I'm literally minutes from doffing my work clothes and donning my shorts and Radiohead T. to walk down to Zilker Park for Day One of the ACL Fest when I see this crap. Man, those were two of the best things on the schedule tomorrow. Damn you, traffic!

Then again, I shouldn't complain. I'd rather be sitting in the hot sun listening to music within walking distance of a Jamba Juice stand than in the hot sun watching helplessly as my car overheats and runs out of gas.

Everyone seems to have learned from Katrina. Everybody is "better safe than sorry" here right now.

Last night, Rebecca went to the Wal-Mart to pick up some water, and it was all gone. She came home with Gatorade and Propel and a flashlight instead.

"Should we tape up the windows?" she asked.

We're far, far, far from the coast, but even people here in Central Texas are worried about Rita and all the usual things you see before a big impending storm -- lines of traffic, runs on water and supplies at stores -- is happening here. I can't imagine what it's like in Houston right now. I'm hearing stories about 6-7 hour trips just from one part of town to another.

I'm looking out my office window now and it's sunny and beautiful outside, with no indication that a major storm is headed our way (or at least within 150 miles of us).

Someone at work came by to see if we had bottled water in our office -- they were doing a bottled water count throughout the building.

They asked if we had anyone coming in to work over the weekend and if any of us live in "low-lying" areas.

There's a big disaster preparedness meeting going on this afternoon. There's talk that ACL will be cancelled, which I sincerely hope it will be. As much as I want to see all those bands, I sure don't want to see them in the middle of major thunderstorms and 60 mph winds. I like Los Aterciopelados, but I don't like them enough to wallow in mud for eight hours.

Mostly it's a lesson in a post-Katrina country. People are taking this storm much more seriously. People are preparing where they wouldn't have cared before. Last year there were multiple hurricanes that slammed Florida, and there wasn't this level of panic and readiness.

So we're just waiting. We should get the first rain late tomorrow or early Saturday. We're expecting bad winds, lots of rain, jammed phone lines and major, major traffic.

Like I said, I really don't want to be driving from New Braunfels to Austin this weekend, so ACL is becoming less and less of a priority for us. I'm wondering what we'll do if the electricity really does go down. We get minor power outages in the best of circumstances.

I really, really want to be home during all of this. But if things really fall apart, I may be here anyway, working, covering news, being a journalist.

It's not scary yet, here, but you can see the horizon of panic getting brighter every few hours. This is real, this is coming and nobody knows how bad it will be.

There's been some buildup in our strips before, but the first official Action Gravy comic is up today, over on Space Monkeys!, which itself is at actiongravy.com, so you see the connection.

Should it worry me that when mail gets misdelivered to my house, what ends up in my mailbox is not "U.S. News & World Report" or MENSA's newsletter, but "Racer," featuring a very thick magazine's-worth of articles about dirt bikin'?



Geez, I wonder if my neighbors are accidentally getting all our porn.

It is at times like this, when we've been through a major national disaster and are on the brink of a smaller, but still significant disaster, that I have to wonder if it makes me a complete asshole to spend my mental energy figuring out if it's going to ruin my Austin City Limits Festival weekend.

Is there nothing the Black Eyed Peas won't do for some cash?

Look, I know you guys toiled in obscurity for a while, knocking out hits in other countries while the U.S. ignored you, but the minute you get a modicum of fame here it doesn't mean you have to do every commercial and accept every gig offered to you.

I was watching the Emmys and you guys went on stage and start rapping about Doris Roberts from Everybody Loves Raymond. Doris Roberts! What the fuck is wrong with you? Was the money that much better than it would have been for the People's Choice Awards where you could have ducked in and out without anybody really noticing?

The Black Eyed Peas are officially the Biggest Music Whores in the World.

If you offer them a few dollars extra, Big Event Producers and Ad Reps, they'll even throw in a blowjob.

Unfortunately, the blowjob will be corny and derivative.