Holy Hullabaloos, The Blog

Here's Something I Hate: The "Wind Chill Factor"

You know how sometimes the incompetent meterologist will tell you that the weather right now is 20 degrees, but that because of the "wind chill factor" it "feels like" 5?  What the hell is that supposed to mean?  What does it mean to "feel like" 5?  So, am I supposed to think about what it felt like on the day that it was 5 to figure out how cold it really is out right now?  But what if the "wind chill factor" on the day that it was 5 made it feel like it was actually 2?  Thinking about the day that it was 5 wouldn't help me at all; indeed, it would be misleading.  Instead, I'd have to think about some other day where the wind chill factor made it feel like 5 regardless of what the actual temperature was if I want to know what it feels like now.  And if that's the case, why not just report the one number?  I mean, who cares what the temperature is in some sort of abstract, Platonic sense, if how I really experience is it is different?  God, I hate meterologists.

I mean, we don't report other numbers like this?  What if in the NFL a team got the number of points that it actually got, and then also the number of points that it sort of seemed like it got?  Or if a transcript reported not just what the student got on the exam, but what she felt like she got on the exam?  How much do these weather people get paid, anyway?  Boy, I really really hope it's less than a public school teacher,  but how come I sort of doubt it?

My Love-Hate Relationship With Meterologists

I've previously promised a post on meterology (or maybe I haven't, what the hell do I know what I have and have not done?), and so here it is.  I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with meterology and meterologists, by which I mean only those who are on TV.  If there are meterologists out there behind the scenes, and of course there are, I couldn't give a rat's ass about them.  That's not nice.  I don't mean it.  I'm just saying, look, this post is about the TV ones.

To begin with, I have a thing for women meterologists.  Right alongside women basketball players (Rebecca Lobo, sigh) these are the women I would like to date if only I wasn't married and ugly.  I don't know why this is--perhaps it's the way they look right at me when they are delivering the weather report; maybe it's how they are forced by their job to smile all the time (it's impossible imagining getting into a fight over why we have to recycle the goddamned beer bottles with a meterologist, isn't it?); or maybe it's how they so effortlessly glide their arms around the imaginary weather map as they show us the oncoming cold fronts.  But whatever it is, I love them.  Especially J.C. Monahan, who is one of the two people currently approved by wife as someone I could theoretically sleep with if I could somehow arrange it.  (the other, incidentally, is Liz Phair, who, as I report in Holy Hullabaloos, I have had a crush on for 5 years (I should probably mention here that my wife's list consists of only one person--Heath Ledger--who is now dead and therefore even more unavailable to her than ever before)).

On the other hand, the thing I hate about meterologists is how they are completely unaccountable.  Does anyone know who is the most accurate weather person in Boston?  In the country?  Of course not.  They tell us what they think is going to happen, and nobody goes back and studies whether they got it right, or if they got it wrong, by how much they got it wrong.  You never hear a TV station advertise their meterologist as the "most likely to correctly predict the weather tomorrow," which is odd, since that's their fucking job!  Also I think they get way more time in the newscast than they deserve.  Though I like hearing about the weather in Fargo as much as the next guy, really: who cares?  Especially because once they start talking about this cold front and that high pressure area, you forget what you're doing and start thinking about the laundry and your impending death and everything else, and the next thing you know they're doing the sports and you've missed the one thing you really needed to see, which is the forecast for your area for the next couple of days.  On the other hand, I guess this isn't really a big problem, since the forecast is likely wrong.  Or maybe it isn't.  How would we ever know?

I Know Your Kids are Cute, But What Do You Look Like?

Over at Beacon Broadside, which is the great Beacon Press blog run by the terrific Jessie Bennett, I've posted a short rant about how much I hate it when people send holiday cards with pictures of their kids but no pictures of themselves.  What the hell are these people thinking?  Are you one of them?  Maybe make a comment to explain yourself?

A Special Place in Hell

I don't believe in hell, but if I did, I would want there to be a special place there for people who sit in a seat on a crowded T train (that's the Boston Subway) and put their stuff on the seat next to them so that other people won't sit in that seat.  I realize there are some worse things that people can do in the world (trading an appointment to the Senate for cash, for instance; also armed robbery), but really, is there any way to more clearly signal, "I am a total asshole" than to put your stupid bags on an empty seat when there are 100 people standing and smushed together in the aisle of the train?  Probably there is, and I realize that you can (and must) say to these people, "can I have that seat," in which case they will nearly always move the stuff (though always with a groan and a grimace), but still, what are they thinking?

Anyone want to share her or his mass transportation pet peeve?