A More Inconvenienter Truth

Background note: The following is a piece I wrote for Lehigh's Drown Writers Series, a forum for writers and musicians to exhibit their works. Normally, people share something poetic or amusing or both. When I started attending it a couple of years ago, I made a promise to myself that I would, one day, read something at DWS. Today was that day, and the piece I read is what's below, in case you missed it. It was received pretty well, so I hope you'll enjoy it too, although part of its appeal was in the presentation. When you read this, imagine that Stephen Colbert is reading it, and you'll get a sense of the style I was going for. Not that I have anything close to Colbert's skill.

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It's strange what we take for granted. And I don't mean just big things, like having a roof over our heads or having water to drink or being able to shoot a man in the face without any repercussions... oh wait, I guess that last one only applies to our Vice President. Anyway, no, I mean the minor facts of life that we accept without a second thought. In particular, I mean the weather.

Admittedly, there are extraordinary acts of nature that don't escape our notice, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and other cable news-worthy phenomena. They have it all: thrills, spills, chills, and millions of dollars of property damage, coupled with significant losses of life. Hmm, I need to work on a snappier way of putting that last one... But I'm getting off track again. The types of weather we give a pass on a daily basis seem much more innocuous but, I will argue, are equally frightening when you get down to it.

Let's start with rain. And what is rain? Oh, you might say, rain is a source of precipitation which forms when separate drops of water fall to the Earth's surface from clouds. Yes, Wikipedia, you might say that. But what Wikipedia doesn't tell you is the sinister truth behind rain. Wikipedia knows that, if you only knew how dangerous rain can be, you would sit in your room all day, afraid of venturing into the outside world. And what would you do with all that time? Why, edit Wikipedia, of course! And that's not what Wikipedia wants, is it? On second thought, I guess it kind of is... but Wikipedia's motives in this conspiracy aren't important. What is important is... *scary voice* RAIN!!!!

Oh, you want me to go on? I was sure that would do it. Ok, if you insist.

What is rain's deadly little secret? Well, that's just it; it's deadly. “But Jay, isn't rain just a source of water, the sustainer of all life?” Wrong, my made-up rhetorical device that I use to move my narrative along! While water may be essential, rain is the scourge of all life. For example, take turkeys. What do they do when it rains? They look up, beaks agape, aware of the fate awaiting them. And then they drown. “Well, that's because turkeys are stupid!” Hey, rhetorical device! How dare you insult the bird that Benjamin Franklin revered above all others! Benjamin, or Ben as I like to call him because we're best buds, never made a mistake! Except, of course, for the womanizing and the syphilis. But otherwise, he was perfect! So if turkeys are killed by rain, and turkeys are the best birds, then ipso facto and carpe diem, rain must be terrible.

And yet, we all act as if it's no big deal. “Oh, it's just a little rain,” we say to each other. Let me ask you this: When we look at Darfur, do we say, “Oh, it's just a little genocide” ? No, we don't, because that's ridiculous. So why should rain be treated any differently? It literally kills thousands of turkeys every day in its “reign of terror”, according to a statistic I just edited into Wikipedia before coming here. Even if rain only killed turkeys (and believe you me, turkeys are not its only victim), that would be a heinous crime against humanity... er, turkeydom that we shouldn't tolerate. So, at this point, I think I've convinced you of the tyranny of rain. If not, let me reiterate: *scary voice* RAIN!!!!

And don't think I'm about to give other forms of precipitation a pass. If rain is the equivalent of God's tears, snow is the crud that God wipes out of His eyes when He wakes up in the morning ... or afternoon ... or evening, because God wakes up whenever He damn well pleases! I don't think I need to do more than point out that it snowed last week. In April. Spring. It snowed! Any precipitation that is so devious as to not stick to its appropriate season can't be trusted.

Hail is self-explanatory.

(Editor's note - That line was on a page by itself, so after reading the line, I paused for a moment and then dramatically put that page underneath the others I had already read. So yes, there's something lost in that gag when seen in written form.)

Freezing rain is the retarded lovechild that results from an incestuous relationship between rain and snow. I wanted to extend that metaphor, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it spoke for itself. I hope I didn't offend anyone who's in an incestuous relationship; you never know what demographics you're going to get at DWS. Anyway, other than its retarded lovechild properties, freezing rain is undesirable for several other reasons. First and foremost, it reminds me of a hard candy confection that I saw as a child. They look like ball bearings and are sometimes sprinkled onto various desserts. You know what I'm talking about? In case you don't, I asked my mom about them while I was writing this, and they're called dragées. Guess where she found the name? Yep, Wikipedia. Regardless, the point is, I hate that stuff! And at least those have the redeeming quality of being somewhat tasty. All freezing rain does is bombard your exposed body parts and lodge itself into every crevice of your clothes. As if that's not enough, if you thought the death toll from rain was high, freezing rain's body count is astronomical. It's something along the order of 5 factorial divided by 60, plus or minus 2. ... Don't think about that one too hard. You can do the math on your cell phone's calculator after this, and you can have a good chuckle to yourself then.

Fog is the only precipitation that I find acceptable. After all, it's what forms on your car's windows during epic make-out sessions. Not that I would know anything about that. *clears throat* So fog's a-ok in my book.

So what should you have taken away from this shocking exposé, as I like to think of it? Ok, I'll break down the themes for you:

1. Wikipedia is useful for EVERYTHING!

2. Anything falling from the sky is evil. Especially freezing rain.

3. Speaking of freezing rain, incest is wrong.

4. I am at the end of my fourth page, and I have no clever way to end this. Thank you.

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While I was fairly pleased with how it turned out, my piece wasn't nearly as good as the one that followed it, so I lucked out with the order in which people read. Also, I have to admit that receiving applause is extremely invigorating.

But anyway, I'm aware that I haven't updated this blog in a while, and I hope to fit in a proper update sometime tomorrow. For the first time in a while, I have some free time this weekend, so we'll see.