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weather underground
By briantologist | June 23, 2007
NOTE: In lieu of The Post Where I Apologize For Not Posting And Explain Why I Haven’t Been Posting, I’m just gonna skip right to the part where I get off my ass and start posting again. If you really wanna know, e-mail and I’ll explain, but, as the answer is basically “Eh, no real reason,” I guarantee you won’t want to hear it.
On 6/21/07, Scott S. wrote:
… NAPLES. Jesus, that’s south of the Line I Will Not Cross. I really hate South Florida. I’m guessing that Tulsa may be somewhat like the Southeast, in that every stranger you meet is overly nice (read: fake), and the further north you move (Chicago, perhaps), the more “real” people act. Do you find that? I found it utterly refreshing to live in the Northeast for a few years and NOT have people candycoat shit for me. I felt really at home in my misanthropy. Anyway, the point is, as fake as people are here, there’s an overarching aura of “fake” in South Florida. I’ve only been to Ft. Lauderdale and Miami once, and if I ever go again, it will be too soon.
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I have this theory that the amount of fake-friendly horse shit a person is capable of producing varies according to how cold the winters are where this person grew up or lives. For example: Thuh Deep South is, as you well know, rife with sugar-coated venom, and hardly has winter in most places. Oklahoma, too, serves up a hearty helping of fake friendliness, but its people don’t lay it on quite as thick; meanwhile, Oklahoma winters can be surprisingly harsh. Obviously the northeast is cornholed yearly by vicious Atlantic forces, and most of its residents are so forthcoming as to quite often be miserable sons of bitches. Perhaps I’m biased, and by that I mean obviously I’m biased, but I’ve been pleased as punch with the delightful balance Chicagoans strike between friendliness and not-fucking-aroundliness. Like, people are legitimately nice here, in most cases, and most don’t seem to see it as a sign of weakness to demonstrate niceness to their fellow citizens. But if you’re pissing them off, they’ll tell you you’re pissing them off.
This throws a minor wrench into my theories about cold weather v. sugar-coated horse shit, as Chicago’s winters are generally accepted as being harsher than New York’s (while the former’s people are friendlier than the latter’s). I can partly explain this away by positing that the bitterness caused by winter is offset by two things: A) the fact that most people here are either immigrants or born midwesterners, and are thus either kind of relieved to be here or are taught from a young age to be polite, and can’t entirely break the habit; and B) the fact that the summers here are fucking awesome, not just because the weather’s nice (but no too horrifically hot), but because every summer takes place right after a winter that is quite obviously a deliberate attempt by powerful forces to kill every man, woman and child in the vicinity. What’s not to celebrate when you’ve cheated death for yet another year?
An interesting sort of parallel group in this discussion is non-Chicagoan midwesterners — say, Minnesotans, Iowans or Dakotans, North or South — who seem to be known for a sort of taciturn affability, and certainly for being less direct than the borderline hostility that the northeast seems to have become known for. I haven’t spent a lot of time in Minnesota or Wisconsin, so I can’t say for sure, but if I had to speculate, I’d say their (perceived) lack of aggression toward their fellow man is actually a result of experiencing the very harshest winters our nation has to offer year after year after year — far, far worse than Chicago experiences. I would speculate that when you know you’re staring down the barrel of temperatures and precipitation that are that potentially fatal, you get the sense that you’ve got other stuff to do than pick apart those who are irritating you, if nothing else because there’s a good chance they’ll end up freezing solid on their way home from the convenience store some night.
Wow. That’s the most I’ve written about anything in a very long time. I think I might post this, if you don’t mind me capitalizing on an e-mail originally intended for you.
Topics: Thinkin'. | 10 Comments »
June 24th, 2007 at 10:38 am
I wonder how Arizona factors in.
June 25th, 2007 at 6:42 am
Erin: Didn’t Hispanic girls beat you up every day when you started school there? I think that classifies as very upfront and honest.
June 25th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Dude, Scott makes an excellent point. Repeated ass-whuppings might very well qualify as brutal honesty. If you’ll pardon the expression. And actually, that might serve as a sort of counterpoint to the often brutal cold of the Northeast: The brain-melting heat of the desert Southwest might drive a person to forgo pleasantries, like not beating people.
June 25th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Hmmm. True. I had repressed that. Point taken.
June 25th, 2007 at 10:40 am
I have always assumed that in the SW, your body temperature rises too much to justify getting pissed off at people very much. In the NE, sometimes your rage is the only thing you have to keep you warm.
June 25th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
No, no, no. You’re all missing it entirely. The amount of fake nice/hostility is directly related to HUMIDITY. This is how we explain Arizona. In high humidity areas, you’ve got the mindset of “I’m gonna show you what’s what…except I’d have to get up. Then I’d get sweaty and stay that way. Then I’d stink. I’d have to take another bath today, and…aw, fuck it.” Meanwhile, we have the winter warmth factor mentioned above AND the fact that throwing down in the DRY heat makes you sweat, which is just God’s little air conditioner. It’s awfully hard to tell someone off whilst breathing soup.
June 26th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
So happy for the new post! As a New Englander I completely agree that looking at the prospect of winter and then surviving it creates a “wow, we all survived” thing. People around here tend to get sad and wierd in winter instead of angry … (OK, me) … so glad for sunshine, humidity, whatever.
Post more I beg of both of thee. How is Henry?
June 26th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
All I know is that I’ve lived south of the mason-dixon line my whole life, and I intend to keep it that way. Cold weather makes me want to stab people. Maybe that’s why so many Yankees are ornery. Oh, wait, was that your point? Anyway, I don’t mind the humidity at all, it’s the heat that kills ya.
June 27th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
As a recovering Minnesotan, I think you’re right about the affability and having the polite drilled into you at a young age. The subtlety you may be missing as an outsider is the that the lack of overt hostililty you note plus the long, cold, dark winter often breeds a paralyzing angst so deep in your soul that no aggression toward your fellow man can cut through. Add to this the Scandinavian way of never wanting to offend anyone and generally perceiving yourself to be at fault somehow for most anything that goes wrong and you’ve got the perfect recipie for long alcohol soaked nights, punk rock, and binges of delicious, delicious fatty and carbo loaded foods that wring any remaining potential to act out aggressively right out of you.
While it sounds sad, its also sort of comforting and I miss it now that I’m out East. The summers are also just fucking amazing by comparison.
June 30th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
As far as being nice aka fake, the Canadians have it down to an art.
I work with a Canadian currently & she will smile & stab you in the back then apologize right after. It fucks with me EVERY DAY. So this shit about it being colder & people not being nice/fake is not true. Canadians have perfected what Southerners wish they had.