Author: Joey deVilla

From the Tampa Bay Times. Click to see the source.

Accordion Bay, a.k.a. Tampa Bay is often a sunny place, but it isn’t always one. For the past twenty or so days, there’s been rain. Sometimes it’s been rain with sunny breaks, other times, it’s been rain all day. But there hasn’t been a day without some rain in the past three weeks. Combine that with the natural low-lying land near a coast, a geography with a lot of lakes, and sandy soil, and you get floods. Lots of floods.

Here’s I-275 at the Westshore offramp, where the flooding is so deep that you can’t drive on it anymore.

From Meredyth Censullo’s Twitter account. Click to see the source.

Here’s Kennedy Boulevard:

From Angela Clooney’s Twitter account. Click to see the source.

All of Bayshore is now a great channel for jet-skiing:

From Eagle 8 Photo’s Twitter account. Click to see the source.

Kennedy Boulevard, again:

From @allyconey’s Twitter account. Click to see the source.

Even first responders are running into a little trouble. Greensboro, NC-based TV reporter Chad Silber’s sister in Tampa sent him this photo:

From Chad Silber’s Twitter account. Click to see the source.

Chad’s probably wishing that he had our weather. His area’s currently undergoing a drought:

From Chad Silber’s Twitter account. Click to see the source.

At least one person here is taking things with a sense of humor and entrepreneurial zeal:

Due to the recent flooding in #Tampa, I’m going to quit my day job and start @uber with boats. It will be called Canoe-ber. 😂😂

— Levi Jaeckel (@levijaeckel) August 3, 2015

Here’s what the weather radar looked like earlier this morning:

Click the radar image to see it at full size.

My own situation isn’t too bad. The back yard’s flooded, but I’ve sandbagged and tarped the lanai door, so the house remains high and dry. I’ve got the luxury of working from a home office, and can keep a watch on things as the waters rise. Be careful out there!

Need more flood porn? Check out the Weather Channel’s photo gallery, Photos of the Deluge in Western Florida.

That’s right — Kevin Smith will be doing one of his infamous monologues at the Tampa Improv on Wednesday, August 12 at 8 p.m.. The tickets are going for $30 apiece (Anitra and I will be attending), and you know they’ll go quickly. Order now at Improv Tampa’s site if you want to attend!

AWWW YISSS!

Those are three of my favorite things, all gathered up into a single unit.

“You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar…” is the only thing that the man and woman in The Human League’s 1981 synthpop hit Don’t You Want Me can agree on. If you’ve ever heard it mangled at a karaoke night, you know that it’s the only lyric that most people remember.

What if it were the only lyric in the song? With the magic of autotune, someone made it happen:

That’s about right.

For your amusement, here’s a blast from the past. It’s me and fellow accordionist Ronen Segall at Caplansky’s Deli in Toronto on my birthday in November 2009, playing Que Sera Sera, Should I Stay or Should I Go?, and closing with Don’t You Want Me:

Thanks to Duarte da Silva for the find!

I work from a home office, so I can crank the tunes when I feel like it. Today’s motivational music is the entire album Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, the compilation album by the legendary Dead Kennedys.

I shouldn’t be the only one pogoing while working, so here it is…enjoy!

They shouldn’t put monogrammed towels on their wedding registry

It seemed like a good idea at the time: the couple above got engaged at dinner at a teppanyaki restaurant and decided to get a photo to commemorate the big event. They probably thought “Hey, we’ll show this to the grandkids someday!”

Somebody got the idea to spell out their initials in rice on the big plancha stove with a big heart between them, but it never occurred to anyone to to confirm that those initials didn’t form any unfortunate words.

My thanks to Frédéric Harper, who pointed me to this photo, saying “I think of you when see stories like this.”

Hotels vs AirBnB

This one’s from The Onion:

Bay Area to Standard American English Translator

If you read one tech-related humor piece today, make it Bay Area to Standard American English Translator on McSweeney’s. Here’s a sample:

Bay Area:

“Who are you again?”
\ˈhü\ \ˈär\ \ˈyü\ \e-ˈgān\

English:

“What company do you work for?”

– –

Bay Area:

“Do you live in this neighborhood?”
\ˈdü\ \ˈyü\ \ˈliv\ \ən\ \ˈthis\ \ˈnā-bər-ˌhu̇d\

English:

“Can you afford to live in San Francisco?”

– –

Bay Area:

“We should get lunch.”
\ˈwē\ \ˈshu̇d\ \ˈget\ \ˈlənch\

English:

“I’ve identified your value relative to me and wish to start the process of exploiting your talents.”

Once again, that’s Bay Area to Standard American English Translator.