Song of this day

How's this for Christian music?

"Breathing in a New Mentality"
Underoath
Track 1, Lost in the Sound of Separation

I'm not smart enough to tell you why

This is the first paragraph of Barry Hannah's short story, "The Ice Storm":

Most of the leaves are fallen and this place looks bombed all over again.  Last February the ice storm of the century passed through the Arkansas delta into north Mississippi and lower Tennessee up to Nashville.  Eleven at night, I was out in the front yard waiting for it, led by a special alarm, even horror, in the voice of the television weather-caster.  Like a Jeremiah just miles ahead of the storm and pointing backwards down the road, raving.  The edge of the storm came on in feather-light little BB's, then began to drive and pile.  The glass on the west of the house went pecking as if attacked by a gale of birds.  Under the streetlights the swirls of white-silver turned almost opaque.  It was a determined blizzard.  A Southerner doesn't see such driving ice more than twice in a lifetime.  But at one I went to bed pleasantly aroused, rich as a caveman with the weather outside.

I absolutely love it.

What can you buy for $900M?

100 years of failure.

This goes for hand-washing, too

For the last couple days, the drain to my bathroom sink gargles every time I flush the toilet.  I don't know what this means.  It could be the cold weather, a frozen pipe.  Maybe the person who built this house wasn't the best plumber.  I hope s/he didn't cross the pipes, though.  If I've been rinsing out my mouth with toilet water, well...I just, I, I don't think I can handle that right now. Today I brushed my teeth in the kitchen sink.  For safety.

Land's End

Funniest things I saw while at a Land's End outlet store:

• Men's gloves marked down to $25.00. Original price: $25.50.
• Hideous Reindeer Sweater, the kind one might wear to an ugly sweater party, one that looked like this (best I could find on the net.  The one I saw was navy blue with red reindeer):

The price of this sweater? $115.  Note to anyone who would want to wear a sweater like this:  go to a resale or thrift shop.  Or call my Uncle Wayne, since he still wears these.  And 

not because he thinks it's funny.  To him, these sweaters are snazzy.  

• A jacket with the RECCO Avalanche Rescue System.  This winter jacket came equipped with rescue reflectors in case the person wearing it gets trapped under snow.  The kicker? A tag on the jacket warning consumers that the rescue reflectors don't prevent avalanches from occurring.  And here I thought blaze-orange nylon could move mountains.  

Warning labels always make me think that the reason they're applied to consumer products is because some dolt in the past had a misunderstanding about what they were buying. Example: McDonald's coffee has a warning on the cup, stating the contents are extremely hot.  This was enacted after some woman got burned, using the styrofoam coffee cup--containing scalding hot coffee--as a thigh master, while driving.  

In this case, I imagine some snowboarder standing at the base of a mountain with his forearms crossed, summoning the Titans with his Land's End RECCO rescue reflectors to stop the approaching avalanche.  He must have been extremely disappointed when he realized he was trapped under thirty feet of snow.  We definitely know he was angry; otherwise, he wouldn't have written a letter to RECCO explaining his dissatisfaction with the jacket and its non-avalanche-preventing reflectors.  

I hate to think that this warning label was created because some ad-whiz had the foresight to believe snowboarders don't understand what the words 'rescue' and 'reflector' mean.  

"With this label, Mr. Recco, we won't get sued if one of those potheads tries to stop an avalanche with our jackets."  

"Good work, Johnny.  You just might have yourself a merry little Christmas, after all."

Does this company actually believe its customers are that dumb?  At least there weren't any reindeer on the jacket; although, I do wish it had been marked down an additional fifty cents.

Back in Mankato

Fuck.