hurricane humour

from "orchidweb", without author permission


FLORIDA HURRICANE PREPARATION

You all should be aware of hurricane preparations, but in case you need a refresher course: We're about to enter the peak of the hurricane season. Any minute now, you're going to turn on the TV and see a weather person pointing to some radar blob out in the Atlantic Ocean and making two basic meteorological points.

(1) There is no need to panic.
(2) We could all be killed.

Yes, hurricane season is an exciting time to be in Florida. If you're new to the area, you're probably wondering what you need to do to prepare for the possibility that we'll get hit by "the big one."

Based on our insurance industry experiences, we recommend that you follow this simple three-step hurricane preparedness plan:

STEP 1: Buy enough food and bottled water to last your family for at least three days.

STEP 2: Put these supplies into your car.

STEP 3: Drive to Nebraska and remain there until Halloween.

Unfortunately, statistics show that most people will not follow this sensible plan. Most people will foolishly stay here in Florida. We'll start with one of the most important hurricane preparedness items:

HOMEOWNERS' INSURANCE: If you own a home, you must have hurricane insurance. Fortunately, this insurance is cheap and easy to get, as long as your home meets two basic requirements:

(1) It is reasonably well-built, and
(2) It is located in Wisconsin

Unfortunately, if your home is located in Florida, or any other area that might actually be hit by a hurricane, most insurance companies would prefer not to sell you hurricane insurance, because then they might be required to pay YOU money, and that is certainly not why they got into the insurance business in the first place. So you'll have to scrounge around for an insurance company, which will charge you an annual premium roughly equal to the replacement value of your house. At any moment, this company can drop you like used dental floss.

SHUTTERS:

Your house should have hurricane shutters on all the windows, all the doors. There are several types of shutters, with advantages and disadvantages:

Plywood shutters: The advantage is that, because you make them yourself, they're cheap.

Sheet-metal shutters: The advantage is that these work well, once you get them all up. The disadvantage is that once you get them all up, your hands will be useless bleeding stumps, and it will be December.

Roll-down shutters: The advantages are that they're very easy to use, and will definitely protect your house. The disadvantage is that you will have to sell your house to pay for them.

Hurricane-proof windows: These are the newest wrinkle in hurricane protection: They look like ordinary windows, but they can withstand hurricane winds! You can be sure of this, because the salesman says so. He lives in Nebraska.

Hurricane Proofing your property: As the hurricane approaches, check your yard for movable objects like barbecue grills, planters, patio furniture, visiting relatives, etc... you should, as a precaution, throw these items into your swimming pool (if you don't have a swimming pool, you should have one built immediately). Otherwise, the hurricane winds will turn these objects into deadly missiles.

EVACUATION ROUTE:

If you live in a low-lying area, you should have an evacuation route planned out. (To determine whether you live in a low-lying area, look at your driver's license; if it says "Florida," you live in a low-lying area.) The purpose of having an evacuation route is to avoid being trapped in your home when a major storm hits. Instead, you will be trapped in a gigantic traffic jam several miles from your home, along with two hundred thousand other evacuees. So, as a bonus, you will not be lonely.

HURRICANE SUPPLIES:

If you don't evacuate, you will need a mess of supplies. Do not buy them now! Florida tradition requires that you wait until the last possible minute, then go to the supermarket and get into vicious fights with strangers over who gets the last can of cat food. In addition to food and water, you will need the following supplies:

23 flashlights. At least $167 worth of batteries that turn out, when the power goes off, to be the wrong size for the flashlights.

Bleach. (No, I don't know what the bleach is for. NOBODY knows what the bleach is for, but it's traditional, so GET some!)

A big knife that you can strap to your leg. (This will be useless in a hurricane, but it looks cool.)

A large quantity of raw chicken, to placate the alligators. (Ask anybody who went through Andrew; after the hurricane, there WILL be irate alligators.)

$35,000 in cash or diamonds so that, after the hurricane passes, you can buy a generator from a man with no discernible teeth.

Of course these are just basic precautions. As the hurricane draws near, it is vitally important that you keep abreast of the situation by turning on your television if you have a generator that's working to keep the tv going and watching TV reporters in rain slickers stand right next to the ocean and tell you over and over how vitally important it is for everybody to stay away from the ocean.

