Now I just see a dog

I caught this on Twitter a couple of days ago thanks to Commentarian Malaclypse and I’m still struggling to come up with a coherent response beyond “I hope CBS News is bombarded by images of weird things people think they see in the clouds.”

What happened is this: While driving to work on 9/11/2019, a teacher in Florida saw a vision in the clouds as teachers do and posted about it on Facebook as lots of people do.

“It might be because today is 9/11 but this is the cloud formation I saw driving into work today. Doesn’t it look a firefighter running with a hose and an angel with the sun perfectly behind it?”

I’m sure it is one of the more benign things ever posted on Facebook that doesn’t involve baby animals. And on Facebook it should have stayed because cloud images are even more not noteworthy than rust stains on an abandoned car that appear to resemble the deity of your choice, or his mother.

OK, sorry. I do have questions. Why would a firefighter be running towards an angel with a hose? Is the angel on fire? I’m pretty sure angels that are on fire are that way by choice and should not be put out.

At any rate, despite the non-noteworthiness of what one man saw in the clouds, when several outlets got wind of it a few days later they decided it was worth a story because it mentioned Sept. 11 in a suitably reverent fashion. And Sept. 11 has become a day that now gives weird people weird tingles down their legs. And for some reason — extra leg tingles or extra brain worms or both — one major outlet went all in with the weird-ass Christowoo.

9/11 MIRACLE: A teacher driving to work on September 11 spotted something in the clouds that took his breath away – the image of a firefighter walking toward an angel.

There are many words that come to mind when I think of Sept. 11, 2001, but miracle isn’t on the list. When it comes to events nearly 20 years later, my criteria for miracle is very high. Finding someone presumed dead in the attack was really in a hospital in a coma all this time, and they just woke up, and have been reunited with their family members? Who are happy that the missing person is not dead? Miracle.

Clouds? Not unless they spell out something like “Bush Lied, People Died.”

CBS News even interviewed the man who thinks God showed the world he loves everyone by using the clouds over Oakleaf, Fla. — which the NYDN noted is about 1,000 miles south of NYC — to reenact one of the most traumatic events in living memory. Because it is something a producer at CBS thought made a feel-good story. And I get it, a lot of people love the idea of a celestial being sending messages with the cumulonimbus. I just wish more would ask why they love the idea.

And I wish the celestial being would do deformed rabbit next. That’s my favorite.