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Ah, Spring.
By briantologist | April 21, 2004
I’ve been working on coming to terms with living in Oklahoma lately. I figure I’m gonna be here for the next few years at least, and I’m just gonna have to deal with it.
And I’ve been making progress. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about things that make our state unique, and the qualities it has that Seattle or Los Angeles or New York couldn’t ever match. I’ve come up with a few. Like ridiculously cheap real estate. And the fact that you can still smoke pretty much anywhere. And the fact that, stupid new law notwithstanding, I can still see a cockfight within state lines without too much difficulty.
Friends, let me tell you one thing I’m not so enamored of after 28 years. It starts with a T, ends with an O, has -ORNAD- in the middle, and shows back up every April through June to eat our trailer parks for breakfast.
Tornado season just dropped right back on in last night like it never left, and I wasn’t any happier to see it then than I’ve ever been. I’m not even gonna do the sarcastic thing where you say, “It’s not that I don’t like …”, and then you say what you don’t like, and then you come up with some clever way to say you don’t like the thing. I’m not going to bother. I don’t fucking like tornadoes. There’s nothing to like about them. I don’t like the threat of death from above showing up again tonight for the second night in a row, I don’t like the fact that we’re supposed to get more of the same tomorrow night, I don’t like corralling the goddamn cats in the basement while the tornado sirens shriek outside the window, I don’t like calling our grandparents in other parts of the state to find out whether or not they’ve been impaled by stray chicken bones from their kitchen, I don’t like thinking about how our roof is only insured for actual cash value and not replacement, I don’t like picking which of our four networks’ local highly trained weather teams’ hyperbolic coverage I have no choice but to watch, I don’t like Bill Paxton, I really don’t like Helen Hunt, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman better thank his fucking lucky stars he’s been in better movies than this one.
It’s getting to the point where I’m absolutely certain my character is not getting built any further by this shit, if it even was in the first place. I know I’m supposed to accept adversities like this as things I can’t change, and to learn a greater lesson about life from them, and I don’t fucking give a fuck. Fuck learning lessons. I understand the lesson I’m supposed to have learned, and I have not internalized it, and at this point it’s hard to imagine me ever doing so. You want a lesson from this? Here’s a lesson: Every year, your fucking bitch capital-G god, the one who told Mel Gibson to make a snuff film about the time God Jr. got nailed to a tree, decides to kill a bunch of people and destroy their homes FOR NO FUCKING REASON. There’s your lesson. People are fucking cruel, but the god they invented in their image is no slouch in that department himself.
I know, I know, I know. I’m tired, I’m in a pissy mood, I shouldn’t spout off to the Internet, what with its strict standards of decorum and all. But y’know, I wouldn’t be in half as pissy a mood if fucking Jove himself hadn’t been threatening my house, my wife and my kitties with total annihilation an hour and a half ago. It angers up the blood, is all I’m saying.
At least the aforementioned bitch-God was thoughtful enough to create us (in a day) with enough ingenuity to make booze he didn’t want us drinking. Downright thoughtful of Him.
Topics: Laments | 46 Comments »
April 21st, 2004 at 9:13 pm
Could move to Florida … wait. Could move to Canada! Although, if a moose dies in your yard, you’re responsible for getting rid of it, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
April 21st, 2004 at 9:16 pm
Err fact checking shows you’re responsible for the dead moose in Alaska, no word yet on Canada’s treatment of dead moose.
April 21st, 2004 at 9:49 pm
My mom called me last night and held the phone up to the tornado sirens. My heart ached for home.
April 22nd, 2004 at 8:01 am
I am inordinately afraid of tornados, esp. given that I live in Maryland, and we’ve had approximately three since the dawn of time (all in the last two years, though, what are the odds?)… my wife and I were once driving up a local road into the path of a giant swirling green cloud that looked an awful lot like it was getting closer to the ground by the second… I’m afraid I panicked quite unmanfully and am still mocked for it to this day, but a tornado DID touch down about a mile from there a couple of hours later… did I mention my wife is from California, and thus somehow believes that huge homicidal natural disasters are FUN?
