Cold heart, hot dog.

Springtime is on my mind

Flowers blooming, all the time

Smell the roses

Smell the grass

Old man winter can kiss my ass

                            --Spinal Tap, "Springtime"

Yay, winter.

The people who dig the snow
Are usually not those who dig the snow

Yesterday was fairly nice, mostly sunny, high in the forties, so global warming will kill us before the year is out. All the snow we'd had earlier in the week had melted but for some piles here and there. 

Unfortunately that left Winter's sickly child, Mud, all over the joint. And the dog had just gotten a pro grooming for the first time in two months. 

He's a hairy beast, and we never let him go that long normally. His fuzz gets matted and clumped, and that's no good for him. We ought to brush him out daily, but none of us would like that, least of all him. We're lucky to have a great groomer who has a knack with the hairy dudes like him. 

But in December, we skipped his usual monthly groom. Why? Because it would have been close to Christmas, and a lot of people who wouldn't normally get a dog groomed by a pro do so when company is coming or when cute pictures with Santa are going to be posted. Also, they might want to board the dog for a few days, or take advantage of doggie daycare (a service our groomer also provides), and that's where the rub is. Because we were a little nervous about this new and mysterious respiratory disease that's going after the dogs. 

The disease is dangerous and disconcerting. It's similar to kennel cough, but the cause is unknown thus far. I have heard of no cases diagnosed here in New York yet. Of course, the usual warnings apply, to keep your dog away from places where lots of other dogs congregate -- like the groomer or the boarder or the dog park. Since you can expect a lot of dogs in these places around the holidays, my wife suggested we skip a month. 

So we skipped December. Izzy was not a huge mess when the time came for January's cleaning, but yeah, he was ready, all right. Off we went yesterday for his early-morning appointment.

He dealt with it with his usual combination of love and panic -- I think he loves the groomer but hates the grooming. I picked him up a few hours later and he looked and smelled awesome. Having him riding in the backseat was like having an seventy-pound air freshener. 

Aaaand then there was the mud. 

The mud was neither very deep nor very squishy, but I have one strongly enforced rule: Stay clean for ONE DAMN DAY after I drop serious lettuce on your bath. It meant keeping pup away from the muddy edge of the sidewalk. The advantage I had was that he was too exhausted from the grooming to need a lot of exercise in the afternoon. 

So he's clean; apparently disease-free; my wallet is lighter; and there are no blizzards in the forecast. If you're in the Hudson Valley and your car is musty, I will rent out the fuzzy air freshener at cheap rates. He will even leave dog hair behind to keep the odor alive. 

Act fast: It rained last night and he could get muddy at any moment.

Sign of the times.

Well, it certainly was windy in New York yesterday. 

[Audience: HOW WINDY WAS IT?]

It was so windy you could hear the air whistling through our governor's head, playing Billy Preston's immortal "Nothing from Nothing."

As I knock these words out it's a little after six p.m. on Friday. The temperature is dropping to below zero, bringing the ruinous winds, and there are 57 power outrages posted on the local utility company Web site. We've been lucky -- so far. If the electricity goes out our gas furnace can't go on. And we only have one dog to cuddle up to -- everyone knows you need at least three for a bad cold night. 

To show you just how bad the wind was on Friday, here's one of the big signs in our area as I saw it at eleven in the morning:

That sign's been up for over a decade and I don't remember it ever getting whipsawed so badly, not even when hurricanes have crawled up this far north. My wife thought some large projectile must have been flown right through it, but I don't think so. I am not sure if it's appropriate or ironic that the one fix-it store in the shopping plaza, Home Depot, had its sign completely blown out. 

Side view -- I don't know what those signs are made of but they were coming off like shredded cloth.

Mean as this cold snap is, it's not supposed to last. By Sunday we should have a high of 44. That'll feel like a day in Daytona by comparison. 

Stay warm out there, my friends. Human beings are only able to survive this kind of thing because God gave us the brains for it. It's our only natural defense against the elements. Regarding intelligence: I wonder sometimes why half the population of New York doesn't die when the weather gets rough. I've seen how they drive. 

Wake-up juice.

Scandinavians and other northern types love their coffee. Charts of the top coffee-consuming nations vary from year to year, but among the top coffee drinkers you will always find Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, and Canada. Why? Because A) it's cold and they want to drink something hot and B) there's no sun for six months out of the year and they need caffeine to stay awake. 

 

A long time ago I visited Norway, one of the nations in my ancestral mishmash, and I remember that people sucked down coffee like they would die without it, and also that the coffee was really good. My wife, having heard such tales, and being a coffee hound herself, got me a couple of bags of Norway's finest coffee for Christmas. Here's one: 

 

Kjeldsberg is a coffee roaster in Trondheim, Norway, and I don't think there's any more Norwegian-sounding city than Trondheim. You could say it all day. Trondheim Trondheim Trondheim. Anyway, Rasmus Kjeldsberg started the company in 1856, correctly predicting that coffee was going to be a big business. That makes Kjeldsberg older than venerable American brands like Maxwell House (1892), Chock Full o' Nuts (1926), Martinson's (1898), Chase & Sanborn (1874), and Hills Bros. (1900), but not quite Folgers (1854). However, most U.S. brands have been bought and sold by big companies over the years*, and the quality of the coffee has not stayed top-notch, dare I say. Kjeldsberg is, I believe, still its own business, and business is good.

I don't consider myself a coffee snob, but I have to say that the Kjeldsberg kids know what they're doing. The two varieties I tried were delicious--full-bodied without being acidic and nasty, rich without tasting burned. Honest injun, it was better than any major American brand I know. It even surprised my wife, who expected some kind of thick Eurotrash goop that could only be forced down with cigarettes and baguettes. Well done, my Norske friends!

