Welcome to Tornado Alley!

If you can look out your window and see this, then you should probably think about going somewhere else.

As winter's fierce grip on the weather begins to slip loose, we find ourselves thrust uncontrollably towards the season that some scholars dub "spring." I don't know what other scholars call it, but I can assume it's something terrible that I can't write on this family-oriented website, like a really dirty word or something in German. All the trees which you assumed got killed off in winter or World War II rise from their graves again, growing leaves and branches and rare strains of airborne bacteria which will eventually mutate and turn into SARS. Grotesque little bugs climb out of the ground and begin doing all the important things bugs do throughout day, like get stepped on and wave their slimy little antennae around whenever a National Geographic photographer swings a camera in their direction. Spring is like some kind of wizard waving a wand over a desolate wasteland and turning it into a colorful, awe-inspiring landscape where flowers bloom and Skittles are magically thrown throughout the air, possibly by a complex series of pneumatic blowers. Oh wait, that was actually a real Skittles commercial I was thinking of. Do any of you guys remember that one? The advertising gurus attempted to make it look like a big time Hollywood fantasy movie, where the noble Wizard of Product Placement had to fight off the evil non-Mars corporate villains who were trying to steal the secret ingredient of every Mars candy bar ("sodium") and combine it all together to form a new moon which would orbit the Earth and cause fantastic earthquakes, tsunamis, tiramisus, and tornadoes.

Of course we don't have to wait for an evil wizard to create tornadoes, as spring does this for us automatically. In fact, spring did this just the other day, churning out a tornado which ripped through various states in the midwest like Kansas, Missouri, and various other identical flat areas of dull fields that could be effectively combined into one large state called "Please Build a Very Large Mall or Parking Lot Here."

Death, damage reported in twisters' wake - The death toll climbed Monday as rescuers combed through twisted wreckage and crumbled buildings after an "extremely rare" outbreak of tornadoes Sunday and early Monday killed at least 39 people in Missouri, Kansas and Tennessee.

Boy! Great thing I'm moving to Missouri in less than a few weeks! Maybe I should just throw myself into the ocean now and cut to the chase of being killed by mother nature before she somehow develops a way for volcanoes to emerge from the basement of my new house and vaporize me with red-hot lava like an Alka-Seltzer dropped into an industrial vat of Clearly Canadian fake sugar water! It's a scientific fact that nature, by definition, hates each and every one of us. She's not like that nice floating holographic lady as seen in such hit shows as "Captain Planet" and "Captain Planet (on VHS tape)." She's a horrid Lovecraftian abomination out to destroy each and every one of us for raping and pillaging her precious land, and if you don't believe me then go out and rent any Anime video from your local pasty white basement nerd video store. See, the Japanese are one step ahead of us ignorant Americans on the Mother Earth scientific front; in each and every Anime movie, millions and millions of terribly futuristic army soldiers are killed by some form of Mother Nature, like the Great Spooky Yet Somewhat Faggy Spirit of the Wind or the 90,000 Penis Meatball Monster From the Ocean. These are all analogies for how our society is carelessly tearing the Earth apart like a gigantic orange peel, only instead of finding a delicious, juicy fruit inside, there's some monster that prefers to get its point across by raping schoolgirls who have eyes the size of bowling balls.

In this photo, a tornado attempts to blend in and sneak into an unsuspecting town. No luck here, pal!

As spring begins to fire up, tornadoes are beginning to awaken and begin Mother Nature's dirty work of causing many of us to die with increased home insurance rates. Many people are unfamiliar with the phenomenon of the tornado, but I hope that after reading today's update, these people will be able to walk away staunchly confident that they still know absolutely nothing about tornadoes but were able to waste six minutes of their day in the process. I consider myself to be a tornado expert because I've lived in the midwest for about 22 years and there's nobody currently here to prevent me from claiming I'm a tornado expert on a stupid Internet webpage. Many of my family members have been killed by tornadoes, including my mother, father, and sister, although they personally don't know about it yet. I plan on telling them soon, so please don't ruin it by sending them a "Sorry You're Dead" cookie cake before I have a chance to break it to them with a tasteful Hallmark card of my choice. It is my duty, as a patriotic American citizen and representative of hyperhidrosis victims everywhere, to inform you of the terrible dangers tornadoes prevent and how you can avoid being killed and having your home torn apart by them. Haha, just kidding, there's no fucking way for you to prevent being killed by a tornado, so just give up and hope you get AIDS or something first.