April 22nd, 2004 at 8:17 am
Feel free to pass along that there’s not a single fucking fun thing about them after the novelty wears off. The novelty, incidentally, wears off right about when you figure out that the tornado’s heading right toward your house. And this is when you have a basement to hide in (which equals a decent chance for survival).
April 22nd, 2004 at 8:18 am
Oh yeah, moose: It seems like if Canada went so far as to provide medical care for every one of its citizens, it’d probably have some sort of federal moose removal policy. I mean, it’s just the neighborly thing to do.
April 22nd, 2004 at 9:31 pm
I would agree about the Tornado thing. I think the most amazing part of all of the crap surrounding Tornado’s is how wild and crazy the TV people (and newspaper as well) get when it comes to the weather. I think there were 6 or maybe even 7 continuous hours of coverage. That’s what makes me crazy. The “weather” forecaster make me crazy. They turn a Tornado, that’s about four miles away from my house into a Tornado that could destroy the whole county of Tulsa (and a few moose while were at it).
Word.
Also, the Tornados miss you too Sarah, as do we all.
April 22nd, 2004 at 9:36 pm
If only you knew in advance when the tornadoes were coming, and where they’d be. Like a home and away game schedule. That way all those people in trailer homes could prepare, and we could schedule a tornado party in the Byrnes’ basement.
I miss you too, Clayton.
April 22nd, 2004 at 10:12 pm
I know I’m in the minority here, but if I have to have a natural disaster, I’ll take a tornado. The weathermen do a pretty good job of projecting where they are going to go and there’s usually enough warning to take cover. It’s also an opportunity to put on a helmet, safety goggles and cuddle up in the bathtub under a blanket with the ones you love.
An earthquake doesn’t give me enough warning to make sure I’m not driving underneath a bridge that’ll collpase on me. Hurricanes make you leave town. Floods kill a lot more people than tornadoes and ruin everybody’s house on the block, not just a few like most tornadoes. And a tsunami…forget that. I don’t want to be around.
Oh, I’m also completely nuts. So, for me, tornadoes are bad, but I’ll take them over that other stuff.
By the way, we got the craziest hail here yesterday that pretty much only hit the streets where the TV stations and the newspaper are located in OKC. It looked like there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground.
April 23rd, 2004 at 12:49 am
Dude, I totally saw that in our local rag, front of the Local (formerly state/metro) section. That’s some fucked-up shit, man. Shit looked like snow.
And you’re right: Even including volcanoes, I guess tornados are probably the best natural disaster we’ve got available to us, simply because the survivability chances are relatively high up until the most dire of circumstances. I mean, even in Moore, there were still a couple of houses mysteriously standing. Not so, you floods.
April 23rd, 2004 at 6:43 am
Yes, to be fair, my wife also thinks earthquakes are fun, so there you go…
April 23rd, 2004 at 7:35 am
I used to like Hurricane Season here in Florida, but now that I’m a homeowner, it sucks. Actually, weather IN GENERAL sucks when you’re a homeowner.
April 23rd, 2004 at 8:56 am
That’s the goddamn truth. Also, sometimes I think earthquakes would be pretty cool. The earthquake simulator at the Omniplex was way fun. I mean, granted, it didn’t include a “getting crushed in your car by the top layer of highway” simultor. But still.
April 23rd, 2004 at 10:47 am
I have allowed the concession that, if I were in a situation where no reinforced concrete could crush my skull, I might be able to “enjoy” an earthquake… similarly, if I could have a high clear path away from a lava flow, etc; but those things are all so unpredictable, and my luck so crappy, and my belief in an afterlife so nonexistent, that I get really nervous even being within sight of a tornado or, well, any giant homicidal weather event…
April 23rd, 2004 at 11:48 am
Just ’cause I love dissent, I’ll thrown in that I like tornadoes a lot. Okay, not the death and destruction part, but the general atmosphere of Oklahoma during those spring months. And, yes, I’ve been through many an actual tornado–one even hit my house when I was a kid, causing (relatively) minor damage.
