Disappointed, but not surprised.

Maybe six inches of snow in these parts on Saturday. Plenty of sun yesterday, roads were really quite nice yesterday afternoon.

Not that it stopped the panic. No school in the county today, and I was turned away at the office gate this morning at 6:05am; delayed opening for some reason.  Really killed any momentum I had going, though I did get to go home and make myself a nice breakfast.

Sure, NoVA and DC got 30 inches, but this ain’t DC; things are pretty much fine here.

I promise, this is the last time I complain about this here, I’m tired of it. I’d rather complain about something else, like how misogynistic and insulting (to both genders) all those super bowl commericals were last night.

…in the lives of certain dear friends, today’s xkcd struck me as particularly funny.

But then, doesn’t it almost always?

Opening and closing with pretty folk music, with some nice loud guitars in the middle. A nice mix. My favorite bit this week is, however, the big – ass pipe organ on track two.

1. “Fischer Store Road” – Sarah Jarosz
2. “Intervention” – Arcade Fire
3. “Gagged and Tied” – that dog.
4. “Salvation” – The Cranberries
5. “Heavy Metal” – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
6. “Canary” – Liz Phair
7. “A Talk with George (live)” – Jonathan Coulton
8. “Part of A Rainbow” – The Badlees
9. “Where Eagles Dare” – Iron Maiden
10. “Saucy Sailor” – The Wailin’ Jennys

/ ♫ …The king’s taken back the throne, The useless seed is sown♫

Yes, they’re calling for some snow this weekend. The forecast says that starting sometime after lunch, the area in which I’m sitting might get one or two inches before dark, with a total weekend accumulation of maybe six. Not a big deal.

Every damned school within a hundred miles cancelled this morning, on the possible threat of two inches that might or might not start falling an hour or so before school’s supposed to let out for the day.

I understand being careful, but really…my kids were in school a total of about five hours total this week because of a snowstorm last Saturday!

Somebody’s really got to get their fear under control.

Ack.

…I’ll let this guy do it:

Happy Birthday, My Dear!

The Oscar Nominees are out today; including the newly expanded “Best Picture” ballot. There are plenty of the nominees I haven’t seen yet, but many I desperately want to, like The Hurt Locker, Up In The Air, and yeah, Avatar (I’m probably the only person in America who hasn’t seen this yet). Generally a good crop this year, but lots of padding to get ten nominees; I understand The Blind Side was popular, but wasn’t it basically a Lifetime Original?

It’s nice to see Up in there, and especially District 9, both of which are on my personal “best of the year” list. Plus, with the Pixar film in for Best Picture, it frees up “Best Animated” for Coraline.

The rest of it’s pretty standard, with a couple of exceptions. I kind of expected to see The Road up there somewhere. The biggest crime, however, is the complete absence of Moon, which was one of my other favorites. Should’ve been on the Best Picture ballot, and Sam Rockwell should’ve been up for Best Actor (and probably Best Supporting as well); Zaphod literally carried the movie, and did a masterful job at it.

Not that I’m actually going to watch the Oscar Telecast, I’m more interested in who gets nominated than anything. The Razzies have always honestly been more fun overall, especially when the “winners” have a sense of humor about it.

This year’s question: Does Sandra Bullock have that sense of humor if she takes home both the little gold bald guy and the spraypainted plastic raspberry this year?

Those wily English, with their tea and their Doctor Who and their National Health Service, also happen to have an interesting perspective on the American political circus.

The other day, the BBC offered up a solid investigation as to why Americans tend to vote against their own interests. And, oddly enough, it’s not entirely that we Americans are ill-informed, though it does have a lot to do with our tendencies to trust emotional appeals over logial arguments, and the willingness of political organizations to abuse this tendency to turn people against policies that would, more than likely, do them a lot of good.

The story spends a lot of time with Thomas Frank, who wrote What’s The Matter With Kansas, which many (such as me) consider one of the defining pieces of analysis on why people in modern America behave the way they do with regard to authority and politics. If you haven’t read it, you should; it’s eye-opening.

Consider the BBC piece highly recommended; if nothing else, it’s interesting to get a look at how the rest of the world sees the United States.

Winter, slumbering in the open air, wears on its smiling face a dream… of spring. Ciao.

So, yeah. Something like a foot of snow on Saturday. Cool. Very white, very pretty. Weekend was fine, hanging out at home, doing "snowed in" stuff. It’s nice when these storms time themselves to fall on a weekend, isn’t it? Here’s the view from the street Sunday morning:

Fast Forward to Monday morning. To the surprise of absolutely no one, school was cancelled, and my office had a delayed opening, so I got a welcome few extra hours sleep. Of course, my street, a tributary off the main thoroughfare with yellow lines painted on it, still hasn’t seen a snow plow (neither, incidentally has the main thoroughfare). My local government has strange ideas about what constitutes a primary or secondary road. This annoys me.

Anyway, having taken some basic vehicular positioning precautions, I got the car out of the driveway (I still haven’t shovelled the whole thing – Sunday morning it was like shovelling flour – it just poured right back into the space it just vacated – would have made for beautiful skiing), after spinning some tires when I hit the ice sheet that was the road, and once falling on my ass clearing some space around the wheels, hence the title of this post.

At least we put off going to DC an extra day. Though I suspect it’s just not going to happen at all, since I’m hearing chance of snow/sleet/rain/etc for tomorrow. The first part of the previous sentence is not a problem for me.

Happy February.

Another friday, another big, threatening snowstorm on the horizon. Weekeend events are already being postponed before a flake falls. That’s the way it works around here. At least it lets me get some more mileage out of this image:

I’m not going to complain too much; I could use the break to work the rest of this accursed affliction out of my system.

Play me out, Keyboard Cat:

1. “I’m A Fool” – The Clarks
2. “Just Dance” – Lady GaGa
3. “Saints” – The Breeders
4. “Black Wave” – Arcade Fire
5. “Peter Pan” – The Badlees
6. “Until The Day I Die” – that dog.
7. “Are You Ten Years Ago” – Tegan and Sara
8. “Little Shadow” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
9. “Particle Man” – They Might Be Giants
10. “Caravan” – Chet Atkins & Les Paul