lobsterchick's Diaryland Diary

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I Just Don't Want To Embarrass Myself on National News, That's All

I'm obsessed with earthquakes, after going to msnbc.com the other day and being greeted with this:

This is not the actual picture.  I'm an idiot and didn't think to save it.  This is my terrible artist's rendering.

Dude.

Do you know where I live? Do you know what's downtown in my city right along the riverfront? THE ARCH. THE GATEWAY ARCH! AND! AND! AND WE'RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEEEE!

How could I not click on the story? I couldn't not, that's how.

So I click, and I read, and blah blah blah, cities around the country, disaster preparedness, etc., LA has earthquakes, we're all shocked. Finally? I get to this:

Two states upriver, St. Louis suffered through a devastating flood only 12 years ago. The day Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, local emergency managers started reviewing flood plans in the area, which is also prone to tornadoes and is within the New Madrid seismic zone.

"It says it could happen here," said St. Louis emergency director Gary Christmann.


OH MY GOD, IT COULD TOTALLY HAPPEN HERE!

But the thing is, I could not honestly tell you the last time there was a tornado in St. Louis. And besides, yes, tornadoes are devastating, but they're small-scale, unless you have a whole herd of them like they did in Oklahoma in 1999. So, I do not worry about tornadoes.

There are floods. But according to all the fancy schmancy engineers and scientificists who stood around everywhere in St. Louis and scratched their heads through the summer of '93, something like that isn't bound to happen within the next 700 years. Or 70? Whatever; it caused a lot of property damage, but (thanks to local and state evac plans - props to the may-ahs!) very few people lost their lives and, I hate to say it, some of the ones who did were at fault. So, floods aren't manageable, and they're not really avoidable as long as we keep destroying the earth, but the chances of my being caught up in one are slim to none (said as a tidal wave engulfs my house and my dead body is carried out to sea... damn you, Fate, I shouldn't have tempted you).

But earthquakes.

I've been in two that I know of, and one of those? I slept through. Apparently it was big enough to wake everyone in my family, except my sister and me. The other one, I was like, "Hm? A slight breeze?" then immediately the news broke in with a Special Report: "THAT VAGUE TREMBLING THAT YOU JUST FELT, THAT YOU MAY HAVE MISTAKEN FOR AN UPSET STOMACH, WAS REALLY AN EARTHQUAKE."

But that's the nervousness. The New Madrid Fault hasn't gone apeshit in almost 200 years, and that's a lot of pressure and friction just waiting to be released into my tender, soft brain. I'm convinced I'll be the first to die, because I have no survival instinct. I'm the girl who, when getting gassed to get her wisdom teeth out, had this exact thought: "100... 99... 98... I can't breathe... I'm going to die. Oh, well..." If I was lying in bed with a support beam through my skull, I don't think I'd be able to give myself any kind of pep talk to keep me alive until rescuers came for me.

But say I live. That's almost scarier. Then there's like, get to my mom, get to all my family, where's the dog?, find a bike because in my earthquake disaster fantasies the ground everywhere is ripped open into uneven chunks and chasms that can only be traversed by... bicycles? Huh. But there's also food, water, turn the gas off, find somewhere to go, and just... like, survival.

I believe I've reported that I'm a chicken baby, and chicken babies just aren't the survival type. I mean, we eat them every day for breakfast, they're not exactly tough as nails.

10:35 PM - 19 September 2005

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Confidential to My Stalker

Dear Whoever Is Finding Me Through the Same AOL Search upwards of 5 Times a Day and Proceeding to Read 20 or So of My Posts Each Time:

Please either reveal yourself or quit. You're freaking me out.

11:01 PM - 18 September 2005

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Overstock Warehouse

From the makers of Oregon Trail and in the grand tradition of Reservation for One ... Million! comes...

Trail of Tears: The Game!


What a way to spend those rainy Saturday afternoons indoors, while teaching your children about Native American history!

Due to the graphic nature of this game, it is not recommended for children under the age of 8.

12:10 AM - 16 September 2005

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I'm Not Telling You Who It Is

I'm freaking out here and I'd appreciate any help/advice you guys can offer.

There is a blog that I read pretty much daily. I consider this person to be something of a friend, as much as she can be, having never met her in real life. But something she wrote this past week upset me so much that I can never read her diary again. I had to take her off my list of diaries I read because I'm so afraid of just going back there and reading that entry over and over again, and obsessing.

The thing is, there's this sort of ... code among bloggers, of which I'm sure most of you area aware. The deal is, if you don't like what someone writes, or writes about, you don't have to read it, no one's forcing you to, so don't comment about it. Just leave.

Which I abide by, but this isn't some stranger's inflammatory political post. This is someone I feel like I know relatively well, and she's done something wrong that she has somehow turned around and is congratulating herself for. No one wants to be told off, but I feel like she needs it.

WHAT DO I DO?

11:48 PM - 15 September 2005

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