I've been told the best you can do if you're in a house without a basement is climb into the bathtub with something over you like a mattress.

I have many memories of doing this in my childhood. We moved from a street nicknamed Tornado Alley (where everything BUT my first home was leveled in the Big One of '73 a couple years after we left) to a block bounded by trailer parks and fairgrounds. Thankfully we never had worse damage than an outside utility room door getting yanked away, but relatives two blocks down lost part of their roof.

I haven't watched any of the tornado footage. It's too much.

In shallow news, OH MY GOD PERSON YOU HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER. I HAVE GIVEN YOU THE CORRECT NUMBER AND TRANSFERRED YOU TWICE NOW. STOP CALLING ME.

People often make fun of trailer parks getting hit by tornadoes but that just means that the poor are in more danger in those storms.

Yep.

I watched some of that tornado footage last night; so terrifying. I am aghast at the loss of life. And yet I live in earthquake & fire country, so.

I hate my neighborhood. As my sister & I were cooling down from our run this morning (at 630 AM), we heard breaking glass, and looked around, to see a young couple fighting inside a car across the street. The girl had her door open and she was shouting but the windows were tinted and we couldn't quite see what was happening.

So we stopped and just stared, and the young man in the driver's seat leaned out the door and shouted obscenities at us (the only word I really caught was "bitch"). We announced loudly that we were really glad "things were all right over there", and then as we walked back to my house the girl got out of the car and went indoors.

The car had no license plates, and I saw no way to report what had really been a minor disturbance. But I made sure he went on past and couldn't see us before I went into my house.

Bah. Hate that shit. Hate it. I hope that girl's okay.

I have a quick question: What does the word "slut" mean to you? Does it mean "has a lot of sex" or "has a lot of indiscriminate sex" (for personal levels of discriminate) or something else?

To me it means: "Someone doesn't like that girl and is using her perceived sexuality as a way of shaming her."

I have some friends in Tuscaloosa. One set are fine (yay!) and the other set I haven't been able to reach yet. I really hope they're okay.

My family is okay (they're in N. Alabama, S. Alabama and Tennessee). Some power outages, but that's it. Thank heavens.

I agree with Consuela, but I think the general use is "has a lot of indiscriminate sex". For whatever definition of "a lot" or "indiscriminate" the user decides.

I have a quick question: What does the word "slut" mean to you? Does it mean "has a lot of sex" or "has a lot of indiscriminate sex" (for personal levels of discriminate) or something else?

Well. I think I see the second definition more widely used, definitely as a pejorative. But I also see people (mostly women, but some men) using it in the first sense, often as a re-claiming of the word.

To be totally honest about my own brain, I think of it as a pejorative, in terms of "indiscriminate" sex. I realize that's uncool; it's not up to me to decide if someone's sex is "indiscriminate." But that's how the word is lodged in my brain. I own that, but I would like to change it. I don't particularly use the word in converation, as far as I'm aware, but it still has that negative connotation when I think it.

If that makes sense.