Many moons ago, when the idea of quality coffee was sweeping the nation (and we could always use some more sweeping), the head of a small company at which I was employed came back from the Frankfurt Book Fair. We were in the business of importing foreign books and Americanizing them for the US trade. While in Germany she had been in a discussion with some of the shifty foreigners about coffee, and they were comparing the coffee found in Italy, Germany, and other nations. 

"What do you think of American coffee?" she asked. 

After a moment, one of the fellows said, "It, too, is a beverage."

She thought that was hilarious. I admire the remark as well -- it so perfectly combines the desire to appear polite with the desire to look down upon others that perhaps no other continent can do as the Europeans do. 

Oh, well. I'll give them credit for the joe. We'll take everything else on a case-by-case basis.

⛾⛾⛾⛾⛾

* For example, Chock Full o' Nuts, Chase and Sanborn, and Hills Bros. are currently owned by Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA, the American branch of Italian giant Massimo Zanetti Beverage Group; Maxwell House is owned by conglomerate Kraft Heinz; and Folgers is owned by J.M. Smucker Company, having broken free from America-hating Procter & Gamble in 2008, where it had been since 1963.

Happy pants!

Sorry I was so low yesterday. I took steps to remediate it. Actually, I got right to it and put on my happy pants! 

You can't go around looking glum with bright red sweatpants on. You just look like an idiot. It's the same reason I used to wear amusing neckties to the office when I was unhappy -- if someone would cheese me off or something would fill me with disgust or discomfort, I'd look down and see I had on a tie with Warner Brothers critters or cartoon elephants or something, and I'd have to turn that frown upside down. It was my Sun-Will-Come-Out-Tomorrow, Give-a-Little-Whistle, Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It, Whistle-a-Happy-Tune, even Smile-Though-Your-Heart-Is-Breaking moment, and it would get me through the day. Then I'd take the tie off and scowl all the way home. But I'd made it to five!

The bright red sweatpants were a bit of an error. I love Jockey's sweatpants, and while ordering a couple of pairs I noticed the red ones were on sale. They looked red on screen, but they looked REALLY red on my legs. I'm not one to wear bright colors, being more old-fashioned in my couture, so this was a surprise for my wife. I had to explain that my cheapness had brought about this change in style.

I do wear these semi-clown sweats at times other than needed to cheer myself up. I dig out my New York Giants cap and wear the sweats with a blue shirt to annoy my Cowboys-fan neighbor. I think that wearing them with a blue shirt and white socks (as pictured) also makes me look like a Great Value Golden Age Superhero. Sweatsman! And Panty, the Wonder Pooch!

And then there's Santa. It's warm now, but Christmas morning was freezing. I put on a Santa hat, my red sweatpants, and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man coat that I only wear when it gets close to zero. It was very early, and figured maybe some kiddies might like to see Santa out walking his dog. Or I'd just tell them I was an elf, since I have no beard. "Yeah, all us elves actually are about my height. A lot of us own dogs, sure. Only friendly ones. Santa uses the dog crap when he stuffs the stockings of Congressmen."

Well, I didn't see a soul -- it was really early and really cold -- but the next day I had the same getup on when I got up, and a pickup truck honked at me. Local utility company truck, I think. Anyway, I gave him a Merry Christmas salute as he went by. 

Red pants: The cure for mopeyness. 

Coldest robot.

Eleven years ago we had a snowstorm here two days before Halloween, which was also on a Monday that year. Snow on Halloween may be de rigueur in places like North Dakota and Saskatchewan, but not in the southern tier of New York. It was not a blizzard, as I recall, just heavy, slippery snow, and it caught everyone by surprise. Weekend workers, plow guys, schools that had to remain closed Monday, even trees that had not yet dropped their leaves (you didn't want all those limbs, didja, tree?). All the local towns and villages barred trick-or-treating, although I seem to recall roving bands trying their luck the following Friday. Those that did made out well. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

A friend had posted pictures of the Great Pumpkin Snowstorm of '11, and it reminded me of another Halloween quite a few years earlier than that. 

I don't remember all the costumes I wore over the years of trick-or-treating; there was the Superman costume I wore to pieces after the fact, the inevitable bindlestiff getup, and probably a vampire or pirate in there. Most are forgotten. But I firmly remember the year I got the much-envied robot costume by Ben Cooper. In addition to being pretty skull-like for some reason, it had a battery pack that lit up a little lightbulb in the forehead. All the high tech of the worst third-grade science project, but I could not wait to go out and impress everyone with my costume.

There was a problem. And this problem is something else that I'm sure is familiar to children of North Dakota and Saskatchewan. That day was the coldest Halloween I'd ever endured -- possibly the coldest I have ever endured -- and there was no way Mom was letting me go schnorring for candy without my parka. 

A robot in a parka? THAT'S CRAZY TALK! Robots are made of steel! They don't wear parkas! I think we can all agree on one thing, and that's that a robot, even one that for some reason was packaged by Ben Cooper as if wearing a spacesuit, can endure common temperatures on Earth. No parkas needed! ROBOTS DO NOT WEAR PARKAS!

Well, you'd better believe this one did. It was that or stay home.

I guess it was not as embarrassing as I probably expected. I'm sure that around the neighborhood we had Supermen wearing parkas, ghosts wearing parkas, skeletons wearing parkas, ballerinas whose long coats covered their entire costume, vampires whose mothers made them wear scarves and woolly hats. It was freaking cold. Any sane person would not have been wandering around, but we were kids looking for free candy without adult supervision, so, yeah. 

That was close to my final real trick-or-treat experience. Those Ben Cooper costumes would last for one night, and little more; even if I had not outgrown it by the following year, or associated it with bitter disappointment, I would not have worn it again. It makes an amusing story now, though.

I laugh at the experience, as I do all those Halloween experiences. You usually forget the candy itself as the years go on, but you remember the things that happened. I hope you have some good memories of Halloween to smile at today. And may your trees be free of snow and TP.

