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gwilson

By gwilson
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EastEnd Susan

EastEnd Susan

Posted
Posted

To: ex-Houstonians, present Houstonians, and future Houstonians or those

who know a Houstonian:

We're about to enter the peak of the hurricane season, which starts June 1

and ends November 30.

Any day now, you're going to turn on the TV and see

a weather person pointing to some radar blob out in the Gulf of Mexico and

making two basic meteorological points:

(1) There is no need to panic.

(2) We could all be killed.

Yes, hurricane season is an exciting time to be in Houston.

If you're new

to the area, you're probably wondering what you need to do to prepare for

the possibility that we'll get hit by 'the big one.

'' Based on our

experiences, we recommend that you follow this simple three-step hurricane

preparedness plan:

STEP 1.

Buy enough food and bottled water to last your family for at

least three days.

STEP 2. Put these supplies into your car.

STEP 3. Drive to Nebraska and remain there until Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, statistics show that most people will not follow this

sensible plan. Most people will foolishly stay here in Houston.

We'll start with one of the most important hurricane preparedness items:

HOMEOWNERS' INSURANCE: If you own a home, you must have hurricane

insurance.

Fortunately, this insurance is cheap and easy to get, as long

as your home meets two basic requirements:

(1) It is reasonably well-built, and (2) It is located in Nebraska.

Unfortunately, if your home is located in Houston, or any other area that

might actually be hit by a hurricane, most insurance companies would

prefer not to sell you hurricane insurance, because then they might be

required to pay YOU money, and that is certainly not why they got into the

insurance business in the first place.

So you'll have to scrounge around for an insurance company, which will

charge you an annual premium roughly equal to the replacement value of

your house.

at any moment, this company can drop you like used dental

floss.

Since Hurricane Alicia, I have had an estimated 27 different

home-insurance companies.

This week, I'm covered by the Bob and Big Stan

Insurance Company, under a policy which states that, in addition to my

premium, Bob and Big Stan are entitled, on demand, to my kidneys.

SHUTTERS: Your house should have hurricane shutters on all the windows,

all the doors, and -- if it's a major hurricane -- all the toilets.

There

are several types of shutters, with advantages and disadvantages:

Plywood shutters: The advantage is that, because you make them yourself,

they're cheap.

The disadvantage is that, because you make them yourself,

they will fall off.

Sheet-metal shutters: The advantage is that these work well, once you get

them all up.

The disadvantage is that once you get them all up, your

hands will be useless bleeding stumps, and it will be December.

Roll-down shutters: The advantages are that they're very easy to use, and

will definitely protect your house.

The disadvantage is that you will

have to sell your house to pay for them.

'Hurricane-proof'' windows: These are the newest wrinkle in hurricane

protection: They look like ordinary windows, but they can withstand

hurricane winds! You can be sure of this, because the salesman says so.

He lives in Nebraska.

'Hurricane Proofing Your Property: As the hurricane approaches, check your

yard for movable objects like barbecue grills, planters, patio furniture,

visiting relatives, etc.

; you should, as a precaution, throw these items

into your swimming pool (if you don't have a swimming pool, you should

have one built immediately).

Otherwise, the hurricane winds will turn

these objects into deadly missiles.

EVACUATION ROUTE: If you live in a low-lying area, you should have an

evacuation route planned out.

(To determine whether you live in a

low-lying area, look at your driver's license; if it says 'Houston'

you live in a low-lying area.

) The purpose of having an evacuation route

is to avoid being trapped in your home when a major storm hits.

Instead, you will be trapped in a gigantic traffic jam several miles from

your home, along with two hundred thousand other evacuees.

So, as a

bonus, you will not be lonely.

HURRICANE SUPPLIES: If you don't evacuate, you will need a mess of

supplies.

Do not buy them now! Houston tradition requires that you wait

until the last possible minute, then go to the supermarket and get into

vicious fights with strangers over who gets the last can of SPAM.

In

addition to food and water, you will need the following supplies:

23 flashlights.

At least $167 worth of batteries that turn out, when the

power goes out, to be the wrong size for the flashlights.

Bleach. (No, I don't know what the bleach is for.

NOBODY knows what the

bleach is for.

But it's traditional, so GET some!)

A 55-gallon drum of underarm deodorant.

A big knife that you can strap to your leg.

(This will be useless in a

hurricane, but it looks cool.

A large quantity of raw chicken, to placate the alligators.

(Ask anybody

who went through Alicia; after the hurricane, there WILL be irate

alligators.

$35,000 in cash or diamonds so that, after the hurricane passes, you can

buy a generator from a man with no discernible teeth.

Of course these are just basic precautions.

