LHC, Hurricane Ike, and Sookie Stackhouse
Well, we survived firing up the LHC. You can see some footage from their webcams here. Pretty neat stuff.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Ike is roaring towards Texas:
”The total amount of energy is more powerful than Katrina, so we could be seeing a storm surge that could rival Katrina,” Masters said. The storm is so large “the location doesn’t matter much; it is going to inundate a huge part of the Texas coast.”
. . . -snip- . . .
Galveston, parts of southern Houston and areas south of the city and near the Texas coast were under a mandatory evacuation order that started at noon today. Hurricane Ike is following a track similar to the 1900 Galveston hurricane that killed 8,000 people, the deadliest storm in U.S. history.
It was actually the bit about Galveston that caught my attention. For those of you who don’t watch the Weather Channel, a bit about the Great Galveston Hurricane:
The Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on the city of Galveston, Texas on September 8, 1900. It had estimated winds of 135 mph (215 km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.
The hurricane caused great loss of life with the estimated death toll between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals; the number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of casualties of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780 and 1998’s Hurricane Mitch. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is to date the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. By contrast, the second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, caused approximately 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, claimed the lives of approximately 1,800 people.
I’ve always been fascinated with the story of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane. It wasn’t the first, or the last, but the variables that went into the (lack of) storm preparation, and the strength of the storm, as well as the massive death toll, have always stuck in my imagination. Rest assured, it’ll end up in some story somewhere.
Speaking of horrible things which will eventually end up in one of my stories somewhere, someday, there’s (Holy NSFW, Batman!) this awful, terrible picture. Click at your own risk! And, there’s this one, which is beautiful and creepy at the same time, and safe for work.
Finally, HBO has a new series, True Blood, based off Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries. I watched it last night. I had high hopes. They were dashed. I mean, the trailer looked so good. The people playing the characters looked great. I was positively gleeful.
But damn. The pilot episode was so cheesy it was painful. Anna Paquin is playing the lead character, barmaid/telepath Sookie Stackhouse. Um. Yeah. So, I totally thought Anna Paquin was a better actress than that. I guess I was wrong. There was a really gratuitous sex scene, and that’s me calling it that. I mean, I can see the scene needed to be there for the sake of the plot, but damn. It didn’t have to be all that. They were going for disturbing, and I guess they got it, judging from my reaction. I just thought, y’know, they could have managed to be disturbing without being so tastelessly graphic about it.
A lot of the interpersonal details in the pilot were handled in a really heavy-handed manner, too. The writers practically bludgeoned me over the head with the fact that Sam, Sookie’s boss and owner of Merlotte’s Tavern, has a crush on Sookie. Tara was a stereotypically angry black woman, which I don’t get, because I was pretty sure she was a nice white gal who owned a clothing boutique in the books. Arlene was perfect, and they got Jason pretty well. The guy playing vampire Bill Compton was a bit over the top. Lafayette, the gay line cook, was fabulous, and I mean that in the best, most wonderful, nearly drag queen way that I can. I hope he lasts the season, because the guy playing him rocks.
I’m trying to cut the episode some slack, because it was a pilot. Pilots are notoriously bad. I mean, I hated Supernatural at first, too, and now I’m all but salivating, waiting for the next season to start. True Blood has a lot of work to do if it doesn’t want to turn into another Dresden Files (another great idea butchered by TV, no pun intended).
(Photo credit: IMDB.com.)
