Kalifornia

Back in the late 70s, my dad took us to California with him on a typical cable t.v. business trip, probably so he could go to a convention or something dull like that. We stayed at a large, bland hotel in L.A., with absolutely nothing original or interesting about it at all, then to the San Diego Zoo (like any other white tourist), a stop at the Chinese Theater to see the handprints of dead "stars" from their era we didn't know (I got a green plastic Buddha bank there, because it was either that as a souvenir or the squashed penny thing) and then my dad wanted to see some western-flavored crap, like the stuffed Triggers he liked as a kid, because he always wanted to be a cowboy. 

We got free t-shirts (mine reads "mighty Mouse" in this photo) and might have had an achingly generic time, if we hadn't insisted on tacking on a visit to one very special editor of cool magazines for kids (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2011/10/monsters-inc.html), because we wrote ahead of time and had our parents arrange it for us. We were down like that: you gotta be savvy New York kids to have a good time, you know? And we were hungry, thirsty lil' devils at that. You can see I'm wearing my brother's hand-me-down jeans (I did not grow up with money) with a hastily-bought and standout gay-colored visor, because I couldn't fucking stand the unrelenting sun out there. I also made my mom buy me some crappy (and also very gay) kiddie shades at the zoo, because I was absolutely miserable: it was hot, crowded, boring, and always fucking sunny. Every day was exactly like the day before it: dry as a bone and dusty. We hated Southern California with a passion that has not dulled with time or age.

Which brings me back to the gripping cranky tone of this piece, because every fucking year we have to see on t.v. how your summer is "THE HOTTEST EVER!", with records temps (!!!), and raging wildfires!! But, guess what asshole? We fucking know you have fires every year because (and this is key) WE KNOW THAT YOU CHOOSE TO LIVE IN A DESERT. That's right, some asshole New Yorker has finally told you the truth, because it's been your truth since well, the last Ice Age: you live in a fucking desert. I promise not to remind you that water is wet, and that it snows here in wintertime, if you decide to finally shut the fuck up about your idiotic choices, and move the fuck on from the glaringly obvious fact that you have stupidly chosen to NOT live near freshwater that's easily replenishable, and/or build your stupid fucking McMansion on stilts smartly built on a precarious cliff-side that either burns in the summer or floods in the spring....each and every fucking year.

So, that would be a resounding "NO!" to the age-old question of "Do we feel bad?" as Northerners forced to watch dry grass burn on some fucking semi-arid hillside every year, at the exact same time. You have the option to move, like any sane human does, by following available and easily sustainable water sources, like humanity has done for millennia. We also don't feel bad that corrupt assholes with a douchey Euro sense of self-entitlement want to drain Lake Mead like it's their g-ddamn bathtub, because dicks like you in Vegas want hookers, blow, and air conditioning on near-constant demand in a nonstop underground twilight that's your fucking compulsive gambling dysfunction du jour. Get with the program, and fuck you. 

Movement in Blue (and White)

This was the morning sky after a day of tornadoes that swept across Dutchess County into Connecticut. You can see the two systems blowing across each other, the one sweeping out the swirling clouds systems that had the potential to funnel, and dispersing it into vapor. Awesome. Pearl River, NY (June 2015)

The Vortex

Whoa! Check out those clouds, dude! Totally "Stairway to Heaven".

Lately, what with the common regularity of Doomsday predictions now fully realized and acted out daily on t.v. and in movies, we've become highly sensitized to news weather deliberately, in order to boost ratings through hooking viewers on the active creation of fear, which propels the vulnerable amongst us to tune in angst, seeking solace from those Doctors of Weather (called "Meteorologists") in some ritualistic pattern of fear followed by soothing comfort, the balm to our collective anxieties. Maybe news forecasters can wear big, peaked hats painted with stars, like some hammy old actor playing Nostradamus to the hilt, so we get the point more readily!

It's true, we did actively melt the polar ice caps due to our own selfish neglect, but that's hardly what one could classify as "new" (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/05/as-we-know-it.html). What is new is our collective awareness of how that neglect has caused fires to rage uncontrolled, waters to overflow in streams, and tornadoes to rip through towns in increasing frequencies of violent intensity. There must be strong language to match!

More beautifully lit clouds. Gorgeous!

Enter the evil "Vortex", what was once dubbed the "Polar Vortex" in winter (to describe a fucking snowstorm, or a heavy downfall of snow once called a "blizzard", a common occurrence in the Northeastern U.S. and the Northern Hemisphere), now re-purposed for the summertime (with its pesky regularly occurring thunderstorms, also common in the Northeast) as simply, The Vortex, like some villain dressed in all-black from a mythical fairy tale fable.

I do understand the challenges behind selling something as banal as a heavy summer rainstorm, (because I'm a publishing professional, and selling something as simple as a good diet combined with regular exercise in book form must be fashioned anew with some fucked up gimmick, like the Neanderthals), and while I do understand it is hard to make that seem "new", I really don't fucking appreciate a thunderstorm artificially heightened to some weird new height as a fake movie villain (which, once again, is really weird, man, and you should totally know upfront that I'm on to you, so, enough already), because it's incredible as it is: a beautiful, and sometimes scary, act of nature.  
See it, and wonder.

After the cloud vortex, the sun sets beautifully.

Bravo! Another winning performance on Planet Earth! Shows over, folks.