In the words of the great W. H. Auden, 'Son-of-the-bitch!'
(This news story includes possibly the greatest picture of Bill Gates ever taken. It's very Mr Burns.)
Last night, Seattle was touched in several inappropriate ways by what some are calling 'The Storm of the Millennium'. In a terrifying display of the raw ferocity and power of Mother Nature, the streets of Seattle were viciously fisted by two whole inches of snow. And the city was cruelly felched by temperatures very slightly below freezing. We awoke today to a nightmarish hellscape of very limited accumulations of snow. Panic ensued.
I learned today that Seattle is full of dumbasses who have no idea how to handle even very mild winter weather. The buses were all shot to buggery. There were no schedules; routes were re-routed, arbitrarily; roads were closed; abandoned cars littered the streets. The University, however, insisted that it was still business as usual, so I boldly went where no bus had gone before, and managed to catch one. Which became stuck in the snow behind a parked car about halfway to campus. We had to physically push the car out of the way, and then shove the bus sideways to free it. At which point rumours began circulating that the University had decided to cancel classes after all. But I pressed on; I had a moral duty, as a TA. I swore a solemn oath. I finally got to the U about an hour after I'd left home. Undergraduates were running amok, giggling and scampering and having snowball fights, and sledding down steep, snow-crusted streets on stolen lunch trays, plywood, garbage can lids, and pieces of Astroturf. I managed to discover that the University, shortly after I left home, decided to cancel all classes from 12.30 onwards, which meant that one of my sections, to which I was now 15 minutes late, was still on, while the other was axed. By this point, I expected the first class to have gotten bored and gone home. It's what I would've done. Bizarrely, they were all still sitting there, docile as lambs. They're freshmen. They don't know any better, I suppose. Fuck it, I thought; I sent them all home, quiz be damned. It seemed only right and fair.
On the way home, the bus got stuck again. Actually, a lot of buses got stuck. 10th Avenue was littered with the corpses of 9's. Like mine. Honestly, between campus and Broadway I saw six stranded buses. Including mine. So I walked the rest of the way home. Because it is, objectively, pretty nice outside. It isn't very cold, there isn't much wind to speak of, and there really isn't very much snow. I didn't even need my warm, fluffy, Canadian cap. As soon as Seattlites see this unnatural white substance falling from the heavens, they shriek and gibber and panic and fear the wrath of their heathen gods. I can only conclude that Seattlites are a soft and weak people, ripe for conquest by the nomadic warrior tribes that stalk the frozen corn-tundra of my native Iowa.
They're called plows, people. They aren't rocket science. Jesus H. Balls!
Posted by aloysius at January 06, 2004 04:14 PM | TrackBack |