Friday was a bit interesting. We had a great winter storm come through, and although I was a bit cynical in the morning about the prognosis of OMG THREE INCHES while walking to class through a slight case of sky dandruff, the precipitation became rather thick by the afternoon and about six in the evening we were getting good nickel-sized flakes. My friend drew Sonic in the snow and in about fifteen minutes you almost couldn't see it any longer.
And I know you guys up north are going "yeehaw, welcome to the real world", but for the people down here that was as close to a blizzard as they're ever going to get. When the most you're used to always looks as if someone came out and shook a bottle of baby powder all over your yard, and mudball fights are more common than snowball fights, you can see why most everyone around was absolutely thrilled. Our campus closed for the first time in 22 years, according to my band director. Me, I was just happy we finally got something decent. Also got to prove to myself I still knew how to base-slide, and almost decided to use it against people in snowball fights: charge your target with two snowballs in hand, drop and slide when they counterattack, stand up in a fluid motion (the 4- or T-position is great for really fast ups) and unload both barrels, then smirk. I did sneak up behind someone and shove a snowball in his mouth. That was fun.
But the real problem with living down here is that the temperature is about as consistent as a woman with new furniture and a man to do the shoving for her. By about ten-thirty that same evening, when you’d think it’d be colder, our snowfall turned into a nice gentle shower of freezing rain. And that, naturally, sank right through the snow, which up until then had been a lovely dry powder. So the next morning we were greeted with a beautiful three-inch blanket of snow that hid a solid sheet of ice an inch and a half thick.
I kid you not. The entire campus was one entire sheet of ice. Parking lots, roads, grass, everything. Only places that escaped the ice cap were where cars had stayed parked. And the ice only just started melting yesterday at around ten in the morning, so when it got far enough down so you could see the parking lines again you couldn’t help but laugh. I literally walked to class that afternoon down an aisle where there were supposed to be cars, and no one line could decide which direction to park in. Looked like a Baptist church was having an ice cream social on campus, except without the grass.
Grass ice cream. There’s a thought.
But yeah, still not totally melted yet. Came back to the dorms last night walking through an inch of free-flowing water and still having to avoid various ice floes here and there. Almost took one skating by accident. Almost took another this morning on purpose. =P (I thought it might get me to class faster, but there was a car in a very weird spot nearby and I didn’t want to risk the dismount with all the water around.)
And according to the weathermen (according to Billy the Awesome Janitor), it’s supposed to happen again around Thursday or Friday. Wicked.
On another note, I am realising that I am starting to become highly critical of movies now, especially as I get more experience with poorly- or tenuously-justified crossover fiction, and especially with the rash of really popular crap going on lately. I feel as if writers are going out of their way to add in little bits of drama and little plot twists that really don’t do anything at all (and certainly do nothing new) and only serve to stroke the fans’ . . . something. Let’s not go there, how ‘bout? =P
I think I might delve into The League of Extraordinary Gentleman to show you kind of what I mean, and I chose that one in particular because I rather liked it myself until my head started talking to me. But that won’t come first, because the last few things I remember talking about were all rather a degrading tone of voice from me, and I’d much rather be able to talk for once about something I really enjoyed from both the pure entertainment and the intellectual side at once.
Speaking of that, though, a friend of mine recently found on Gizmodo a review of Avatar that, as he told me, he thought I would like because it said basically the exact same thing I was telling him a few days ago when we discussed the subject. I almost want to link to it, but after watching the first ten minutes of it I had to close it because the narrator sounds like a cross between Ben Stein and the narrator for the Shane Co. jewelery commercials—whom I imagine would be Thomas Shane, though I do not know for certain—and I cannot stand to listen to people who talk as if they would much rather still be sleeping. I especially do not appreciate the voice tone when said person throws in a random derogatory towards a movie he can’t even be bothered to talk about (five seconds on The Princess and the Frog, three of which were spent censored), and even though I agreed with a the points he was making (mostly because I’d made them or wanted to make them myself), I can’t deal well with someone being a deliberate moron.
Plus, you know, I haven’t seen The Princess and the Frog in the first place, so I can’t back or refute his claims about it being [CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED], and to just arbitrarily say that about a movie and then move on as if it’s nothing is kind of self-possessed to me. I at least watched the movie I tore a new one. He apparently walked out after five minutes—so I gave him the same time window. =P
And that extends to really everything, with me, because although I will make jokes at Twilight’s expense (and at the expense of its author), I won’t say anything more seriously than that because I simply do not know what I am talking about either way. Why did I never watch any of The Fast and the Furious movies? They looked like crap. Were they crap? I have no idea. Same principle here. You can knock what you don’t know, just don’t bash it. People might think you actually got a clue.
Moving on.
A couple of guys moved in next door to me just recently. Basketball nerds the lot of them, along with their posse (big crowds over there some nights), and so far they have regularly been disruptive at early hours in the morning. Pair of their friends came running down the hall at three in the morning about five nights ago, beat violently on their door (which is semi-hollow sheet metal so is LOUD), woke everyone, literally everyone on the hall up, and persisted being obnoxiously vocal for a half hour until someone came out and politely asked them what the hell was their problem and could they f***ing leave because he had f***ing class in the morning. I cheered silently.
Last night, while they were dropping beats and laying down some free verse, it was me knocking on their door saying that it sounded good and all in there but it was one-thirty in the mo’nin’ and could they keep a lid on it. (I am blessed with the ability to sound like anyone without sounding forced, thank goodness, and the fact that I was already half asleep kinda helped the speech pattern flow.) I expect it’ll keep happening, though, so I fear I may be visiting our hall director (or our RA, whichever I can find at the time it occurs to me to find them) and asking that the boys be discouraged from such nightlife in the future.
Problem is, they’re all black, so the potential for the race card being thrown at me is, like, *skyrocket hand gesture*. Nothing like reinforcing the stereotype, neh? =/ Fortunately Myron (HD) and Desmond (RA) are both chill dudes and know I’m relatively chill, so I should have allies in case that blows up. And it’s not like these guys are pissing off the entire hall or anything. (Friend of mine lives at the complete other end of the hall and is regularly P.O.ed that they keep waking him up.)
So fun times, fun times indeed.
Wow, almost fifteen-hundred words. Talk about stream of consciousness. I should probably stop now.
