Six years ago on AWV

This entry was originally posted on Friday, February 9, 2007.



   It's weekend assignment time again.

Weekend Assignment #151: Is Valentine's Day a genuinely romantic day? Or just a big commercial money pit into which romantic people fall? Go on, share how you really feel about the day -- whether you enjoy it, or feel like it's forced on you by greeting card companies, or fall somewhere in between those two poles.


Extra credit: Suggest a nice romantic movie.

   In order to address this weekend's assignment, I did some some research on St. Valentine, and Valentine's Day.

   I was amused.

   Traditionally called St. Valentine's Day, February 14th hasn't actually been the Catholic feast day of St. Valentine for almost thirty-eight years. Today, February 14th is the liturgical feast day only of St. Cyril and St. Methodius. Why is Valentine's Day no longer St. Valentine's Day? Well, it seems that the current opinion of the church is that the most popular figures referred to as being the origin of the holy day are 'legendary' saints. That means they did not, in actuality, ever really exist.
   In addition, it seems that the association of Valentine's Day with love and romance is almost entirely the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, in the fourteenth century. In his Parlement of Foules, he relates the tale (couched as if it were, indeed, an old tradition) that St. Valentine's Day was the day that birds met and chose their mates. There are no earlier references to St. Valentine's Day being connected with romantic love known. But why, you ask, would birds be mating in the middle of February, in Englande of Olde?
   Well, I don't know if you really asked that, or not, but two points to you if you did. Them's some pretty good critical thinking skills at work. It seems that Chaucer wrote that poem to commemorate the first anniversary of the engagement of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia, which event occurred on May 2, 1381. And May 2nd, as it happens, is the Catholic liturgical feast day of another saint named Valentine, of Genoa, from the early fourth century.
  So all those hearts and chocolates being thrown around every February 14th are, in fact, being received on completely the wrong day. Those who read Chaucer's poem at the time naturally assumed he was talking about the St. Valentine they were most familiar with. You know, the one who never really existed. Christians are funny that way.
   There you are gentlemen, from me to you: an excuse you can try out the next time you forget Valentine's Day. "But honey, I was saving your gift for the real St. Valentine's Day." I don't really expect that would work, and I certainly would never try to pull it off myself, but you, when you're desperate, you'll try anything. Just remember to get her something on May 2nd, or your ass is grass, man.

   So. Valentine's Day. Day of romance, or commercial blackmail? Well, both, really. I mean, when the tradition of St. Valentine's day was brought over to North America in the nineteenth century during the huge wave of British immigration that happened at that time, it took little or no time for it to catch on with enterprising merchants as a "let's make a quick buck at the expense of those poor schmucks being ruled by their testicles" opportunity. And, in fact, Hallmark Cards admits that they sell more product for Valentine's Day than any other holiday other than Christmas (you know, the liturgical feast day of another one of Catholicism's legendary figures). There is no question that the day has become little more than an occasion for retailers to hold a hammer over the heads of us poor, hormone controlled fellows. Buy flowers or sleep on the couch!

   Still, as they say...um...somewhere, "might as well roll with with it." Being that it is impossible to avoid, why not embrace it? You know your wife/girlfriend/illicit adulterous mistress is expecting something romantic. So go with it. Give it a little thought. Get her something that'll really set a sparkle in her eyes.
   Forget about the chocolate, the flowers, the stuffed bears holding little stuffed hearts. For the love of Woden, forget about the slutty little piece of barely there lingerie you had your eye on. Think about it, damn it! Because, you know, at the end of it all, that's all they really want: to know that you're thinking about them.
   Remember, life's what you make it.

Life's what you make it - Talk Talk



Baby, life's what you make it

Can't escape it

Baby, yesterday's favorite

Don't you hate it

Baby, life's what you make it

Don't backdate it

Baby, don't try to shake it

Beauty is naked

Baby, life's what you make it

Celebrate it

Anticipate it

Yesterday's faded

Nothing can change it

Baby, life's what you make it

Everything's all right





Extra Credit:  "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Moulin Rouge.



Tags: Memes, Weekend assignment, Saint Valentine, Valentine's Day, Chaucer, YouTube, Talk Talk, Life's what you make it

Is it still June 28th?

