The Most Insulting Love Song Ever

A month from now is Valentine’s Day, a time when thoughts turn to romance, chocolates, and tender songs. The most beloved Valentine’s ballad is undoubtedly “My Funny Valentine.” Frankly, though, I have to wonder why. Have you ever seriously considered the lyrics? If a woman I was with ever slapped my self-concept across the face with a song like that, she’d be going home in a cab and paying her own fare.

Just look at the words to “My Funny Valentine” and tell me they make you feel cherished, idolized, and all-around glowingly great about being you. You want something that’ll take you a few pegs down from warm and fuzzy, the old Rogers and Hart tune will do it.

Let’s say you’re a lady and the guy you’re with has gotten it into his head that he’s going to sing you this song while gazing soulfully into your eyes. Here, line by line, is what he’s saying to you, along with an explication of its actual meaning:

My funny Valentine–sweet, comic Valentine

You make me smile in my heart.

So far, so good. Your amour finds you amusing. But is that really a smile in his heart or a snicker?

Your looks are laughable.

Doesn’t take long for the truth to come out, does it. He’s just told you that your appearance is a joke.

Unphotographable.

You’re ugly. Your face would melt the sensor on a digital camera.

Still you’re my favorite work of art.

He’s into Cubism, so consider that line nothing but a left-handed compliment.

Is your figure less than Greek?

You’re not Rubenesque, you’re just overweight. And yes, that dress makes your butt look fat, definitely.

Is your mouth a little weak?

What the hell does that mean? Maybe he’s commenting on your receding chin. Surely he doesn’t expect you to curl dumbbells with your lips.

When you open it to speak, are you smart?

He thinks you’re stupid. Ugly, fat, weak-mouthed, chinless, and stupid. What on earth are you doing with this dork? He’s done nothing but insult you since he started singing this idiotic song. You’d have been better off spending Valentine’s Day with your cat, who is thoroughly nuts about you, not to mention a whole lot nicer.

But don’t change a hair for me. Not if you care for me.

Care for him? He’s lucky you haven’t bitch slapped him into oblivion.

Stay, little Valentine, stay!

Unbelievable. The jerk is propositioning you. Having verbally abused you, having shredded your ego to the consistency of mulch, now he wants to have sex with you. And all the while, he’s staring into your eyes and singing that stupid, snarky song with that stupid smirk on his stupid face.

Each day is Valentine’s day.

Not in a pig’s eye it ain’t. Not today, not any day. You smack the insensitive turd with your purse and walk out the door. Don’t change a hair for him? You’d like to rearrange his entire face for him. Bastard!

Then again, it could be PMS.

January 15, 2011 by
Filed Under: Humor, Jazz, Music Tagged With: , , ,

The Giraffe Test: You Only Fail If You Pass It

No doubt you, like 99 percent of the civilized world, have taken the Giraffe Test. So you’re well aware that…

What, you say you haven’t taken the test? Mercy me. We need to get you up to snuff, then, because this thing is important. Purportedly devised by Anderson Consulting, the Giraffe Test measures various of your abilities to reason in a way that allows you to function on a level above, say, protoplasm.

But not so fast. My friend Pat Bowman emailed the test to me a few days ago, and having taken it, I’ve concluded that the test itself suffers from a few gaps in logic. In fact, whoever designed the Giraffe Test is–I shall put this delicately–crazy.

Below is the test. After the answer provided for each of the four questions, you’ll find my own response, which I think is a bit more real-world than the one furnished by the test developer.

THE GIRAFFE TEST

First Question: How do you put a giraffe  into a refrigerator?

Stop and think about it and decide on your answer before you scroll down.

Now scroll down

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[Note: Don’t you find this scroll-down business annoying as hell?]

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The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe, and close the  door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

My Response: You’ve got to be kidding. WROOOONG! Wrong, wrong, wrong! We are talking about a freeking giraffe here, not a jar of mayonnaise. So unless your refrigerator is the size of a giraffe, you haven’t got just a major project on your hands, you’ve got an impossible one. Unless, of course, you kill and butcher the giraffe, in which case, still, no way are you ever going to pack all that meat into your standard refrigerator. Even if you’ve got a honking huge freezer chest, you’d better have lots of friends and family whose mouths water for giraffe, because you’re going to be giving plenty of it away.

Just for chuckles, though, let’s say you actually own a fridge that will accommodate a live giraffe–a fridge twenty-one feet tall, fifteen feet wide, and eight feet deep, sitting out there on the back forty next to your meth lab. Do you seriously think that a creature as big as a giraffe is going to willingly comply with being stuffed inside a cold, dark, airtight container? At the very least, you’re going to need a tranquilizer gun, plenty of helpers, protective gear to go around, and all the equipment necessary to implement successful giraffe refrigeration. And by the way, have you got a permit for that giraffe? The US Department of Agriculture will take a dim view of your activities if you don’t.

