Ephemera/ What I'm reading these days

The last time I saw this much bullshit about snow was when I was in Corpus Christi, TX like 10 years ago and they had their first ever White Christmas. At least they had an excuse to be excited. They're on the goddam Mexican border. We're in the northeast US, at the northern limits of the temperate zone in our hemisphere. It snows. Fuck, get over it.

To our friends in the media: please go eat a dick. Someone's got to, and it's absolutely going to be you. 

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On board, we've tidied up the deck extra nice-nice here at HAWSEPIPER's global HQ/ hot dog stand, and tried to find as many places to hang lines and gear that we could. Many hings normally coiled, stacked or stored on deck or on pallets on deck have found a new home, and revealed the wonderous treasures of mother nature when moved, like when you move a rock in the backyard. Dead bugs, 1/2 a dead bird, an empty pack of smokes, stuff like that. Just lovely. We're as ready as can be, anyhow. Looks like we'll get about a foot of snow, which is a pain because shoveling on a boat is not much fun. There are conduits, pipes and deck fittings EVERYWHERE, and nothing makes your back sing like an overtightened rubber band like the feeling of a shovel coming to an abrupt stop mid-thrust when you're trying to scoop up 50lbs of wet snow.
 In the meanwhile, Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife is supremely uninterested in the fact that she's about to get snowed it. Either she's suddenly found new inspiration in Stoicism, or she has no idea of the inconvenience she's about to get in having 2 feet of snow between her and the local hair salon or whoever the hell does her nails and waxes and such. Either way, I think she's in for a shock. My kid's already as happy as can be. They preemptively cancelled school tomorrow. I can't remember them ever doing that when I was a kid.
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 One of the best things you can do if you're stuck in a big metal floating pickle barrel is to enjoy 'repurposed' classic comic strips that no one ever liked, ever. Dysfunctional Family Circus is worth checking out. Finally, after 50 years, Bill Keane's work made someone laugh.

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 What I'm reading these days:

    Dan Simmons is a genre-hopping author who has dabbled in drama, horror, fantasy and Sci-Fi. The guy's done it all. He's fucking brilliant.

 Illium and Olympos are wonderful books. I've tried twice here to write a synopsis of them, but it reads like an insane rant- like something James Joyce would write while he was enjoying his insanity brought about by having terminal syphilis.   At any rate, the story involves the Trojan War, cloning, Homer's The Iliad and some of the chief cast from Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Oh, and there are self-evolving robots who are far more human than most humans in the books.
 Overall, I give these two books an enthusiastic "Wicked Good " rating.