And now, another regrettable moment with Igor.

This has been another regrettable moment with Igor. 

Out on the carpet.

Ugh. Yesterday was a very Monday Monday. I agreed to do a big assignment without realizing that the deadline is this Friday, and it's the most boring book in the world and worked on it all weekend and most of the day Monday. All that on poor sleep Sunday night (another windy night, and large dog Tralfaz wanted multiple trips out in the bitter cold). But that wasn't the worst of it.

A client bawled me out for a poor job I did on another book. What hurt was that she was exceptionally nice about it, and that she was right. I had neglected the book. I'd overbooked, and it was the same week baby dog Izzy needed surgery and then keen attention during recovery. The thing was, her assignment wasn't difficult; it was painless. A pleasant enough mystery novel. Meanwhile I was doing a crazy cookbook for one client and a messed-up manuscript that looked like it had been dictated to Siri for another, and a flow of short fact-checking jobs from a third, and I took it all because I have to help come up with the $5,500 for the kid's surgery. But just as the best-behaved child gets the least attention, so too did the most pleasant editing job, and the errors that escaped me in my proofing were caught by others.

So I have taken up residence here. 

 

Which leads me to one of my favorite conundrums: Is it worse to be accused of something falsely or accurately? The first is frustrating, because it's unfair but it's hard to prove innocence; the second is embarrassing, and shame is painful. My first thought is that it's better to be accused falsely, because there's always the option of punching someone in the snoot. But really, for the sake of truth, it's better to be upbraided honestly. Wounded pride stings like hell, but the only way to get better is to be caught in the act of being worse. If I have to lose this client, those are just the breaks. 

Meanwhile, until my penance is over, Tralfaz will be in the bed while I'm in his house. Woof!

Tire-D of the cold.

The last two weekends have been cold snaps, as if the weeks had been rubber bands and when Friday hit, SNAP! Ouch! Negative degrees for you!

I am usually out and about on Saturday mornings. A week ago I had taken my wife's car and left it in the cold for an hour; when I got back the dashboard helpfully informed me that all four tires were now about four pounds under optimal pressure. That was quick!

This is something that happens every year, at least when we have truly cold temperatures, as Firestone explains here. The thing is, I never knew it when I was younger and drove crappier cars. The 1988 Chevette did not tell you the tires were low. Even my old Saturn had no idea what shape the tires were in. But my wife's 2019 car tells you everything, including whether you forgot to buy eggs at the store. (You did.) The idiot lights came up all aglow when I was on my way home that Saturday. 

My wife is the kind of person who takes idiot lights seriously. But me, I figured, the car's in the garage, she's not going anywhere for a couple of days -- maybe they'll re-inflate! And then Wednesday came and she had to drive forty miles, and I knew she'd be upset if the car was still sending up flags. I figured I'd better find out.

So, I said, "Honey, before you leave, I must ascertain whether your tires are safe for the ride."

NO, of course not. I waited until she was in the shower, then I took her car out. At once--Ping! Ping! Ping! All tires showed up as low PSI.

I immediately drove to the nearby gas station that has a free air pump, only to find one guy filling his tires and two more waiting on line. No doubt they all had their wives' cars.

Then I tooled to my mechanic, who charges a buck for the air machine.

Looks just like this place.

A buck's worth was enough for the job, and the tires were satisfied. I returned her car and off she went. 

Yesterday, my car, a 2011, flashed its idiot light after I left it in the parking lot for an hour. Another cold snap, another pressure loss. My car doesn't tell me which tire is low, though. Hell, my car didn't tell me what had happened the day I got a spoon stuck in a tire. I don't know if it was one tire or all of them. 

So I just drove home. I'll get to it. Or maybe it'll warm up and they’ll re-inflate.

Cold hands, warm heart.

It's supposed to reach the sixties today, so spring fever is running pretty high at the Key Compound. Birds are singing in the morning. More lawn is exposed as the glaciers retreat. Yes, there's a chance of snow next week, but it's not a serious amount. Besides, I can't think that far ahead. If I could, my life would be a lot more organized. 

Now that it looks like Old Man Winter is finally lurching out of here, I can pass along one of the secrets for how I survived. 

The thing that bothers me most about the winter is probably that my hands get so desperately cold. Well, this year I Took Steps. And enlisted technology. Behold, the battery powered heated gloves.

Each glove has a little power pack that zips into a pocket. You can run the heat on three different levels, but I can't tell the difference between them. They are waterproof and supposedly windproof, but since I don't ride a motorbike (for whom these things are intended) I can't really tell. 

The Inclemency Gauntlet

Yes, they're from China, and yes, I bought them from our oligarchical friends at Amazon. It's almost impossible to not buy from China. Even if the label doesn't admit it, parts of everything are made there, or they just ship things to Vietnam or other places and pretend they originated there. Anyway, I couldn't find a pair of heated gloves made anywhere else.

Do they work? Yes, but not quite as much as I might have hoped. When it's really cold they don't seem to do much, but they definitely keep the edge off. The batteries last about an hour or so before recharging, which isn't bad. And I could still make snowballs while wearing them to throw at the dog. So, a success. 

For those chilly spring mornings, I'm planning to invent a heated umbrella -- it pours waves of warmth onto your head as you walk. Money in the bank, if I can think of a way to keep heat from rising.

Updates and downdates.

