Claudette Ravages Texas Coast Like Mean-Hearted Woman in Blues Song

weet mercy! Texans are still rebuilding their shattered lives after last week's "just plain cold" brutalizing of the Galveston Bay area by heartless hurricane Claudette.

Like an insufferable tropical cocktease, that hurricane moved in and out of the Gulf of Mexico with threatening promise until attacking the Texas coastline with unrelenting moxy. Damages were estimated easily into five-digits, possibly six with the option for seven, and over 30,000 Texans were left without power. Electric power, not power in the Marx-Engels sense.

It was a double-decker sadness sandwich for residents of the Texas coast, who found their homes and livelihood torn up like the love of a good-lovin' bluesman. Ol' Claudette, she knocked over houses and blew down powerlines with a blow from those puckered-up metaphorical lips of hers and left all Texans lower than low. Some residents were desperate for electricity and shelter again, and even though Gov. Rick Perry promised disaster relief and the American Red Cross offered help to those hit hardest by the storm, it was little consolation after being so brutally used and abused by a hard-hearted bitch with a max wind speed of 85 mph.

"I lived in that wreck that used to be my house all my life," said 10-year-old Bob Phelps, a part-time investment banker and pretend Indian. "Claudette rolls in here like a storm and leaves everything all busted up. A lot like a storm, very much so, really. And all this debris, it's just like the inside of my little ol' heart."

Some grief-stricken residents, like cat fancier Elvin Harper, hoped Claudette would follow earlier predictions of losing intensity before reaching the coast.

"I had friends who said she was just a pretty coastal wind, but I knew better," said Harper, searching through cat debris to salvage what he could. "That hurricane was no good, and she messed Texas up good. It just ain't right, I'm telling you the truth."

Used to being turned inside out by tough-lovin' women, local blues players were among the first to recover from the storm. Though electricity was still out in the town, renowned blues legend Galveston Larry had words none-too-kind for the Category-1 storm in an all-acoustic set at Victoria tavern Benny's.

"That Claudette, she's a tough-lovin' woman," Larry advised, seeking a harmonica affirmation from fellow musician "Luckless" Gary Woodland. "She done rolled in over me, all up and down me—you hear what I'm sayin', Gary? And she flattened my trailer like thousand-pound anvil. Just like in Bugs Bunny cartoon or something."

Despite the poor simile, most residents suffering the aftermath of the tropical storm could identify with Larry's feelings.

"It's just sad, wrenches your insides all up," said steel worker and aspiring dancer Clara Gumption. "You can run into good weather systems every day of your life, it only takes one bad one to ruin it for everybody. But I don't hold no grudges. My main concern is getting on with everything, not cursing Claudette to Hades. She'll get what's coming to her some day, she's going to stroll into the wrong town and get herself messed up like she done to Texas."

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Apologies for the sudden end to last week’s column, communistas. The sheer epic scope of the commune’s tale got the better of me and I had to take three Excedrin Migraine and spend a few hours feeding the ducks behind the Shanesly Arby’s.

When I left you last, the Crochet! staffers had just packed up and left town like those front-running little bear assholes in The Lorax. I have to tell you, commune readers, this was a personal low point in the life of Emil Zender. However, that didn’t last long as the very next week there was the lawsuit, which made Crochet! jumping ship seem like a trip to Six Flags.

It turns out that all these years there was a website called The Onion that people tell me is quite popular. And apparently various individuals with law degrees felt that the commune’s brand of insouciant truth-telling was a bit too close to The Onion’s jam for comfort. I don’t see it personally, but that may be due in part to our lack of a working internet connection. For all I know they may have a Homer Brinks working there who tortures their downstairs neighbors at Sew What? magazine, that really would be weird and possibly actionable. But either way, there was a lawsuit, and it turned out that our "friends" at Hipsoda.com were just archiving our site for use as evidence in the trial, just like they had repeatedly told us they were doing. It even turned out they weren’t being sarcastic! Note to the world: We really need to develop a sarcasm font, pronto.

