Superstition: pleading with thunderstorms

Light a cigarette. Maybe it’ll make the bus come.

Terry Pratchett mentions “pleading with thunderstorms” in The Truth, in which the younger son of an aristocratic family declines to enter the clergy because he regards prayer in this light.

Whatever your views on the efficacy of putting the hands together and hoping (another Pratchett quote, this one from Going Postal), it is a well-known factoid that certain behaviors bring on disaster, while others avert it.

Be prepared for Snowpocalypse and it...