The Earth is a strange place, but it’s the only living quarters we have for the time being. Sure, the environmentalists act as nagging roommates, telling us we need to clean up after ourselves, and we try not to get upset when Spain is totally cranking their music when the rest of us have to get up in the morning for work, but let’s face it: We have jerks for roommates.
But what’s slightly worse is that because mankind is stuck on Earth with everyone else during what I am dubbing the Great Intergalactic Housing Shortage, and the apartment we’ve got is really kind of shady at times. Things have been a bit strange lately, at least over here in my corner.
Don’t worry, I’m stopping the metaphor now.
I have made no secret that fall is one of my least favorite times of year because it means summer is over and winter is just around the corner. My next point, and I’ll need you to follow me on this one, is that winter sucks. It’s cold, it’s gray, and it’s only tolerable during the holidays because society says it’s OK to binge drink in most social settings.
But winter really hasn’t been that bad for me, so far. In fact, it’s been slightly lame. Compared to last winter, where the Washington, D.C. area got pounded with blizzard after blizzard, we have gotten almost nothing this year, and what we have had has melted within a day. Meanwhile the rest of the Eastern Seaboard is getting hammered with snow. I take a certain delight in hearing from people living far south of me dealing with inches of snow and calling it the end of times, because, of course, they don’t know what winter tires are.
The big storm that hit the East Coast on Dec. 26, or as we say in my country, “the day after Christmas,” actually missed the D.C. area while everywhere from South Carolina to Maine got inundated with snow. I don’t really have any theories as to what happened. Perhaps the weather operates like the mafia, and we paid it off for “protection” after getting punished last year.
On the West Coast the winter was sucking less. In fact, the earth was shaking, but it was actually man-made. The Seattle Seahawks’ Marshawn Lynch (who sucked all season long on my fantasy team, by the way), made a 67-yard dash to the end zone yesterday against the New Orleans Drew Breeses, thus changing Bourbon Street’s reason to drink from celebration to back fighting off tears, where it had been from 2005 until the Super Bowl last year.
Lynch’s run brought down the reigning champs and rocked the Qwest Field. As it turns out, it rocked more than just that. A seismic station in Seattle, just outside of the stadium registered the ground shaking during the run and for a good 30 seconds afterward. Scientists are not certain if the cause was the jubilant Seahawks fans jumping around in delirium, or the Saints’ linebackers falling down missing tackle after tackle.
Still, the earth moved.