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Well it looks like we can’t have one damn holiday go by without some kind of self-induced catastrophe happening. Many of you who have been following the progress and accomplishments of the Institute are aware of our meteorological department and the amazing progress we’ve been making in the area of manufactured weather.

Manufactured weather is not  a new subject, there are others dabbling in this field, the US government, Leroy and Maurice, the 4-H club in Elkhart Lake, Indiana, and others, but I’m proud to say none have made the strides we have here at the Institute.

This is due in great part to the efforts of our head meteorologist, Thor. We don’t have a lot of background on Thor, he just appeared one day and took over our small, mostly unused weather station and began to manufacture weather. The rest is history, or as close to it as you can get around here. Things were going very well until we began to notice small changes in our weather pattern. The occasional tornado where none had ever been recorded before, small but destructive Tsunamis that occurred on some of our larger reservoirs, a dust storm that buried nine farms east of town so deep that all you could see was the top of the truck antennas sticking out of the sand and some other events that can’t be mentioned due to ongoing litigation.

Thor was called into the directors office and asked to explain some of the events that were occurring. His answer was to set the directors desk on fire with a small lightning bolt, or maybe it was a bic lighter, it all happened so fast we couldn’t tell, and scorch the office cat. That’s when we knew we had a problem. This whole weather making thing had made him drunk with power.

Intoxicated with his ability to create havoc he retreated into his laboratory and locked the door. We tried to get in to control him but the door, one of those sliding patio doors with the screen door that sticks, stuck as soon as we tried to open it and we were helpless. All we could do was lean up against the screen and watch as he worked his madness.

Unknown to us, Thor had been jilted by one of the local girls that lived in the small quaint village you see in the image above and he was crazy, crazy with rage. He would have his revenge. The poor unsuspecting village is the same one that grew up to support the growing needs of the Institute and of course we feel an obligation to keep them safe so they can continue to support us in the manner to which we’ve become accustomed. But now here we were, helpless, all we could do was watch as Thor sent lightning strike after lightning strike against the helpless serfs, I mean citizens below.

We knew we only had minutes to solve this terrible problem and save all those helpless folks below. Lots of ideas were quickly passed around and just as quickly rejected, mostly because they were unbelievably stupid, but one idea was put forth that might save the day, or night actually, by now. It seems that the laboratory was a building that was on its own electrical meter and due to an oversight by our business office the bill hadn’t been paid, so the power had been shut off. Rather than pay the bill our maintenance staff had simply run a 50′ extension cord to the next building and was running off their power.

The solution then was simple, send one of our most expendable staff members, I mean volunteers to go over, grab the cord and pull it out of the wall. This was done by simply performing Rock, Paper, Scissors until one staffer was left and then pushing and kicking her until she ran over and bravely jerked the cord out of the socket. The flash of the plug leaving the socket was spectacular, I mean totally freaking incredible. It was like one of Thor’s lightning bolts.

That did it. The storm immediately abated, the lightning stopped and other than the fact that over half the village below was burned to the ground everything ended well. We couldn’t find Thor even though we looked and looked. It was as if he vanished into thin air. Lucky for him because the authorities have some pretty tough questions for him. Our gallant but brave staffer is in ICU but is not in critical condition, we’ve graciously given her a five-day medical leave of absence to recover before we post her job online. We’re just thankful here that things weren’t worse than they were. This could have been really bad, not to mention damaging to the institute’s weather modification program. But due to the quick action and firm direction and leadership of the Institute’s director this mishap was handled with extreme professionalism. Thor’s job as head meteorologist has been posted online so if you know anything about weather and you’re interested in working in a lively but fun environment send us your resume. Who knows the job could be yours.