But I love the Zool-is-getting-pissed clouds, the breathtakingly strange light, the way the quality of life that results from a few tornado scares a week combats the mundane, the ability to Lord my cool Oklahoma born-and-raised blase-ness about the storms over people who were new to the state.
Maybe I’m just nostalgic.
April 24th, 2004 at 12:34 am
I totally miss tornadoes and severe weather in general. I also really miss falling asleep in the middle of a thunderstorm. Out here I probably see lighting once a year, at the most. And I don’t remember it ever being so windy that your neighborhood streets are covered with tree branches teh next morning.
April 24th, 2004 at 2:20 pm
Yeah, I always thought the near-total lack of weather in LA might get kind of weird after a while, at least coming from here. Thunderstorms are nice, as long as they’re not threatening your well-being.
And I guess I’d be happier about having a cavalier attitude about severe weather if I ever had a cavalier attitude about severe weather. But I don’t, and I never have, ever since I was a kid. Either I’m not meant for this place, or I’m meant to stick around until I can get comfortable with it.
April 25th, 2004 at 6:20 pm
damn, what a great post! i have no feckkin’ idea how you sleep at night. i’d be terrified 24/7 until december.
April 25th, 2004 at 7:34 pm
Yeah, luckily the worst of it’s usually over by late July or so. These first few weeks, though, are a different story.
May 3rd, 2004 at 6:03 pm
For those non-believers, please Read:
The Evolution of a Creationist By Russell Schoch
I too was once like you- intellectually sterile, shaking my fist towards the heavens, and so terribly, painfully, alone… not any more! I have seen the darkness, but more importantly- I have seen the light!
May 3rd, 2004 at 9:04 pm
If you move to more big city areas, you won’t get hit by tornadoes. Stay away from the middle of nowhere and trailer parks, man.
May 3rd, 2004 at 9:55 pm
I too am like me. I’m kind of a fan of shaking my fist at the heavens. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Luckily I have a lot of friends and an excellent family, all of which I’ve managed to procure sans Jesus. Maybe because my intellectually sterile brain still manages to shit out the occasional idea.
In other news, I’m close to downtown of a largish city (400,000 w/out suburbs). It doesn’t always help. There’s a bunch of ages-old horseshit about Tulsa being protected from tornadoes because it’s nestled in a bend of the Arkansas river, but seriously, it’s horseshit. It’s pure dumb luck that downtown hasn’t gotten hit yet.
May 3rd, 2004 at 11:45 pm
Um? About the moose? If you are lucky enough to survive a car/moose collision, and the moose is unlucky enough to die. (which doesn’t happen often, they usually bounce and move on to the next innocent victim.) Odds are there will be a long line of people waiting to see if you are gonna keep the meat. Getting rid of dead moose is easy, killing them isn’t.
As for tornadoes? Thanks, but no thanks, I’ll stay where snow doesn’t kill and moose sometimes just bounce off the fender.
May 4th, 2004 at 8:31 am
God. I’d think a moose’s odds of surviving a car crash would be about 50-50 at worst, with any improvements going in favor of the moose.
May 4th, 2004 at 10:07 am
I heard that Mel Gibson is making a tornado movie, something about a house being torn apart for two hours in slow motion. Paige Davis will play the mayor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman: the wayward moose.
May 4th, 2004 at 10:52 am
I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.
May 4th, 2004 at 11:46 am
Never seen a moose in my 27 years in Canada :(
May 4th, 2004 at 11:54 am
I understand the fear – its hard to round up kitties w/ a siren or any loud noise for that matter, but a tornado is so fascinating to watch from a distance, water spouts too. I also like tropical storms (homeowner near H2O – no hurricanes please!). While i am at it, I really wish it would thunder and lighting during snow storms and freezing rain would just go away.
