We got socked on the jaw with another big snowstorm last night. The New York Times has such a wonderful way with words. They called it a “giant amoeba-shaped storm.” An excellent metaphor. They called the December 26th mega-blizzard “diabolical” because of the timing. Not only did it deprive everyone of a white Christmas, but it also prevented people from getting home. Some for a week or more! Diabolical, indeed.

I have colleagues who are on staff who spread the word yesterday that they were going to “work from home” today. Up here in the Northeast, “work from home” is a euphemism for staying in your pajamas and fucking off all day. But not me, brothers and sisters! Because I’m still just a consultant, it’s imperative that I make it in to work. No work = no pay.

So at 5:15 a.m. I was shoveling about 14 inches of powdery snow out of my driveway. Have I mentioned that I’m a martyr? I am! You’d think that I’d be violently heaving shovels of snow in great, angry arcs but that wasn’t the case at all. Snow can be a big pain in the ass but, good Christ, it’s beautiful.

Everything was white-white. Snow was clinging to the tiniest tree branch and there was a muffled calm. There was no wind and the storm had passed so the stars were out. One bright planet was shining in the southern sky. I would have gotten the driveway cleared in half the time if I hadn’t stopped to soak it all in every few minutes. There was a true Zen-like tranquility in the air. Being tripped-up by circumstances was the furthest thing from my mind. For fleeting moments, I felt kind of lucky.

I just added the asshat lounge to my blogroll over there on the right. It’s a pretty good show. Kind of like an American Jimmy Bastard without the shivs, blood, enforcers and broken bones. His post from January 4th will lay you flat. Also, just as a reminder, don’t forget to click over to secondWide every once in a while. She’s still posting consistently interesting photographs. I don’t know how she does it.

What’s the perfect Christmas gift for a 17-year old who had not one, but two traffic accidents just one month after getting his driver’s license this past August? Why, you buy him a BMW 330ci which, according to the newspaper, goes 0-60 in about six seconds, of course.

Can you guess what happened? A violent wreck. He’s dead and his two friends who were passengers, both 16, are in critical condition. One is in an induced coma.

Oh, by the way, he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

I’ve complained about this in the past so I won’t elaborate. I’m sure the family is devastated. But as far as I’m concerned, the father should be brought up on manslaughter charges. Stupid ass. If that kid had taken out my family, or if that were one of The Daughters in a coma, I’d snap. Christ, I hate humanity sometimes.

Here are some leftover nuggets from 2010. I stole this idea from The Beatles. It’s like the medley at the end of Abbey Road whereby they took a bunch of half-finished songs, mashed them all together and created an epic.

I see this ad and many more just like it in the subways almost every day. Cell phone providers boast that their networks are so powerful that you needn’t ever be without the internet.

The premise of these ads is always the same; a guy or gal in a remote, bucolic setting, surrounded by nature, with their faces buried in a laptop or cell phone. They are seemingly oblivious to the beauty around them. Pardon me for judging, but if you’re on vacation in the vast wilderness and you simply cannot tear yourself away from the internet, you are a LOSER. That’s what these ads say to me: “Our products will turn you into a needy LOSER.”

This morning I woke up in the bathroom. I didn’t know how I got there. Did I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or did I wake up because the alarm went off? I was standing there completely flummoxed! I tiptoed back into the bedroom to check the clock and, sure enough, the alarm had gone off. It was 5:18 a.m. I had no memory of turning it off, getting out of bed and walking into the bathroom.

I use to have to smoke a ton of weed to achieve this state. I’m happy that it requires less effort.

9-Year Old Daughter has a friend in school whose father passed away last week while shoveling snow. He wasn’t that old but he was pretty overweight, which was probably a contributing factor. You read about stuff like this in the paper all the time. Someone is missing in a flood. A fatality from a fire. A traffic accident claims a life. You turn the page and check the box scores. But when something like this happens to someone you sort-of know, you see the aftermath. What goes on after everyone else is on to something else. It makes you realize how fragile life is. All that guy wanted to do was clear the driveway and it cost him his life.

The best reason to quit smoking:

I did not Photoshop that image. Cigarettes in New York City cost $11.00 per pack.

When I was smoking, we bought our cigarettes for 50 cents a pack at the Bi-Lo Gas Station on Pearl Road right behind the Junior High School. Marlboro Lights. I started smoking because, to be perfectly honest, it make me look pretty damn suave. I looked like a poor man’s James Bond. (Substitute the Austin Martin for a brown Chrysler Newport and the martini-shaken-not-stirred for a pop top Pabst Blue Ribbon.) Then, whoops!, I got addicted and smelled bad. So I quit. It’s a good thing. I couldn’t afford the habit now.

I work in Soho in a building that use be a printing plant. Lots of buildings down here that were purposed for heavy industry have been converted to living and office space. Because they’re not traditional skyscrapers and more factory-like, it occasionally takes a while for the heat to kick on in the winter. This is my colleague:

She looks like something out of a cruel scene that Charles Dickens dreamed up.

Over this past weekend I read a heartbreaking article in The New York Times about the war. There’s no shortage of pencil-pushers in Washington who insist that American troops need to fight the fight in Afghanistan, but they make no personal sacrifices themselves towards that end.

The article, Families Bear Brunt of Deployment Strains, tells the story of families who are torn apart because of the overseas deployment of a mother or father. All the sacrifices are born by the troops and their loved ones. The politicians don’t give a shit. It’s always been that way. The article is full of quotes like this:

It’s pretty hard worrying if he’ll come back safe. I think about it, like, 10 or more times a day.

Isaac Eisch, 12, on this father, an Army Sergent deployed to Afghanistan

How does a little kid rise above something that?

It’s a tough read. The article began on the font page. I opened the inside spread and finished it. On the opposite spread, my eyes fell on an article about the Debutante Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria this weekend.

It was about the difficulty of executing the perfect Texas Dip. The Texas Dip is a bow the Debutantes from Texas have to perform when they enter the ballroom and are announced to society. It’s a maneuver that requires the Deb to throw their arms apart and bow forward to the floor until their chin almost touches the carpet.

The Dip is difficult to perform because the large white meringue dresses they wear limit their range of motion. One of the little princesses complained that it made her “quads hurt.” Another was featured for her heroic act of performing The Dip with a broken collarbone. Her arm was bound in a raw silk sling that matched her dress perfectly.

The juxtaposition between the two article could not have been worse.

I don’t consider myself an angry guy. By that, I mean that I lose my temper just like you do, but I don’t get into fistfights, shout or kick walls. But the bile rose in me and I wanted to mash a Debutant in the face. Don’t you?

I spent New Year’s Eve in Times Square exactly ONCE. There were four of us and it took me all of :15 minutes to get separated from my friends. I was pushed into a coral by the police and stood there by myself and froze my ass off. Nobody would talk to me because I looked like the lone loser who wandered into a party by himself. Midnight struck and while it was a pretty spectacular moment, I can’t say it was worth the hassle. By 12:15 all of Times Square was deserted.

Happy New Year, everyone. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hide under my bed from all the amateur drunks.

Incidentally, as a point of clarification, tomorrow is the first day of “twenty-eleven,” not “two thousand eleven.” When it was 1999, we didn’t call it “one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine,” did we?

Is it just me? You can tell me. I can take it.