Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[Tal]

I'm sure you already know and love The Onion. This article tickled me today. Silly thing but the 'quote' just made me smile.

Click to see full-size image.

SeaWorld To Discontinue Great White Shark Ride

ORLANDO, FL—Citing flagging popularity and recurrent technical problems over the attraction’s 10-year run, SeaWorld Orlando announced that it will permanently shutter its great white shark ride, officials for the theme park announced Tuesday.

“Due to a number of difficulties related to maintenance costs and a mixed customer response, we have decided to shut down our great white shark ride indefinitely,” SeaWorld spokesman Robert Hawes said of the long-running attraction, which allows adults and children to touch, swim with, and ride atop 7,000-pound great white sharks in a large tank.

“We had hoped that visitors of all ages would be thrilled at the chance to fall in love with these magnificent predators up close, but, regrettably, this did not prove to be the case.” Officials added that at no time during the ride were any great white sharks hurt or endangered, and that in fact they were the happiest and healthiest of all the park’s animals.

[Tal]

"Mixed customer response" was what got me.

Think I'm in a silly mood today.

[Tal]

A series of tornadoes have been wreaking havoc through the mid-west. One in particular has gone through an elementary school:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22604251

[tikay]

Testing testing.

[tikay]

A series of tornadoes have been wreaking havoc through the mid-west. One in particular has gone through an elementary school:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22604251

This is terrible, quite beyond words or imagination.

I can barely comprehend it happening in Great Britain, or how we'd cope.

Over 50 confirmed dead already, expected to rise substantially, with at least 20 children killed. Just so terrible.

Hard to grasp how savage a "twister" can be. Hundreds of houses & buildings blown away, quite literally blown away. 

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[tikay]

This will interest not a soul, except maybe Tom & one or two other fruitcakes, but our minds work in the most peculiar way.

Amid the obscene horror of all those children & adults killed, much of the TV footage was devoted to the rescue of several dogs from the wreckage. I guess it is a macabre variation of "Man bites dog".

And yet it did not seem in the least offensive, or out of place. I am a bit (over?) sensitive to lack of respect for those who have died, or passed on, perhaps because I am closer to the buffers than most here. (Think "Thatcher Dead?" which, to me, was gratutiously offensive).

I live in a little dream world, a really daft world, where I like to think that birds & animals are just as important as human beings, & I'd no sooner shoot a duck, bird or stag for fun than a human being. 

Meanwhile, my favourite foods are KFC, roast lamb or beef, steak & kidney pud or pie, & pork pies.

Go figure that lot. None of it makes an iota or scintilla of sense.

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[TightEnd]

I'm not quite sure I have worked out the picture yet

but its interesting...

Click to see full-size image.

[TightEnd]

and this is the start of the tornado yesterday, before it moved on and became such a destructive F4

[TightEnd]

 this turned into a "2-mile wide, 20-mile long "grinding wedge" tornado"

[tikay]

I'm not quite sure I have worked out the picture yet

but its interesting...

Click to see full-size image.

Nor me, but if you click the bars on the graph, or the "Frequency" bar, it does things.

Amazing how such repeated tragedies barely raise an eyebrow in the UK.

Today's "Times" headlines? Gnomes at the Chelsea Flower Show, & "Gay marriage revolt drives Cameron into labour arms". Oh dear.

I've reached the point in life where nothing makes much sense any more. Can't believe it, I used to understand & know everything when I was a young man.

[tikay]

and this is the start of the tornado yesterday, before it moved on and became such a destructive F4

That would scare the life out of me.

If you got caught in the middle of that, you'd just get sucked up into the sky I guess?

[DaveShoelace]

This will interest not a soul, except maybe Tom & one or two other fruitcakes, but our minds work in the most peculiar way.

Amid the obscene horror of all those children & adults killed, much of the TV footage was devoted to the rescue of several dogs from the wreckage. I guess it is a macabre variation of "Man bites dog".

