Winter denial: therein lay the key to California Schadenfreude—the secret joy that the rest of the country feels at the misfortune of California. The country said: ‘Look at them, with their fitness and their tans, their beaches and their movie stars, their Silicon Valley and silicone breasts, their orange bridge and their palm trees. God, I hate those smug, sunshiny bastards.’ Because if you’re up to your navel in a snowdrift in Ohio, nothing warms your heart like the sight of California on fire. If you’re shoveling silt out of your basement in the Fargo flood zone, nothing brightens your day like watching a Malibu mansion tumbling down a cliff into the sea. And if a tornado just peppered the land around your Oklahoma town with random trailer trash and redneck nuggets, then you can find a quantum of solace in the fact that the earth actually opened up in the San Fernando Valley and swallowed a whole caravan of commuting SUVs.
CHRISTOPHER MOORE
THE STUPIDEST ANGEL