Mother Nature and the Disappearing Pants!

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Any New Yorker will tell you it gets pretty cold here in the winter months. In the last two decades alone, we’ve endured several record-setting blizzards that would make Canada proud.

by Thanassi Karageorgiou*

We expect Mother Nature to bombard us with mounds of snow and bitter wind chill. But it’s not her fault she’s been so moody lately. She just went through a rough break up with her boyfriend of 10,000 years. Fortunately, every once in a while Mother Nature likes to take a break and put Armageddon on hold. She unwinds with a relaxing day at the spa, indulging in a mani-pedi, cucumber face mask and perhaps a massage by a strong Latino man who speaks very little English.

One such gift was bestowed upon us on Sunday, January 8th. In what was perhaps the most awesome meteorological phenomenon since the Tunguska Event in 1908, in a matter of seconds, the cold simply stopped happening.

It began like any other winter day in New York. It was a brisk 28 degrees and evil grey clouds hovered above Central Park at first light. Twenty mile-per-hour winds threatened to steal the papers from every news stand in the city. By three o’clock the temperature had only risen two degrees but the ferocious winds only grew stronger. A little girl on 5th Avenue and 83rd Street was seen clinging to her mother’s arm for dear life, as the angry gusts whipped her about like an unmanned fire hose. And then at exactly three-twenty-five, something eerie occurred: All the winds suddenly subsided. Newspapers stopped rustling, scarves were loosened and all the little girls and Chihuahuas on the Upper East Side breathed an uneasy sigh of relief.

Back at the spa, Mother Nature had just finished sipping on her green tea in preparation for her massage. Eduardo laid her down on the plush massage table and applied hot basalt stones on her back.

Something funny happened. In a matter of seconds, the temperature in New York rose from thirty degrees, to a very tropical eighty-nine. Joe Bonaducci of Flushing Queens, who was sprinkling calcium chloride salt on his driveway in preparation for an upcoming storm, was in complete shock. “…I was wearing heavy layers, I was wearing gloves I was even wearing long-johns under my pants. Forget about it. It was freezing. And then the next thing you know, its July out here and I’m sweatin’ freakin’ bullets. It was crazy”. It was the same scene in Williamsburg Brooklyn, as local ice sculptor Silas Parfuten was taken by surprise. “… I rely on the cold weather for my livelihood, I was commissioned to make a dolphin sculpture for my dear friend and roommate Chad, who loves dolphins, but when that wacky heat wave hit us, our dolphin morphed into more of a platypus.”

Eduardo let the heated stones work on Mother Nature’s circulation for about fifteen minutes and then removed them from her back. He then draped a warm towel over her legs and began to slowly massage her shoulders with essential mahi mahi therapy oils sourced from a small village in the southwest region of Fiji. Mother Nature “oohed” and “aahed” in delight, as did the New Yorkers who had forgotten their gloves and hats. Everyone in the city began to shed their heavy layers as the temperature reached a staggering ninety degrees.

And then Eduardo’s cell phone rang. “Hola, mama! Como estas?” Then whispering to Mother Nature with an apologetic smile, “Please excuse me, señora. I come back. One Minute.” He hastily left the room to speak to his mother, who had been complaining that Eduardo hadn’t been calling her as often as she’d like.

And then something even stranger happened. The temperature in New York began to drop again, but in a way that has baffled many leading scientists for the last three weeks. It seemed that all the air situated three feet above any horizontal surface decreased in temperature, while all the air below that invisible mark remained at ninety degrees. It’s as if we had all stepped into a waist-deep heated pool filled only with air. Stunned yet again, the good people of New York quickly put their winter coats back on, and began shedding their pants to relieve their overheated legs. One after the other, men and women of all ages began dropping their trousers in the streets and subways until everyone was comfortable.

Experts are calling the phenomenon MIGE, or “Micro Isolated Greenhouse Effect”. Professor Karl Malone III of the University of Hells Kitchen’s Geophysics department believes this effect occurs once every three hundred and fifty years, which is coincidentally the same amount of time it takes to find a parking space in Lower Manhattan. Although conclusive evidence has yet to be determined, he believes that emissions from vehicles, (particularly those looking for parking) are the catalyst in a series of chain reactions that have accounted for the recent climate conundrum.

Conversely, Local religious leaders have warned that this is the first sign of the upcoming rapture that was originally scheduled for October, but was later postponed due to budget cuts.

One minute went by. Then two, five, and then fifteen. No Eduardo. Mother Nature began to grow slightly irritated, but found comfort in the fact that a son was taking the time to talk to his dear mama. With the door cracked open an inch, she noticed him speaking softly just outside the room. Although she never took Spanish in High School, Mother Nature prided herself on being able to interpret tone. She could sense that Eduardo has just been on the receiving end of some unpleasant news, and deduced by the frequency of his sniffling, that there was almost certainly a death in the family. After twenty minutes, Eduardo returned to Mother Nature with sadness in his eyes. She took her face out of the donut pillow for a moment and turned her head to give him a warm smile. As if to say, “I’m here for you, Eduardo. I didn’t take High School Spanish, but I know what you’re going through. I too have been scarred. I too have loved and lost, but we’ll both get through this, Eduardo. We’ll live to love another day, and we’ll both see the sun come out after the rain… unless of course I’ve scheduled more rain that day… now get over here and finish what you started! And for God sakes, cover my back with something. Its freezing in here!”

The New York City temperatures eventually leveled out to normal ranges at around six o’clock that evening, but not before we all experienced some of the strangest weather patterns ever recorded. Dr. Karl Malone III is spearheading a research project in hopes of finding more evidence to support the MIGE theory. If you’d like to read more about the efforts and make a monetary contribution, please visit: improveverywhere.com


* Thanassi Karageorgiou is a New York based commercial/lifestyle photographer and cinematographer with an extensive background in Architecture. His love for making pictures is overshadowed only by the desire to find the perfect slice of pizza.

©2012 NEOCORP MEDIA






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