Good luck and remember: It's great living in Paradise.

So close to fact that it sometimes reads like the excuses the insurance companies give you. I used to live in West Palm Beach, and my mother does (used to?). She has gone to northern Florida to ride out the storm. Unfortunately this one went through the most reliably anti-Bush area, and many of those people may have other things to do come the first week of Nov. rather than go vote. It is discouraging to see that Bush may be re-elected. His campaign has been filled with lies, broken promises and outright fantasies about the state of affaris. The thought of living under his regime for 4 more years is depressing. I think I'll go have a drink.

pete wrote:
...
>It is discouraging to see that Bush may be re-elected.
> His campaign has been filled with lies, broken promises and
> outright fantasies about the state of affaris.

I do agree with you, but we have a question here :
Would Kerry be better than Georges "dumb" Bush ? I read here and there that it may not be worse, but not better either.

Yann.

Nobody said he could stop hurricanes...

Yann, Kerry has to be better. Bush has politicised absolutely everything. He has re-written the environmental laws, allowing them to sever the tops of mountains and dump them in the river vallies to get at the coal. The American West is mostly owned by the Federal gov't, for instance, so it is run directly from Washington. Stream pollution in extracting industries (mining, lumbering, drilling) used to be carefully monitored. Now, all they need to do is get a permit, because citizen groups, fishermen and individuals no longer have legal standing to bring a complaint. This means that only a state can sue, and it has to be done in a Federal court. For instance, if you use the water in a stream and they decide to drill for oil upstream from you and your stream becomes very polluted, you can no longer sue. You have to somehow get your state to sue. Just one for instance.

His policies, for the first time ever, are not based on science. You are familiar with RU-486? Over here it takes a prescription to get it, and a waiting period. The scientific facts did not show any adveres effects, but the Bush admin, which is hostage to the fundamentalist Christian right, found that it had not been tested on children, so the permit to have it as an over the counter drug was denied.

We (US citizens) also pay the higest drug costs in the world. Senior citizens that try to import their drugs on the internet from Canada or Europe have had them siezed at the border ("might not be safe"), and the gov't entity that buys the drugs is forbidden by law from bargaining with the drug companies for lower prices. This was written into law by the Bushies.

Some people in this admin. have actually proposed selling some of the gov't land. The rich and the multinationals would be the ones to buy, the land would be sold in large chunks unaffordable to the average person. The budget for the parks has been cut, staff positions are going unfilled, and the administrators of the parks are expressly forbidden to complain about it.

We have a law, also from this admin., that says that all the records of your reading materials from a library can be searched without your knowledge. The librarian is also forbidden to tell you, and the law expressly says that he/she cannot appeal to any court or congressman. Our rights are slowly being eroded. There are now cases where people are held for months, and the gov't doesn't have to release even the name, where they are held or why they are held. Did you know that the Attorney General (Justice Minister) is an ordained Pentacostal minister who claims that God talks to him in tongues (glossolalia)? I am a church goer, but that scares the hell out of me. These people really think they are doing the Lord's work. Combining religion and politics gives us states like Iran, Israel and Midievel Europe. Not any example I want to follow.

Of course Kerry is from the ruling class. Just like your leaders came of age under De Gaulle, and some claim to be his political descendants, so too is it here. Without a revolution, there is always a continuity in governments. Even when youall went from the 3rd Republic to the 4th to the 5th, the actors were the same. So too is it here. Kerry is an intelligent man who would not have led us into Iraq. He would not be winking as the Israelis trample the Palistinians. He would not be sending hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax money to the Christian right. Kerry knows that he cannot be to far out in front of the pack, his positions are carefully (too carefully I think) thought out to keep from offending anybody. His politics are squarely in the center, which is a far cry from W's extreme right stance.

