Frankenstorm

I figure I'll write this while I still have juice in my laptop and a functioning light with which to see it.

Though I admit I'm skeptical about Sandy.

I grew up in earthquake territory, where if disaster is going to strike, it will do so with no warning. No news bits every 20 seconds sensationalizing and politicizing the approaching catastrophe. No lines pouring out the doors and winding around the corners of hardware stores. No hiding your kids. No hiding your wives.

Not to mention the constant weather graphs tracing the path of the storm. Are we really supposed to make sense of those? They look like a kindergartner's fingerpaintings. Perhaps they were created in Paint.

  

Looks like I just landed myself a job with Good Morning, America. I didn't realize what a natural meteorologist I was until now. 

Oh no! We're being attacked by fake spider web Halloween decorations!

Oh no! We're being attacked by a rogue black light dance party!

No but for real, I'd so much rather not know about impending disaster. I prefer to live my life in blissful ignorance, if you will. That is the West Coast mentality in a nutshell. Roll with it. Oh it snowed a billion feet? Ain't no thing. Forest fires? S'mores for dinner! If my memory doesn't fail me, school was canceled ONCE in my life and that was because it was 40 below and too cold for the buses to start.

Here, all it takes is the POSSIBILITY of a hellish storm to shut down functioning society. I write from the comfort of my bedroom window sill because the entire federal government canceled work today. And without them, my office really serves no purpose.

It's raining outside. That's it. Am I missing something? Rain like this would never shut down businesses in Southern California. And if it did, it would be because people are out swimming in it because it rains maybe twice a year (in the Inland Empire, at least, where my parents live).

Anyway, should Hurricane Sandy worsen drastically and you don't hear from me for a few days, I'll be in the basement, surviving off the industrial-size crate of VitaWater and triple-ply toilet paper. All set!