Snowbound!

There is approximately 3 feet of snow outside the front door this morning. I don't think it actually snowed that much, but the wind has piled drifts that high just about everywhere. I can see no cars on the street;the streets are unplowed, and the parked cars are buried except for little bits of color, or perhaps a side-view mirror sticking out of the drifts.

I was just saying to my nephews on Christmas Day, that it would be a good idea to rent a snow-blower from the local tool rental in anticipation of this storm, so that we could spend the first day afterwards making a killing on driveways and walkways, but they had no enthusiasm for the project, and then I didn't get the chance to actually put the plan into action. Now I'm kicking myself: the opportunity to make several hundred dollars (cash!) this day has gone right out the window.

I wish Al Gore were here right now so that I could push his face into the snow. I'd grab him by the back of his toupee, and hold his head inside a drift, and yell "What was that about global warming, Fuckface!? Huh? What was that about fucking polar bears?" Then I'd bitchslap him a few times and send him home crying to his mother. After I took his lunch money.

Oh, and speaking of mothers...

Mine was in rare form last night. She's one of those people upon whom television actually works. Let me explain that; if there's an announcement of impending holocaust transmitted over the airwaves, she'll buy it, hook, line and sinker. There will be no personal analysis of the information, no thought given to it's veracity, no attempt to put the announcement in context, no need to go to a different source to verify this or that stated "fact", no critical thinking skills involved, whatsoever. If it was on television, it must be true, and cannot be argued against.

And so it was that last night's overwrought, overdone wall-to-wall weather reporting which would have had you believing the Earth was entering a new Ice Age, worked it's fear-mongering magic upon her. (Just why is it that every local TV station must do this? They interrupt normal programming to give you an over-the-top, fear-injected five-hour weather report -- with other assholes in parkas and microphones standing at strategic locations to tell you how the bread lines are at the supermarkets -- to tell you what you already know: It's snowing outside...a lot).

I happened to be out last night. My friends are in New York from Britain for the holidays, and I haven't seen them for over a year. In fact, I barely get to see any of my friends, at all. They all live in different cities, states, and even countries. A little thing like a snowstorm wasn't keeping me home. Besides, this is New York; unlike most other places that either completely shut down in a snowstorm, or where complete pandemonium breaks out after a light dusting, we New Yorkers can deal with snow. Even two feet of it with 60-mph winds. If you can't, you're a pussy.

Get yourself some boots, dammit.

So, there I am, getting ready to enjoy a lovely evening, with lovely people, and...mother keeps calling their hotel room. She managed to get through twice, but that's only because the first three times she tried she had the wrong number. The Television Weather Report had achieved it's goal of making a winter snowstorm (like they never happen?) seem like the Apocalypse. Mom is now worried that I won't be able to get home, and every minute that goes by brings more dire and dreadful predictions and pronouncements from the Weather Chick on Channel 4 Whom I'd Like to Fucking Strangle Now.

Note to all my readers who may not have known this previously: your local weatherdouche gets his/her information from the National Weather Service. The Weather Service is actually pretty good at collecting information about weather and weather patterns, BUT, despite all of their Accu-weather-this, and Doppler-4000-that, you cannot get a weather report that is accurate to within 4 hours, give or take. This means that the idiot on the television giving you the temperature, and prognosticating over the prospects of rain and snow probably provides information as accurate as you could get by simply sticking your fucking head out the window.

And since his/her information comes from the same Federal Government that pays $400 for toilet paper and considers forced redistribution of wealth to drug addicts, career baby mamas, and people who just plain don't give a shit to be an anti-poverty program, well, you can just imagine how accurate your weather reporting actually is, despite all the super-expensive high-tech whizzbangery involved.

You see, Mom was frightened to death by the doom monger before the green-screen map. However, because she's my mother -- and that means she's a neurotic mess -- what worried her the most was that even if had successfully made the Odyssean journey from Manhattan to Staten Island, I might arrive at a time when the front door would be snowed shut by an accumulation of snow at it's base.

I'll repeat that: my mother was scared out of her fucking skull that I would be snowed out of my own house, and that I just might not be smart or motivated enough to dig through to the front door, if I really needed to. I suppose she thought I would, upon finding the door buried in snow, simply curl up on the doorstep and accept my fate quietly, like a dying Alpha Wolf in those nature documentaries. Or maybe she thought I would stand there for several hours like a nose-picking moron at a complete loss as to what to do, whereupon I would freeze to death. That would be embarrassing...for her. Her friends would all say, "My, how strange...he froze to death just feet from his own front door...The poor boy."

But first, she'd enjoy all the attention she'd get at the funeral.

So there it is; dinner plans shot to hell. My first night out in about a month, wasted. An opportunity to see friends that live 3,000 miles away frittered away; I've been cheated by a conspiracy of foul weather and a mother who lays awake all night in a panic that the front door will never be open ever again.

Maybe I'll bury her in the snow, and let Al Gore off with a Wet-Willie?