Gigantic Pencil, Reporter Nearly Kill 74-year-Old Woman

This is probably my greatest response to a story EVER. And by greatest, I mean perhaps the most stultifying, stupefying example of head-smacking obtuseness:

I have not listened to the weather channel or paid much attention to hurricanes since the passing of Ike. After all, I had prepared to evacuate with the threat of Hanna, but recently unpacked all my necessities. I just was avoiding the issue.

And then today's headline! "The Storm is headed for the Carolinas." My goodness, a story that should have been a Sunday feature on an inside page ends up on Page 1 of the Beaufort Gazette. I looked at the picture of the huge hurricane heading straight for us and quickly turned on the weather channel. It was after the hour, so there was no Atlantic weather news. Back to the story, and it turns out it is just a feature on "the Carolinas".

My heart did not stop racing for at least half an hour. I am 74 years old. How many elderly people did you cause to have heart palpitations this morning?

I wonder if it also got first page coverage on the Island Packet. Your next headline might read "12.000 people in Sun City head for the hills--or back to Ohio." Sounds like the radio program of "War of the Worlds."

Anyway, the article was a fine one, even though it was misplaced.

For reference, this is the story that's under discussion. And (brace your heart for it), below is the offending graphic that ran with it that made me responsible for this woman's near cardiac arrest:


So, instead of actually reading even the first paragraph of the article that sent this woman's heart into Speed Racer mode, she threw aside the newspaper and threw herself into a panicked frenzy befitting cable news coverage, presumably calling up the Weather Channel and awaiting Local on the 8s while haphazardly stuffing prescription medicine bottles, the deed to the house and various clothing into a duffel bag, yelling at her husband to don't even bother boarding up the windows, just go outside and start the damn Escalade already.

But, more amusingly, I can only imagine the thoughts that ran through her head when she noticed not only a large hurricane barreling straight for South Carolina, but also a gigantic pencil looking like a Stylus of God sticking out of the sky apparently erasing South Carolina from the map.

"Dear Lord, Joseph, get the sharpeners! This thing means business. Do we know if our storm shelter is eraser proof? GAH! THERE'S NO TIME MAN, THERE'S NO TIME!"

I haven't responded to her yet, but I'm betting my reply will be none too light on the sarcasm (in extraordinary circumstances such as these, you are allowed to bite back, I think) and contain the basic sentiment of: "sorry you didn't take the time to look at one sentence of the story before freaking out, and sorry for piquing your interest and getting you to read our newspaper."

But at least she liked the article, when she finally did read it. This is, however, the first time I've been compared to Orson Welles. But maybe not the last?

Beware the Rhombus of Ambivalence

My favorite hurricane term by far: The Cone of Uncertainty. It just sounds so ... so ... calamitously chaotic. Say it in that deep, portentous, "thunder throat" Don LaFontaine voice: "In a world where everything is certain, one cone will change the face of predictability ... forever."

CUT TO Hilton Head Island, exterior, day:

Civilian 1: "Watch out! A gigantic geometric embodiment of precariousness is headed this way!"
Civilian 2: "If only we knew where it was going!"

This is not to be confused with the Cone of Silence, or the Fortress of Solitude or the Sea of Tranquility, the Rhombus of Ambivalence, the Quadrilateral Conundrum or (a rare, yet unspeakably terrible weather event) Schrödinger's Dodecahedron.

The Cone of Uncertainty is also the most accurate geometric-related term to define my life right now. I'm, like, 100 miles deep into the cone, being constantly rapped on the skull by the shifting black lines of the edges. Just like the storm, there's all the exogenous (VOCAB WHAT) factors at work. But at least I'm not on Hispanola. They never get the Cone of Uncertainty. All they ever see is the Cube of Unspeakable Devastation and Mud Slides.

To Arms! To Arms!

Hurricane Strike Force Action Team: ASSEMBLE!


We've been teased by storms before, so everyone is preparing for this one while trying not to get too worked up into a frenzy. But it does certainly appear Hurricane Hanna (Carroll) is on track to jam herself right up our noses by the weekend. Everyone here is amping up towards full newspaper disaster battle mode — filling the car with gas; buying bottled water; sending templates to our sister paper in Columbia; sparring each other in preparation for a bare-knuckle fight with Geraldo, the usual. Then, when Go Time arrives, everyone gets sent off into their different teams and battle stations to form a perimeter of reporting around this tropical beast. It's kinda like Voltron. Five teams of reporters, each with their separate missions, dispatched to locate the five hidden robot lions in Beaufort County that will join together to form one newspaper. Go team!

I've been meandering through thoughts all day trying to figure out what I would take if we have to evacuate. The good thing about being young and perpetually transient is you don't have much stuff to worry about. I know I'll grab my computer, photo albums and journals. I might also want to bring to safety a few of the more irreplaceably ironic thrift store T-shirts, my Super Nintendo, some Kerouac, paper versions of clips (though who knows why) and the rest of the bottle of Absinthe sitting in my cupboard. It could, after all, be a very boring time sitting in the emergency operations center waiting for the storm to clear.

Then again, business reporter (and apparent amateur meteorologist) Jim Faber keeps telling me this storm is a piece of trash that he won't even think twice about. He's predicting light rain, tops, just like what happened with Ernesto in 2006 when everyone freaked out only to be greeted by a sprinkling of a storm. He will not, he informed me, be packing up his life-size George H.W. Bush cutout, because he refuses to give this storm the satisfaction of watching him evacuate.

But I'm packing up my Voltron lion key anyway. Just to be safe.