Because if it is, it's still the eighth anniversary of the creation of Aurora Walking Vacation, back in the heady days of  AOL Journals. That blog still exists in archived form at http://awvarchive.blogspot.ca/. You could go there, and read, and stuff. Or not. It's no biggie.

Ask an Atheist anything...

Apparently, today is "National Ask an Atheist Day." Who knew? Now, most people I know are not under any illusions about my beliefs, and for the most part, they play no part in my day to day life. But, if you happen to have a question about atheists or atheism that you'd like answered, hey, now's the time. Ask away, and I will do my best to provide reasonable, considered answers.

In fact, I don't even care if the question is about or relating to atheism at all. Let's make this one of those "Ask Me Anything" memes that Jaquandor likes to do over at Byzantium's Shores.

I can not has Internet now?

As a quick follow-up to my previous - non-photographic - Internet cat post; my wife came home from work to find out she could not access the World Wide Web from her laptop for some unknown reason. After a significant amount of generally ineffectual troubleshooting, we discovered the laptop's internal wi-fi card had been turned off. Apparently, in getting comfortable on the keyboard earlier in the day, Kitteh had managed to simultaneously press the shift key, and the F-whatever key that has the little picture of an antenna on it.

Do you think she's trying to tell us something?

I am a bad Internet user

Yeah. So. It's March 7th, and the top article on my blog is still something Christmas themed. I am a bad Internet user.

As an example, I offer you today's event. I am walking through the dining room, and I see the kitten sleeping on the keyboard of my wife's laptop.

Do I:

A) Run and get a camera to take a picture of the kitten on the keyboard, and post it online for all to say, "awwww?"

 or

B) Shoo the cat off the freakin' computer, blow on the keyboard to get any hair and/or dander out of it, and close the laptop?

As there is no graphical component to this entry, you, do doubt, can guess the answer.

I'm sorry.

Trimming the tree

Tonight we set up the Christmas tree, and discovered that the lighted snowflake we've had as a topper for the last several years doesn't light up any more. Pat commented that trying to figure out which little mini light bulb was burned out was more trouble than it was worth, and we should just buy a new tree topper. Which statement immediately brought to mind this post from the original AWV, originally published in December of 2007:

We put up the Christmas tree today. As the wife was trimming it, she mentioned that we needed to get a new angel to put on top. As I recall, the conversation went something like this...

Paul: Can we get one that shoots lasers out of her eyes?
Paul's wife: Lasers? That wouldn't be very angelic.
Paul: Can we get one riding a shark?
Paul's wife: Get serious.
Paul: I am serious. I think an angel riding a shark with lasers shooting out of her eyes would be all kinds of awesome.

Welcome to the Internet, Dr. Burzynski

All the cool kids in the skeptical blogosphere are talking about Stanislaw Burzynski, and I didn't want to be left out. Never heard of him? I hadn't either, until yesterday, when the Internet, as we know it, exploded on Dr. Burzynski's head.

Here are the salient facts, as I understand them:

Dr. Burzynski owns and runs The Burzynski Clinic, in Texas. The Burzynski clinic specializes in "Alternative Cancer Treatments." According to its website, the clinic also offers conventional, FDA approved cancer treatment, but that's not what they are currently in the spotlight for. One of the modalities they offer is something called "Antineoplaston" therapy. It is this treatment that everyone seems to be talking about right now.

Antineoplastons were "discovered" by Dr. Burzynski, himself. Dr. Burzynski has published the results of several clinical trials of this therapy which appear to show effecacy. These studies were published in fringe journals with questionable peer review policies and, often, questionable professional detachment from the subject (they are journals whose purpose is the publication of studies supporting alternative medicine). Other researchers have been unable to reliably replicate Dr. Burzynski's findings. In fact, 100% of properly blinded, randomized, placebo controlled, peer reviewed trials published in reputable journals have been negative - that is, they all fail to show any benefit at all of Antineoplaston therapy in the treatment of cancer. The FDA has not approved Antineoplastons for use in cancer treatment in the USA. That means that doing so is against the law.

It is not, however, against the law to administer Antineoplaston therapy if it is done as part of a registered clinical trial. Dr. Burzynski has been running "clinical trials" of Antineoplaston use in the treatment of cancer for over thirty years. People travel from all over the world to the Burzynski Clinic to receive treatment participate in a clinical trial, and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so.

