I sometimes think that I'm being funny or that I'm pretty sarcastic or acidic or some other -ic, and then I go and read Gawain and realize I'm an infant in a world of toddlers. The G-man really cracks my shit up. The sad part is, he probably doesn't even try. I hate him. I wanna be like him. I wanna have sex with Ever. Ok, I'm just kidding on that last one...or am I? Heh... God, I'm so pathetic.

Reading Uberhamster's latest entries about snowstorms and the way people react to them makes me think about all the different types of weather I've lived through. When I lived in Missouri, of course, we were dodging tornadoes. Now that I live in Florida, it's hurricanes and flash flooding. Guess now I just need to move to Cali so I can experience a quake and get the Mother Nature Trifecta. Like Tommy Lee Jones' character "K" says in Men In Black, "A person is smart, people are dumb...and panicky". It amazes me the way people react to the threat of bad weather. Yes, just the threat.

About two years ago, maybe it was just last year, I can't remember, South Florida was supposed to get hit by a big hurricane. As the news was following the storm, they were giving people the usual bullshit boilerplate. "If the hurricane does make landfall, get away from the windows, bend over and kiss your ass good-bye" and some such. The wife and I, basically being out of everything decide we'd better go to the store. You don't want to face the end of the world, or at least the end of your world, on an empty stomach, so we hit Winn Dixie. My jaw almost hit the floor. People were running around like looters at the L.A. riots grabbing bottled water, chips, whatever they could. The shelves looked like they'd been picked clean. And the weather people weren't even sure if the hurricane was going to make it this far. Shit. We picked up what we could and headed out to crowds of people fighting over carts and pushing and shoving. Pathetic. You'd have thought the world was ending. And what ended up happening? We had some heavy winds and rain for a few hours and then nothing. Of course, like most people in Florida, everyone who was in the store and had to have this, and couldn't survive without that, was standing in line trying to return the shit. The WD people just stood behind their counters and laughed at them. I did too. Fuckers.

We haven't had rain for quite a while here in South Florida, and have in fact, been under a water enforcement. People who have sprinklers and shit are only allowed to run them on specific days of the week. If you get caught running them on a day when you're not supposed to, you get fined. Of course, depending on who you are determines the amount of the fine. One of the news anchors for the local Fox station down here got caught watering on a no watering day and they slapped him with a big $50 fine. Of course, everyone else they caught that day, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public, got fined $500. Go figure. Luckily, we've had some rain down here the past few days.

Unfortunately, the aggregate IQ of everyone driving, except for yours truly of course, drops 20 points for every hour that it rains. So, by the 3rd day, I'm stuck on the highways with drooling, grunting neanderthals, in SUV's and BMW's. The turn signal get's replaced by various obscene hand gestures, the color of traffic lights becomes trivial and the speed limit becomes a suggestion. It's like a bad, wet version of the Road Warrior and all the actors are blue-haired little old people who can barely see over the hood ornament, or grunting, growling neanderthals who really want to see if their SUV can drive over the tops of other cars like in the commercials. Luckily, if you think quick, you can avoid these drivers. If one pulls up beside you, or vice versa, just point the other way, yell "Oook! Ooook!" and watch him slowly turn his head, then his hands, then his entire vehicle into another lane and the traffic that inhabits it. Fuckin' cromagnon, australopithicus africanus, uni-brow assholes (yes, I took anthropology in college).

Well, I think that's about it for me for today. I'm going to go home and curse at the computer for a while playing chess and then calm myself down by playing a little Planetarion. Heh, The wife is even playing. She was actually beating me until some asshole whose been playing longer decided he wanted to wipe out an easy target and turned her first planet into space dust. She's rebounded well, though. She just took it out on me and then signed up for a new account. I'm going to go nurse my wounds and relax. Till tomorrow (yeah right, who knows when I'll update again), you all take care.