Panic in the Streets

One of my favorite things about Nashville is our ability to overreact to just about any weather pheonomenon.  When it snows, which it does here on occassion, though hardly very deep, the Butcher and I like to go to the grocery store just to watch people buying five gallons of milk and ten loaves of bread at a time.  One wonders what folks plan on doing with five gallons of milk if the power goes off–maybe making large vats of instant pudding in the dark? I don’t know.  Quite possibly, there are wild winter pudding wrestling matches I’m missing out on.  I can’t say.

And when it rains, you are literally taking your own life in your hands when you drive, because people act as if the presense of rain negates all traffic laws.  People ignore lanes.  They run lights.  They drive as fast as they can, as if that will somehow help them get to their destinations safer.

And now, in what might be considered the world’s most fucked up show of solidarity with the people who are actually going to suffer due to the hurricane, we’re running out of gas around town.  The building has been a-flutter all afternoon with rumors of prices jumping fifty to seventy-five cents over the course of the day and now, folks are saying forget even trying to buy gas, that there’s no gas left along West End.

I hope I make it home in one piece before the rioting and looting start.

Here’s Something I Wonder about Black Holes

Okay, I’m walking across the universe and I skip a little too close to a black hole.

And I start, if I’m understanding correctly, to swirl down the black hole like water down a drain.

And so on

Until I’m gone.

Over at Slate, they have a more science-y description.  But my question is this: isn’t it possible that, while to outsiders, I appear to rip apart and swirl to my death into a black hole, to me, things seem to be proceeding as normal and I am under the impression that I’m still skipping along past the black hole?

My Morning Palin Thought

Read this.

America, last night we saw the person running for Vice President of the United States try to cute her way out of Charlie Gibson’s questions.

America, forget not blinking–when she didn’t know, she winked.

This, America, is why we still need feminism, because, when the chips are down, women need a stronger skill-set than “just flirt your way out of the problem.”