I’m very frustrated with meteorologists. Let me begin by saying that I wanted to be one. Thought it was the coolest job ever, and it may still be. My problem, however, is that they are wrong so fucking often, and I don’t understand what’s going on. From my understanding, we were more intelligent and intuitive when it came to weather hundreds to thousands of years ago. Native Americans would read the land, the behavior of the animals, the position of leaves, the strange motion in plants to predict the weather, and they would be right. They could tell by the color of the sky, by the types of clouds, by the patterns in the breeze. We – with our stupid machines, radars, and graphs – can’t tell shit. I understand that a 10-day forecast may be a lot to ask. I’m sure the cavemen had no fucking problem, but I’ll cut the weathermen a little slack on the 10-day forecast. But when you tell me it’s going to rain today, and then it doesn’t fucking rain??? Seriously, what’s the point? What good are you? Who the hell CAN’T stand outside and say, “It might rain, it might not, I don’t fucking know”??? I think I learned more in the girl scouts about predicting the weather.

I just can’t stand the unreliability. All those scientists. Sure, I don’t know anything, and I’m sure it’s very difficult and many educated people are working on it, but when have we been impressed? We have geologists who spend all day monitoring volcanoes and fault lines (is that who monitors them?), and WHEN is the last time an area was evacuated BEFORE the earthquake, the volcanic eruption, the tidal wave? It doesn’t count when you read an article that says, “Los Angeles will have an enormous earthquake sometime between now and the next 500 years that will level the whole city, and scientists think it may be sooner than we thought!!!” Nice attention-grabber, but when the fucking thing is about to happen, am I really going to know about it, or do I have to wait until everything I own is melted in lava, leveled to the ground, or washed away so I can one day discover that scientists “knew” this would happen???

There are a lot of people out there, and you know there was at least one guy that knew this shit was going to happen. Not in a psychic way (but we can go into that too maybe), but some little nerdy lone scientist who had all the readings, who knew it all for a fact, who tried desperately to evacuate everyone he could, but no one would listen to him because it sounded absurd. No one paid attention. Maybe the police even put him away for trying to start a panic, when the man just happened to know. No one thinks that an earthquake is really going to level Los Angeles. I mean, we know it’s possible, and it wouldn’t be unbelievable if it were in a textbook, but when I get up to go to work, I don’t think my building might not be there. I don’t actually imagine it, and if it did – it would be “unbelievable.” If someone ran around telling the whole city to LEAVE, would we really do it? Not unless it’s something that happens all the time. You tell someone Wichita that a tornado is coming, they take cover because that is damn believable to them.

I think I digressed a bit. All I’m saying is that I’d rather there be someone out there with the ability to tell me BEFORE the earthquake to leave rather than lettin’ me know that the earthquake that destroyed my life was measured at a whopping 9.0. Fuck the measurements – just do your job and keep an eye on this shit or YOU won’t be here to measure it either.

The tsunami. Was there really no way to know? I read CNN.com articles on it. I guess with those tsunamis, the way it works is that the wave is not rising high into the sky. It is a surge of water from the surface all the way to the ocean floor that moves outward, and it only becomes high when gets the shore because the ocean floor rises up. This is what bothers me: Are movies just completely fictional when they show the labs that monitor this shit? Don’t they have some sort of screen that shows outlines of the continents, that have the bleeps for hotspots? When something like that happens, that earthquake under the sea – I imagine that there’s a big red spot beeping loudly with alarms going off in the lab, and then some guy wide-eyed running to the phone to alert authorities that it happened and to prepare the people for possible aftermath. Is that naïve of me?

What’s interesting to me is how nature works. It’s beyond fascinating. If we imagine this earth without people or animals – just plant life and single-celled organisms – and then you just think about the earthquakes, the fires, the tidal waves, the volcanic eruptions, the tornadoes, the hurricanes, the blizzards – it doesn’t sound tragic because it’s not. It’s just an active planet rejuvenating itself. I even learned once that some natural forest fires are good because it releases certain nutrients and rejuvenates the soil. You think about giant waves crashing over islands – it sounds like a sweeping, cleaning effect (again – no humans or animals in this scenario). The earth would just be growing, building. It’s self-cleaning. That earthquake and those tsunamis that followed – it wasn’t personal, it was nature, it was life. But when you factor in people – it becomes a “natural disaster,” and it feels personal. You start to factor in fate, God, karma. It feels like a punishment, when the planet doesn’t give a fuck that we’re here. In fact, it’s doing everything it can to survive as we bully it.

Okay, moving off of this topic, I’d like to say I was a poor example of a Los Angelino at Starbucks this morning. Now, I’m not a regular at Starbucks. I still don’t get the proper order of information you’re supposed to give. My friend Mike just waltzed in all prepared. “I’ll have a grande non-fat vanilla latte.” I thought it was funny. So, I had already had my coffee that morning, but I felt like the tasting it. I was feeling warm, so I went with the iced. Now, at the coffee shop in my building, the woman told me I couldn’t have just any coffee iced because the hot coffees would melt the ice quickly and you’d end up with lukewarm watered down coffee. She said you could only have the coffee they already had cold. I’m at Starbucks now thinking I’ll all educated and shit, but I’m not entirely sure.
“ Hi, um…is there such a thing as having a vanilla latte iced that’s decaf?”
“ Uh…yeah,” she replied with annoyance.
“ Really? A latte though? Because isn’t a latte made with espresso?”
“ YEAH.”
” But an espresso can’t be decafe, can it? It’s an espresso. Isn’t that just like liquid caffeine?”
” There can be decafe espresso, m’am.”
” Oh. Well, can it be iced?”
She makes a face and says, “Where are you from??”
< I stare at her confused.>
” What size, m’am?”
Now I’m totally lost, so she just grabs one, and I nod.

I understand that I’m the total asshole here. I’m aware, okay? You hear me, you damn barista. By the way, Barista is getting the red squiggle from my Word because it’s totally absurd. Even Microsoft is like, “She’s a fucking cashier, okay? I refuse to acknowledge barista. Squiggle, squiggle, squiggle – and DON”T bother to spell check because I will give you NO suggestions, lady!”