The Weather and Other Chitchat

I don't really understand how weathermen keep their jobs.

Let's put aside the fact that it's an obvious joke amongst everyone, probably including weathermen, how often wrong they are, and look at specific examples.

After an unusually warm winter, up til march, we had a rather seasonably cool april.  April around here is normally around the 50's and drab and dreary, so, nothing unusual there.   So this first week of may, there's supposed to be a warm-up.  Supposedly there's this big mass of subtropical air and it's shoving it's oppressive weight around into our area.  Monday was supposed to be 66, tuesday was supposed to be 70, and wednesday we were supposed to hit 81 and thursday was due to be the warmest day of this week with high's in the low 80's.

Now after the seasonably cool april, I was more than ready for this.  I may be a tech support geek, but dammit, I like fresh air.  I enjoy opening my windows and feeling the breeze waft over the fur, uh, I mean, hair on my bare skin.  Usually while standing naked in front of the open window, but it's at night so no one knows about that, and you are probably wishing you didn't, either.  Well... moving on.

So monday rolls around and I am all set to open my windows to the blisteringly hot (by comparison to the 40's we had last week) 66 degrees...  and it's about 52.  Sure, I guess that's... warmer...  not warm, by most stretches of the imagination, but still.  But hey, according to the information on my website, the quality of the forecast is EXCELLENT!  And the quality of the national weather service's forecast is GOOD!  I have no idea who rates those or what the difference is between the one or the other.  But even I can tell that's an outright bloody lie, considering they were off by 14 degrees.  But hey I am not a weatherman, so by their definitions, that's probably spot-on, as they say across the pond.  SPOT ON, MY GOOD CHAPS!  For me, it just chaps my ass.

Then tuesday rolls around, and I'm waiting for the 70's.  And holy SHIT, it made it up to 57.  That's... still not 70.  Nowhere damn near it.  And still, the forecast quality is FUCKIN AWESOME!  Well, it may not have said fuckin awesome, but when you use the word EXCELLENT in bold type, it implies fuckin awesome.  Which, it's not only NOT fuckin awesome, but it's goddamn cold, cold enough to leave my nipples hard for hours.  Or maybe that was just sexual arousal.

Now, i know weathermen are often wrong, and I know forecasting the weather is a tricky business.  I mean, for the last 5 years they've said the hurricane season would be above average in strength and number of named storms, and every year, it was the exact opposite of what they said, so, they aren't exactly batting a thousand here.  But come on guys.  Can't you even get close?  I'd settle for close!  If an extra butterfly wing flap in japan can throw your forecast off by THAT much, you're doing it wrong.

So wednesday rolls around (today) and I'm stoked.  I'm sitting out in the yard in my manly pink banana hammock, I got my rum-runner frosting my beefy mitt (because chick drinks are a MUST when wearing banana hammocks...  it's the LAW), and my extra-shiny shades on to keep the UV out of my extra-sensitive yet steely amber-brown eyes.  And I'm FREEZING MY BALLS OFF because it only made it up to 66 so far.  Okay, maybe freezing my balls off isn't exactly true, but come on.  it's not like these banana hammocks provide much insulation, right?  brando, you know what I'm talking about.

Now i'm confused.  Because maybe if the quality of the forecast said WAY FUCKIN OFF or PRETTY GODDAMN SHITTY, then I'd forgive them for being, well, way the fuck off.  But to sound so goddamn sure of yourself when you are so dead wrong is usually the province of idiots and politicians (or idiot politicians, but maybe that's just being redundant), not trained meteorological scientists.  Who the hell pays someone fifty to a hundred grand a year to be wrong EVERY DAMN DAY?

The National Weather Service, apparently.

Can I get in on this thing, too, while the money lasts?  I mean, shit, I can throw darts at a dartboard or roll some dice or use tarot cards and probably be just as accurate (if not more so) than the supposed "meteorologists."  Or does it take some fancy piece of paper that says "trained meteorologist" to apply for those jobs?  Hell, if I'm more accurate, do I make more money?  They should pay them by how accurate they are.  That right off would separate the good ones from the bad. Nobody who wasn't at least %50 accurate would stick around because they'd all STARVE TO DEATH.

Probably out in the freezing cold rain after they'd predicted it was going to be 80 and sunny.

In other news, the month of may brings with it memorial day picnic with the fam.  And as most of you know, my "fam" are a bunch of assholes.  Not all of them, just...  well, most of them.  Now, my mom is like 10000 years old and I can forgive her most of the time because, well, she's old and crotchety and old people are like that.  Probably over-medicated.  or under.  But my brother is going to be there.

Now my brother, for those that don't know, is a dick.  He's not only a republican, but he drinks all day long, and partakes of other, smokier intoxicants (hey at least he quit smoking actual cigarettes).  none of which I would hold against him, except that the drinking all day makes him not give a shit about anything, the smoking makes him forget anything he said on any given day, and being a republican means he thinks George bush is a hero to the common man.  Seriously.  And he will not let you get away from him without arguing with you, until you give in or flee, that George Bush Jr is THE MAN.

Just as an example, he comes to my house one day and I'm browsing the web, looking at boobs, whatever, and tells me point blank that President George Bush (he was president at the time) disarmed two nuclear weapons, HIMSELF, that very day.  Yea, he heard it on Rush Limbaugh's show or something like that.  Obviously it's a huge load of tripe, but my brother wanted to give his argument weight, so he also added another 'factoid" that i could check.  he said that two OTHER nuclear weapons went off in the atlantic and pacific oceans, and I could check that because the explosions registered on the richter scales!  Why or how 4 nuclear weapons were set to go off in the US or how good ole boy george managed to disarm them personally, while not being able to disarm the two that went off in the oceans, is beyond me.

