It’s more than necessary, now that half the country looks like Detroit…

     Southern California never gets much in the way of rain.  At least, not in the way that the rest of the country gets it.  For the most part, “rain” to SoCal is pretty much considered “heavy fog,” or “drizzle” in an extreme case.  But over the last few days, they’ve experienced a normal, every-day, East Coast sort of rain which has caused numerous traffic accidents, evacuation planning and mass hysteria.

     I remember a particular rain back in the early 90’s which would have been considered a “light shower” to Knoxville.  However, the occurrence in SoCal was so foreign that it prompted numerous news reports.
     A local radio show — the station and location escapes me at the present — did a spoof news report about the incident.
     “Sir, can you tell me what happened here?” asked the fake reported.
     “Yeah, man, like… There was all this water in the air?”
     “Yes?”
     “Then it landed…”

     The specific storm included up to an inch of accumulation, thunder, lightning, and winds in excess of five miles per hour.  A woman on Rodeo Drive experienced water so deep that it reached nearly half way up her stiletto heel.  The State of California was immediately contacted to compensate her for the trauma.

     But the devastation of nearly twenty years ago was not restricted simply to California.  Thousand of activists flooded then-President George H.W. Bush’s office with demands that he take control of the disaster, which left Southern California’s homeless population demoralized and wet.
     Much like Hurricane Katrina, which left nearly one million homeless without homes, nearby Nevada was subsequently inundated with an influx of storm survivors trying to find their beloved boxes.

     I only hope that the events of past are not repeated during this crippling catastrophe, and that FEMA will respond accordingly in their attempts to offer shelter to the millions affected by this light rain.

A good friend of mine used to say, “This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” Think about that for a while.

— Coach “Nuke” LaLoosh, in Bull Durham

     Speaking of Rain…

     I am reminded of a man dubbed by Science as a “Quasi Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer…”

     Rob McKeena was a miserable bastard and he knew it because he’d had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and he saw no  reason  to disagree with them  except  the  obvious  one  which  was  that  he  liked disagreeing with people, particularly people he disliked, which  included, at the last count, everyone.

   …

     It wasn’t that he was naturally predisposed to be so surly, at  least he hoped not. It was just the rain which got him down, always the rain.
     It was raining now, just for a change.
     It  was  a  particular  type  of  rain  he   particularly   disliked, particularly when he was driving. He had a number for it. It was rain type 17.

…

     He had read somewhere that the Eskimos had over two hundred different words for snow, without which their conversation would probably  have  got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between  thin  snow  and  thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom  of your neighbour’s boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows  of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember  from  your  childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the  morning,  snow  that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you  were  going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts  to  train  them,  the huskies have pissed on.
     Rob McKeena had two hundred and thirty-one different  types  of  rain entered in his little book, and he didn’t like any of them.

…

     And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the  sky  after  him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKeena was a Rain God.  All  he  knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of  lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him  and  wanted  to  be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.

— Excerpt from Chapter 2 of Douglas Adams’
“So Long and Thanks for All the Fish,”
the fourth book in the not-so-aptly-named
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy

     It’s raining cats.

     No dogs, fortunately.

     Dogs tend to cause a lot more damage, mostly because they don’t land on their feet.

     Of course, neither do some cats…

     *shrug*