Snow Blizzard Ice Calamity of 2011

Take the snow, for example. Please.

As this crazy weather has gone on, we’ve begun to hear new weather terms on the news, which I suspect are just made up. A couple of them being “Thunder Sleet” and “Ground Blizzard”. Totally not real. So, being the helpful and awesome person that I am, here are some other dastardly weather phenomena you probably haven’t heard of, but might want to watch out for:

Slush Earthquakes

Hail Flurries

Snow Tornados

Icicle Storms

Snowdrift Tidal Waves

Cumulonimb-slush Clouds

Rainflakes

I'm sure there are other new weather thingies that could pose a threat; I just haven't made them up yet.

Two feet of snow

The other interesting thing that has developed is the media’s insistence that simply “The Blizzard and Snow and Such that is Currently Happening Here but Also Other Places” apparently doesn’t cut the mayo as a name for the blizzard and snow and such that is currently happening here but also other places, so they’ve taken to nicknaming the thing in order to give it a nicer or more menacing ring. For example, The Great Blizzard of 2011 or The Blizzard of the Century or The Blizzard of the New Millennium. My favorite from one of the local news stations is… wait for it… Winter Gone Wild! No, I'm not kidding. I guess the storm wasn’t satisfied with the destruction it has already caused, so now in an effort to get more attention, it has gotten with its college sorority sisters and allowed pervy men to video it and put the DVD’s on the internet. Have you no shame, Blizzard?

Some of the funnier names I’ve heard non-news people come up with include Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon, and my favorite, Snowlonoscopy. Inspired, I came up with a few of my own:

Catast-snow-phe

Freezing Reign (of Terror)

Snow Day Melee

Ice Crisis

Winter Massacre

Plague of Precipitation

Dev-ice-station

Bobcat-aclysm

Curse of the Flurries

De-snow shovel-bacle

Icicle-bacle

Frozen Pipes of Doom

The Great Drift Disaster

State of Emergensleet

Salt Truck Havoc

The Scourge of the Dripping Faucets

Fiasc-snow

Bane of the Tire Chains

Snow Woes

Blight of the Unique Snowflakes


Got any to add?

No.

So, many of you are familiar with my distaste for PeTA. Reason numero uno: they are pibble-haters. They want to ban and euthanize all pit bulls. They wanted to PTS every dog confiscated from Bad Newz Kennels. And despite the amazing stories having come out of the Vick Dog camp, they continue to declare that the dogs still should not have been allowed to live.

They also think having a "companion animal" (read: "pet") is slavery. And when I say they call it slavery, I mean that they literally compare having a pet to pre-Civil War America's enslavement of African captives.

Now, I thought they had pretty much fallen off the deep end already when last year they actually requested that Ben & Jerry's change their ice cream formulation to use breast milk in lieu of cow's milk. That's just dirty hippie on a whole new level.

But just when you think you've heard it all, here's Reason No. 1,782 to believe that PeTA is truly one coconut short of a migrating flock of swallows: they have sent 80's pop group the Pet Shop Boys a letter urging them to change their band name to "Rescue Shelter Boys." No, people. This. Is not. A joke. Except maybe in the metaphorical way. You can't make up stuff this stupid. As you might imagine, the Boys have declined the request, although they have also made it clear that they do not in any way support pet shops.

PLEASE don't get me wrong here. I am as staunchly anti-pet shop and puppy mill as they come. And if you are wondering why that is, then please, please, PLEASE check out Best Friends' A Puppy-Store-Free L.A. campaign.

Lastly, I'll leave you with one more tidbit... PeTA is now going on the PR defensive for fish, redubbing them "Sea Kittens" because they believe that people would think twice about fishing for, killing and eating "Sea Kittens." You can even go on their site and create your own huggable sea kitten. I tried to put mine on here but I couldn't get the html code to work right. Suffice it to say, it was awesome. It had a mohawk, a unicorn horn, and Water Wiggles.

But I still don't like PeTA. Cutesy Flash-animated fishy dress-up games notwithstanding.