Blizzard jihad

Yesterday, Utah was brought to it's knees by a merciless testicle squeeze from the local weathermen and the media outlets for which they work. That was an inadvertent rhyme.

While I was hunkered down in a cold, dark basement next to a 50 gallon drum filled with wood, wadded up toilet paper, kerosene, and consequentially fire, a 72 hour kit strapped to my back, a rifle clutched in my cold, nervous hands, quick shallow breaths leaving visible evidence of my terror in the air, I thought, "maybe I'm overreacting."

As was the rest of Utah.

As I was browsing Facebook 'liking' all kinds of shit after waking up at about 11, I began to notice a lot of buzz about some blizzard that was either apparently ushering in the zombie apocalypse, or the second coming, depending upon what you believe/hope for. So I started doing some homework, and tuned into the radio. (The homework was unrelated to the radio, if that sentence confused you like it did me.)

Every few minutes, radio people were frantically updating an eager Utah about the certain death that was blowing in via Wendover. From what I could gather, by 2pm, Wendover had already been completely destroyed and had descended into anarchy. The citizenry had divided into vicious packs of survival gangs, burning all remaining tooth brushes, looting homes and businesses, and slaying local animals in order to make new clothing.

Schools everywhere were shutting down by 2pm, because a blizzard jihad was to be descending upon us within the next...4 to 5 hours. I could vividly imagine parents on a mad dash to get to school, some mom in her pink Bebe sweats in an Escalade, seat warmers cranked full blast, driving over the curb and onto the grass, running over 5 or 4 kids before skidding to a halt in front of the main entrance, rolling down the windows and screaming for her child. I imagined this sort of thing was going on at public schools all over Utah. Under slightly overcast skies. The wind seemed threatening though.

My school was the last higher learning edifice to bow to the hubris of the blizzard media. I was already at school when I found out that I was being deprived of my 3pm class. In lieu of being educated, I would have plenty of time to buy a lots of gallons of water, fruit snacks, dehydrated fruit, and jerky to get me through the impending doom. When apocalypses happen, one should be less than fickle about omnivorous responsibility. Nutrients are what's important.

I headed to Smith's to get supplies (milk, cereal, and ice cream, in reality) and there was literally no place to park. I walked into a mad house of people buying big boxes of bottled water, and tons of toilet paper. I guess I should have taken toilet paper into account; if the water system goes out, there goes my bidet. Certainly, Smith's was having record sales of flash lights and 50lb sacks of rice.

I got home, got my gun, and waited for the Jesus to come.

By about 8:30, there were a few inches of snow on the ground, and it had pretty much stopped falling out of the sky. In my frantic search throughout Smith's for 100 hour candles, I didn't consider the fact that maybe I was going to have a terrible hankering for a frozen pizza about 8:30. So, back to Smith's I went. Salt Lake City was a literal ghost town.

I went with a Di Giorno cheese stuffed crust 5 cheese pizza. And a veritable medieval broadsword of an ice scraper, as mine had broken near the end of last years snow season.

As soon as I took the first bite of the pizza, and was overwhelmed by the pungent taste of cheddar, I knew I'd made a huge mistake. I bit into the "cheese" filled crust, and my tongue was violated with none other than what seemed to be squeeze cheese out of a can. I have never wanted 5 dollars and a treacherous drive through snowy roads back so badly.

I am simply amazed by the media's power to utterly shut down the state, all because of some greenish blob on a radar screen. I will never trust reports or anarchy coming out of Wendover again.

There are some weathermen feeling very smug, or very sheepish today.