Forget Spiders, Tornadoes Are My Number One Fear

I grew up in an area that is referred to, not so affectionately, as Tornado Alley. Fort Smith, Arkansas to be specific, which if you look at the picture I’ve included is right in the eye of some of the most severe tornado activity.

 

Looking at photos of the terrible devastation that occurred in Oklahoma today and the photos of the tornadoes themselves, I felt that old terror that I used to feel when I was still living in that area of the country and I realized that there is not a single thing that could possibly entice me to ever
live in that area ever again.

I lived through plenty of tornadoes during my years in Arkansas, but I still remember one particular instance that scared me more than all the others.

When I was in first grade we lived in a house in Arkoma, which was a ghetto little town on the border between Arkansas and Oklahoma. Most people will tell you that they have cellars or basements that they retreat too when the sirens for a tornado warning start blaring, but our house at the time was extremely old and the basement was poorly constructed. It had been raining for days and the basement had filled with water, several feet deep, as it tended to do when we got big storms (having a company come out to pump the water out of the basement was commonplace for us, several times a year) and there was no way we could go down there during the tornado warning that came through that night.

We had a barn in the back of the house, but it was old and oddly reminiscent in that one scene from Twister where they hide in the barn full or sharp farming tools. Not the best plan.

So we hunkered down in the only hallway in the house that had no windows, on a mattress from the guest room, with pillows piled around us. Just me, my sister, and my parents. The power cut out at some point, but before it did we were watching the coverage of the storm on the TV and the images of that tornado are burned into my memory.

When the power finally cut we sat in the dark, not even using candles, and listened to the storm.

That’s not our tree, but it’s about the same size.

I don’t really remember what the tornado sounded like, I just know that it was loud. It never hit our little area of town, but it passed quite near us and I could hear the noises. The wind picking up to insane levels and the next morning we had limbs down from our very old, very tough Magnolia tree in the front yard.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep the entire night, even after the sirens switched off.

I don’t remember if it was one day or two before I went back to school, but I sat down in my class with my favorite teacher I ever had in elementary school had a bandage on her hand from getting splinters pulled out of her and a horror story about how a third of her house was flattened and it was only by the grace of god that the portion of the house they had been hunkering down in had been spared, though part of the roof of that room had been ripped off.

Tornadoes put the fear of god in me.

Last week I got home from Dallas after BlogCon and I was relieved to realize that I made it out the day before severe storms and tornadoes hit the area.

They are truly an unstoppable part of nature and you can’t really escape from them, you can only try to hide some place safe and wait for them to pass over. Usually ripping your town apart as it passes. Sometimes they kill, sometimes they merely rip apart your material possessions. You can never tell what they will do.

Now that I’ve told you my story, keep in mind that I was lucky. In fact my teacher was lucky too. She was only superficially wounded and her husband and children remained safe and unharmed throughout the storm, but in Oklahoma this week many were not so lucky. So please if you can find the money, donate to Mercury One, where 100% of the donations will be going to the survivors in Oklahoma.

The Only Thing Worse Than an Audit is a Colonoscopy; Now You Get Both from the Same People

Putting the IRS in charge or Obamacare seems like a mistake of epic proportions, especially with the recent knowledge that the IRS has been harassing Tea Party groups, pro-constitution groups, pro-life organizations, Pro-Israel, and religious institutions.

I foresee the following happening.

Patient to Obamacare IRS office: I need medical attention.

Obamacare IRS office: Yes, I can help you with that. I just need you to fill out these forms.

Patient: Holy crap, I’m going to need treatment for carpal tunnel too after filling these out.

IRS office: You’ll need to fill out a different set of forms for those, let me get those for you. *hands patient a stack of paperwork twice the size of the first one*

Patient: *begins filling out paperwork* Hey, why do you need to know what political party I’m registered too? AND who I voted for last election?

IRS office: It’s standard procedure.

Patient: Okay…wait, you need to know what books I’ve read in the last year?!

IRS: With a summary of the content as well, yes.

