One Reason For Keeping Your Creationism Books on the Bottom Shelf

Posted by jrosenhouse on November 11, 2010
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That way, if you have a flood in your basement that completely submerges the bottom shelves of your bookcases, you don’t lose anything especially valuable.

Early on Monday morning a water main burst in front of my house. This caused water to back up through the toilet and shower drain in my basement, leading ultimately to close to two feet of water covering everything. Fun! I discovered the flood at 3:30 in the morning, the clear moral being that it’s very important to keep eccentric hours. Had I been asleep like a normal person the water could have been in my living room before I noticed.

Never fear, though! It was only a very small portion of my extensive creationism collection that was destroyed, and I am sure that the volumes that were lost did not include anything that is not repeated in countless other books.

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Comments

  1. #1 Michael D. Barton, FCD
    November 11, 2010

    Any books being destroyed is a loss… sorry to hear that.

  2. #2 Josh Rosenau
    November 11, 2010

    Oof, sorry to hear that, dude. If you have anything in need of replacement, I may be able to rustle something up for you.

  3. #3 Ctenotrish
    November 11, 2010

    Oh, I feel your pain ….. my basement flooded this summer (heavy rains, poor drainage) and I am still working on getting the basement back in shape. I keep my books upstairs, mostly, and only lost a few random books that I had stored in a crate (which leaked) downstairs. Anyway, may you dry out mold-free, and may you never lose a book worth something. :)

  4. #4 AL
    November 12, 2010

    Lose any books on Flood geology?

  5. #5 zackoz
    November 12, 2010

    Horrors, my sympathies, it’s a nasty feeling that I recall only too well, especially when you start noticing strange wriggly things in the water.

  6. #6 feedayeen
    November 12, 2010

    Gen 9:11 “And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.”

    Yeah, sorry, I couldn’t resist.

  7. #7 nice_marmot
    November 12, 2010

    Gen 9:11 “And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.”

    Yeah, sorry, I couldn’t resist.

    “And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water.” Numbers 5:23

    “When confronted by unfortunate circumstances, forget about it. You can’t be worrying about that shit. Life goes on.” Duderonomy 1:11

  8. #8 Charles Sullivan
    November 12, 2010

    Did it burst from cold temperatures, or what?

  9. #9 blf
    November 12, 2010

    Did it burst from cold temperatures, or what?

    The plan was for the ninja butterflies to invade the house via the basement drains, but they misunderstood the instruction “hold your breath” as “exhale really hard”. The old pipe either couldn’t stand the pressure or else simply burst from laughing.

    Teh Great Sky Faeries magic in wonky ways.

  10. #10 Sigmund
    November 12, 2010

    I had the same problem. It turned out to be leaky fountains of the deep.
    By the way, I bet your first reaction was to say “Oh Noah!!”

  11. #11 Jason Rosenhouse
    November 12, 2010

    My first reaction was mostly astonishment. All subsequent reactions involved profanity.

    It’s unclear, at least to me, what actually caused the break. The fellow from the water company told me they have a lot of these breaks around this time of year. Apparently, it’s a combination of old pipes, and radical changes in temperature between day and night that cause the ground to shift quite a bit.

  12. #12 Clam
    November 12, 2010

    So sorry to hear about your loss. I used to live in a river valley in England. Had some flood near-misses. Now I’ve built a bungalow of top of a mountain in Cyprus (you see, I WORRY about global warming!) About as flood-proof for my 4000-odd books as one can get. And we’ve had no rain since June. Oh dear, bush-fires, anyone?

  13. #13 Bob Carlson
    November 12, 2010

    I discovered the flood at 3:30 in the morning, the clear moral being that it’s very important to keep eccentric hours. Had I been asleep like a normal person the water could have been in my living room before I noticed.

    I’m curious to know What were you able to do at 3:30 that prevented the situation from being worse that it would have been otherwise?

  14. #14 MKR
    November 12, 2010

    Headline: “Creationists Drown in Flood.”

  15. #15 MartinDH
    November 12, 2010

    @Bob Carson, re #13:
    Call a 24hr plumber who’ll come over lickety-split and install a working sump pump to replace the one that failed…at least that’s what happened when I got a foot of water in the basement. Oh yes…I forgot the $500 bill.

  16. #16 Bayesian Bouffant, FCD
    November 15, 2010

    Ironic that this should happen to a flood denier such as yourself.
    ;>

  17. #17 James Sweet
    November 15, 2010

    It’s unclear, at least to me, what actually caused the break. The fellow from the water company told me they have a lot of these breaks around this time of year. Apparently, it’s a combination of old pipes, and radical changes in temperature between day and night that cause the ground to shift quite a bit.

    Yep. Dunno what part of the country you hail from, but here in upstate NY, it’s disturbingly common. For some reason, the complex where I work seems to be particularly prone to it. In the decade or so I’ve worked there, there’s been probably 4 or 5 main breaks that affected the complex. (No flooding, but some buildings you couldn’t drink the water for a while)

    If you’re concerned about it, you can get these little water detector thingies that beep like a motherfucker when they get submerged. A friend of mine has some that look like little frogs. heh… I haven’t bothered — in my current house I have a walk-out basement that continues out downhill, so it would be difficult to get actually flooding, and in my previous house the basement would occasionally flood a few inches but that place was so nasty I didn’t care — but it’s probably not a bad idea.

  18. #18 cure for candida
    November 16, 2010

    what a tragic day I felt sorry about that. Ya it happens to me 2 years ago but only a lil bit of water in my basement.

  19. #19 Tom
    November 16, 2010

    Perhaps this is proof of intelligent design by an almighty creator. A creator smart enough to recognize a really dumb ideas.

    As you mentioned if you have read one, you have read them all.

  20. #20 rmp
    November 17, 2010

    My inlaws had a flooded basement a couple of years ago. A pretty big flash flood that destroyed much. There house (like yours if I’m reading you correctly), the water came up from the floor drains and the toilet. After the 5 feet of water finally went back down the floor drain (several days) we began the cleanup. As we shoveled the brown smelly goop up for disposal, we just kept calling it mud. Mud, mud, mud mud mud. Holy shit there was a lot of mud.

  21. #21 keithb
    November 19, 2010

    @21:
    Pray.
    8^)