he whole nation wants to do their part to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, but a Madison, Wisconsin man is doing so much he makes all the other volunteers and charity donors look like dried puke. For Albert Pohl Martinson hasn't merely taken in three or four family members or refugees from New Orleans: He's taken in a whole jazz band.

"I just wanted to do what I could," Martinson told a deluge of fawning media standing on his front lawn. "So I said I would take in the first group of refugees I could. I sent them bus tickets and had them carted up here immediately. And then, being a good citizen, I called the local news to make sure they were informed."

However, Martinson didn't stop and giving the 5-man combo all the food, shelter, and clean water they needed; he also bought them sparkling fresh instruments so they could take their mind off their troubles.

"I've always enjoyed the real music and culture of working-class people," said Martinson, a retired advertising sales manager. "Not particularly jazz, more the rich and textured Delta blues. Some jazz, I guess… this Dixieland stuff isn't really what I thought I was getting when I agreed to—you know what? It doesn't matter. I'm just trying to give back something to a community that has lost so much."

Martinson, upon opening his front door to go back inside, was greeted with the jovial and unrelenting blasts of trumpets playing, "When the Saints Come Marching In."

"Oh, goody—they're still playing!"

Martinson is not the only one opening his home to those in need from the disaster—only the best. But across the nation, many Americans are staking out their piece of great historic tragedy. Like Amy and Morrie Callum of Albany, New York, who took in New Orleans legendary jazz guitarist Halo Jones.

"It's horrific to see all the death and destruction left in Katrina's wake," sobbed Amy, while her husband nodded perfunctorily. "I had to do something. Like everyone else, I was thinking, 'What can I do? Little ol' me?' But I didn't let that hurt me. I got on the phone. I called disaster-relief people. I told them, 'Get me a jazz guitarist.' And they did."

Sure thing, less than a week later, Jones arrived via cab with his trademark Yamaha acoustic.

"He loves to play that thing," said Morrie with a smile. "Honestly, he won't stop playing it."

Still, there are others. Few who have given to disaster relief groups can match the sheer generosity of Ketcham, North Carolina strip club owner Paco Wiley, who opened his home and his club to 13 refugees from a New Orleans brothel, including 12 high-priced prostitutes and a madame, Ms. Louise.

"You've got to remember these are people like you and me," said Paco, wiping his forehead with a lacey pink bra, in one of his rare public appearances outside his club. "You have to give them back their independence. Give them back their dignity. So immediately, rather than just give them charity and let them live off my contributions, I put the ladies to work for me. It's all in the name of relief, folks."

And we spell relief with media coverage—oodles and oodles of media coverage.

n the wake of the catastrophic flooding that hit New Atlantis/New Orleans this week following Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of refugees have been evacuated from their submerged homes and treated to an exciting whirlwind tour of America’s domed sporting facilities.

“Don’t worry, the government will take care of you all,� explained President Bush, who drastically cut funding for levee upgrades in order to pay for a war in Iraq, so terrorists wouldn’t be able to destroy a major American city like New Orleans. “We’re sending water wings and crossword puzzle books on the double.�

Upon being plucked from their rooftops and attics after breeched levees on Lake Pontchartrain submerged the city in up to twenty feet of water, thousands of New Orleans residents were transported to the Superdome, home of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, for emergency lodging, beer, and giant cheese-filled pretzels.

“I really appreciated that they opened the Superdome to us,� expressed flooding victim LaTrevor Wynn. “But I gotta say they gouged the fuck out of us for boat parking at the stadium. I was saying we should park a few blocks away and swim to the stadium, but there was some guy in a wheel chair who wanted us to just pony up the money. I guess he was rich or something.�

Good spirits quickly turned foul, however, when the stadium’s power and sewage systems both failed, and they ran out of souvenir air horns. Before long, deteriorating conditions and asshole Saints fans forced the evacuation of the Superdome, which by then smelled strongly of poor people.

Refugees from the Superdome, which is now almost completely under water, were moved by bus to the Astrodome in Houston, formerly home to over 30 years of bad baseball courtesy of the National League’s Houson Astros, as well as the catastrophic 1992 Republican National Convention that offered America one last chance to listen to Ronald Reagan flapping his cheek meat.

Relief efforts at the Astrodome were short-lived however, as over 100 refugees suffered knee injuries from the stadium’s unforgiving Astroturf playing surface. Several reported serious cases of rugburn as well.

Re-refugees from the Astrodome were then bussed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where a disappointing summer performance by the local Twins has left plenty of empty seats in the Metrodome.

“This place blows,� complained disaster victim and dome expert Marvin Milk. “It has all the ambiance of a bus station and the hot dogs are gross.�

Fellow refugees agreed about the hot dogs, but gave high marks to the stadium’s nacho hats, a popular refugee staple. Problems arose at the Metrodome, however, after some disenfranchised dickcheese left the stadium’s back door open, allowing all the air to escape and collapsing the dome’s pressurized roof. Some blame the mishap on the Metrodome’s short-sighted no-smoking policy.

The remaining refugees who didn’t take to wading through Minneapolis’ many metropolitan lakes out of sheer habit were shipped to either the Skydome in Toronto, Canada, or the Tacomadome in Tacoma, Washington.

“Man, this sucks. I knew we were going to get the Tacomadome,� bitched flooding victim Marcy Flobere of New Orleans.

A few lucky victims were bussed instead to Tropicana Field in St. Petersberg, Florida, which has a part time gig as the home of baseball’s Tampa Bay Devil Rays in-between housing refugees from the region’s monthly hurricane disasters.

