the government says it's due to poor farming.

< back | up | next >

18 september 1997

9:12 p.m.

Dear diary, I don't know where I'll be tomorrow night, but I sure know where I won't be. It's an annual ordeal -- the Waikiki Ho`olaulea. The grand finale to the statewide Aloha Festivals. The mess of traffic that usually crowds Kalakaua Avenue is supplanted with an even thicker mess of bodies, booths, loud music and god knows what else. I'm pretty wishy-washy on it all, I know. Sometimes I look forward to it. Even when I do, though, I change my mind when the noise of ten-thousand revelers echoes so loudly it sounds like I'm having a tea party in my bathroom. And noise isn't the worst of it. After it's over, and everyone slowly heads home, the brainiacs running the show unblock all the streets in Waikiki at the same time. There's still bumper to bumper gridlock at midnight. The neighborhood is twisted enough, what with its mazes of one-way streets. Throw in tourists who can't get "big red hand means don't cross" through their skulls, taxi drivers whose lunacy rivals New York's finest and roaming swarms of jarheads on mopeds, and you've got one of the uncharted levels of Hell. Throw a party there -- inviting all the residents of the tenth-largest city in America -- and you've got... you've got... You've got a good reason to go out. I've been in a movie mood lately, so Derek and I will probably take in "In and Out." Or "Career Girls," now playing at the Varsity. Or maybe both. Whatever. Just keep me away from the city. You know, Waikiki is a schizophrenic town. Between day and night, you wouldn't know you were in the same place if it wasn't for the unmistakable, hideously-designed street lights. During the day, everything's bright and violently colored. Nothing to see besides the beach, the sky, and the stores. The beat cops tool around in all-terrain buggies and now, on mountain bikes -- shorts and Oakleys are standard issue. "Hey," Waikiki seems to say, "We're like Malibu, only better!" When night falls, the stunt doubles go home. The cops -- the real cops, not the cosmetic ones -- prowl around in their big Ford cruisers. There's not a block without a blue light readily visible. Yet somehow, the ISPs are also out in full force, decorating street corners with gold sequins and latex. People scream for no reason. Fleets of ambulances perform what have to be random siren tests. Street performers do their thing, as do wandering whacks who insist George Bush is an alien. Voila. Now we're New Orleans' second cousin. For no apparent reason, I was wondering today what the difference was between a "hurricane" and a "typhoon." I waited patiently to get home so I could ask the Oracle of the 90s, the great Internet. Sure enough, a simple search turned up thousands of inviting weather links. Too bad most of them -- even those to sites in other countries -- pretty much pointed to the same document (last updated 1987). The terms "hurricane" and "typhoon" are regionally specific names for a strong "tropical cyclone". A tropical cyclone is the generic term for a non-frontal synoptic scale low-pressure system over tropical or sub- tropical waters with organized convection (i.e. thunderstorm activity) and definite cyclonic surface wind circulation. I'm sure glad I've got that straight. Oh indeed. I've got the whole planet at my fingertips, and right now there's nothing I want more than to be able to find my dictionary.