Dec 15, 2000

    Good freakin' lord, there's a hell of a lot of goddamn snow up here. The evil rat-bastard winter gods have unleashed their cruel powers and bestowed upon my little hamlet a whopping two feet of the cold white stuff. Overnight. Struggling for almost three fucking back-breaking hours clearing the driveway gave me a lot of time to think.

    I thought about how I wish I had said "yes" to the kid who came to my door last night and offered to shovel my driveway. Man, never mind the hefty tip he would have rightly deserved; I'd have bought that kid a hooker for the night.

    I thought about the game those loveable snow-plow guys play: How much stinkin' snow & slush can I pile up at the end of the driveway? They're off to a fine start, indeed. Score: Plow-boy: 1, Housebound Civilians: zero.

    I thought about how wickedly out of shape I am, and how I keep thinking that one day I'm gonna stop smoking, cut down on my drinking, start exercising and eating right. Since my smoke was down to the butt anyway, I decided to go back in the house to refill my Gin & Tonic and see how my double-chocolate brownies I was baking were coming along.

    I thought about how a heart attack feels like, and that there might still be a few worse ways to die than face-down in a snow bank on your own goddamn front lawn, with only about a ten square-foot area of snow cleared away.

I thought about peeing on my hands to warm them up. Then I thought about the feeling of bitterly cold hands on my Johnson, and decided frostbite was better.

I thought about how many different words there are for Johnson.

I thought about how swell a nice big mug of black coffee would taste as I soak in a relaxing, Juniper-scented hot bubble bath as soon as I'm finished.

    I thought about being young once, and never minding the cold too much. Like the time some bullies in grade school pushed me onto a roadside ditch one winter. The ditch was about three feet deep and had frozen over, but not solid. I stood in the middle of this tiny ditch-pond and I heard CRACK! The next thing I knew, I was up to my armpits in icy water and all the kids were laughing. I felt like crying, but I laughed, because my cheapo K-Mart snowsuit miraculously held back most of the water. So here was I: a tiny winter Aquaman, laughing harder by the second, because, in some twisted way, I thought victory was mine. I stayed in that water, laughing and splashing around like I was at Myrtle Fucking Beach; there was no way I'd get out before the toughies left. Eventually they left, and everybody thought I was a freak after that. Good.

    In my third hour of shoveling, I was getting a little loopy. Maybe it was the temperature shrinking the distance between my synapses, making my brain all goofy. Or maybe it was the buildup of Carbon Dioxide in my system from breathing recycled air through the ice-crusted scarf which was tightly wrapped around my face. Whatever it was, I couldn't feel the cold any more and I thought about the battles & balances between opposing forces in the universe: good needs evil; warmth needs cold; light needs darkness; drought needs rain; mountains need valleys; oceans need deserts. Love needs hate. We need our opposites. I needed those bullies; you needed your bullies. It's OK to hate, because this makes you love. I hate snow. But I love coffee. Snow: cold white stuff. Coffee: hot, black stuff. Get it?

IT'S ALL GOOD !

    Farewell until next time, gentle reader. Do come back again and feel free to send me your comments, suggestions, stories, whatever. Gotta go, the coffee's on. "Different strokes for different folks. And so on, and so on and scooby dooby do!"