A chronicle of 2 friends (christians), and some spiders Snowmen.

The Place, Was Solon.
The Year, was 2002(A.D.)

Sunday, 5 January, 2002: Now sometimes, especially if I'm of the thought that Luke and I are both in the same town at the same time, I'll try and give a ring to see if he feels up to doing something wacky, interesting, or mundane. Invariably, he's not there at the time of the call, and usually it's because he's gone off to do something wacky, interesting, or mundane with Macks. The clever bit here is that at least half the time, they're out doing the task I had in mind with the call.

Monday, 6 January, 2002: School was back in session on this very day, lessening the chances that Max had spirited Luke off once again, so I appeared on his doorstep, and found, at last, why Luke kept going on about my lack of a lunchbox during phone conversations:

BADTZ-MARU!

Yes, a Badtz-Maru Lunchbox. This generosity left me curious, even moreso when I saw Luken's pile of new Badtz-Loot. At the time I gave a Border's Gift Card with a curious sum remaining to him in exchange, and later I found that his mother had in fact been the buyer of Maru-Merchandise.

At some point, we actually made way for the Great Snowy Outdoors, and a chorus or three of the Mooby theme later, we arrived at Stop Number One!

The story picks up at Feathery (Energy) Jon's house, where Luke ate some snow, and we found that the snow of the day did not in fact lend itself in anyway to being made into balls, let alone men. Then Luke ate some snow. We did manage to cobble together a very small snowman, about 8" tall. Then Luke ate some snow. No wonder the kid's always ill. He tried to take some pictures of it, which you might see scattered around these words. Nothing else done here was successful, so we left the little snowman (standing I might add), and Luke ate some more snow as we took off for...

Stop Number Two! Mooby was replaced by They Might Be Giants' "No one knows my plan" for traveling music, as we then traveled to the summer home of the mighty (?) David Marmot. Due to bad planning, carelessness, and maybe a missing landmark, some bad physics, uninhibited - or at least improperly inhibited - daydreaming, or booze, his house did manage to elude us, and we instead toured the great Ohio tundra to the migratory home of the less-elusive Darius Monkey.

Now I was instructed to present this as a tale of intrigue, with suspense and all, but come on, only a few minutes had really passed here...the snow was still no good for packing or much of anything else, although we did have a preliminary encounter with plow rocks and big piles of snow. Can't say there's much to explain here, Luke ran to the top of the hill, fell off backwards, and repeated. Sometimes I pushed him. At least here he ate less snow. Regard!

So, what does this page of snowy nonsense have to do with the other page of snowy nonsense? I'm glad you asked, and I'll tell you why: Panama, by Van Halen, did NOT replace the previous bit of travelling music on the way to...

Stop Number Three: The decision came down to see what happened of the laboriously created snowman of the day before. We put the car in a parking space, and proceeded on to the cement platform that a snowman once called home: Nothing. Gone. Probably plowed away before the kids even got to school.

Luke gestured at the space his old snowy pal occupied, and not paying attention, something caught my eye in the big pile of plowed snow:

From this point, the actions that would follow were inevitable: We began picking up plow rocks and clumps of snow from the stack against this brick wall, carrying them to the far end of the platform, and building a snowman. Understand that the average time found to be necessary in placing a snowman here is 4 work-hours. This was enlivened by a gaggle of sports-types standing around wishing for playing cards, my being said "Hi." to by a number of girls too tall to be named Doreen, and the previously mentioned gaggle daring and challenging each other to go ruin the snow-pile we were making. The biggest difficulty in this is that it was just a big pile of shapeless snow; that is, kicking it in would not result in any change in appearance.

Eventually, one little hood ("It") was promised half a candy bar to go over and kick it. It asked permission repeatedly before doing anything. Luke told 'em that It could indeed kick it, since there were no laws or city regulation preventing androgynous creatures from damaging snow art-in-progress. I responded with a question of my own, as to whether It had already tried to kick the 'snowman.' It said "no," and I suggested that the world may never find the answer to It's question. As I made another snow run (we had by now developed a routine in which I would find large, sometimes heavy chunks of snow and carry them a long ways, and Luke would fetch curb slush and small snow deposits to mortar them together) It sat on the pile, compacting and solidifying the base, making it generally more sturdy (small "i," denoting the snowman, as It was already very sturdy.). We thanked It, and It ran away with wet sweatbottoms. Attempts were made twice to take It's picture, not only for the posterity of a project such as this page, but also due to a curiousity: from a distance, listening to them recounting the glorious tale of The Sitting, It sounded decidedly female, and It was dressed completely in sweatthings, with a hood pulled closed to reveal only a bit of face (see illustration)...so what was It? We may never know.

