Hurricane Katrina is really wreaking havoc in Lousiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Whole neighborhoods are underwater, many people have been killed and are missing, and millions are without electricity as flood and rain waters continue to rise.

CNN just showed video of dozens of people looting a flooded supermarket.

This looks to be one of the worst hurricanes in United States history and conditions are deteriorating, even as the hurricane has been downgraded to a tropical storm.

Take a minute and say a prayer for all those affected by the storm. And, if possible, donate some money to the Red Cross.

Check out the latest at CNN.com.

UPDATE (2:30am): CNN is now reporting that two New Orleans hospitals are being forced to evacuate because of a 2-block breach in the Lake Ponchartlain levee. Water is rising an inch per five minutes and they’re worried their emergency generators might fail.

Here are some thoughts about the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards…

The amazing Green Day was, well, amazing! Fire and water seems like the theme of the show.

Yes, we know your new name is “Diddy” — no need to make a song and an awards show opening about it. Okay, Sean?

How about presenting two awards at the same time? What smart production assistant came up with that one? Kelly Clarkson and Kanye West accepting awards at the same time. Good thing Kanye had a longer walk to the stage or they would have had to battle it out for the mic. Next year, let’s present awards in groups of five. The fastest winner to the microphone wins a bonus moonman statue!

Ludacris’ performance was good, but who is Bobby Valentino? I was expecting some rapping Italian guy to come out. Getting all Mardi Gras was exciting, but just made me worry about Hurricane Katrina destroying New Orleans. Bad timing I guess.

ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN! That was theme for the night. Well, Diddy did give away his diamond-encrusted watch away to the crowd. And then security wrestled it away from that poor kid in the audience during the commercial. Anything can happen! At least Diddy gave him the watch back.

Shakira and Alejandro Sans really rocked their performance. Its nice to see Alejandro cross-over to the American music scene (by continuing to sing in Spanish), after his many years of success in the Spanish-language music world.

“Your favorite jeans just fit what you feel.” That GAP commercial featuring Alanis Morrissette, Joss Stone, and other musicians talking about their favorite songs… and their favorite jeans really caught my attention.

Jessica Alba, Ashley Simpson, and Jessica Simpson all looked hot. One of the three could speak without any difficulty while presenting. Guess which?

The Killers “hotel performance” rocked. Starting the performance in that hotel room looked really cool and the stage built over the pool was a unique touch. It was only a kiss! It was only a kiss! Great song.

Let’s hear it for the entrance stairway! Looks like there’s a leak — water’s dripping down the stairs!

L’il Kim is going to jail for lying. That is all. Not really a comedy segment, but Jeremy Piven did cram in a funny Martha Stewart reference.

The Biggie tribute was nice and Diddy even conducted an orchestra for it. Another posthumous performance by the Notorious B.I.G. And Snoop Dogg showed his respect as well.

My Chemical Romance should have won the MTV2 award, but at least that Gasolina song didn’t. Okay, Fallout Boy is cool, for giving MCR a shoutout onstage.

Kelly Clarkson really got lost getting to the stage. Seeing her crawl under the streams of water after getting lost in the haphazard and wet floor layout was just crazy. I guess she really wasn’t prepared to win.

Kanye West and Jamie Foxx’s performance was really good. Foxx kills in Ray and already he’s a rapper?

Did anyone else think the Dane Cook standup segment was a refreshing moment in the show? Finally, someone trying to make people laugh wrote his own material.

And the winners of the Diddy Best Dressed Contest: Snoop Dogg and Gwen Stefani! Who doesn’t like random contests? Winner of the worst dressed: Eva Longoria and her way-to-tight bathing suit. Did somebody say contrived?

Whoa! Mariah Carey’s dancers jumped into the water during her performance! Finally, a good use of the water theme!

Well, that’s it for this year’s recap of the 2005 VMA’s! Diddy wasn’t bad and water was everywhere, but all in all, one of the better MTV awards shows.

I finally got to see the very last episode of Six Feet Under and it was like nothing I’ve ever seen on television before.

The way they ended the series was simply amazing.

I was just talking to someone about how I’ve connected with this show on a different kind of level than other shows I’ve watched regularly. She thought the show was way to dark and focused so much on death that it was depressing.

I didn’t see it that way. I saw it as a reaffirmation of how great life can be, despite the many boundaries and setbacks along the way.

Of course Six Feet Under focused on death — it was set mostly in a funeral home. But that was only superficially what the show was about. It investigated the importance of relationships, the doubts and fears all of us face, and what life should really be about.

And I figured all that out without seeing the first few seasons of the series. (That was BH — before HBO).

But wow, the people behind Six Feet Under couldn’t have wrapped up the storylines and the characters’ lives in a better way. Simply captivating.

How do I get myself into these things?

I can’t go into the details at the moment, but why can’t life ever work out the way you see it going in your head? It’s just not fair.

Is anyone else excited about the new season of The Apprentice and the debut of The Apprentice with Martha Stewart this fall?

NBC just showed a promo for the two shows — Martha Stewart’s version will air on Wednesdays and Donald Trump’s will air on Thursdays.

What if Martha Stewart comes up with a super cool catchphrase that is so catchy that it puts the Trumpster’s show off the air? Like if she uses, “You are off the show… and that’s a good thing!” when she’s firing people from the show. I just think that now that there are two versions of the show, one will definitely do better than the other and draw related comparisons.

And will there be Apprentice reality show specials where the winners from both shows compete to be the “Ultimate Apprentice” with Trump and Stewart judging them simultaneously?!?

And will Omarosa finally stop being brought back to the show?

