KIND NOTES ABOUT REPULSIVE LIZARDS AND COLD WEATHER

Well, black Friday is over and nobody got killed. So why do they call it black Friday? Have we been cheated? Weren't we promised scenes of despondency and mayhem? Dead shoppers piled around the last doohickey in the store? It turns out they all order on line now, then come on over to get mildly blotto and gibber inanely in the backroom. If it were up to me, we would never turn the heat on in the morning to keep the place bearable during the day, and I would have the only taun taun for warmth. Bugger off, Luke, your dark father wants you to freeze to death. It builds character. Go crawl back into that trash compactor.

What that really means is that I have scant patience for idiot old rightwing men being offensively Republican. Their MRI scans came back showing nothing. Empty.

I do not need to be tortured.
There are no secrets.

Plus it's cold. Which I find harder to deal with now that I am no longer a springy young lad. Circulation. Koud kleumerij. My people overwintered on Nova Zembla, where it seldom gets above freezing. Poor bastards. Their suffering must have been immense, I should read that book again. No wonder we let the Russians have it. Lots of ice, no cozy cafes, no poffertjes, no oliebollen, no cuisine worth any note, and no central heating. Basically the windswept saltflats of Marin with Nazi walrusses for company. A zero-stars Yelp review.

Overwintering Op Nova Zembla: written by Hendrick Hamel, describes the horror endured by the expedition of Willem Barentsz and Jacob van Heemskerck in 1596 - 1597 while trying to discover a Northeast Passage through the Arctic. An epic. A moral tale filled with flawed and very human people, plus the threat of death in a ghastly frozen wasteland. Among the great works of Dutch literature.

Yeah, okay, this little essay is more about current seasonal weather in the SF Bay Area than anyhing else. One very good friend insists that this is nice and brisk, and it's glorious outside. But he's younger than myself, with better circulation, more body fat, and undoubtedly greater insanity or a mean streak.


Over a decade ago, when I told Mistribhain that it wasn't buggery cold, it was brisk, she opined that I was clearly out of my bally mind. She may have been on to something.



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