and I feel fine

There's a low constant hum that covers multiple city blocks. It's like a heater struggling to start, or a snow-blower running low on fuel. The euphoria of Saturday when snowball fights reigned and passing neighbors smiled in amusement has been replaced by a white-grey dread. People no longer bound out of doors and down the middle of the street bending to form a snowball or a ready-made sno-cone. Now they trudge. They've bundled a little tighter. The bright colors of winter wear seem a little muted. Playing in 20 inches of snow with the hope of missing work dancing on the falling flakes is replaced by shoveling 10 more inches with the flakes flying horizontally. The weather and the city's accompanying emotion have gone from Lady Ga-Ga inspired party dress to the long walk of shame home. That walk seems to grow longer with each hour. The questions of where will we put the snow? and what do you mean the snow plows have stopped due to dangerous conditions? don't seem to be real. How can they be?

We still have power. Others have lost theirs. At the risk of being too dramatic, I can't help but wonder how fragile we are. I can't help but think about global warming either. Could this be a harbinger of things to come?

I read the newspaper stories about young neighbors taking care of their older neighbors and I talk to my friends who have shoveled driveways and pushed cars out of snow drifts. The spirit of community rises in these situations. Could this too be a harbinger of things to come? It seems just as likely.

Burned by an icon

I'm spending an unreasonable amount of time with my iMac lately. Sometimes, he even lets me call him Mac. We watch TV together, read the paper, visit with our parasocial universe, organize movie rentals, and even check the weather. Yesterday, Mac told me that today would bring rain. I stopped listening to weathermen some time ago, but the icon showed rain and I believed it. It turns out that Mac is good for a lot of things, but predicting the weather isn't one of them. Maybe it's harder than I thought. It's a little amazing that the weather even matters; I mean by 2007 someone surely thought we'd be traveling in glass tubes, but the earth is not dead yet. It might be sick, but I'm holding out hope that we'll survive the melting. Today it didn't rain, not even a little bit.

Mr. iMac, sir, please fix your predictions and get started on those glass tubes just in case.

Save us. Get rich.

It's time to save the world, take home the $25 million dollar booty, and make Gore pleased as punch.

http://www.virginearth.com/

Global warming, Martin Luther King conspire to kill boy

Temperatures bordering on hot combined with three day weekends have led one young man to overdose on "Winter" Ultimate. Weathermen had promised rain and expected respite, but weathermen SUCK! I can't believe that's even a profession. It's got to be the easiest job ever. You don't ever have to be right. Without rain, I had no choice but to go out and enjoy the global warmed winter before hot becomes way too hot. Every time this body thought it was about to stop and rest, maybe even return to the office and sit still, it ended up out and chasing after another disc. Today, it even unsuspectingly walked into sprinting drills.

My body is the only thing ready for this weekend to end.

Dear Santa

Here's a list of things I no longer need thanks to global warming:
*ice picks
*skates
*really thick sweaters
*hot chocolate
*skis


Here's a list of things I need more than ever because of global warming.
*Margarita glasses and tiny umbrellas
*suntan lotion
*lemonade
*sandals
*beach towels
*waders
*chiles

Please adjust your list accordingly. I have been mostly nice, with some naughty streaks mixed in this year.

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

Sincerely,
David

P.S. Are you concerned about global warming? Is it cutting into your real estate?

Well that’s a FINE mess global warming has gotten us into
If you’re not going to make winter, then neither am I. I’ll wear shorts. I’ll drink lemonade. I’ll go for long walks and I won’t ask you to come with me. If you won’t bring me any of the white stuff, then this will just be the dark summer. That’s right. Winter is a distant memory. This is the dark summer. Remember the dark summer of 2005? I’ll ask my children. And they’ll say, “No. Silly. We weren’t born yet.” And I’ll say “show a little respect!” And then I’ll start to throw a shoe at them, but realize that would be mean and take a deep breath and say, “Well, the dark summer of 2005 was a miserable year.” Only I’ll say miserable like it had 8 syllables instead of 3 or however many it has. Like this: Mis se ra bu uh le. That way they’ll know it was bad.

“Why was it dark, Grandpa?” they’ll ask. “Was it a meterorite?” “Weren’t you just my father?” Time moves so quickly.

And then I’ll scream and say, “It’s dark because MA Nature says it’s dark, dagnabbit. And if you kids knew anything at all about history you’d know it was dark because it didn’t snow. And also because of the tilt of the earth's axis.” And then I’d fall asleep in my rocking chair. The great-grandkids would roll their eyes and say, “What’s snow?”