Patient: You want a book report?

IRS: Standard-

Patient: -Procedure, I know. Hey, you can’t ask me if I own guns. That has nothing to do with my medical needs.

Big Surprise: Sandra Fluke Lied

I know, I know, this is old news, but let me ramble.

I recently tangled with an idiot over whether or not Sandra Fluke wanted her college (or the American people) to pay for her sex life (and the sex life of every other woman on the campus). Their argument, as is typical, is that Fluke wasn’t making an argument about needing birth control for sexual reasons, she wanted the school to provide it for medical reasons. PCOS (Polycystic Ovarioan Syndrome) being the most popular of these medical reason for liberals (and Fluke herself) to bring up. She claimed that students who had PCOS, or other medical needs the necessitated using birth control, could not get the birth control they needed because of Georgetown’s insurance policies.

This was, of course, a load of horse manure and 1o seconds on a google could prove it. So it always struck me as odd that so many people spent time debating Fluke’s demands based on the morality of them or the 1st amendment issues. Yes, the 1st amendment is hugely important, but common sense is important too, which is why smacking Fluke in the face with the actual Georgetown student insurance policy (specifically the FAQ section of it) several times would have been more useful.

A Pox Upon Modern Feminism

I really dislike feminists.

And by that I mean that I dislike 98% of modern feminists.

Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony have my respect. Women like Marie Curie, who was a successful scientist in a time where men owned the field of science 9 times out of 10, and women like Abigail Adams who did what they could to influence their husbands when they had very little voice of their own. These are people I respect.

Modern feminists are, 98% of the time, vulgar and utterly terrible at doing any sort of effective activism.

Take FEMEN for instance, they don’t change anyone’s mind or work to change laws or cultures, they just run around half naked, being a nuisance, and trying to recapture the days of protesting flower children. You find me one person whose mind they have actually changed through their antics or one law they have successful overturned or changed.

Super Gonorrhea, AKA: The Plague for “Proud Sluts”

Oh this title better bag me some hate mail, if it doesn’t then I don’t know what will.

Now I’m sure not all feminists or even all “proud sluts” (which is actually how they refer to themselves) are out there having unprotected sex, but they are having sex and usually lots of it it…with different men (or women). Say what you will about the morality of that, but you can’t argue the dangers of it.

STDs are a fact of life ladies, whether you get Chlamydia or Herpes or a case of Super Gonorrhea (my own name for it) sleeping around only increases your chances of this.

I don’t know if you know this, but condoms are not actually all that effective against STDs other than HIV. I mean, they are better than nothing, but you are still playing a pretty risky game with your life and your reproductive organs.

Now most STDs are not life threatening, at least not in this day and age (Syphilis, 100 years ago, was a different story) , but now we are getting superbugs.

This Super Gonorrhea was first spotted in Japan in 2011 and now, like a slow, but dangerous zombie infection, it’s spread to cases in Hawaii an California (and, for some inexplicable reason, Norway). I guess my decision to not pick up a one night stand in Cali when I was there on vacation was a smart one.

This particular strain is less like a typical STD and more like the Bubonic Plague to be honest.

“That’s what’s kind of scary about this. We are at lows in terms of infections, but this strain is a very tricky bug and we don’t have anything medically to fight it right now.”

The new strain of gonorrhoea resists existing drugs and the NCSD has asked the US government for an extra $53m (£34m) in funding to prepare.

It claims it is a case of “if, not when” a drug-resistant form of the disease arrives in the US, and that if action is not taken now it could potentially cost around $780m (£501m) to treat.

“This might be a lot worse than Aids in the short run because the bacteria is more aggressive and will affect more people quickly,” Alan Christianson, a doctor of naturopathic medicine, told CNBC.

“Getting gonorrhoea from this strain might put someone into septic shock and death in a matter of days,” he claimed.

- Sky News

Feminists, like Moe from Jezebel.com, who think that condomless sex is so freaking awesome that they are fine with risking infection in order to make like bunnies without a rubber, may be in for a nasty surprise with this beginning it’s spread through North America.