Today I have some brief updates to items we've posted on this blog. In a way it's that old standby of the newspaper columnist, the Brief Observations, but in another way, it's not -- it's partly a Return to the Well. But some things do need updates, especially when an apology is in order. Thus we start with:

1) Apology to Chinese hand sanitizer

Last month I trashed a bottle of hand sanitizer I bought at Target, the "Scentfull" Winter Wonderland stuff. I thought it smelled like "some cheap 70's cologne with Tabasco mixed in". Well, as time went on and I was obliged to use it to fend off Chinese Death Virus, I came to appreciate its balsam scent. It actually does smell like a pine tree -- an artificial version of a pine tree from some weird planet that's like Earth but not exactly the same, but a pine tree nonetheless. So I don't hate it anymore. Sorry, hand sanitizer from China. But I still hate the government under which you were made. Anyway, speaking of health:

2) FitBit

I'm having much better luck with the FitBit I got for Christmas, the one that gave me a nasty rash on my wrist. I tried it again when the rash cleared up, only I wore it a lot looser and switched arms at night for sleep monitoring. This way I didn't have plastic tight on my wrist all day long. So I have been rash-free for the last couple of weeks. At first the thrill of getting 10,000 steps a day was a good motivator to keep moving, but then it started to wane, and now the software itself doesn't make a big deal about 10K steps. Seriously, I was getting fireworks on the little screen and everything. Now I'm mainly wearing it as a watch and to find out how poorly I slept last night. Maybe it will help with fitness in the long run. Except for...

3) Pork rinds

My wife was a pork-rind fan in college, because smoking and drinking were not unhealthy enough on their own (just kidding, honey!) (not really!). But I had never tried them. I remembered they were supposedly a guilty pleasure of George H.W. Bush, but I knew little else. Well, the delightful Mrs. K got me to try them, and I thought they were great -- the consistency of shrimp chips with a great bacon flavor. Just what I needed -- to like another snack with 90 calories in a half-ounce serving, along with 2g saturated fat and 12% of my daily sodium. Why can't I ever get that excited about a vegetable? Especially since all this lard can lead to...

4) Back pain

Had a scare this week following something that happened last week. I was taking down some Christmas stuff (believe me, it's still not all put away) when I decided, as we manly men will, to reach over a wing back chair to get a stocking hung at the top of the window rather than pick my way around the chair to get it. At that moment I felt something pull in a muscle on my left side. More than a week later the Back Revenge set in (a.k.a. Pay BACK Time), and I woke up feeling like I'd been questioned by the Inquisition. Well, I didn't expect that! Fortunately it seems to be fading, but for a day there I thought I was going to have to crawl back to the hospital, after I finally finished paying that little vacation off. Of course, I might wind up there anyway for frostbite, because it is:

5) Freezing cold

Ten degrees and breezy this morning; with windchill, -7. As I write it is colder here than in Anchorage, Oslo, Moscow, Helsinki, or Reykjavik. Which means it is time to take out... the Porta-Igloo, the Huge Lands' End Coat That Walks Like a Man.

I've had this thing for at least eighteen years and it hardly shows any wear. Why? Because it's so warm and well-insulated that I only wear it maybe three or four days a year. Today is one of those days. When I would commute to the city it was a major help, but I was always nervous about wearing a light-colored coat on the subway. Still, it was a matter of survival. And it never got all messed up. I think people believed I was the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and kept their distance. 

Off I go with the crazy dogs! Keep warm and Chinese-virus-free, my friends!

Cold places that don't exist.

It was mighty cold here by New York standards over the weekend, those standards being four degrees Fahrenheit with the windchill. That ought to be cold enough for anybody.

But no! 

While turning to ice outside with the dogs, Tralfaz and Nipper (a.k.a. Thing 1 and Thing 2), I got to thinking about cold places in fiction, or rather places that are very cold that don't really exist. This is hardly a comprehensive list -- in fact, if you can think of any others I'd appreciate your leaving a note in comments. Just a fun thing to think about while freezing to death waiting for the dogs to defile the lawn.  

Frostbite Falls, Minnesota: The first place I thought of was the hometown of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. According to the show's Wiki site, the population of this chilly spot roars to 48 during the summer rush. For such a tiny and cold place it is not underserved; it has a Rotary club, a newspaper (the Picayune Intelligence), a train station, and a hospital. It also has a town hall, movie theater, and bowling alley -- all in the same building. Apparently the inspiration for creator Jay Ward was football player Bronko Nagurski, who came from International Falls, Minnesota. Bonus Cold Place: The island that would become known as Moosylvania on the show became the focus of a comical campaign for statehood by Jay Ward and publicist Howard Brandy -- the timing of which turned out to be very bad, as they arrived in Washington, DC, in November 1962. 

Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude: The pulp hero Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze, had a Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic that predated Superman's. This is where Clark "Doc" Savage Jr. goes "in order to make new scientific or medical breakthroughs, and to store dangerous technology and other secrets." That includes things from "Doc’s labs, and many of the inventions Doc has captured from the villains around the world," according to the Doc Savage fandom page. I only read a couple of Doc's books, because he was so perfect, so without weakness, he made Superman look like a wimp. And speaking of which:

Superman's Fortress of Solitude: When you're the world's most famous superhero, where do you go to get away from it all? Not just Clark Kent's apartment -- city apartments are too small for that, and the landlords complain if you keep interplanetary crap around. So, Superman totally ripped off Doc Savage. Originally he built a "Secret Sanctuary" in a mountain outside Metropolis, but later moved it to the "polar wastes." As time went on the in the comics, the Fortress was established to be in a secret location in the Arctic, and Superman literally used a huge arrow disguised as a luminous marker for airplanes as the key.

The Fortress had all kinds of stuff, like a zoo of animals from other planets, Superman robots, rooms dedicated to his friends (Lois, Jimmy, and so on -- and Clark, in case someone came in and wondered why his friend Clark Kent wasn't represented). There was alien weaponry, Superman's giant diary (written in Kryptonian), world monitoring systems, all kinds of stuff. It also contained the bottle city of Kandor, an entire Kryptonian city that had been shrunken and stolen by the evil android Brainiac before Krypton exploded. Superman spent a long time trying to find a way to bring the Kandorians back to normal size and a place to put them when he did. And you think your closet is a mess.

