I love NASCAR racing, and by that I mean I FUCKING LOVE NASCAR RACING. I've been addicted to the sport ever since being forced to watch the 1999 Pepsi 400 from Daytona, thanks to the fact my grandmother's house in Mississippi could only receive 2 channels. That night I watched a "washed up" former champion of the sport race his black Chevy from the back of the field all the way to the front at 200 miles an hour, only to have the win kept out of his grasp by a late caution. I was instantly a fan of Dale Earnhardt and NASCAR.

If any of you know anything about NASCAR you know Daytona is the sport's most storied track, and of course the yearly running of the Daytona 500 is close to auto racing's biggest event, eclipsed only slightly by the Indianapolis 500. So imagine my dismay when the area I live in (only a few hours away from Daytona) began experiencing adverse weather on the day of the race. And not only that, but the storm system hit us at the start of the race. I was worried at first about the race being washed out. But the track was safe. My viewing experience however was in serious jeopardy.

Now people, after the events of Hurricane Katrina and the tornado that destroyed Enterprise Alabama I'm all for early warnings and all that shit. But what the local weather fuckers did to my race was uncalled for and unnecessary. See, our local Fox affiliate didn't want to put on their own news broadcasts, so they made a deal with the local ABC affiliate to carry their news services. So half my race went out the window because a station I wasn't watching wanted to warn me about weather that wasn't affecting me. The asshats started breaking in while the storm system wasn't even in the viewing area, meaning the people that needed to be warned weren't seeing any of it. Not only that, they kept breaking in, and kept breaking in, for a fucking hour before the storm was close enough to us to even matter.

Once the storm was close enough, they had the scroll at the bottom and the "warning map" on the left side - so literally a quarter of my TV screen was obscured by weather warnings. Very easy to read and understand weather warnings. But I guess the ABC affiliate (WTVM, Channel 9 in Columbus, GA) assumed all us rednecks watching the cars turn left at 200 mph were either illiterate, or so attached to our trailer homes we wouldn't seek shelter they had to break in for 10 minutes every 2 to warn us of our impending doom. I missed over half the fucking race thanks to their overkill trying to save us poor, pathetic hicks.

Well let me tell you something, Kurt Shmitz - the majority of us can tell the orange and red parts on that HUGE FUCKING MAP. We can read the scroller, hear the NOAA guy in his Stephen Hawking voice tell us the "sheriff is near"*, and hear the 800 tornado sirens we have in the area. And I wouldn't have minded you breaking in a few times to extrapolate on the storm and showing us the radar. However, we ABSOLUTELY DO NOT NEED TO SEE YOU FOR 40 MINUTES OF EVERY HOUR GIVING US A SEMINAR ON HOW WEATHER SYSTEMS FORM AND LETTING US KNOW HOW MUCH IT MOVED IN THE LAST 30 SECONDS! Tell us how bad the storm is and to stick our heads between our legs to kiss our asses goodbye, and then GET THE FUCK OFF THE SCREEN! If I wanted to attend a class on meteorology I would get a grant for being awesome and enroll in one of the 4 colleges (2 of which are university level) within 20 minutes of my fucking house. Make it 5 if I want to drive more than 25 minutes.

You assholes insulted my intelligence with your actions, and ruined my favorite sporting event of the year. And I'm not the only person who felt this way. About halfway through the broadcast Kurt started apologizing to "those watching the Daytona 500" and promising to "make this one quick". Well guess what, Bucky Beaver; if you had an inkling that your stupid "Triple Doppler 9 Storm Team 8000" wasn't the best thing on earth you wouldn't have been receiving death threats. Spending that much time on storm warnings was unnecessary, and you deserved all the hate mail you got, dickface. We did not need to see you throw it to your pimply faced sidekick, nor the black Bruce Lee. All you had to do was show a quick radar update, tell everyone to run for the hills, and get the fuck out of the way. And better yet, you could have waited for the fucking commercials to do that! Between that and the ridiculous amount of space you were already taking up on the screen with the map and scroller, I think the mouth breathers you assumed we were could make an informed decision about whether to ride it out or run to the basement of the old folks home.

So now I have yet another reason to despise the local media. The rock station sucks, the TV stations suck, and the newspapers have more retractions than a diarrhea riddled sphincter. So Channel 9, if you didn't get the hint during the race, here it is clearly:

I want laps 21 to 132 and two hours of my life back. Fuck you Channel 9.