Okay, so I accidentally leave the TV on past the top of the hour this evening before I realize I'm watching CBS network news. It's that time of year again when we get to see hurricanes blowing shit over, sparks from downed power lines angrily lashing out and rooftops flying off schools. By this time, Dennis is onshore and most of the worst is over.
But it takes me a few minutes before I realize what I'm watching next. It's some guy with a microphone getting his hair really messed up. He looks to be wearing inflatable balloons. He's not. He's just in a wind tunnel. They're illustrating the effects of wind upon a body at ever increasing speeds.
For this, they picked one of their older on-camera journalists. You know, the guy whose 60 year old skin is losing its elasticity but gaining in "sagnicity" which becomes embarrassingly more evident as the tunnel wind speeds increase to 80, to 90, then 100 mph. His jowls are now flapping in the 'breezes' reminiscent of those old 60's astronaut movies that demonstrated the effects of increasing gravity units, or "G"s, imposed upon them. Except here, his jowls are really, really flapping. Repulsively so. It's not a pretty sight.
I think I have some vague earlier memory of such bodily disconfigurations demonstrating the effects of nuclear winds from atomic blasts. (Except in those, after the disheveling by winds, victims were usually fried and, because of the high radiation doses, left inedible for the unfortunate, starving survivors. But I digress.)
About this time, the wife walks into the room, looks at Distorted Man and asks, "What the hell are you watching?"
I explain enthusiastically, "A lesson illustrating the hazards of hurricane winds!"
She pauses, twisting her neck back and forth, trying to make out flappy guy's face in 100+ mph winds and then asks, "So, where's the rain, falling palm trees and decapitating metal signs?" and leaves.
In a lucid moment, I shut the TV off. This is not news. I feel so taken in, like an idiot.
No comments:
Post a Comment