More excitement on the home front! Yesterday morning, Bio-Lab caught fire! Bio-Lab makes chlorine sticks and those chemical tablets for swimming pools (not that Sandy would know this because she uses frogs, birds and assorted wildlife in hers) and there was this huge, fat cloud of Clorox-smelling smoke over Conyers as it burned. Because chemicals were involved, fighting the fire was complicated. Haz-Mat was summoned. Statements were issued. Rednecks were interviewed (more on this later).
As time went by, the fat cloud stayed as a cloud, that is, the smoke didn’t dissipate, and the column of thick white gunk stretched out for miles and miles. The chlorine in the air caused evacuations throughout a one-mile radius; a five-mile radius was being considered - I live further away than that in either case, and in the opposite direction from the blowing fumes. Authorities shut down Interstate 20 in both directions and picked my exit as the point of demarcation, so I had to wait a bit before beginning the morning commute. The smoke was so thick and visibility was so bad that the airport in Covington, a town 10 - 12 miles further east, had to be shut down. Never a dull moment in Conyers but really, the fire at Bio-Lab doesn’t compare to the lady who used to talk to the Virgin Mary (sadly, I’m not joking about that).
I was supposed to meet my mom for dinner and errand-running after work, but Bio-Lab was still ablaze and various streets shut down so we postponed. That turned out to be a good thing because apparently authorities imposed a curfew and were arresting people (!) who were out and about after 9:00 pm. I’m not sure what good it does you or Bio-Lab for you to go home early while it burns, and the chlorine cloud had blown to Lake Oconee by this time, but there you go. The thing was, though, that I heard absolutely nothing about this curfew yesterday - and I was listening to the news during my afternoon commute - the first I heard of it was this morning, which if I had decided to chance running my errands, would have been too late to do me any good. I’d have been leaving B.J.’s, laden with parcels, and gotten my happy ass ARRESTED. Again.
Okay, about interviewing rednecks. Why is it that anytime anything remotely newsworthy happens, the media find the most backward, unkempt, ill-spoken, dangerously inbred denizen of a trailer park to interview? There could be twenty people lined up to talk about the late-night shooting at the Waffle House, and the press will find the ONE among them who cannot form a complete, grammatically sound sentence or articulate it understandably. They never ask someone who says, “Yes, I was employed as a warehouse supervisor at Bio-Lab for five years in the early nineties and am not surprised at this turn of events, given their lax approach to safety.” No, they ask someone who says, “Hyuck! Ah ain’t serprized atall at sumfin lak this done happen. Ahm jest serprized hit hain’t happened afore now, way they run at place. An hit’s shore gone to hayall since they farred me.” My friend Sheila (who can say this ‘cause she’s black - yeah, ‘black’, for her own reasons she does not approve of the term ‘African American’ and I’m writing about her so I’ll use the term she uses for herself) pointed out that the media does the same thing whenever their chosen interviewee is black: Atlanta is full of well-spoken, highly educated, successful and photogenic blacks (or African Americans, if you prefer) but you’ll never see any of them on camera because the media invariably chooses some overweight, toothless, barely understandable ghetto denizen instead. My gods - people from other parts of the country have got to think that Georgia is entirely populated by filthy, uneducated, tobacco-chewing freaks with four teeth (crooked ones, in odd locations). Which is not true. Except for Villa Rica.
MONTOYA DELENDA EST!
As time went by, the fat cloud stayed as a cloud, that is, the smoke didn’t dissipate, and the column of thick white gunk stretched out for miles and miles. The chlorine in the air caused evacuations throughout a one-mile radius; a five-mile radius was being considered - I live further away than that in either case, and in the opposite direction from the blowing fumes. Authorities shut down Interstate 20 in both directions and picked my exit as the point of demarcation, so I had to wait a bit before beginning the morning commute. The smoke was so thick and visibility was so bad that the airport in Covington, a town 10 - 12 miles further east, had to be shut down. Never a dull moment in Conyers but really, the fire at Bio-Lab doesn’t compare to the lady who used to talk to the Virgin Mary (sadly, I’m not joking about that).
I was supposed to meet my mom for dinner and errand-running after work, but Bio-Lab was still ablaze and various streets shut down so we postponed. That turned out to be a good thing because apparently authorities imposed a curfew and were arresting people (!) who were out and about after 9:00 pm. I’m not sure what good it does you or Bio-Lab for you to go home early while it burns, and the chlorine cloud had blown to Lake Oconee by this time, but there you go. The thing was, though, that I heard absolutely nothing about this curfew yesterday - and I was listening to the news during my afternoon commute - the first I heard of it was this morning, which if I had decided to chance running my errands, would have been too late to do me any good. I’d have been leaving B.J.’s, laden with parcels, and gotten my happy ass ARRESTED. Again.
Okay, about interviewing rednecks. Why is it that anytime anything remotely newsworthy happens, the media find the most backward, unkempt, ill-spoken, dangerously inbred denizen of a trailer park to interview? There could be twenty people lined up to talk about the late-night shooting at the Waffle House, and the press will find the ONE among them who cannot form a complete, grammatically sound sentence or articulate it understandably. They never ask someone who says, “Yes, I was employed as a warehouse supervisor at Bio-Lab for five years in the early nineties and am not surprised at this turn of events, given their lax approach to safety.” No, they ask someone who says, “Hyuck! Ah ain’t serprized atall at sumfin lak this done happen. Ahm jest serprized hit hain’t happened afore now, way they run at place. An hit’s shore gone to hayall since they farred me.” My friend Sheila (who can say this ‘cause she’s black - yeah, ‘black’, for her own reasons she does not approve of the term ‘African American’ and I’m writing about her so I’ll use the term she uses for herself) pointed out that the media does the same thing whenever their chosen interviewee is black: Atlanta is full of well-spoken, highly educated, successful and photogenic blacks (or African Americans, if you prefer) but you’ll never see any of them on camera because the media invariably chooses some overweight, toothless, barely understandable ghetto denizen instead. My gods - people from other parts of the country have got to think that Georgia is entirely populated by filthy, uneducated, tobacco-chewing freaks with four teeth (crooked ones, in odd locations). Which is not true. Except for Villa Rica.
MONTOYA DELENDA EST!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home