Friday, January 19, 2007

Live from the County Library: Apocalypse Now

Now where was I?...
Oh yeah, that's right. I'M STILL FRIGGIN' OFFLINE!!!Ah, but the good news is, folks, at least I have a line to be off of. The world just to the north of here wasn't so lucky.

I'm sure you've seen all the vid clips that have been running all week on the network news shows. Almost all of those clips come from the Springfield area. OK, so there's a few from the Oklahoma area...but they are using primarily Ozark footage.
So that gives you some idea of how devastating the destruction is. It's apocalyptic, it's armedgeddon...it's, dare I say?...Katrina-esque. I was here for the Big Ice of '87 and this is making that look like a small cola slurpee. It is jawdropping.
Only a mere 20 miles kept us from abject chaos. We were just enough south that all we got was a buttload of rain and some flooding. So I was able to watch the mutha of all ice storms unfold on TV from the cozy comfort of my propane heated and electrically lighted home. I have to hand it to channel 3 one of the few Springfield stations that did manage to stay up and running for the whole event-their coverage was excellent and made for great TV. And they acted just as a media outlet should in a catastrophe. "Just the facts, ma'am." Very informative and professional.

Even after a week of misery up there, folks are hanging tough.
I have yet to see footage of disgruntled masses demanding some sort of help or rescue.
No scenes of anarchy or widespread looting.
Wolf Blitzer is dismayed.
Nope, despite shortages, long lines in the bitter cold and no telling when everyone will have power restored, us dumbass hillbillies are just doing what comes natural...taking care of our own.
FEMA? We don't need no steenkin' FEMA!

Although the FEMA boys are on the scene, no doubt, but assisting on the local government level.
We got chains saws, we got pick ups, we got places to go for a warm meal and to take the chill off. We got our National Guard boys helping out. We got folks checking up on the farms and outlying areas and helping those folks out. Yep, we'll be alright.
That's just how ya do it around here. The contrast twixt here and Nawlins is startling.

There has been so much going on I can't possibly comment, but I have been enjoying reading what all y'all have been writing.
On a personal note, the 'puter is still crapped up. The geek nephew had his confidence pulled out from under him by his somewhat bullying father. I know the kid could fix it, but dad railed on the boy about it so bad, he gracefully bowed out from the project.
So now I'm back to square one...facing a massive repair bill if the weather will ever cooperate long enough for me to make the 100 mile 'round trip to a competant repair shop.

I vow to be back here from my own computer by Ground Hog Day!

Of course, now the next ice storm may hit just a dab south of Springfield...so that would be us! So, I'm in town today replenshing the "Oh Shit" pantry, just in case.
Y'all be cool, now, Ya hear?

2 Comments:

Blogger Fish-2 said...

D-a-a-a-n-g! I feel blessed indeed to have missed all such messes so far this winter (holding breath). My wife's computer took a major dump, but there's a young fellow here locally that will do all kinds of stuff to them for $25. He managed to get it back up and operating, but for some strange reason neither CD unit would operate (one player, one burner/player). We had bought her a new one in the mean time but wanted to be able to retrieve lots of stuff off the old one via burned disks. I finally just stuck a second hard drive into it, she transferred everything she wanted to keep onto that, then I pulled it back out and put it in her new computer as a second drive with all info intact on it. I didn't take the old one back to the guru but gave it to my son and his wife because they wanted it to play all the games we'd loaded onto it.

1/20/2007 9:36 PM  
Blogger Joubert said...

I did wonder if the ice-storm had hit you. Glad to hear it didn't.

1/26/2007 7:25 PM  

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