And for the secret service or FBI or whatever is checking websites for plots against the government, hey, guys, I'm just repeating what he said.  I didn't believe a word of it and my brother is an alcoholic crackpot.  I'm a born citizen of the US and I don't have any desire to hurt anybody, so, if you want to arrest somebody, I can give you his address.  lol  Yea, I know like 3 people read my blog, but it never hurts to run a disclaimer.  I'm sure people have gone to guantanamo bay for less, right?

So, being on the web at the time he told me this, I asked him point blank "So, you're telling me it registered on the richter scale?"  And he says "yes."  So I go to the usgs (US geological service) website, and sure enough, it says...  "no recent earthquake activity reported."  and then I checked another site, an oceanographic one, and there were no oceanic quakes that day, either.  So of course, my brother is all "oh, they covered it up!  You want the truth, go to the radio station's website!"

Yea, good thinking, go directly to the place that ran the bullshit story so you can verify their "facts" with their own facts.  GENIUS!  I drip with sarcasm.  Needless to say, i didn't bother going to the radio station's website.

Anyway, so my brother has been feuding with my sister for going on 14 years now.  Apparently, my brother borrowed some money from my sister and lied to his wife about it and my brother and sister had a fight and my sister told his wife about the money and the lying and this, needless to say, caused a bit of a rift with him and his wife.  So, my brother has wanted my sister dead for 14 years since the fight.  Literally, he's told me to my face that someone should brutally murder her, with his disclaimer "I don't mean me, but SOMEBODY should!"  Yea, not the sanest nor calmest of men, there.

None of that would have been any of my business, and I don't even know if I have the facts straight since I wasn't there and it didn't involve me.  But, my brother has been on me, for about the last 14 years or so, to "join his side" in his feud with my sister.  Still, despite my older brother (with all that that implies) being an asshole to me for years when i was a kid, and me liking my sister more (we get along great), still i tried not to get involved, and just sort of let his rants about how my sister was evil incarnate and needed to be expunged from the earth for her crimes, go in one ear and out the other.  Until one day, when my mother was in the hospital undergoing (admittedly minor) heart surgery and my brother decided it was time for me to join his side or he was disowning me after mom dies.  Yea, you read that right, while Mom was in the hospital for the surgery, he's pushing his agenda on cutting my sister, and whoever doesn't side with him, out of "his" portion of our family.

Which pretty much guarantees him a permanent slot in the Asshole Hall of Shame.

So now I have this dilemma.  I told my brother to pretty much go to hell, but he insists on acting like nothing is wrong between us because that's his thing.  He'll act semi-civilized around my mom because she's pretty much the only one that still loves him.  But my mom wants us (her and me) to go to this family picnic thing at the end of the month, which he will attend, and she expects me to go, because, well, she needs a ride.  Now I'm pretty much non-confrontational, mostly because it's a pain in the ass to kill someone at a family function and have to be arrested, go to jail and prove what an asshole he was so you can avoid jail time.  Which, I probably would, after i proved what an asshole he was, not that everyone doesn't already know.  But my point is, who the hell wants to hang around someone like that, knowing they are going to disown you literally at your mother's funeral, just for not joining his side in hating your own sister, whom you actually like?  Not me.  I'd be happy if I never set eyes on him again.  But mom is all about us going, and my nephew (yes, my brother's son) thinks I should go because "we always go" and "he probably forgot he even said that."  Wtf.  Who gives a fuck if HE forgot.  He's still an asshole, whether he forgets what an asshole he is or not.  it doesn't change anything.  I'd still have to mull around the picnic, pretty much doing nothing, while my brother is all like "HEY how are you?  What's up?  How's the wife and kids?" like he didn't hate my guts and want to punch me in the face.  And I know he hasn't forgotten, either, because even my nephew says I am now included in my brother's daily rants about how my sister needs to die.

So how does someone actually want to kill you and just hide it so your mutual mother does not realize what a fuckstick he is, behave normally, and try to engage you in jovial conversation?  I'd love to know where he gets the balls even to think I'd stand around and chat with him.  I'm pretty sure he's down to one anyway,  so, where he gets "the ball."  Also, why the fuck should my nephew and mother be surprised when i DON'T want to spend any time around this asshole?  I mean seriously, you can say "well he's your brother" and all, but if he's disowning me after mom dies, and only pretending to be civil to me to keep her loving him til her death, doesn't that pretty much not only make him NOT my brother, but some fucked up nutsack I should be avoiding in the first place?  And here's the kicker, how the fuck do I avoid a family function where my mom can't go unless I drive her, and not have to deal with my nephew's and mother's "you should just go and ignore him all day" bullshit?  Why should I go to a picnic where I'd normally be having fun, only this time I'm not because I am avoiding my own goddamn brother (and by avoiding i mean having at least a picnic table or two between us so he doesn't try to chitchat with me), and spend all day listening to him spout his "George bush rules" and "republicans are the SHIT!" bullcrap while I want nothing more than to rip his face off and expose him for the lying sack of monkey shit that he is?  Do they really think I could stand that all day and actually have a good time around him?

If so, they must think me more of a politician than I am, because I can't hide my disgust that easily.  I'm surprised his wife and kids are still around that level of insanity, because I know they don't share it with him.  But how his family makes it through their day isn't any of my business.  I just have to figure out how to avoid a picnic and still get my mom there.  Hmmm.  29 days to figure something out...

And then figure it out at least twice more over the summer, because we don't just have one picnic.  Sigh.  And it wouldn't be a problem if there were more people there, but it's literally JUST me, mom, my brother and his family, since no one else wants to be around him.  I may just tell her to get her own ride, because I can't put up with that level of bullshit for 6 to 8 hours.  Oh well, there's my rant for the day.