According to dictionary.com, a tornado is defined as the following: "a violent thunderstorm in western Africa or nearby Atlantic waters." This is obviously a lie perpetrated by the Jewish media New World Order to subdue us into complacency, so I recommend writing a harshly-worded letter to the folks at dictionary.com and then buying some assault rifles just in case. Don't bother spellchecking your message to them; that really gets on their nerves. If I can remember what I learned in junior high school regarding tornadoes, they're some kind of thing which is made up of wind, like a fart but only much more powerful. The wind emulates a flushing toilet bowl by spinning around nonstop until it either runs out of gas or gets bored and decides to call it quits. Now some of you may be wondering how these horrible beasts are spawned in the first place. Although my strict Mormon upbringing informs me that "God creates them," I know some scientist-like people who claim tornadoes are the result of warm fronts and cold fronts colliding like when the two helmets smash into each other and make that exploding special effect at the beginning of televised football games. Warm fronts consist of a shitload of hot air from places like the Gulf of Mexico or Hell, and cold fronts are masses of cool air that float down from Canada nonstop thanks to NAFTA and lax border laws. When these two rivals meet each other, they create a real ruckus and somehow transform into a tornado. No, I don't know how; if you're really so goddamn interested in finding out how a tornado works, go down to your local community college and major in weatherology or whatever the hell they call it. It's not "meteorology" because I think that's the study of meteors or meat. Or maybe meat meteors. Who knows.

This is what happens when you own a shitty house and a tornado hits it. So, in summary, don't live in this guy's shitty house and you won't have to deal with tornadoes.

One thing that I do know is that tornadoes are very difficult to ignore. If you ever get lost and somehow end up in the midwest, you'll know with absolute certainty when a tornado is approaching you. Look for the following tell-tale signs of tornadic activity:

1) LOTS OF WIND. Anybody who has grown up on a farm or has seen that movie where Harrison Ford had to pretend to be Amish in order to protect some stupid kid from crack dealers knows the old farmer saying, "where there's lots of wind, there's probably a tornado or a very big fan of some sort." If you feel things getting very windy, then a tornado might be trying to form nearby and you should seriously entertain thoughts of moving to a slightly different location in the immediate future. Actually, you can never be too safe, so if you ever feel any wind or air movement of any kind, it is your civic responsibility to shout "tornadoes!!! HEAD FOR THE HILLS!!!" and begin running around like a madman. Never underestimate the dastardly cunningness of the tornado; sometimes they can disguise themselves as things like rain or air conditioning or family members, so trust nobody and always keep your eyes peeled (literally) for their nefarious tricks.

2) THAT IS ALL.

I didn't really have a second point, but I felt a compelling need to make a numbered list, so there you go. Tornadoes have a lot of wind, wind which they are not afraid to use toss around and decimate your house while casually throwing your loved ones headfirst into trees seven miles away. I'm sure Mother Nature is currently trying to figure out a scheme to inject molten lava inside a tornado to kill us all more efficiently, but I don't plan on worrying about that until the media tells me I can stop worrying about getting SARS. Like earthquakes and Louie Anderson, tornadoes are unstoppable creations sent here to torture us and make our lives miserable. There is no way to defeat a tornado, even in Dead or Alive 3; you simply have to wait until it gets bored of tearing shit up. The military and air force have attempted to lob atom bombs and Hellfire missiles into tornadoes in a futile attempt to kill them, but that only caused the tornadoes to begin flashing red and deal out even more splash damage to surrounding targets. If you have any atom bombs or Hellfire missiles, please do not use them as anti-tornado projectiles, as you'll just be wasting your time. There is simply no way to stop tornadoes, even by calling 911 and reporting rape, so the best you can do is get acquainted with ways to survive a rogue tornado attack. Since I'm a tornado expert and such, I will now present a brief bullet-pointed list of these survival techniques. Feel free to write them down on your hand if you have access to both your hand and a marker or tattoo needle.