As the hurricane draws near,

it is vitally important that you keep abreast of the situation by turning

on your television and watching TV reporters in rain slickers stand right

next to the ocean and tell you over and over how vitally important it is

for everybody to stay away from the ocean.

Good luck and remember: It's great living in paradise! Those of you who

aren't here yet, you should come.

Really!

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lockmat

lockmat

Posted
Posted
New Guilty Pleasure:

the TV shows "Wipeout" and "I survived a Japanese gameshow."

Saw them both yesterday and damned near died laughing.

I watched most of the Japanese gameshow as well. I like the gameshow part a lot, but I could do without the reality show drama. It felt like The Real World, and that's for teenagers IMO.

I wanna be on it, especially if they always get to take helicopter rides over Tokyo!

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Chamo

Chamo

Posted
Posted
New Guilty Pleasure:

the TV shows "Wipeout" and "I survived a Japanese gameshow."

Saw them both yesterday and damned near died laughing.

I saw the beginning of Wipeout, had to leave the house.... Will watch the rest probably tonight. Love those type of shows..... Have you seen Silent Library or Human Tetris?

There another one tonight "It's not TV, It's birth control". Baby borrowers is the name of the show..... Great for a guy like me.

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cnote

cnote

Posted
Posted
Okay, THAT was funny, I am so tempted to sign up....the library one is great for a bunch of masochistic guys, though.

Baby borrowers...no. I already had my own, thank you...

Didn't anyone watch MXC on Spike TV I think it was? This was based on a Japanese gameshow called Kashiki's Castle or something like that. It is basically the exact same thing as wipeout, but they overdub all the Japanese with English funnies. We used to watch it when we were drunk in college (read: all the time) and laugh hysterically.

The best challenge they had was when the constestants would run full speed across a pond along stepping stones, some of which were solid and some of which were floating and would move. They would slip on a floating one and slam chest first into a solid rock, I dont see how they didn't break ribs (maybe they did...)

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Chamo

Chamo

Posted
Posted
Can anyone translate this for me? alta vista babble fish is not helping.

eres burda d pana

I'm not sure if there is a typo in there, since I've never seen "d" as spanish word.

I would guess it comes from VENEZUELA..... "Eres burda de Pana"

Burda = A Lot

Pana = Buddy / Good friend

I would translate "You are a very good friend"

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lockmat

lockmat

Posted
Posted
I would guess it comes from VENEZUELA..... "Eres burda de Pana"

Burda = A Lot

Pana = Buddy / Good friend

I would translate "You are a very good friend"

aw, very good. She IS from Venezuela.

Thanks for that!

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gwilson

gwilson

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She is even MORE intriguing in person wilson. We are gonna have another "DRINK YOUR FACE OFF!" get togethervery soon. It will be a sort of going away party for me as I am in the final stages of moving to Austin. I am thinking we will have to do something this week or next.

Shall we then ? I am encouraging ALL HAIFers to come to this one. I am once again open to buying everyone who attends A beer. ;)

I've met her before and was prompted to ask her to marry me, but I held my tongue. ^_^

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crunchtastic

crunchtastic

Posted
Posted
Maybe what you need is a little youth in your life to offset that... :D

Ha! On my 40th birthday, after a looonnnggg week in Vegas, I decided to give up guys 15 years younger and settle down.

A wise choice, but sometimes it's not easy. Or were you referring to something else?? :D:lol:

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lockmat

lockmat

Posted
Posted
Ha! On my 40th birthday, after a looonnnggg week in Vegas, I decided to give up guys 15 years younger and settle down.

A wise choice, but sometimes it's not easy. Or were you referring to something else?? :D:lol:

no, you were on the mark...hehe :blush:

I'm just messin'

watch out if she offers you candy. LOL

hmmmm, yeah...haha

---------

On another matter...why does everyone who writes an unintended pun compelled to always point out that it's not one?

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lockmat

lockmat

Posted
Posted

I wanted to create an account at a video website for my extended family to share so we can all upload our videos in one place. I thought about youtube, but they have a time/size limit. Anyone know of a quality video website that could let me do this?

Thanks

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houstonmacbro

houstonmacbro

Posted
Posted

Okay, I know we are all on this group, but what other (social) networks do you belong to? On average, I get friend requests/invites from so many it's hard to keep up.

I just got one from a (social) network called Tagged. What tha ...?

But since my darling and beautiful niece invited me I joined.

Here's the dilemma ... I tend to create the accounts and then abandon them. Let's see, there's ...

Tagged, Ning, BisonRoundup (Go Howard University!), Flickr, Orkut, MySpace, Facebook ...

