My car is a Ford, so I'm Snowbound.

Santa Claus gave me video games for Christmas.

There's a snowstorm outside. My car is a Ford, so I'm trapped inside.

Snowbound.

There's nothing left to do but play video games. And play video games. By the time the snow melts, my mind will be warped beyond repair. By February, I'm sure to be a drug addicted, foam spitting, cop killing sociopath. All because of Dino Crisis 2 and Resident Evil: Survivor.

***

I planned to visit friends over the holiday. Greenland changed that. A big swirly-thing of high pressure is pushing the Jet Stream down into Mexico. This, in turn, pulls arctic air down from the pole, and drops it right into the heart of the United States. There's freezing rain in Texas, ten-foot snow in Iowa, and, in New Orleans, Poppy Brite and her vampires are freezing their asses off. 40 degrees is considered a chill, after all.

Fucking Greenland. We should have let the Vikings keep it.

***

I planned to visit friends over the holiday season.

One of them is "engaged." That's how we all say it, all of us in my little group. "Engaged." We'd use air quotes, but that would hurt people's feelings, now wooden't it?

For a long time, my friend would cross her fingers and mutter, "I hope he asks me over Christmas."

I'd try to stare at something. Anything. I am many things, but I'm not good at hiding my emotions. My eyes and my face all commit treason on a regular basis, the godless, pinko commies.

So I would look at something. Anything, really. The fly on the wall. The scribbling that fly is crawling over. Hell, even a picture of George W. Bush our psychology professor insisted upon hanging at the front of the class. Our court-appointed president stares down on us from the bulletin board, his gap-toothed, "Gee ga'wash, I'm from Texas," grin mocking us. If he were surrounded in brass and wood instead of red, white and blue trim, he'd look like a hunting trophy.

Gee, Mr. Psych Prof., you done got yerself a Bush. I didn't even know theys was in seeson.

***

My friend would announce what she wanted for Christmas and I would avoid her eyes.

I don't want her to ruin her life, but I know she will.

She's know this man for five months, and now she wants to marry him. They've shared their bodies, and now she wants to marry him. They've shared a bed, and now she wants to marry him. They've even shared controlled substances. And now she wants to marry him.

Marriage is an appendix to my generation. It's something we do because TV tells us constantly that this is what people do when they fall in love. But none of the sitcoms we watched told us what to do during your fall. They only provided a blue print for what to do after. You're in love, you get married. Simple as that. Nothing even as complicated as, "You wait until you have sex before you get married."

You never saw a sitcom about two teenagers dating. You never saw teenagers getting shakes at Sonic. You never saw teenagers necking in movies. You never saw teenagers having rough, hurried, frantic sex in the boy's bedroom while his parents watched TV downstairs.

In those days, you couldn't say "sex" on TV until seven p.m.

***

None of my women friends have waited, and I say, "More power to them." The concept of taking a virgin bride is as outdated as Disco. It's just another custom to make men feel self-important. Yes, this beautiful woman waiting all this time just for your sorry ass to come along before she gave it up. Isn't your head swelling? Aren't both of them?

But none of them have lived, either, and to marry now would be as cataclysmic as swallowing a nuclear fuel rod. Marriage ties you to one person the same way Snidely Whiplash used to tie Nell to a train track in those old Duddly Do Right cartoons.

Not that any of my friends (male or female) realize this. Half their parents are divorced, most of their siblings are in jail, and they stand in awe of me. I have a mommy and a daddy.

***

Things would be better if I had a cold. Or maybe the flu. Even a high fever would do the trick. Anything to warp time and space, make the days go faster. Even some drugs would do me good. Instead, there's nothing to do but stare into my computer screen, or stare out into the white.

Today I began to reread The Shining, mostly to check myself for warning signs. I tried to read Richard Adams's Watership Down, but I'm not in the mood to pet the rabbits, George.

