The Curse Of Santa Anna!
Ah, autumn. Here at last.

The breezes drop their summer-long pretense at warmth in favor of a brisk tincture of cold, a promise of winter to come. Leaves, living and green, alter color and shape before they succumb to the cycle of nature and fall, all reds and golds for crunching under feet. Wakened flocks of birds--entire species--flee ahead of the coming frost for parts unknown leaving only memory and instinct to suggest their eventual return. Autumn: of all the seasons, the most vibrantly transitional, the withering death-rattle before the morbidity of winter, to presage the resurrection of spring.

Unless you live in southern California, like I do. Then it's just fucking hot. Still. And all that leaf changing stuff? Yeah, the whole place turns an even lovelier shade of dirt brown. And that's only for the trees that actually shed leaves. Most of them don't even bother. Don't get me started on palm trees, either. They just sit there, impassive, all year, never failing to ruin Christmas.

Traditionally what we get at the onset of autumn is the onset of the awful, cursed Santa Ana Winds. It's a weather phenomenon unique to this part of the world. I don't know if I can even really adequately explain it to outsiders who have never experienced it.

Imagine, if you can, the wind blowing anywhere from 25 to 60 miles an hour.

Wow. Hey, that was easier to describe than I thought.

We like to personalize and overdramatize everything out here, even the weather. It gives the news programs something to put on their scary, scary graphics behind the head of the anchor talking about the weather. Just like every time we get more than 1/4 inch of rain we get STORM WATCH 2004 coverage, with many grim-faced assurances that we will all be dead within 24 hours.

The year in the graphic changes, you know, annually. STORM WATCH 2004 last year would have been... stupid.

No, the Santa Ana winds have nothing to do with Mexican president and general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the villain of the Alamo melodrama in boring, boring Texas history. No, he's got lots of extra style and panache with that extra N in his last name.

We call them the Santa Ana winds because we're a highly unimaginitive people. There's a city of Santa Ana, the Santa Ana River (such as it is), Santa Ana Canyon, lots of other stuff. Even Anaheim is a Germanized bastardization of the name.

We can't help it, though, as we're heirs to the traditions of highly unimaginitive Spaniards who named every settlement after a saint; Santa Ana, San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, San Tobasco, Santa Incontinentia and San Alex Trebek, to name a few.

So it's fall, which means the hottest, least comfortable days of the year are just around the corner. It's warm, it's dry, there's lots of blowing dust and about a 50-50 chance my house will be burned down in a raging wildfire. Look out Florida, we're aiming to take our Natural Disaster crown back within the next 3-5 months.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.6


Pops

- posted by Pops @ 10:05 AM