Look who we have left for friends in the world. Client states like Egypt and Pakistan (the gov'ts, not the population, they hate us), neither a model of progressiveness. A theocracy (Israel), and China, not a paragon of virtue in anybody's book. The democracies from Spain to Greece, France, Germany and the Low Countries are polite (ok, some are not so polite) but distant. Italy is with us, Berlusconi is a real gem, isn't he? Tony Blair is mistaken if he thinks this will help his standing, he is in it because we both speak the same language. The Eastern European countries would climb in bed with the devil if it meant that the Russians will leave tham alone, so we know why they are with us. So 4 more years of Bush will likely mean that US tourists will be able to travel to Canada (they don't like us either, but they have no choice), and the gated resorts in the Carribean. We have a saying on the farm that applies here: If one person calls you an ass, ignore him. If ten people call you an ass, you better find out the price of hay.

Did you know that one of Bushes spiritual advisors is anti-Catholic, anti-Moslem and forbids inter-racial dating at his university? In 2004, that is unacceptable in my view.

There is so much more I could say, but this is long enough. Bush has bankrupted this country, shifting the resources to a military footing, ignoring the real reasons for Al Qaeda. We will not defeat terrorists using only the military, although that is part of the solution (and there is no connection between Al Qaeda and the butcher Hussein). We must also stop the Haliburtons, WalMarts and McDonalds from using our governments as their enforcement arm. Let them be subject to the laws of the countries they operate in. As it is now, if you don't let them run as they wish, the US gov't will see to it that you do.

From a Christian perspective, Geo. Bush has robbed the poor to enrich his friends. That is not the Christianity I practice. He has run a deficit that will take my daughter years to pay off. That is not fiscally responsible. He has entangled us in a war we cannot win, mostly to avenge his father's name and to fill the coffers of the military-industrial complex. All the while, we are spending 180 billion (milliard) dollars in Iraq while the Taliban are resurgent in Afganistan. I think he is the worst man we could possibily elect.

What a diatrib, Pete!
I read lots of things about this man, it is terrific to think that we can only wait and see what your compatriots will vote, us in the dominated world; I read an editorial by a Mexican journalist who said that all citizens of the world should vote for the election of the president of USA, since they are involved so much in the results for themselves...

Elisa, this is one of the important elections for the whole world, that is certain.

You also bring up an important topic. I too have read about that journalist. He also advocates a more open border. We have 12 million or more illegal immigrants from Mexico who need their status clarified. I know some of them, and they are always surprised when a light haired gringo speaks with a decent Spanish accent. Many of them have been involuntarily separated from their families for years. Crossing the border is expensive and dangerous, so they remain here while their parents die, their brothers emigrate and their children are born. Under the Bush administration, new measures have been taken to deprive these people of any help of any kind, and the individual states have been encouraged to keep them from getting drivers liscences, having their children enrolled in school, getting financial aid for college. This relegates them to second class status, a permanent underclass. This is very short sighted. These people are here, they are not going away. If we made the process of crossing the border a little bit easier for Mex. nationals, they would go back and forth. Many of them do not want to permanently leave Mexico. most of them would spend their younger years here, then go home to jump start their economy. Mais assez.

I know this will not change a single person's mind in Europe. I have read the anti-United States statements on here and am under no illusion that one person over there will be swayed by my words. I could fill cyberspace with my rants about W, and I also don't think a single American who wanders in here would be swayed either. This country is so evenly divided, and so bitterly divided, that it will take more time for the right wing to finally be shown for what they are. From my perspective they are much closer to Le Pen than they are to Chirac, although they clothe themselves in the flag of respectable conservatism.

One more point of just how political things are. If you are in the National Guard (the domestic equivalent of the army, [Gendarmes?]) from New York, chances are 1 in 4 that you have gone to Iraq. If you are in the national Guard from Texas (W's home state), your chances of going to Iraq are 1 in 31. How would it play in Paris if you had a war and it was mostly fought by troops from the opposition's region? I will stop now. We need understanding, prayers and patience from our European friends. Your governments shuld make their disgust clear about the man Bush, and your peoples should make it clear that individual United States citizens are not monsters. Every single unfriendly act against our tourists is magnified on Fox News, the mouthpiece for the administration. We are your friends, we were your friends, and will be friends again. This too shall pass.

Hi .
Cela m ' en BUSH a corner !
Gérard16