Holy crap. The Great Deluge just hit Thayer Street. The city is flooding, it’s been dark for an hour starting at 3 pm, lightning has been piercing the sky and a thunderblast just set off a car alarm.

In conclusion, the rain is crazy. Start preparing your farm animals for a forty day cruise. In the meantime, be safe, and peep this tribute to precipitation:

As it becomes more and more clear over the years that Al Gore does a much better service to the world around us out of office than he ever would have as President, on Wednesday he is set to launch a three-year, $300 million dollar climate change campaign which is gearing up to be one of the most expensive and ambitious public advocacy campaigns in American history.

“This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” Gore said. “I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.”

( HuffPo, WaPo)

These signs are sprouting up around town — thanks RIEMA. The arrow is always pointing (surprise, surprise) up a hill. Apparently Governor Carcieri has decided that los moronos will have to figure the whole ‘hill’ thing out for themselves. We told you to learn English!

It’s Tuesday and it’s time for LOADED! Join Kevin Leavitt, Handsome Pete and myself at the lovely  Local 121 for the very best in britpop, indie classics, new wave, glam rock and sweet new jamz. LOADED! @Local 121 10pm, free,  

It may be my imagination, but I think this installation is getting a wee bit saggy. Erected in October 2006 by Patrick Dougherty and a crew of mystical magical elves, it was supposed to be ‘on view’ until October 2007. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can still see it.

To go there: head into the rising sun, up College Street to Prospect where you will pass through the Van Wickle Gates (Rowling-esque name if ever there was one) and turn right. There you will meet a wizard named Tim and you will have to answer his questions three.

One… Do you speak Mandarin?

Two… Have you erected at least one clinic in Nicaragua?

Three… Spell ‘Leelee Sobieski’.

Answer correctly and you’re in.

Snow in Daytona, and something like this round here:

Today:

31° F | 7° F
-1° C | -14° C

Tomorrow:

17° F | 4° F
-8° C | -16° C

• A Projo Retrospective: The Politics of a Storm
• State Treasurer Frank Caprio gives away $30,000 of his own money to help folks whose cars were tagged or towed during the storm. WHAAAAA?????
• Bob Kerr: Teenage boys take the law into their own hands.

As more and more shit hits the fan over Snowplow Clusterfuck ‘07 parts I & II, what I don’t get is how these people who were supposedly in charge of some of the most important things in our lives: traffic, and to a lesser extent, our schoolchildren, could not be aware of some of the most basic information during that afternoon. As I write this, I have MSNBC on mute, NPR playing softly in the background, and at least three browser windows open with all sorts of news and whatnot. I get the sense that these folks were managing the emergency from a dark wood-paneled library, wearing a smoking jacket, drinking a snifter of brandy while reading ticker tape stock quotes from 1929.

Today, in plowgate update:

• Fired EMA Chief Bob Warren gives his side of the story in today’s ProJo.
• Councilman Nick Narducci told Spt. Evans: “ I’d fire you.”
• The PVD Storm Review
• Outline of City’s Storm Response
• Timeline of what actually went down
• MC Bakst: “ What Cicilline doesn’t say“

When will it end?

• Providence director of the Emergency Management Agency, Leo Messier, joins state director Robert Warren on the unemployment rolls.
• Cicilline also suspended chief of operations for Providence schools, Thomas Hannah, without pay.

“More to come…” says the Projo. News, or firings?

LAAAAAADY…. just move the car. Speaking of doppelgangers…. when the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency is being run by Jerry Lewis, whaddya expect? A cover story in today’s ProJo about ‘The Storm’ indicates that RIEMA director, Robert Warren, has been canned. Now, how do we fire the thousands of Rhode Island drivers who really bolloxed the whole thing up by pulling into and blocking the goddam intersections?!

Whatever you say about how Governor Carcieri handled the snowstorm fiasco, let the record show that he’s owned up to his mistake. He acknowledged today that his administration did “a poor job of communications” during last week’s storm. Awww, Donald, we forgive you. Just foot the bill for the damage to my car, please! I hear there’s that tobacco money…

ProJo has the scoop:

Today’s press conference marked his first public comment on last Thursday’s epic traffic jam, which choked most of the state’s major arteries, stranded children on school busses until late at night, and left motorists struggling to get home three to six hours on gridlocked roadways in the nation’s smallest state.

Carcieri, who returned from a weeklong visit to the Middle East on Saturday, acknowledged he didn’t learn of the story until it was over because he was flying from Kuwait to Afghanistan while the storm played out, and would not in any event have expected his staff to call him “for a 6- to 10-inch’’ snowstorm and what, he was told, was largely a Providence issue.

Uh oh… looks like Carcieri and Lt. Gov. Roberts kissed and made up and decided to turn the Plowgate scandal on the Providence Department of Public Works.  Cicilline wasn’t in Iraq, so what’s his alibi?

As my car is prone to taking extended vacations in the shop when it gets this cold, I walked to work this morning. Guess what? It’s a little cold out there! The sidewalks are awful, forget about the lack of plowing and all that stuff during the storm, it’s like walking on a glacier. You have to walk way out in the street, there are no cleared sidewalks anywhere. I saw schoolkids struggle to not skate into traffic, and old people have enough trouble walking when it’s warm! Some cities have sidewalk plows…just sayin’.

… and stare at your cat. Okay, the What Cheer Antiques & Vintage Holiday Party has been postponed to Saturday, December 22. In fact, they will be closed today (I think Jen was traumatized by the storm last Thursday). They will be open daily 11 — 7 through Christmas eve.

It just took me 45 minutes to get from White Electric to my apt. on Parade st. Just sayin’.

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This summer, when beach traffic got too intense, Gov. C responded by CLOSING ALL STATE BEACHES. By this logic, I imagine lil’ Rhody’s got a snow day. The ProJo reports a “ mass exodus out of Providence.” Hasn’t the DOT heard of a snow plow? What about salt? I’m looking out the window at streets blanketed in white contemplating how I can sled down to the Dose party at Local 121. If you too are getting antsy, check out the National Weather Service RI alerts. But if you’re feeling adventurous, maybe today’s the day to go snow tubing in Yawgoo Valley.