Therein lies a rant. Of course, shoveling snow isn't a consideration this morning, although I'm so impossibly old that I can remember being warned four days ago to expect eight inches of it, followed by the Killer Kold, presumably preceded by flash floods and the stray winter locust infestation.
Think of all the jobs on the planet, and consider how often weather forecasters are wrong as they fear-monger for fun and profit. Consider how long you'd last in your job with the same abysmal rate of failure. The weather forecasting profession has long since digressed into realm of late night television sketch comedy; you know, when the weatherman calls the supermarket and says "line up the milk and bread, boys -- I'm gonna spin the wheel and scare the bejesus out of the morons tonight. Just send my commission check to the same Swiss bank account."
Shakespeare's oft-quoted line, ''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" turns out to have been inaccurate. There were no weather forecasters in the playwright's time. He couldn't possibly have known to get it right.
Shovel Your Fucking Walk, by John Cook (Gawker)
Good morning. Is there snow on the sidewalk in front of your residence or place of business right now? Shovel it.
Oh, I'm sorry—you don't own your apartment? You just rent, from a landlord, whom you believe to be responsible for shoveling the walk? Good point. Has he shoveled it yet? No? OK, then shovel your fucking walk. You're right, he should totally have shoveled it. But he didn't. So now you have to.