I pet my cat, instead. We hold one way conversations together. I have to move around a lot, otherwise she'll fall asleep and I'll be left with just the voices in my head. They're always communicative, but they don't know when to shut up.

Sometimes, you don't want to hear the truth.

***

Like today.

I don't want to hear that there's another snowstorm heading my way. I don't want to hear that I'll be trapped here by impassable roads for another week. And I certainly don't want to hear the excuses I give myself for not calling my friends.

Half of me is tempted to risk it. Risk the drive to someone's house. Hell, if they aren't home, I'll at least be past my driveway, and that's the only real obstacle between me and freedom.

I'll probably never be able to get back into my driveway again, but …well … opportunity cost.

The last time I made a successful escape I fishtailed. Twice. It’s nowhere near as fun as the action movies make it seem. And I have no desire to live through one of those 180-degree turns Ah-nold does in Last Action Hero.

Always was a big chicken.

***

One of the excuses for not calling (the real hum-dingger) is as follows: "I don’t want to bore my friends."

The assumption is that my life is so boring, so indolent, so mind-numbingly pointless that merely discussing it will send my friends into stupefied comas.

Wanna hear a sick thing? I can even justify this theory.

***

Q: Describe your typical day.

A: I wake up around ten, sometimes later (this morning it was earlier, but nightmares do that to you). I stumble into the kitchen. I drink some coffee, or some tea, or (if I’m feeling really adventurous) some hot chocolate. I watch the snowfall. Today it fell in big, cinematic flakes. Movie-snow, I dubbed it.

Yes, in my spare time I think up new and interesting names for snow. The Eskimos have 40. So far, I’ve got three.

For the next few hours or so, I putter around the house. I watch CNN until I get depressed. I watch MTV until I get a headache. I watch the History Channel until I get sick of Hitler. I finally settle on MTV 2, because it can be background music for the rest of the day.

That rest is spent surfing the web. Real, honest to God surfing, not caring what I find, just following a trail of links as it goes deeper and deeper into the obscure corners of the web. This is how I found Stomp Tokyo, after all.

Then its time to kill something. Thanks to Santa, I have my choice of dinosaurs or zombies.

Afterward, its back to the TV. Or the computer. It doesn’t really matter. Politically Incorrect is always good for a laugh. I eventually fall asleep, out of boredom if nothing else.

Sometimes I dream.

Those aren’t usually good times.

***

So, there it is. My boring, indolent, mind-numbingly pointless day.

Wanna hear a strange thing? My friends feel the same way about their lives.

***

My car is a Ford, so I’m snowbound. And I sit here with nothing to do but play into a stereotype. All us young people are nothing but degenerate slackers who sit around all day playing video games, surfing the web and watching MTV. We all mope constantly and complain about things we can’t change.

Not all of us are like that, of course. Just a few.

My friend is "engaged" to one of them.

***

I spend New Year's Eve watching five channels of celebration. I couldn't stop wondering which of my friends was having the wildest party. Were they stoned off their asses, or just cuddling up with someone in a bed somewhere?

When you're spending New Year's Eve with your TV and your cat, you can make yourself pretty depressed thinking shit like that. Halfway through Marilyn Manson's Traditional Cover song, I got the overwhelming urge to get uproariously drunk.

I fought it, of course.

If I'd given in, I really would be Jack Torrance, and this little hovel of mine really would become the Overlook Hotel, complete with murder/suicide, and Lord knows we can't have that. No. Too many damn movies to review.

***

None of my friends read this site. Only a few of them use email, and those that do rarely check it. And certainly none of them call me. The concept of calling someone just to chat, just to talk, just to "shoot the shit" (as Steve King’s Yankee rednecks say) is completely foreign to them.

Nothing to do except write embarrassing personal articles. So, okay. Here’s another one for your reading pleasure. I have no idea how to end this one. I never do. They just seem to end themselves. I suppose this is how songwriters feel.

Merry [insert holiday here] to all, and to all a blank, white snow day.