Day 2662

Around midnight last night I was awakened by the sound of tornado sirens. I went outside and the first thing I saw was the moon. The sky was clear and there was no wind at all. I checked the weather radar on my iPad and there weren't even any clouds in the vicinity. WTF? The sirens finally stopped and I went back to bed. It seemed weird that the city was testing the warning system at midnight, but life is full of weird things these days. About five minutes later the sirens resumed again. This didn't seem like a test.

I turned on the television and there was nothing about the warning sirens at all. As I flipped through the local channels, it quickly became obvious that everything was on autopilot. Most of the stations were just replaying programs they had already run earlier in the day. I turned on the radio and discovered that local radio doesn't even even exist anymore. Everything was just a syndicated satellite feed. By this time I had been listening to the sirens for about an hour and still didn't have a clue what was going on. Local news was non-existent.

I had never heard the tornado sirens go on this long, so I was very curious about what was happening. Were we being nuked? Had the zombie apocalypse begun? I just didn't know. It finally dawned on me to turn on the computer and look at Facebook. Bingo. Facebook was a beehive of activity. Apparently all my Facebook friends are night owls and everybody was talking about the sirens.

There were lots of theories. Had a disgruntled employee set off the sirens set off the sirens as his final revenge after being fired? Had the Russians hacked into the City of Dallas servers? One jokester said that North Korea had launched a nuke in the direction of Dallas and at least ten people seemed to believe him. Finally I found a post from the city's Emergency Management Department saying that there had been a major system malfunction and that everyone should quit calling 911. Ironically, I heard the next morning on the news that the warning system actually had been hacked. Maybe it was the Russians after all.

All this strange activity got me thinking. The world has definitely changed. If this had happened ten or fifteen years ago, you could have turned on the television and listened to a local reporter explain the situation as it was happening. Now, we all get our news on Facebook. The trouble with Facebook is that most of the news is wrong. Even a small local incident that wouldn't even be known outside of Dallas generated a fair share of fake news.

Even though the sirens were loud and blared for over two hours, I was the only one who woke up. Janet and both dogs slept through the whole thing. I hope there's never a real emergency in the middle of the night, because it's going to be hell getting everybody up.

Dot seemed stronger today and was much more active. I was sleepier today for obvious reasons. The produce guy at the grocery store told me that there would be a new shipment of blueberries tomorrow. I didn't believe him. All in all it was a pretty normal Saturday. It just got off to a strange start.

Cooper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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