down to look like the shape of a regular roll-up (not that big azz peice that it comes like), and while you’re doing that, make sure you leave one side free of vines that wont let you close the blunt. Then, just roll it and make sure to close it with the side that has no vines. Nice! And yeah, the feeling of a Wood and a Dutch is different but Dutches burn slower though.

To the other guys, well, if you don’t smoke you ain’t gota answer. Obviously you would like, die if you smoked out of a 20 so I ain’t even tryin to hear it.
real killaz - that’s too bad. i can dedicate my next blunt to you if you’d like. it will be in about 30 minutes.

nate - hmm… i like the noise of bubbles too but you just can’t pack enough weed in bongs. i use a hookah/shisha sometimes… good bubbles there.
big bear - Well, first of all, not a damn thing. You had to be there earlier. Somebody wanted to ask questions non RHH related. See here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgDGo_BEuadMYj2ILkhZP3Ku.Bd.;_ylv=3?qid=20080606125814AAi5MNw

And anyway, stop being such a bamma all your life. How can smoking weed give anything a bad name? Or are you just brainwashed by the media? You just need to smoke a blunt, and you’ll be aiight.

OK I’ve measured a large triangular window and am going to cover it with hurricane shutters, I know how long each piece needs to be in inches like 47.298, but how do I convert that .298 into a fraction I can read on a tape measure like 5/16?

on WHNT, amazing force Storm Report : PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HUNTSVILLE AL 541 PM CDT FRI MAY 9 2008 …PRELIMINARY STORM SURVEY INFORMATION ACROSS NORTHWEST ALABAMA… A PRELIMINARY STORM SURVEY OF THE DAMAGE INCURRED ACROSS NORTHEAST COLBERT…EASTERN LAUDERDALE…AND EXTREME NORTHWEST LAWRENCE COUNTIES /ALABAMA/ HAS BEEN COMPLETED BY NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AND COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PERSONNEL. THE EVENT OCCURRED THURSDAY…MAY 8 2008. INITIAL FINDINGS …

I think people should be more responsible for there own safety. There are people that think the Government should support them, take care of and rescue them. We have a moral responsibility to look after the old and disable, not they able body, lazy leeches on society.
I am from Louisiana and am remembering Katrina and the elderly and diabled that could have been saved if the were not wasting energy and time on those who by choice didn’t want to leave.

I just moved here very recently for work. I used to live in a northern state. Any realistic and low cost suggestions would be nice.

hello,Temporaly , I am sleeping in a gazibo with my cat since i cant bring her in the house for particiliar reason . But right now its around 5oC outside so i am sleeping in the house. Is she safe in there? I built her a little shelter too..

I’m just curious how many countries will be sending "foreign aid" to help the victims of hurricane Gustav? Since the United States of America is always the first to send supplies and relief to any country that has a major natural disaster (China, Myrnamar, Indonesia, Georgia) would it not be a great switch to see other countries "aid" the USA?

I need to have a 4 page report on this question^
I need a link with some RECENT data on a hurricane temperatures.
Preferably Noel[2007] but as long as it’s recent I need it. I need to know about the path it took and if it left a cool surface water path. I have pics of Noel’s infrared path and it did cool the ocean but I need WORDS. I have to make it my own and Im gonna summarize everything anyone gives together.
it has to be on the path it lef and how it affected surface water temperatures.
Links to websites would be wonderful.

The restaurant I am employed with has been closed for over a month now due to flooding. We were expecting it would be closed for two weeks, MAYBE, but it has turned out to be much longer.

My boss told those of us who work full time that we can file for unemployment insurance, as well as disaster relief. I was waitressing 6 days a week.

So, while I wait for the restaurant to re-open (which will hopefully be in the next few weeks) I have been selling some things that I can do without, babysitting for families as much as I can, and now just this week I have decided to file for unemployment and the disaster relief.

The unemployment is something that will effect the weeks from now until I am able to work at the restaurant again, and the disaster relief is back pay for this past month.

My questions:

Is unemployment or disaster relief something that I pay back, like a loan, or is it more like a "grant." - For lack of better metaphor?

Will this increase the taxes I pay month to month? I told them to take income tax out of the checks right away.

Will this affect my credit score?

Thank you for any info you can provide.

i am doing a project. it’s an a-z book about hurricanes. i know that the hurricane centers don’t name hurricanes after the letters X, Y, and Z and i need to find a place that does. it has to be in the united states or canada and you can search for tropical storms if needed also. please help!! thanks!

I live in Texas and at this time of year the weather sometimes gets bad (tornados, severe thunderstorms). I have always displayed family photos in the hallway of our home (which is our safe place during bad weather) and realized that having frames with glass hanging over us when we are seeking SAFE shelter is probably not a very good idea.
I have seen in mail order catalogs these pouch type things that you hang on your wall and display a lot of pictures (4×6), but now when I try to find them…I can’t!
Does anyone have any ideas to hang photos (all sizes) without frames/glass? Does anyone know where to find those photo pouch things (I think it was called "wall it"??)?
Thanks for any and all ideas!!

There is a large and very symmetrical rotation that has developed in the last several hours in the area where Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas meet.
Does this type of feaure have a more specific name?

I’m looking to get a tattoo on my rib cage. It willl read "I am just a dreamer, but you are just a dream" It’s a quote from Like a Hurricane by Neil Young. It’s one of my favorite songs of his that I have loved since childhood, and also my favorite quote from the song.

I know I want the text. But I’m not sure what to add around it. And anyone have a rib cage tattoo? How’s the pain? My other tattoo is on my shoulder blade. (I’m a girl too, if that helps)

I want it to look kinda like this.
http://wreckingbalm.com/tattoo-removal-blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/celebrity-tattoo-megan-fox-rib-tattoo.jpg

When disasters, such as a hurricane, hit an area, the cost of everything seems to go up immediately: food, water, housing, gas, etc. Explain possible effects on the economy, using the laws of supply and demand to explain your comment.