Saturday, March 23, 2019

Newsworthy? More like boozeworthy...

Sorry, that was uncalled for. I'm...I'm better than that. But for real, do you know what's not newsworthy? This. Yeah, I know, clicking on links isn't your jam, so I'll explain. Dudes finding beer isn't newsworthy.
Breaking News: They have it in stores.

Above: Nebraska earlier this week.
(source: slight exaggeration)
I mention this because in the midst of the devastating floods in Nebraska-huh? Yeah, devastating floods. Nebraska. Yeah, I missed most of this too, but the dramatically named bomb cyclone that drenched the midwest last week left the State of Nebraska mostly underwater. No really, most of the state. According to this, 76% of the state's land area and 95% of Nebraskans are affected by the flood.and it's going to cost something like $1.3 billion to rebuild.

So it's kind of weird that we haven't heard much about it. I mean, I know it's one of the boxy middle states we just lazily drew in on a map a couple hundred years ago to fill in the gap between coasts, but still, you'd think a new inland sea would be worth at least a mention.
It was all over the news during the Cretaceous.

Never Forget...that time Juggernaut
knocked over the World Trade Center.
I think it's because we basically live in a comic book universe where we're so used to catastrophes that the odd one can slip past us. Like, if you say lived in the world of the X-Men or the Avengers or something-yes, I know if's called Earth-616. Pfftt...nerd. Fine, say you live in Earth-616 and every other day Galactus shows up, or Magneto destroys some famous landmark and every couple of years the fate of the planet/universe/multiverse is put on the line, after awhile people would get used to it, right? Like that, except for us disasters are drowned out by the President's angry Tweets and feigned surprise at how rich people buy their kids' way into college.

But dudes finding beer? Right, getting off track. Anyway, a couple of guys doing cleanup found a fridge washed up in a field and helped themselves to some Busch Lights.
This just in: two Nebraska men found garbage in a field,
opened it and drank what they found inside.
It takes a brave person to step forward
and admit to a fridge full of Busch Light.
Which, ok, finders keepers or whatever, but a couple of things don't sit well with me about this. First, is that when these guys found the fridge, they had no idea who it belonged too. I don't begrudge them the beer, it's just that for all they knew, that fridge had floated past the bloated corpses of its owner on its way to the muddy field in which they found it. While it turns out they did wonder about the fate of whoever's fridge it was, and someone did later come forward alive and well, they didn't know that at the time.

But I guess what really bothers me about this this story about a couple of dudes finding a mini fridge full of beer that washed up in a field, is that-at least as I write this-the story that comes up first when you search 'Nebraska Flooding.'
"But hey, look on the bright side, at least some guys found beer."
-The news

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