And yet it did not seem in the least offensive, or out of place. I am a bit (over?) sensitive to lack of respect for those who have died, or passed on, perhaps because I am closer to the buffers than most here. (Think "Thatcher Dead?" which, to me, was gratutiously offensive).

I live in a little dream world, a really daft world, where I like to think that birds & animals are just as important as human beings, & I'd no sooner shoot a duck, bird or stag for fun than a human being. 

Meanwhile, my favourite foods are KFC, roast lamb or beef, steak & kidney pud or pie, & pork pies.

I wonder why it is we can have such double standards, I am exactly the same. Animal cruelty gets me much angrier than person cruelty, I always feel more sorry for the dog in a dog+tramp combo. Yet I eat meat.

[tikay]

This will interest not a soul, except maybe Tom & one or two other fruitcakes, but our minds work in the most peculiar way.

Amid the obscene horror of all those children & adults killed, much of the TV footage was devoted to the rescue of several dogs from the wreckage. I guess it is a macabre variation of "Man bites dog".

And yet it did not seem in the least offensive, or out of place. I am a bit (over?) sensitive to lack of respect for those who have died, or passed on, perhaps because I am closer to the buffers than most here. (Think "Thatcher Dead?" which, to me, was gratutiously offensive).

I live in a little dream world, a really daft world, where I like to think that birds & animals are just as important as human beings, & I'd no sooner shoot a duck, bird or stag for fun than a human being. 

Meanwhile, my favourite foods are KFC, roast lamb or beef, steak & kidney pud or pie, & pork pies.

I wonder why it is we can have such double standards, I am exactly the same. Animal cruelty gets me much angrier than person cruelty, I always feel more sorry for the dog in a dog+tramp combo. Yet I eat meat.

Boom!

Someone thinks the same.

It really makes no sense at all, does it?

PS - Loving your work on Twitter.

[Laxie]

and this is the start of the tornado yesterday, before it moved on and became such a destructive F4

That would scare the life out of me.

If you got caught in the middle of that, you'd just get sucked up into the sky I guess?

You might get sucked up, but eventually you'd be launched out again.

Some of the footage I've seen this morning has been taken by random untrained people in their own gardens.  It takes a certain kind of 'special' to be crazy enough to stand outside watching an F4...or any tornado for that matter.

Those poor kids would've had tornado drills as standard and thought nothing of this initially.  Mother Nature can be pretty cruel sometimes.

[outragous76]

This will interest not a soul, except maybe Tom & one or two other fruitcakes, but our minds work in the most peculiar way.

Amid the obscene horror of all those children & adults killed, much of the TV footage was devoted to the rescue of several dogs from the wreckage. I guess it is a macabre variation of "Man bites dog".

And yet it did not seem in the least offensive, or out of place. I am a bit (over?) sensitive to lack of respect for those who have died, or passed on, perhaps because I am closer to the buffers than most here. (Think "Thatcher Dead?" which, to me, was gratutiously offensive).

I live in a little dream world, a really daft world, where I like to think that birds & animals are just as important as human beings, & I'd no sooner shoot a duck, bird or stag for fun than a human being.  

Meanwhile, my favourite foods are KFC, roast lamb or beef, steak & kidney pud or pie, & pork pies.

I wonder why it is we can have such double standards, I am exactly the same. Animal cruelty gets me much angrier than person cruelty, I always feel more sorry for the dog in a dog+tramp combo. Yet I eat meat.

Boom!

Someone thinks the same.

It really makes no sense at all, does it?

PS - Loving your work on Twitter.

Im not sure it is that strange, i think many would share the same view. I think the definition is "for fun" as Tikay put it.

I am a very experienced shooter (clays), however I have never shot an animal for fun, nor sport in my life. I have absolutely no problem with people shooting things if they are going to eat them, or if it forms part of a genuine pest/population control exercise, but I personally dont get involved for sport or fun. Not least of which because they arent very difficult to kill when you have a gun, and therefore it isnt really sport!