There aren’t a lot of ways to say the following without sounding a wee bit like a raving lunatic, so i’m hoping that the latinish third person treatment will soften the blow: Directoris Raafmanicus was nearly split in two by Boltus Gigawattus, and caught the whole thing on video. No BS.

Okay, so a little while ago I decided that spending the summer in New Orleans would help me to write the screenplay that will one day make me famous. But then the other day when I was shooting a thunderstorm on my handy digital camera and NEARLY GOT STRUCK BY LIGHTNING, I realized that fame can come in a lot of different ways, not all of them desirable. I’ve since decided to juuuust focus on the words and leave the part about filming electrical storms to the crazy people.

So here’s what happened. Frustrated that I couldn’t catch one of those majestic blue rays in a still frame I spent a couple of minutes shooting video — there’s a thunderstorm here every afternoon, like clockwork. Of course I paid no attention to the regular people rushing to their cars or the shelter of the nearby shopping plaza. When I thought that I may have caught a distant flash, I turned the camera off and headed home.

Upon further review, there appear to have been two bolts each from the ground up and top down that struck LESS THAN 15 FEET FROM ME. I’m now sure that if I hadn’t been standing LESS THAN 15 FEET FROM THE LIGHTNING BOLTS they would have appeared plenty majestic. Uhh, let’s just move on. So what you will see is, apparently, the very bottom part of a couple of bolts of lightning. Also, you’ll see a weird grayish vapor color from where the bolt just struck that stays onscreen for several frames after I ALMOST GOT STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.

Here’s a link to the video.
(quicktime users can scrub through the relevant bits using the left and right arrow keys on your keyboards).

Though the video looks better (and bigger), here’s the sequence of still frames:

Oy vey.