May 4th, 2004 at 1:14 pm
You know what the perfect place is to watch a tornado? On TV. TV tornado documentaries, or “Weather Porn,” as I’ve heard them called, are endlessly fascinating. Especially since I’ve been a lot of places they’re filmed, or personally been scared shitless by the storms they feature. It really personalizes TV in a way most shows can’t achieve.
May 4th, 2004 at 1:23 pm
haha, I’m from Canada and I’ve NEVER seen a mouse! eh? haha…Canada is very beautiful but dont go too far north cause its fucking cold! The only natural disasters we have from time to time are earthquakes- very few.
May 4th, 2004 at 1:25 pm
omg MOOSE us canadians can spell
May 4th, 2004 at 2:15 pm
You should check out the NOVA web site on ‘Hunt for the Supertwister’: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tornado/. Lots of scary tornado shit there–be sure to read the interview with the tornado damage expert. Here in Indiana we get only the occasional tornado, but for some reason the fear of god was put in me by all those grade school drills (and they were always changing the plan–huddle in the bathrooms or cower in the hallways?). Last summer brought one tornado warning that found me cowering in our bath tub having a panic attack, while the lights browned in and out with an eerie electrical buzz and the infamous, low-decibel locomotive sound throbbed in the near-distance. Needless to say, we survived unscathed and I felt like a fool afterwards. My husband, who’s from New Jersey, loves severe weather.
May 4th, 2004 at 3:37 pm
Dude, seriously, if you could actually hear the locomotive sound from the bathtub, you had plenty of reasons to be freaked out. I’ve lived here 28 years, and I’ve never been close enough to one to actually hear it.
May 4th, 2004 at 4:35 pm
Went through a tornado . . . literally. Went to pick my husband up from work. Had our seven year old daughter in the truck with me. Noticed some funky clouds in the distance. Pulled up in the parking lot outside the prison where he teaches and observed for a moment. Decided it best to seek shelter, but the only shelter was a 2 x 2 foot space between a brick post and a brick building. Put sweet daughter in space and then crouched down over her, bracing us between the wall and post with my foot. The tornado literally went over us — blew out four of my truck windows, and ripped part of the roof off one of the prison buildings. When the storm passed by, we had broken glass in our hair and there was a chair stuck feet first in the chain-link fence near us.
While the winds swirled around us, I cried out to God for protection and neither one of us had one scratch, inspite of the broken glass in our hair that took three shampooings to wash out. The front seat of my truck was full of broken glass, so it was a good thing we didn’t stay in the truck — even though it was terrifying to actually outdoors with the tornado passing over. My daughter still watches the sky carefully when it’s stormy . . . just in case.
May 4th, 2004 at 4:56 pm
just to let you know, all those who think that living in a big city might be a refuge from a tornado, i, hailing from the state with the most tornadoes, would like to remind you that a tornado just a few years ago DESTROYED the entire downtown of ft. worth to such effect that the block on which i worked was cordoned off to allow fbi agents an opportunity to pick shreds of sensitive documents out of the telephone poles, the screaming silent carcass of the 25 story building from which they were blown laughing (on a rather awkward angle) in the background. it was fucking scary.
May 5th, 2004 at 1:09 am
Wow! I had no idea about the Ft. Worth tornado. We get so preoccupied up here with our own and all … you know how it is. The FiBbIes haven’t been seen much around here since our own little incident back in ’95, the one with the 7,000 pounds of cow shit and the detonator and the federal building and whatnot. But we think of them often.
It didn’t even occur to me that Tejas has more tornadoes than OK. (Sigh.) As long as Texas exists, I get the feeling its neighbor to the north will always be a bridesmaid …
May 5th, 2004 at 3:22 am
i have never seen a “real” tornado. we don’t have that here in germany. and we don’t have whipped cream, which sucks. other than not having tornados. we have floods instead..
uh – and to the aforementioned senior inventing all that crap – f..ck you!
ps: by “crap” i don’t mean whipped cream.
May 5th, 2004 at 11:13 am
Oops, re above comment I meant to say low-frequency, not low-decibel.
