It's christmas, more or less. Maybe you've noticed? A regular tip-off are the cloying illustrations on everything up to and including toilet paper ads of snowy landscapes. You know the drill, don't pretend you don't. Drifts of it, snowflakes, Victorian ice skaters, reindeer; an entire iconography of images that mean nothing to boy a like me, sensitive and attractive, but completely unexposed to the phenomenon of snow due to my Gulf Coast childhood and subsequent life in California. And let me be clear about this, I am not unhappy about missing out on it. Whenever I have been forced to deal with snow, on visits to Colorado or Tahoe, it has always confirmed my suspicion that it's vastly over-rated, like rain that won't take a hint and leave.
Still, the holy season of jeebus's birth and Macy's last chance at making their quarterly numbers rolls around and suddenly the white stuff is everywhere. These ads and commercials are baffling to those of us lucky enough to live on the West Coast or along the magic of Interstate 10, snow-free, all of it. We see those pictures ("Look! Polar bears drinking coke! Oh boy!") and think "what the fuck is going on here? Where are the palm trees?" Is it just me who thinks a whole ad industry is devoted to making us feel deprived by being left out of something we don't even want?
People here will occasionally say how very much they miss snow. One assumes they were dropped on their heads at some point, possibly in the snow, but I'm too polite to ask.
And now word comes from Night is Half Gone of snow in New Orleans. New Orleans! I have been so betrayed.
Yeah, the snow here in NO was no picnic, but at least it melted in a few hours. We're expecting highs in the upper 70's for the rest of this week, so things are once again as they should be.
ReplyDeleteAs one who lives here in the land of many snows (and widespread Seasonal Affective Disorder), snow basically sucks. Yes there is that moment, when it's falling thick and silent, and you're inside and it's outside that, in theory, I can appreciate as lovely to look at. But soon cars spew exhaust on it, dogs pee on it, and it sits in grey piles in the gutters for weeks. To get that cozy seasonal glow unfettered by the grim realities of actual life in winter, watch "White Christmas!"
ReplyDeleteI have to agree that ads like that should be restricted to communities like Vermont or Wisconsin and keep the Southern ads tacky and redneck. By the way, What's snow?
ReplyDeleteForget the snow; remember the fruitcake.
ReplyDeleteWho you calling a Fruitcake? Oh wait, christmas, right. It's on the way.
ReplyDeleteuh...sorry 'bout that.
ReplyDelete