Hey man, nice shot (of cold air)

Weather Pals, it's been a busy week. With the Writer's Guild on strike since Monday, the nation is already experiencing crippling banter shortages, with zany antics down 31percent and the snappiness of American comebacks off a whopping 77 percent. With the price of a barrel of entendres approaching $100, experts agree that this is the nation's worst writing-related crisis since the 1983 train derailment near Princeton that released a cargo of reclusive authors into the wild. While JD Salinger spent much of a weekend following phonies around campus and hating them, Thomas Pynchon escaped capture for over two weeks by disguising himself as "Gravity's Painbow," a moniker under which he briefly fought in Tennessee Championship Wrestling during the early '70s. Based on this experience, Pynchon later penned the 1400-page "The Parking of Lot 23."

Fortunately, my 10-year, $252 million deal with The Daily Princetonian remains in full effect, but my workload greatly increased this week thanks to strong Hollywood ties. You see, I was Second Farmer from Right in the sixth-grade production of "Oklahoma!" with Chad Nelson, a kid known mainly for prodigious glue consumption, who was in "Guys and Dolls" a year earlier with Mandy Moore, who was in "American Dreamz" with Marcia Gay Harden, who was in "Mystic River" with, yup, Kevin Bacon. With my Bacon number holding at a muscular four, it would be ridiculous if I wasn't appointed head writer for literally dozens of your favorite TV shows. For example, here's a sneak peek at next week's "House":

Cuddy: Are you mad, House? You can't release Sentox nerve gas into the hospital's ventilation system, you'll kill us all!

House: First, it's sarin. Second, it's the only way to treat the patient's titanihematisisosis. (Cut to interior shot of blood vessel filled with shards of metal.)

Cuddy: House! Mr. Krabbe is here for food poisoning from an Italian restaurant!

House: He's lying, that pizza was a Boboli. Besides, sarin will clear up your chronic sinus pain.

[Several minutes later]

Cuddy: [Breathes deeply] Wow! Thanks, House!

House: I hate phonies.

On a related note, I also plan on replacing Angus Jones in "Two-and-a-Half Men" with former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.).

Of course, the rapid transition from summer to winter has also been keeping me on my toes. The forecast for this weekend remains chilly, with highs around 50 and a 40 percent chance of showers Friday and Saturday. In the long term, November will remain on the cold side of averages, which is typical of Novembers featuring a moderate La Nina. In the long term, however, colder sea-surface temperatures will push westward in the Pacific, allowing a warming trend in the Northeast relative to climatology for January and February. This concludes the tour of the science center; please stop by the gift shop of the way out to sample our wide selection of geodes and freeze-dried ice cream. It's what astronauts eat for dessert!

Was that a paragraph of actual forecasting? Noooo! Weather Fans, my legendary zaniness is fading away before your eyes like Marty McFly's hand. Our collective zaniness is also under assault, thanks to Wednesday's appointment of Dolores Umbridge as high inquisitor of Princeton University. Please writers and studios, agree to a new contract before the president is forced to tap the Strategic Banter Reserve. Until next time, this is the Weather Guy reminding you negotiators to, as they say in France, GIT-R-DONE.