Recently, several prominent medical and skeptical bloggers have published articles critical of Dr. Burzynski and his Antineoplaston therapy, and calling into question Dr. Burzynski's research, and the ethics of his practice of charging patients exorbitant amounts of money to receive treatment participate in a clinical trial of a drug that has not been demonstrated to be effective at all. In most instances, when faced with criticism or questioning of their research, scientists respond by presenting the evidence which supports their work, but that doesn't seem to be what's happened here.

Instead, these bloggers were contacted by a gentleman by the name of Marc Stephens, claiming to "represent the Burzynski Clinic, Burzynski Research Institute, and Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski," and threatening legal action if the "libelous and defamatory information" was not removed from their websites. It turns out Mr. Stephens is not a lawyer, but an employee of The Burzynski Clinic who may or may not have overreached in his zeal to defend his employer. In what has become known as "The Streisand Effect," an attempt to suppress criticism on the Internet has resulted in that criticism becoming far more widespread than it ever would have. Virtually every skeptical blog I read has posted an article about Burzynski over the past two days. Well done, Marc.

Word is Mr. Stephens is no longer employed by Burzynski. He appears to have been thrown under the bus by his former employer in a desperate attempt at damage control as this story spirals out of control across the World Wide Web. And Dr. Burzynski is learning a valuable lesson. If your particular form of pseudoscience has been the subject of criticism on the Internet, either bring the evidence, or, if you don't actually have any evidence, lay low and hope it all blows over. Making lame and empty threats is only going to turn you into a deer in the headlights of the monster truck that is the web.

Splat.


To read more about this topic, I recommend you start here, here, and here, and then go on from that.

Blogroll blues

Today I noticed that the link to my blogroll no longer works. (Over there... to the right. Scroll down a bit, see under where it says, "The Links"? No, don't click on it - I told you, it doesn't work anymore.) I guess Bloglines, where it used to be hosted, is defunct. The service was taken over by a company called Merchant Circle, but clearly the functionality is different. So, you currently cannot see my blogroll - that is, the list of blogs that I read regularly.

I don't know, is that still a thing? Do people still want to see that? Let me know.

Also, let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions for replacing the blogroll with another service or widget to display it. What do you do on your blog?

Let's play a game

Apparently, this blog is the first result in a Google search for the phrase, "npr penguin poem mary poppins asks do you like kids and the penguin says yes in a red wine sauce."

Ima let that sink in for a little bit. According to my stat package, someone actually visited AWV from a Google results page for that combination of words. I cannot image why someone would Google that combination of words. That's where you come in.

Please feel free to speculate in the comments what you think the person who typed in that search criteria was really looking for.

Nothing to see here

Clearly I have neglected this spot for far too long. My last post garnered no more than fifteen views, and a solitary comment. My own fault, of course. One doesn't leave a blog lying fallow for four full months. I'll try to do better. I swear.

In remembrance

...and in support of those who grieve:

http://awvarchive.blogspot.com/2005/09/now-of-it-all.html

http://awvarchive.blogspot.com/2006/09/weekend-assignment-remembering.html

Those posts now reside in an archive of the original Aurora Walking Vacation blog. If you feel moved to comment, please do so here, rather than there.

Fionavar Tapestry Character Test

This has been sitting in my Test Journal since April 24, 2007. I never published it here before because I didn't think anyone would be interested. Activity here being what it is, however, I thought I'd dig out some old stuff just to let everyone know I'm not dead or something.


I'm Paul Schafer!
Take The Fionavar Tapestry Character Test today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

You are Paul Schafer, the Twiceborn. You are a private person who values self-control but inspires loyalty in your friends. You expect much of yourself and are willing to push yourself to your limits, both physically and mentally. You may have a fondness for tree-houses.

So, WTF? The Fionavar Tapestry is a fantasy trilogy by Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay of which I am very fond (the trilogy, I mean - OK, and the author, too). If you haven't read it, the quiz results will be somewhat meaningless to you. Also, if you haven't read it, I recommend you do so. It's rather good.

Monday Stealing

I ripped this off from Kelly, who, apparently, ripped it off from somewhere else (as it was meant to be ripped). I'm not a big quiz kinda guy, but this one fed right into my own personal sense of misanthropy and self-superiority. You probably shouldn't read it.

