Tulsa Tuesday – Snowpocalypse Edition

Mother Nature spewed out 14-inches of powder on the Tulsa metro area. Although by our collective reaction, it would feel like we got 8-10 feet of snow. Here are a few highlights from a city on the brink:

Tulsa schools have decided to close for the remainder of 2011

For a record fifth day  (I just assume, I’m too lazy to confirm), area school districts have kept students & teachers at home.

District officials said hazardous neighborhood streets, unplowed parking lots and even melting ice falling onto previously cleared walkways meant that reopening Monday was out of the question.

Neighborhood streets don’t matter here, that is why school districts have “ice routs” – the real reason Junior has another day with his Xbox is Groundskeeper Willie was off nursing a bottle of Jim Beam rather than plowing the parking lot of his school. Which is understandable, since it’s been four and a half days since the major snow fell.

At the rate local kids are missing class now, Oklahoma might be in danger of losing ground to Mississippi & Arkansas in the “race to the bottom.”

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Mayor says the streets are just fine, but stay home anyway – you deserve a break

Screw Egypt, we need Sarah Palin to make a major policy speech about the City of Tulsa’s casual approach to snow & ice treatment. Coming from Alaska, this may be the one area the dolt is actually qualified to govern – effective snow removal by municipalities.

Apparently the original plan was to haul the snow out of downtown in dump trucks, to across the River to where they hold Octoberfest. Since this idea was incredibly stupid (taking 40 minutes a trip) and, it was dropped after two days and they started plowing streets into piles like every other city in America.

But hey, we’ve got a hell of a collection of snow ready to chill some beers for next fall.

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Tulsa World proves you don’t really need the paper

Kudos to the Tulsa World for taking  off Wednesday to Friday of last week from printing papers. No better way to prove how unnecessary a printed paper is than this.  Now that the World is on the Kindle, who needs a physical paper?

By the way, love the sample screen shot you put as an advertisement – featuring Dewey’s sexy jowels on the cover – are you actually trying to get people to stay away from subscribing?

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Finally, our Tulsan of the week

Marke “Ke Ke” Hayes

Ke Ke was being aided by his neighbor 53 year old Joseph Garfield in digging his car out of snow. Ke Ke possibly had issues with his technique so he shot and killed him.

This seems like a perfectly reasonable response, particularly when someone is helping you dig your car out of snow. Surely he was smart enough to wait until the guy was finished helping before he killed him. No wait, apparently not according to the World:

Witnesses told police that after shooting the victim, Hayes hit the man with a shovel and attempted to bury him under the snow in the front yard.

Here’s to you Ke Ke our Tulsan of the Week, I hope your cell mate is mean and lonely.