Holy shit here it comes. Word has it that the Blizzard of 08 is to hit here on Friday. Whispers of "snow days" echo throughout the locker lined hallways. Adults look happy like children at the hope of having one day off...a Friday at that. The excitement is electric. The only problem is that Midwestern meteorologists have a success rate on par with a therapist working at a Hollywood Heroin Clinic. They conjure up all this excitement and then poof...45 degrees and rain. They won't dupe this sap...not this time. I plan for nothing but another day of work...another 6 am morning. It reminds me of the last time I had a Friday snow day.
From January of 07
I would never, in my right mind, choose to spend an entire Sunday afternoon @ Starbucks sipping coffee amongst hipster chatterboxes, popping Adderals, and reading various essays written by David Foster Wallace...In fact it might be one of the last things I would choose to do on a winter Sunday. So why would I make the conscious decision to spend my Sabbath in human claustrophobia instead of lying in the warmth of my living room, drifting in and out of naps while the crashing of football pads played beautiful background symphonies? The reason is that a city wide blackout has robbed me of my warm livingroom and my football and my comforting way of life...72 hours and counting...no heat, no television, the smell of rotting carcuses in a dead box in the kitchen, sock hats, ice cold toilet seats, colder bed sheets, flashlights, a fruit salad of scented candles (evergreen, carribean breeze, and soap), not being able to find the goddamn square batteries that power my clock radio, a dead ipod, a deader cell phone...
We all knew the storm was coming...we heard it like the approaching snare drums of the Revolutionary Red Coats...we were just children praying for a snow day. And it came. Half a day Thursday, Full Day off Friday. Plans to drink whiskey and watch movies, and take naps, and listen to new cds, and play guitar abruptly died at 1230 am on friday morning when a transformer outside my bedroom exploded like the 4th of July...Silence...you dont realize how badly silence hurts your brain until you hear true silence. No buzz from the heater...no hum from the fan...just cold air...cold, cold air...
It is amazing how one learns to adapt...to enjoy a seemingly mundane activity like sitting in a coffee house when faced with shitty cicumstances. Our evolutionary survival instincts kick in and we search for warmth...Prometheus stole us the fire...but Zeus seems to have the last word today...for his lightning bolt is directly related to my frozen ass and my frozen toes...so we loiter...all day long...9 hours to be exact...in one of the only places loitering is encouraged, or at least practiced...Starbucks. We were refugees fleeing to coffee shops and movie theatres, and book stores and tiny cars spitting heat.
The needle has broken off our themostat...50 degrees is the coldest it shows...and the needle has broken off...last night it was 9 outside...we are settlers...we are tougher than the settlers...We are tougher than Laura Engels Wilder, tougher than Davy Crockett, tougher than Daniel Fucking Boone (they had fire places, we have the warmth of scented candles)
I have not watched television since thursday night and it feels good...like I have finally removed myself from this electronic teet that has become so necessary to my survival...I read books and go to movies, and listen to headphones in a man-made cocoon of hooded sweatshirts and blankets and stocking caps
This situation is not as bad as it seems...or maybe it is...or maybe i have slightly lost hold of my senses...it is now just a matter of principle...we will not bail on the house...we will not flee to an overpriced hotel...we will not abandon this ship...I am just out of sorts...
A few minor details have made this situation a bit more ittitating
1. Ameren UE (local electric company) has taken their phones off the hook (i have stubbornly called upwards of 75 times) and I can only picture them all sitting around in their boxer shorts in the warmth of their office playing poker and drinking scotch...I cant help it, this is what I picture and it fucking pisses me off
2. The houses directly across the street...fifty yard from my front steps...are lit up like Vegas
3. I carefully planned, as this ice storm approached...to store my car in my garage...the ice came and my car was safe, avoiding the crystal shell that encased vehicles parked curbside...But since the electricity is out my car remains unrescuabley trapped in the only garage in the universe without a connecting door to the outside world (electric garage doors dont open in blackouts). This is only bothersome because I never carefully plan...never
So it ends with me, pensively looking on as Morgan Freeman narrates my inner monologue overlooking the sun setting on this the third day of our Antarctic Midwest...
I pray we never have such a day again
Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned [mp3] Don't Fall Asleep
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