Given my druthers, I'd just as soon skirt the whole hurricane issue—there's only so much mawkish solicitude and amateur punditry one can take—but since I didn't want to seem like a middle-aged guy who was living with his mother on purpose, I mentioned that I was from New Orleans and temporarily homeless, etc. A few minutes later a guy with an Okie accent and haircut en brosse approached me. Diffidently he mentioned the looting in New Orleans, and I agreed it was a shame.

He went on: "I had a dream the other night that God was flushing the toilet."

" … I'm sorry?"

"I told my wife, 'God's flushing the toilet!' Know what I mean? Those people who stayed behind and looted?"

"Well," I said, "I don't think they stayed behind to loot per se …"

"Still, you know, that whole damn city—"

¶ 11:20 AM