Well, I remain relatively unscathed after my drive to work this morning — which, I must say, is no small feat, since it’s snowing pretty heavily and the roads haven’t seen even the rumor of a plow. I skidded into the curb and was sure I’d damaged the side of my car, but it appears unharmed. Dirty, encrusted with snow and ice, but unharmed. I think it’s very clear I won’t be travelling to Bellefonte this evening. I was hoping to see “Lost in La Mancha”, which, surprisingly, is playing there. But it’s at least a twenty-to-thirty-minute trip from my apartment (as I discovered over the weekend when I failed to arrive on time), and the snow doesn’t show signs of letting up and disappearing before tonight.

It’s just as well, I suppose. It will probably be out on video this summer, and I have laundry I need to do.

But man, I hate this snow.

I go out of my way not to watch cable “news” (I’ve already mentioned my disgust with Bill O’Reilly), but it does seem unfortunate that MSNBC has decided to cancel its highest-rated program so that it can pander to the worst impulses of the far-far-right by hiring a hate-monger like Michael Savage.

It is not, however, surprising. A fascinating read in today’s Salon:

Such vitriolic ranting is over the top, even by the ever-declining standards of talk-radio decorum. Yet, in this time of war fever and hyperpatriotism, inflammatory rhetoric draws conservative ditto-heads and liberal rubberneckers alike, and that translates into big ratings.

Whenever I think this sort of uber-conservatism can’t get any worse…

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

– T.H. White, The Once and Future King

Me, I’m learning Quark.