(no subject)

[apocalypsos]

I believe the phrase I'm looking for is what in the ever-lovin' fuck is this happy horseshit? 'Cause, you know, I like the bad words and such.

And while we're talking about things that make me go, "What the fuck?!", I was listening to the radio today when a commercial for the nightly news came on. Apparently, one of the big stories was how D.C. is preparing a plan for a citywide evacuation in case of terrorist attack. Of course, this implies something a great deal bigger than "We just dropped a plane on your geometrically proportionate building full of warmongering infidels." That implies "We're bombing your city full of lawmaking infidels."

Let me just ask the other Americans in big, big cities just to make sure, but am I the only one rolling my eyes at the absurd paranoia of that whole situation? I mean, maybe it's just the fact that I just spent the first twenty-five years on my life in Scranton, which on the list of cities terrorists would think to bomb only beats Peoria, Topeka, and maybe Albuquerque, but only because people who make wrong turns there end up in weird places, which makes it an interdimensional rift and therefore means it must be destroyed.

Anyway, maybe it's just me. I don't mind the fact that they'd know how to evacuate Washington if trouble came ... in fact, as long as Marjoe Gortner doesn't show up at my door with a bad wig and a semiautomatic, I don't care how the hell you get me out of here, just do it. (My apologies for the '70s disaster movie reference, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't make it.) What bugs me is that the newspeople coming on the air and saying, "We're not actually expecting it, but should the eeeeeevil terrorists decide to nuke Washington, we know how to set up an orderly line out of the city" reminds me vaguely of that part in "Airplane!" where Julie Hagerty calms down the passengers and then casually asks if anyone knows how to fly the plane.

(I feel like I should mention that every time I watch "Independence Day" and they say that Chicago and Atlanta were destroyed in the second wave of alien attacks, I think, "No more Bulls games in Atlanta? Pity." I don't even remember if Chicago plays Atlanta, but that's what pops into my head all the time. Go figure.)

Okay, enough ranting ... I'm off to inflate my Amazon wish list again. I won't be happy until it's reached the height requirement to devour planets.

Comments

[cmstephens.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Bulls do play in Atlanta, since the NBA doesn't force each conference to only play in-conference games, like MLB does (er, did, before they started with Interleague play a few years back).

This would also mean:
-- No more Blackhawks/Thrashers
-- No more Bears/Falcons
-- No more Cubs/Braves (I still can't believe they gave up Greg Maddux to Atlanta all those years ago... and you see where that got the Cubs...)
-- No more White Sox/Braves (if it's on the Interleague schedule)
-- Atlanta doesn't have an MLS team, so the only way the Chicago Fire could play there is if it were a neutral-site exhibition game, or if the league expanded into Atlanta
-- No more Olympic Park bombings... if the city was destroyed, what difference would it make? For that matter, how could you find the Olympic Park without the help of a map and a GPS system?

[fallofrain.livejournal.com]

Scranton is Northeast PA's Bermuda Triangle.

[apetslife.livejournal.com]

Yeah. New York has one too, and my eyes continue to roll, because frankly everyone in Manhattan is going to head to the nearest bridge or boat and fuck the orderly lines, should bombs start falling.

It's an island, for god's sake. I'd probably try to swim to Jersey. No one wants to bomb Jersey, and I'd put Hackensack on your Peoria and Scranton list, too.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

I've been to Hackensack. I'd bomb it over Scranton just for having a better mall.

Did you know

[seferin.livejournal.com]

1> that the current evacuation plan will not work because the vehicles used for the evacuation of congress do not have the fuel capacity to get to the second area?

2> that I tried to pull up your wish list, but could not find any requests?

Why does your icon say 'Bitch, please'?

What is the reference?

[mintwitch.livejournal.com]

This post boggled me. I don't think anyone in Seattle knows of this thing you call "evacuation". Unless it is in regards to volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or tsunami.

Right now, the PNW is staring into the sky, collectively gasping, "What is that yellow thing, that is bright?" I'm sort of amused that there exists anything in the universe other than unseasonable warmth, medicinal marijuana, and gay marriage. Go you for being all informed and shit!

/random comment

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, according to Amazon, it takes a day or two for the list to come up.

[fairestcat]

See, the way I figure it, every city has their natural disaster/misfortune that every just sorta half-expects and accepts the possibility of as the price of living there. In much of the West Coast its the Big Quake. In Seattle, its the day the Mountain erupts. In Spokane, WA (my hometown) it's the big firestorm some summer. Heck, we had one of those in my lifetime. In Florida, where my roomies from, its the Big Hurricane.

The way I figure, in DC our price is that in a terrorist attack/nuclear war we are the first place struck. Not that this means I think we should make things easy for them or that I wouldn't try to save myself, just that this kind of panicking/overreacting just makes me shake my head

[tenebris.livejournal.com]

Just fyu: As a resident of Albuquerque, I have to say that the rift in the space-time continuum? This would be due to our mountain full of nuclear weapons. Which may in fact be urban legend, but who wants to take that chance? ;)

An orderly city evac? Puh-lease. Did someone give a "Mob Lobotomy" to these people?

Re:

[apetslife.livejournal.com]

Yes, but have you ever tried to get a tow truck there? Hell on earth, I tell you.