Before you get too excited however, the lawsuit turned out to be about 97% sizzle and only 3% steak-like polyurethane. It turns out they’d spent years carefully amassing evidence against the commune without bothering to check in on our assets, which turned out to total -$47.39. Yes, Kinkos, I got your collections call. After realizing that even recouping their legal expenses was an absurd pipe dream, the lawyers attempted to have our site shut down so as to cease and desist damaging The Onion’s reputation. However it was quickly uncovered that for most of the commune’s existence, due to various technical fuckups the site had only been accessible through off-brand love tester machines in various Southern California Pioneer Chicken locations, and had never actually been posted on the wider internet until Hipsoda.com started collecting evidence for the lawsuit. So by a strange twist of fate The Onion had damaged its own reputation, spreading the commune’s unique brand of verve to seven new fans in the intervening years.

This seemed to embarrass everyone into just dropping the whole thing, well that and the fact that Boris Utzov got confused and went home with The Onion’s lawyers at the end of our last meeting with them, and the last I heard they’ve been unable to get him to leave.

But sadly, the commune’s triumph was short-lived. Without their shared hatred of Crochet! or the law to rally around, the commune staffers soon began to splinter. Some followed Omar when he left to start a cult in Gambia. Some -shudder- got jobs at the Shanesly Department of Public Works. Some are employed at the local strip club, Twerks because they typed in "Works" wrong on the nav. Some, I am certain, were eaten by the Gnarlap living in the crawl space under the basement, after it ran out of regretted mail-order brides and Pomeranians to eat.

Raoul Dunkin left to start a new political news site, TwinkInc.com, a hopefully more palatably-named successor to his deeply mourned spankrag.com. Red Bagel did stop by briefly, dressed as Colonel Sanders and insisting that everyone refer to him as such for tax purposes, but he quickly lost interest and left to work on his "Donald Trump" character.

My most loyal boarder was of course Ivan Nacutchacokov, who stayed the longest due to his fierce love for the commune and deep fear of his ex-wife, in uncertain proportions. But even his ticket was punched one night a few months back when the NSA came for him, apparently after finally getting around to reading some long-forgotten commune article that laid their nefarious plans bare for all to see. I would suggest they were tapping our phones or internet, but we had neither, and I’m not sure they’ve learned how to intercept bulk Valpak coupon mailers marked RETURN TO SENDER, which had been our main means of economical correspondence.

After Ivan was dragged screaming out my front door, then calmed way down and went along happily after discovering it was the NSA and not goons hired by Ivana, I must admit I fell into a bit of a funk, commune readers. Was this all my grand plans had come to? A brief smattering of articles over the years, countless unexplainable holes in my walls, some kind of insatiable beast living under my basement and an attic that smells like a sanitarium for dogs? Sometimes I question if it was all worth it.

And then I remember that all those dolls in the attic still have little walkie talkies in them. And man if my mom’s boyfriend Doug isn’t afraid of those dolls.

The spirit of the commune lives on!

Zincerely,
Emil Zender

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"One day my brother Goose and I had treed a cat. It was barrels of fun, until we heard mom yell from the backporch, 'Kids! Come in and see!' Obviously we didn't know what she wanted us to see yet, but at the time we were hugely excited, it could have been anything, like a plate full of fresh cookies or the Kaiser's beard torn straight off his face.

We were delighted to see it was a brand new radio my father had bought! Everyone on the block had wanted a radio, even the people who already had them, although they wanted new ones, and now we had one!

My sister Stephanie, Goose, and I all gathered 'round the radio for hours listening to The Lone Ranger, Little Orphan Annie, The Shadow, and several racist radio shows I probably shouldn't elaborate on. It was the most fun you could ever imagine.

And when we weren't listening to the radio, we were talking about the radio. Stephanie and I would talk about what we thought the characters looked like, about the bright colors of the world the radio people lived in, and what The Shadow did to keep his laundry clean. Goose couldn't join in on account he had no imagination, something he inherited from mom.

Sure, we were disappointed later when we found out the radio wasn't even ever plugged in and it had been dad making all those voices we had been listening to. We probably should have guessed since the radio was so light, being hollow and having no electronic innards like a working radio. Goose is still mad at dad, rest his soul, but Stephanie and I say we still have our imaginations and memories, and they can't take that away without highly expensive surgery."

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