After a good million or so years had passed (roughly equal to an hour) I tired of tracing the same path in the quest for rocks o' snow, so different distant corners of the parking lot were explored. Of course, this required more explanation as to just what the "hooha!" we were doing. A common explanation to passersby involved the necessity of harvesting lots of snow if we're going to have a good snow harvest.

Finally, the blob of snow had reached a sufficient height, and it came time to Form the Head. I did this by wandering as far away as possible, where a plow rock just happened to be sitting in the middle of a big empty space all by its lonesome. After writing creative things in the snow on folks' cars in the parking lot, I brought it over to the snow-creature, atop which it then rested in majestic glory. There was a picture of this, but it is much too blurry and I am barely in frame. I was also eager at the time to place the head, rather than pose with the forty pound plow rock.

All that was necessary now was to gouge some eyes and stuff into the face of the creature, since we lacked coal, rocks, or even, as a last resort, the expensive bottle of ink used the day before. Luke wandered off to steal some small tree limbs from someone's lawn, and unable to jam the fangs into the plow rock, they became feeble moogle-wings. Luke says it looks like a dragon. Finally, I got the sign used the day before, and affixed it to the snowman, and arms were adjusted to match. Here are some pictures of just such an event. Mouseover for alternate angles.

Just then, when we thought it was all over, and I took the picture directly above of Luke with the snowman, I was warned that his mother was RIGHT BEHIND ME!

It was then that we were informed by some kind of higher power that what we had done was indeed good, and worth our effort. How did we know this? Luke's mommy bestowed upon us a sandwich that was intended for Nigel, Luke's brother. We returned to the comparative safety of my white chevy rectangle to eat the sandwich, then to the greater safety of Luke's home, where we watched Invader Zim, ate Tacos, and talked through a screening of Willow. And so the day ended, with Luke and I well-fed and confident that while more people would see our work than saw the previous snowman, it would still be gone by morning.

By the way, as literary convention would have it, this story has an epilogue. Are you curious about the epilogue? Would you like to read the epilogue? Would you? Well then,

The Epilogue: By Luke Meeken, again You may be asking yourself: "Well, that was a quaint story about some snowmen." Or you may be asking yourself, "Where can I find a doctor to stitch this up?!" In either case, you yearn for closure. What fate did befall snowman Mk.1? Well, prior to the aforementioned blabbing thru Willow I received a phone call from comrade Max detailing his discovery of the snowman's death and its cause. He, like us, saw the sign by the wayside, and presumed the snowman's death came from wanton plowing of the school sidewalk. This was not the case. Treachery was afoot. Deeply shaken, in his afternoon Calculus class, when illustrious educator D^2 asked if the class had any questions, Max posed the enigmatic quandary "When snowmen die, do they go to snowman heaven?" The question itself wasn't answered sufficiently, receiving only a blank stare from the prof, however, it sparked an outburst that resulted in surprising discovery. "!!!0H, Y34H!!! D1DJ00 H33R? 50M3 1DJ1T5 BU1LT 4 5N0WM4|\|!! MY FR13|\|D R4N 1T 0V3R W1TH H15 HUMM3R!!!!" said the L33T LUMM0X seated behind Max. Some fevered interrogation revealed the name of the perpetrator, which won't be divulged because making specific personal threats on the internet gives the government the right to break down your closet doors and formally castrate you with a USDA five iron. We'll call him Par Joynersh, as it sounds alien, mystical, and evil. Max began, and is currently planning revenge. Initally, he was going to go all out, putting scary messages into the morning high school announcements, and pasting Par's locker with threatening signs. Under the sage advice of communications teacher D.B. (earned by bartering an illicit copy of the fabled Tunak Tunak video), he's instead taken a more subtle route, choosing to wait a few months, then start randomly placing pictures of the snowman with 'I KNOW WHAT YUO DID' scrawled on in red pen on Par's locker, desks, and other places he'll frequent. This will let Par be certain that he is dealing with a mental case (in reality, three mental cases, but he doesn't have to know that just yet).

Tuesday, 7 January, 2002:I went to the high school at night, and given that 4 hrs of work for a snowman bit, after scouring the snow drift for the sign, I took it home and put it in the garage instead.

I like to think that that punk came by again to hit our snowman with his car, what with the big ice-rock on top. Maybe it coulda dented or scratched something.