1. Lindsay Lohan was recently sentenced to 90 days in jail. What do you think her future has in store for her?

Who cares?


2. What is the biggest fashion "don't" that you would like to police?

Who cares?


3. How should we punish sites that lure us in with "read this" and take us somewhere where we are first greeted by a pop-up and then a series of click throughs to actually read the meat of the story?

Be smart enough to not click on the lure link in the first place. I mean, c'mon, they're pretty damn easy to spot, you know. Also, who cares?


4. What is the most you will do to post a comment on a site? At what point is it not worth posting a comment?

I usually balk at signing up for some proprietary commenting system that isn't widely used. I mean, I have a Blogger (Google) ID, an AOL ID, a Wordpress ID, a Yahoo! ID and a Typekey ID. If your blog uses some other sign-up required system that I've never even heard of before, I'm unlikely to make the effort, 'cause, you know, who cares? Unless, of course, I need to point out how stupid you are, or something.


5. If you purchase something online and you are charged for postage, is it still reasonable to charge for "shipping and handling"? What exactly does "shipping and handling" entail?

"Shipping and handling" is just another scam way of inflating the profit on your sale. I just add it to the purchase price in my head and then decide if I think it's still a good deal. Ebay users who charge it deserve to be shot. And, to carry on the theme, "who cares!"

That's all.

Oops.

In my recent inactivity and inattention, I have let my blogiversary pass unmarked. This past Monday was the sixth birthday of Aurora Walking Vacation. What, you're skeptical? Please allow me to present my evidence.

As you were.

Apparently, the Olympics are over

Good thing The Brier starts this weekend.

Where all you all coming from?

This blog, which usually gets between five and fifteen unique visitors per day, has averaged over 60 hits a day over the last ten days, with a high of 91 unique visitors on February 20th. Virtually all of that traffic has been generated by Google searches for curling related terms. The most common searches have been for variations on 'curling t line'. That comprised about 41% of incoming traffic. Another twelve percent of people were looking for information on curling measuring devices, and six percent seem to want to know how thick curling ice is.

The ABCs of curling series is certainly not an in-depth look at the game, but I hope those of you who have checked it out have found something interesting to take away.

Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot - Halloween Edition

In this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, Carly invites us to post pictures based upon a Halloween theme. For extra credit, she says:

Show me a GHOST. A real one. A Fake one. Any old GHOST will do! Feel free to use your photo editing software if you like. The spookier the better! Scare me please!

Never having been one to be hung up on doing things in the right order, I chose to dive right into the extra credit question - mostly because it gave me a chance to dust off one of my old skeptical articles from the original Aurora Walking Vacation blog. Herewith, I am pleased to present a repost of a piece first published on Thursday, February 10, 2005. Boo!


SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY

  The other day on a message board I was accused of ridiculing somebody for my reply to their post offering spirit photography lessons. I wrote a fairly long and detailed reply offering up my expertise on the subject right there on the board, without people having to resort to taking some kind of formal lessons. Apparently, I stepped on somebody's toes, because my post was taken down by the powers that be in short order. A lesson learned. Far be it from me to impinge upon somebody's ability sell themselves and their 'talents' on AOL's message board system.

  Here, however, is an entirely different matter. In my personal journal, I can chose to make my expertise available to all for free if I so choose.

  I so choose. Herewith, find attached evidence of my mad spirit photography skillz. I have 'em. You can have 'em too. This entry shows the evidence. If there is interest, I will do another entry detailing my methods.

  An introductory note: All of the photographs in this entry are (with the exception of one) taken by me, and, other than some cropping and resizing for editorial purposes, unmanipulated. No photoshopping here. These are pictures of actual phenomena.

  First, let me introduce you to Matthew. Many of you, if you have been reading me for a while, have heard me mention his name. You may even have seen a picture or two of him here from time to time. Little known to us, Matthew has a guardian spirit who helps him with his homework. I have taken hundreds of pictures of Matthew before, and never before seen anything like this before. However, I had never before taken a picture of him doing homework before. Yesterday I did, and got this.



