The Klaxons are Blowing! The Hurricane's Coming!

"Sandy" is a really substandard name for a hurricane that's supposed to bring complete doom. I still think there should be a stock of reserve 'badass' names for hurricanes that can used when one turns especially doomful.

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So, these dipshits destroyed the HMS Bounty replica from the 1964 World's Fair by deciding they'd be cool and sail it through the hurricane. One more link to the past is gone.

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As I remarked back when The Beloved Leader toppled over, "Mourning is Mandatory". That seems to have been no exaggeration:

TOKYO: A North Korean army minister was reportedly executed with a mortar round for drinking and carousing during the official mourning period after the death of Kim Jong-il.

Kim Chol, the vice-minister of the army, was taken into custody earlier this year on the orders of Kim Jong-un, who assumed the leadership after his father died in December. On the orders of Mr Kim to leave "no trace of him behind, down to his hair", Kim Chol was forced to stand on a spot that had been zeroed in for a mortar round and was "obliterated", South Korean media reported.

Damn. Words fail me. It's like something a rather over the top James Bond villain would do, except they're real. How could anyone drink and carouse during the mourning period for a dictator from such an impressively evil and insane regime?

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Ocean City is being destroyed. http://oceancity.patch.com/articles/photo-gallery-storm-on-sunday-in-ocean-city-5dffb726#photo-11929292 These pictures are from yesterday afternoon, and the height of the storm surge isn't expected until 8pm tonight.

Ooh - and here's from 10am this morning... http://oceancity.patch.com/articles/photo-gallery-storm-on-monday-in-ocean-city#photo-11936521

This is weird and horrible to watch, as I spent several springs there performing in the Doodah Parade. That entire area along the ocean front from 12th up to 7th or so is familiar to me, as is the middle of the town. The Boardwalk area seems relatively intact, and indeed the live cam from 9th street shows it holding on, undamaged.

Alas! Grundleland!

http://galloway.patch.com/articles/hurricane-sandy-live-discussion-board-during-storm

And, per NOAA, Ocean City apparently got hit dead centre. "5 miles SW of Atlantic City" is what they're saying for landfall. High tide was at 8:00, and landfall at 8:20, so hopefully that's the worst of the flooding over.

Doug Bergren, who stayed on the island, reports it's now dead calm, about 70F, water four feet deep on the Bay Ave, and 'all manner' of household debris floating by, including a bookshelf, so one can infer that at least one house has broken apart. There's little he's able to tell beyond his immediate neighborhood, of course, but from what I could see earlier today, before the webcams stopped working, the bayside and downtown were being hit worse than the beachside, so perhaps it'll still be there, relatively undamaged, in the morning.

I'd been half-decided these past few months to go there for the parade come April.