Tropicana Field has not been without its share of problems, however, ranging from occasional hurricane damage to the roof and overcrowded bathrooms to the stinky, lousy baseball taking place on-field.

“This has been a disaster. I’ve had to watch four Devil Rays’ games this week,� groused Tropicana Field refugee Homer Angus. “This is worse than the hurricane.�

Government officials have assured the tired, huddled masses that they will be allowed to return to their homes in New Orleans as soon as disaster-relief workers can find the city.

Just now the question may be dawning in your Pre-Cambrian brain: Wait a minute, what happened in New Orleans? Last time I was down there, it was a drunk, titty-flashing good time. I don't remember all these poor people smashing windows at the Piggly Wiggly to get at some Doritos, or floating around on air mattresses through a soup of toxic dogshit. And since when have they had canals instead of streets? You think you'd remember something like that, even while lying drunk on the sidewalk with your fly open.

Don't worry, gentle idiot, your brain's not playing tricks on you. It didn't come with such fancy features. No, something did happen to New Orleans this month, and it wasn't just an incompetent government run by a man with a sixth-grade understanding of adult reality and all the savvy of a small child lost at an astrophysics convention. Hurricane happened, readers, and it happened but good.

I'm sure you've heard of hurricanes before. After all, it's what killed JFK. But do you really understand how they work and why they always strike in threes? I didn't think so.

Hurricanes are nature's douche, a natural remedy for when Mother Nature's got that "not so fresh" feeling downstairs and needs to clean house. Regardless of what you may have read in irresponsible academic journals growing up, hurricanes are not "Nature's Fart." In fact, they're not a fart at all. That would be silly. "Hurricanes are Nature's Fart" was a rumor started over 30 years ago by Airologist Walter Zoloft, who though that the wind smelled like beef during Hurricane Yolanda in 1972.

In scientific terms, hurricanes are caused by heat energy from evaporating water. Confused? Think of it this way: When you get out of the shower, you feel cold because the water evaporating off your naked ass is taking your body heat with it. This heat energy does not disappear, it has to go somewhere. And it goes into hurricanes.

The first hurricane in Earth's history happened in 1964. You've likely heard of "Hurricanes" previous to this date, but all such references were to the nicknames of boxers or hookers with grossly oversized egos. The first actual hurricane hit the town of Papa Old Money on the coast of Papa New Guinea in August of 1964, and it scared the living daylights out of the town's seventeen residents, who thought God was whistling at them. No one was sure how to interpret such behavior from the universal creator, and this frightened them.

The world's first hurricane was, as you may already have guessed, the direct result of the invention of the shower in 1963. Previously, nature had been held at bay thanks to the prominence of the bathtub on the world's body-cleansing scene, though the balance had already been somewhat upset by the invention of the "European shower" in 1960, which consisted of standing over the bathroom sink of a gas station and splashing water near your armpits while rubbing an automobile air freshener on your chest.

But the invention of the shower and its catastrophic convenience changed all this in less than a year's time, as the residents of Papa Old Money and their demolished straw huts could attest. It took the town's residents seventeen months to find all the straw again, which had been distributed evenly over the surface of the island, and rebuild their huts in time for the Great Catastrophic Hut Fire of 1966.

The devastation would only grow worse over the next forty years, as millions of people turned to showering to ease overcrowding in the world's gas station restrooms. Hurricanes would grown in strength and number every year, except for a brief respite in 1969 when the hippies took over and it briefly became uncool to rinse off your butt musk and most Americans received all their needed hygiene from police water cannons at protest rallies.

Many famous hurricanes would ruin kite-flying contests and destroy property in nations that had not learned from the legend of the three little pigs during the 1970's, including the famous Hurricane Harry in 1973, the legendary Hurricane Delmon in 1976, and the altogether disappointing Hurricane Pip in 1978. Government officials were able to placate the devastated masses by holding fun write-in contests to decide the name of the latest hurricane, which remained popular until some smartass ruined the fun by naming a hurricane Hurricane Hurricane in 1985, and the federal government had to step in and start naming hurricanes after ex-girlfriends in 1986.

So what can we do to cause the scourge of hurricanes to abate before the entire globe is as flat as a wet T-shirt contest in North Dakota? Besides granting every child's wish by outlawing all bathing, our only real hope is to figure some way to take a break from humanity's true passion: finding new and exciting ways to fuck up the planet with the most noxious chemicals possible. Instead of dumping thousands of gallons of DDT into rivers and streams, why not dump wildflowers, honey and mint? Or whatever they put in douches, I'm no expert on their contents. I only bought one that once because I thought it was a cocktail mix.

You look me in the eye and tell me summer's eve doesn't sound like a good name for a cocktail, that's misleading advertising plain and simple. If they didn't want guys to buy douches, they shouldn't put a woman on the box, that's Advertising 101. You put a vagina on the box and accidental guy purchases will hit zero in a hurry, I guarantee you. Unless the wording on the package is vague enough to leave open the possibility there could actually be a vagina in the box, then all bets are off. But now we're detouring far from my original point.

The fact of the matter is, if we don't like the effects that nature's douche has on our country's barbecues, straw homes, tents and brothel-heavy southern cities, we need to stop making them necessary by continually inundating the entire American South with battery acid, asbestos and Agent Orange like we have been for the last 100 years. We need to clean up the South, or better yet, cover it in several feet of fresh, clean saran wrap and never speak of it again. Only then will we be able to shower with a clean conscience, knowing that the big, tidy nothing the hurricanes are blowing over down there isn't going anywhere any time soon.

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