May 6th, 2004 at 1:28 pm
As some one who has lived through a couple of earthquakes and tornados I will take the tornado. Even small earthquakes are pretty scary, especially when you realize that the building you are in is not retro-fit despite the fact that it is on a fault line.
May 6th, 2004 at 1:41 pm
You know, 28 years living in MN and I’ve never seen one tornado, even though they’ve come close. Wild, unpredictable shit with how they can blow away every house in a 10 mile radius, but still leave ONE standing in the middle of it all. I would almost hate to be that one guy left standing. Everyone in town would be thinking, “So, who did HE have to sleep with to catch that kind of break?”
Anyway, I bet a tornado could kill a moose.
May 6th, 2004 at 2:19 pm
A few years ago when The Big One hit (May 3 of ’99), it obliterated a good third of Moore, Okla., just south of Oklahoma City. There was this one neighborhood right by the highway, and just like in the tornado textbooks, there was one house left standing in the middle of it, pretty much unscathed. Everything around it was destroyed, though. Everything.
That was one fucking hell of a tornado, I’ll tell you that much. It completely leveled the outlet mall in Stroud, just off the turnpike between Tulsa and OKC, and it’s never been rebuilt. Now there’s just a big weedy parking lot there. I believe it’s for sale.
May 6th, 2004 at 5:42 pm
Coming from Illinois we’ve had our share of tornadoes (one in Plainfield around 10 years ago leveled the high school and a good part of the town). Loss of life was fairly high for a tornado too. I’ve never actually seen one, but have observed the cloud cover turning a sickly green and coming down so low it was freaky. Was huddling in my powder room once during the sirens (only “interior” room with now windows – was unfortunate enough not to have a basement). Our 3 year old trees were nearly bending over and touching the ground. Husband was nowhere to be found, and I was freaking out. Used to love severe weather until then. Now if it’s anything stronger than a spring shower, I’m checking the National Weather Service alerts every 5 minutes until the weather clears. Even have nightmares of the blasted things. Hope I never see one up close, or it might become a full blown phobia!
Ironically, growing up, I wanted to be a tornado chaser. Stupid, stupid girl.
May 7th, 2004 at 2:42 pm
Northern New Jersey is pretty devoid of any major natural disasters. The occaisonal killer snowstorm (of ’96), flood (thank you hurricane Floyd), and I only remember one tornado about 10 years ago. No earthquakes, volcanoes, glaciers or Godzillas. I think all the smog forms a protective film over New Jersey, protecting it from tornados.
May 9th, 2004 at 3:10 am
having grown up in the tulsa area, tornadoes are just a fact of life. have had one touch down within 2 miles of me every year for the last 11 years but none have gotten closer than than 2 blocks. witnessed the 5/3/99 storm and the one that hit bruces truck stop. have seen all shades of green and yellow in relation to swirling clouds. there’s not much you can do about them, just keep out of the way and never live in or near a trailer park. although i would agree that the bout of storms that we have had to deal with recently is a bit much. at least 5 days of no tv because the weather guys just have to keep up updated.
May 10th, 2004 at 2:47 am
I was born in Tulsa, but we moved while I was still young enough not to remember any tornadoes there. I grew up in Nashville, though, and the twisters rip through there on a regular basis. Poor Rivergate Mall gets hit EVERY SINGLE TIME. There could be a tornado down by Memphis and the Dillard’s at Rivergate loses its roof. LoL
I saw a tornado once, and was so stricken by fear and awe that I didn’t have the sense to try and find shelter. Guess I was lucky to have been with a dozen other people at the time. It’s some scary shit, man.
May 11th, 2004 at 7:55 pm
I don’t know. As natural disasters go there are things to admire about the Big T. I miss that dead calm in the hour before a tornado. BTW, I live in Seattle now, and there’s no wind here whatsoever. A fly could fly a straight line across the lake. I DON’T miss that about Oklahoma — fucking gale winds all of the time. Not a bit. But I sure miss thunderstorms.