The Reality of Snomagedon

The news was poised for action. Talking heads were posted at any location where an accident could be caught live on the Action News cameras. Edwin R. Murrow award winning filler for approximately a week before the snow had a chance to develop.
Environmentalists across the nation were poised - pointer-fingers at the ready and signs of doom painted on feces stained bedsheets ready to flash fishermen and big business. All shouting about the evils of mankind - in particular big business.
Sadly, the news media, the people who point out that we actually have seasons, and Washington DC, went for the most part unscathed as snow from two major strom systems converged on our area.
And what a storm!

I haven't ever shoveled like that and with such veracity!

Small business owners across the region ended up shutting their doors over concerns for the safety and impossible passage. Among those small businesses were the owners of Cafe Kolache in Beaver, PA.

Kristi and I stayed awake throughout the night. We didn't want our bakers to risk crashing or getting stuck in the snow. We thought about opening later in the day, but it just would not have been prudent. Our Saturday evening performance was cancelled. We were even worried about our home, fearing that we might lose power and heat and - well we have a one year old.

The total accumulation after the two storm cells passed through, blanketed up to and beyond the thirties in inches and for most those who spent the first wintry evening shovelling, the next day was not as arduous as it had been for those who waited for the first storm to end.
The total loss - economically at least in the region has been estimated at well over $1 billion dollars in lost revenue. And those numbers sunk in more deeply for small business in the region including Cafe Kolache.

We're still reeling from it. It's going to take some pretty significant traffic to make up for the loss, especially after such a lack luster year. The blizzards and a crappy economy have really hit us pretty hard.

As one can imagine, even hearing the rumors of another snowfall brings a sense of dread to a great many in the region. Much to the dismay of those who need to continue to get to work day in and out - winter is not done with the region.

We can't close again. Even if it means Kristi and I coming in to bake at 3:30 in the morning - we just can not chance it. It's just getting harder. And she keeps telling me to keep my head up, and she's right - after all, we believe that our shop really is a warm hole in the wall where people can congregate. If we can't get there, neither can they, and that is just not an option.

Small business has taken a number of hits, from taxes to minimum wage increases from both local and federal agencies. With the president promising to help small business across the country, many owners are considering the idea yet another terrible storm in an already discontented winter.

Snomagedon

Saturday, February 13th
SNOMAGEDON

This is a transcript taken from a conversation found after Old Earth was abandoned. It is between a man, Travis and a woman, Jane Doe. Neither of them could be found after. May they rest in peace.

Crap!
No seriously. What in the world is going on Travis?
Where are you? Are you not at a window?
No! Ah jeez!
The world honey... it's just gone. (sobbing.)
Honey? What are you talking about?
Four horsemen schtuff... Oh my -
Travis? Travis?
(Sobbing)
Travis?
Oh no! (violent scream and scuffle) Wh - Why?
Trav - (Crackling over the phone.)
So much I just wanted to say to you. Now -
Travis, please -
No sense, baby. Just no sense. What have we done?
We'll be okay?
I hope, but - (the phone crackles) Why do we have to be so far apart? I can't tell you how much I love y- (crackling)
I love you too. I do.
It's getting closer now.
I don't understand. What is (crackling)?
(static) - really piling up now. Can - hardly?
I'm going to my window! Travis, can you hear me?
(static)
Travis?
I don't want to have to say goodbye, but -
But what? I'm opening the curtains my love! Stay with me!
Don't (static)
Travis? Trav? I'm coming to you!
No! Stay there you'll d - (static)
I'm already dead!
NO!
(the line dies)

This cheezy dialogue brought to you by an overanxious Western Pennsylvania, during the February 2010 Snow Storm.

