The older you get, the more you talk about the weather. And eventually, talking about the weather leads to the be-all end-all grudge match: tornadoes vs. hurricanes. Which is pretty lame, because most folks agree that hurricanes are more destructive, but tornadoes are scarier. Which ought to pretty much take care of talking about the weather. Still, this formulation leaves out the scariest, most destructive natural force there is: earthquakes.

A massive (9.0 on the Richter scale) earthquake rocked the Indian Ocean last week, and the resulting tsunami ("tidal wave" being outdated and redundant, to boot) killed at least 150,000 people outright, with hundreds of thousands more likely to die because of disease and other disaster-related causes.

A really big earthquake in the right place could kill hundreds of thousands of people within the course of minutes. Now that's power.

In my position as a music critic, I'm privy to lots of discussions about what "art" is the most effective. And while my general answer to that question is "good art"--a term that is intentionally subjective--I do think that there is something of a artistic hierarchy that falls along lines similar to that of natural disasters.

Visual art (sculpture, painting, movies, plays, even TV) seems to excite my brain along story-telling lines. Watching a good movie can take my mind on flights of fancy far beyond what appears on the screen. The effect can be overpowering, but it doesn't last much past the viewing time itself--maybe an hour of overflow, but only with seriously great stuff.

Books (which are visual, I suppose) are the hurricanes of art. You can see them coming a mile away, and yet you're always astonished at the power of a truly great one. Books excite all parts of my brain, inspiring me in a myriad of ways. And the euphoria lasts quite a long time. I don't think I've yet recovered from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, even though I first read it more than half a lifetime ago. The same can be said for Breakfast of Champions and Water Music. And going back to the well deepens, rather than cheapens, the effect. When it comes to art, it's hard to beat a good book.

Audio art falls into a variety of camps. There are the visual audio arts (opera and musical theater in general), which are something like movies except that they generally easier to hum. Then there are the more straightforward audio arts: recorded albums and the songs within them.

Albums are a lot like tornadoes. They're shorter than books and movies and such, they jump around a lot and they can sure do a heck of a lot of damage, especially to trailer parks (the effects of Guns N' Roses and Lynyrd Skynyrd on the sanity of folks who live in mobile homes is a subject in need of greater study). But when an album is done, it's done. And listening to an album is an intensely personal experience. I'm a music guy, and I don't think I've lent out more than a dozen albums to my friends and family. I've got some 6,000 albums in my possession, and I hoard them like gold. On the other hand, I've loaned a good portion of my video/DVD collection to friends, and at any given time I have six or more books making the rounds. Sure, I'll make a mix disc (the shiny descendant of the noble mix tape) now and again, but I don't loan out albums. And since the communal toke is no longer in vogue (at least in my circles), sitting around and listening to Dark Side of the Moon has also taken a serious hit in popularity. A good album is sublime (and I include in this jazz and classical stuff, of course), but it just doesn't have legs. You need to listen again and again to get the same rush.

Songs are the tsunami of art. Whether we're talking Derek and the Dominoes (or, rather, Eric Clapton's) "Layla" or "Che Gelida Manina" from La Boheme, a great song has a crack-like effect on the brain. Not only must you listen to it again and again, you also go around humming or singing the damned thing every other waking minute. A good song can inspire, but it can also drive you mad. Especially if the song features in all your dreams in addition to overwhelming your waking hours. Nonetheless, a great song is a thing of wonder. Once overexposure strips a song of its addictive charms, the true beauty of the piece can shine through.

A bad song, of course, is the real tsunami. Everyone remembers the damage that "Afternoon Delight" wrought in the 70s, and I don't think anyone over the age of 15 can forget the horror that "Wannabe" wrought. Whatever Nero fiddled as Rome burned probably qualifies as well. Bad songs can destroy civilizations, not by killing scores of people but by driving the populace mad. Folks who at one time could conceive of an entire lifetime without People Magazine suddenly begin spending hours hanging out in supermarket check-out lines just to find out the name of Britney Spears's latest husband. I don't want to be a Cassandra or anything, but once we start paying more attention to the life of a pop singer than to our own affairs, we're doomed.

All I can say is that I hope I'm wrong about that last bit.

Jon Worley is too tired to have a happy new year.