|
 A Reason to get Tropically Depressed
by Patrick Clapp
 The end of days are upon us. The impossible has come to pass. Stephen Colbert was right. The watery grave of the Atlantic has gurgled its death cry for the 22nd time. Tropical storm Alpha has begun its blood letting in the lands of Haiti. As a patriotic American I must ask the hyper-necessary question: who is to blame? Who is at fault for the approaching monstrosity?
The guilt lies fully at the feet of the World Meteorological Organization. Their unimaginative near-sightedness in the arena of Hurricanes is well documented. They have been locked into a rigid sequence of disaster forecasting that can only be broken by a truly destructive force. The scandalous blacklisting of nearly 20% of available American letters has brought about such headline qualifiers as "record-breaking 22nd named storm of the 2005 Atlantic season" (AP Newswire). This travesty cannot go unpunished. The slighted will raise their font size, set their bold bit, and be heard.
Fema claims that only the letters Q, U, and Z are oppressed. Apparently X and Y are so beneath the sweep of their caring glare that they fail to even acknowledge their absence. As usual the west coast is far more liberal about such things, but the coastlines of our capital will never be ravaged by the likes of Yancy or Xerxes. And who else is being shunned by this duplicity? The list is prodigious:
Yasmine, Ynez, Yolanda, Yvette, Yvonne, Yale, Yardley, Yates, Yeoman, Yitzhak, York, Yule, Yuri, Yusuf, Yves. And then there is Xavier and Xaviera: a name of foreshadowing meaning "new house." Plus: Xenos, Ximenes, Xanthe, Xenia, Xylia, and Xan.
The Atlantic also loses out on such excellent representation and innuendo from Zachariah, Zale which means "strength of the sea", Zebedee, Zedekiah, Zeke, Zelig, and Zephaniah, Zara, Zelda (a catchy diminutive of Griselda meaning "gray battle maid"), Zena, Zenobia, Zerlinda, Zoe, Zola is a bit of a thinker meaning "lump of earth" while Zona is a little off topic meaning "belt or girdle", and finishing with Zora, and Zuleika.
And what do we have in place of that ripped and chipped list of under-achievers? Well, based on strength of schedule, the 2006 Atlantic season could be quite the media frenzy. If we survive the cavalcade of Greek insurgency we just might live to be annihilated by: Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto, Florence, Gordon, Helene, Isaac, Joyce, Kirk, Leslie, Michael, Nadine, Oscar, Patty, Rafael, Sandy, Tony, Valerie, and William.
I cannot decide if our final doom should be named after a famous fictional starship captain, an award for a movie, an award for stage, a porn star, a police commissioner, or a rambling author hiding behind a shield called stream of consciousness. Perhaps you will be the doom of our nation? Tell me, do you see your name here?
|
