Why do people talk about the weather? It's so uninteresting. It's safe, I suppose. It's certain not to offend in these days when each word, each adjective, each tone has to be weighed and measured lest the PC arbiters drum you out of human society. And it's different,the weather talk, depending on where you're talking it and with whom.
Friday in Chicago in October: Two Chicagoans grouse a bit, but admit that summer was pretty nice. October's too gray though, with too much rain. When you know November through February will be gray and wet and cold you want a sunny October. Then I walk into the converation. "Hey," the one guys says. "Did it get any colder out there?" Out where? I just landed at O'Hare after leaving John Wayne Airport, where it was a hot 90 degrees. So... I can take pity and pretend I'm still a Chicagoan and shrug off the cold, or I can throw my hot weather right at them. Hell, why live in SoCal if you can do weather boasting.
"I can tell if it's any colder, " I say. "It was 90 when I left Orange County this afternoon." That silences everybody. 90. It wasn't nice in their oven keeping the fries warm. The only Midwesterners can top a CA weather boaster is with the reverse boast ... how cold it was and how YOU overcame the cold.
"Yeah," I reminisce. "Back in 1982 it was so cold we kept getting up every hour to start up the car. The wind chill was -50 degrees. You couldn't feel your feet five minutes after stepping outside the car. Trip and you're dead." These are the weather ghoul stories ... no one wants to experience them, but everyone listens and is then glad to not have had that experience.
We're boastful people. You can'tpossibly have had a worse drive than I did. Oh yeah, listen to this! My boss was so bad that ...
Perhaps it because extremes of bad things lead us to humor, and humor is intensely humanizing. Those of in SoCal also take responsibility for the weather. No one goes to Chicago in the fall or winter with high expectations. But we get visitors to the OC. They're spending their hard-earned cash, and they want blue skies and warm breezes. Sometimes they get hot Santa Ana winds, or a marine layer tht blots out the sky with gray cloud. Or it's "cold" ... 62 degrees. And then we apologize for the weather, and explain, as if the traveller cares, that just last week it was 80 and sunny and the air was clear.
So maybe weather is the best thing to talk about. Everyone has something to share, or to criticize or to remember. Maybe the 6-party nuclear talks should start up with a warm-up session on the weather.
US envoy: "Good morning Mr. Kim Il Jong. What a beautiful day here in Tokyo. How was the weather for your flight overhere?
Kim IL (smoothing his weird hairdo, which is a little more rambunctious becuase of the humidity): No day is beautiful unless it is a people's dawn. Why have the conservatives in the US run amuck? We can make weapons if we want.
Japanese envoy: Peaceful weather can lead to peaceful conditions. We thought we would open the windows to enjoy the fragrance of the garden.
South Korean envoy: The weather has been especially nice this spring.
Kim IL: The weather is a plot. We will not be swayed by all this talk about weather. Our weather is independent of all other weather. We are leaving this discussion. The weather is a front for you all. You hate my hair. You hate the fact that I look like a fat woman. US and Japanese reactionaries are seeding our clouds and making it rain too much. And what do you know about our weather - you have been spying on us! Struggle against the class enemy!
OK ... maybe not even weather talk will calm down old Kim IL. Someone ought to suggest a hair cut and a modern look, though, don't you think?
Friday in Chicago in October: Two Chicagoans grouse a bit, but admit that summer was pretty nice. October's too gray though, with too much rain. When you know November through February will be gray and wet and cold you want a sunny October. Then I walk into the converation. "Hey," the one guys says. "Did it get any colder out there?" Out where? I just landed at O'Hare after leaving John Wayne Airport, where it was a hot 90 degrees. So... I can take pity and pretend I'm still a Chicagoan and shrug off the cold, or I can throw my hot weather right at them. Hell, why live in SoCal if you can do weather boasting.
"I can tell if it's any colder, " I say. "It was 90 when I left Orange County this afternoon." That silences everybody. 90. It wasn't nice in their oven keeping the fries warm. The only Midwesterners can top a CA weather boaster is with the reverse boast ... how cold it was and how YOU overcame the cold.
"Yeah," I reminisce. "Back in 1982 it was so cold we kept getting up every hour to start up the car. The wind chill was -50 degrees. You couldn't feel your feet five minutes after stepping outside the car. Trip and you're dead." These are the weather ghoul stories ... no one wants to experience them, but everyone listens and is then glad to not have had that experience.
We're boastful people. You can'tpossibly have had a worse drive than I did. Oh yeah, listen to this! My boss was so bad that ...
Perhaps it because extremes of bad things lead us to humor, and humor is intensely humanizing. Those of in SoCal also take responsibility for the weather. No one goes to Chicago in the fall or winter with high expectations. But we get visitors to the OC. They're spending their hard-earned cash, and they want blue skies and warm breezes. Sometimes they get hot Santa Ana winds, or a marine layer tht blots out the sky with gray cloud. Or it's "cold" ... 62 degrees. And then we apologize for the weather, and explain, as if the traveller cares, that just last week it was 80 and sunny and the air was clear.
So maybe weather is the best thing to talk about. Everyone has something to share, or to criticize or to remember. Maybe the 6-party nuclear talks should start up with a warm-up session on the weather.
US envoy: "Good morning Mr. Kim Il Jong. What a beautiful day here in Tokyo. How was the weather for your flight overhere?
Kim IL (smoothing his weird hairdo, which is a little more rambunctious becuase of the humidity): No day is beautiful unless it is a people's dawn. Why have the conservatives in the US run amuck? We can make weapons if we want.
Japanese envoy: Peaceful weather can lead to peaceful conditions. We thought we would open the windows to enjoy the fragrance of the garden.
South Korean envoy: The weather has been especially nice this spring.
Kim IL: The weather is a plot. We will not be swayed by all this talk about weather. Our weather is independent of all other weather. We are leaving this discussion. The weather is a front for you all. You hate my hair. You hate the fact that I look like a fat woman. US and Japanese reactionaries are seeding our clouds and making it rain too much. And what do you know about our weather - you have been spying on us! Struggle against the class enemy!
OK ... maybe not even weather talk will calm down old Kim IL. Someone ought to suggest a hair cut and a modern look, though, don't you think?
posted by Dynamite T at
9:57 PM
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