Withering Glance: Hideaway or not, we fight cabin fever

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

RN: I think I've developed an unsightly heat rash from this nasty outbreak of cabin fever.

CP: For me, cabin fever is not an issue. I'm less get-up-and-go, more lie-down-and-read. And if you don't like to read away those wintry hours, you can muse. We don't muse enough.

RN: Yeah, right. I'd like to muse my sorry self all the way to Puerto Vallarta.

CP: Then I suggest you put on your Snuggie, curl up on the sofa with a margarita and watch the "The Night of the Iguana." It's set in that picturesque seaside resort, with Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Richard Burton as a defrocked priest. As for actually going there? I have heard it's overrun by the gay crowd these days.

RN: And your point is? Sounds like paradise to me, baby. Better than another shut-in weekend watching a "Damages" marathon and carb-loading on cookie dough.

CP: And your point would be? The weekend you describe sounds perf. Chase those cookies with ice-cold half-and-half. Then, when the hour grows late, pull out the hooch and keep viewing. The Lord actually invented winter for "The Wire" and Leo Tolstoy. I think She also meant for us to stare into the middle distance, sometimes for hours.

CP: I think you misread that Google map. In Phillips, we are all about "Scarface" and "8 Mile." Getting back to cabin fever, the long, frigid nights that are shutting you in are also enabling you to ignore, guilt-free, weeding and grass-cutting.

RN: I know my cabin-fevered self should be visiting the conservatory at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, speed-walking at Brookdale or some other anti-winter-doldrums activity. Yet all I want to do is sit in the dark and consume whole cans of Betty Crocker canned frosting. Could you please pass that spoon?

CP: Let's not even go to the junk-food place where I found myself over a very long, snowed-in Christmas weekend. It's not pretty what an electric blanket can do to a half-eaten, 14-inch Byerly's cheesecake.

RN: I bet it was more along the lines of a seven-eighths-eaten cheesecake. Here's my deep thought for the day: Can a person become afflicted with cabin fever if said individual isn't in possession of a cabin?

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com.