Mother Nature: Fooled ya! (giggle)

Well, the predicted End Times fell short -- again. Stormageddon didn't submerge all of Lower Manhattan under fathoms of seawater after all. Nor did it turn New York (or the East Coast) into a post-apocalyptic wilderness populated by zombies. We can safely skip the Planet of the Apes casting call for Charleston Heston to pound the sand and scream: "Oh my God! ... You Maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! God damn you all to hell!" That said, I'm glad Mother Nature (this time costumed as a skanky temptress called Irene) opted mostly to toy with us, test FEMA's preparedness and try President Obama's patience. This is, what, the 100th natural "disaster" on the president's watch thus far? What's next -- an epochal Ice Age? And the Republicans will still say it's his fault, of course. But I digress. Per the New York Times, the storm never packed the "violent punch that forecasters had feared" (like the weather guy ever gets it right). Ergo, the Eastern Seaboard is still there. Though denizen inconvenience is high, damage is relatively light and casualties are low. Bullet dodged. From the news coverage I caught intermittently, it seems the media did not totally embarrass itself. So I can skip aping Heston's "It's a mad house! It's a mad house!" theme as a basis for my commentary. To be sure, there were plenty of over-the-top media moments (i.e., reporters lashing themselves to rain-whipped telephone poles, shouting: "Oh the humanity!" into the hurricane-ing wind, and such). But all in all, the press mostly kept their heads about them. Um, bravo, I guess. Anyway, we're lucky Irene, that hussy, turned out to be mostly a tease.