  It looks like, in this picture, there is a spirit of some kind hovering over Matt's head as he does his homework. In fact, if you look close enough you can see what looks like fingers reaching out to touch his head; almost as if some kind of otherworldly knowledge were being imparted to him. This may explain many of his teacher's comments regarding Matthew's homework assignments. Obviously, the answers he is providing are simply beyond her ability to comprehend.
  I enhanced the above photo with specialty software to reveal this:



  You can clearly see the otherworldly violet aura surrounding the spirit manifestation. It is in stark contrast to the more earthly colours of the rest of the photograph. You can even see that aura impacting on the hanging, potted plant in the background. I always wondered why that plant grew so well.

  A photograph taken a moment later reveals that this spirit falls into the famous spirit photography category of a vortex spirit. This appears to be a rare double vortex. Or a close up of the ghost's elbow, I'm not sure.



  One night I was in my basement, trying to take a picture of my cat. She didn't want to sit still for the picture, and was very restless. Later, when I looked at the pictures, I saw this:



  Look very carefully at the left hand side of the picture, and you will see the visible manifestation of spirit orbs. There are several to be seen in the picture, but the clearest one is right near the top of the frame. I have enlarged it to bring out more detail. You can clearly see a face, not unlike that of the man in the moon, on the close-up of this orb. These orbs are obviously ghosts. Due to the similarities in appearance, it is also quite clear that the moon is a ghost, too.
  I have hypothesized that these ghosts were attempting to protect my cat, when she did not want to have her picture taken by me. Due to my frequent sneezing at the time, I suspect that these were the ghosts of cats, thereby causing my allergies to flare up. On a related note, we have been erroneous in using the terminology 'the man in the moon' all these years. We should have been saying, 'the cat in the moon.'

  I was outside the other night, and happened, entirely by accident, to take a picture of the tree in my front yard. When I looked at the picture later I was amazed by the amazing colours of the colourful lights I saw.



  Look at the colourful illumination of the snow on both sides of the street. And the colourful lights in the background, behind the tree. None of these colourful lights was colourful like those colours to my eye. Obviously, the spirit world is at work here. There must be many ghosts of painters around the Aurora area.



  Look how the lights in this close up appear to be dancing around the telephone pole. In colours.

 What AWV entry would be complete without a picture of the redoubtable Shadow? Here he is with a piece of garden edging in his mouth. Somehow, he managed to tear this up out of ground that was frozen solid during our -30 degree cold snap a couple of weeks ago. It was originally about twenty five feet long. This is what is left. As you can see, of any member of our family, Shadow attracts more spirit attention than any other. They are drawn to the young, and cute.
  This picture shows Shadow surrounded by ghostly orbs. There are dozens of them in view, maybe hundreds, and remarkably, every single one of them unique. Not a one exactly like any other. (It's because they used to be people, and people are all different).



  Finally, here are two astounding pictures of spirit phenomena. I have saved the best for last. I have elected to link to the pictures rather than post them here so I could show them at a larger size, the better to view fine details. The first example is a picture I took in my back yard one January evening. I was standing there, doing nothing, minding my own business, with a digital camera in my hand, when I inexplicably started feeling cold. I suspected there was a spirit, or ghost nearby. Breathing heavily with fear, and fear, I raised the camera and snapped a few frames.  The first picture is here: http://members.aol.com/plittle/ghostface.jpg . In this picture, one can see the bio-thermal pulmono-exhalatory cloud as it coalesces. If you look very carefully, you can just make out the outlines of a face.
  The second picture was taken a moment later, but still slightly too early. The carbondioxygenic vapourous apparition had not yet fully formed. Yet, the image is unmistakable. It is still quite fuzzy, but you can clearly see that this is the spirit of a young woman wearing a hat. http://members.aol.com/plittle/ghostface2.jpg .
  I am left to wonder; who was this woman? When did she walk this earth? What is she doing in my back yard?

  I would like to close this topic with a short statement. We at Aurora Walking Vacation are on a quest for the truth, and are interested in an open minded examination of these phenomena. We invite all discussion, as long as it agrees with our views. Be advised that anyone who suggests there are rational, scientific explanations for our results will find their closed-minded comments immediately deleted, and their rude, harassing asses banned from making subsequent comments. Furthermore, we may complain about them on the message board and threaten to report them to AOL, the police, the F.B.I., and our Alien Overlords. Remember, open minded means, "in agreement with my point of view."

