Two Weird Deadly Disasters Prove Nature Is Strange.

A phenomenon called liquefaction turned solid land to liquid, causig
this mess in Indonesia recently. 

Florida is reeling today from the Hurricane Michael disaster, and my sister blog Matt's Weather Rapport has videos of the extreme and scary things 100 to 150 mph winds can do.

To further prove that disasters can be hugely, weirdly, strangely scary, I have two weird videos of how strangely aspects of two recent disasters played out. They are fascinating to watch because it shows how strange nature can be when it goes off the rails.

A couple weeks ago, a terrible earthquake and tsunami struck parts of Indonesia, killing perhaps 1,400 or more people.

The following video, edited to take out the fact that the terrified person taking the video kept turning the camera, shows a strange, large landslide caused the the earthquake.

It's not a steep slope at all, like you see in most landslides. It's a gentle grade, but the entire landscape is moving. My understanding is this is an extreme example of liquefaction.  It usually occurs durig earthquakes in wet soil, or soil that is sandy, or was used as fill to claim a wetland. According to USGS:

"Earthquake waves cause water pressures to increase in the sediment and the sand grains to lose contact wit each other, leading the sediment to lose strength and act like a liquid."

Sounds very scary, and the video below verifies that horror:



The next video shows the aftermath at one house of Hawaii's volcanic eruption this year. Kilauea  has been erupting much of this year. Lava has destroyed hundreds of homes.

Even homes that were not overrun by lava were extensively damaged or destroyed. Huge quantites of sulfur dioxide belched from fissures. This stuff is highly corrosive. It turned the lush Hawaii vegetation in spots into something that looked more barren than Vermont in the depths of post-foliage November.

Worse, it corroded anything that was made of metal. Like leaving the stuff out in the rain for decades. Except this sulfur dioxide destruction took weeks, not years.

At one house, which was under construction when the volcano erupted, everything that was metal, from electrical fixtures to appliances, corroded away. A new metal bucket left outside was reduced to crunchy bits of rust.

The following video of that under-construction property, really is jaw dropping:

Annual Google Search Video Reflects An Exhausting 2017

This wonderful woman was among the many iconic people
featured in Google's annual searches of the year video.

At the end of each year Google releases a sort of year-in-review video of top news events and top search subjects during the prior 12 months.

This year's Google search video which is at the bottom of this post, is surprisingly emotional, at least to me.

I guess 2017 was even more trying than I thought, what with the constant political upheaval; endless string of disasters; scandals, sexual and otherwise; and more encouragingly, a sharp uptick in citizen activism.

It seems we had only the Great Eclipse of 2017 to distract us from all the messes we endured.

The year was surely reflected in some of our most frequent Google searches:

"How far do North Korean missiles go?" 
"How do wildfires start?"
"How to help flood victims"
"How to be a strong woman."
"How to make a protest sign."
"How to run for office."
"How to be fearless."

I think we all want to know the answer to that last Google search on the list you just read.

I like how toward the end of the video, Google tries to encourage to keep going, keep doing what's right, as other people in the video's closing half minute or so do.

I wish everyone a calm and happy 2018, and I hope we all find the best answer to the last and most poignant Google search question in the video you are about to see: "How to move forward."

Your Day Will Be Horrible If You Didn't Buy All That Stuff In Late Night Infomercials

This woman has a disaster with a toilet plunger
as she incompetently gets through her day
in infomercials. 

I don't stay up late to watch infomercials.

But I love the actors in them and how terribly they struggle until they get the perfect product in the ad. But wait! There's more!!

I love these people because they seem so incompetent at life.

They can't handle the most simple tasks without creating a disaster and a mess. These people are fun to watch, but aren't you glad you don't have to live with them?

Here's a great compilation to show how difficult the entire daily routine is for the people in these ads. I'm SO glad life really isn't this hard.

Here's the video. It's hilarious!!

The End of the World? Or Just Oklahoma?

It didn't take long for Pat Robertson to say that the Oklahoma earthquakes over the weekend were a sign of the end times.

To Robertson and his ilk, every disaster, or even little mishap is a sign of the end times.  Every time there is bad weather somewhere, it means the world is ending.   So we'd better get in shape, Robertson says, or God or Jesus or somebody will punish us. Kind of like Santa Claus not bringing us presents if we don't make our beds and stop pulling our sisters' hair.

