How many good Americans does it take to clean up the World?

We had some really nice snow in the past few days, and that's really cheered me up. What's weird about snow, however, in Milwaukee, is that the people here act like it's a terrorist attack or something. They freak out, get up at 5am on Saturday morning and are out running around with pick-up trucks with snowplows, and really loud snow blowers. Any other time you get up on a Saturday morning, it's the quietest time of the week, but when there's a snow it sounds like there's a war going on outside.

Maybe I shouldn’t complain so much, because it's nice for me when the sidewalks are cleared-- it's easy to walk. (Though they aren't ALL cleared.) Plus, it's nice for the older people, and the disabled. But what gets on my nerves is all this gasoline powered equipment to clear the snow, which then adds to the amount of black sludge frozen in the streets, not to mention spewing shit in the air, and all the noise. And the big reason that they are out clearing snow is to clear the ROADS, because people can't go ONE DAY without using their cars. And the few people who DO choose not to drive get their vehicles packed in by snowplows, and ticketed or towed if they're on snow emergency streets.

If it was simply up to the residents to clear the sidewalks in front of their houses, in a house like where I live with seven people, we could conceivably clear the sidewalk with a teaspoon. But on Sunday, I saw a pickup truck with a snowplow DRIVING ON THE SIDEWALK, plowing. I could only think such desperate measures had to do with the urgency of residents to get to church. Or maybe it's the German heritage in Milwaukee. I don't want to pick on ethnic groups, but since I'm more German than anything else, at least I'm acknowledging that I'm a little like this too. My neighbor in Ohio, a German lady, used to freak out about the trees dropping leaves in the fall, like it was someone throwing McDonald’s wrappers in her yard or something. She eventually cut down most of the offending trees.

I heard people referring to the snowstorms as "being hit" like we were being attacked in a military strike. Then they kept talking about "cleaning up" after the big snows. Hey-- it's frozen water! The snow is clean, it's pretty, it's nice, and it's going to melt in no time. It isn't something you have to clean up. After "cleaning up" all of this snow we're left with black sludge everywhere, and no one seems to worry about cleaning up that.

Blue Skies

Blue skies blue skies blue skies blue skies. Blue skies make me want to puke. The sun is out, making a mockery of warmth. The streets are encrusted in salt, or whatever chemical they use to melt ice on the pavement. One interesting thing about a long deep-freeze is you see how much black sludge cars emit from exhaust and off their tires and engines, and along the side of the road where the cars are parked the ice and snow is totally black. Where does this go in warm weather? Into the grass, and into the ground, in the sewers, and into the lake. The lake I was able to swim in when I moved here six years ago, but no longer can.

Maybe I should go back underground. I was much happier there. I wouldn’t have to necessarily find the mysterious tunnel down at the end of the block, or the gold mine, or the passageway to the center of the earth. I could simply head down into the deep tunnel. There is a manhole to it, marked with fluorescent spray-paint over on Kilbourn, I've noticed walking by there. I could hang out down there with "The Family" whose aversion to the sun, while not for the same reason as mine, is no less as strong.