mondrian’s neon fantod

An alligator at the Texas State Aquarium, waiting patiently at the front of the tank, hoping beyond hope that somehow the glass would break and he could get to one of us silly mammals.

It’s a jellyfish – several, actually, since those ghostly images in the background are other jellyfish that were further back in the tank – straight from the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Chrisit, where Patita, Madre Mo and I spent the Thanksgiving weekend.

There’s lots of very cool things to see at the TSA, so if you’re ever down in that part of the world you should give it a visit.

I’m very glad to say that the folks I know who were likely to suffer greatly from Hurricane Rita have, in fact, come though fairly well all things considered. My heart still goes out to those whose lives were touched, though. I wish you all a swift and successful recovery from whatever you are faced with now. And I hope that the disasterous failure of governmental officials in regards to Katrina doesn’t spill over into your ability to recover from Rita.

CNN has a well put together piece on The big disconnect in New Orleans.

I’m inclined to believe the people on the ground rather than the officious twits who are only going on “reports.” Those people are a lot like the bosses in the old office parable where the front-line workers say “This is shit and it sinks” and their supervisors then say “It is excrement and it smells badly” and the next level up says “It is fertilizer and it makes things grow” and so on until the people at the top finally hear “It promotes growth and is powerful.”

I’m leaving all the politics and rants and all that aside. Just go donate whatever you can spare to the relief efforts. I chose to use MercyCorps, since they’re 92% efficient with donations. But use the Red Cross if you feel better about using them.

You can also check your local TV stations’ web sites for local donation possibilities. Like this one here in Austin.

The best example ever of a marketing wonk who’d rather be doing something else with her life: Dragons, Quests and Marketing Plans.

An upgrade to WP wound up taking out my DB. So here we go again.

On the plus side, the new version of WP should mean that I can have comments open again. At least until the poker bots figure out new ways of jamming up my content with their useless advertisements.