Pat Robertson explains how a random Oklahoma
earthquake means the world is ending.

I guess if we're not good, we will kill somebody in some distant disaster. And remember, you have to be good in the way Robertson, et al think you ought to be good.  Better research Robertson's morality and follow suit, or else!

Could anything be more pathetic? Keep warning about the "end times" in a futile attempt to keep us in line. Robertson continually does this  end times schtick so tirelessly, and tiresomely. Does he actually think he has that power of persuasion? Or that God talks to him about how He likes to unleash random disasters on unsuspecting humans because it's fun or something?

Yes, there are gullible people that follow Robertson and those end time types, but really.

By Robertson's logic, if somebody in Vermont likes the fact that gay marriage is legal here, the end result will be, I don't know, a typhoon in North Dakota or something. If somebody is "bad" in, say, New York, why do the nice people in Tulsa have to bear the cost of some jerk sinning in Schenectedy?

And don't even get me started on Harold Camping and his repeated warnings of the impending end of the world.

Maybe it's just Oklahoma that's ending. Yesterday, the day after the worst of Oklahoma's earthquakes, some nasty tornadoes spun through the state, and flooding hit other sections of the state.

 And so far this year, Oklahoma had its sharpest cold snap on record, one of its worst blizzards, one of its worst droughts, the hottest summer ever and a nasty spring tornado season that was hard to bear even by Sooner State standards. God hates Oklahoma. Well, actually no. The state has just had really, really bad luck in the weather department. At least the Weather Channel has been winning big time with storm footage from Oklahoma, so there's that.

Where I live in Vermont,. things are tranquil. It's been sunny lately,  mild for early November, and there have been no earthquakes or tornadoes.  So are we Vermonters better than the folks in Oklahoma? Or will a plague of locusts descend on Oklahoma City tomorrow because I sit here in St. Albans, Vermont thinking about what a moron Robertson is?

Drowning and Burning

The East Coast continues to drown this morning.

 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania had almost four months worth of rain in a day. More than 10,000 people are being kicked out of Binghamton, N.Y. ahead of what is predicted to be the worst flood in the city's history, beating a record set just five years ago.

Some of the worst flooding on record is happening in several other spots.

Luckily for Vermont, the worst of the latest round of rain missed the flood ravaged state. We just had minor flooding last night.

And we've seen Texas burn. Here's a video from the Texas Parks and Wildlife department showing how fast wildfires move. It's a scary video:

Storms, Rain, Wet Still in Vermont

As I noted yesterday, Vermont continues to be harassed by bad weather.

So far, this latest round hasn't been another uber-disaster, but just annoyingly threatening and slightly damaging.

A nasty looking thunderstorm bears down on
St. Albans, Vermont on Sunday.

Yesterday, here in St. Albans, we weren't due to get any weather until late afternoon, but at 11 a.m. the sky to the west turned as black as can be. The dark clouds swirled and lowered and rolled, and I was sure we would get a lot of damage.

Luckily, the storm had a bigger bark than bite. There was a lot of lightning, a big downpour, a bit of hail and some impressive but not terribly damaging wind gusts, and it was over in 15 minutes.

From there on, thunderstorms seemed to fire up all around me but never hit with full force. Elsewhere in Vermont the storms knocked down trees, cut power (again!) and caused some flash flooding. The flooding wasn't nearly as bad as last week.

Today, there's a drenching rain here in St. Albans, but it's not torrential. My brook is behaving itself so far. Elsewhere in Vermont, there's areas of downpours.  Some of Burlington's streets flooded. So far, no major new flooding though, so we all have to keep watching unfortunately.

A towering thunderstorm cloud erupts southeast
of St. Albans Sunday evening at sunset.
 The moon is still out, though. 

At least forecasters now tell us Hurricane Katia is going to miss. The remnants of Lee, with it's inches and inches and inches of rain, is another question. Maybe it will hit, maybe it won't. Gawd, I'm still so ready for some boring weather.

Too Many Weather Worries

On this strangly tropical, humid September morning, there's more weather worries here in Vermont.

The forecast calls for severe thunderstorms with scary winds and hail late today, followed by another drenching rainstorm that could cause more flooding tonight, tomorrow and Tuesday.

Flooding near Fairfax, Vermont in April.

This comes a week after Tropical Storm Irene flooded Vermont in the worst disaster since 1927. We've been on the national news, and the whole state is mobilized for aid and cleanup.

