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Oh, so that's what it is!

It's been a while since something like this happened -- I'm speaking of the rain -- so I must have forgotten what it's like. I'm tryng hard just now to remember exactly when it last poured down, and that ain't easy. The price you pay for perfect weather, see, is puncturing the paradigm: what used to be perfection turns out to be something else indeed.

The other night I listened to a lady from Sapello describe her "crunchy landscape." But out here the land is always dry, or has been since '99, at least (my friend from the other side of the mountains must not have had much snow last winter). Oddly enough, my own last memory of anything approaching that comes from Maryland a few years back ... Oh, that was a tough summer, everything dead or dying, the grass all brown and spiky, the well threatening to run dry. The English walnut tree beside the back door lost its leaves in August. Starving squirrels from down in the woods invaded right before our eyes, chewing the husks from immature walnuts to get at what little meat there was. I don't remember when the weather changed, but it always rains in Maryland, given just a little time.

A while ago I tried without success to read some news online. The Washington Post Web site partly loaded and then hung. "Transferring data from washingtonpost.com," the browser lied for several minutes. Ah phooey, who wants to read the darn Post anyway? All I wanted was to confirm a CBS News item about how George and Condi "did not entirely read the most authoritative prewar assessment of U.S. intelligence on Iraq before the State of the Union speech last January." (Well good, that explains it then. Sorry we blew you all to kingdom come, we didn't read the CIA report!) I tried to visit several other sites and almost did, but Apple Remote Access disconnected in mid-render. What the?! -- and then it hit me: the rain, of course!

About an hour before, the sky had opened up, a veritable deluge. Water ran in the streets and the cat got wet. With any luck at all, some of it fell onto whatever was left of the miserable fire just east of town. But things happen when it rains. The Internet screws up, I kid you not. The phone may go out. Sun-crisped wiper blades disintegrate and drivers roll into the ditch. I have this theory that here and there, electrical components inside gasketed metal boxes get shorted out when water actually falls from the sky and finds its way inside. That doesn't explain why the power fails sometimes under clear blue skies, does it? Ah well.

So many things that need explaining, or at least a blast of ice-cold agua in the face. For now the rain comes trickling in between the shrunken seals and something sparks. On the same day I read that Microsoft has been awarded umpty-million dollars to outfit Homeland Security with thousands of new PCs, they post a humdinger of an alert about how easy it is for evil hackers to get inside their operating systems. Er, um ... This is something you'd think people would be exercised about, but maybe having Microsoft technology in charge of keeping track of what we email to our mothers isn't such a bad thing after all. If the fear monkeys need a database, let it be from Microsoft, oh yeah. (Praise the Lord and pass the Constitution!)

Which reminds me: another little zap occurred the other day. Remember when Apple first announced that Al Gore had been appointed to the board of directors? The aftermath reminded me of nothing so much as turning on the kitchen light at midnight in the old apartment back in Austin in the glory days: cockroaches running EVERYWHERE, big ones too! Besides reminding me that anyone can buy computers, I understood why Texans buy big black Suburbans. (Actually, I don't, but let's pretend.) Well sir, last week after writing about the "switch" campaign, I got an email from a woman in Florida who said she'd dumped her PC for a Mac because Big Al had joined the board! Hee-hee. Ho-ho. Hoo-hah. Take that, you twitchy little linoleum-lickers, and get back under the refrigerator before I find the Raid.

The rain has stopped now. It's dark, and the temperature is in the 40s, yay! Maybe this new system will blow itself on further south. I hope it does, because I don't think it's rained down on the border since before the days of popup folders. Yes, that reference is lost on some of you, maybe even my dear sweet wife way up in Iowa (hi, honey!). I'll bet they don't have arachnid arsonists in Iowa like they do here (???). See, there was this big grass fire down in Carlsbad, I think (I've lost the clipping). It was a major blaze and did some damage, but the authorities arrested someone for the deed. I wouldn't know this except the headline in the paper mentioned something about a spider starting a fire, which naturally made me drop my apple-cinnamon burrito and take another look. No, really (on all counts) ...

I swear that every word is true. The suspect's "defense" was that he and two friends had tried to set a tarantula on fire, apparently successfully, and the overheated spider had sought refuge in a patch of grass. Dry grass, I imagine. One thing led to another, and the culprit's two companions skedaddled, leaving him to tell the cops the poor singed bastard caused the conflagration. The critter did, of course, technically speaking, which means the guy is off the hook. (One beat, two beats, three beats...) You think?

This whole thing's coming to you from the TiBook, incidentally, and my thigh-hairs haven't curled and smoked. (See last week for explanation. Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's my mind.) I'll bet I can even go online now and get it posted before 3:00 a.m., time enough to check out Google News and see if the meek have finally inherited the earth (I almost trust it because it's put together by a machine). After all, it's just 11:47 here and the lights haven't gone out yet.

If it rained today in Taos, anything is possible.

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr invites your emails.

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