Like, sitting at the kids' table on Thanksgiving.

It's raining. Torrentially, downpouringly, sweetly, like an answer to somebody's prayers. Since I got the rest of my books back I've been re-re-re-reading my copy of James G. Frazer's The Golden Bough, which is a source of enormous sentimental as well as inspirational value since it's the first thing I bought during my first day of orientation at New College four years ago. The purchase took place at the now-defunct Pelican Man Thrift Store on N. Tamiami during a search for something appropriate to wear to a 70's retro rollerskating party and I spent the whole time talking about Joseph Campbell to impress a guy who later that night hooked up with my neighbor Frank. So the book is dear to me for a lot of reasons, in particular as a symbol of the weird, irrational, ridiculous things people (I) do (did) when they just don't have a clue what's going on.

The rain-making section has been my favorite for years. Frazer notes that there are as many different rituals for bringing rain as there are magical cultures: Macedonian Greeks would sing songs while drenching a flower-bedecked virgin who leads a parade, while in New Caledonia the custom was to exhume a dead body and shower the bones with water. In a tribe from New South Wales, Frazer observed a ritual that involved a sorcerer breaking off a piece of quartz and spitting it at the sky. And this is possibly one of my favorite passages in any written work anywhere: "In Zululand women sometimes bury their children up to the neck in the ground, and then retiring to a distance keep up a dismal howl for a long time. The sky is supposed to melt with pity at the sight."

In my neighborhood the ritual is opening the fire hydrants. Basically every kid on my block was out in a bathing suit during the recent heat wave, and since the forecast for the next few days is rain in amounts of one inch or more, it seems to have worked out all right. Coming down from a margarita-drinking contest at the Times Square Dave and Buster's, I listened to the rain and supinely watched CW11's 10 o' clock broadcast and coincidentally got really, really nostalgic.

Oh, Florida, I love you so much. A guy in Deland (where else?) tried to rob a store with a palm frond! Tampa developers are, um, dangling a nude pool in front of reluctant condo buyers to beat the dismal market! Florida, the FDA even thinks you might have poisoned the rest of the nation! Not only that, but today alligators were found in a Tennessee drain pipe, a family pool in LaGrange, NY, and the fucking Chicago River. Please, please, please keep this up, Florida. I may have my ups and downs adjusting here, but it does me much good to know you'll always be the United States' retarded cousin.