I think the news media is undergoing Hurricane-Withdrawal Syndrome.  They had such a good string going.  All the reporters in place.  Able to turn rookie hurricane-reporters into seasoned vets in just one summer-fall.  Getting the stance down to stand up against the thrashing, tackling winds.  Developing hurricane-resistance muscles in parts of their bodies where they never even had an inkling of muscle before.   Knowing when to invoke the buzzphrase “eyewall” and attempting to predict the conjunction of “eyewall’ with “landfall” with the precision that an assassin might bring to a target in a scope.  Getting so cocky that they could cast contemning aspersions upon curious residents venturing  out into true force winds (to see the hurricane and  the spectacle of them!) even while they stand there like idiots themselves wearing red and waiting for the bull to charge.  Yep, they have the hurrifunk DTs while they yet hope against welfare for yet another storm to swing by, hit Florida, and make it an all-time record-breaking year.  For then they can boast not only that they ‘Survived 2004” AND “Defied the Eyewalls” but that they were the Ringleaders of the Greatest Hurricane Circus of all time.

 

 

Now, these reporters seem really to take tremendous pride in confronting the storms and avoiding a knockdown wind swell.  But I'd really rather see them, or at least one once, swept up, knocked down, and spanked to the ground -or- smacked up against the side of a roofless garage  while still hanging on to the microphone and groaning a surprised “ohhhhhh”.  What, after all, is their rational for acting like participants in an episode of Jackass?  Well, they claim, getting flogged by the storm is the only way they have to convey to audience America the true ferocity of the menace on our shores.  Really?  Well, what if they just hung piñatas out and kept the cameras on them and we could all wait for their limbs to be torn off and the goodies to spill (and fly!)  Or they could strategically position an ensemble of wind instruments in harm’s way and we could gauge by the pitch of sustained notes the magnificence of the hurricane-jazzman’s squeal.  Heh, but what I'd really like to see is the adoption of a convention whereby these reporting hurricane-defiers dress in tear-away wardrobes that are rated precisely for various windspeeds.  Thereby when the wind reaches 70 mph, their parka gets torn away.  At 80 mph, shirts depart like kites taking flight.  At 90 mph, slacks are stripped of all seams and voyage like vagabonds hopping a train and disappearing into the night.  Left then only in underwear, at 100 mph, stripped nekkid, bare.  At which point they can then be tossed bars of super-sudsy soap (watching them try to catch them will be illustrative of nature’s fury, too), suds up, and we can all marvel as they become our heroes: true death-defying living bubble blowing machines.

I'm being asked with increasing frenzy and frequency if I'm going to vote in the coming presidential election.

Yeah, I'm voting.  But not for Busch (beer) or Kerry w(h)ine.