Interesting fact, did you know that the number of new STDs in American grows by about 20 million a year?  If only our job market grew that quickly.

Here’s a piece of advice for those with the proclivity for promiscuous sexual activity.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You may think that abstinence is an “unrealistic proposition” for you, but you aren’t an animal in heat and you have self control. With this sort of plague beginning to spread, you might want to invest in a little more “me” time and a little less “picking someone up at the bar” time.

New Article @ Damn Straight Politics: Batman and Gun Control

 Batman and Gun Control: Hollywood’s Selective Ideas on Gun Ownership

What I’m getting from this “Batman is anti-gun, so you should be too” thing is mostly that I can’t own a handgun, but an aerial stealth vehicle or a motorcycle equipped with machine guns and missiles is 100% okay.

You know what? I’m okay with that. I’ll give you my handgun and you hand me a batpod and we’ll call it a fair trade.

Let’s see the cops try to pull me over for speeding then!

Manufactured Outrage: Racism, Racism, Everywhere and Not a Drop is Real

Yeah, we know kid. You’re a liberal and everything is racist.

Sometimes I wonder what drugs most liberals are on, because they get some really good stuff apparently.

There were two symbolic stick figures on the quilt in which one represented no knowledge while the other represented enlightenment after the learning assignment. Can you imagine a nervous young student who was proud to discuss the quilt work, and the horror when Martinsville, Virginia Councilwoman Sharon Brooks-Hodge suddenly accused the student of racism over a black stick figure in the quilt?

Where does the liberal insanity end? Sharon Brooks-Hodge thinks that a stick figure using the color black is racist and wants to see “you white people” as stick figures on the quilt. Isn’t that racist? Oh wait… it’s not racist when it’s a Liberal doing it.

- Gateway Pundit

Yup.

That happened.

Reportedly the councilwoman made one of the students cry through her strident insistence that the children from the Piedmont Governor’s School were racist because they chose the color black (which is the absence of color and light) to describe how they felt before they were enlightened by the knowledge they gained a school trip.

I think Sharon would get along spectacularly with John Wiley-Price of Dallas, who thought the term “black hole” was horribly offensive and racist at a County Commission meeting in 2008. Someone get these two on the phone with each other, they will be BFFs that will provide us with nonstop entertainment as they travel the country declaring which uses of the word “black” are racist in their view.

It will be the best comedy film of the year.

Thought the Oscars would probably put in the drama category for being a “heart-wrenching discussion of the inherent racism of the English language.”

My advice to Sharon Brooks-Hodge, grow a thicker skin or keep your mouth shut. Not every phrase uttered that uses the word “black” in it is meant to refer to your race.

You made a child cry because you called them racist for a kindly meant gesture and a handmade quilt.

You are a terrible person and that has nothing to do with your race.

New Article @ Damn Straight Politics

The False Narrative of Immigration Reform

People who are invested in the continued protection of illegal immigration are always talking about how difficult it is to get citizenship or visas to come to this country and on the face of things, yes the bureaucratic red tape can seem never ending and endlessly frustrating, but it’s nothing compared to immigrating to any other country.

Compared to immigration to Norway, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Greece or most other countries, immigrating to the United States is easier (and usually cheaper) than a guy getting laid at a gay bath house during Pride.*

Government Mandated Neverland: Parents? What Are Those?

I recently talked about the story of the of the Niklayev family of Sacramento, California in an article for Damn Straight Politics. The story was absolutely horrifying to me, that the police and a government organization like CPS could simply walk into your home without a warrant or any proof or documentation and take away a women’s child for unsubstantiated reports of neglect.

Are we living in the USSR now?

It’s like the government wants us to believe that we don’t have the right to raise our children as we see fit.

Oh wait, they aren’t actually OUR kids at all, they belong to the community at large, right Melissa Harris-Perry?

