That was no BIG SNOW, meerly a Blizzard.

I watched ABC's new reality series "Brat Camp" last night. The kids had to hike 10 miles through the desert and it was snowing.

The voice-over narrator person kept refering to the fact that the kids were walking through a "blizzard." He must have said it 5 times. Blizzard. Blizzard. Blizzard. After hiking 3 miles it looked like there was about 1 inch of snow on the ground, and after 5 miles, maybe an inch and a half. At one point, it looked like it had stopped snowing all together, (but i do realize that sometimes when filming precipitation doesn't really show on tv, so i won't argue that point) all i am saying is that it wasn't snowing all that hard.

HERE IS MY CONCERN: To truly have a blizzard, there has to be sustained winds of 35 mph for over 3 hours and the visibility has to be less than one-quarter of a mile. In watching the television program the snow was falling straight down... therefore, i don't think the wind was over 35... not even gusts of 35.

HERE IS MY REAL CONCERN: Crap like this only leads to the further dumbification of America. when we start refering to snow flurries as blizzards, it lessens the impact of a true blizzard. And it is going to cause our meterologists to make up new names for actual blizzards (or tornados or hurricanes, etc etc.) I am going to call this the Burger King Effect: there used to be Small, Medium, and Large sodey-pops. Then they got rid of Small and just had Medium, Large, and Extra-large. The smallest size is Medium and the medium size is Large. The trend line on something like that leads us to believe that in the future there will only be Extra-large, Extra-extra-large, and Extra-extra-extra-large.

By this hypothesis, a snow storm will be a Blizzard and i suppose a bilzzard will be a SuperBlizzard? Or will there be a new name for this natural event. My suggestions are as follows: "King Snowstorm" or "Annie, Get your Milk and Bread Storm."
Or, in an attempt to help foster the dumbification of America, I offer this gross oversimplifications of the event: "Big Snow."

Another concern: Changing definitions will water-down history. In the late 1870's a true blizzard of mamouth proportions killed millions of cattle in the midwest. Today's young scholars, thinking that a blizzard is hardly enough snow to even shut down school for the day, will be perplexed as to how cattle froze to death in a dusting of snow.

Here is what i really should do: watch zero tv.

yeah, right, like that would ever happen.

peace.

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory

My Mom and Dad, along with Molly and Seamus, came to babysit Fiona so Amy and I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory yesterday and we really liked it. Johnny Depp is, by far and wide, the best actor to come from 21 Jump Street. He is also the best actor from our generation. who can come close?

typical to a tim burton film - the movie was visually pleasing. my only gripe comes with some of the dialog was a wee bit contrived.... that crap drives me nuts. There were a few lines that were hilarious and a few sight gags that made me laugh out loud.

overall - i loved the movie. i will probably get it on dvd when it comes out.

after the movie, amy and i went to Lancaster Brewing Company . I decided to do what i usually do at a place that brews it's own beer: i get a sampler. The little menu thing on the table had 5 beers and so i thought the sampler would have 5 little glasses of beer. Well well well... i was a little off base. LBC has 12 beers, of which i recieved a 5-oz sample of each. Yeeaaahhh.... all of a sudden there is 60 ounces of beer in front of me. Michael P. Holland from 10 years ago would have reveled in teh prospect of 60 ounces of beer to drink in short order. However the current version of Michael P. Holland (or MPH v33.0) looks at 60 ounces of beer and thinks: "ugh.... i don't want to get drunk in the middle of the day... i have stuff to do.... and i will be hung over tomorrow... and i will have a headache... and and and.... I JUST DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO BE DRUNK RIGHT NOW!!!" Anyway - i drank about half of the beer - most of which i found to be very tasty. Amy drove home, i was a little headachy, it rained so i didn't have to do any work at home, anyway. We rented the Will Smith/Doug Heffernan movie Hitch which was fun to watch, but was very very predictable and outlandishly contrived, but enjoyable none the less.

went to bed around 11:15 and slept until 10:00 sunday. all in all, saturday was a really really good day.