The so-called “correct answer” reveals the test developer’s tendency to hugely oversimplify complex issues. Whoever came up with that response is clearly in middle management.

Next Question: How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

Did you say, Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the  refrigerator?

Wrong Answer.

Correct Answer: Open the  refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and  close the door. This tests your ability to think through the  repercussions of your previous actions.

My Response: Okay, I’ll play along. And nope, Right Answer. It was a different refrigerator. For this task, I had to go out and purchase one the size of an elephant. The question actually reveals the test designer’s failure to think through the repercussions of his or her lack of specificity regarding the respondent’s refrigeration options.

Third Question: The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend–except one. Which animal does not attend?

Correct Answer: The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there. This tests your memory.

Okay, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.

My Response: Wrong again. I let the elephant out. He was going utterly berserk in the refrigerator. What did the test designer expect–that the elephant would just sit there and placidly suffocate to death while the Lion King organized his little fete? I’d have had to to deliver the carcass to the conference on a flatbed truck.

The last I saw of the the elephant, he was heading into the forest and presumably arrived at the meeting intact and on time. The correct answer, then, is that none of the animals is missing from the Lion King’s … omigod, the giraffe. I don’t even want to look.

Moving on, this test has one last opportunity to demonstrate some semblance of sanity. Let’s see how it fares with …

The Final Question:

There is a river you must cross, but it is used by crocodiles and you do not have a boat. How do you manage it?

Correct Answer: You jump into the river and swim across. Have you not been listening? All the crocodiles are attending the Animal Meeting.

This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.

My Response: Is there something wrong with simply walking across the bridge like I did? The “Correct Answer” reveals the test designer’s tendency to overlook the obvious, and thus, to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

According to Anderson Consulting  Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong, but many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a  four-year-old.

Send this out to frustrate your smart friends.

Or, alternatively, send this article to the smarty-pants at Anderson Consulting, who have demonstrated that, unlike most professionals, they obviously do possess the brains of a four-year-old.

September 28, 2010 by
Filed Under: Humor, Life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Spam Rant

Excuse me while I depart from the normal storm-, jazz-, and saxophone-related material on Stormhorn.com long enough to let off some steam. Sorry, but I’ve had it up to here with email spam, and I feel a profound need to vent if not outright vomit.

I have deleted, I have blocked, I have blacklisted, I have steadily added keywords to my spam filter, and still the unwanted sales messages pour in daily, relentlessly. They are tasteless. They are offensive. They are irritating as hell. And, at least where I’m concerned, they are worse than ineffective–that is, unless the goal of the unscrupulous marketers who send them is to infuriate me. In that, they’re succeeding. As for getting me to buy their products, never in a million years are they going to see a solitary farthing from me for their…

* Cheap Swiss Watches. Hey there, Spammer, why not just stand on a street corner in a rain coat with big interior pockets filled with your trashy fake Rolexes and hawk them to passers-by? That’s the time-honored way.

* Sex Products. Pardon my bluntness, Spammer, but you’re a lot more concerned about the size of my penis than I am, and if I felt otherwise, I wouldn’t come to you for help.  As for “sex pills,” what kind of vast quantities do you think I consume? Judging by the volume of email you send me daily, a dump truck ought to be pulling up to my place once a week and restocking my supply of your cheap Viagra through a coal chute. But if you want the truth, I’m not using your products at all, and I never will.

So stop calling me “User Bob” in your subject lines, because I’m not a user. And while you’re at it, “Friend Bob” doesn’t work with me either. I know you think that using my name and calling me “friend” is the Marketing Magic Button, but here’s a tip: Disingenuousness is never good marketing. I’m not your friend and you’re not my friend. You’re a sleazy, greedy, unprincipled, disrespectful purveyor of sham products that you’re marketing illegally, and if I knew of a way to shut you down, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

* College Degrees and Diplomas. Let me get this straight: I “deserve” a master’s or doctor’s degree and you’re the folks who are going to help me get one in just 6 weeks. Gosh, what a great idea. I’ll consider your offer of a cheap and easy graduate education once you learn how to write and spell on at least a 3rd-grade level.

* Cheap Software. Guess what? I can find my own cheap, not to mention free, software online without your help. I don’t need your cheap software. I don’t trust your cheap software. I don’t want your cheap software. And I’m not going to buy your cheap software. Take your cheap software and stick it in dark, sunless posterior accommodations.

I suppose it goes without saying (though I’m going to say it anyway) that I delete all such messages without opening them as soon as I see them. What amazes me is the sheer audacity of the folks who send them. We’re talking about an entire spam marketing industry that is premised on violating people’s communication boundaries, an industry that is all about peppering their unwilling database with an endless supply of unwanted sales messages. It’s the good old shotgun approach: If you shoot enough pellets, a few are bound to find their mark, and hang whoever else they hit.

