Thursday, August 04, 2011

Everybody just lie on the floor and stay calm. You too, Contessa.

Some kids at the Virginia Tech campus called the cops and said they saw a guy sort of carrying something that might be a gun, maybe. New York City network newsrooms immediately went into lockdown, with the kind of wall-to-wall coverage you normally only get when we're invading Iraq again. I half expected MSNBC to whip up special "Gunman On Campus" theme music.

15 comments:

T.Stahl said...

Yup, heard about it on AFN-Stuttgart. I was on my way from work to my favorite arms dealer and thought to myself, 'I hope it's just someone CCWing and I hope if he is they won't find him.'

TJIC said...

> I half expected MSNBC to whip up special "Gunman On Campus" theme music.

Uh...believe it or not, my youngest brother works at MSNBC and specifically is a video and sound editor for the "bumpers" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(broadcasting) ].

...so if there is "Gunman on Campus" music, he'll be the one to edit it to length and slot it in with some computer graphics and a voice over by Dee Snider of Twisted Sister.

No, I'm not joking.

(a) Dee does voiceover work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dee_Snider , and

(b) my brother directs enough business to him that he gets a fruit basket from Dee every Christmas

Tam said...

TJIC,

"Uh...believe it or not, my youngest brother works at MSNBC"

That must make for lively conversation around the dinner table at Thanksgiving. :D

Freiheit said...

TJIC - Thank you. Thats all I needed today was a mental association between "Dee Snider" and "fruit basket"

Anonymous said...

Must be budget time for the VT police.

Shootin' Buddy

North said...

My alert level is elevated to shartruss.. shartruce.. chartroose...

OK, back to plaid.

SoupOrMan said...

From what I've seen of daytime news I'm guessing that their alert levels are as such:

1. Brow-Furrowing Concerned Worry: Remain calm, all is well until after the Metamucil and Liberty Medical ads are over.

2. Car-Chase Live Feed Drama Agitation: there's a car down there and it's driving! You can tell it's bad from the fact all the other cars are avoiding it!

3. Missing Baby/ Blonde Teenage Girl From Rich Family Frantic Prurience: Just how badly has this obvious victim been raped and murdered? We'll show you our experts' best guesses and most creative drawings after this batch of Ensure commercials.

4. The Evil Republicans Just Ordered Lunch Near-Orgasmic Horror: First they throw YOUR grandmother off a cliff and now they're eating YOUR FOOD! Stay tuned, we need a cigarette or something!

5. Please Tell Us It's A Real School Shooting Trouser-Filling Bowel-Voiding Terror: Caution! Don't look into the killer's eyes or your blood will explode with ebola and AIDS while on fire, even if you only see him through your tv set! Trust us! We're the midday news!

6. War, Plague, Famine, Death, or Other Assorted End of the World: Okay, we totally got caught unprepared by this. We're not sure what to do here. Report it? Report what? What is this "report" thing? News? Well, it's significant, but is it really news compared to the president of ExxonMobil making TOTALLY OUTRAGEOUS MONEY? Call us when we can put a human face to the suffering, preferably one that's a missing teenage girl.

Or is that too cynical of a guess?

God, Gals, Guns, Grub said...

Just more fiction by the main stream media... as we all know... VT doesn't allow guns on campus...

Dann in Ohio

Bob B. said...

will these clowns ever wake up and take responsibility for their own lives?.......kinda doubt it. what a shame.

Old NFO said...

Sigh... Gun free zone = target rich environment for the bad guys

Bubblehead Les. said...

I'm down to checking the Blogs and skimming through the news straight from AP and the BBC pretty much now. Seems to be cutting the Electric Bill down a bit, also. And I don't have to listen to the Blather of Talking Heads, who are getting their news mostly from the AP and the BBC anyway. Cuts out the middlemen.

Chas S. Clifton said...

All student should be issued Slap Hats (TM) in university colors for self defense.

Crotalus (Dont Tread on Me) said...

That "Gunman on Campus" theme music... that wouldn't be "Danse Macabre", would it?

Mikael said...

Is it bad if the theme music I'm hearing in my head is the Benny Hill theme?

Randy said...

I'm thinking some Boomtown Rats would be appropriate bumper music.