Resurrecting a query

I was looking over some posts I'd made back in January, and I found the Fannish Five question from the last week of that month:

What five crossovers would you like to see?

I know a number of people answered this back then, but have your interests changed since then, now that we have HBP, Episode Three, the season finale of Lost, the end of 6 Feet Under, the release of Eldest, Batman Begins, etc?

Back then, I had four, HP/Buffy in Giles' time at Hogwarts, Oceans 11/The Eight, HP/The Outsiders and Clueless/Heathers. If I was doing the list anew, I'd drop the HP/Outsiders and instead, wish for HP/The Eight and HP/Batman Begins, focusing on Dr Crane getting ingredients for his fear toxin from breeding dementors, and Lucius Malfoy playing some sort of role in the acquisition.

What about you?

(coming in two minutes, a much more serious post)

(no subject)

elke_tanzer, queen of useful links, has a wonderful collection of links with donation information here and methods of getting and sharing information here.

Flickr has over two thousand photos that ordinary people have taken on camphones and their own cameras and uploaded to the site. It's heartbreaking.

hurricane_blog is the RSS from our local Sun Sentinal's hurricane-themed blog. It's very down to earth and useful in terms of flat-out information, but if you want something very local, check out the Times-Picayune's blog.

And fandom_charity is thanking donors with gifts of fics, icons and art. The general fic "rate" is $1/100 words, $10/1,000 words.

A big thank you to the US Navy, who are en route with amphibious crafts to rescue and transport people to safety, and bring food and drinking water for those in need. My brother in law, who is in the Navy, is currently in Ft Worth where everyone from his New Orleans base is relocating - it looks like he'll be there for weeks, if not months. I am choosing to avoid politicizing right now, but I may later rant about the morality of vacationing. On the flip side, though, there was a family quoted in the Herald this morning who decided that if they were going to spend a hundred dollars a night on hotels, they were going to drive to Orlando and take the kids to Disney World and try and distract them from the fact that they may not have a home to go back to. I'm not sure if I'm cheered or devestated by that.

It's probably too early to really talk about this, but back in 1992, everyone said that Homestead and County Walk and even Kendall and the Gables would never recover from Hurricane Andrew, which flattened nearly two hundred thousand homes, destroyed towns and ruined lives. Yes, the devestation from Katrina is multiple-times-multiplied from Andrew, but the sentinment should be the same - New Orleans, Biloxi and all the other devestated towns need to be rebuilt and revitalized. Kudos to the casinos who've promised at least three months pay to their employees. Kudos to those who are helping their neighbors and the refugees in their midst. Best wishes and the all important "please stay safe" to everyone in the area, and may they get that damned levee closed.

Something frustrating

Since there's been a diaspora from the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama areas, I think it would be good for everyone if the national newscasts spent a smidge of time covering what people who have been forced from their homes can do, in terms of contacting their insurers to find out about what their homeowners' policy will pay for in terms of food and shelter, or if they rent, the fact that they possibly don't need to pay rent on an uninhabitable place, and if their job is gone, there will be unemployment benefits which will probably be supplemented by FEMA, etc. These were all things we learned about down here after Andrew, and right now, people feel so lost and shellshocked and I don't think the tv networks are really helping explain, as much as they can.

ETA: FEMA has put up a page of resources for those suffering the impact of Katrina.