The government is invented a world in which parents don’t matter. Their own twisted version of Neverland where the peace pipe contains actual weed, Peter Pan is taught to recognize whether Tiger Lily and Wendy are sluts based on their clothing choices, the lost boys aren’t really sure they are boys at all, and Wendy can buy the morning after pill without talking to a doctor, a pharmacist, or her parents first.

Parents? Who needs ‘em?

A world where no one ever grows up, but they all do adult things and expect someone else to clean up the mess for them.

California is pushing for legislation that would allow boys and girls to use whatever bathroom they want, regardless of gender, as long as they feel they have a different “gender identity” than they were born with.

Yeah, that can’t possibly go wrong.

California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano [is] pushing a bill that would allow public school students to pick the bathroom of their choosing based on their “gender identity.”

Assembly Bill 1266 would force boys athletic teams to accept girls if those girls identified as boys, or vice versa. It would force schools to allow boys to use girls bathrooms if they identify as girls, or vice versa.

- Breitbart

But what about the parents? Where is their say in this little scheme to promote “equality”. Now I have no problem with people who say that they feel like they should have been born the opposite gender, but the issue is that 99% of the time they still have the same plumbing they were born with if they are under the age of 18 and so do all the other people of that gender.

So a boy who feels like a girl wants to be in the same bathroom and, quite possibly, the same locker room as well (unless they plan to relegate the one transgendered kid on the team to a separate locker room before and after practice and games. Try that and you really would hear the howls of “DISCRIMINATION!” from the left) as your daughter.

So does the rest of the male population that identifies as male. What’s to stop them from claiming they are transgendered and walking right in any way?

Do you really want the problems that come with that? I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable putting my son or daughter in a room where they are exposing their genitalia to use the restroom or shower or change for games and having people of the opposite gender sanctioned to come into that room and expose themselves right along with them.

But somehow I’m just a closed minded bigot for wanting to have a say over which gender is allowed around my child when they are removing clothing.

Then there’s the fact that the FDA has decided that not only do girls as young as 15 need to be able to buy the morning after pill, but they really need to be able to do so without their parents permission and they really need to be able to do it without talking to a pharmacist about the side effects of a drug that, essentially, performs a chemical abortion.

The government is moving the morning-after pill over the counter for those 15 or older.

Today, Plan B One-Step is sold behind pharmacy counters, and buyers must prove they’re 17 or older to buy it without a prescription. Tuesday’s decision by the Food and Drug Administration lowers the age limit and will allow the pill to sit on drugstore shelves next to spermicides or other women’s health products and condoms — but anyone who wants to buy it must prove their age at the cash register.

- The Blaze

Yeah, 15 year olds are totally old enough and responsible enough to understand the risks of taking dangerous medication.

Here’s a quandary, why are Plan B pills stocked next to the Trojans, but you still need a doctor’s visit to be prescribed a low dose birth control pill? Why aren’t they next to the flavored, glow in the dark rubbers?

Not only that, but in New York City school nurses can hand out the Plan B pill (and have, to thousands of students) without permission from the parent. I couldn’t even get an aspirin when I was in school, without a signed release form. How much longer till this spreads to your local school?

Parent’s opinion on whether their daughter (who probably has no idea if the medication is something she is allergic too or will interact with other medication she’s on) should be taking this stuff? Why would we need that?

Here’s another interesting “WTF?!” moment that happened recently.

Outraged parents say a New York middle school instructed young female students to ask one another for a lesbian kiss – and boys learned how to spot young sluts – in an anti-bullying presentation on gender identity and sexual orientation, according to Fox News’ Todd Starnes.

According to Starnes’ report, the children attended a special April 11 health class taught by college students at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, N.Y. Parents say they were not notified of the presentation.

The students were introduced to terms such as “pansexual” and “genderqueer.”

Some of the young female students said they were told it was common for 14-year-old girls to have sex and their parents couldn’t stop them.

- WND

Now I know exactly which girl I would have asked for a kiss (and I probably would have got it) in school if this had happened to me, but that’s beside the point. (She was bad news, 2 grades above me, and so hot it hurt to look at her sometimes.)