Santa Claus's Workshop and Castle: Got to be the most famous frozen fiction fortress. According to Oceanwide Explorations' blog, it was New York cartoonist Thomas Nast, remembered for driving Boss Tweed crazy and for designing the first modern Santa Claus, who put Santa "way up North where the air gets cold" (cf. Beach Boys). "St. Nicholas’s migration to the North Pole is due most directly to Thomas Nast, an American cartoonist who submitted 33 Christmas drawings to Harper’s Weekly magazine between 1863 and 1886, one of which featured a village called 'Santa Claussville, N.P.'" And, as they further point out, reindeer, who live in the arctic, had already been established as Santa's ride by Clement Clarke Moore. But why the North Pole? "During the 1840s and 50s, public imagination in Europe and America was stirred by several highly publicized expeditions to the Arctic, which at that time was largely unexplored." Just think -- if it had been the early 1800s, when there was great interest in exploring Africa, Santa's place might have been the source of the Nile.

Lake Woebegone, Minnesota: Garrison Keillor's chilly town of Lake Woebegone, whose tales were told for years on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion and featured in the best-selling book Lake Woebegone Days. I enjoyed reading the book, but that was many years ago and I can't recall anything much about it now. But the town is in Minnesota, like Frostbite Falls, so you know it's cold.

Blofeld's Research Station: From James Bond's adventure On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Located atop the Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps, the evil Ernst Blofeld uses the cover of an allergy research station to plan biological warfare that will either destroy England's agriculture (1963 novel) or kill people all over the place (1969 film). Personally, if I were Blofeld, I'd have located the lab in a nondescript building outside Cleveland, but Bond villains always like to live it up. 

Arendelle: People kind of think that the setting for Disney's film Frozen is Norway, and if more proof were needed, the Maelstrom ride in Epcot Center's Norway pavilion, which was great, was replaced by a stupid Frozen Ever After ride in 2016, which is stupidly stupid with stupid sauce. What's the point of the "permanent world's fair" gathering of nations if you're just going to shove Disney junk everyplace anyway? Anyway, yes, Frozen takes place in Norway, during summer, which Queen Tantrum ruins for everyone by plunging the whole joint into freezing cold. But, being Norway, we know they're used to it. I'm sorry I even brought it up, but at least I haven't mentioned that pile of cowardly excrement, the snow homunculus Olaf. Oh, damn it. 

End of the Road, Alaska: Tom Bodett, best known probably as the friendly voice of Motel 6 ads (and author of the "We'll keep the light on for ya" slogan) is also a story writer and novelist. He has written several books about the people of End of the Road, which is based on his real-life home town of Homer, Alaska (Homer's nickname is "the End of the Road"). The stories are pretty good, and definitely in the style of Garrison Keillor. Bodett clearly loves his characters, except for the Lutheran minister and his wife, whom he paints as the stupidest people on earth. Go figure.

Ice Station Zebra: Drift Ice Station Zebra is located an ice floe, and is the setting of a British arctic meteorological station, in Alistair MacLean's 1963 novel and the 1968 movie loosely based on it. The men at Zebra have suffered a catastrophe, and no one knows if anyone has survived -- so a U.S. submarine is sent to find out. I haven't read the book nor seen the movie, but it's a freaking ice floe, so coldness is assured. And it's imaginary, so it's on the list. For the record, ice-floe based stations are real -- MacLean was no slouch for research. I loved his The Guns of Navarone before I saw the movie.  

City of the Elder Things: Maybe the worst thing to ever be found at the Antarctic in fiction was this ancient city in H.P. Lovecraft's 1936 novella, "At the Mountains of Madness." I haven't read a lot of the famous horror writer's work, but that was one I read around Halloween and it was truly unnerving. More horrible than discovering the evidence of the advanced and awful Elder Things is discovering that some are still alive.... Surely no cold place Man's imagination could be more terrible than this!

The Ninth Circle of Hell: Unless it's this. In Dante's Inferno, every circle of hell is horrible, but the lowest, the innermost, the place reserved for abominable traitors like Judas and Brutus, the place Satan himself stands, is not burning, but frozen. I almost didn't include this because... do we really know that it's fictional? 😱

Lake Lebarge: To end on a lighter, if still eerie, note, Lake Lebarge in the Yukon is the place where the cremation of Sam McGee takes place in Robert W. Service's poem about that singular event. It's a terrific poem for several reasons -- for one, I love that it introduced me to the word moil. The problem is that there is a real Lake Laberge (note spelling) in the Yukon in Canada. But since Service changed the spelling and thus pronunciation, I'm calling it fiction. Also, I wanted to include this poem, because it makes you feel cold and it's so good.

Well, I've moiled through all the ones I can think of; what've you got? 🧊❆⛄

The Florida menace.

People keep wondering: Why do so many people in New York retire to Florida? They got hurricanes, they got alligators, they got weird and incompatible cultures from Miami to Orlando to the Panhandle, and most of all they got Florida Man (as detailed most Fridays by PJMedia's own VodkaPundit). Plus, it's hot and humid, so they can't even claim they have a "dry heat" as in the Southwest. So why Florida?

There are theories, of course. We have to discount the "Because New York Sucks" theory first, because while it is true, it does not explain why New Yorkers go to Florida rather than, say, Colorado or Arizona. So let's look at the plausible theories.

1) Leisure police. It's not that older people want to go to Florida; they have to. Jerry Seinfeld explained this about his parents long time ago: "They don't want to move to Florida, but they're in their sixties and that's the law. They got the leisure police. They pull up in front of the old people's house with a golf cart, jump out: 'Let's go, Pop, white belt, white pants, white shoes, get in the back. Drop the snow shovel right there, drop it!'" Maybe, but I've never seen the leisure police in action.  