The approach must work; otherwise, such an industry wouldn’t exist. But of course, spamming is illegal, and I marvel at the willful dehumanization that lies behind it. Spam filters are the modern counterpart of a “No Solicitors” sign to a vacuum cleaner salesman. In developing technology that enables them to slide over, under, and around those filters, spammers are saying, in effect, “Nuts to your sign, nuts to your closed door, and nuts to you. I’m coming in anyway!”

A Hoover salesman who tried to sneak in through a side window would deserve to have a shotgun stuffed in his face. Unfortunately, no virtual shotgun presently exists that can inspire spammers with a sudden ethical awakening.

Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if one did? Wouldn’t it be extraordinarily cool if someone would develop a spam filter that not only deleted the most sophisticated forms of spam, but that could also, at the user’s discretion, trace its way back to the sender and wipe out their entire database? Just a thought.

Hmmm…

Hey, there, Scouts, if one of you is looking for a project for your Hacking Merit Badge, have I got a fantastic idea for you!

July 25, 2010 by
Filed Under: Humor, Life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Smart Shopper’s Guide to Swan Meat

It’s gratifying to know, in these troubled times when so many are struggling financially, that you can purchase swan meat for just $50.00 a pound. That’s right, there are deals to be had and ways to satisfy the well-known American craving for swan at bargain-basement prices. The kicker is, you’ve got to purchase the entire bird. But at rates this low, why would you not?

Presumably, when you order a bird from 1-800-STEAKS.COM, you’re getting a black swan as shown in the web page photo.* The page doesn’t actually specify that it’s a black swan, nor does it tell you how much meat you’re getting for your money, because, heck, why not make things more fun by making the customer guess, right?  At the time of this writing, I defy you to search the page content and find any details beyond the fact that you’re getting swan for $999.00–a steal at $500 off the regular price of $1,499.00.

Since it really is kind of important to know where in the size spectrum between a chicken and a sperm whale the swan in question lies, it’s off to Wikipedia we go, you and I, where we learn that a mature black swan weighs anywhere between eight and twenty pounds. Very good, now we’re getting somewhere. But in what form will our swan be delivered to us? After all, it’s swan MEAT that we’re after, and that is what the site advertises. So should we expect it to come pre-packaged, or frozen whole with the feathers still on it, or what?

Finding no immediate information, off we go again to do more research, this time to the Exotic Meat Market, which offers competitive prices on black, mute, and black neck swans and is pleased to answer some of our pressing questions.*

Ah! The swans are live. We will not be receiving our eight to twenty pounds of swan meat in nicely prepared parcels. No, our swan meat will be arriving in the freshest of all possible conditions, honking and hissing and flapping its wings and ready to vigorously assert its personal views on being converted into table fare. So we shall have our work cut out for us, but the Exotic Meat Market sweetens the deal with prices that make us want to shout for joy, they are so ridiculously low.

Here, for instance, is the pricing information for a single live, male black swan:

Regular price: $1,299.00
Sale price: $599.00

Black Swan – Live Male blswlima

[Add to cart]

I’m not sure what “blswlima” means. Maybe the swan comes with Lima beans. Regardless, you can see right away that here is a platinum deal if ever there was one, with the Exotic Meat Market undercutting 1-800-STEAKS.COM by $200 on their regular price and $400 on the sale price. I know, I know–it makes you want to rub your eyes in disbelief. Disbelief is a common reaction to prices like these. Nevertheless, it’s true: you can purchase live, aggressively fresh swan meat–between eight and twenty pounds, we’re still not entirely clear on that–for a low, low, not quite 600 bucks.

And that’s not all. Mute swan, a non-native species which is rapidly becoming a weed bird in United States lakes and rivers, also sells for just $599.99. And black neck swan, regularly $2,499.99, is currently on sale for a paltry $1,999.99. That’s a $500 SAVINGS! (Though it should be mentioned that the black neck swan doesn’t come with Lima beans.)

But perhaps you’re the outdoorsy type who prefers to head out to the swan blind and harvest your own. If that’s the case, you’ll appreciate this recipe for mute swan burgers. I realize that you’ve probably already got your own half-a-dozen-or-so favorite ways of preparing America’s favorite poultry, but in a country where the mere mention of swan sets mouths to watering, one more recipe can’t hurt.

Let me know how you like it. As for me, I think tonight I’ll settle for fried chicken.

ADDENDUM, March, 2013: Over three years have passed since I wrote this article, but it continues to draw traffic. I’ve spent hours writing serious, marvelously practical posts that have long since settled into the sedimentary layers of blogdom, while an aberration I knocked off in an hour or so has attained modest immortality. Weird. Must be a lot of folks are just crazy about swan. That or else they enjoy a chuckle or two. Probably the latter. So if you enjoyed this post, you might also want to check out my assessment of the Giraffe Test. It’ll set your mind at ease, particularly if you’re a business professional.