It's been a weird, scary year of weather in Vermont.  I've been lucky. I have not suffered much at all from this weather,

I wonder when the other shoe will drop on me. Will the roof blow off in a bad storm this evening? Will the brook finally take out my driveway tomorrow?

I don't mean to complain. People in Vermont have been walloped repeatedly all year. So many people have lost homes, businesses, farms and livlihoods in the bad weather that keeps happening over and over again.

It feels like my turn will have to come soon.

Wreckage after flash flooding in Barre,
Vermont in May.

Luckily, until now, I've been a sad bystander to these weather problems. Sometimes the weather has been just very odd but relatively harmless, like the snow thunderstorm in February and the huge, deep blizzards of February and March.  The only pain I got out of that was a sore back from shoveling snow into eight foot deep piles.

Then the snow melted and it rained like hell. In late April, on the day tornadoes were laying waste to Tuscaloosa, Alabama and a bunch of other southern cities, flash floods swept Vermont during the heaviest April rains on record.

My little brook heaved out of its banks, covering my lawn with rocks, branches, mud and gravel. The embankment holding up my driveway collapsed.

Lots of people had it worse, with lots more property damage.

It kept raining through the month of May, making Lake Champlain's water rise to the highest level on record. Thousands of shoreline properties flooded, eroded, were battered by waves and covered in debris.

Storm clouds loom over Addison
County Vermont in July.

In the third week in May, a flash flood covered my lawn with debris again just after I cleaned from the previous storm. Other areas saw worse flooding, which lead to road washouts and damaged houses.

A week later a much bigger flash flood hit, laying waste to Barre, Vermont and surrounding areas. Central and northern Vermont communities were devastated, and they're still trying to fix the roads from that one.

During the summer, while parts of Vermont were repeatedly raked by severe thunderstorms with gale winds and giant hail, other sections of the state withered in dry weather. Farm fields that were swamps on June 1 turned into dusty, brittle messes by mid August.

Then Irene hit with its worse floods since 1927. And now we're under threat from more dangerous weather today and tomorrow.


They say that global warming is increasingly causing more extreme weather. This constant battle with the elements, I'm told, is the new normal.

I shouldn't complain about my worries, since I'm not in the same position as so many thousands of Americans who've had their lives upended this year by tornadoes, floods, wind, fire, drought and hurricanes.

But I'm getting tired of watching the television weather people have to walk us through the latest danger. Here are the roads that are closed. Here's when we think the big hail will come. The strong winds will peak this afternoon. The biggest flood danger is at rush hour tomorrow. Stay off the lake because there will be far too much lightning.

Tropical Store Irene flooding in Waitsfield,
Vermont last Sunday.

Lately, listening to the forecast every morning is getting more and more like receiving bad news from your doctor.

Which is sad. Because I want to go back to the days when the only anxiety stemming from listening to the morning weather forecast was wondering if I need to bring a sweater,

Vermont Irene Disaster Hurts Us All

I haven't posted on this blog for a couple of days because like everybody else in Vermont, I've been dealing with what is perhaps the worst disaster the Green Mountain State has ever seen.

Four people have died, buildings and houses have washed away, hundreds of roads are closed, a few of our iconic covered bridges that had been there for over 150 years were swept away, and towns are isolated.

I'm suffering from a bit of survivor's guilt. I was extremely lucky. Property damage at my house in St. Albans, Vermont consists of a few fallen branches.

The Winooski River roars past Winooski,
Vermont Monday. 

I work as a reporter at the Burlington Free Press, so I've been talking to lots of people who lived the worst of the flood.  Vermonters, me included, are proud and parochial about our state. It's corny as hell to say, but we love our beautiful villages, farms, small shops and rivers.

Some of that is in ruins. There's a video floating around YouTube of a covered bridge in Rockingham,  Vermont collapsing in the flood. Everyone who has seen it said it brought them to tears.

The power of the water, and where it went astounds everybody. I'll never get over it. There was white water on Main Street in Brandon, Vermont that pushed a pizza restaurant 25 feet downriver. In Wardsboro, four houses disappeared. They found a roof in the middle on Route 100 in Wilmington. Nobody knows where it came from.

Many of the towns hit hardest by the flooding were some of Vermont's prettiest. Grafton. Wilmington. Weston.

