No, sadly that's not the name of the new dance that Carl is learning. We know this because Carl does not possess the dancing gene, not to be confused with Gene Gene the Dancing Machine who was that guy on the Gong Show. Where was I? The Yucatan, thanks.
Below you can see a historic track of Hurricane Dean courtesy AccuWeather.com, and a graphic showing the likely track of T.D. 6, which will probably become "Felix" sometime over the holiday weekend. The tracks look very similar; I'm sure Belize would like a break.
Actor George Clooney, who appears in a number of ads for Nespresso (a division of Nestlé) was asked about the spots in the context of his past remarks criticizing multinational corporations. So, to review: George says bad things about multinational corporations, George then appears in ads for Nespresso, a division of multinational corporation Nestlé, and then George gets asked about that.
His reply?
"I'm not going to apologize to you for trying to make a living every once in a while. I find that an irritating question."
Now, the Blog Hero's legal team (Sven) would like it to be known that Blog Hero, Blog Hero, Inc., Blog Hero's administrative staff ("Carl") and Blog Hero's legal team (Sven, see above) have no real strong opinion about George Clooney, Nespresso or Nestlé, although most of them enjoy a good bit of Nestlé chocolate now and then.
The challenge with George's remarks is that some may think they smack of hypocrisy - and the last thing you want to smack is an hypocrisy. A quick web search revealed some of George's past salaries for various movie roles:
George's salary for past movie roles include:
Intolerable Cruelty: $15,000,000
Ocean's Eleven: $20,000,000
The Perfect Storm: $8,000,000
O Brother, Where Art Thou?: $1,000,000
Three Kings: $5,000,000
Out of Sight: $10,000,000
The Peacemaker: $3,000,000
Batman & Robin: $10,000,000
One Fine Day: $3,000,000
From Dusk Till Dawn: $250,000 Source: TV.com
At this point, do you really need to do a Nespresso commercial to make a living in light of your distaste of multinational corporations? Break into small groups and discuss. (Bonus question: Was Batman & Robin worth $10 million dollars?)
I know this seems prescient, but first I reported on the lightning attack in Michigan. Now comes word that lightning strikes have killed 109 people in China during August. 43 others were wounded in various attacks. Official Blame™ is being laid at the feet of Global Warming. No officials would go on record with this blog to discuss whether this is part of a broader offensive by lightning.
Global Warming To Make Severe Storms More...Severe
August 31, 2007
Photo of Severe Severe Storm, Carl's porch
NASA is predicting that global warming will cause more severe storms and tornadoes. Using a series of super-computers the size of 14 footballs fields* NASA has run climate models that show that as the Earth warms, severe storms and tornadoes are likely to become more common. Not only that, but the research also suggests that there may be more forest fires as a result of lightning, and that peanut crops are more likely to fail* and the Scandinavian Blue Warbler is probably on the verge of extinction.**
*Okay I made that up.
**I've just been informed that there is no such thing as the Scandinavian Blue Warbler to which I can only reply, "See, it's happening even faster than they thought."
There's an interesting meteor shower opportunity tomorrow morning for those of you west of the Rockies. The earth will be passing through the (fairly narrow) tail of Comet Kiess (named after astronomer Carl Clarence Kiess.) This comet is interesting because we know that it takes about 2,000 years to run around the sun, putting its last visit at about 4 A.D. It's strange to think you can look into the sky and see something that hasn't been seen since 4 A.D.
Well, you can look into the sky if you're west of the Rockies. Here's a graphic showing the state of sunlight when the earth will pass through the tail:
NASA
The best time to start watching will be 4:30 a.m. PDT. Keep watching until sunrise, but meteor gazers are cautioned: this particular event is not well understood, and while it could be a dazzling light show, it could also be a bust.
A giant spider web the size of fourteen football fields* has been found blanketing a 200-yard stretch of trail in Lake Tawakoni State Park, Texas. The web is likely the work of Spider-Man, A Giant Alien Spider, a species of spider known as the "Southeastern Social Cobweb Spider." Now, the only thing worst than Spider-Man running amuck, or a Giant Alien Spider attacking our parks in Texas, is the discovery that some spiders are social and work together. My skin is crawling just writing this post. Have you ever killed a bug in your house, or had your spouse come running to kill a bug, such as a large, cantaloupe-sized spider, and then for hours I mean HOURS afterwards felt little tingles everywhere on your skin like you missed the cantaloupe-sized spider's brother and he jumped on you when you were busy squashing his sibling and now he's just aimlessly roaming around looking for a place to settle in and have lunch? EXACTLY. But I brave this sort of thing you bring you important news, like the discovery that spiders are working together and socializing and having barbecues and whatnot.
The only other thing that you really need to know about this situation is that the spiders are going after the mosquitos first, then the humans. A human who works at the remains of the North Texas park is quoted in the article above as saying:
"There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."
