By Lacy Thundercake
This map of Cleveland shows six concentric circles, which the city’s mayor wants to reduce to a more manageable three by 2016.
CLEVELAND – With the east coast still in the grips of an 800-mile-wide Frankenstorm, our nation was dealt a further blow tonight when Cleveland, Ohio suffered a Dracuquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale. The extent of the damage is not yet known, but authorities are hoping the quake will be killed when the sun rises tomorrow morning.
At a televised press conference that concluded a short time ago, Cleveland mayor Jonathan Harker implored residents to stay out of damaged buildings and to wait calmly for Red Cross personnel to deliver “food, blankets, water, and garlic.”
It is not known what effect a red cross with arms of equal length will have on the Dracuquake.
Harker also advised Clevelanders to tune into The Weather Channel for further updates. “I know this is more of a geological event than a metrological one,” the mayor said, “but I get kickbacks every time I mention them and need money for attack ads.”
The Anvil contacted Weather Channel spokesperson Judy Drench for a response to Harker’s comments.
“A Dracuquake is too weather,” she said. “If it happens outside, it’s weather. Well, a football game isn’t weather I suppose, but we’re not a sports channel, so I can’t comment on that.”
When asked for a response both to the mayor’s comments and Drench’s subsequent response, meteorologist and frequent Anvil contributor Pinky Middleton said he didn’t know why those who study weather are called meteorologists.
“I got into this [expletive deleted] to look at space rocks,” he explained. “Excuse me for using logic. I guess I should have signed up for ‘cloudology.’ I’d probably be on my way to the asteroid belt right now with a fat NASA paycheck, a badass spacesuit, and more chicks than I can handle.”
Middleton did warn east coasters to be on the lookout for Were-nados, which are often spawned by Frankenstorms.
“Those things can get pretty hairy,” he said.
In other natural disaster-related news, scientists in Washington State are currently monitoring seismic activity at Mount St. Helens, site of a massive explosion in 1980 that destroyed hundreds of homes and leveled miles of forest. No one from the Weather Channel was willing to comment, but sources say experts fear a Creature From the Black Lagooncanic eruption on the magnitude of the Mount Pinatubo blast that rocked the Philippines in 1991.
THE ANVIL 