The possibilities are endless! Tune in to NBC this fall to find out how it all shakes out. If you don’t, then YOU’RE FIRED!

Much thanks to Heidi, Courtney, and Jessie for reminding me that having fun is important.

I noticed that one side effect of growing up is that you have to actually schedule your fun. As a teenager, I could just meet up with friends after school and have fun. And before that I could have fun virtually any moment of the day, except maybe when I had to go to the dentist or something.

For those readers who don’t know, Heidi is a co-worker of mine, who I found out actually went to elementary school with me for a few years. It really is a small world (afterall). Anyway, we went on a “Pet Store Tour” of sorts, checking out an independent pet shop called Country Critters (which had degus!) and the local Petland.

Then we went over to Courtney’s house (another co-worker) and hung out around a fire. Well, eventually we did.

We got there to find Courtney trying to light the (very damp) wood she had bought at 7-11. After throwing in a few rolls of paper towels, notepad paper, and even cardboard from a case of beer, the wood still wouldn’t light. We figured out that she was destined to fail because she had been in Girl Scouts as a child, where they don’t teach you anything about camping or lighting fires.

Somehow the firestarting progressed (or maybe regressed) to pouring some sort of lawnmower fluid into the fire pit and then throwing in a lit paper towel. (Don’t try this at home, kids!) Smart guy that I am, I took a few giant steps back and didn’t get any of my hair singed off. Courtney’s brother came out and poured some more liquid into the fire and it finally stayed lit.

We had fun once the fire was burning and then after Jessie left we went inside to watch Sin City. I really liked the movie (I hadn’t seen it), but Courtney didn’t seem to understand that the movie was based on a graphical novel. She kept asking why it was in black-and-white and why the characters had cartoonish features. Some beers and some popcorn fights later, I think she finally got it.

So, although having fun needs to be scheduled now, I definitely don’t mind fitting it into my schedule as long as I get to have it.

Great news for all those late night television fans who own an HDTV — The Late Show with David Letterman will be broadcast in high definition by the end of August.

BCBeat says the show will join NBC’s Tonight Show and Late Night with Conan O’Brien in high def after it returns from a two week hiatus:

The show will be on summer vacation from Aug. 15-29, giving technical crews two weeks to make sure the new technical facilities (which include a Sony HD production switcher) are up and working properly.

That means the only late night talk show left out of the HD riff will soon be The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. We’ll have to wait and see when CBS decides to invest in bringing that show into hi-def.

Although, since that show is also produced by Letterman’s World Wide Pants production company, maybe Dave will use his pull to get it done sooner rather than later.

Just when you thought celebrity blogging couldn’t get any better than Rosie O’Donnell’s blog, Donald Trump has entered the blogosphere!

That’s right, the Trumpster has a blog where he rights about issues near (money) and dear (success) to his heart.

And the writing isn’t half bad, either. In fact, reading through a bunch of posts, it is actually very interesting.

If you don’t like the man, you probably won’t find the blog entertaining, but for fans of Trump or The Apprentice, his blog over at TrumpUniversity.com is a must-read/must-blogroll.

I’ve noticed through my interaction with LiveJournal users that the community there consists of a different type of blogger than independent bloggers or even users of Blogger’s BlogSpot.com.

While there are real bloggers using the service, a large number of users have switched to password-protected “Friends Only” blogs. This segment of the community views their LJ as a way to exclude most Internet users, while allowing only a privileged few to read what they write.

It takes all the fun out of what blogs are all about. Besides the fact that most LJ users seem to not realize that they too are bloggers (and some refer to themselves as “LiveJournalers”), restricting access to one’s site defeats the “spirit” of blogging as a medium.

I mean, think about it, the Internet is the most vast and effective mass medium in the world, used by millions of people all around the Earth, but some people are posting every single day and excluding everyone but 10 or 50 people. It seems like a backwards approach to using the Net.

Of course, there are many valid reasons for protecting the content of a blog. One LJ user I recently talked to via IM refused to add me to her friends list in order to read her blog. This despite the fact that I had been regularly reading her blog before she decided to make it “Friends Only.” She’s had several problems with Internet stalkers, so she had been forced to restrict access.

I’m sure anyone else who has had similar problems would also take action to prevent them from happening again. And its a shame that people would take advantage of someone dutifully blogging about their day-to-day life, as many LJers do. But it begs the question of why she continues to write about her life online… or why she published so much personal information in the begginning (although the limit is not a definite line by any means).

The part the miffed me the most was that even though I thoughtfully presented my blog (the one you’re reading currently) as a means of “identification,” this LJ user seemed shocked that I would have an LJ username, but not blog there. Of course, the only reason I have a username there is to read my friends’ LiveJournals. The odd part is that anyone can easily glimpse my opinions by reading my blog, which in some ways has the personal approach of LiveJournal-type writing.

In addition, I’ve been writing this thing since 2001. Doesn’t that count for something? Among other real bloggers it definitely does. I consider myself an “early adopter” of the blog format and those I consider real bloggers — those people who know who invented the word weblog (or at least know that ‘blog’ is a shortened form of ‘weblog’!) get what that means.

But the LJ community by function excludes non-LJers, which probably started with all that invite code nonsense when the site was getting started.

Many bloggers write quality blogs anonymously or don’t offer up quite so much personal information in the first place, and while you can’t fault people who are forced to react, LiveJournal makes it way too easy to exclude people from interesting writing in a medium where it should be openly available.

Why didn’t anyone tell me Hulk Hogan has a reality show?

The former professional wrestler’s show is called Hogan Knows Best and shows the Hulkster’s daily life with his family in the suburbs.

Sort of like The Osbournes with more crazy moustache action.