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| December 31, 2012: New Year's Eve Stop-Action Ice Art |
The thing about our Family Holiday that struck me deeply
this Christmas season – the thing many families were equally touched and awed
by – was the epidemic of killer icicles that broke out Friday through New
Year’s Eve.
Rogue, mutant icicles were apparently super-sized by temperature-fluctuations so vast, one minute our roofline burst forth with waterfalls and song, and the next, arctic gusts transformed them into
stop-action ice art.
(These arctic gusts were similar to those Kurt Russell spat
into in his arctic movie, The Thing,
where airborne spittle got so brittle, it shattered in loud shards upon
impact with tundra.)
By yesterday morning, every overhang on our house was
adorned with morphing, stop-action ice spikes in various stages of birth and
death. It was like living inside The
Science Channel. Or the movie Inception, down in a Limbo Layer where twenty-four
hours pass as slowly as one thousand years.
We were so busy from 10 PM on December 27th until
roughly 59 hours later, working a variety of moments that morphed from protracted
warmth to frozen stop-action, it was stunning to ride the layers back up to
real-time last evening when I came face-to-spike with a Death-cicle at
midnight.
It was dizzying. Although, it was difficult to discern from whence my vertigo
derived, after a day of a different stop-action, caused by the car we were stunt-driving through Boston in. (I think in a “cloverleaf” pattern.)
The TomTom GPS we borrowed instructed us to “Turn
around … as SOON … as possible.
Turn around … as SOON … as possible . . .” until all five of us were
vomiting and my son proposed to his girlfriend so we could stop and visit wedding-reception venues that did not spin on their own.
Five of us ventured into the city. Only three would return. (Our two missing passengers kept the TomTom with them to ensure their return to Canada. Or Guam. We'll see.)
So there the remaining three of us were at midnight last night, so bereft of a
TomTom, we had no idea how to get from the parked car to our front door without
guidance. We clung to each other,
disoriented from lack of direction, lurching like a six-legged epileptic
ant, clawing at the door-handle with our thirty grappling-fingers.
“Finally,” I sighed through clenched teeth, arms wrapped
around decorative woodwork surrounding a load-bearing column. "We're safe." Which is when a killer icicle I’d not previously appreciated
for its beauty or lethality snapped off the entry's overhang and slid neatly
down my back.
What this season lacked in temporal-accuracy, it made up for
in icicle carnage.
The icicle I eventually retrieved from the base of my spine -- trapped by new Christmas leggings -- was the kind that only houses on Neptune can
grow: Sabertooth Dagger Prong Dart-Shards From Space.
Today they are affixed like jaws of death to every possible
form of egress, making entry and exit to our home impossible without chainmail
and a Spartan Helmet.
This morning I learned that these sentry’d stalactites are
identical to those encountered by Samus Aran in Super Metroids, Level Four,
Land of Norfaire, Planet Zebes.
You remember the story.
Samus had just made her way to the research facility, only
to find the building in ruins and the Metroid Larva nowhere to be found, when
out of darkness came a group of Zebesian Space Pirates and their leader Ridley with
Metroid Larva in tow, who – upon this chance encounter with Samus –fled swiftly
to the rebuilt planet Zebes where Samus followed, resolving to finish them off
and save the hatchling.
Our icicles were of the same treacherous strain Samus could
only defeat with a Grappling Spazer, two Morphing Balls and Brinstar Spore
Spawn.
Plus they far transcended the official icicle definition
rendered by the World Home-Book of Cold. “Icicle: frozen ex-water drippage that transforms barren architectural
awnings into delicate crystalline fringe.” -- See Doily, Vol.
6; Pg. 32
This hardly depicts the weaponry severing scalps outside my
slider.
My 22 year old just snapped one off an awning outside her
bedroom window.
She used a pulley system and a lasso.
She is now outside transporting it via snowshoes and electric
toboggan to bury it in snow to keep it cold for tonight’s Anime New Year’s Eve
Costume Party.
It is seven feet long and was snapped off midway between its
dagger-tip and awning attachment-point. Even at this halfway mark, its severed trunk measures two
feet in diameter. More than a half
dozen little neighbor boys are asking her now if they can come over later to
base-jump it.
She is explaining to them how she needs to keep it intact,
so she can whomp it through gin-entranced guests this evening announcing, “Behold,
I am Samus Aran. I bring you Isis, chopped by hatchet for our Brinstar Spawn-tinis. All Hail Isis.”
Speaking of entranced, those little boys look positively
enchanted out there now.
Hmm.
Uh-oh.
It looks like Abby is dragging out plastic mailing-wrap from
the Christmas trash.
Oh, will you look at that?
She is rolling
the boys in bubble wrap. They look
like blistered dwarves.
Hang on.
[ABBY! Stop that.
You’re Samus Aran, not Snow White And The Seven Burn Victims.]
Wait. I get it. She is dressing them up like Metroid
Larva so they can transport Isis to the party, much in the way that Cleopatra was
transported by Egyptian Elves.
[SLAVES, Mom, not Elves.]
I am not liking the way these icicles are shaping our New
Year’s Eve. Excuse me while I venture out with protective fruit cake
over my head to round up a girl posse and their Totally-Hair Barbies so we can
Blow Dry this town’s awnings back to safety.
Actually, if we dress up the blow dryers like little
Grappling Spazers and Morphing Balls, I bet we can turn Abby’s Metroid Larva
against her and make them our elven minions.
[Let that be a lesson
to you, Samus Aran. ZZZZAP!! KerPLOW!! ZOINK!
HAZZZAAAH!---]
-- ring --
"Hello? We were just talking about you. Did you guys make it back to Canada even close to on time AND on the right continent hey? Mmm hmm. I see, well great. Happy New Year's Eve back and we'll talk on the New Year tomorrow!"
They made it back to Canada early due to the metric time up there. (Also because the TomTom was confiscated at Customs.) And since ice does not stick to Toronto, they have no killer icicles up there, so I have to hurry up and post this, along with a photograph, so my family in Canada can know what's going on.
Happy New Year to All, and don't forget to take your morphing balls and blow your awnings for safety.
Love, Carolyn
I love this!
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