Miscellany

Can You Hear Me, Major Tom?

What are McDonald's restaurants made of that makes me lose my radio reception when I am in the drive through lane? I can be in the middle of a station's listening area and as soon as I pull astride the building to wait for my plastic infused but remarkably food like meal I lose the station. Are the walls lead? I know the stuff isn't good for you, but is McDonald's compelled to line their walls with some sort of impermeable boundary for the good of the health of the immediately surrounding community? Perhaps they are only trying to prevent a leak of whatever proprietary substance they use to make "Happy Meals" so "happy". Or maybe there is something a good deal more sinister afoot.

We all know about the various bunkers spread throughout the country for government officials to bravely hide in while we the proletariat have our faces melted off by the bomb. The most famous of the exposed bunkers actually has a close tie with my family. My Grandfather was an employee of the Greenbrier resort hotel during the time of the addition of the wing that was the cover for the building of the bunker. If he knew anything, he took it to his grave with him. Anyhow, why spend billions of dollars for an elaborate bunker that nobody will be near when the big one drops? Why not pay the McDonald's corporation to equip their ubiquitous restaurants as bomb shelters for those people deemed important enough to live through Armageddon? There are so many of them that it will be easy to just duck inside and ride out the end of days supersizing it!

McDonald's restaurants, cockroaches and politicians are the only things that survive global-thermal nuclear war. This is the worst possible post apocalyptic scenario ever. I hope I am standing directly at ground zero if the bomb ever goes off.

Auntie Em, it's a Twister!

When the weather monster broke loose across the Midwest yesterday, I was stuck in a manufacturing facility in the "severe weather gathering place" with 700 of my closest friends. It was fantastic, especially when the lights went out. I called my boss and told him if I died at work, I was going to come back and haunt him... and I could do some really crazy shit, too because I've been thinking about what I would do as a specter for a long time!

I did not die. Nor hopefully did anyone else. The wind is quite amazing, though. Straight line gales of a pretty impressive magnitude. All I can think of is the only 20th Century sea shanty to make it on the charts which is of course Gordon Lightfoot's masterpiece "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

For those of us who grew up on the Great Lakes, the legend of the Mighty Fitz is as well known as the Titanic. Sure, the loss of life at 29 pales in comparison to the 1533 souls who perished on the Titanic, but it was a shocking disaster of magnificent proportions nonetheless.

"That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed when the gales of November came thrashin'". Indeed. I felt this way as my 2 ton automobile was being tossed about on 131 at the whim of the wind. What a massive force must have been applied to fell a thousand foot freighter. This storm was no joke. Our news outlets never let us forget it, either... Even Brian Williams used his best fake concerned voice to remind us that this was the worst storm on record since the one that sunk the Edmund Fitzgerald. They even sent a newsman to get blasted smooth by supersonic sands in little Muskegon (MUSKaGONE is how they pronounce it), Michigan. This is an honor usually saved for Hatteras North Carolina and the Outer Banks.

One thing that was nice was the gorgeous sunset that was going on behind the poor soul's shoulder. It was odd to hear and see the wind whipping, the waves crashing high and hard into the lighthouse and to see the incredible colors of a fall sunset radiate softly through a crackling blue sky. I was proud for good old MUKSaGONE and for making the national news for something other than the constant murders.