_______________

* The link I had to this site no longer works and has been removed.

February 22, 2010 by
Filed Under: Humor, Life, Outdoors Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

More Winter Weather for the South? More Long-Range Musings from a Michigan Snow Grinch

There’s talk about another round of snow hitting the South toward the end of February. It’s a bit strange to see how much discussion goes on about snowfall as an anomaly when here in Michigan, it’s a way of life. Today, snow was in the forecast in the Grand Rapids area. But that’s the norm in February. I’m used to looking out the window and seeing snow in its various forms: big, fat, fluffy flakes; small, sharp, crystalline flakes; hard, dry graupel that bounces off the sidewalk like Styrofoam crumbs; frigid diamond-chips that barely qualify as snow, they’re so fine and so tremendously cold, cold, cold.

The snow du jour on this fine, wintry Monday has been the big stuff–merry, white clumps cascading by the billions out of the mid-February sky, twirling, diving, swooping, soaring, pirouetting on the wind–snow that looks as if God sliced open an enormous feather pillow and has been emptying its contents in fits and starts over my hometown of Caledonia. I grudgingly admit, snow Grinch that I am, that it has been a darn pretty sight.

Yes, you heard me say it. Even an avowed, long-time loather of snow such as I has his moments, times when the beauty of winter transcends its miseries and those dancing flakes warm my attitude with their frozen magic. It’s a bit easier to admit to toward the end of an El Nino winter that has been less snowy than usual.

Nevertheless, I’ve never taken the kind of interest in winter weather that I have in warm-weather convection. I don’t make a habit of following forecast models daily in February, I possess only a rudimentary understanding of their interpretation at this time of year, and I get caught by surprise by events that blizzard enthusiasts have been following with eager eyes. You maybe can’t understand my indifference unless you’ve lived in a place where the snow is going to come to you whether you look for it or not, and you will be scraping plenty of it, along with generous portions of ice, off your car windshield for four or five months.

So, is the South due for another round of snow in a week or so? I dunno. Out of curiosity, I ran a GFS snowfall totals loop out to 384 hours a little while ago, and it suggests a pretty good dumping, beginning in Pennsylvania and parts east–why am I not surprised?–and then spreading the joy to northern Oklahoma, Missouri, and Tennessee as another system moves through. That’s probably the system that folks are harping about. But as everyone knows and everyone is quick to say, it’s still a long way out, and nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen right now. That’s particularly true for someone like me, who hasn’t bothered to cultivate winter forecasting skills in a place where snow is as inevitable as death and taxes, and for many, only slightly more enjoyable.

A little dark humor there, folks. Don’t hold it against me if you’re one who loves snow. You’re welcome to remove as much of it as you wish from my vehicle for free, take it home with you, and enjoy it to your heart’s content. Come, ease your craving. I call that a generous offer. But act soon! It’s only good through April.

February 15, 2010 by
Filed Under: Humor, Life, Outdoors, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Trouble with Reading Glasses: A Jazz Saxophonist’s Lament

Reading glasses suck.

No, let me restate that: Reading glasses are a boon, but having to wear them sucks. And it particularly sucks, sucks to the fourth power, when one is trying to read big band charts on a bandstand.

Am I the only horn player who has this problem? I seriously doubt it.

I go through reading glasses like they’re M&Ms chocolate-covered peanuts. I buy them, lose them, buy them, lose them. So I get the cheapest ones I can find–I mean, reeeaally cheap, $1.99 glasses which I purchase at Ace Hardware in Hastings. They do the job just fine for most purposes, but playing in a big band is not “most purposes.” It’s a purpose set apart that poses some peculiar problems.

For one thing, those classy, low-slung bandstands which are so much a part of the big band tradition place the music a couple feet away and well below my natural line of vision. I compensate by scroonching forward and down in a manner that would inspire admiration in a circus contortionist.  This gets me closer to the music, allowing me to read it.

Most of it, that is. There comes a point, as I approach the bottom of a chart, where the music dips below the frame of my glasses, and I’m confronted with a decision whether to scroonch even farther–and believe me, four hours of scroonching in this manner does nothing to improve either my posture or my attitude–or else attempt to read the remainder of the page without the assistance of lenses.

Now, my vision isn’t so bad that option B isn’t feasible, at least in theory, but a funny–though not knee-slappingly so–thing happens when I attempt it: I lose my place in the music.

This leaves me frantically scrambling to find my place while the rest of the band chugs merrily onward. Eventually, Eric or Hugh or whoever is playing tenor next to me points to a spot on my chart, and I dive back in with varying levels of success, depending on my familiarity with the arrangement. It’s frustrating and embarrassing.