Some of my favorite places in Vermont are wrecked. The Weston Playhouse. The Alchemist, a brew pub in Waterbury that had the best beer in the state. (They hope to rebuild) My favorite swimming hole in the Mad River was surely hit. I wonder what that looks like.

Below is a video I shot of the torrent rushing past Winooski, Vermont yesterday.


But my mild anxiety pales in comparison to everybody else. I know a lot of people who suddenly have no house. Or no job. No prospects. What are they going to do? Nobody knows, and that's what really gnaws.

That's the refrain I keep hearing. Nobody knows. When will the road out of town reopen? Nobody knows. When will the electricity come back on? Nobody knows. The weather has been weird. Will we get a storm like this again in the coming years? Nobody knows. And that's the scariest unknown.

As always, Vermonters are turning out in droves to help out their flooded neighbors. There's no shortage of good ideas to help. On radio call in shows yesterday people suggested we raid our undamaged gardens and take the harvest to emergency shelters.  A couple of women in Waitsfield set up a table yesterday to solicit volunteers to help business owners start cleaning up. In less than an hour, the pair had 30 people helping out.

We help each other here in Vermont.  At this point, that's about all we've got. And that just might be enough.

Disaster Aftermath in Vermont

I spend the day Wednesday in a mobile home park in Berlin, Vermont that had been all but wiped out in a flash flood a week earlier.

Flash flood devastation in the River Run Mobile
Home Park in Berlin, Vt. this week.

I did an article on the flood aftermath there for the Burlington Free Press, highlighting how the disaster inflicted unremitting uncertainty on its victims. That maybe was the worst part of the flood for them.

We all like predictability. We like to know we will drive home after work, the home will actually be there, and we will follow our routine tomorrow and the next day, and the next.


That's what made me feel so bad about the flood victims in central Vermont. All that predictability was gone. Where will they live? What do they have, and what have they lost? Can they get back some of their possessions? How will they pay for it?

The initial moments or days of a disaster are exciting in their own way, even if they are tragic. There's drama and things nobody has seen before.

Paul Turner sifts through what's
left of his home after flash flooding
last week in Berlin, Vt.

Of course, the experience quickly gets old. You've got to rebuild your life, regroup, cope with all the stuff you loved that you lost. The lucky ones were not hurt, or didn't lose any loved ones. Fortunately, in Vermont, nobody died in the flooding.

I didn't know it at the time, but as I wrapped up my visit to the the flood ravaged mobile home park, a big tornado was spinning through Springfield, Mass. 

The tornado added to the many thousands of people in the United States, a few of them in Vermont, who are coping with weather calamity after weather calamity.

Next up: The big Missouri River flood. It doesn't end, unfortunately.

Disaster Aftermath in Vermont

I spend the day Wednesday in a mobile home park in Berlin, Vermont that had been all but wiped out in a flash flood a week earlier.

Flash flood devastation in the River Run Mobile
Home Park in Berlin, Vt. this week.

I did an article on the flood aftermath there for the Burlington Free Press, highlighting how the disaster inflicted unremitting uncertainty on its victims. That maybe was the worst part of the flood for them.

We all like predictability. We like to know we will drive home after work, the home will actually be there, and we will follow our routine tomorrow and the next day, and the next.


That's what made me feel so bad about the flood victims in central Vermont. All that predictability was gone. Where will they live? What do they have, and what have they lost? Can they get back some of their possessions? How will they pay for it?

The initial moments or days of a disaster are exciting in their own way, even if they are tragic. There's drama and things nobody has seen before.

Paul Turner sifts through what's
left of his home after flash flooding
last week in Berlin, Vt.

Of course, the experience quickly gets old. You've got to rebuild your life, regroup, cope with all the stuff you loved that you lost. The lucky ones were not hurt, or didn't lose any loved ones. Fortunately, in Vermont, nobody died in the flooding.

< I didn't know it at the time, but as I wrapped up my visit to the the flood ravaged mobile home park, a big tornado was spinning through Springfield, Mass. 

The tornado added to the many thousands of people in the United States, a few of them in Vermont, who are coping with weather calamity after weather calamity.

Next up: The big Missouri River flood. It doesn't end, unfortunately.

More Damaging Storms in Vermont

This has been quite a year in Vermont weather. We've always gotten extremes, but this year it's one right after another. Flooding has been happening over and over again for more than a month now.

Menacing storm clouds gather over South
Burlington, Vermont Thursday.

