If nobody got shot today, the news will be 95 percent weather, including a 60-second reading of temperatures around the state that are 1) right there for you to read yourself and 2) all within 2 degrees of each other. "It's 48 in Mantachie, 48 in Fulton, 48 in Pontotoc, 48 in Splunge, 47 in Algoma, 48 in Hatley, 48 in Big Creek, blah blah blah." Once that's done, we get an update, sometimes including video, on how Dick Rice's tomato plants are doing. After that, we go to sports.

Weather guys are a different breed. They get fired up about any cold front like we do for the Sugar Bowl. While I was at State, I took a geography class as a sop elective. The teacher assigned to it was a meteorologist. Yes, I know. Anyway, every class, every day, was about weather. This went on for four or five weeks until complaints to the department head finally got the guy yanked. These people live and breathe that shit. I subscribe to the Lewis Grizzard weather dog theory. Send the dog outside. If he comes back wet, it's probably raining. If he doesn't come back at all, it's probably windy.

The WTVA sports guys might be OK -- but we'll never know. I've had them tell me they never get to do the sportscast they'd planned because the weather segments leave them 90 seconds to say all they're going to say.

In the sports guys' defense, they do tend to do a pretty good job on Friday night football.

I get so pissed off during, "54 degrees in Golden, 54 in Possum Flat, 54 in Cotton Mill, 54 in Booger Den" that I usually have started flipping channels well before the sport report gets on.