Life would be so much easier if I could trade the bandstand for a good, old-fashioned music stand which adjusts easily for height and distance. Get those charts right smack in front of my eyeballs, where I can read them without the aid of a telescope, and I’d be fine. But no, that’s not how it works, not with a big band, where low-rise bandstands are integrally woven into the mystique.

That, my friends, is why I emerge from big band gigs with the posture of a Cheeto. Reading-glasses-induced scroonching is doing me in.

I may be a well-maintained 53 years old, but I’m still 53. That’s not old enough yet to qualify as a curmudgeon, but there are times when I come pretty close, and an entire evening of imitating a hunchback is one of them.

So why do I continue to put up with the frustrations and, in all seriousness, the physical discomfort? Because I enjoy playing the music. I’m not primarily a big band musician; my natural habitat, where I really spread my wings and fly, is small combos. But I came up through big bands, and I’m glad for the opportunity to still play the great old arrangements from time to time. I mean, you can’t get a better jazz education than you’ll find in the music of Duke and Basie, you know? That’s why I continue to pay the cost of tuition.

There’s no problem with the library, none whatever. I just wish I could find some reading glasses that would enable me to read the books without a hitch from cover to cover.

December 19, 2009 by
Filed Under: Band, Humor, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Farmers’ Almanac Secret Weather Formula: Even Eric Rasmussen Doesn’t Know It–But One Man Does

In a recent post, I poked a bit of gentle fun at the Farmers’ Almanac’s long-range forecasts, speculating that the Almanac’s weather sages were consulting woolly bear caterpillars to determine the nature of the coming winter.

Writing the article was good for a grin, but doing so got me to wondering: How the heck do those folks over at Farmers’ Almanac go about making such perilously far-out weather predictions, anyway? Surely they must have a few highly knowledgeable weather heads on staff with access to some extremely sophisticated technology, along with a formidable understanding of global climatology, oceanography, and whatnot.

So I posed the question on Stormtrack, and Lansing meteorologist Rob Dale responded with a link back to the Almanac which answered my question beautifully. Turns out the Farmers’ Almanac is far more advanced than I ever dreamed.

What’s their secret? A roomful of meteorologists hunched over sophisticated computers? A database brimming with decades worth of climatological statistics?

Nope. The Farmer’s Alamanac doesn’t need computers, and it doesn’t need no stinkin’ mets, climatologists, or databases. No, they’ve got something better: a solitary “calculator” named Caleb Weatherby and a nearly 200-year-old, proprietary formula developed by the Almanac’s founder, David Young, which allows Weatherby to calculate the Almanac’s forecasts several years in advance.

Did you get that? Several years. We are no longer talking weather forecasting here, we are talking prophecy. But perhaps prophecy is one of the secret ingredients blended into Young’s incredible formula.

According to the Almanac, “Since 1818, this carefully guarded formula has been passed along from calculator to calculator and has never been revealed*.” No one else besides Caleb Weatherby knows it. Not the SPC, not NASA, not the CIA, not Chuck Doswell, not even your mother.

While the formula eludes even the lofty craniums at NOAA, who must resort to more primitive devices such as GOES, Doppler radar, atmospheric soundings, numerical models, and a fleet of high-tech computers, the Almanac assures us that their formula “considers many factors, such as sunspots, moon phases, and other astronomical and atmospheric factors and conditions.” They forgot to mention eye of newt, but I suppose that would be giving away too much.

Just in case you’re doubtful, the Almanac furnishes a long list of their forecasting triumphs. I have to tell you, though–and I don’t wish to shock you, but confession is good for the heart–that I’m nevertheless a bit skeptical. Spin is spin, and a lot of things can be spun, including the conclusions extrapolated from weather statistics and meteorological crapshoots.

To be fair, the Almanac admits that “weather forecasting still remains an inexact science. Therefore, our forecasts may sometimes be imperfect. If you are planning an outdoor event, we recommend that you also check forecasts from local sources.”

That last, modest caveat is a bit of good advice, and if you’re a fan of Farmers’ Almanac forecasts, you’d do well to take heed. Go ahead and plan your family reunion picnic at the park six months in advance based on what the Almanac says; but if I were you, when it comes down to the week of, I’d place a whole lot more faith in the predictive expertise of your local WFO than in something generated by the Almanac’s calculator several years prior. I mean, you never know–ol’ Caleb might have been missing a few essential chicken bones from his rattle when he was doing his forecasting dance for that day.

