People in Texas

You really have to love people who live in Texas. Everytime Texas is on the news for something, we end up looking so redneck. I loved how in the news footage this morning of waves crashing over the sea wall and palm trees bending over in the wind of the huge rapidly approaching hurricane, people were in the background walking their dogs along the beach and driving by with their kids IN THE BACK OF THE TRUCK so they could take pictures of how high the water was. Nice!

This reminded me of when the space shuttle exploded over east Texas a few years ago. The news anchors warned that the space shuttle debris was highly radioactive and no one should come within several hundred feet of it. They urged people to keep far away and call authorities if they saw any of the debris. Cut to the footage of a man in east Texas holding up pieces of the shuttle he had found while he was walking his dog. He was on TV with the dog and he was literally holding parts of the shuttle IN HIS HANDS and talking about how interesting it looked. The poor dog! I bet he grew an extra tail. This was after they had already shown a woman from Texas with really big hair describing how the shuttle explosion looked like "a giant sparkler".

While we are on the subject of disasters, I heard a comedian talking about this and now every time I see it on the news it intrigues me: Why do they always give disaster victims something that looks like a blanket made of foil to put around their shoulders? What the heck is that stuff? I see it on TV all the time. Someone's house will burn down and there they are, sitting on the curb wearing foil around their shoulders. Does anyone have any insight?