2) Lower taxes. AARP (which doesn't stand for anything anymore, except maybe dog with a speech impediment) says, "Nine states — Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming — have no income taxes. Tennessee and New Hampshire, however, tax interest and dividends, although Tennessee is phasing out its tax in 2021. New Hampshire is phasing out its interest and dividends tax by 2025, according to the Tax Foundation." But why should the Sunshine State get all the AARPers in New York? Maybe because...

3) Weirdness magnet. Back in 2007, Miami humor columnist Dave Barry proposed the existence of a "weirdness magnet" that drew weirdness to South Florida. "We need to find it, dig it up, and get rid of it. I’m talking about the South Florida Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet. It’s buried around here somewhere. It has to be. How else can you explain why so many major freak-show news stories either happen, or end up, in South Florida? O.J. Simpson, for example. Why is he here? Did anybody in South Florida ever say, 'Hey O.J.! Why don’t you pack up your golf clubs, your one glove and your remaining cutlery, and come be part of our community!'? Of course not! Nobody WANTED him here. He was DRAWN here, by the Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet." It's not hard to imagine that the magnet is strong enough to pull people to Florida, but they may be able to stop anywhere along I-95 once they cross the border. Maybe the major Floridian weirdness is in the southernmost part of the state, but it's not all there. 

4) I-95. Speaking of Interstate 95, that majestic road that runs from the Maine/New Brunswick border to Miami, I can tell you that it seems to exert its own attraction over New Yorkers in a way our west-bound Interstates like I-90 and I-84 do not. There's a feeling that all of civilization worth seeing must lie on I-95 somewhere. The theory is that New Yorkers can't bear to live too far away from this modern Appian Way. Go west, young man? Nay -- go south, New Yawk man.

These are all valid reasons, but my personal favorite is:

5) They can't feel their fingers. When you're a child you can play in the snow all day and still feel all your appendages. When you get a little older, like over forty, suddenly an hour in the cold makes you wonder if your hands are covered in frostbite and will have to come off. After enough winters of this you succumb to the temptation to get in the car and keep driving south until you run out of road. Thus, ultimately, Florida.

Perhaps all these are true. New Yorkers, a little weird by nature, after being taxed like Hagar the Horrible long enough, and sick of freezing half to death, are guided by the leisure police to the I-95 corridor, and the weirdness magnet does the rest. 

I might fall for it, but my dogs won't let me. They're furry and they like the cold. They reminded me I'm too young to retire. I asked them and they both said "AARP! AARP!"

Brisk!

It was cold this morning in New York -- pretty darn cold, I ought to say. 

How Cold Was It?

It was so cold, my antifreeze froze.

It was so cold, Governor Cuomo declared that up to three people would be allowed to eat together at home indoors. 

It was so cold, Chuck Schumer's mouth froze shut and the president declared a national holiday.

It was so cold, Frosty the Snowman decided to move south.

He's kind of a moron, but he's not stupid

It was so cold, Gladys Knight froze her Pips. /Carson

The weird thing was, it was so cold that my wife and I had different Weather Channel app results on two different iPhones. Hers said it was 3 degrees; mine had a balmy 7. Either way, I had to take out the dogs, but I was not taking chances as well. I got my thermal Underoos, my woolly hat and scarf, and a couple of HotHands. These things stay warm for up to ten hours, but I knew I'd be in and out all day, so I just had to put them someplace safe while indoors. I didn't want to leave them on my desk where they might cause a stack of papers to spontaneously combust. 

As I write this at 5:30 a.m., both iPhones say it's supposed to go up to 32 later. That seems like quite a hill for this weather to climb. Thirty-two would feel like a day at the beach compared to my first trip out. 

At least it isn't windy. That turns a painful chill into a brutal chill. That's the kind of cold a friend of mine would call "Brisk!" back in the day, with a cheerful and slightly insane grin. He would not let mere hypothermia get in the way of a determined pub crawl. 

I hope it's a little warmer where you are. Weather like this could make a guy freeze his BLANK off! /Rayburn

Fred's Book Club: Cold War.

Wednesday is Hump Day, so it's time for our Humpback Writers feature, with no actual humps involved. Although today's book does have a very famous Bulge.

As it is the week of Memorial Day, I thought it would be good to look at a terrific history of one of the world's greatest battles, the third-deadliest ever involving American troops, the horrific last-ditch fight of the Third Reich to break the advance of the Allies and cut their troops off from supplies.

The attack was to be made through the Adennes on a sixty-mile front between Monschau (twenty miles south-east of Aachen) and Echternach (a similar distance north-east of Luxembourg), with an initial object of seizing bridgeheads over the Meuse between Liège and Namur, thereafter aiming for Antwerp. Randstedt and Westphal both pointed out after the war that there was almost no planning for the phase beyond the Meuse to Antwerp, and none whatsoever following the port's capture.

Peter Caddick-Adams's Snow & Steel: Battle of the Bulge 1944-45 is one of the best military history books I've ever encountered. I found its history of the battle, from the top of the leadership chain to the grunts in the snow, to be completely compelling. Its description of the bizarre and deadly winter of 1944-45 (that actually began in autumn) could make you feel cold while sitting on the beach in your shorts.

I am not sure I had enough conceptions about the battle to even have misconceptions, but I guess I had the thumbnail sketch most of us had: Hitler, back against the wall, took advantage of terrible weather to launch a huge surprise attack and try to snap the Allies' race across Western Europe. That much is true, but Caddick-Adams makes a couple of things clear up front:

1) Hitler was not as nuts as he would be later, but he was still nuts;

2) The Allies were caught with their pants down because they were too optimistic.

