Violent Reactions

Recently I watched a show on the History Channel called Mega Disasters. It wasn't the first time I saw the show, but this one caught my eye. Previous episodes have been about possible disasters that could occur in America that would make New Orleans and Katrina seem tiny. Shows like what will happen to Seattle when Mt. Rainier erupts, or if a asteroid landed off the coast of California.

This weeks show was about a seldom heard of fault line in the midwest. The New Madrid fault line. The New Madrid line runs under 5 states; Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois. (Hence the reason I'm interested.)

For most of my life I wasn't even aware there was a fault line in Illinois. That was until about a few years ago there was an earthquake here.

I was sitting in my room playing an online poker tournament. I was at a final table, and it was going on 4AM. All of a sudden out of nowhere everything in my room started shaking for a few seconds. It wasn't violent, but it was noticeable. My initial reaction was "Holy shit. An earthquake! COOL!!!" In the morning I watched the news, and they did report about the earthquake, so then I felt that I should research it.

That's when I first came upon discovering the New Madrid fault line. I had no idea of it's capability until I saw Mega Disasters though.

Apparently in 1811 over a 3 month span there were 4 very violent earthquakes(4 of the most violent in the history of North America) with the epicenter being in New Madrid, Missouri. All 4 earthquakes are estimated to be between a 7-8.5 on the Richter Scale.

Based on written accounts from people living in the area at the time, the earthquakes seemingly never stopped for a month straight. People wrote of the ground shaking for days at a time, and not being able to stand. I mean imagine living in the middle of Missouri in 1811, and the Earth is shaking, splitting open, spitting sand geysers up to 100 feet into the air. People felt as if Judgement Day was upon them.

The earthquakes were so large in magnitude that they rang church bells in New York and Boston and could be felt everywhere east of the Rocky Mountains. At one point it forced the Mississippi river to change direction AND FLOW BACKWARDS. This obviously led to a lot of flooding.

The show then goes on to explain problems that would occur if an earthquake occurred now compared to when it happened then. An earthquake now would rupture the natural gas pipelines underneath the ground and release the gas into the air.

Now what do you think happens when downed power lines and natural gas get together?

Mix that in with all the sulfur floating through the air and you got yourself one helluva fireworks show.

If similiar earthquakes happened today the cities of St. Louis and Memphis would be destroyed. Bridges all across the midwest would collapse, making it very difficult to get aid to victims.

So as I'm watching this I'm getting a little worried. In Chicago the quakes would be between 4-5 on the Richter scale, not horrible, but enough to do some real damage.

Then they get to the point where they say that the earthquakes seem to happen every 300-500 years. It's almost been 200 years since the last one. Then the narrator goes on to say that "we don't have much time left to prepare."

100 years isn't enough time to prepare? Think about where this country was in 1905, and look at it today. 100 years seemed to be enough time to get a whole helluva lot of things done.

So immediately my mind goes from "Oh this could be bad!" to "What the hell do I care?"

I watched the rest of the show for the computer simulated animation of what would happen if the quake hit today. It was pretty cool. I feel sorry for my great great grandkids though. Well not really.

If you want to see the episode, it will be shown again on the History Channel this Sunday at 10PM central time.

Last night at work I had an interesting encounter on the phone. Dianna, Greg, my sister Megan, and I were ordering dinner from Pauls. I love Pauls. They have the greatest beef sandwiches in the area, and I love to eat them.

So I go upstairs to call in the order. I get to Dianna's turkey sub when the guy on the phone asks, "Mayo, mustard, or Italian?"

I don't know. Dianna didn't tell me. So I ask the guy if he can hold on while I go ask. I even tell him to put me on hold and take the next order so I don't hold him up. He agrees and puts me on hold. So I tell Greg to go find out what Dianna wants.

A few seconds later the guy gets back on the phone and asks if I'm ready. I explain I'm still not and it's ok if he puts me on hold for a few minutes.

Well this time he THINKS he puts me on hold, but instead just puts the phone down. I then hear,

"Whatever you say asshole. Take all the fucking time you want, I don't have anything better to do. I just have a ton of people who want to place orders, but it's your fucking world. I'm just living in it."

He then gets back on the phone.

"Ready yet?"

"No sorry, the asshole still hasn't gotten an answer."

"Excuse me?"

"I heard every single word you just said man. What the fuck is your problem? I told you to put me on hold. If you're so fucking busy how come you have all the time to talk to yourself while waiting for me?"

"I put the phone down, I wasn't talking to you."

"What am I an idiot? Since you weren't saying it directly to me that makes it ok?"

"I was quoting a movie."

"You were quoting a movie!? Well I got a fucking movie quote for you. Go fuck yourself we'll order from someplace else."

I was so pissed that I couldn't get my sandwich. Since he knew who I was, and where I was ordering from I let my coworkers know that they probably don't want to order from Pauls for a week or two.

Greg of course asks, "You wanna ride over there and kick his ass?"

I did. Unfortunately I had too much work to do. But one day..........

Since he was just released from the hospital this morning, and will be all right, I now feel comfortable making fun of Ben Roethlisberger and his motorcycle accident. The thing I have seen written about it that made me laugh the most though was something Knighty posted on Full Tilt Forum.

It was an analysis of the Roethlisberger accident given ala Mr. John Madden. While reading it, make sure you read it in Madden's voice for full effect.

Now, you see, what happened here is that Ben Roethlisberger was on a motorcycle, which is a motorized vehicle with two wheels that goes really fast but it doesn't really offer much protection in a crash. Now, he wasn't wearing a helmet, which as a football coach I just can't understand because every football player should want to wear a football helmet all the time because that's what makes a football player a football player, especially when he's got a big hunk of turf hanging from the facemask, that's when you know a guy's a football player. Ben didn't read his block correctly and rode right into the New Yorker, which is named after a city with a great hot dog stand, which aren't as good as Philly cheese steaks but they're pretty darn good when you're in New York though I like the Chicago dogs a little bit better but that's because they put the relish all over the hot dog. Anyway, Ben didn't see the car and BOOM! he smacked right into that. This is just a rookie mistake on Ben's part. He should study film of Brett Favre, the greatest player in the history of the game even though he can't figure out which team is his anymore but he's just got so much heart that you can't help but love him and want to cradle him in your arms after a pleasurable evening alone with him where you just sit there and question your sexuality. Brett Favre's the type of player that would've realized he was about to get hit and just thrown the motorcycle into the arms of a waiting criminal, which are abundant in Pittsburgh, unlike Detroit which really cleaned itself up for the Super Bowl, which was won by the Pittsburgh Steelers in Jerome Bettis' hometown which made for a touching story and kind of ties the whole thing together.

That's it for today! I'm tired of typing and fighting Blogger to let me post pictures!!!! What the hell is wrong with this place!?

Keepin It Real Since 1980,

Tom