This week, repeated thunderstorms have dumped hail as big as baseballs in the town of Duxbury, prompted rare tornado warnings, caused wind damage, and worst of all, caused some of the worst flash flooding the state has seen. The other night, thunderstorms repeatedly followed state Route 2 northeastward from central Vermont to the northeast corner of the state.

Damage was really bad in many towns, including Vermont's capital city of Montpelier, and St. Johnsbury, and especially Barre. In Barre, almost the whole city was covered in mud after the flood. Some streets had two feet of mud on them.  On the trashed Barre-Montpelier Road, piles of mud cleared from the road line either side of the busy route, like ugly brown snowbanks.

Threatening storm clouds over South Burlington,
Vermont on Thursday.

Hundreds of houses and businesses are damaged. The photos in this post are only a glimpse of what happened.

Today, the bad weather was supposed to wane. But they've extended the flash flood watches. Torrential thunderstorms are supposed to blossom again this afternoon, threatening us with anothe rround of wicked weather.

I'm at once fascinated and horrified by all of this. I like the excitement of big storms, but of course I hate even more intensely that people's lives are upended by all of this. Luckily, nobody has died in the latest round of storms. That's miraculous, considering the worst flooding hit at night, when you're out on the road and can't see what's going on until it's too late.

Chaos after flash flooding Friday in Barre, Vermont. 

This storm had the usual array of disaster idiots, too. In flooded downtown Montpelier, a car zoomed around barricades blocking inundated State Street. The car splashed through for about 200 yards, and stalled. Four beefy young guys got out of the car and pushed it away, somewhere. Morons.

A man crosses a mud caked street in Barre, Vermont
Friday. 

A car is barely visible in flooding
in downtown Montpelier, Vermont Friday.

A small crowd of onlookers laughed at them, for good measure.

In Barre, one street was covered in up to two feet of squishy, soft mud. You couldn't even walk through it, much less drive. One guy tried, but got stuck, naturally. Nobody helped push him out, even though he asked. Because he was an idiot.

But people helped everybody else where needed. Clots of people showed up to rescue merchandise from the rising water in store basements in Montpelier. One guy I met hitchhiked for 45 minutes into Barre to help shovel mud, remove ruined furniture from houses, or do whatever needed to be done.

So, we help each other out, and watch the skies for the inevitable next storm. We wait the storm out, clean out the mess and get ready to do it again. It's becoming a routine now.

These guys drove past barricades on flooded State Street
in Montpelier, Vermont Friday. The car stalled, and
they had to push it out of the water. Morons. 

And we count our blessings. It's bad, but not nearly as awful as disasters like that tornado in Joplin, Missouri. Survivor's guilt, I guess.

The Horrible Sounds of a Tornado

Of all the news and images coming out of Joplin, MO, where a tornado yesterday killed 89 people, the nost stunning video has visuals that are almost nonexistent.

But the sounds pack such an emotional wallop. It's the sound of 20 or so people huddling in a convenience store cooler as the tornado hits. The sounds and the terror are haunting. You don't want to ever be hit by a tornado, that's for sure.

Listen for yourself:

The Beautiful, Ugly Flood

For a month at least, Lake Champlain in Vermont has been flooding, wrecking camps, damaging homes and roads, and just causing misery and annoyance.

The water isn't receding fast, so this will go on for awhile.

I took the photo in this post two days ago at Burlington, Vermont's flooded Perkins Pier. It's sad that the park there is under water and wrecked, but I do like the photo. The oddly bright colors, the reflections and the misty background are strangly pretty, even though nobody is happy the flood is continuing.

Click on the pic to make it bigger and get a better look at it, if you'd like

Most Dramatic Tuscaloosa Tornado Video Yet

The following video recently surfaced on YouTube. It shows yet another of dozens of videos of that awful tornado in Tuscaloosa, Alabama last month that killed so many people.

The person who took this video kept shooting even though he ended up in the edge of the tornado. Not a smart move. Had the tornado been maybe a few feet closer to him, he surely would have been killed.

Just the roar of the approaching storm would have sent me screaming and fleeing into the basement.

Still, it's an incredibly dramatic video, and worth the watch, if only to encourage people to hide in their basements when a tornado approaches. 

Epic Lake Flood Pics

Lake Champlain here in Vermont has had its worst flood on record. The crest yesterday was a foot over the old record. There's been lots of damage, as you might expect. The governor declared a state of emergency, the National Guard is helping, and we're officially a disaster zone. 

