All Covering Their Circuitry With Little Fez Hats, Awaiting My Command

After a long and welcome delay, the Michigan Winter has formally settled in around these parts. For the kids, this means excited fantasies about snowmen and sledding. For me, it means the act of filling my car with gas becomes an exercise in bitterness and frustration that leads me to wonder just how far advanced we are as a species if we haven't yet converted anything with more than a half inch of annual snowfall into a massive penal colony.

Okay, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but really, I do not approve of Winter in the least. This region is great for Spring, Summer and particularly Fall. However, besides proximity to family and obvious tactical advantage during a zombie apocalypse, spending Winter here has nothing to offer someone like me.

Now I know there are those of you out there who would argue that I would enjoy Winter more if I partook in some of the more popular Winter sports. To these people I would point out that in high school, the guy who was supposed to teach me skiing broke his leg skiing the weekend before my scheduled lessons. If that's not a sign, I don't know what is. (On the bright side, I got to call him 'Hopalong' for weeks, and he couldn't move fast enough on his little crutches to stop me. Ah, good times.)

Apply a little logic to the Winter sports, actually, and you'll see that this is actually an argument for my point of view. Skiing, snowboarding and sledding all have two things in common: speed and travel. Even snowshoeing is based on the same common thread. Basically, all Winter sports are built on the premise of getting the hell away from wherever you are, i.e. the snow. Heck, even the Olympic biathlon, where athletes test their prowess at both skiing and rifle shooting, was born of an angry Norwegian who was so desperate to get to warmer climes that he declared he'd shoot anyone who got into his way.

Of course, I should look at the bright side, like all of the things Winter encourages. Watching movies on television for example. Or playing video games. Reading books works as well. Basically, anything that allows me to close the shades and pretend that if I were to open them again I would be presented with a lovely Summer afternoon full of lush, green life and sunshine.

Or an army of cyborg monkeys waiting to do my bidding. That would be pretty cool too.