Where did this come from?
De-Chapeau’d in Deschutes brings back an old favorite:
You would think they’d never seen snow before the way they react when there’s a storm coming in. It’s a weird phenomenon that strikes whenever more than five inches of snow is predicted around here. People start acting as if they had lived in pure sunshine and heat the whole time. OMG! White stuff falling from the sky! We’re all gonna DIE! Please. You all drive Lincoln Navigators and Hummers with twelve-wheel drive. The town will clear the roads within 24 hours and your kids will be pelting the toddler across the street with snowballs within two.
The magical phrase around here is “freezing rain,” and it doesn’t matter how many driven wheels you have when that stuff shows up.
Incidentally, the above paragraph is from:
(a perennial favorite rant of blogs and email forwarders. source unknown, slightly edited.)
Assuming I sourced it correctly when I posted it four years ago, this is the work of ex-blogger Michele Catalano.
fillyjonk »
13 December 2011 · 9:00 pm
I’ve also heard the phenomenon referred to as a French Toast Emergency, to wit: you go out and buy up bread and milk and eggs. Never mind that if the power goes out, those eggs won’t do you much good (unless your grandma taught you to suck raw eggs, or unless you like eggs fried on top of a woodstove).
‘Round here, it seems that the frozen pizzas are the first thing to sell out. Which seems odd to me: again, if the power goes out? A frozen pizza won’t be much use. (I tend to keep things like granola bars and peanut butter and tinned fruit – and yes, I have a manual can opener – on hand.)
hatless in hattiesburg »
14 December 2011 · 1:21 pm
thanks for the link.
as to the source, it might be un-knowable. when i read the post you linked that was from four years ago, i saw that the last bit about “storm of the century” was apparently originally yours, which i had edited in to the piece. so some credit is due to you for that.
but i’m fairly sure i had seen a similar “winter rant” floating around before i even started blogging, maybe two or three computers ago. suffice it to sat that no matter how the “long island winter rant” virus started, it is still alive and mutating. ;)
CGHill »
14 December 2011 · 1:28 pm
In the absence of the original Catalano piece — the Wayback Machine doesn’t have it — “uncertain origin” might be in order, though it was not generally her style to copy out large blocks of text.