Bad news bears no gifts

I'm at my parents house. We're off to France tomorrow on a family holiday. It's my sister's idea. She got it into her head some time ago that we should squeeze as many family holidays in as we can while... well, while we're still a nuclear family, I suppose. We did the same thing two years ago, for the first time in fourteen years. It went pretty well. Though I'm hoping this time we can avoid exchanging gunfire.

Anyway, my dad just bounded into the kitchen as I was layering Mexican hot sauce over my tuna salad. "Have you heard the weather forecast for when we're away?" he asked, an enormous grin stretched across his eighty-year-old face. He was out of breath. He'd actually run down from upstairs to deliver this news. "You mean here, in England? No, what?" I responded, clearly not wanting to hear his answer, gearing up to stab the messenger with my fork. Dad just stood there by the fridge, licking his lips, his grin still making him look like The Joker might look after reading The Code of the Woosters. Then, with undisguised glee in his voice to compliment the idiotic facial expression, dad said, "Sunny all week!"

After cursing the gods, I wondered: what is it with people enjoying bad news so much? Really, what are they getting out of it? In this specific case, was dad just happy to have it confirmed by the TV weather girl that sod's law is infallible? Or was he getting a kick out his son's (inevitable) grief at hearing that he's away for the one week of sun Britain will see this summer? Or is he actually happy that all of next week, stuck in the middle of the Loire valley, we'll be sitting around the pool cursing the bloody English weather?