Flushing in Fear

There are dangers in this world. Dangers that people need to be warned about. Natural disasters, potential terror attacks, movies about above-average intelligence infants – the public deserves to know what’s coming to them. Fortunately, we’ve evolved as a species to the point where we can put alert notification protocol in place long before it becomes too late. But before we continue, we pause for this message from the Emergency Blogcast System…

Eeeirrrrrgg. Eeeirrrrgg. Eeiiiiirrrrrrggggh.
This is a test. This is only test. If this were a real blogging emergency, we would have shifted from original, well-crafted comedy in favor of some YouTube video of a guy getting hit in the groin with a baseball. And the screen would flash red. Or something. I don’t know. Never happened before. But it could.This is only a test.

Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop.

You see, just like the EBS, we’ve come up with perfectly good ways to alert people of nearby danger. On highways, we have electronic overpass signage. In Homeland Security, we have a Skittles-sponsored Taste the Rainbow of Doom System. Natural disasters, if meteorological in composition, can be tracked and trumpeted by our friends at the National Weather Service. Their wide array of brightly-colored precipitation maps will let you know when to bring an umbrella and when to get in your car and drive to Arizona.

But what will be in your Flagstaff-bound Camry, praetell?

It’s one thing to warn people about when there will be gale force winds and cows flying through the air. It’s another to remind them to be prepared for the next Aerial Bovine attack. YAB fully endorses the efforts of www.ready.gov, in hopes that the next time a pal of Katrina chooses to blow, we as the American People will be prepared.

But there? Really?

Like I said, FEMA has the aforementioned website to instruct people what they will need in desperate times. Of course, the FEMA website may not be on your morning blogroll of things to check out before starting work. That’s understandable. So by partnering with a grassroots effort (and that likely includes the Health and Safety guy that works for us), they’ve designed posters to remind you to be prepared. They’re far more omnipresent that a website. Seems like perfectly good bulletin board fodder to me.

I said BULLETIN BOARD.

In recent years, restaurants have become quite adept at discovering a great way for men to spend just as much time in their bathrooms as women. They call it the Urinal News. (Although I would prefer the much-truncated Urinews.) Above a standing stall, one can find a glass-enclosed front page or sports page of the day’s paper before them. This is cutting edge current events acquisition, people. And I’m all for it.

What I’m not for? Public Service Announcements above thy wall-fused throne.

This is where I found the huge picture of a cyclonic weather system over Louisiana, accompanied by the big red letters “ARE YOU READY FOR AN EMERGENCY???” Good God, people. I don’t exactly find this to be the appropriate time for a FEMA Shock and Awe campaign, do you? Way to catch a guy with his pants, er, open. The last thing I need to think about in this situation is where I’m going to get a flashlight and canned food on such short notice. Lesser men could be shaken by this.

And as I don’t need to remind you – this is the last place we need shaking.