I have found the
Tower Of Babble!
Actually, it wasn’t that hard to find, really.
I work there every day.
It’s the offices of the Federal Emergency management Agency in
Algiers, Louisiana.
And no, I didn’t misspell that. But with all due respect to
the Bible, my discovery has striking
similarities to the Tower of Babel described in the book of Genesis.
For instance; the Tower of Babel was built by descendants of
Noah’s flood survivors. My Babble came to be because of the flooding caused by
Hurricane Katrina.
In the story of Babel, the Lord God Jehovah (or Yahweh, if
you prefer) saw that humanity was getting pretty full of themselves and perhaps
distancing themselves from proper worship. So he (or she as I suspect) in yet another display of divine stand-up comedy
opted to make them all speak gibberish. And, for a final giggle, God had
everyone speaking different dialects of gibberish.
Since the land of Gibber had not yet been discovered,
Gibberish made no sense at all to anyone and
thus, construction on the tower was doomed to failure.
Really? I mean… if
I wrote this into a sitcom I wouldn’t need to write a blog again…ever! By the
way, I may have also found the land of Gibber. It’s in southern Louisiana. But
everyone there calls their language Cajun.
In my modern day version, the Tower of Babble was
established to circumvent and overcome the impact of a hurricane, commonly a force of nature or Act Of God. I suspect that there may be a direct lineage between those
original survivors of Noah’s flood and the world’s government agencies, which
would explain why said agencies are (like their ancestors) also full of
themselves. It would also explain God’s reaction which, keeping on a theme, was
to confuse communication. But in a rare stroke of efficiency, God had the
agencies confuse themselves.
This freed up God’s schedule to work on his advanced
logistical plan (something involving the
Mayan calendar).
And so, granted a moment of God’s divine inspiration, the
government invented acronyms.
Okay, it’s starts to get complicated here, so I’ll try to go
slow. But do try to keep up.
I work with the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security &
Emergency Preparedness, (GOHSEP) as a State Applicant Liaison, (SAL). My office
in Algiers is located in the Louisiana Recovery Office (or LRO). I review
Requests for Public Assistance, (RPAs) that are submitted by Points of Contact (POCs)
at local agencies (with their own acronyms) and Private Non-Profit agencies or
PNP’s as we lovingly refer to them.
I’ll pause here so you can re-read the previous paragraph 2
or 3 times.
Ready?
After they are granted eligibility to the Public Assistance
(PA) program, applicants document their damage claims via Project Worksheets
(PWs). If there is a problem with their claim, they can request information via
the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or informally via a Public Assistance
Expedited Information Request (PAXIR). The Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) is also in the building. They assign a Public Assistance Coordinator,
(PAC) and Project Officer (PO) or Project Specialist, (PS) to work with the POC
of the agency or PNP to document the PW which includes the Damage Description
& Dimensions (DDD) and Scope of Work (SOW). To determine appropriate costs
of repairs, FEMA may utilize the Cost Estimating Format or CEF.
It helps if you’re sitting down while reading this….really.
Once this is done, the SAL (me) and the PO and the PAC will
meet with the POC of the PNP to present the PW and discuss the DDD and SOW. We
then forward the PW to Quality Assurance & Control (QAQC). If the Katrina PW
passes QAQC it gets entered into the National Emergency Management Information
System (NEMIS), where it gets processed thru a queue of reviews including (but
certainly not limited to) Environmental & Historical Preservation, (EHP)
which will also include a signoff by the State Historical Preservation Officer
or SHPO.
And this is the condensed version. For sake of your sanity
(and mine) I’ve left out a multitude of other potential steps. But you get the
idea.
As you can easily see, it is quite possible, in fact an
almost daily occurrence that I can have a complete conversation without uttering
a single actual word.
Somewhere in heaven, God & Daniel Webster are
laughing hysterically.
One final note, for anyone who doubts the logic of attributing acronyms to God’s wrath & warped sense of humor, I submit the
following;
According to Wikipedia, the Tetragammaton transliterates the
Hebrew word & symbols for “God” into YHWH….
(LMAO)
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