Magic's a Piece of Cake

Fred Marcuso stood before a large bathroom mirror. The sink in front of him was clean and dry, with the exception of a sparkling green bowtie. He picked it up and gingerly flipped it through his fingers, then placed it around his neck.
“You look gawd awful!”
Fred Marcuso glanced back at Marni, his wife of eighteen years. She struggled to cover herself with a skin tight black skirt. He smiled. She had finally returned to him and embraced his inequities.
“It’s our daughter’s sweet sixteen birthday party and you – you want to do magic?”
It is our last sweet sixteenth.
Fred pulled a single long-stemmed rose from beneath his green cumber bunt and presented it to her. He pursed his lips together.
“What will the guests say? Look at the stupid leprechaun? What’ll he pull from his bottom now?”
Marni disregarded his gift and nonchalantly stepped on it. Fred Marcuso smiled.
I have been practicing.
“Emily does not care about magic. It’s her birthday and –“
Emily Marcuso looked on and laughed, partly in hysterics and another in embarrassment at her father.
“Come along Emily. Guests should be arriving at anytime. Let’s leave David bloody Copperfield.”
“Can we lock ‘im in the room?”
Fred Marcuso sadly stood alone. His eyes suddenly drooped. A melancholy that was veiled behind the silly smile lay revealed. In front of the mirror again, he began performing - pulling from the sleeve of his right arm, a multicolored cord. The faster he pulled the longer it seemed to become. At his feet, there formed a perfect coil of rope, the length of which was impossible to tell.
An easy trick.
One of the five-thousand sunny faced pink and white balloons – a pink one – caught Fred Marcuso’s eye as it wafted skyward. Loosed from the crowd. He spent money he did not have and time he had too much of, for this day. Emily would hopefully not forget it.
Fred Marcuso’s posh little neighborhood looked empty. Foreclosures. People lived beyond their means. They, including the Marcuso’s, waited for banks to retrieve their properties like old trees await the axe.
Fred Marcuso stepped out of the bathroom and straightened his jacket. Guest began arriving. Their house filled with hormonal teenagers. Spin the bottle. Truth or dare. He reminisced about his pock-marked teens. So very lonely.
An older motorcar drove into the neighborhood and parked. Fred watched as the woman, Linda Smythe pulled the visor down and checked her smile. She played sincerity like a well-worn violin.
Sigh.
“You invited Jenny Smythe? Why?”
“I felt sorry for her.”
Sorry? I cannot imagine.
The Smythe family did not need to live in a posh neighborhood. The Smythe family did not need a fancy motorcar. Mrs. Smythe never lusted over Lewis Smythe’s boss. Jenny Smythe respected her father, and Lewis Smythe loved his family.
Marni approached the motorcar. She wiggled over to Lewis and kissed him on the cheek, then hugged Linda and Jenny.
Fred Marcuso watched. A violin smile accompanied his bright green tuxedo.
Fred Marcuso, magician, had everyone sit as he began his performance. The kids – eager for spin the bottle – rolled their eyes. Suddenly, out of his brilliant-green top hat, he pulled an enormous rabbit, and then some clanging, and then –
“Flowers for Emily!”
Fred Marcuso’s act was nothing short of amazing. He performed a supernatural feat of levitation, and proceeded to eat a sword which he later produced from his bottom without ripping his trousers.
“Now, if my lovely Marni would please come to the stage and lie on this magic table.”
Marni Marcuso reclined on the table, and Fred lofted a bright green blanket over her. He performed a magic incantation, and then dropped a napkin over the blade of his sword, where it became two separate pieces – proving it to be quite sharp indeed.
“Oh.”
Fred Marcuso took a drink from a small metal flask taken from inside of his jacket pocket. He whispered into Marni’s ear, and proceeded to drive the blade through her and the table, as though it were a piece of birthday cake. Marni, oblivious to it all, continued to display her permanently wretched smile –and would forever more.
Fred Marcuso, father and magician, stepped through the separated torsos and bowed.
“A split personality!”
A nervous laughter and applause ensued.
With a broad, satisfied smile, Fred Marcuso dropped dead.

Interview with Big Feather

The white man has a thing that we call "Fire Story", which they attach many hairs of the great beasts from this into the walls of their enormous caves. Many of these white man caves have more than one Fire Story, because the white man tribes all live separately in smaller caves, where maybe one Fire Story tells one in great moving paintings of rape and another tells of how white man and man of many color beat the kolunka out of another group of the same, but wearing different war dress and paint... and maybe another Fire Story paints a moving picture of how a white man can please his woman, but only if he takes the medicine from a giant beast.
I think that we, the Invisible People, invented this, but the white man made it easy to sit on their fat hides. Hides made of what we hunted for food, and hides for our teepees.
We were a proud nation. We enjoyed the hunt for totonka, and our villages would often walk into the dangerous lands of many nations, but we were the Invisible People, and the nations to which we warred at times could not see us. The totonka could see us. Their herds moved in the night... sometimes to the northland, sometimes to the southland, or to the east or to the west, and we followed them. Other nations followed totonka also. The totoka would leave enormous kolunka on the plains.
At night, we would gather totonka kolunka and set it to fire, and then as we sat eating what we hunted, we would tell stories to one another speaking loudly through the fire. I told the stories of the great totonka that was born of the mountain spring, and others about giant fish.
I can not understand white man Fire Story. We tell our Fire Story outside until the morning when the fire dies, but white man, who lives in caves of many smaller caves, brings in the totonka kolunka, does not set it to fire and listens to its story.