RANT Part II - This Time It's PERSONAL

Yes folks, it's about that time: something in New Zealand has caused me enough frustration to warrant me pulling out my soapbox and climbing aloft to begin ranting and raving like a lunatic. As a quick aside before I unleash a torrent of vitriol strong enough to wash away whole city blocks, I'd like to thanks Jaws 4, truly one of the worst movies of all time, for the tagline for this post. Yes, "This Time It's Personal" is the actual tagline of an actual movie, and just any movie, a movie about a giant shark that has somehow developed the cognitive ability to HARBOUR A VENDETTA AGAINST A WOMAN AND HER FAMILY (but somehow Michael Caine is in it?). That kind of quality screen writing can't be taught folks, you're just born with it.


BUT, I digress. The real point of this post is not to point out the sheer ridiculousness of a movie that involves a shark and a woman developing an unexplained psychic connection (SERIOUSLY?!), but rather to air my grievances with MOTHER NATURE herself. Now, the weather in Dunedin, while not great, is certainly something that I've grown to tolerate. Complaining about the weather is like complaining about Nickelback (my belief being that complaining about how much Nickelback sucks makes you the Nickelback OF PEOPLE), and I've managed to grin and bear it, for the most part, over the past 7 and a half months.

Today, however, was the proverbial straw that broke the even more proverbial camel's back. Let me give you a brief timeline of my day and the accompanying weather patterns:

7:00AM - My alarm goes off, and I can hear that it is PISSING down rain. Hit snooze.

7:20AM - Downstairs making cereal, and it has stopped raining. In fact, the sun is shining. OH HAPPY DAY.

7:50AM - Leaving my house for school. It is now raining again. AND SNOWING. How is it raining AND snowing at the same time? I certainly have no idea, and now I have this internal debate regarding the use of an umbrella:

Pro Umbrella Dave: It's raining, and you're wearing teacher clothes. Wouldn't want to show up to school looking like a drowned cat - then you'd look as poor as you actually are!

Anti Umbrella Dave: You know the kind of people that use umbrellas in the snow? What do you call them? Oh, that's right. TWATS. Be a man.

Pro Umbrella Dave: At least you'll be a dry twat.

Anti Umbrella Dave: No one likes a dry twat, AMIRITE? But seriously, it's also very windy, and wind and umbrellas don't mix.

Anyway, Pro Umbrella Dave won. For about 2 minutes, because it stopped snow-raining. And it was, as Anti Umbrella Dave pointed out, goddamn windy. I've never been a huge fan of umbrellas, simply because of their sheer uselessness against wind. Watching people struggle with umbrellas on a windy day, while hilarious, is a shameful indictment on humanity. We can put a remote-controlled SUV on Mars, but we can't produce an item designed to keep us dry that doesn't immediately turn into a hopeless mess of cloth and cheap plastic the instant a light spring zephyr comes in from the west? OBAMA/ROMNEY - forget medicare and Khloe vs. Kim: this is the issue America needs solved.

You might as well be holding a sign that says
"I'm so dumb I can plunge an entire country into a financial and social crisis." 

3:50PM - End of the school day, and it is now HAILING (HALEING? HALING? SHIT.) like I've never seen before. Not large chunks, but coming down with the excessive force of a Roger Goodell on James Harrison ruling. No big deal, I'll go to the staff room for a chocolate biscuit (NOT risking it for the chocolate biscuit) and wait it out.

4:00PM - Hailstorm hath abated, so I pack up and begin the walk home.

4:01PM - Hell hath no fury like a hailstorm cheated. It's back, and it wants to hurt me. Aggressively hails the entire walk home.

4:20PM - Arrive home. Stops hailing immediately.

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? Yes, I have heard it said many times that, in Dunedin, one often gets "All four seasons in a day." What a quaint notion, I always thought to myself, chuckling softly. That certainly would be an interesting day. Well, I've lived that day now, and it is neither quaint nor interesting. IT BLOWS.

Personification of Dunedin, when asked about providing some decent
weather for a change.

Also, as if dealing with a weather scenario that's more frustrating and incoherent than a plot line in an adult film (why even bother?) isn't bad enough, I gave away my sleeping bag just yesterday. This is important because it served a critical function throughout the winter - acting as my fourth/fifth layer of protection against the chilly Dunedin nights. But, with spring arrived and summer around the corner (it was 18 Celsius or something on Thursday), I didn't think I needed it anymore, so I shipped it off to Queenstown, where I will pick it back up in October (a long story). No sooner had it left my possession, however, than this shitstorm comes down. We didn't have snow on the flats in Dunedin all winter. Now that I'm vulnerable? PRANK. SNOW FOR YOU, ASSHOLE!

Anyway, I think that's all I've got for now. No more rage for a little while. New Zealand's great otherwise!

Dave

P.S. SPOILER ALERT - Jaws 4 ends with the shark being EXPLODED using some type of electrical impulse bomb. Couldn't leave you guys out to dry not knowing how that cinematic masterpiece ended.