Seriously though, what the ever loving hell?

The lesbian kiss request is weird enough, but teaching boys how to spot “sluts”? I thought that was a “no-no” in liberal ideology.

Mandy Coon, one of the parents, got it right when she said this:

“I am furious. I am her parent. Where does anyone get the right to tell her that it’s OK for her to have sex?”

__________________________

For some reason my little sister wouldn’t be able to buy a soda bigger than 16 oz. in New York City, but she could get Plan B over the counter and her parents would never be wiser. That infuriates me.

Every day they are taking away our right to make basic decisions for ourselves and our families, turning that right over to alphabet agencies. IRS, FDA, CPS, and so many others.

In the [paraphrased] words of Ronald Weasley, “Liberals need to sort out their priorities.”

Liberals really are living in a fantasy land.

I Don’t Get This Whole “Coming Out” Thing

Everyone is talking up a storm about Jason Collins, a pro-basketball player who just announced that he’s gay to the entire world.

Or at least everyone who reads Sports Illustrated.

I don’t, so I had to wait for the rest of the world to catch up and start frantically covering it in the news and on twitter to hear about it. I just shrugged and said “Okay? So?”

I’ve never understood the need to make a huge spectacle of your personal life.

Well that’s a lie, I used to bring up my sexuality in conversations when I was in 9th grade and I was an obnoxious little liberal troll, but that’s about it.

I didn’t make a big production of coming out, in fact I usually came out by accident, because I would talk about “my girlfriend said…” as normally as I would have said “my boyfriend said…” in a conversation. So I would say that and people would interrupt the flow of the conversation to say “Whoah, whoa there!….you’re gay?” I would confirm and then we would carry on with the conversation.

What I didn’t do was take out a page in the school newspaper to announce that, yes, the obnoxiously smart kid in the freshmen class was, in fact, a lesbian.

What is it about being gay that leads famous people to announce it to the world? They don’t feel the need to announce their straightness to the world and they still make plenty of headlines. Why not just live your life and answer the question honestly if you are asked and you want to let people know that you live with a person of the same sex and not the opposite.

Maybe I’m more annoyed by this because I wish that the Gosnell trial or Benghazi or Fast and Furious had gotten even half the amount of media coverage this is getting. Why in the world is the sexuality of an NBA player more important than the murder of small children or the death of American citizens? Why is it that our culture has more interest in the sexuality of a Basketball player than they do in terrorism or foreign policy.

I know, I know, the latter seems awful boring and the former is titillating and interesting.

To some anyway.

I probably wouldn’t even be writing an article about this if it weren’t for the fact that Obama still hasn’t said a word about Gosnell, but he apparently too the time to call up Jason Collins and let him know how proud of him he is.

It’s that I don’t think he should be gay or that I don’t think he’s brave for announcing it, it’s just that I don’t care.

And more to the point, the fact that anyone DOES care when someone announces their sexuality is a black mark against what the gay community is supposedly trying to accomplish. My straight friends don’t preface the announcement that they are dating someone with “Oh right, I’m straight, so don’t be shocked when I announce that my significant other is the opposite sex”. Neither do I and that has, to date, never been a problem for me. I thought the gay community wanted to be accepted the same way? Which doesn’t involve making a big production out of announcing which gender you sleep with.

I don’t announce that I’m gay when I meet a new group of people, I just act like a normal human being. My sexuality is not who I am, though I admit to employing it to make liberals heads explode, but that’s also part of who I am. If you talked to most of the people who met me at CPAC or Right Online in last year or so, they would tell you that they were not aware I was gay until they heard me talk about my girlfriend or they got home and checked my twitter bio.

That, ideally, should be how people operate. Why would Jason Collins want to be known as “the gay NBA player” for the rest of time? Like being gay is who he is?

Then again, maybe being gay is who he is. Perhaps he’s like all those liberal gay activists that feel the need to wear rainbow bracelets and a shirt announcing that they’re here and they’re queer.

If that’s your identity, fine. Don’t expect the rest of us to get all excited by it.