So…did you know that if you’re in St. Louis, you’re supposed to die from a tornado tonight?  There have been warnings all over the place since this morning, with the entire storm system not supposed to leave the news station’s viewing area until after 10pm.

Well.  That is just great.

I’m so sick of these goddamn tornadoes.  What’s going on with them, anyway?  I don’t remember having so many of them when I was younger, but in the past few years this shit has been crazy.  I’ve been in my basement three times this past year.  Have you ever been in my basement?  Do you know what it’s like?  It’s not a nice basement.  It’s got a concrete floor, lots of spiderwebs, and it smells like mold.  So a regular basement, I guess, at least where I come from.  I mean, I can mess around on the Internet no matter which room I’m in, but it’s the getting everything down to the basement that’s the problem.  This mostly means the cats, both of which are very heavy and very resistant to me saving their lives.

Yeah, I know it’s not cool to go to the basement.  I know this because I’m always the only one down there.  I can hear my neighbors walking around in their apartment like it’s no big deal, like the sirens aren’t alternating between screaming at us and telling us in a robot voice to get to the lowest possible level of a substantial structure.  You know what, bitches?  You can just stay up there.  I’m going to sit in the basement and worry about a tree falling on my brand new pre-owned car and then, less materialistically, about all the windows blowing out and being flayed to death by flying shards of glass.  Clearly, you have other priorities.

I used to think that in order to procreate, a person should have to pass an IQ test.  I see now that this may have been a bit presumptuous.  Some people just don’t do well on tests, and others might not have a technically high IQ but they’re functionally capable, decent people, and this is usually enough.

Now I think that in order to procreate, a person should have to pass a Basic Skills test.  Kind of like the standardized test they administered during my senior year of high school.  The ACTs were already done so there was nothing harder they could throw at us, so we had this ridiculous test that required very little brainpower but was apparently sent back to the military for recruitment purposes.  For months, I had recruiters knocking on my parents’ door to tell me about maps and shit.

While my remaining problems with authority prevented me from having any interest in joining the military, I still think there are a few non-intellectual things that should be required of anyone who wishes to have children of their own.  It’s never a guarantee that your child will inherit your nose or your voice or your aptitude for math, but at the very least, you should be able to teach them some useful things that could contribute to everyone’s continued survival, or, you know, just make your continued existence a lot easier on the rest of us.

For example:

• Get to the basement in the event of a tornado
• Cook a potato
• Change a tire
• Build, sustain, and control a small fire
• Navigate a simple automated phone tree
• Not put feminine products in the toilet
• Maintain a bank account
• Understand the difference between the common cold and a life-threatening strain of influenza
• STOP TEXTING WHILE YOU’RE FUCKING DRIVING
• Operate a screwdriver (Phillips or flathead)
• Do laundry
• Google

See?  It’s not a hard list.  It’s certainly not complete, either, but I’m preoccupied by tornadoes right now and can’t possibly be giving out all of my advice.