WHITE FLAKES OF DEATH, PT. 96

Much like the movie Groundhog Day, I'm starting to wonder if I'm trapped in a bad 6-o-clock newscast. You see, there's a hardware store across the street from my office, and for the fourth or fifth time in the past month, TV crews have staked the place out to gauge the Mood of the Populace. And apparently, the Populace is interested in only two things these days: snow shovels and duct tape.

When I walked across the street to the shopping center today, I saw a cameraman and his sound guy sprinting backwards, filming a middle-aged woman, snow shovel in hand and leering like an idiot. Never mind that we had just been through a blizzard ONE WEEK AGO and a less major snowstorm ONE DAY AGO. Maybe some people have simply forgotten to look out their windows for the past 10 days and needed the assistance of their friendly local TV stations to remind them that a $12.99 shovel is the only thing separating them from certain death from above.

(Speaking of which, one of the points I've gleaned from my nightly, blurry-eyed re-readings of the full contents of the Ready.org site is that one subtle, easily missed sign of terror-related trouble is things falling from the sky, which might force one to "improvise." That, or get out a snow shovel.)

But as always, I digress. Don't get me wrong -- I don't have the print reporter's automatic disdain for all things televised. Back in my newspaper days, I was friends with some of the guys from the local TV station (the only people we felt we could safely make fun of as we wrote our groundbreaking exposes about baby pageants and the like). One even risked his fledgling broadcast career by showing up in drag to a Halloween party we threw. But still -- the ground has been covered with snow since basically the end of November here, and there's been other pressing news of late. Does this mean when it finally melts, I'll have to watch camera crews film people rushing to hoard flower bulbs and garden shears?