Now, please, please, please…if you’re a die-hard devotee of the Farmers’ Almanac, don’t take me too seriously. I’m just having fun, but I really think fondly of the Almanac. It’s a beloved and revered slice of Americana that bears a torch of genuine, irreplaceable folk wisdom, and if you swear by its forecasts, great. Continue to swear by them (or at them, when they don’t pan out quite the way you expected). I’ve personally enjoyed reading them, and they’re harmless enough. The world would be a poorer place without them, and certainly less amusing.

But when it comes to chasing storms or going camping, I’ll probably look elsewhere for my weather information. Punxatawney Phil, for instance. He’d make a great chase mascot, and I’ll bet he’s  a whiz at pinpointing storm initiation.

______________________

* All quotes excerpted from the Farmers’ Almanac article, “How does the Farmers’ Almanac Predict the Weather? [sic]” Article’s web page address at the time of this blog post: https://www.farmersalmanac.com/farmers-almanac-forecasts

October 30, 2009 by
Filed Under: Humor, Life, Outdoors, Storm Chasing, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

The Farmers’ Almanac, Woolly Bears, and Government Cover-Ups

Given the unreliability of long-range forecast models, there’s a lot of justifiable skepticism in the storm chasing community when someone (like me, for instance) talks about an event that’s 120 or more hours out. Beyond maybe three days, trying to forecast weather events becomes increasingly like reading tea leaves. We watch the ECMWF and GFS for signs of agreement and consistency, and if they start showing up, we cross our fingers, knowing that a lot can happen between now and payday.

So I’m not sure what to think when the revered Farmers’ Alamanac gazes into its crystal ball and issues with serene confidence the following prognostication for the Great Lakes region:

November 2009
1st-3rd. Sunny, with increasing clouds. 4th-7th. Rain spreads in from the west. Turning clear and frosty. 8th-11th. Rapid temperature changes. Storm moves east, with heavy rain or wet snow. Frigid cold air follows. 12th-15th. New storm moves into Great Lakes. Heavy rain and/or wet snow. Then clearing and very cold. 16th-19th. Storm sweeps across the area, followed by very cold air. Fast-moving storm, reaching the region by the 19th. Heavy snow, followed by colder air. 20th-23rd. Cold Canadian front brings rain and thunderstorms for the Great Lakes region. 24th-27th. A wet Thanksgiving.  28th-30th. Few rain or wet snow showers. Turning colder.

December 2009
1st-3rd. Rain and wet snow shift into the Great Lakes, south to Kentucky, followed by clear and cold weather. 4th-7th. Storm Ohio River Basin deposits heavy rain and wet snow. Very cold air follows. 8th-11th. A “winterlude” for Great Lakes and the Ohio River Basin. Temperatures still well below seasonal norms. 12th-15th. Scattered snow showers and flurries. 16th-19th. Considerable cloudiness over most areas, but little precipitation. Nights are seasonably cold, days are mild. 20th-23rd. Rain and/or snow.

Not being a climatologist, I’m unaware of what sophisticated meteorological resources the Farmers’ Almanac may be tapping into. Possibly they’ve been consulting woolly bear caterpillars. According to folklore, you can tell how severe the winter will be by the ratio of brown to black banding on the woolly bears. Plenty of brown means a mild winter; wide black bands with little brown points to a nasty snow season. A few weeks ago, I found an all-black woolly bear. I knew that couldn’t be good.

If only we could get the woolly bears to cooperate when storm chasing season is underway. But the little critters have other things on their minds by then, namely, pupating and becoming Isabella tiger moths. So I guess we’re stuck with the Euro and the GFS. Or sacrificing chickens, though the research supporting the link between chicken sacrifice and improved storm intercepts is slim.

No doubt the government is covering up the information, just like they do everything that’s related to severe weather. They want us to remain ignorant, unsuspecting guinea pigs while the weather gods at Norman conduct their insidious experiments, using their array of antennas and radars to generate monster tornadoes 400 miles away and then guide them unerringly through populated areas. Take the May 13 Kirksville, Missouri, tornado, for instance. That one had Government Issue written all over it. The lack of a single shred of substantiating evidence just goes to show how expert Big Brother is at keeping the truth hidden.*

That’s why you’ll find no NOAA papers correlating tornado outbreaks and chicken sacrifice. Same with woolly bears and long, hard winters–though the Farmers’ Alamanac folks, bless their hearts, have obviously made the connection, and hence, they have the weather for November and December pretty well locked in. I call that kind of forecasting ability reassuring.

As for the rest of us, well, we’ve got the ECMWF, the GFS, and tea leaves. How do you like your tea?

_______

* The following disclaimer is intended only for those who take me seriously: I’M JUST KIDDING! Sad that I’ve even got to say it, but the truth is, some folks out there do in fact believe some damn crazy things about the government’s ability to manipulate the weather. I’m not one of them, and I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for such.

That being said, I would love to see the SPC’s research on chicken sacrifice and tornadogenesis.

