The most beautiful girl...

...in the world is named Rita. Well, she's not as beautiful anymore. But I swear, last night, when Rita was raging at her most intense, I've just never seen anything that beautiful, a symmetric sawblade with perfect circular rings of red, orange, yellow, blue and purple, the lilliputian blue one inside the brilliant scarlet.

I've always been fascinated by the weather; I amazed my fourth grade science teacher in that I knew what an isobar was (she scarcely did). I've been particularly fascinated by tropical weather. I get a feeling of grand excitement--that I keep secret from the rest of the world because I don't want to seem heartless or insensitive--when a hurricane becomes extremely strong.

Part of it is for the beauty aspect--as I said before, there's not a lot more beautiful than a storm so symmetric. But it's also the idea that nature is unwaveringly and apathetically above civilization. If there is one more shred of evidence we need that we are not at the top of whatever hierarchy we've devised to make meaning of our existence, it's hurricanes. They just keeps spinning and there's nothing we can do about it and it's beautiful, even then mass exodus of cars and the abandonment, and I dunno. I wish my school had offered a meteorology major, because I could happily discuss and dissect these ideas the rest of my life.

As beautiful as Rita may be, though, I wish she'd stop pissing on us; contrary to popular belief, I'm NOT into watersports.