AFTER HOVERING OVER NORTH CAROLINA FOR DAYS, OPHELIA TAKES "UNPRECEDENTED TURN"; BIG EASY MAYOR WHISPERS TO REPORTER, "IT'S COMING FOR US. YOU DON'T KNOW HOW HIGH UP THIS HURRICANE THING GOES. WE'RE DOOMED!"NEW ORLEANS - At 9:30 this morning, Hurricane Ophelia sputtered and crawled along the North Carolina coast at the same tortuously slow pace it has taken for days, meandering in fits and starts without direction.
Hundreds of miles away at that same moment, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was announcing that the Big Easy would emerge from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and once again play host to Mardi Gras, the decadent pre-lent celebration, in 2006.
All of a sudden, Ophelia churned and put itself into a meteorological hyperdrive, taking a hard left and zipping through South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi, plotting a trajectory with a bullseye on New Orleans. Within fifteen minutes, the vicious storm was wreaking new havoc on this already ravaged city.
With news of Ophelia beating a path to the city, a reporter asked Mayor Nagin if he found any meaning in this latest show of nature's fury, and the Mayor whispered to meet him in the "second to last pew" of St. Louis Cathedral. At the wind-swept church, the Mayor entered unrecognizably clad in black and wearing a wig. He quietly knelt down behind the reporter.
"Don't turn around," the Mayor whispered, his words halting and nervous. "I can't be seen talking to you. These hurricanes -- you don't know what you're playing with. You don't realize how high up this thing goes." The reporter pressed the Mayor to be more specific.
"Do you think it's a coincidence that Katrina ravaged New Orleans, the epicenter of sinful Mardi Gras, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the epicenter of sinful Southern gaming?" the Mayor asked. "Or that Ophelia comes calling the minute we say we're back in the decadence business? Let me put it to you this way: you didn't see either Katrina or Ophelia roar through the Vatican, did you? You do the math." The reporter turned around but the Mayor was gone.
Outside, college students were racing to salavage a decadent Mardi Gras float before the latest storm hit. Every so often, they glanced over their shoulders at the giant dark cloud that had enveloped the city.