October 24, 2009 by
Filed Under: Humor, Life, Nature, Storm Chasing, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Using the Augmented Scale with “Giant Steps”

I tend to arrive at things the hard way, which is to say, by personal discovery. For instance, I come across a large circular object and find that it has a unique quality, namely, that it rolls, and this gets me all excited, and of course I have to go tell all my friends. “Hey, Fred,” I say, rolling my circular object around on the lawn in front of him, “check this out! Pretty nifty, eh?”

“Ermmm, yeah. Nice. A wheel,” says Fred.

“A what?” I reply.

“A wheel,” Fred repeats, confirming my sudden suspicion that others may have already crossed this territory before me.

“Exactly, ” I say. “A wheel. Isn’t it great?”

Fred scrutinizes me for a second, then walks away. Now you know why I don’t have any friends named Fred. Used to, don’t anymore.

Anyway, the same principle probably applies to this post on using the augmented scale over “Giant Steps” changes. I’m sure it has already been done, and I’m probably just the last person to know about it. But since I haven’t come across any other literature that addresses the subject, either on the Internet or elsewhere, I thought I’d talk about it here.*

I do seem to recall reading somewhere about a connection between the augmented scale and the Coltrane tune, but it was just a passing comment that never went into any detail. I have no idea where I came across it. Evidently it planted a seed, though, because the relationship between the scale and the set of chord changes, both of whose symmetrical constructions emphasize the interval of a major third, has been intriguing me lately.

So earlier this evening, having thought the theory of the thing through, I finally sat down with my sax and my Jamie Aebersold “John Coltrane” CD and played around with the concept. It’s still very new to me, as is the sound of the augmented scale, but I’m satisfied at this point that I’ve acquired a very useful and colorful tool.

Simply put, the augmented scale is as close as you can get to a universal scale that covers “Giant Steps” in its entirety–not just the cantilevered dominant-tonic cycle, but also the ii-V7-I cadences. The application isn’t picture-perfect, but it works, and besides, a little dissonance is beautiful, right?

I’m not going to get deeply into the theory behind my thinking. I’m just going to assure you that, just as you can play an entire 12-bar blues using one blues scale, you can improvise on all of of “Giant Steps” using a single augmented scale. It’s not something you want to base an entire solo on, particularly since the augmented scale is such a foreign sound; but for that same reason, it’s also a very nice color to tap into, and you can coast along on it for as long as you please without having to think too much about making the changes. As long as you stay within the scale, you’re golden.

But of course, you want an example. So without further ado, here are a couple of licks on four bars of the “Giant Steps” cycle. Me being an alto man, I’ve written them for Eb instruments, so you may need to transpose. Click on the image to enlarge it.

augmented-scale-on-giant-steps-changes
Three points to be aware of:

• Use care in handling the perfect fourths of the dominant chords and the flatted thirds of the tonics.

• I’ve shown the standard chords without alterations. However, by virtue of its construction, the augmented scale works best with “Giant Steps” when you flat the ninths and raise the fifths of the dominant chords and flat the fifths of the minor sevenths.

• The sound of the augmented scale is quite different from everyday major/minor tonalities. So set those standards aside and suspend judgment until you’ve worked with the augmented scale long enough to get it into your ear.

That’s it. As for any further brain work, that’s up to you. Of course, you’re probably way ahead of me on it to begin with. That’s why, at this point, I’m turning my mind in other directions. For instance, I was sitting under an apple tree the other day, and an apple dropped off and bonked me on the head. I wondered why. What makes things fall? It’s almost like there’s some kind of a force or something. Has anyone looked into that?

They have?

Nuts. I was afraid of that.

————————–

* ADDENDUM: I take it back. After posting this article, I came across an excellent writeup by Jason Lyon that digs deeply into the theory of using the augmented scale with “Giant Steps.”

October 16, 2009 by
Filed Under: Humor, Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

RAOB and Other Weather Widgets

Some storm chasers pride themselves in being minimalists who have a knack for intercepting tornadoes without much in the way of gadgetry. Others are techies whose vehicles are tricked out with mobile weather stations and light bars. It’s all part of the culture of storm chasing, but the bottom line remains getting to the storms.

To my surprise, while I draw the line at gaudy externals, I’ve discovered that I lean toward the techie side. For me, storm chasing is a lot like fishing. Once you’ve bought your first rod and reel and gotten yourself a tackle box, you find that there’s no such thing as having enough lures, widgets, and whizbangs. You can take the parallels as deep as you want to. Radar software is your fish finder. F5 Data, Digital Atmosphere, and all the gazillion free, online weather maps from NOAA, UCAR, COD, TwisterData, and other sources are your topos. And so it goes.

