Apocalypse Warning Level: 2

Pea-sized hail and lightning over most of North Seattle.

Level 3 is when animals of all kinds begin dropping out of the sky and speaking in tongues. Call me when that happens.

Edit: I’ve been informed (thanks, Mom!) that this was apparently not hail, but instead graupel. What the crapel is graupel? Read on, with text from the Glossary of Meteorology:

“graupel—Heavily rimed snow particles, often called snow pellets; often indistinguishable from very small soft hail except for the size convention that hail must have a diameter greater than 5 mm. Sometimes distinguished by shape into conical, hexagonal, and lump (irregular) graupel.”

Hunh.

She’s crowning!

Ayup, that’s right, the Miss America pageant was on Saturday. Did you miss it? Did you think you had something better to do, dammit? (You were right).

If so, you missed the sight of Miss Indiana Katie Stam (over on the left here) being crowned in her jaw-droppingly awful shredded 80’s bridal gown. I will repeat that: for her “evening gown” she voluntarily chose an off the shoulder, slit-to-the-upper-thigh white mini dress overlaid with a long lace layer that looked like it had been dragged through a horror movie swamp full of broken glass and down home Southern charm. She’s doomed herself to forever be that pageant winner whose crowning picture we see and say “hey, Miss 1987 was kind of hot, but why does she look so constipated?”

You also missed her response to host Mario Lopez’s question of “What does it feel like to be Miss America?” Answer: Panicked, choppy breathing and flailing hands, and not a word in sight over the horizon. Yes, folks, this is our elegant and articulate new Miss America. She’s done gonna git herself to cawledge!

I celebrated the event much as I have done over the past four years: by attending an official Miss America party where we place bets on the ladies, answer trivia questions, and—most importantly—dress up as our own Misses. This year we had quite the line up in attendance, and in through the door sauntered; Miss Conception, Miss Fire, Miss Fit, Miss Interpret, Miss Tletoe, Miss Carriage (with a jar full of…never mind), Miss Diagnosis, Miss Cegenation, Swing and a Miss and a host of other lovely ladies and boys with sashes. Highlights from past years include Miss Ogyny, Miss Cellaneous, Miss Ionary Position, Miss Ion to Mars and a representative from the State of Shock. Maybe that’s where Miss Indiana secretly hails from?

Screaming Mimi

I love my adopted Emerald city, but there are times when I just want to roundly smack every journalist who works here. Take a gander at three consecutive headlines from the Seattle P-I last week.

“SNOWED UNDER.” Yes, all 6 terrifying inches of it.

“START PRAYING NOW.” Is this about the snow or the bus collision in which no one was hurt?

“WILL IT EVER STOP?” It has.

This is not journalism, this is sensationalism. Seattle, take a deep breath and stop your wild, flailing freak-out over winter weather.

Snow!

Real, honest-to-god, snow in North Seattle. Winter isn’t a lie after all!

(Snow melting turning to black ice in t-minus 9 hours.)