The mall in Hackensack nice, but Scranton has the lovely 380/I-81 interchange (built over the agonizingly long course of fifteen years, apparently by monkeys with only rudimentary tool-use capabilities), without which one cannot conveniently get to Canada! It'd be a tough call.

Re:

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Fifteen years is agonizingly long to build a highway?

Oh, right, I forgot. States that aren't Pennsylvania actually work on their roads once in a while. I thought that was just a dirty, dirty rumor until I stayed in North Carolina for two months with my aunt. I swear, that's all they do there is repair highways.

The funny bit was that our area used to have a hotline where you could call to report potholes. From the response it got, I imagine the phone line reached the Cavernous Gapng Hole Watching Club at PennDOT HQ.

Re:

[cmstephens.livejournal.com]

Fifteen years isn't too bad as far as highway-building goes. Hawaii's (or, more specifically, Oahu's) H3 "interstate" highway commenced construction sometime in the 1960s. It was completed and opened in 1997.

There's your federal tax dollars at work...

Re:

[apetslife.livejournal.com]

But it wasn't a highway! It was just an overpass/interchange thingy!

It was on my to- and from-college drive route, you see. I watched it grow, inch by (literal) inch, over months, and then years, and finally a decade. *wipes a tear* I was almost sad when they'd finally finished it...

[feath.livejournal.com]

When I was little, we were taught at school, in case of a bomb attack (yes, they were concerned about that in the 60s) we were to duck under our desk and hold our hands over the back of our neck and bend down.
This was to give us the feeling (illustion) of safty, that we were doing something to survive.
The same with the city evacuation. It's an illustion of safety. If a bomb goes off -- like heroshima -- the only thing you can do (if you're lucky) is bend over and kiss your ass good bye.
Or jump in the ocean, and watch your skin float away.

[azurelunatic]

Peoria, which state?

Re:

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

I think I could live without all of those, except for the basketball and maybe the hockey games.

You know, I think I could root for an apocalypse if it meant everyone else would die and I'd end up being the world's best basketball player by default. Unfortunately, that's how many people would have to die before that happened.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

I've lived near Washington. The only way they could evacuate it in any sort of reasonable time is if God Himself flattened the surrounding five hundred miles, turned it into a parking lot and started teleporting cars.

Even then they'd have three hour backups

Re:

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it a suprisingly orderly evacuation on 9-11?

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

You should have heard the commercial. It was hilaaaaarious. It was like, "Oh, we've got this all planned out." Sure, you do. I got to have another Independence Day moment thinking of the President saying we need to evacuate the cities followed by immediately by New Yorkers acting like excited Muppets.

Dude, they couldn't evacuate Scranton in an orderly fashion if they wanted to. A quarter of the population wouldn't go anywhere out of pure stubbornness, another quarter would end up stuck behind some guy herding his cattle down the highway, and the rest would run into people they hadn't seen in ages on the highway and stand around gossiping about old times as the apocalypse came.

Re:

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but you don't get anywhere fun when you get lost in Scranton.

Re:

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

I like being at Ground Zero. A selfish part of me thinks, "Wheee! They're aiming for me!" And another part thinks, "Yay! I'm going to be in an Irwin Allen movie!"

Because I am, of course, a moron.

Re:

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Bit of trivia: In a nuclear attack, you don't actually have to bend over to kiss your ass goodbye. You can just peel your ass right off if you're so inclined.

[allegraconbrio.livejournal.com]

I live in the DC/Balt. metro area-ish and maybe I am in the vast minority here, but one thing that I take a bit of comfort in, is the fact that if the big bomb hits DC then I am going to be taken out in the first wave. No post-apocalyptic disaster movie life for me. And that is just fine.

The evacuation plans strike me more than a bit optimistic, considering it can take 2 hours to get from College Park to Rockville on the beltway on some days. Good to be prepared and all that, but it seems like more of a psychological palliative than anything else to me. Cynical me. heh.

Oh and Hello neighbor:) I think this is my first post here, happy to be here.

idiotic paranoia

[cmpriest.livejournal.com]

darling, the day of 9/11 they were sending people home where i worked..."just in case."
i worked at a newspaper in Chattanooga, TN.
first we take Manhattan....

*sigh*

Re: idiotic paranoia

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Chattanooga is on my list of Cities I'd Bomb Just For Having a Name That's Really Fun to Pronounce, right next to Walla Walla, Albuquerque, Sheboygan, and Minooka. (Minooka's a "suburb"" of Scranton, if you will. Yeah, it's tiny, but it's so much fun to yell out the car window going 75 down the highway.)

Re: idiotic paranoia

[cmpriest.livejournal.com]

fair enough.
i'd like to bomb it because...well...because apparently the yankees did only a half-hearted job the first time, and now the place is rather terminally dull.

Re:

[apetslife.livejournal.com]

Yes, but everyone pretty much headed to the nearest bridge or boat, and no one was trying to organize people into 'orderly lines.' I think the lack of official 'organization' was key.

[ktmobile.livejournal.com]

Working on your Amazon Wish List is like being sucked into a dimension devoid of time. I'll casually surf over to the site, add a few things here and there, and suddenly it'll be 3 hours after I first hit the site. Ridiculous!

Re:

[cmstephens.livejournal.com]

I'm good enough to beat my dad (occasionally), but that's about it...