How to survive a disaster

How to survive a disaster

Disasters can be dangerous, even deadly, but by following these handy tips you can be sure that you’re safe every time. Feel free to print this out, laminate it, poke holes in the top and run string through those holes so that you can wear this article around your neck at all times. Thus you will survive.

Should you need to resort to cannibalism, never eat the thin active people. They’re always stringy and tough. Go for the overweight and docile; their meat is finely marbled and always tender.

To survive, you will need plenty of water. 90 proof whiskey is 20% water, so be sure to have plenty on hand to aid your thirst. Whiskey is also a handy disinfectant.

White it would seem useful to have a rifle or handgun, remember that the wide scatter of a shotgun requires less aiming and can be used effectively against crowds of looters or zombies.

A portable radio can provide life-saving information and updates; there are even solar powered models that never run out of batteries. Or better yet, get an MP3 player which lets you choose your own playlist so you don’t have to listen to what those fat cat corporate radio stations want you to hear.

It is important that you find shelter in a safe structure. In Des Moines, you will find that bowling alleys are exceptionally well built.

If you are in a group of strangers, stay together. Try and make sure you are either A: the cocky young hero who needs to reconcile with his dying father, B: the pretty girl who, at first hates the hero’s brash attitude but later gives in to the obvious attraction, or C: the comic relief guy. Everyone else will be dead within two hours.

In this day and age you need not get two of every animal on your boat. Just take digital copies of their genome maps.

When looting, always go for the sporting goods store (guns, ammunition and camping supplies), the hardware store (generators, rope, and shock weapons) and the grocery store (food, bottles water and salad dressing). You’ll find that you’re prepared while those idiots with plasma screen TVs will die of starvation in a few short weeks.

While it is highly unlikely that you would need such information to survive a disaster, the metric prefixes are, from smallest to largest: milli, centi, deci, deca, hector and kilo. You can remember that with the handy mnemonic My Cousin Delores Died Horribly Kilo.

They’re popular articles, but don’t take those “desert island albums” things to heart. That classic Coltrane record isn’t going to help you catch fish, though you might be able to make a passable snare from a reel-to-reel copy.

Don’t view the next insect attack in a negative light. Think of it as dinner.

If all else fails, panic; run around and scream your head off.

Nine People Worse Off Than You

Having a bad day? The bakery on the corner gave you the wrong kind of muffin? Was one of your expenses rejected? Did your little sister mouth off to you? Oh poor you. If you’re having that kind of day, it might pay to keep these people in mind. It won’t make the hurt any less, really, but it would certainly distract your thoughts for a bit and get you thinking “I’m glad that didn’t happen to me!”

1. Charlie Parker
The seminal Jazz saxophonist became a huge success at a young age. He enjoyed money, fame, and women, but threw it all away for heroin and just about anything else he could put in his body. At one point the Kansas City native was forced to perform on a cheap plastic saxophone, having sold his in order to buy smack. Parker led such a hard life that by the time he died at age 35, the coroner believed him to be around 60 years old. And he was a fatass. You don’t want to piss off the pallbearers. Not that I know from experience.

2. The Stolen Generations
If you were an aboriginal child in Australia any time between the early 1900s and the 1970s, your life was fairly horrid. You were likely brutally torn from your parents’ arms at a young age, placed into a squalid orphanage, and if you were lucky you weren’t raped. Upon reaching adulthood, you were released back into society; angry, in great emotional pain, and probably a drunkard. I’m sure you feel really bad about missing out on the subway seat in the morning now.

3. Socrates
Most people think the Greek philosopher led a great life because of all the respect given to him since his death. This, however, is untrue. To start with, Socrates was incredibly ugly. He was also short. The man fought in three wars, had no job, a wife he didn’t love, and three sons who sound like shiftless layabouts. But Socrates liked to talk, and he like to be annoying. For which he was eventually forced to drink poison. Oh, I’m sorry, are you working a crappy restaurant job?

4. Ryan White
White was a young hemophiliac who contracted HIV through a contaminated blood transfusion. His infection was discovered in 1984 and his school expelled him. While he did gain national attention and help promote understanding of HIV/AIDS, he died at 19 without graduating from high school or ever getting laid. I’m sure that last sounds callous, but how would you feel if you died only ever having kissed your Mom?

5. Joanna the Mad
She ruled Spain, her husband was king, and her son was a Holy Roman Emperor. Imagine living in opulence, but being chained to a patriarchal system where you Father hated the idea that your son from elsewhere would rule. Then end your life imprisoned and unable to come to grips with reality. You never change clothes, bathe, or eat. I’m sorry, are you reading this and late for work?

6. Stephen Hawking
So you’re the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position Newton once held. You’re one of the leading minds of your time, certainly amongst the top three in physics. You’ve made money from books and television, and you even left your wife for your hot nurse. But, you needed a nurse. And you needed her because you’re paralyzed. There’s no doubt you’re respected, but your mind is trapped in a body communicating through a robotic voice you control with your teeth and you can’t fuck the hot nurse. Remember our well-respected and good friend Stephen when you haven’t been laid in a while.

