I've been a long-time resident of Atlanta. My family relocated here when I was three, and, apart from the four years I spent in college and that two- month stint in Hartford, I've lived here ever since.

Basically, that gives me a pretty good perspective on how Atlanta has developed as a city.

When my family moved here, our area (in the 'burbs) was considered "outside" Atlanta. It was mostly farmland, with a handful of new-ish neighborhoods and a small mall (with an ice-skating rink) that had been an airport a few years earlier. And it was all built on a two-lane road heading back towards the city. Today, that road has six lanes and a median, and pretty much every available space within five miles (with the exception of the National Park Service land) has either a home or a business on it.

I spent most of my pre-college days in the suburbs. I went to high school within the Atlanta city limits, though. When I first started there, my classmates considered my area "waaaaay out there" aka "Outer Nowhere". I think at that point, Outer Nowhere consisted of any location more than a thirty minute drive away. We were aided by the fact that very few people at my school lived that far away. But by the time I graduated, my area had become "not too far", thanks to the influx of kids who lived in the newer developments in the northeast suburbs more than an hour (!) away.

I rarely ventured to the "real" city of Atlanta - downtown - until I was in college. During the summer of 1995, I took a job downtown, requiring lengthy commutes in some of the worst traffic I'd ever seen. (And that says something, granted that if there's any one consistency of the years I've lived in Atlanta, it's heavy traffic. Even in the 'burbs.) I also started playing Ultimate with the local league, and nearly all of their fields were (and still are) located in what would be considered "sketchy" parts of downtown.

Playing regular days of Ultimate downtown and driving in from the 'burbs leaves me with a lot of time to think while sitting in traffic. And during one particularly hot, dry summer, I began to realize something.

Atlanta is slowly working it's way towards becoming Los Angeles II.

Let me break it down.

Weather: Atlanta is hot during the summer. Every day, eighties and nineties. It's sunny more often than not, too. Sure, it does snow during the winter in Atlanta every now and again - real accumulations about once every three years. (Naturally, that's about once every three years more than LA.) But it doesn't tend to stay below freezing very long.

Water: Both have water issues. Los Angeles pumps theirs in from the Colorado River. Atlanta only has its own sources, and seven years of drought coupled with the dramatic increase in population over that period have left a lot of them depleted.

Sprawl: Yeah, metro LA covers a lot of territory. Atlanta just added nine more counties to the official "metro area". I'm not sure of the exact figure, but I believe it's 100 miles from corner to corner. (Until recently, the population basically lived in an area until it became crappy, then moved somewhere else to build a new community.)

Traffic: The obvious one. Sucks both places. In a survey done a couple of years ago, Atlanta actually beat LA for longest average distance of commute and longest average time spent commuting. With all that sprawl, is that any surprise? And nobody upon nobody (pretty much in either city) uses public transportation. Heck, in Atlanta, the few kids in my class that didn't get cars when they turned sixteen were outcasts. (I had to wait a full four months to get my license, and it felt like an eternity.)

Smog: LA is the indisputed king of smog. But Atlanta has gained in recent years, particularly with the drought, the long commutes, and the increase in SUV's. Scary fact - Atlanta had more smog alert days in 1999 than Los Angeles did.

I'm not the first person to notice this trend. Ever since the "masterpiece" of Burt Reynolds' Sharky's Machine, Atlanta has been trying to sell itself as a viable movie location. Some actors even relocated to Atlanta, just so they wouldn't have to put up with all of the daily Hollywood hype. Unfortunately for them, Atlanta's resume looks like this: Freejack, Robocop 3, Scream 2, parts of Road Trip, and parts of that Denzel Washington football movie. Recreate that end scene of The Heavenly Kid on the escalator at the Peachtree Center MARTA subway station! (That one's in the brochure, I'm sure.) Oh, and there was that other movie that was largely filmed at one of my classmate's house - a movie so memorable I can't remember who was in it or what the title was. Wait, I think Sean Young was in it. Maybe.

I know, you think I'm nuts. Yes, this theory is stupid. But give it up for Atlanta - we took one step closer today.

At 5:00 this morning, I was rudely awakened. My room was kinda noisy. Felt like the room was moving. Hey, wait a minute - it was.

Yes, that's right, kids - earthquake! One more merit badge for the sash.

For those of you with Life of Chris Blackburn punch cards, poke out the "Earthquake" punch under "Nature's Worst". You should now have "Hurricane" (Fran - 1996) and "Blizzard" (1993) punched out. All you need is "Whirlpool", and you get a free slushie!

As you know, however, sequels are always lacking something from the original. And here's where the big plot hole is in this one: no beach. Okay, yeah, Lake Lanier is just up the road. But the "beach" there has water slides, no surf, and has an admission fee.

I am ready to remedy this problem. I'm going to run for President, and here is my platform: Flood Alabama. No one will miss it, I promise.

Flood Alabama (and western Georgia) all the way up to western suburbs of Atlanta, and we've got ourselves a beach! Hey - the peaks of the Appalachians will become islands - much closer than flying to Hawaii or Puerto Rico.

Admittedly, I really don't want Atlanta to become LA II. LA is already LA and we really don't need two. I would far prefer Atlanta to get their mess together and deal with the traffic, the smog, the water issues, and everything else. And I'll take the Braves over the Dodgers any day.

But can we flood Alabama anyway? Please?