Infinite Universe: January 2nd, 2009 - Come on everybody, get Happy!

Trudging across the tundra of the Pog Dark earlier today, had me feeling glad I brought a scarf. My "barn coat" is great except for the small shortcoming of not having a high throat collar.

It's got a thick hood, it's long enough to keep my butt warm, it's cut spaciously enough to wave my arms around, BUT a vortex of superchilled air always seems to be working around the throat area. I'm generally not a fan of scarves, but I am a fan of practicality. And now I've got the Space Plague that has been going around, so I'm in superbundle mode.

This reminds me of an image that has been stuck in my subconscious accumulator for the past week or so. When Sharon and I were walking the dog on Christmas Day up in Ashland, the storm had just rolled through and all the trees, roofs, and any available flat or slanted surface was covered with eight to ten inches of snow.

As we walked up the alley towards my mom's house, I caught the vague shuffling of a thickly clad humanoid form emerging from their backdoor. They had on one of those infinitely black, quilted down, full-length trenchcoat style parkas, with the hood drawn so no features showed themselves.

Out they came from through backdoor of an ancient white house, carrying an implement with a extremely long handle that just kept coming and coming and coming out the door, until the T-shaped head finally emerged and I recognized it as a snow rake. They crouched down and swiveled the tool to get some leverage, cold and slow like a Samurai, and I reeled as my mind saw before me what could only be the shocking silhouette of :

THE GRIM REAPER, with a roof rake.
No scythe for the Reaper in Northern Wisconsin. It's the glint of a 12ft. aluminum roof rake, the faceless void and the bones creaking inside an overstuffed parka of doom that send the already shuddering penitents to their icy eternity. Harrowing.