Weathermen...Paid Even When Wrong

On many occasions, I believed being a roadie on John Mayer's tour was the most worthless job to possibly have, but thanks to broadcast television, I have found someone slightly more useful than the Pet Rock. Your local news weatherman.

Consider this. Let's say that, in your job, you were given the responsibility of making one decision, every day, seven days a week. You went to "school" to learn about this decision you have to make and received certification from that prestigious school of learning. Now, this decision would be used by people in making their plans, whether it be business or pleasure. Now, let's say that 5 of the 7 times, you are dead wrong. In your job, as it is in mine, if you are wrong that many times in 1 week, you would be fired...really fired, and with good reason, because if you went to school for something and cannot do your job, then dammit, I see that someone spent a lot of time learning chemistry in a bar and figuring out how to get the imaginary multi-colored dancing bears to sync up to The Kink's "Lola."

This is the weatherman. A weatherman is someone who has been paid to guess, went to school to learn how to guess, and looks at charts and graphs to attempt to make an "educated" guess. (Side Note: Making an educated guess on the SAT will not help you. It only makes you think about the question longer after you have moved to the next question. If you get it wrong, you get it wrong. Get over it.) If I guessed at my job and was wrong 5 out of 7 times, I would be removed, tarred and feathered, and beaten.

I am not saying that it is easy to predict the weather. It isn't. My idea of predicting the weather is going outside in the morning before work to determine if I need a jacket or not. What I am saying is that we need to remove these people from their lofty positions at the Weather Center desk and boot them out. Then we'll go to the American Meteorological Society, an organization of false prophets, and let Mother Arson deal with those who believe they can see the future. I'm pretty sure that the AMS is somehow linked to Scientology, and Xenu is really a First-Degree Master Weather Prophet, but without actually seeing the souls in the clouds, I will just have to wait for that battle.

Instead of having a very well-educated boob tell you what may or may not happen, how about you just go outside. If it's cold, wear a jacket. If it's hot, don't. If it's humid, take a jacket. If it's snowing, wear a heavy jacket. If it's sunny, wear sunglasses. Think it may rain? Grab an umbrella. Think for yourself instead of having someone guess what may happen. They say there's a snow warning, and we get enough to barely cover a sidewalk. We hear there may be a sprinkle of snow, and it snows for 6 hours. They say we may get a sprinkle of rain, and we get a tsunami with winds that blow away the little hair I have left.

Terms we will no longer have to hear and have no idea what they mean:
Bow echo- ummm, seriously, this is made up.
Wintry mix- what the hell does that mean, honestly? Rain and snow? That's not a wintry mix, it's goddamn rain and snow. Snow=winter, Rain=every other time.
Intermittent showers- It's either raining or it's not. Call it what it is.
Dusting- they think it means a light layer of snow. Wow, really. Could have sworn dusting was a desert thing.
Pop-Up Showers- See Intermittent Showers.
Cloudy and Cooler- If you look outside, clouds mean that it is going to be cooler than if the sun were beating down on you directly. Assume.
Partly Cloudy- Okay, this is just dumb. Either there are clouds or there are not clouds. Quite frankly, go up in an airplane and then tell me that a clear day isn't cloudy in some way.

Perhaps we can have the weathermen of the nation go to school for something useful, like predicting Armageddon.
Then again, most cable news networks already have that predicted...November 2008.