Cold weather, so we scan and back up. Sit in the warm office and do rote work. Watch Hoarders with one eye, waiting for the inevitable drama when Ned just can’t throw away half a hot plate covered in rat crap. Every single one is the same, more or less - as Day 3 starts, Edna is still balking at parting with her 437 plastic bags of clown heads in the garage, and Doctor Z is wondering if they’ll get done, and Matt’s had it, and then there’s a breakthrough, and eight hours later everything is gone and the house has been restored to pristine condition. Roll credits. Hoarder talks about how things are better. Post-credit note about how Edna is taking advantage of after-care, but has also filed the interior walls of the house with plastic swizzle sticks she bought at the Goodwill. Every single one.

I am a digital hoarder, but that has no ill effect on anyone. Adult Protective Services is not going to come by because I hoovered up some 1970s rock magazines from archive.org. I can navigate my hard drives without worrying that one folder is going to tip over and bury me in recordings from the 1920s. I have one closet of Stuff, and I add to it sparingly. For example: I bought a bottle of Shinola, but only because it was two dollars, and I was amused to own actual Shinola. I can do without it. I can do without most of it.

But the digital stuff . . . you’re only three hard-drive failures away from losing everything.

But of course I went to work. I took a different walk, because I thought it would shield me against the wind, so it wouldn’t feel like 21 below. Just four. It did not work. I go through this every year, and it has to be a metaphor for something in life. When leaving, sometimes I think “it’s too damned cold” so I take the long way through the skyway, even though I suspect it means a longer time outside. Even though I know it means a longer time. I vow to get out the google maps and chart it and prove it one way or the other.

Okay, let's do it

		This is the normal route. Blue is the time spent outside.
		The route that trades current comfort for later pain. You can see how I struggle with this.

Saturday had some interesting idiocy: a local crime twitter feed decided that I was a gaslighting writer for a bird-cage-liner paper, because of the headline on a piece I wrote about the skyways. The headline, which is all anyone in the comments apparently read, made it seem as if I was blaming the empty streets of Minneapolis on the skyway, whereas I was critiquing the mindset of the people who want to get rid of skyways, or at least stop building them, in hopes that street-level retail will return. My point was that it will not. That horse left the barn long ago, ran itself to the point of exhaustion, died, was dragged to the rendering plant, and has been sitting on a shelf in glue form for 20 years.

I DMd the author of the tweet that the headline may have mischaracterized the piece, and I was in fact a follower of the account and appreciated a lot of what she did. Got a reply that was aggressively defensive or vice-versa and said I was gaslighting. Meanwhile, in the tweet replies, someone pulled our a 1997 Backfence ill from the paper to say “are you surprised he looks like this” because apparently if you’re relaxed and smiling and wearing civilian clothes, and not clad in RETVRN armor or something, you’re a beta libtard.

I don’t think one of the accounts, including the original poster, used their own name. I’m sure they remain anonymous because they don’t want RETRIBUTION for speaking truth on the internet.

It’s 1934.

They could do pictures. They just didn’t want to.

Have you payed your poll tax?

		“Injured somewhat.” Also, “Carter negro.”
		On the same page.

		I’ve absolutely no idea why they felt compelled to print the names of people who were getting pensions. Was this state aid, and if so, was this a matter of necessary disclosure?

		Knee-slappers.

		The title sums it up; the copy . . . well. Not exactly riveting. If it’s this guy, he’d be pushing 70 when this ran.

Pig and Corn, walking hand in hand to the inevitable machinery that converts them to food

I wonder what the percentage would look like today. Ah: increasingly used for fuel.

		Okay thanks for checking in

		I’m not going to begin to pick up the ten-foot-pole around this one.

		Okay thanks for the tip I’ll keep it in mind

		It was not, in fact, what they just needed.

I wonder if people read every word, because it was the only news of the town they'd get.

Printed, that is.

That'll do! See you hither / yon.