Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Yesterday was Michigan's first snowfall of the year, and I'm super ultra excited.  I mean, I've seen snow before, but I've been living in the desert for three years.  Then again, I've been back to Michigan plenty of times, and I've certainly seen snow on a goodly percentage of those trips, so what's the big deal?

A lot of my writing comes from the sense that it's a rainy-day activity.  I don't know why, I don't know what started it.  I think a part of it may have been living with my dad who wanted my sister and I to go outside and enjoy the fresh air when it was sunny out, but who found it perfectly acceptable that we write and draw if the weather was bad.

I guess it's lucky for my writing career that Michigan weather is usually bad with a 90% chance of terrible moving in by evening.

But I love this terrible weather.  I'm built for the cold - very dense and thick-blooded, and a nip in the air doesn't hurt me much.  And, as I was saying, there's the association for me between writing and cold, writing and wet, writing and gloom. 

It sounds like romantic nappy-dappy crap to say, but I really can't articulate where writing "comes from," as in "OMG how do you think of something to write about?" It's about the closest thing I have to a sense of spirituality.  The "place" itself is primordial, dark, savage - Plato's cave, filled with dinosaurs. 

So now comes winter.  Is it coincidence that I think of "...the winter of our discontent" (poorly paraphrased, as is the parlance of our times, to convey gloom - the opposite of the speech's intent)?  There's something about the stillness, the dormancy, the short days and treacherous nights that excites my imagination. 

In short, on a day like today I say again that it's damn good to be back. 

I left Rosie O'Grady's last night, where I unwound with a couple of cheap domestic drafts after a hard-lost game of dodgeball, and all around me were those bitter icey snowflakes, the big and jagged ones; like rain hard-frozen and angry at the change.  They hit the ground, they turned to slush, and then they melted away as fast as they fell.  By morning all that remained were some frozen puddles in the gutters and a fragile frost on the ground. 

And now my only worry is every other asshole in the world, which brings us to the point of this post:

Michigan people, how long have you lived here?  What the fuck is wrong with you that every time the snow falls you freak the fuck out and forget how to drive? 

EVERY winter I see pickup trucks crashed into snow banks.  Every winter I see little four-speed imports stalled out on freeway turns because the owner flinched and didn't keep the vehicle's speed high enough to avoid sliding into the ditch.  Every winter people either start driving about a bajillion miles over the speed limit as if they could dodge the snowflakes, or drive at half speed thinking that it's all their poor little car can handle.

OR my personal favorite, and I know this is cliche, but:  Get off your goddamned phone when you're driving eighty miles an hour in a blizzard!  Hey, it's awesome that you can multitask - you're going to multitask everyone around you into an early grave just so you can drunk text some bar skank that you think will put out so long as you pay her enough attention. 

Ten and two, douchebags.  Remember: the speed limit is a recommended speed based on tests done under adverse conditions: that goes for the minimum limit too.  Pay attention to the road, drive defensively, and know the limitations of your car.  It's not hard people:  if I can do it drunk, I'm sure you can handle it too.