Pay No Attention to the Clown Banging a Shield Behind the Curtain (UPDATED)

Go home, war god.

Three places at once?
 
The other night, April 12th, at approx. 3:00 am, while Da-da was trying to sleep after visiting with friends in Northern California, Da-da was witness to the weirdest thunder Da-da's ever heard in 198 years of thunder concerts. "Regular" thunder booms and echoes. But this thunder was, to wax onomonopoetic, like this: BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM.... Da-da lost count, but it sounded like seven times. (Seventh Seal? Buehler?) There was no echo, though, just extremely impressive and repeated, loud metallic reports of equal intensity.

The trailing edge of a storm was indeed over us, but nothing was happening until the cacophony, which sounded for all the world like a thousand-foot-tall giant banging a club against an enormous bronze war shield, and there was no rain or hail -- or lightning -- where Da-da was. It did, however, make the whole of Marin County vibrate. And while some might think it was due to thunder echoing (the town where Da-da heard the sounds is in a large box valley, suggesting echo to some), Da-da is a recovering musician (jazz and classical) and has rather acute hearing, and can tell if a sound is an echo or not. Additionally, Da-da not only grew up in a box valley surrounded by mountains and thunderstorms, he also spent lots of time in Colorado Springs, the thunder and lightning capital of the world, so he's pretty much heard it all -- that is, until now.


Suffice to say that it seemed like some large and aggressive zeitgeist-y spirit had finally been purged (and wasn't very happy about it), trying one last time to scare the pants off everyone. Well, it worked for the people around Da-da. Da-da himself rarely wears pants to bed, but if he did, they would've been scared off. (Da-da actually wears boxers with little Yodas on them.) So. Slice it right with Occam's razor and you've got unusual thunder. Slice it sinister (that is, slice it left) and you might've just heard HAARP being... HAARPy.

Ah. Now the weird part: The exact same metallic banging sound was reported in San Diego, CA and Lacey, WA at the exact same time, 525 miles south and 750 miles north, respectively. That's some echo, Timmy. Perhaps this was just a West Coast, longitudinal Testing of the Sound System for the Apocalypse? Next stop: rousing the whole earth at once?