I'm all fakakta this morning because the alarm didn't go off. I woke up on my own at 7:50. I'm supposed to be at work at 8:00. It was like a Dane Cook moment: "I'm LATE for the thing I HATE!" Fortunately nobody comes over and stabs me in the jaw if I roll in at at 8:30. And Joe was still able to shower and make it to work on time.
But I'm pissed about waking up late because I wanted to watch as much coverage of Hurricane Katrina's landfall as possible. I'm an inch-deep science geek when it comes to things like space and weather and plate tectonics, so the pairing of natural disasters and television is a beautiful one. That shit is scary and titillating and awe-inspiring. Human suffering is a sad and unfortunate by-product, but you have to marvel at nature's utterly ridiculous capacity for destruction. I do, anyway.
Even though I feel awful for the people who will be impacted, major televised weather events still do it for me: the doomsday predictions by helmet-haired anchors, coverage of pre-event preparations (flashlights and bottled water flying off store shelves, highways jammed in one direction due to mandatory evacations), the exhaustive repetition of every new visual, soundbyte and morsel of data, the radar maps and projections and consulting of federal agency experts. And the networks really do their job at those times... I'm locked in, flipping channels, absorbing the same information fifty different ways, adrenaline zipping through my bloodstream like an F1 racecar.
Hurricanes, tornadoes, nor'easters, blizzards, ice storms, whatever it is, I'm there, I'm watching it. I even glue myself to the TV in the winter when they're predicting a routine snowstorm; they always create this stir like we're in some sort of unprecedented danger. Stay indoors! Be prepared to wake up to the presence of a strange and potentially deadly white substance coating outdoor surfaces! Take appropriate precautions! If the area where I live is in the ring with the highest totals, I feel a surge of "YES. We're gonna get SLAMMED." Because if you're going to get snow, why not get the MOST snow and then your town gets on the news because like, a tree fell and dented a car roof.
The best, of course, are the dramatic reports by windblown, be-slickered meteorological field reporters during the actual event. The wind is howling and they're being pelted with sideways precipitation, all to show us a few plows going by, or a breached seawall with a few vessels playing bumper boats. The best is when the cameraman cleans the lens during a live broadcast, huge fingers or the sleeve of a sweatshirt smearing the view. It kills me that they go out there and do that, and that I get to sit at home and watch. Even now I'm fantasizing about how later on I'm going to go to the gym and watch the Weather Channel as I pound the treadmill. I'm probably going to do 2 hours on that thing. Then I'm going to go home and watch MORE.
But I'm pissed about waking up late because I wanted to watch as much coverage of Hurricane Katrina's landfall as possible. I'm an inch-deep science geek when it comes to things like space and weather and plate tectonics, so the pairing of natural disasters and television is a beautiful one. That shit is scary and titillating and awe-inspiring. Human suffering is a sad and unfortunate by-product, but you have to marvel at nature's utterly ridiculous capacity for destruction. I do, anyway.
Even though I feel awful for the people who will be impacted, major televised weather events still do it for me: the doomsday predictions by helmet-haired anchors, coverage of pre-event preparations (flashlights and bottled water flying off store shelves, highways jammed in one direction due to mandatory evacations), the exhaustive repetition of every new visual, soundbyte and morsel of data, the radar maps and projections and consulting of federal agency experts. And the networks really do their job at those times... I'm locked in, flipping channels, absorbing the same information fifty different ways, adrenaline zipping through my bloodstream like an F1 racecar.
Hurricanes, tornadoes, nor'easters, blizzards, ice storms, whatever it is, I'm there, I'm watching it. I even glue myself to the TV in the winter when they're predicting a routine snowstorm; they always create this stir like we're in some sort of unprecedented danger. Stay indoors! Be prepared to wake up to the presence of a strange and potentially deadly white substance coating outdoor surfaces! Take appropriate precautions! If the area where I live is in the ring with the highest totals, I feel a surge of "YES. We're gonna get SLAMMED." Because if you're going to get snow, why not get the MOST snow and then your town gets on the news because like, a tree fell and dented a car roof.
The best, of course, are the dramatic reports by windblown, be-slickered meteorological field reporters during the actual event. The wind is howling and they're being pelted with sideways precipitation, all to show us a few plows going by, or a breached seawall with a few vessels playing bumper boats. The best is when the cameraman cleans the lens during a live broadcast, huge fingers or the sleeve of a sweatshirt smearing the view. It kills me that they go out there and do that, and that I get to sit at home and watch. Even now I'm fantasizing about how later on I'm going to go to the gym and watch the Weather Channel as I pound the treadmill. I'm probably going to do 2 hours on that thing. Then I'm going to go home and watch MORE.
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