First, about old Adolf, he writes that Hitler was trying to relive the triumphs of the past in this attack, not just the Blitzkrieg that rolled west, but earlier than that:

Hitler was obsessed with his Reich retaining the military initiative, which all knew had been surrendered since Normandy; grand, proactive offenses were part of his psyche, as he'd revealed far, far earlier in Mein Kampf. There is no doubt that in 1944 he intended to relive the early, heady days of the March 1918 offensive in which he personally took part....

Second, having broken out of Normandy, the Allies were outstripping their own supply lines. They were sick with a terrible case of victory fever:

The Allied intelligence failure over Arnhem would precede the much more serious one before the Ardennes, both shortcomings made for exactly the same reason. Due to the prevailing victory fever, which affected all levels of the Allied governments and military chains of command, Montgomery (and Lieutenant-General "Boy" Browning of the First Airborne Army) displayed a worrying tendency to disregard unwelcome intelligence. 

That supply problem was no small thing, especially with the early onset of a devastating winter.

Some historians have alleged that winter clothing was sacrificed to male more room for gas and ammunition, but this is nonsense -- winter clothing was not ordered or requested from the US because the Allies expected a victory before the winter of 1944-45 arrived. 

American troops were also facing some battle-hardened Germans from the Russian campaign who retained excellent winter gear.

Caddick-Adams gives credit where it is due, to military commanders on both sides (including natural politicians like Ike) having to fight in terrible conditions with the end of the war in sight. Did Hitler's staff know he was losing touch with reality? Was Patton really a genius? Was Montgomery an overbearing pest? Find out inside!

I can only do a little justice to the book with a few quotes, but I found the author to be very good at some of the popular historian's tougher acts -- describing memorable personalities in brief; setting the place to bring the reader in rather than just reeling off dates and map points; letting the causes and effects unwind as only hindsight can unwind them. The book is also full of fun ordnance facts, like:

The new American proximity fuse, which detonated a warhead when near, but not on, the target was also felt to be a hugely important innovation. Prior to the Ardennes the device, known as a VT (Variable Time) fuse, had only been issued to anti-aircraft units for fear the Germans might retrieve one and learn its secrets. Devastating against unprotected infantry, where the fuse could be set to explode a shell as an airburst fifteen to twenty feet above ground, it soon became the US weapon of choice against the Volksgrenadiers.  

In the end, it was a tremendous Allied victory, but at a cost of 89,500 Americans killed, wounded, or missing.

As you see, I do recommend this book for anyone interested in military history, Western history, 20th century history, or just interested in interesting things. I picked it up because of research I was doing for another book, and I'm glad I did.

Ice capuppies.

Tuesday was the first day I recall our local schools closing entirely because of rain, but to be fair, it was freezing rain. And it was pretty bad.

Every flat surface, every branch of tree, every blade of grass was coated with layers of ice.

Of course this meant I was determined to be careful to the point of paranoia. I didn't want to reenact last winter's Skaters' Waltz and the resultant injury. The grass is crunchy and its texture helped with the footing, although it was a bit slick; it was also softer than concrete, helpful in case of sudden gravitational intervention.

The dogs didn't mind it a bit. They enjoy chewing on ice and even rolling on that nice crunchy grass. I saw the little guy slip on the driveway, but what does he care? He can only fall a few inches. Besides, he has four-paw drive. For the first time I agreed with Napoleon the pig -- four legs good, two legs bad. Sure, two-leggedness enables us to use these hands of ours, and helps us see over most obstacles, but none of that is helpful when you're flat-out on the sidewalk wondering if you broke anything.

This is the kind of weather that turns everything upside down. Keep on the grass. Do not walk on the walkway.

It was sunny Wednesday morning, and the temperature was expected to peek its head just above freezing, so I put down close to forty pounds of rock salt. I sprinkled it on the driveway, the walkway, the sidewalk. I made it so salty that the FDA was ready to sue me for causing pavement hypertension. And the ice was getting good and melty.

Three p.m.: Snow started.

I had been out and noted the dark skies. Still dark when I got back in my office. Went to get changed. By then everything was white outside.

What the heckin' heck --- !

Just a snow squall, over by 3:20. But it helped dissolve my salt. Then, frigid temperatures and wind. Black ice on the cleared spots. This morning it was -6 with the windchill.

And winter is still not starting until Sunday.

I'm not entirely sure that nature is trying to kill me, and yet I'm not entirely sure it isn't, either. But it's making my furry friends happy, so good for them.

😠

DecemBRRRR.

Who are all you freaks dreaming about White Christmases out there? KNOCK IT OFF!

I'm writing this at lunchtime Monday, and last night we had a lot of freezing rain as well as snow and a little hail. This morning was a treacherous mess.

We were actually lucky to get a little snow, because it was the crunchy kind that was good for walking. The ice beneath it is a stone-cold killer, a menace to drivers and to pedestrians with two legs or fewer, and I've had enough concussions for one year and am not looking to add to the total.

We may get a foot of snow by the time it ends in the wee hours on Tuesday. It should be over by four a.m., so there will be at least a school delay, possibly another cancellation.

It wouldn't matter so much if we didn't have a still-not-healthy dog -- Nipper keeps improving but he isn't normal. He did play in the yard with his normal vim and verve this morning, so I have to count that as a good sign. I am mainly concerned about dehydration at this point. More selfishly, I am concerned about the frozen diarrhea awaiting when this white sky garbage starts to thaw later in the week (high on Wednesday: 38; next week we hit the forties).

Earlier this year I thought I'd do a little photo project for this site -- try to take the same tree picture to see how it changes over time. I actually forgot the November update, but here goes:

August 13, 6:50 a.m.

September 20, 6:41 a.m.

October 15, 6:52 a.m.

December 2, 6:48 a.m.

One of these things is not like the other...

Ugh. Any wonder I'm so depressed today?