7. Mohammad Jawad
You’re fifteen years old and hanging out in Afghanistan. Things have pretty much already sucked your entire life, what with the Taliban banning dancing (amongst other things). Suddenly your country is invaded and you get picked up by some U.S. servicemen who say you tossed a grenade into their camp. Then you’re sent to a speck of land on the tip of Cuba and tortured for six years. Cuba of all places! You’re now old enough to drink in the U.S. (if you weren’t Muslim), but you probably couldn’t even hold a bottle with those shaking hands of yours. Yes, it’s a damn shame they didn’t put enough sugar in your Dunkin’ Donuts today, sugar.

8. The Ammonites
Hey, the Jordan River Valley is great. It’s some thousands of years BC, there are nice crops, good sunlight, sultry Mediterranean women, and only the occasional cattle raid. That is until a pack of scraggly, bedraggled, smelly desert wanderers come over the dunes and murder you, your family, and everyone you know because their God told them to do so. Just so they can get the land and sunlight. Yes, you just had an awkward moment with that girl you kissed a couple of weeks ago. Beats death.

9. Ferdinand Magellan
He’s got strait and two dwarf galaxies named after him, how is he worse off than you? Well, first he worked for years to get Portugal to send an expedition past South America, through the Pacific Ocean and on to the Spice Islands. They told him he could take a hike. Then he went to Spain and tried the same thing, but they were suspicious. It took them a year or two, but they finally gave in. At which point they were still suspicious because he was Portuguese. So he makes his trip, fights off mutiny and starvation, saves most of his crew across the Pacific, and then is killed in a land he doesn’t know, by someone only known to history because they killed him, and his body was never recovered. Plus he never actually made it around the world.

I ended the list at nine purely to annoy you. Number 10 would’ve been interesting, though…

Evil Madlibs, Matrix Kittie, Sloth

In celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day we here at Axes & Alleys are bringing you a very special Three Links today. What’s that you say? None of the links have anything to do with the MLK? Maybe they aren’t so special, then…Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Neo the cat is surrounded by Puppy Agents Smith!

If you don’t want to work hard at your next evil plan, try out this madlib evil plan generator.

One of our favourite animals gets its own poster. Have you seen his tie?

Crustacean Considered Kosher

Karakol, Kyrgyzstan – The serendipity of science continues in an onward direction! Children from a local village, in an attempt to play a painful prank on a visiting British scientist, have brought into the blazing beam of the lighthouse of science Pronephrops capranothus; the Mountain Lobster. The children and local villagers were denied the chance to name the lobster, however. Dr. G. Everett Spindle refused to consult them before submitting the discovery to the journal Biology.

“That’s what they get for being literal pains in the bum,” the irate Spindle responded when questioned on his decision. “I’m still unable to sit down a week later!”

The Mountain Lobster, whose scientific name roughly translates as “bastard of the goat” is not just the first lobster to be found on land. In fact, it is also the first lobster known to have hooves and to chew its cud. It is also the only known lobster to live exclusively on a diet of grass.

These discoveries have made for an influx of Jewish and other Hebraic tourists to the Karakol region on the assumption that they could now enjoy lobster like everyone else. Rabbis everywhere have cautioned that the appearance of hooves and cud-chewing does not negate the animal not being a mammal. A minority of Rabbis have posited that the Mountain Lobster could be the long-lost species of locust mentioned as edible in the Torah.

The creature is still rather difficult for non-locals to find. Though large in size (some approach nearly a meter in length), the Mountain Lobster is able to run at over 10 miles per hour. They dig extensive burrows in the mountainsides and, due to a symbiotic relationship with a slime mold, are able to blend seamlessly into the crags and crannies of the local valleys.

The benefit to the slime mold is, at present unknown, though it has been hypothesized that organism has created a culture based entirely off of wind power, which the lobster’s movement provides.

Slime molds with culture and windmills are also a biological first.

Kyrgyzstan was long ridiculed as the land of stone rolling competitions and a poor man’s Uzbekistan. This Mountain Lobster discovery, newfound tourism income, and a more prominent place on the world stage all bode well for the landlocked Republic.

Only time will tell if the Mountain Lobster becomes an income generator pending Rabbinical decision, though the fact that the lobster tastes slightly like motor oil mixed with wheat germ may preclude its eventual adoption as a popular food stuff.

Nerdbots Stuff the Rock Vase with Maggot Cheese

Just so you know, I’m typing this without a shirt on. I think it’s real professional-like. I imagine that Bob Woodward did a lot of his writing without a shirt on. Hundreds of reporters across the country must write with their shirts off. A deadline’s a deadline.

Now for Three Links:

The Nerdbots remind me of the kind of things I made as a kid. Mine were better, though, because they usually had cricket pilots.

Casu marzu is a maggot cheese. Sure, Sardinia gave us sardines and those are damn tasty, but I’m going to pass on the cheese with maggots in it. I’ll give five bucks to the first person to link me to something grosser as judged by me. Keep in mind that I have a reputation for being hard to impress when it comes to depravity, debauchery, or disgustitude. Rude behaviour is more likely to upset me than photos of torn up dead bodies or the latest sexual fetish involving kebab skewers.

Ever want a nice flower vase with the Metallica logo on it? Maybe The Misfits are your bag instead. Either way, check out these rock vases.