Offended

Just got done watching "Bizarre Foods" on....the Travel Channel. Gross. That guy will eat anything. I can't even imagine how hungry I would have to be to eat a whole roasted sparrow or a plate full of silk worms. Yucky. Anyway, the show playing on the same channel right now is called "Tornado Alley USA." I think this show is way worse than the gross food show.

I'm sure many of you know my complete and utter spineless fear of tornadoes. I think anyone who willingly chases these things around is a special kind of crazy. I realize that it is important for scientists to research tornadoes in order to better understand how/why/where they form in order to protect people. I get it. I'm for it. Better them than me. But here's why the show offended me. (And it had NOTHING to do with them showing a giant 7-tornado-spawning-supercell that hit August 2006 less than an hour from where I now sit.) The show is following some big shot storm chaser guy and his company that offers tornado tours. Tours? I really find that to be ghoulish. There are people who lose their lives and everything they have from these storms. To pay money to chase them around seems really freaky to me. It's like paying money to visit horrible house fires, or sites of famous dog maulings, or following the Ted Bundy trail. The sad thing is that I'm sure there are people who would love to do these things as well.

On the clip from last August the main guy sees a tornado hit a house and he says, "oh wow that guy's house just got totaled!!." Oh yeah. Great. What a thing to be excited about. Let's take a wrecking ball to your house (with you in it) and then cheer on the destruction. What a sicko. He then gives this lame-o kind of look and says, "there were no fatalities with this system, just some minor injuries." Yeah that. And some poor guy losing everything he owns. Whoopee. What sick jerk.

I understand that it's a pretty amazing weather phenomenon and I'm sure that these people would argue that it's no different than watching lightning or enjoying the rain. But it is different. When I finally left the room to come do this post, the people were kind of upset that after two days on the road they hadn't seen a tornado yet. So they're hoping and praying for a horrible destructive force to happen just so they can be entertained. I just can't understand why anyone would pay money to gleefully chase something around that kills people and destroys lives. Do these folks like brag about it back home?? "Hey look. Here's our pictures of the storm that wiped out a neighborhood. Yeah like three people were killed and 40 homes destroyed. Oh yeah it was a blast. You should go next year." Sick.