Unfortunately I can't find an audio file of this online anywhere. Surely someone SOMEWHERE recorded this because there would probably be a lot of interest in hearing the screech of millions of mosquitoes. The only thing I could find on the web was this quote in Star Wars:
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of mosquitoes suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
This was the part of Star Wars where Obi-Wan killed a spider with his Light Saber, and then spent the rest of his trip to Alderaan twitching because he felt like there were bugs crawling under his robes.
It what might be the first attack in a new offensive, lightning struck the National Weather Service building in White Lake Township, MI. The bolt apparently struck yesterday at 6:48 p.m. local time and was responsible for "ripping down radar equipment." No one was hurt in the attack.
Curiously, no National Weather Service Personnel have been quoted on record about the attack, and no one has categorically denied that the government has placed a gag order on meteorologists, forbidding them from speaking publicly.
Repeated calls to the lightning involved have also gone unanswered.
Thanks to alert reader Angela for passing this along.
Apparently this was done at something called Winterfest; a YouTube posting said this occured in Knoxville, TN but this Wikipedia entry suggests that it's held in Lynchburg, VA. The song in the skit is by Lifehouse (volume alert if you go to their site) - it's called "Everything" and it's from their debut album "No Name Face."
Many of you may yawn at this, but I guarantee some of you will be reaching for the Kleenex®...
Elsewhere in the tropics, we are monitoring some disorganized showers and thunderstorms in a broad area that covers the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola. This area of interest is a combination of a tropical wave along 77 west extending north to 30 north and a weak upper-level low. The weak upper-level low located across the northwestern Caribbean is going to prevent this system from becoming an organized tropical system by causing upper-level wind flow in the wrong direction and pockets of stronger wind shear. We have also noticed that surface pressures do not suggest any coherent surface feature, so this system will bring a more moist, unstable atmosphere over the Bahamas, Cuba and Florida during the next three days, leading to more shower and thunderstorm development. Another tropical wave along roughly 61 west, between 22 north and about 8 north, remains very disorganized as it moves west at about 6-8 degrees longitude per day.
Some of the thinking here at AccuWeather is along the Canadian route - some sort of hit on Florida. We should know by Thursday what sort of development has occurred that might threaten Florida. Assuming that all goes down correctly, Floridians would be looking at a storm this weekend. That gives you about 5-7 days to find old, discarded battleships from which to peal off sheets of metal to cover you home. Or, move to Nampa, Idaho - which incidentally has no hurricane preparedness material on their site - probably a good sign.
That sounds like a great movie title or book title. It probably would be written by Tom Clancy, and the movie would star Morgan Freeman who may or may not be Canadian. In this case I'm actually going to refer to the canadian forecast model, which is commonly called the CMC. I think CMC stands for Canadian Meteorological Centre, which may explain all of this talk about Canadians.
In any event, the Canadian (the model, not Morgan Freeman) goes all nuts with a florida hurricane:
This image was cobbled together from the Experimental Forecast Tropical Cyclone Genesis Potential Fields thing at FSU, which you can find here. I set the animated GIF to run 5 times with a 5 second pause; you'll have to reload it if you want to view it, say, 6 times.
Based on my expert pixel analysis this would be headed straight for Ft. Lauderdale. While it's still early, consider these remarkable "coincidences:"
1. Ft. Lauderdale is known as the "Venice of America." Venice, as we all know, is part of an ancient civilization (Rome) that was destroyed by taxes, open-air buffets and hurricanes.
2. Ft. Lauderdale is an anagram of Dreadful Teal*, and teal is pretty close to blue, the color of hurricanes.
3. It's well known that Tom Clancy's younger brother October** lives in Ft. Lauderdale.
4. Florida, home to Ft. Lauderdale, just juts out there in the water between the very warm Gulf of Mexico and the very warm Atlantic Ocean. Many of the hurricanes that form every year in this region appear in either the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean.
5. In order to prevent a panic, Florida Government Officials have said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about this potential threat. Go ahead, ask them.
So if you live in Ft. Lauderdale what should you do? The Blog Hero would be happy to give you free advice but our legal team (Sven) has instead asked that this statement be issued:
The Blog Hero, Blog Hero Inc., Blog Hero Enterprises, employees and family members of Blog Hero are in no way responsible for any use, non-use, thoughtful pre-use or un-non-pre-use of any hurricane information, maps, graphics, data or datum presented on the Blog Hero blog or anywhere else on earth. Any information provided is for entertainment purposes only, but Blog Hero makes no guarantee, formal or informal, applied or air dried, that said non-informative entertainment will be entertaining. Please use or disuse all entertainment at your own risk. Blog Hero does not suggest boarding up your house with sheet metal torn off of old Navy battleships, nor does Blog Hero endorse fleeing the state of Florida for something more inland, say Idaho. Thank you.
Good luck out there!
*It's also an anagram of "Farted La Duel" but after much careful consideration and thought the Blog Hero and representatives thereof have decided not to publish this for fear of alienating members of the audience by writing the word "farted." It should be noted, however, that "Farted La Duel" has now be trademarked by Blog Hero, Inc., because it would make a really great book title. (Dreadful Teal has also be trademarked, and will be an unsuccessful garage band any day now.)
