Pauly the Platy­pus has not posted an arti­cle on Log­a­rchism in a long, long time. It hasn’t been a platypus’s age, but close. This week, Log­a­rchism’s mod­er­a­tors sent Pauly down to Tampa to take in the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion, and maybe take in a strip club or two. (Repub­li­cans spend three times as much as Democ­rats at strip clubs, but Pauly has ten sex chro­mo­somes — XYXYXYXYXY — and is there­fore five times as randy as any human Republican.)

Tampa is a con­ge­nial place for a platy­pus. Platy­puses (never “platypi”, as Kory Stam­per, whom Pauly calls “Merriam-​​Webster Babe” will explain) love water. Pauly planned to do lots of swim­ming in the nearby wet­lands and unwind from gru­el­ing con­ven­tion days.

Michael asked Pauly to write the open­ing Mon­day con­ven­tion arti­cle, then dis­as­ter struck. Lit­er­ally. Pauly is trapped here, with plenty of wind and lots of water, and the con­ven­tion has been post­poned a day.

What’s a platy­pus to do? Write a Meme Watch, that’s what.

Pauly hasn’t been post­ing, but he reads Log­a­rchism reli­giously. He loves Meme Watch and always dreamed of writ­ing one — and now he gets his chance. His sub­mis­sion fol­lows the jump:

In both Old and New Tes­ta­ment Judeo-​​Christian the­ol­ogy, YHWH has clear con­trol over wind­storms. The most promi­nent exam­ple is in Acts 27:14, when the Apos­tle Paul (after whom I am named), hav­ing been taken pris­oner on a Roman ship, warns the cap­tain that a Nor’Easter (Euro­cy­clodon) is com­ing. The cap­tain and sailors pay no heed, and the ship man­ages to get through the storm but is dam­aged. The cap­tain ordered the crew to let the pris­on­ers try to swim for shore (rather than killing them, as the sailors wanted) and so Paul escapes.

Some have even spec­u­lated that hur­ri­canes are signs of the End Times.

Con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tor John Hagee is sure that Kat­rina and other hur­ri­canes are God’s wrath on a sin­ful soci­ety:

All hur­ri­canes are acts of God because God con­trols the heav­ens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offen­sive to God and they were recip­i­ents of the judg­ment of God for that.

Source: Jack Chick Pub­li­ca­tions (www​.chick​.com), Chick tract “Some­body Angry?”

Hagee is no stranger to pol­i­tics, and no friend of the Pres­i­dent. He has endorsed Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Alan Keyes (in 1996), and Sen­a­tor John McCain (in 2008). (McCain soundly repu­di­ated Hagee and rejected his endorsement.)

It’s not just Pas­tor Hagee. Jack Chick (no rela­tion to fil-​​A) knows about these hur­ri­canes. He believes that they’re sent to pun­ish Amer­ica for mak­ing Israel give back land. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, and all that.

Chick is a one-​​man meme watch hero, hav­ing estab­lished a clear rep­u­ta­tion for pat­tern recog­ni­tion that is either super-​​human or just a lit­tle too close to schiz­o­phre­nia.

Plenty of peo­ple go look­ing for evi­dence of God’s wrath when a major hur­ri­cane strikes. The graph below shows Google searches for “god hur­ri­cane” in the United States over the last eight years. Not sur­pris­ingly, the num­ber one state for search vol­ume is Florida, fol­lowed by North Car­olina and Texas.

Google searches for “god” and “hur­ri­cane” together, 2004-​​present.

The 2004 spike is pre­sum­ably about Hur­ri­cane Ivan. The 2005 spike, is of course, Kat­rina. The 2008 peak is prob­a­bly Ike, and the 2011 peak is likely Irene. (The National Weather Ser­vice is likely to run out of “I” names soon; Isaac is the fourth “I” named storm in this list.)

Isaac is fore­cast to hit the Gulf Coast as a Cat­e­gory 3 Hur­ri­cane near the mouth of the Pearl River, on the bor­der between Louisiana and Mississippi.

If YHWH is try­ing to send a mes­sage, then what is the mes­sage? G*d knows. The left-​​wing site Alter­Net thinks it knows, too.

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