Monthly Archives: November 2005

We’ve had some snow accumulation here in the metro area over the last 24 hours so I’d like to take a minute to remind everyone of proper snow clearing etiquette. Sit up straight and pay attention.

• First and foremost, if the snow has not accumulated to a dept of at least 6 inches, it is NOT appropriate to use mechanical assistance when clearing your sidewalk and/or driveway. And by ‘mechanical assistance’ I mean “anything that makes noise and ruins my otherwise peaceful snow shoveling experience”. This includes snow blowers, power shovels, leaf blowers, hair dryers, or any other type of stupid tool that destroys nature’s perfect tranquility after a snow storm. I know, I know, you *really* want to use your new 25-horsepower riding snowblower with a heated cab and a CD player to clear your 15 foot driveway, but I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait until it’s justified, which, if you’re lucky, is maybe once or twice a year. Have fun with that cost benefit analysis, then. Doofs.
• No matter how tempting, do NOT shovel or blow your snow into an area of your neighbor’s property that they have to keep clear of snow and/or use as a dumping ground for their own snow. (Duh.) Furthermore, do not assault your neighbor’s house with the snow blasting out of your snowblower. (Duh again.) Put another way: winter etiquette dictates it is fine to throw reasonable amounts of snow into your neighbor’s yard, just not onto their sidewalk, driveway, or house. That may seem counterintuitive at first, so read it again to make sure you understand it. (Your neighbors probably won’t.)
• If you park your car outside and it gets snowed on, it should be brushed off thoroughly before you take to the roads. This is in contrast to the less common but still popular technique of clearing off just the driver’s side half of the windshield and then hitting the streets to let the wind handle the rest. Doing so creates a thundercloud sized mobile blizzard on the freeway that effectively blinds everyone behind you. You may think you’re a genius, but trust me, you’re not. Brush it off next time.

There may be others, but I can’t think of any right now. And remember, I don’t make the rules, I just abide by them. You should, too. Hooray for winter.

When we woke up on Saturday morning we realized there wasn’t any coffee in the house. Being a great guy, I naturally volunteered to down to Dunn Bros and get some. (I’m a coffee snob, and I like their beans best, so I’m happy to fork over the big bucks to get the good stuff.) (I also like the beans over at Coffee and Tea Ltd., but they’re not open at 7:15 on a Saturday morning. Sucks to be them.)
I pulled on a pair of bitch pants and put on a stocking cap and drive over there, teeth unbrushed, half awake, all the while counting the minutes until I’d be home grinding and brewing. When I walked in, I noticed that the front of place had been taken over by a medium sized group of your typical fourtysomething Linden Hills elitists. (Good thing I drove the Saab.) Knowing how stupidly slow the lines move at Dunn Bros, a burst of panic set in that the line would horrible even at this early hour. I caught a break, though, as the last couple appeared to have ordered already and there was no waiting at the register.
I put in my order and waited for the girl to bag my beans. I’m just standing there, in my own little foggy world. It’s quiet, it smells nice, I’m starting to wake up, everything is going swell. I watch the dude making drinks and he finishes up the last of the ones he’s making and puts it down on the counter.
“Medium latte,” he says as he turns to punch something into the computer display.
Then, out of nowhere, the woman waiting for her drink explodes with a “WELL COULD I HAVE A LARGE BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I PAID FOR!”
The whole place kind of goes quiet. The coffee dude turns to look at his computer thing.
“It says medium on the screen, you only paid for a medium.”
“WELL THEN YOU SCREWED UP MY ORDER, BECAUSE I ORDERED A LARGE!”
More awkward silence.
Finally the kid says, “I could make you a small to make up the difference, maybe?”
The lady repeats, “WELL I PAID FOR A LARGE”.
And that’s when I snapped. Now keep in mind it’s like 7:15. And I haven’t had coffee yet. And I don’t really like people to begin with. Especially jerks.
“No no no no no no no no no”, I said, though I didn’t look at her, I just keep staring straight ahead. “Why do you have to be a bitch so early in the morning?”
Coffee dude looks at me. More awkward silence. Finally the bitch lady just gives up and turns to walk away, apparently now satisfied with her previously inadequate medium latte. As she did she turned to the dude she was with and stage-whispered “I PAID FOR A LARGE”. And I just laughed, because she was so lame.
And then I got my beans and went home. And even though it cheapens the story, I’ll admit that after I said something I kinda hoped the kid would give me a free drink or something. But he didn’t. Oh well.

One of my favorite parts about Black Friday is how neatly it divides all of society into two distinct groups. I like to call them The Idiots and The Smugs.
The first group, The Idiots, includes the people who buy into the hype and the hope and the hysteria. They’re the people pouring over the ads, reading the internet sites, and developing game plans about where they’ll go and what they’ll buy and talking-up how they’ll be done and home before 8am. The most extreme of this group are the wackos who drive over to Best Buy at 9pm on Thanksgiving night with their lunchboxes and lawn chairs, totally at peace with their decision to camp out in a parking lot in the name of saving a couple of hundred bucks on a crappy laptop. Have fun with that, then.
The second group, The Smugs, includes the people who refuse to go out at all. They hide in their homes and laugh at the television footage of the The Idiots trampling each other down at the Megalomart. The Smugs can be further subdivided into those who a) bury their self-righteousness behind the classic “I don’t like crowds” excuse or b) wear it proudly on their sleeve. Subdivision aside, it goes without saying that all Smugs think they’re better than Idiots. (“That’s me!” – Libby).
I personally don’t really fit into either group. On one hand I can totally see how getting up at 3am to chase after a $17 DVD player is certifiably loony, but on the other hand, there’s no way I’m going to miss out on a social spectacle of this magnitude. Put another way: I don’t want the DVD player, I just want to see the doofs who do. So that’s why I go out. To soak it all in. To see the chaos. To see the insanity. To watch grown adults basically have tantrums. How can you *not* want to see that? And hey, if you pick up a $2.77 snow shovel while you’re out, well then kudos to you. And by “you” I mean “me”.
Unfortunately, I now realize I don’t have too much to report from BF05. It was a little snowy and I think more people than usual got scared and stayed home. I also didn’t hit the streets until like 7:30, so the hardcore frenzy was long since over. It was still a madhouse everywhere I went, though, and the stress levels were up enough that I got to witness a couple of good screaming meltdowns. I also saw one of those surreal “only on Black Friday” moments where an employee dude at Menard’s came out with a pallet full of $2 fleece blankets and customers swarmed him like starving refugees attacking a UN food truck. Awesome.
I also got some free hot cocoa at CompUSA to go with my bitchin’ new wireless mouse. Can’t argue with that.