Like the news….keeping you up-to-date (but the truth)

Dude, I’m tellin’ ya………..

We were waiting for a decent snowstorm to start landing today and into tomorrow to the tune of 5-9 inches. My area would have only gotten about 5 inches. But up near Rockford and that northern area, they were predicting as much as 9 inches. Right up until last night I was getting this forecast. All of a sudden, it’s down to 1-3 inches. Mostly tomorrow. Just like that. Now the story is that there’ll be a frozen rain “wintry mix” that will make things a bit messy all day Wednesday. Winds as high as 45mph that will keep the light snow whipping around. Whatever. Tom Skilling strikes again {See:  Like it or not, here comes winter}. 

By tomorrow, they’ll be saying it’s going to be 50 degress and mostly sunny. Weather forecasting is almost as big a scam as the US court system or medical care/costs in the US. Pure bullshit.

But the snow rumors did put me to mind of some more memories like the nightmare traffic and cleaning off your car. These were pleasant memories of when I was a kid playing in the snow. My dad would change his summer quotation around slightly when recruiting me and my brother for work. Instead of “mowing the lawn”, he’d say:

“Hey…..I need a couple of big, strong, young guys to go out and shovel the driveway. And don’t do a half-assed job on it either.”

My brother and I would go out with a couple of shovels, but we weren’t ready to shovel just yet.  We would start at the top of the driveway and make a single shovel-wide twisty curvy path all the way down. With some intersections. Then one guy would start at the top and the other would be at the bottom. The guy at the top had to catch and tackle the other guy. But you had to stay on the path. If you went off the path, the other guy got to nail you with a snowball.

Of course the driveway was pretty slick with ice and the matted down tire tracks my parents seemed intent on grinding in there before sending us out to shovel. The kind where you need a damn garden hoe to scrape ’em up. I think that was part of their plan and they sat inside and laughed their asses off. They always said it happened because me and bro took so damn long to drag our asses out there and shovel.

That issue remains unresolved to this day.

But it was a hell of a lot of fun chasing each other around. One guy would wipe out and slide 8-9 feet into the grass. Or one of us would slide right into the garage door in a loud collision. The old man would come down to the front door and scream to start shoveling and quit screwing around. What he didn’t realize was that as we slid around and our bodies cleared off snow, we were cutting our eventual shoveling job in half.

Then there was the Great American Past-time for young boys. Pegging cars with snowballs. And especially schoolbuses. The neighborhood guys, bro, and me had a terrific little spot. This one front yard a few houses down had a somewhat thick growth of Evergreen trees. Good enough for almost complete enclosure. Four or five of us would be ready and when a car came by, we’d nail the shit out of it. Then you ran to the people’s backyard (which had no fencing) and led all the way to a ditch about fifty yards back. We’d skim the ditch the few houses back to our own and be back in the safety of our own yard.

Once though, me and two other guys nailed a schoolbus in the wide open. The driver was a neighborhood woman we all knew. She drove the buses for all of us for years. This particular route was the high school dropoff. She pulled over and let four guys off the bus. We ran like hell and they chased us down. Gave all three of us a helluva white washing. You know….where they tackle you and rub snow all over your face.

Ah…..the memories.

On another note, it looks like we’re on a run of skanks in the whole Tiger Woods thing { See: Power = infidelity }. Skanks looking to get famous. I connect to the internet thru my Comcast cable hookup. And the newscover page on Comcast today has a feature entitled, “Tiger’s List Grows to 9 ?? ” 

That makes like one skank crawling out from under a rock every day for about four or five days straight now. Let’s just cut to the chase here. OK? Let’s just establish that he has a honey at every stop on the PGA tour and one in every resort/vacation spot that he frequents. The same as every other playboy athlete or actor. If Tiger has played in the Bangkok Open in the last five years, just assume he has a booty call somewhere in Bangkok. Deal ?

I love the way the media has to act so surprised and shocked every time another ho’ comes forward.

I’m afraid Southern Illinois University lost their playoff game this past Saturday ending their season { See: Some wacky stuff in the news }. As soon as I give them some kudos for a great season and wish them luck, they lose. Nice guys.

The SIU basketball team is 5-2 though. So I got that goin’ for me. Which is nice.

My Blackhawks are still playing pretty well. Marian Hossa is healthy and back in the lineup. He had two goals in his debut. And on Saturday night in Pittsburgh against the very talented Penguins, he had a first period goal that looked like it might hold up. Unfortunately the Pens scored a goal with about 1:30 to go in the damn game. But the Hawks pulled it out in overtime. A great scrappy game that to me could be a preview of this year’s NHL finals. To win in Pittsburgh is pretty good. Even though the Pens played without their best player.

Finally we checked in with the great state of Texas and also asked a handful of people throughout the US and they all agreed. Unanimously. Nidal Malik Hasan is still a bona-fide, 100 % Grade A asshole { See: Asshole of the Month November 2009 }. 

 And that’s the news. The truthful news.