Today I got to take a ride in a Hummer Limo, and you didn’t. So there.

I must of course deplore this egregious waste of petroleum.

Then again, it was kinda cool.

Yeah, I know. Kindof an over-reaction there, I suppose. It’s just one more example of death by a thousand bureaucratic paper cuts that’s been going on down there. (Here’s one more, by the way.)

Here’s a photo essay taken by a Nicaraguan who was living and working in New Orleans at the time, that documents the scene before, during, and after the hurricane. I’m not finished looking at it all – it’s almost 200 pictures with captions, and I’m on dial-up. But it’s well worth a look. Thanks to Edith Frost for posting it on her blog.

Yes, I know. There are far, far bigger reasons to suspect FEMA of being next to thoroughly useless. But here’s one that sticks in my craw, and it’s not going to make the 6:00 news:

FEMA’s disaster assistance claim web site only works on Windows computers running Internet Explorer 6.

First of all, this is blatantly dumb.

Second of all, it hardly takes any work to make a web site which is standards compliant and works with nearly every browser made. There is absolutely no reason why a web site should only work on one browser. Ever.

This is insanely stupid.

It means that relief workers have had to spend extra cash purchasing Windows XP licences and wasting time setting up Microsoft’s buggy shitware just to access the web site.

This is blitheringly insane.

Oh, and by the way, the site also therefore happens to be in violation of the U.S. government’s Section 508 Accessibility Standards, which are in fact mentioned on FEMA’s own goddamned web site.

This kind of fucking crap pisses me off when it happens on just an average, boring e-commerce site. For it to happen on this site, it’s just… well…

There are surely even better adjectives and invectives I could use, but it’s late and I can’t think of them.