Stocking Up For The Storm

Or, as I almost titled this post, "Too little, too late."  I never know what, exactly, will send me back to the blog to vent my spleen; this morning it's a more-than-usually-inane segment I watched on Good Morning, America.  All the morning shows, of course, were in full-on Apocalypse mode covering the big storm that hit New York and other East Coast cities, and that's okay. Even if they occasionally go overboard with the melodrama (heard during b-roll of a hospital evacuation:  "it's an infant...") the storm is in fact big news.  The  segment that caused me to roll my eyes and take to my keyboard had to do with how to manage for the next few days if your power is out. The information was sensible, if not too original (canned goods, manual can opener, bottled water, use your outdoor grill if you have one...) but I was struck by two things. First, the storm went through last night and the affected cities are basically shut down. If you didn't stock up on canned tuna and bottled water in advance, now's not the time for a quick jaunt to Walmart. Secondly, and maybe more annoying - the audience for whom this advice is meant, i.e., the people without power, can't watch television, because they don't have power. The fact that GMA says they need a gallon of bottled water per person, per day, for at least three days, isn't going to help.