Baby, It's Cold Outside.

Push, Twist, Shake. Stepping outside, he checks his coat to make sure everything is as buttoned up as much as it can be, an “I don't care how cold it is attitude” was for some other day. The cold hurts, so you button up. He looks at the car that at one time was so much fun to have. “Fun to have” seemed like an absolutely shallow concept that he couldn't even touch anymore. Brrr. He was tiring of concepts in general anyway, worn out more than bored. Push, Twist. Shake. All the stuff. So much stuff. A world full of stuff collectors trying to show all the other collectors of stuff their stuff to make them feel bad about not having the right stuff. Was it an unintended bonus of all that advertising or did the madness happen fully by design. He wished they designed an electric coat and that he had one right now. That would be some cool stuff. Ha, electric coats are cool. He had started getting smarter about stuff. In fact several times he got rid of almost all of his stuff. “Who needs all that stuff?” he would proclaim. He would walk around with his wife in a department store and sneer at the stuff. “look at the stuff they're trying to sell you” Dirty snow is ugly. Sometimes he would pick up stuff that he wanted and then he would walk around the store and see all the rest of the stuff and put it back.

He would think “Victory over stuff!”.

Winter can be pretty until everyone has to tromp all over it. Some other times he would pick up some stuff at the store. Push. Twist Shake. Seems no matter how much he talked about how bad stuff is with his wife he kept getting more stuff, but at least he didn't love it. He actually could feel a pain in his chest and eyes when he thought about stuff lovers.

Right now he felt the cold, he crossed the street and walked in front of the cars he felt the eyes of all the drivers watching him, too. He did feel a sick feeling in his stomach and thought that that was the feeling of the drivers judging him. Push Twist Shake. It is amazing how fast things change at the edge of town. One moment its all parking lots and stores with signs that look like they deserve that dirty snow. Cross one street, walk by one more MacStupid fast food place and a nail are us next to an insurance company and then is feels so different.

“ They put scenes like this on post cards” he thought to himself. OK, there were snow covered pines, but the was clumps of weeds poking up threw the snow some junk cars and a ugly scar of mud in the snow made for no discernible reason at all by a tractor that was just left there, new junk, it was just before it quit, quit being stuff. Push... Ta-wist. Shake. Just as he had forgiven the weeds and the dirt and the newly broken tractor and re-decided on the post card a mini-van materialized behind him at a high rate of speed making an nasty brown cloud of road juice. The concentrate that makes dirty snow. He tried to avoid it, he imagined for a moment that is something that he could do. What he did was duck his head, put his arm up by his forehead, trip for no reason catch his balance do a quarter turn and “ski” a couple feet into a shallow ditch and sit down. He just sat there. Then he made that sound some people do when they just got sprayed or soaked. If you had to spell it, I think the closest you would get is pppppp. It has a real name. It's called a bilabial fricative.

You might have though I learned that from some official smart guy book, but I learned it from a comedian that pioneered saying dirty words than talking about them to make people laugh. Once as a kid, I watched him on a prime time show and he couldn't say his famous words. So instead he made the sound, that sound and everybody laughed. Then he told you the name of the sound and everyone laughed again. I think he was the smartest man I ever saw on TV and not just because of being able to make a sound, make millions laugh and tell them what it was called and make everyone laugh again. Not because of his famous oration about dirty words even. They did hint at how smart he was. He was smart, now he's dead. The idea of a well loved, smart dead guy made our friend smile. Pushtwistshake.

It didn't really make a lot of sense, but sitting in the snow with a face full of concentrated dirty snow he was just as cold, but he felt a force push the cold out of him, it was cold around him. It didn't make sense, he didn't make sense. He has made less sense than ever lately. Is sense related to stuff? Putwishake. An Indian word or type of foliage. Sometimes nirvana can be found by simply seeing it. He stood up, stretched and saw before him the post card woods, he wanted to share that beauty with his wife, she made beauty worth seeing. He missed her incredibly although it was less than an hour after he walked out the door. It wasn't his choice, he had to walk through the door. Everything after was his choice. He stopped and urinated. He wasn't quite to the trees yet, but he didn't want to pee on the postcard thing. After he was done he put himself away. Oh, that's where he is. He snickered at the irony, it was kinda funny, but nowhere near as funny as a man making sounds. So he made the sounds, then he laughed. He laughed so hard he fell right in the yellow scribble in the snow. It was hilarious, but it was a laugh without energy, but he was warm. Warm and his wife was rubbing his back, without even asking, in that wonderful way, he couldn't tell what she was saying.