Go ahead, tell me this hasn't happened to you:
You had to run a late-night errand because you were perilously close to running out of milk, and heaven forbid a day should pass when the house doesn't have a jug of bovine lactation. CNN says, "The Banking System Is Now in Total Collapse" and you think, well, better hit the ATM on the way to work tomorrow, but someone says, "We're out of milk" and you're shrugging on your coat.
So you drive to the store shivering and muttering dark oaths, because it is 37 below. You pull a wobbly bladder of 2% from the cooler, when it hits you: What's Whole, anyway? What if it's 3%? Now there's also 1%; if you add two cups of 2%, is it 5%? No, it would drop to 1.65% or something. If we call the full-fat milk Whole, then shouldn't 2% be labeled Incomplete?
You keep this up, not wanting to go back outside. But eventually you go. The milk freezes between the store and the car. When you push the cart into the corral it shatters. Your feet are insensate chunks of meat. When the car finally provides some heat, you turn it all the way up to the SATAN'S NAPALM setting and point the vents at your face, not particularly caring if your mug melts like Nazis in the "Indiana Jones" movie. In fact, that sounds rather pleasant.
The next morning everyone else has a bagel and juice for breakfast.
After you finish your Raisin Bran — darn right you had cereal — you get in the car, whose temperature is consistent with the dark side of the Moon. You turn the key and GAAAAHHHHHH the blower IS ON: a firehouse of Freon full in the face. Your eyebrows are flash-frozen, they snap off and patter into your lap.
There has to be a name for that. Something cruel and German that lacerates you for your stupidity. Wincenblasten. Shriekenblower. Coldendunce.
I'm going with winterinminn.
jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858
