Shotgun Thoughts ('Cause They're All Spread Out, Baby)

Thoughts from my twisted mind on all that's going on in the world the last few days...

• Tornadoes - It's still hard to put into perspective what April 27th's tornadoes really did. I haven't really seen the damage, other than in pictures. I think it's safe to say that at least in Alabama, it will go down as a worse day than 4/3/74. As I type the number of missing in Tuscaloosa is STILL over 500. That can't be good, folks. I've read where people have said that the death toll likely has to get higher before the cleanup is all said and done. And that's just in one town. I have friends from Cordova... it's gone. Hackelburg? Gone. Phil Campbell. Tanner. Harvest. Dekalb County. That doesn't even address what happened even closer to where I live, where Trenton, Ringgold, and Apison were so devastated. I wish I could put some great speech to words and try to eloquently describe how I feel, but I just can't. Survivor's guilt? I think I have some of that.
•  Bin Laden - I don't know if he deserves my attention. I probably shouldn't even waste my time typing words that mention him. I guess something has to be said though. Look, I struggle with my Christianity, I admit that. I certainly believe in God, but also have a very hard time serving Him and glorifying Him as I should be doing. Does it make Him sad for people like me (and many of us) to celebrate the death of a man? I don't know, pals. I hope He understands us on this one, though. While I don't want any man to have to suffer the curse of an eternity in hell, it's hard to argue that Bin Laden doesn't deserve it. I am thankful that after ten years of eluding us, that he finally got a small measure of the justice he so much deserved. I'll also gladly admit that a part of me wishes he could have been brought back alive and drug through the streets of Manhattan while people point, laughed, kicked, spit on, and generally did whatever else they felt like doing to the pathetic SOB. But again, like I said... I'm not the best person in the world. Lord, please forgive me.
• Myrtle Beach, SC - Finally, I wanted to mention being here in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, as I type this. I was conflicted over this. My parents called me about two weeks ago and, sort of "out of the blue", asked if I wanted to go with them on this trip. I agreed. Now look, I love my family to death. I really do. But, we have a lot of differences. At 28, it's hard to go on a family vacation with your parents and 23 year old brother. Four grown adults, even in a three bedroom condo, just isn't a good recipe for harmony. A few months ago I was engaged and had a completely different dynamic working with my family, and my fiancee would have been with me on a trip like this. That would have made things a little easier. Seeing a bunch of happy couples walking around, and you still trying to move on from the last relationship, is not an easy thing to do. Plus I've got this terrible guilt of being here, while others are back in Alabama or Tennessee or Georgia, helping with the tornado cleanup. It would have been foolish to turn down this trip and lose money on canceled reservations... but it still feels so wrong. I will have to do SOMETHING when I get back to Chattanooga. I am a very fortunate person, and do want to help those that can't say the same.

I'll leave with this picture. As Jimmy Buffett might say... "the weather is here, I wish you were beautiful"...

The Longest Day

I have heard a lot about April 3, 1974, during my lifetime. My dad lived through that day, and being a weather geek himself, always used to tell me about how it wiped Guin, Alabama, and Xenia, Ohio, "off the map". It was a day that spawned several F5 tornadoes across the country. They called it a "generational" tornado event. Well, apparently, "generational" is equal to about forty years.

What we all witnessed on Wednesday is not normal. Thankfully, it is NOT something that we have to get used to (I don't think). Atmospheric conditions made Wednesday the absolutely perfect day for what we saw. Forecasters knew it was going to happen days in advance. I first heard about the forecast on Saturday. Even though the storms eventually took hundreds of lives, if not for the advance warnings we had, I'm sure it could have been higher.

Here in Hamilton County, we were pretty fortunate - for the most part. The folks in Apison wouldn't agree. The extreme southeastern portion of the county was hit by an EF-4. At work today, my coworkers went out to photograph the devastation. What the pictures show, they said, is nowhere near an accurate description of the true story. If you've seen the images of Tuscaloosa... then you know what Apison looks like, albeit on a much smaller schedule. There were houses in the pictures that are just completely... gone. A pickup truck was sitting beside a railroad track, its wheels nowhere in sight and no good explanation for where it came from. Just unbelievable destruction.

My heart goes out to all the people affected by this, and there are many. I love Tuscaloosa - anybody reading this probably knows that. While I never made it to the University, I still feel a connection to that city. To know that it was hit by what may soon be declared as THE most devastating tornado to EVER hit the US... that's just hard to fathom. It's a cruel reality of how bad the day was. It's not something that those of us who lived through it will soon forget. I just read a book a few months ago, entitled F5, that was about April 3 and the damage it brought on Limestone County, AL (Athens). I wouldn't be surprised if I'll soon be reading the sequel, unfortunately set in Tuscaloosa County.

I'll leave you with this image. This is satellite photography that you can actually see tornado tracks on. You can see them from space! Absolutely the most efficient tools of destruction the earth has ever seen.

Tornado tracks across central Alabama - http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/severe-storms-20110429.html

New York City Dreamin'... Doesn't Have the Same Ring

I haven't written a blog post in months. This will probably seem like a crazy post to come back to. But oh well, my life has been a little topsy-turvy lately anyway. This post is about a dream that I had last night. I'm used to having crazy dreams, but this one struck me as different for some reason.

The setting is New York City, and it's apparently September 11, 2001. Note that date... I'm sure you already have. I'm on the streets of Lower Manhattan, suspiciously close to the World Trade Center towers. I think it starts with me, early in the morning, hanging around outside a coffee shop. I see people going to work, with their Starbucks in hand. Then I wander into a subway, and there is the first peculiarity - I see former WCW/WWE wrestler Dean Malenko, the "Man of 1,000 Holds". Yeah... I haven't thought about Dean Malenko in yeeeeears. So that would be weird enough. I think I may have asked Dean something about when he'll resume his wrestling career. Either way, I know that we greeted each other like old friends.

Next, I am in some kind of store, looking at, I believe, touristy-type merchandise. The store owner seeme to be this hippie woman, with red hair in braids, but she was very friendly. I walk back outside, and that's when I look up to see one of the two planes (I'm not sure which one) striking one of the World Trade Center towers. It seems like it may have been the second plane, but oddly, I had not even reacted to the first one if I knew it had hit. Either way, I do remember feeling very shaken by this (duh).

I'm not sure what happened in between, but next I am listening to a man giving a speech outside the store I mentioned above. It was apparently about terrorism and what our response should be to this tragedy. That's when I look up, and see that the building is starting to collapse. Naturally, I'm terrified. I duck into the store again, trying to outrun the now wave of smoke and debris making it's way from the tower down the street in front of me. It grows dark as night in the store and people are screaming. All of a sudden, instead of being in the store, I'm in some sort of SUV with my now ex-fiance, Amanda. We are trying to outrun the still-charging cloud, but there's only one problem... the SUV will apparently only go in reverse. I'm looking out the back window as we continue down a hill, and I see a park with a lake. For some reason... we apparently cannot turn OR stop the vehicle either. Sure enough, we continue on, and crash into the middle of said lake.

I think this is where the dream ends, sort of anti-climatically. If there was more, it was the kind of situation where I had forgotten it by the time I woke up. That always frustrates me actually. I have a strange dream in the middle of the night, wake up, fall back asleep, and then have ANOTHER dream that causes me to forget much of the first one. The dream I described here was striking enough that I woke up in the middle of the night and almost wrote down these thoughts. But, it was also important enough that I am able to remember details twelve hours later (though probably not all details). It involved such an important event in our lives, that I think it really struck a nerve.

Very strange, and not a type of dream I would like to have again, any time soon.