The manic has been top-shelved once again. We've moved on to the under-the-counter depressive, I fear.
Clearly, my mind mistook all that snow on the ground this past week for some sort of mega-harvest of Bolivian marching powder (legal disclaimer: an illicit substance that I must admit to never having encountered personally--all my friends are paupers with no let's-get-this-party-started sense about them, thank goodness--nor one that I would recommend). I was obviously half-crazed in my last post, acting out from some sort of two parts Red Bull/two parts espresso powder/two parts home-processed Sudafed "classic" fliegerschokolade psycho-emotional escalation (or, if you prefer, surge) in my brain chemistry. 'Cause it's the only explanation for my rhapsodizing about Central PA's recent snowfall.
Well, that's not entirely true. I do love snow. There's the beauty it creates in my already charming 19th-century neighborhood, the comforting downy white blanket it wraps the rolling hills and farms in, which I see on my drive to work, the invigorating crispness to the air, the satisfying scrunchiness to the ground I tread in my winter boots.
For a brief moment, I even had fantasies of making snow cream, a Southern winter favorite, at least in those regions of the South that allow for something as Yankeefied as snow. There are different recipes for this--my grandfather's, as I recall, was a simple plan of fresh, clean snow mixed with vanilla, whole milk, and sugar (yes, real sugar, none of that Splenda, Equal, Sweet-n-Low, or other self-loathing crap that some diet book would recommend). However, I recently learned of a recipe that involves adding eggs and cream (vegans need not apply), making a sort of custard before folding in the other ingredients. Mmmm, sounds yummy, other than the raw eggs = potential salmonella poisoning component, and brings back many good memories from childhood winters in North Carolina . . . .
But screw to tha En to tha O-stal-gie. All's well and good with the snow. It's the copulating-with-the-persons-who-give-us-life ice that's making me all Courtney Love in the head. Because this last week we really didn't have just a snowstorm in the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast U.S. We had a poo-poo platter snowstorm-sleetstorm-icestorm, which I believe is popularly abbreviated as "shitstorm" among the laboring classes. And clearly this tempest of merde has p.o.'ed me to a 20-below Fahrenheit windchill if I'm cursing in my blog, which I almost never do.
Yes, dear readers, in real life, it's a far different matter. And while I'd like to think that in real life I manage a certain panache and creativity with my cursing, I imagine that's a challenge to perceive when, say, you are an innocent passerby, watching a middle-aged man with the physique of an oil drum with arms, stuffed just so appealingly into his winter gear, standing in a parking lot cursing loudly and gesturing wildly because 1) he cannot find a decent, relatively ice-free parking space and needs to be at a meeting in 15 minutes, and 2) he decides he does not care about the potentiality of ice, reasons that it's just packed snow anyway, and will no doubt scrunch under the weight of his far more powerful automobile, 3) and slams into the space anyway, immediately realizing that ice is harder than white diamonds, and that the laws of internal combustion engines be damned, he's stuck on top of an ice boulder, wheels spinning, oil pan crying out in pain, axles threating to snap like his fragile, fragile state of well-being and balance.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid ice. Stupid running late as usual and in too much of a hurry. Stupid Rap Licious. The incident puts Monsieur Le Rap in the mood to do some or all of the following:
- Wreak havoc on the planet and buy the biggest mofo of an SUV unknown even to General Motors (Chevy Suburban? Please! I want a Chevy Economically Disadvantaged Inner City Neighborhood), one with a wheel clearance taller than the U.S.-Mexico border fence and the ability to burn gas with an MPG in negative integers
- Bitch slap anyone who looks at him funny, sad, happy, inebriated, serious, detached, gravely, fondly, or wryly
- Hire and fire and hire again at will, just because he can and because it will send the human resources office at his alleged place of employment into a paperwork perfect storm
- Bake and eat an entire pan of brownies, followed by an entire pan of blondies
- Oh hell, who he is kidding? He'd never make it past the baking stage and would just eat the batter straight from the bowl
- Punch Carol Burnett and Alan Alda in the face for making The Four Seasons
- Kick some ice
- Kick some ass
We don't yet know the full extent of the damage of this self-induced idiocy--and perhaps, the gods smiled upon our petit tête de merde and decided to grant him and his oil pan a break (figuratively, not literally, speaking). But the event just seemed to solidify in the spinnng wheels of our Joe stupide's mind his belief in a killing, humorless, mocking karma.
A thin-lipped, bile-loving, could-try-harder karma that seemed to follow our anti-hero throughout the day and has done so throughout his life and, obviously, straight through his bottle of Prozac (legal disclaimer: a licit substance that I must admit having encountered personally--but one that I would, nonetheless, not recommend).
Still, it could always be worse. I could have been stuck on I-81 or I-78 somewhere between Fort Indiantown Gap and Ice Station Zebra, waiting for the roads and the bureaucracy of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to thaw, a hundred thousand truckers for companionship.
Well, on second thought, that scenario might have made for a more interesting ice day, imagining myself bundled up in a blanket with some burly, Quebec-or-bust bound, conducteur de camion, keeping me company on such a winter's day. Add in some Patsy Gallant on the stereo, a little vin chilling in a snow drift just outside the driver's side door, and a pot of fondue bubbling on the hotplate in the back of the cab, and, voilà! May I introduce you to Mr. and Mr. Beaujolais-Jones . . .
As an added benefit, the vehicle transporting the happy couple would easily clear any Everest-sized ice boulders obstructing the way home to Montreal.
[Editor's note: Perhaps I should stop listening to Radio Canada's Espace Musique when I'm home alone on winter days. It puts me in a better mood, but it does cause the mind to wander.]
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