... and that's just getting started. I also have accounts on Yahoo360, TalkHouston (defunct?), HAIF, LinkedIn, tons more newsgroups setup for various family and neigborhood activities, this one (ForUsByUs), and one that I even setup for my workplace when I was in Baltimore. There are probably as many others that I've totally forgotten about, but will visit when I get a message from a 'friend' that decided to contact me on there as opposed to sending me a regular, plain-vanilla email. What's that all about...?

For the record, I've pretty much settled on HAIF, Facebook and ForUsByUs as my networks of choice. I tend to stay around and participate where there is stimulating and thought-provoking conversations. Over40andFearless on Ning is another great one for conversation (Hey Melissa ... you like my shout out?). I will also post the occasional post to my blog, but that's like doing it to yourself ... it's all one way and not very enjoyable over the long run.

Oooh ... no he didn't!

:-)

There simply are too many, and no compelling reason ... or earthy means possible to visit them all on a regular basis. If I cannot just answer or pose questions in my email (like we do here) it is hopeless. One good thing is that I have been able to reconnect with friends I thought I'd lost forever on some of the networks, so they're not all bad.

So how do you cope with the ever-increasing, omni-present social networks and the unending invitations from friends --present company excluded? Oh yeah ... and what ever happened to plain ole e-mail?

:-)

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lockmat

lockmat

Posted
Posted

I did see a muslim filiming with a tripod a tower off 59 and richmond the other day. But I doubt they'd be so dumb to do it on a street corner like they did and I don't even know if one of those houses an energy company.

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gwilson

gwilson

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I did see a muslim filiming with a tripod a tower off 59 and richmond the other day. But I doubt they'd be so dumb to do it on a street corner like they did and I don't even know if one of those houses an energy company.

I was just joking with a buddy of mine about seeing the same guy in a minivan taking pictures and video of things up and down Westheimer and Allen Parkway.

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lockmat

lockmat

Posted
Posted

this article was written in 2003?

I was just joking with a buddy of mine about seeing the same guy in a minivan taking pictures and video of things up and down Westheimer and Allen Parkway.

I'm not gonna lie, the thought of the guy being a terrorist was one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind. Just a thought though. Hope it's not true.

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houstonmacbro

houstonmacbro

Posted
Posted
I did see a muslim filiming with a tripod a tower off 59 and richmond the other day. But I doubt they'd be so dumb to do it on a street corner like they did and I don't even know if one of those houses an energy company.

Was he Muslim, Arab, or just middle-eastern looking? There are worlds of differences in all of those.

But on this same thread of thought, I had heard somewhere that terrorists of the aforementioned descriptions could easily slip (like many other illegal immigrants) through the unguarded regions of our southern border because of their similarity in appearance to many Hispanics. Food for thought.

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lockmat

lockmat

Posted
Posted
Was he Muslim, Arab, or just middle-eastern looking? There are worlds of differences in all of those.

But on this same thread of thought, I had heard somewhere that terrorists of the aforementioned descriptions could easily slip (like many other illegal immigrants) through the unguarded regions of our southern border because of their similarity in appearance to many Hispanics. Food for thought.

Yeah, I guess he could have just been arab? I'm not familiar with the specifics of all their differeneces. Since he had one of those hats (for the life of me I can't think of the name of it) I assumed he was muslim. I thought only the religous wore those but I'm not sure.

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Mark F. Barnes

Mark F. Barnes

Posted
Posted
Yeah, I guess he could have just been arab? I'm not familiar with the specifics of all their differeneces. Since he had one of those hats (for the life of me I can't think of the name of it) I assumed he was muslim. I thought only the religous wore those but I'm not sure.

Hope I can clear some of this up for you, without a description I can be exactly certain about which you are talking about, so I will cover the most common and you can decide. Please know that there are several different versions of Muslim headdress, but I will just address the most common. There is the Ghutra which is a part of the headdress worn by Arab men, is a square scarf made of cotton, and is worn folded into a triangular shape with the fold in the front over the Tagiyah. (Taqiyah is a small white cap that keeps the Ghutra from slipping off the head.) The Ghutra usually worn in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE comes in either pure white or a combination of red and white (also called smagh / shmagh). Over in Kuwait and Bahrain, pure white Ghutra is normally worn. Contemporary black-and-white headpiece, called Kofiyah / Kaffiyeh are popular in Palestine , Jordan, Syria & Iraq. The Iqal is the doubled black cord that you see that secures the Ghutra to the head. Back to the Taqiyah, which is the small white cap that keeps the Ghutra from slipping off the head, however in some places like Egypt, Sudan and other North African countries, the Tagiya is worn by itself with no other head cover. When worn by itself, and in some areas is seem as recognition of being a peasant. Tagiyah can be of any color, while when worn under a head cover, it is always white. It is also worn separately by young boys in public in most Muslim societies. If you could describe what you were referring to I might be able to be more accurate.

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