Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

Purple rain a pain, when it won't drain

The purple pixel is surrounded by dark red pixels. And those are surrounded by pinkish ones. Then they turn to yellow and green.

According to the color-coded chart next to the satellite weather map I'm looking at on the Internet, purple means "extreme rain." Dark red means "heavy." Green means "light." There are no green pixels near my house in Kaneohe. Only red ones and the one dark, purple bugger lurking right above the driveway.

I don't need the purple pixel to tell me it's raining extremely outside. There are 13 pots, pans and Tupperware bowls scattered around the living room catching drips. The rain is slamming so hard onto the roof that it's coming through the ceiling via osmosis. The pounding makes it sound like I'm standing inside a 747 engine. Water is leaking into one bathroom. The garage is flooded. Every towel in the house is being used to fend off the deluge. One of two sump pumps behind the house has conked out. A small hot-tub pump called in on special duty is overheating but pumping water like a champ. And the purple rain shows no sign of letting up.

PURPLE RAIN. I hate Prince's guts right now. What kind of a sadistic idiot glorifies purple rain?

Where did this purple rain come from? It wasn't forecast. If someone said a purple pixel was going to be sitting on top of my house, I would have cleaned the gutters. Too late. Water is pouring over the gutters. To go on the roof in the dark in the midst of a purple rain storm would be suicide. Or at least, broken leg. Hurry, sunrise. Drops of water hitting the various pots and pans in the living room are pounding out a vaguely Caribbean steel drum riff. Mon, this sucks.

I move from pots to pumps to towels like a deranged washerwoman.

The sky finally begins to lighten, and the rain eases up. I hear a few birds chirp. They sound like they're wearing snorkels. Now the computer satellite image shows only yellow pixels overhead, surrounded by green. What did people do before we had this fantastic technology that tells you just exactly what color of a butt-kicking you're getting?

The TV news weather dude is forecasting rain on the Windward side. No kidding? I don't need him to tell me this. I've got Prince. "I never meant 2 cause u pain. ... I only wanted 2 see u bathing in the purple rain. Purple rain, purple rain."