11/27: No Hurricanes, But Still Plenty Of Hot Air
I seem to remember last year when Katrina was still fresh in everybody’s minds hearing how we were headed to a new generation of hurricanes, thanks to global warming and George W. Bush. Why, they were going to be bigger and badder; super-sized even! Well, now it’s one year later, and where are these uber-hurricanes? Where’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in that god-awful annoying-as-fuck voice of his trying to make me feel guilty for driving to work rather than taking a dozen transfers in order to show up at my job after a five-hour commute courtesy of public transportation? Buck up enviro-weenies. There’s always next year.
With cataclysmic predictions that hurricanes would swarm from the tropics like termites, no one thought 2006 would be the most tranquil season in a decade.
Barring a last-second surprise from the tropics, the season will end Thursday with nine named storms, and only five of those hurricanes. This year is the first season since 1997 that only one storm nudged its way into the Gulf of Mexico.
While I’m on this subject I feel like taking a trip down memory lane. I’ve noticed during the last few years an AccuWeather meteorologist by the name of Joe Bastardi has made a few appearances on Sean Hannity’s radio show, among other places. Having worked at AccuWeather years ago, I’ve been around this guy. Now you may be expecting me to bring up some stories of how he sliced Asian children in half and drank their blood. Not quite. I will say that this guy is a horrible-ass writer. (I know. Pot. Kettle. Black. Fuck you.) Every morning I had to proofread this daily column of his that was posted on AccuWeather’s Web site. Holy fuck. If you people thought I rambled on and on and on and on, don’t EVER read his stuff. It was so bad that when I started working there I was told to just glance through it and just move it along because it wasn’t worth revising. Besides, there were a few hundred other clients that needed worked on, and those were of more importance than “WebJB,” which was the filename of Bastardi’s daily column.
Ha. I just went on Wikpedia and found this. No, I didn’t write it.
Bastardi sometimes contributes columns several times a day when a storm is approaching. His writing is known for its long-windedness and frequent grammatical errors, which lately have improved.
Actually, what I really want to bitch about regarding Bastardi was during my final weeks at AccuWeather. My boss knew I was leaving. No, I wasn’t burning any bridges. The better half had just been accepted to the University of Dayton and I let my boss know at least 4-5 months ahead of time that I was going to be leaving. During this time the other copyeditor on my shift got promoted, and the company had just hired this chick to take over her full-time slot. (I was a part-timer and my replacement didn’t get hired until 2-3 months later.) Now we were always busy, and I frequently stayed past my scheduled shift (getting paid, of course) to help her out. One of my selfless acts of charity was to edit WebJB. Every day. Ugh.
Not many women worked at AccuWeather during my time there, and couple that with the fact she wasn’t 300 lbs with five kids, this chick, who just graduated nearby Penn State University, was much more popular with the male meteorologists than I could have ever been. She of course knew this, and we actually had an inside joke going about my status as “phantom” copyeditor. Well, one day Bastardi came over to our station and began showering this chick with praise about what a great job she was doing and how his columns looked great. Never mind the fact I was reading those bastards every fucking day. When I went to ask Joe about a letter to the editor he wrote the other day in the local newspaper, he told me to shut up! You bitch. Needless to say, his WebJB columns weren’t as readable for the rest of my time there.
But I can’t be all that hard on Bastardi. After all, there were many days when he wore sweatpants to work. Respect due.
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