2003-03-18 - 11:14 p.m.

Ice cream holocaust

Okay, last week it was snowing, this week it's too warm to wear a jacket outside. April may be the cruelest month, but March is pretty screwed up too.

Oh wait, I forgot. Only boring people talk about the weather.

I was driving around on Monday, the first really warm day. The nice weather brought people swarming out of their houses like cockroaches. This added an element of excitement to driving - people seemed not to be paying close attention to where they were going, stunned by the sudden warmth.

There was also another summer-like sign - kids wandering around the neighborhood with ice cream cones bought at the local convenience store. The sidewalk for blocks around is speckled with dripped and dropped ice cream. Every so often one sees a sad sight - an entire dropped cone. I see these lumps of melting ice cream and think: somewhere a child is crying.

Speaking of which, there is a HUGE pile of ice cream melting on the sidewalk in front of the store, as if someone dropped four or five cones at once. What's up with that? It's like a dropped-ice cream holocaust.