**One of Tom's famous books, The Hunt for Red October, involves the difficult family issues of adoption, line dancing and being sold into a Russian Slave Labor Ring.
I received an important email over the weekend. I knew immediately it was important because of the subject of the email:
On impulse, the gnome looked around for something unpleasant that he could drop on them.
I knew I had to open and read the email because clearly there were people who needed to be warned. (These would be the people that the gnome was going to drop something unpleasant upon.) Granted, it's possible (even likely) that the people that the gnome was going to drop something unpleasant upon deserved it even though we know from the subject line that the gnome was acting impulsively, as gnomes are wont to do.
I also wanted to open the email because of all of the unanswered questions: Who was this gnome? Why was he (or she) acting so impulsively? Did he find something unpleasant, that was suitable for dropping? And who was he dropping it upon? How many of them were there? And how did it turn out? Was the gnome successful? Did the plan work?
Then I clicked on the email and it was about a stock market opportunity. I'm not even sure what the stock market symbol is, because the message had all sorts of special characters interspersed in the text so that my spam filter would miss it.
So I'm forced to assume that the gnome was a disgruntled customer at McDonald's who ordered a cheeseburger without cheese and, upon eating his burger discovered it laden with cheese - nay, burdened tremendously with cheese - and then in a fit of rage drove back to the restaurant, crawled into the duct work and finally stopped above the drive-thru workers milling about the Magic Milkshake Spigot™ at which point he decided to drop something upon them. Something, well, unpleasant.*
*If anyone has any details about this gnome or his clash with McDonald's, and/or the resulting lawsuit, please let me know. Thank you.
One of the computer models, the GFDL, has been targeting the U.S. coast pretty consistently. It's one of the more eastern tracks now, and a recent run (which you can generate for yourself here) has a pretty ugly hit on Louisiana, close to New Orleans, as a borderline category 4/5:
Of course this model is in disagreement with the model consensus, which is much more southern/western.
The UKMET and GFDL, not normally "model bedfellows" seem to be pointing to Houston.
AccuWeather's track is currently taking it south of that, for a hit on the south Texas border similar to Emily. We'll see - it's still early. But the GFDL track is scary, with a miss on Yucatan and a hit on the heart of Texas.
Here's the latest model guidance. The plots for Dean have been all over the place, from Mexico to New York. It'll be a few more days before there's a concrete track. Based on what little meteorology I suspect Dean hits somewhere in southern Texas. Of course, my meteorological credentials consist of sitting next to Henry...
There appears to be this Internet Rumor that I've just recently turned 40. While I can't substantiate this, Alert Reader Tammy was quoted as saying, "HA!" Then she had this sort of chuckle/maniacal laugh.
Thanks to everyone though who sent kind wishes and condolences via email. I'm looking forward to another, even better, 39 and four quarters.
Yesterday I posted about McDonald's murder attempt on a poor shmoe who ordered a burger without cheese and yet, mysteriously, ended up with cheese on his burger. You might think that someone who is deathly allergic to cheese would simply avoid McDonald's - but you would be wrong. So, given that you're deathly allergic to cheese but decide to go to McDonald's ANYWAY, you would think you would order food that normally does not come with cheese. Like, Chicken McNuggets, or something. Well, you would be wrong again.
So, given that you are deathly allergic to cheese, and you just have to eat some sort of McDonald's food that normally comes with cheese, you would think you would go into the store to make sure the order is right. Wrong again! Poor Jeremy, in what can only be described as all of the stars aligning against him, went through the drive thru.
To recap: You're deathly allergic to cheese, so you go to McDonald's of all places, and order a menu item that normally comes with cheese, while going through the drive through. SURELY you open the package and peak under the bun to see what's there, right? NOOO! Instead, you take the food home and (allegedly) sit in a dark room and just gobble it down with total faith that you won't die.
But there's one more twist in the story. You know you've just eaten cheese (which, incidentally, you are deathly allergic to) - what now? Rush to the hospital? Call 911? Get out your anti-cheese kit? Nope. YOU CALL MCDONALD'S TO TELL THEM THEY MESSED UP THE ORDER.
I'm reviewing all of this for the poor guy who left a blog comment that was so anger- and profanity-laced that I can't post it, but which probably summed up how 90% of us feel about the whole incident.
Best wishes to Jeromy Jackson, by the way, who is reportedly trying to order a deep dish at Pizza Hut with pepperoni and mushrooms. No cheese.
Of course, I've been warning everyone about the dangers of going to restaurants and ordering food without cheese. It just doesn't work. I never knew they were trying to kill us though. One can only hope that the almost dearly departed Jeromy Jackson can finally stick it to The Man and make an example of McDonalds. I'd like to think that the restaurant industry would police itself, but legislation might be required. Maybe some sort of cheese form could be mandatory for all restaurants.
Sometimes though we never know what the whole story is just by reading these articles. Do we really believe that someone who is deathly allergic to cheese would go to McDonalds and try to order food without cheese? Would YOU go to a store that routinely served arsenic in it's food and order a hamburger without arsenic? How confident would you be?
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