Alexander Kobulnicky

There was a Nor’easter today, and although the gusty wind didn’t generate the sustained force necessary to blow out the kitchen windows, it did ruin umbrellas in Midtown by the thousands. So many people opened their umbrellas into the wind and the rain that their little metal struts bent and snapped off almost immediately. Outside of every subway station was a heap of shattered, twisted metal and wooden handles with the fabric ripped totally off, and mortally wounded umbrellas, still caught in the wind, skittered around the streets.

As disastrous and surreal as it was, Oscar Wilde was right to say that whenever people talk about the weather, they mean something else. In this case, I just want to point out that in response to Daylight Savings Time, the New York Times’ AP feed — as of 3:45 AM EDT — is running backwards and prophesying future news. Right now, for instance, they’re saying that -54 minutes ago, a rainstorm will cut the electricity to 500,000 houses.

It might just be a Y2K-style glitch, but with this mounting, umbrella-proof chaos, it might also be the apocalypse. If the prophesies are true and we get another Nor’easter like this, time could stop altogether.