⛄⛄⛄

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE: Nipper's still not 100%, but is getting better. The Curse of Frustration is still upon me. I missed the garbage this morning, because I was digging out and trying to get the dogs to do their thing, and I expected the trash men to come a little late and they did not. Now I'm stuck with sick dog's poop and a turkey carcass until Friday.

I know that when things start to go wrong, it's easy to get confirmation bias; start looking for wrong things and you'll find them. But I can't escape the feeling that I have the Creeping Dangerfields upon me.

Fall or Christmas?

All right, so what is it? Autumn? Winter? Christmas? It was 18 degrees Saturday morning... Fahrenheit! What is it?

Okay, this is definitely fall. Wait -- I took this on
October 28. Maybe it's too old.

Fall... I guess? I mean, the leaves fell off this thing
and left the berries behind, but it's not totally dead yet.

Aieeee! Halloween! Or winter!

Ordinary fall photo, in the wee hours.

Here's some nice fall foliage. Oh, crap -- this one
is from October too. 

Um... beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

And your little dog too.

It's taken over!!!

Basically it feels like a kind of weird season, because it's as cold as the middle of December but no one feels like the starter's gun has signaled the mad shopping dash for Christmas. On Thursday we had a ton of rain all day, very autumnal, but overnight the temperature plummeted and my umbrella froze out on the porch.

Iced umbrella, Friday morning.

So my analysis is: It may not be Christmas, but it sure ain't fall anymore.

The shape of things to come.

Well, here we are in the northeast. Someone hit the big PUMPKIN SPICE button, and now autumn is here -- it dropped thirty degrees in one day. Last night the low was 49; tonight, 37.

So here are some autumnal visions for you.

This one's kind of sad; the tree in the center is usually the most gorgeous tree I know come fall. The leaves turn a bright red-orange, and if you stand under it in the sunlight, it looks like a sunlit sky from some fantasy land. Instead, because of the weather -- too rainy, too hot, too dry, I don't know -- it's dropping its leaves immediately, before they've even turned. Sad!

Meanwhile, up the street, Muppet fruit is carpet-bombing the block. Got to give the chestnuts wide berth so the dogs don't step on those spiky outer sheaths. I know dogs have tough foot pads, but these things are painful.

Okay, this is not specifically a fall scene, but admit it -- CRP is about the perfect name for a dumpster company, isn't it?

Closer to home, I find myself a little unnerved by the psychedelic -- or should I say psycho-phallic -- fungus that popped up amid the mulch.

Of course I had to smash it. No, not because I can't take the competition. I didn't want to be reported for having a naughty Halloween display.

But if you think THAT was disturbing, here was the scene in the local Walgreens...

AIIEEEEEE!!!!

Needful things.

"The Necessary"

by Frederick Key

When winter hits

And makes us all sad

The freezing cold makes us feel awfully bad

Four little things

Stop us being dead:

Toilet paper, milk, eggs, and bread

Quick! To the store!

We mustn’t be late!

Open at seven, sold out by eight

Those magical things

That save us from dread:

Toilet paper, milk, eggs, and bread

“Four little things

We can’t go without!”

Shoppers pushing their carts will all shout

“Keeping us clean

And even well fed!

Toilet paper, milk, eggs, and bread!”

Gather them up

Through aisles we race

Punch the other guys right in the face

They get in your way

They make you see red!

Toilet paper, milk, eggs, and bread

Don’t dawdle now

It’ll all be your fault

If we get stuck ’cause you had to buy salt

Just focus on

The quartet instead:

Toilet paper, milk, eggs, and bread

Get to the line

You can take the express

You certainly got just ten items or less

Remember the thing

Your ol' mama said:

"Toilet paper, milk, eggs, and bread!"

Jam in the car

And stomp on the gas

We got what we need and we’re gonna haul ass

Only some tracks

Will show that we fled

Toilet paper, milk, eggs, and bread

Back to the house

And hunker on down

While winter’s wide paintbrush whitens the town

Our stuff is secure

That’s using your head!

Toilet paper, milk, eggs, and bread

The wind it is raging

Pelts us with sleet

Time to snuggle up under the sheet

We’ll ride out the storm all cozy in bed

Toilet paper, milk, eggs, and bread

It was cold, I tell ya!

Give the weatherman his due -- they said it would be cold on Monday, and it was frigid. I'm glad at least the mail carriers and schools were closed for the holiday. Pretty sure I heard the kids saying "Free at last! Free at last!"

It all started Saturday night with freezing rain and light snow, and eventually it was like Mr. Freeze had attacked the town and was holding us hostage. (I prefer to imagine the urbane and tragic George Sanders version, but choose your favorite.)

The temperature never got out of the single digits from Sunday night through now (Tuesday morning), and all day Monday we had windchill as low as -21. The snow that had fallen was not deep, but froze over into a candy shell of treachery. I'd crouch from the blasts of wind before they could send me sliding down the hill, AFV style. My four-legged friends -- the only reason I even went outdoors on Monday -- didn't fare much better. Legs all over the place, paws unable to gain purchase. And these are suburban dogs, not used to peeing on solid surfaces; the little guy, Nipper, was baffled. He had a terrible time figuring out where to go. 

I never fell, and we never lost power, thank heaven. I've mentioned before that our furnace can't run without electricity, and winters where random tree limbs took us off the grid would get cold fast.

How cold was it? <carson> It was SO cold, that Gladys Knight froze her Pips. </carson>

Below is a bad picture of ice on the window. Or more specifically, on the window crank mechanism on the inside of the house, above the kitchen sink.

Today it's supposed to go to 26, which will feel like a day at the beach by comparison, and it's said to be a rainy 50 on Wednesday. I think I can live with that.

(Note that all temperatures used in this blog are in that human scale of Fahrenheit, not those other anti-human scales people outside Murca like to use. Just FYI.)