Monday, August 29, 2011

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!

I’m just going to go on the record and say I hate our fucking news people.

They’ve built this whole culture around this Chicken Little / Boy that cried wolf frame of mind.

I’m sick of it.

I know—Irene sucked in parts of the country, and not so much in my neck of the woods. I get that we were very lucky. I also get that people need to be prepared for what may happen… but there’s a line that got crossed.

Other parts of the country get Cat 4s. We had a tropical storm by the time it hit the New Hampshire seacoast. We’ve had worse windstorms in the past few years, and I don’t remember this whole DRAMA before the storm hit. If I remember correctly, it took us by surprise.

The media hits the panic button too soon. Maybe that’s what some people need…

I don’t.

Tell me there’s a hurricane coming and I will do what I need to. Telling me it’s THE. WORST. STORM. IN. FOREVER. isn’t going to change my preparations. A hurricane is a pretty severe threat, but at the end of the day, we’re subject to it’s whims. It chose not to hit Da ‘Brook, and I am thankful for that. Had it hit us, however, there would have been nothing more I could have done to protect myself from the damage. I was concerned, and rightfully so, but I didn’t need to hear the news people constantly making it sound like we needed to stick our heads between our knees and kiss our asses goodbye.

Honestly, I was more concerned about the Nuke getting destroyed and killing us than I was about a tree falling on my house or my basement getting flooded. Amazingly enough, there wasn’t a peep about the Nuke. NOT A PEEP ABOUT THE NUCLEAR POWER PLANT THAT I LIVE WITHIN A MILE OF. After what happened in Japan, I think that’s a little more important than hearing that you need to grab bottled water and a flashlight forty eleventy billion times a day. (Granted, I did get sick of listening to Chicken Little, so maybe they did say something, but by then, it was too late. I’d already grown deaf to the little boy that was crying wolf.)

I don’t know—I feel sorry for my friends who got slammed by the storm. I know I’m lucky as hell that we didn’t get touched.

But the next time a storm’s coming, I think I’ll keep the news on mute and just watch the pretty pictures instead.