I've been taking pictures of the flood, and the river flooding that led up to it. A few are in this post to share.  I've been contributing, along with almost the entire rest of the staff to extensive flood coverage in the Burlington Free Press if you want more details.

Stay dry!

Lake Champlain floodwater destroys a camp
on Colchester Point, Vt,  May 6 2011

Another view of camp destruction from Lake Champlain
floodwaters, May 6, 2011

Lake Champlain floodwater invades the U.S.
Coast Guard station in Burlington Vt. this week.

A toy truck rests on the hood of a car flooded
by high Lake Champlain water, Burlington Vt.
earlier this week. 

Water from Lake Champlain invades a
Burlington, Vt. building this week,

Laundry is caught in floodwater along the Missisquoi River
In East Berkshire, Vt. on April 27

Floodwater cascades over a dam along the Lamoille River in
Fairfax, Vt., April 27, 2011

Cars make their way through floodwater along
Route 105 in Enosburgh, Vt., April 27, 2011.

Sifting Through Tornado Photos

One of the many awful things about those extreme tornadoes in the South this week is that the storms literally scattered residents' memories to the winds.

Photos found after the Tuscaloosa tornado
this week

Close to 300 people died in the storms.

Many of the survivors lost everything, including treasured family photographs. Many pieces of homes in devastated Tuscaloosa, Alabama,  probably including photos and important papers, rained down from the sky as many as 60 miles away. The tornado was that powerful.

As a small way to help, and as a memorial of sorts, a Facebook page of found photographs from the tornado has appeared.

People who found the photos are scanning them and posting them on the page. Maybe some people will find the photos and claim them. It might help a little.

Flooding Nails Me.

My property is washing away.

Up here in St. Albans, we've had over the past couple of days the most intense spring rainstorms in memory, and there's lots of flooding going on. A flash flood came out of nowhere Tuesday night and swept across my lawns, gardens and driveway, really causing some damage.

Flash flooding across my yard almost took out
this spruce tree

As I write this a day and a half later, a new batch of severe storms is sweeping in, and will surely compound the problems.

I can't complain, of course. I just got a little taste of the horror and destruction from what is probably the worst April storm in the nation's history. Close to 100 people have died in 200 tornadoes and incredibly flash floods, mostly in the South and Midwest.

But of course that same vast storm struck Vermont, just not as severely, thank gawd, as elsewhere.

I got home from work Tuesday evening in a thunderstorm. The storms kept waxing and waning, but kept up continuously for hours. Sometimes we'd get a tremedous gust of wind. Sometimes a little hail, then booming thunder.

Things got out of hand around 9:30 p.m. A tremendous rush of rain hit, more intense than I've seen in a long time. Then the hail started banging down. Tons of it, mostly dime size or smaller, but some nickel sized.

Watch the video of my deck to see for yourself:




Once the hail subsided, I went outside with a head lamp because I heard the brook roaring like I'd never heard it before. I wanted to see if the culvert holding my driveway up was intact. It sort of was, but it looked threatened.

As I stood in the darkness, lightning flashing around and thunder booming across the valley, I heard the sound of rushing water and rolling rocks up the hill to my left. I turned and saw a foot high wave of water, with a tangle of branches and rocks in it, headed straight at me. I got out of the way just in time as it rushed through.

The flash flood lasted less than a half hour, but by the time it was done, the embankment near my driveway slipped down the hill, there was a major washout that almost killed one of my spruce trees and my lawn was a mess of mud, branches and rocks, some the size of bowling balls.

All things considered, this is a minor inconvenience, not a disaster. But I'm so behind on work this year that this will delay me further.

But every time I start whining like that I remember.  I suffered no mega disaster like so many people across the country had this spring.

Um, Interesting Disaster Theories

A (very) few commentators say this tsunami was God's
punishment against atheists in Japan

The sober among us usually have pretty logical explanations for disasters that befall the world.

The Japanese earthquake and tsunami had to do with plate techtonics. Hurricane Katrina's destruction came from, well, a hurricane, plus maybe some inadequate levees. Terrorists are to blame for the 9/11 attacks.

These explanations don't stop people with more, um, interesting theories as to what caused some of the world's catastrophes over the past decade or so.  It seems God hates us for not hating certain people, so he unleashes traumatic but photogenic disasters upon us.

