Climactic schizophrenia
There's a saying among Ohioans that if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.
That much has been demonstrated with tremendous accuracy today, although my weather widget is now holding steady at 3 degrees. In the past half hour or so, the temperature has dropped from 9 degrees to where it currently stands, and it's still four degrees above the expected low for tonight.
I bring this up because I know I am not alone in this fight that all midwesterners endure each winter. We all live with that one thermostat Nazi who refuses to let it go above 64 degrees, no matter how cold it gets. Whereas most people put on their coats when they go out, I usually don't need my coat until I get home. The only advantage to this is that we don't really get cabin fever. We get cabin colds instead.
Lately I've had to keep my mind off of the cold by resorting to watching old Meet The Press and Wired Science podcasts, along with other programs I can only get on iTunes since we don't have cable (we don't have high-speed internet either, but the neighbors across the street are especially obliging with whatever trickle of wireless signal blows this way). I can say from personal experience that Tim Russert's three chins do not complement Chris Hardwick's fuzzy haircut, not in the very least. But being inside isn't a particularly huge problem for me, because I'm an indoor person. But I still like to have that option of going outside on those rare occasions when that desire presents itself.
Fortunately, though, this is Ohio, after all. The climate here is just so ridiculously arbitrary, and any atheist would be hard-pressed to explain how anything but an omniscient deity could even keep up with it. It's like a person being subjected to an involuntary sex change every five minutes. Just call us the Alexis Arquette of the midwest.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:43 am
School (for me) was canceled! Ironically this was around 11 o'clock PM, 43 minutes before my birth-time. staying up I looked out the window, saw snow. This morning, our yard was practically void of any snow. That's Ohio for you.
February 12th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I had to do a paper on the symbolism that John Steinbeck used in his book "Of Mice and Men", and do a really quick report on "East of Eden" (which I did not accutally read). Both Steinbeck's commentary and analyzation from professional critics showed that he hated his life from his childhood up until the time he died. A loner as a child, married thrice as an adult; Steinbeck never found a comrtable neiche in life... and blamed God for it. Although I have only read Mice and Men, the critics that I have read would agree with me that Steinbeck thinks there is a god who is simply a kid with a magnifing-glass where as we are a bunch of ants on a sunny day. His books are of hoeplessness and the futility of life and happiness.
Really, it's not a big deal if you read the books. I just have something against Steinbeck's veiw on life and the fact he hates God. But it's no big deal if you just read the books for the story line. I'm not like that, I need symblolism and satire. So after doing research on him, I could never read another book of his. If anything, my remark on Steinbeck was a joke because I have a grudge against him.