A few notes:

1) This post is made in memory of Lahoma Taylor, A.K.A. MzGoochi, who was alive when that last picture was taken, but was subsequently taken from us by cancer.

2) I left the text form of the last two links as they were. However, AOL Hometown, and the members.aol.com domain no longer exist, and the photographs are now hosted on my Flickr account.

3) If you like, you can visit the archived version of this article at http://awvarchive.blogspot.com/2005/02/spirit-photography.html. Some of the comments are interesting.

4) Happy Halloween.

Comments revisited

I have just approved eight comments that were sitting in the moderation queue - some of them for over two months. Clearly I am not all that good with this whole comment moderation thing. The blog was only asking for moderation on comments on posts older than fourteen days, but with my current blogging activity rate, that has, at times, included everything, even the most recent entry here. I have decided to remove the comment moderation requirement, and just go with the captcha method of spam comment prevention for now. We'll see how it goes. That may well be enough.

If you've commented and been disappointed in not receiving a reply, I apologize. Thanks for coming by, and I hope you'll be back again to allow me to make ammends.

New commenting practices at AWV

Due to a recent spate of spam commenting, in Japanese no less - I had to use Google Translate to find out how I could increase my "male performance" - I have been forced to institute a couple of new measures here at Aurora Walking Vacation. First is the "captcha" system. All commenters will be required to enter the verification word. I'm sure you've seen this system in use at many blogs. It is intended to defeat automatic commenting bots by requiring human eyes to read and interpret an image of a word, rather than a piece of text. Second, comments on posts older than fourteen days will be moderated. I will have to approve those comments before they appear on the blog, so if you are leaving a comment on an older entry, don't be alarmed when it doesn't show up immediately.

I regret having to do this, but it's better for me than spending fifteen minutes every day deleting spam posts.

A bunch of stuff

Role reversal?

Rebecca - also known as 'she who goes walkabout' - who blogs at Provocation of Mine(d) - from whom we are familiar with sudden, long absences from the world of blogging - has been pumping out an entry a day for over a month now.

I - who used to be good for at least three or four entries a week - am having difficulty managing three a month these days. I - in comments at Rebecca's blog - early in her 30 entries in 30 days experiment - suggested that I might try to emulate her. At some point.

What was I thinking?

Now, she's nosing around here - leaving oh-so-polite comments - sending me friendly emails - reminding me - asking me - prodding me - refusing to let me pretend I never made the comment. "When are you going to start your 30 posts in 30 days?" she queries. I can almost see her batting her eyelashes in mock innocence; hear her voice dripping with honey...and cyanide.

What can I say, Becky? My blogging output recently has suffered greatly at the hands of real life - and internet ennui. I'm not sure I can muster the wherewithall to create an entry a week, much less one a day. Let's just say I'll try to put something here more often that I have been lately and see what happens, OK?

Counting in Japanese...over and over again

The family and I have been watching the first season of Heroes on DVD. Good times.

In one recent episode - which we watched last night - our Hero - Hiro - is locked in a broom closet. The scene opens with him counting to three - in Japanese - and throwing himself at the door - over and over - which resolutely refuses to open - throwing him to the ground - over and over.

The point of my story is the counting. In Japanese. The subtitles say, "one, two, three," but Hiro says - out loud - "Ichi, ni, san..." Listening to this, I cannot help but hear the opening bars of the 80s Canadian hit song, The Second That I Saw You, by Strange Advance, that begins with a female voice counting in the song. In Japanese.

Here's a sample. Listen.



For the last twenty four hours, this song has been playing in my head. Over. And over. And over. You can have it for a while. OK?

A thing about spring

One of the things about spring that can be annoying is the dramatic temperature swing we see over the course of a day. How many of you have looked high and low for your jacket one morning, only to remember that you left it at work the day before because it was cold when you went in, but warm when you came home?

Today I had lunch on the run. I had to drive down to Richmond Hill to sign some cheques for the curling club. I'm cruising along - window down - radio playing - and about halfway there, I realize the there's hot air blowing at me from the vents. Really hot air.

This is another manifestation of spring: drive to work with the heater on full - 'cause damn, it's cold - then get halfway home that afternoon - when it's warm and sunny - before you realize you forgot to turn the heater off when you got out of the car that morning, and your shoes are melting.

Stupid spring.


That's all I got.