Partly Cloudy, 64°
At the most recent WaterFire, the planning committee reversed the event’s water-to-fire ratio with predictably horrific results.
“There’s always this huge river with only a few little braziers, so we thought it might be fun to spice things up,” said Avery Schmidt, WaterFire chairman, from his bed in the hospital’s burn unit. “So we drained the river, refilled it with gasoline, and lit a match. I don’t know what went wrong.”
“We were going to have these little cauldrons of water, just as garnish on the inferno,” said Schmidt as doctors applied aloe to his singed eyebrows. “I guess we underestimated how many safety precautions we’d need in place. We thought we’d be okay with a couple sprinklers and a hell of a lot of asbestos.”
“But what exactly did they expect?” asked spectator Bailey Hoff after coughing up several clouds of soot. “I mean, you can’t exactly set up souvenir stands on a concrete street right next to a three thousand degree river of lava and ash. Sure, it’s cool, but the risk of your face melting tends to scare off tourists.”
At press time, the Delta Tao welcome-back party decided to reverse its usual gender ratio, with predictably homoerotic results.
