Wednesday 19th March 2003
So this sucks.
For those who have assumed to date that this is normal for Denver, realise that--until this happened to us--we'd had about four inches of snow since August. This is abnormal.
LIBERTY SHIELD
Okay? Look retarded now? Good. You're seeing this my way.
Not the part where I went another week without writing a What's New. That sucks too; but I've been busy with things lately. Hey: fire me. I don't get paid for running gremlin.net, per se; despite the fradulent libel from various morons who shall remain michaeltherighthandofgod@yahoo.com.
Worse than even that is the damned weather. I don't know how muh of this is globally known, but Denver--which is approximately the only metropolitan sector of the Mountain Timezone--has been hit by a metre of snow in the last twenty-four hours. Which is currently 'threatening' to break the record set in 1913, when Denver was hit by nearly five feet of snow in just five days. Wow. A foot a day. Scare me. It started snowing yesterday, and the snow is literally waistdeep out there. On me. Which means a bit when I'm wearing soviet officers' boots and ending up at six foot six due to the heels. Which, adding in the snow smashed down like concrete, puts me about seven feet above the grass itself. I think the record has been broken.
Hunter, being insane anyway, went out there with the DigiCam. Here's where I get to write off the twelve hundred bucks I spent on it. Behold the suction:
If you can't figure out the bit about clicking on the arrow to go to the next shot, you're at the wrong website.
North view
East view
West view
South view
Incidentally, a few of those are colourcorrected to hell. I thought Hunter was going to get them in infrared, so I shut off the flash for her. I'm kinda surprised they turned out dark at all. At three in the morning, it looked like an afternoon in Seattle out there.
We walked about a mile through a metre of snow--mostly to see the nothingness. Between the daylight conditions of three in the morning [thick cloudcover over a city like Denver adds a lot of nice light] and the bulletforce winds, sunglasses were actually necessary out there. I love natural disasters. It's neat to be able to walk down the middle of a major street and watch industrial 4X4s with chains on their snowtyres spinning up onto the sidewalks. I just wish we'd got snaps of that. Or video, maybe.
Oh well. I'm sure I'll have another chance at it.
Apparently, we can 'look forward' to another three days of this. Go us.
As for yet-more-major roads than I was able to get to on foot, I snaked a few images from DenverPost.com, showing Interstate Seventy at Chambers. Those are over on the right. Below, you'll see the weather.com view of hell.
All the freeways in town are closed. Mostly because they're full of upside-down semis. Also because the snow is already too deep for the plows to drive through. And, at the rate the snow is still falling, there's no logical reason to plow anything yet. It makes more sense to wait until the daytime temperatures are in the seventies again. Which, in Denver, should be about Monday.
If you want a reasonably accurate weather report for Denver, just read the last book of the damned bible. Short of large asteroids and dragons with seven heads and ten horns, the rest of it happens here every week.
Okay: enough about the weather. Let's talk about other news.
At the moment, we've got about nine hours left for Hussein to stop laughing at President Junior and get out of Iraq. And then, we hit ZeroHour. Which means we can then officially start thinking about maybe eventually someday getting round to considering an attack on them sometime at our lesure if nothing is on television. This means Hussein should quiver in fear. Or something. I'm not sure what the point is, really.
Personally, the ultimatum of Get out or We'll Attack at Our Convenience holds all the RealWorld threat of a collections letter from the Columbia Record House. Which is slightly less terrifying than any given moron screaming 'bring it' on Jerry Springer. Who cares.
Oh, I'm sure we'll attack Iraq soon. And I'm sure we'll manage to drag out what should be a fifteen-minute surgical strike into a three-month adventure sponsored in part by AOHell Version It Really Is That Simple. I just don't care. I've seen it before. I rarely disagree with Denis Leary, but I spent most of Desert Shield playing SuperMario2, okay? The most entertaining element of Desert Shield I ever saw was Wag the Dog.
And what in the living hell is Liberty Shield? Was that a typo? Can this sort of thing actually happen in a country with people scrutinising Mark Twain for offensive content? Liberty Shield. Christ. Didn't Captain America have one of those?
Maybe I'm not illustrating exactly how silly this name sounds to me. Let's see if this helps a little:
I'd be less offended by Operation Stomp the Cockroach. At least it would be honest.
Yes: strangely enough, I'm not opposed to assassinating Hussein. Granted, I'm more interested in removing any potential for him to annoy me for another twelve years than putting an end to whatever he's doing to people I don't know. Which is also honest. I'm guessing a lot of people feel about the same way. People are being tortured? Oh; that's too bad. Oh--it's that Hussein bastard? Kill him; I'm sick of hearing his damned name.
After all: if it were merely the morally-questionable practise of torturing innocent people we were concerned about, we'd be assassinating the vatican before we went after Hussein, now wouldn't we....
Which brings us to the morally-questionable portion of the news. Which, of course, means film reviews. Dreamcatcher is pretty well worth seeing. Unless you're in Denver and aren't expecting to be able to get to a cinema on Friday night to see it. In which case you'll want to download the film through WinMX. I'd upload it to the server for you, but that would be dumb.
Besides: Jason Lee is in it. And, since we've got a couple of mutual friends, I suppose I should suggest paying the eight bucks to see a film he's already been payed for being in. Or something.
More Later....
--Gremlin