The Web site Jezebel has put together a nice timeline of offbeat theories behind major world disasters from the past ten years or so. 

As you can see in the list,  abortion providers, gay people and atheists seem to be the cause of many calamaties. I wonder if any members of these blamed groups do any of the heavy lifting.

Abortion doctors, like 'em or hate 'em, don't seem to have the skills to spin up hurricanes. Most gay and lesbian people I know don't have the strength to shift plates in the earth's crust to set off earthquakes.

The list indicates God is clearly in cahoots with these groups. See, he's punishing the world, or at least some denizens of the world, for accepting the fact there are gay people, abortions, atheists and the less-than-devout.

But what of the collateral damage? Seems these disasters kill, along with the heathens, some people who don't like gays, atheists, etc.  What gives? Is God clumsy? Or do the victims of the collateral damage go straight to heaven, where they help God plot future disasters.

Inquiring minds want to know.  So I can begin cowering in the basement.

Misery in Japan and Miserable People

Note: This is something of a rewrite of my blog from its previous location, mattalltrades.wordpress.com

At first, I will post new items and recent ones from the old site here at blogger.

The entire archive of photos remains at www.mattalltrades.wordpress.com

The post:

People, predictably, have been getting in trouble for saying wildly inappropriate things about the tragedy in Japan.

We do have an amazing capacity for stupidity, so that's to be expected. I say the wrong things sometimes, so I'm not immune from commenting stupidly on awful things like the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster.

Some things I've seen take the cake. I saw a YouTube video this week called "God is So Good" It's a valley girl type idiotic woman who is SO HAPPY the earthquake happened in Japan

She's what is know as a YouTube troll. She posts videos sure to anger people, because I guess she likes angry people. Or people who are angry at her. A self-esteem issue perhaps?

YouTube troll tamtampamela

Part of it is she wants a lot of hits on her videos, and she can make money through advertising this way. Piss people off, make money. And I realize I'm violating the "Please don't feed the trolls adage fro on line behavior. But here, I can't resist.

Anyway, she says she's been praying that God would offer a sign that those awful atheists, of which she said Japan has plenty, would show the world who's boss. And he did!, she says, with that earthquake and tsunami.

Watch this bozo's video if you can stomach it:

I've never wanted to slap the smug look off somebody's face more than I do hers.

The worst quote from the vid: "I'm so amazing God has answered prayers like this. I'm so overjoyed and so encouraged," she said.

Yeah, and she should have been standing on the beach in Japan when the tsunami came in. Overjoyed? Encouraged? Eve if she is "joking," tell that in person to a Japanese tsunami victim, then, and see what reaction you get, you slimeball.

As you might imagine, our "God is So Good" piece of crap of a ditz has gotten a lot more hate than even she thought she's imagine. Some resourceful people have posted her name and address on line. People have gone so far as to threaten to rape and kill her.

I know the Internet is the land of frontier justice, but death and rape threats are no good, obviously. But you'd think she would have anticipated one of her troll videos would eventually garner such a response. People have ordered zillions of pizzas to be delivered to her door, as a prank. I do hope she continues to have a miserable time for awhile.

Maybe we can make her go to Japan for a year and clean up the muck left by the tsunami.

She's asking that people stop being mean to her now, but the blogosphere and on line world is having none of it. The woman, known as Tamtampamela, is still getting incredible hate directed her way. Though she doesn't deserve the death and rape threats, she does deserve the generalized hate.

Let that be a lesson to you, sweetie.

I've seen other examples of Japan disaster stupidity. In saw a post on Facebook from someone I know who posted a video of the tsunami. The person who posted the video said she is praying for the Japanese, was upset about the disaster and urged people to help.

The Facebook post was a giving, loving gesture.

However, it always takes one person to muck up a bit of kindness. One guy who responded to the Facebook post said the Japanese got what they deserved, because some fishermen there kill dolphins for food. It was karma, he said.

So 10,000 or so people deserve to die and millions deserve to suffer because a few dozen people in Japan engage in the ethically dark activity of hunting dolphins? Oookay..... The mean Facebook poster really deserves his OWN awful karma.

Also because of the Japan disaster, Gilbert Gottfried is no longer the voice of the Aflac duck. A tragedy, of course. Gottfried tweeted some wildly inappropriate, insensitive jokes about the Japan disaster, so Aflac dropped him like well, a dead duck.

Frankly, I'm not exactly upset that Gottfried lost his job......