So much stupidity, so little time

I began skiing (gack!) 59 years ago. Yes there was skiing. No, you didn't have to carve your own equipment out of a clump of birches. There were proper ski areas (gee, six or eight in all of NH) and numbers of joint-challenging local rope tows. There was only a little snow-making, no interstate highways, and a very limited number of safety procedures. (I still remember an accident involving a brain pan and a broken bamboo ski pole with which I shall not darken the light of day.) There were maybe half a dozen TV stations in all of New England. Most of southern NH could receive Boston TV, but Boston TV weather ended below the state line.

Back then, prospective skiers had some excuse for not understanding that, on average, places with high elevation get more snow than places with low elevation. Absent much in the way of snow-making, they had some small reason for tying their own urban snowfall (or its absence) to the likelihood of snow in their favourite ski area.

Today, there are scores of ski areas, all with snow-making. There are dozens of sources of electronic communication prepared to give skiers hour-by hour conditions anywhere in the world, never mind New England. I-93 can take you from metro Boston deep into the White Mountains in less time than it took to get from Boston to Manchester in 1953. Thus, any skier who judges their prospects of snow by conditions in their urban backyard is a blithering idiot.

In days of yore, we were taught to have considerable care for our personal safety, because most of the adult skiers around us had gory first-person stories to share. Few of us exited our teens without minor injury. Then there were those ill-disguised spots of pink snow where some of the casualties had happened. These influences made one thoughtful. The late ski pioneer and author Newt Tolman once wrote that, since the 1920s, each improvement in skiing technology had led to fewer broken skis and more broken skiers.

The helmet is a new arrival in recreational downhill skiing. Somehow, the learning curve on the limits of helmet use seems to be much slower for skiers than it has been for cyclists. Despite all the evidence offered by years of "agony of defeat" footage, all the international skiers carried off the slopes held together by their clothes, I suspect that far too many skiers have fallen into a false assumption that ski helmets confer invulnerability and immortality. Bike helmets reduce the likelihood of traumatic brain injury at all skill levels. Ski helmets can do the same. Consider, though, that even a novice skier can easily reach speeds three times the average speed of professional cyclists, on surfaces just as damaging as pavement. If helmets encourage skiers in the deadliest skier behaviour--skiing above one's ability--then they become part of the problem, not the solution.

Over the past two years, a depressing number of ski fatalities have included the words "...was wearing a helmet...ran into a tree." Once upon a time, running into a tree was considered prima facie evidence that the victim was skiing above his/her ability.

Helmets have instructions. Those of us who have written documentation know how futile it can be to get people to read the fuckin' manual. Possibly we need documentation aimed not at those who wear the helmets, but on those who sell or rent them, many of whom are below the age of optimum brain development.

Unchristmas, and a shuffle with the idiots

In the end, we worked out our own unchristmas. First, the early show at Loew's on Tremont in Boston (The King's Speech, which I recommend even if you're not a Brit). Then, instead of Chinese, we did Middle Eastern at the Black Seed, which is up the street and a steady favourite of mine. Home again, holiday nap, chat with the daughter and a French-Canadian film (betcha didn't know there were such things, eh?) Les Doights Croches.

Since my spouse was working today, last week I began to plan a Boxing Day dinner. Nothing remarkable, except that we don't cook a lot of whole chickens around here. On Thursday, it was clear there wouldn't be room in our modest fridge for the chicken and everything else, so I decided to put off buying some of the ingredients until today.

This wasn't a good idea. Although there was snow on the horizon Thursday, the weather media panic machine had yet to work itself up to a berserk frenzy. By the time they hit that level of stridency, it was already christmas day and finding a roaster in these parts would have to wait.

For a moment, I considered running over to Stop and Shop, where you get the vintage sort of panic disaster shopper. These are the people who go as a couple and fill two shopping carts: one has twenty bags of potato chips and one bag of ice-melt. The other has two dozen two litre bottles of soft drink, a snow shovel, and three pounds of deli meat. For whatever reason, I thought I'd have better luck at our local, regional-type market.

Things were probably worse at Stop and Shop, but only because they have more floor space. I can't say this is true of all affluent towns, since I've only lived in this one, but the Stop and Shoppers with the soft drinks and chips were one up on the average person in this scrum: they had a clue what they were about. It was clear, from the various overheard conversations, that most of these people hadn't seen the inside of a grocery since the last weekend disaster: hmm, that would be the water thingy back at the end of April. That one was simple, because all they had to buy was water. This one required them to make choices. The line moved along all the same, and it was enlivened by the utter helplessness of so many of these people. It probably didn't occur to them that they already had all that they needed in their homes: they would need the help to explain that to them.

Each winter's first serious snow has always been good for some unintended comedy, but it used to be out on the roads. The winter storm disaster culture has ensured us hilarity indoors and out.

I think I have a cause

Nice thing about blogs, as in any other form of writing, is you get to put pretty packaging on your obsessions and call them causes. I think mocking New England weather broadcasts is becoming my cause. It's less contentious than political blogging, where even your friends rip you. Even meterologists ridicule weather forecasts.

We are in, oh, hour 37 of the current weather broadcasting overreaction to last week's weather broadcasting overreaction. In this case, the most populous parts of New England may just possibly see an inch or two of snow by this time tomorrow (it's raining right now). Since the temp will also be at or above freezing most of that time, and since there is more than an inch of salt on most paved public ways in Massachusetts, the chances of an accumulation of anything but raw hype are minimal.

At the present rate, the hysteria will begin shortly after July 4, skipping right through hurricane season to begin warning people of the need to maintain their shovels while they are still trying to maintain inflatable water toys.

Links and pictures soon, I promise.

Why Johnny Can't Talk (or Think) Good

Oh My GAWD!! It's December in New England! There's going to be SNOW!!! Call FEMA!!! (Or not: call someone who can actually help instead.)

Don't you get sick of the broadcast media's fixation with making normal events into disasters?

Don't you wonder about those panic shoppers ahead of you in the checkout line? What do they live on when they can't get two dozen two-litre bottles of Coke and cases of giant-size bags of ripple chips? What do they do with the surplus when our blizzard amounts to two inches and they can go out the next day? Are their houses overflowing with stashes of soft drinks and potato chips?

PET PEEVE WARNING: Will this be the year when at least one bold New England weather prophet has the stones to say "Northeaster" as normal people do? "Nor'easter" has never been widely used outside newsrooms in the history of the language...except by New Yorkers pretending to be New Englanders.

The answer is "fat chance". There will be snow Sunday: let it come down. There will also be a football game against the Jets, who have just enough of a chance to make life interesting. So what is it we hear about? "Spygate." The geniuses of the broadcast media still think that applying, or misapplying, a stale suffix over 30 years old to any scandal that shows up is clever. Evidently, they now think that evidence of a routine coaching procedure constitutes scandal.

Isn't the endless repetition of a meaningless word a symptom of some psychosis or other?