Are you still on AIM? You're not showing up on my list, though I added you.

Can't wait to see the pictures.

I feel cheated. No catastrophic destruction, no free-fire against looters (at least not yet).

The superdome thing is promising, at least.

Be careful what you wish for.

According to the NWS, levees have been overtopped... no major flooding yet?

Buff is downtown, the levee broke off Tennessee St. which is up the river and the opposide side from where he is.

There has only been scattered reports of flooding downtown.

A LEVEE BREACH OCCURRED ALONG THE INDUSTRIAL CANAL AT TENNESSE STREET. 3 TO 8 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED DUE TO THE BREACH...LOCATIONS IN THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO ARABI AND 9TH WARD OF NEW ORLEANS.

nws reporting

Note this is of course not the catastrophic flooding which was predicted and worried about, but it will likely cause significant economic and structural damage.

I was hoping you would get to kill some looters!

YOU NEED HELP

THAT IS SAD WHAT YOU SAID AND THE FUNNY PART IS I GUESS YOU DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER.

Days ago on TV I saw a woman in the convention center or the dome wearing makeshift shoes made out of some plastic stuff. I don't think anyone needs to care about some people taking waterlogged sneakers from an abandoned store, let alone shoot them.

We finally found out that at least some of the people taking pot shots at authorities simply did not want to leave the city. In many cases I suppose it was because their pets would be abandoned, or something. Who knows. Who cares? Seeing looting doesn't make me feel good, but when the world has ended around you, and credit cards are "useless for 100 miles", you have no cash because the banks are all closed, the federal aid doesn't come for days, you bet you would "loot". Thank goodness they decided to let people take stuff so long as they didn't damage anything.

What about all those people who didn't loot, but waited around, finally starting to chant "give us help!". I saw them on TV a lot of times. I am surprised they didn't riot. Even the news anchors were getting outraged. Even on the very conservative Fox network, it looked like people were getting freaked out from seeing all of that suffering.

The people to really blow away might well have been those gangs of kids roaming around raping and killing people in the early days after the wind broke... but far better would have been to have caught them earlier in their lives and helped them have some respect for themselves and humanity. You can't create that for a poor inner city kid using bullets.

Anyway... any ordinary "looted" shit will be compensated for in one way or another by the huge amounts of aid starting to roll in. As for the expensive stuff that appeared on "The Antiques Roadshow" a few years ago when they visited New Orleans, if you see one of the things floating by in the water and you can make it into something useful (even a back-scratcher), I say go for it.

No flooding? That's good. I heard a woman on the news say the water level had reached the top of the levy.

the city should be fine?

Famous last words. With all that you've been through, I couldn't help a little ironic (and inoffensive, I hope) chuckle at this.