A couple years ago I spent $300 on a Kestrel 4500 weather meter. It’s a compact little unit that I wear on a lanyard when I’m chasing. It weighs maybe twice as much as a bluebird feather, but it will give me temperature, dewpoint, wind speed, headwinds, crosswinds, wind direction, relative humidity, wet bulb temperature, barometric pressure, heat index, wind chill, altitude, and more, and will record trends of all of the above.

I use it mostly to measure the dewpoint and temperature.

Could I have gotten a different Kestrel model that would give me that same basic information for a third of the cost, minus all the other features that I rarely or never use? Heck yes. Nevertheless, I need to have the rest of that data handy. Why? Never mind. I just do, okay? I need it for the same reason that an elderly, retired CEO needs a Ferrari in order to drive 55 miles an hour for thirty miles in the passing lane of an interstate highway. I just never know when I might need the extra informational muscle–when, for instance, knowing the speed of crosswinds might become crucial for pinpointing storm initiation.

If I lived on the Great Plains, with Tornado Alley as my backyard, I might feel differently. But here in Michigan, I can’t afford to head out after every slight-risk day in Oklahoma. Selectivity is important. I guess that’s my rationale for my preoccupation with weather forecasting tools, along with a certain vicarious impulse that wants to at least be involved with the weather three states away even when I can’t chase it. Maybe I can’t always learn directly from the environment, but I can sharpen my skills in other ways.

Does having all this stuff make me a better storm chaser? No, of course not. Knowledge and experience are what make a good storm chaser, and no amount of technology can replace them. Put a $300 Loomis rod in the hands of a novice fisherman and chances are he’ll still come home empty-handed; put a cane pole in the hands of a bass master and he’ll return with a stringer full of fish. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for that same Loomis rod in the hands of a pro, and it’s not going to damage a beginner, even if he’s not capable of understanding and harnessing its full potential. Moreover, somewhere along the learning curve between rookie and veteran, the powers of the Loomis begin to become apparent and increasingly useful.

Now, I said all of that so I can brag to you about my latest addition to my forecasting tackle box: RAOB (RAwinsonde OBservation program). This neat little piece of software is to atmospheric soundings what LASIK is to eye glasses. The only thing I’ve seen that approaches it is the venerable BUFKIT, and in fact, the basic RAOB program is able to process BUFKIT data. But I find BUFKIT difficult to use to the point of impracticality, while RAOB is much easier in application, and, once you start adding on its various modules, it offers so much more.

RAOB is the world’s most powerful and innovative sounding software. Automatically decodes data from 35 different formats and plots data on 10 interactive displays including skew-Ts, hodographs, & cross-sections. Produces displays of over 100 atmospheric parameters including icing, turbulence, wind shear, clouds, inversions and much more. Its modular design permits tailored functionality to customers from 60 countries. Vista compatible.

–From the RAOB home page

The basic RAOB software arrived in my box a couple weeks ago courtesy of Weather Graphics. It cost me $99.95 and included everything needed to customize a graphic display of sounding data from all over the world.

I quickly realized, though, that in order to get the kind of information I want for storm chasing, I would also need to purchase the analytic module. Another $50 bought me the file, sent via email directly from RAOB. I downloaded it last night, and I have to say, I am absolutely thrilled with the information that is now at my disposal.

kmia-12z
Here is an example of the RAOB display, including skew-T/log-P diagram with lifted parcel, cloud layers, hodograph, and tables containing ancillary information. Click on the image to enlarge it. The display shown is the severe weather mode, with the graphs on the left depicting storm character, dry microburst potential, and storm category. (UPDATE: Also see the more recent example at the end of this article.)

The sounding shown is the October 13, 2009, 12Z for Miami, Florida–a place that’s not exactly the Zion of storm chasing, but it will do for an example. Note that the negative area–that is, the CIN–is shaded in dark blue. The light blue shading depicts the region most conducive to hail formation. Both are among the many available functions of the analytic module.

The black background was my choice. RAOB is hugely customizable, and its impressive suite of modules lets you tailor-make a sounding program that will fit your needs beautifully. Storm chasers will want to start with the basic and analytic modules. With that setup, your $150 gets you a wealth of sounding data on an easy-to-use graphic interface. It’s probably all you’ll ever need and more–though if you’re like me, at some point you’ll no doubt want to add on the interactive and hodo module.

And the special data decoders module.

Oh yeah, and the turbulence and mountain wave module. Gotta have that one.

Why?

Never mind. You just do, okay?

enid-ok-00z-gfs-5112011
ADDENDUM: With a couple storm seasons gone by since I wrote the above review, I thought I’d update it with this more timely image. If you’re a storm chaser, you’ll probably find that what the atmosphere looked like in May in Enid, Oklahoma, is more relevant to your interest than what it looked like in Miami in October.

October 13, 2009 by
Filed Under: Humor, Reviews, Storm Chasing, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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