Tropical Storm Barry

Hi, Barry! Happy June First!

You're not much, just a tropical storm. If you weren't aware of it before, let me be the first to tell you that according to a poll conducted by Mason Dixon, when one of your big brothers or sisters smacks into the U.S. this year everyone in the affected area is gonna die.

Or something.

That's what this article says the poll results indicate, and what numerous news sources have been echoing all day.

I'm gonna be one of the dead, I guess, 'cause if we're flooded I don't have any axes handy to chop through my roof.

I mean, I do have one but it's in the garage. Not that I'd be able to chop through the roof with it because it's so damned big and heavy. How I'd manage to swing it around in the attic much less haul it up there remains a mystery. A hatchet , I think, would be far more sensible. If I did somehow manage to climb on top of the refrigerator and clammer up . . .

Not that I'm in a flood-prone zone or live on the coast, but if the media reports the poll results as if they apply to everyone, who am I to disagree.

If the flood waters don't get me, Barry, I'm gonna burn to death.

Like 82 percent of those the survey says have made preparations, I have a "fire hazard" -- candles and and kerosene lamps -- in my "survival kit." But I'll probably bleed to death before the flames get me, if I drop any of the containers the candles are in and the glass breaks. All I can say is thank gawd the poll didn't ask about big-assed flashlights. If it had, it would be scaring people with the possibility of broken bones if they dropped one on their foot.

I haven't fortified my home, either, Barry. I'm not even sure what "fortified" means. If fortified means "boarding up" windows and such . . . I really don't want to hurt your feelings by making you feel inadequate, but you're only a tropical storm. We don't "fortify" here until there's actually a reason to do so.

Then again, we don't live on the coast.

Come to think of it, I don't think anybody I know even knows anybody rich or dumb enough to live on the coast, which just might be the population Mason Dixon surveyed. Not that you can tell from the media reports that nobody is ready for anything, so everybody's gonna die.

It's June 1. The official beginning of this year's Atlantic Hurricane Season. Let the media's annual hysteria begin, right?.

Anyway, thanks for the bit of rain a little while ago. It's been so long since we've had any, when I went out to feed Dingbat, the old Quarter Horse, he almost ran me over because the strange sound spooked him.

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