Hide in a basement. Basements are the safest place to be during a tornado attack because once your house collapses and kills you, you won't have to deal with the assholes at the insurance agency and wade through all their bullshit. For maximum results, your basement should have one of those short staircases that leads to a wooden set of swinging doors in your backyard. Stick your head out of these doors every two minutes to see if the tornado has passed. If your head is instantly ripped off and tossed hundreds of yards away, then the tornado is still quite active.

Hide in a doorframe. Wait, I think that's for earthquakes. Oh well, earthquakes are kind of like tornadoes, except instead of lots of air moving, they have lots of land moving. I guess the same idea applies here. If possible, construct your house completely from doorframes. Then you'll never have to get up and walk somewhere when a tornado / earthquake strikes.

Move thousands of miles away. Remember how Craig T. Nelson and his family dealt with that pesky haunted house in the movie "Poltergeist"? They just grabbed their shit and left once the corpses began popping up and greeting them in the flower bed. There are plenty of places you can move to that lack tornado activity, but each has their own pros and cons. For example, Los Angeles has zero tornadoes, but they have a lot of Mexican guys who wear gold chains. New York City lacks tornadic activity as well, but hell, it's New York City for Christ's sake. If you accidentally move too far and find yourself in the ocean, then you'll be fairly safe from tornadoes, but you'll be susceptible to whirlpools that suck you into the underworld like in Ultima V. Then you'll have to fight those annoying creeper guys who attack you from underneath the ground, and I don't think anybody really wants that.

Lobby Congress for stricter anti-tornado laws. I'm not sure exactly how this will work, but everybody always seems to do this for anything anyway, so it's worth a shot. Make sure to write up colorful protest signs with such remarks as "NO MORE tornadoes" and something that equates tornadoes with oil in the Middle East. Oh yeah, put a big photograph of George "Bush" Bush Jr. with a giant red X through his face too, as that will help make your point and you'll get a good chuckle about it with your liberal college buddies when you go to the next coffee shop meeting.

I personally cannot think of any other tornado tips, mainly because I'm simply so excited that I'll be moving to Tornado Central, Missouri in a few weeks. I'm sure there are several hundred additional ways you can temporarily increase the odds of surviving a tornado attack, but I really cannot be bothered to look them up on some public grade school's webpage because I'm too busy hitting bags of Skittles with my "magic wand" and waiting for all kinds of red and yellow and orange colors to spring up in the woods behind my apartment. I think I'll be here for a while folks, so don't hold your breath.

You Must Whip It!

Ryan "OMGWTFBBQ" Adams here for yet another Goldmine Tuesday, and a quick note. People, I enjoy getting e-mails from you and Nigerian e-mail scammers telling me how much they enjoy reading the Zoo Stories. I am very sad to inform you all that I in no way, shape, or form, have worked in a zoo. These stories are not my own, I am just re-telling them with the permission of SA forum goon BigPeeler. So please, more praise for BigPeeler, and less fraudulent e-mail scams. Thank you.

Also, if you are currently playing in the Planetside beta on the Markov server, yes the character named "OMGWTFBBQ" is infact me. if you see another OMGWTFBBQ, it is not me. Why people need to use my nickname, I will never know.In today’s Goldmine we take a look at the thoughts of those idiots, those morons, those imbeciles known as drivers. Obviously, these people behind the wheel see things differently than you and me, Mr. and Mrs. Careful Motorist, and the SA Forum Goons have decided to give you a quick peek at the mind of these demented automobile pilots by translating traffic signs.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and some playing cards. Click here to understand that jackass that was behind you this morning!

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)