Saturday, October 29, 2011

It's raining... WHALES???

Even though it was almost 41 years ago I remember this news story way too vividly for my own good.  I think that I actually blew milk out of my nose when I watched it the first time.

DATELINE:  1970, Florence, Oregon.  BTW, at that time Florence was a small village on the Pacific coast where you could literally walk out of your front door, cross the street, walk across the sand dunes and be in the ocean in less than 300 feet.

So, one morning the village wakes up to a rather vile, over powering stench.   Shortly thereafter a number of beach walkers discovered the culprit:  an 8-ton, 45-foot dead whale had washed up on the beach and was rapidly (RAPIDLY!!!) decomposing.  EWW!!!  Within a matter of hours a horde of onlookers and slew of news crews from Portland had arrived to "admire" the disaster.  Hmmm, what to do with this nightmare.  Bury it?  No, it would only wash up again in the tide.  Drag it back out to sea?  Nope, it just pulled apart when they tried that.  EWW!!!  Cut it up for disposal?  No one in their right mind volunteered for that cluster fuck!!!  Hey, I know!  Let's blow it up!!!  WHAT???  Yet, that solution won approval...

The DOT was called in with some backhoes, some forklifts, a half a TON of dynamite and an additional half a ton of idiots to supervise the insanity.   The beach side of the whale was hiked up and dynamite was packed underneath it with idea being to blow the majority of the thing back out to sea and leave the "smaller parts" left to the natural beach scavengers to take care of.  ROLTFLMFAO!!!  OK, whatever, sounds good on paper...  Why does it always sound good "on paper"???

So, with the explosives set, the crowd is moved back a safe distance of a quarter of a mile and the blast is let loose.  What happened next can only be described as unholy and truly unhuman.  The blast rivaled Nagasaki in it's attempt.  The assembled crowd was cheering.  The newscaster was overjoyed.  And then the unthinkable happened.  It started raining whale.  Everywhere.  Yes, they had all been taught a very valuable lesson...  just like sheep, whales do not fly as much as they, how shall I put this...  plummet.  Spectators were running for their lives.  The camera crew was pummeled.  The newscaster was covered in decomposing whale parts.  EWW!!!   And then they cut to the parking lot several blocks away.  Not a pretty sight.  Multiple cars had been smashed beyond recognition by sofa sized pieces of whale parts.  And I am talking SERIOUSLY smashed.  I wasn't sure how to view this mayhem.  Was it "It's Raining Men" from the Weather Girls gone horridly awry or that chapter from the "Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" about the inter galactic interstate by-pass reconstruction thing come way too true.  It was whale "goo" on a scale way too much for me to even consider...  Oh, the humanity!!!

Think I'm kidding?  Google up YouTube, do a search for "1970, exploding whale, Oregon" and see what you find.  I CANNOT make this shit up!!!

Now... for those of you out there with even a stronger sense of stomach, stay on YouTube and search for "exploding whale Taiwan".  Other than that it involves a larger whale, a flatbed truck, a crowded intersection and couple of mini-malls, that is all I'm gonna say.  Happy flukes to you...

Again, I just can't make this crap up...

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