Benefits of freezing to death.

Well, I finally found something to do with all the #&$^*#& snow we're getting.

Yep, it's the world's chilliest, most ubiquitous cup holder. And it's free! Approximately 10,000 per lawn.

I'm beginning to make peace with this freaking winter, even though as I write more of the white crap is falling. The reason is that I've come to believe that living in northern climes makes you tougher and more resourceful. I remember a history teacher who told our class that it was no coincidence that all the great cities of the world were clustered within about ten degrees of latitude: New York (40°40′N), Rome (41°54′N), Paris (48°51′N), London (51°30′N), Munich (48°08′N), Peking* (39°55′N), Jersey City (40°43′N)... Something about being cold half the year and hot the other half was like tempering steel. I think his theory extended to why the North won the Civil War.

I was thinking about that the other day, and about bull. What do I mean? I wonder sometimes. No, what I mean is this: In Mexico, when there's a crazed bull in an arena, they send out a highly athletic man in a uniform that provides ease of motion, armed with lances or a sword. We just let the clowns handle it.

You can say that warmer areas have more disease, hurricanes, vicious insects and animals, dangerous swamps and jungles, etc. etc., and that's all true. But winter will kill you just standing there.

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*It was Peking back then, in the Mesolithic Era. Why they changed it, I can't say. People just liked it better that way.