latter day ice pickers

its 12:23 AM and there is a guy outside shoveling his sidewalk. his shovel is striking the concrete to the rhythm of a somewhat familiar motown tune. i would normally find this quite annoying, but since im not trying to sleep its not keeping me awake. and it gives me something with which i can begin this blog. earlier tonight i decided that i should do a bit of shoveling myself. i havent moved my car in about a week's time, so it was thoroughly entrenched in snow and ice. everyone here in the neighborhood owns fancy ice scrapers to clear off their cars. i, on the other hand, was forced to use an old pizza box that i dug out of my trash. the pizza box worked well at first, but it was all over once the cardboard got wet. i was feeling fairly ridiculous...standing out in the street, wearing a corduroy sport coat and dress shoes, trying to shovel snow and ice off my car with a wet pizza box. and in that moment i began to think about how i needed a mormon to come help out. i was a church of the latter day saints commercial waiting to happen. imagine it- innapropriately dressed out-of-towner on the icy street has no idea of what he is doing, angrily smashing a wet, deteriorating pizza box into the white icy crust that has formed around his mid-sized sedan. then cut to a well dressed, well adjusted upper middle class family enjoying a warm family discussion in the kitchen over cups of hot cocoa overflowing with marshmellows. dad looks out the window and sees the clueless, helpless out-of-towner. he gives a knowing look to mom, nods at his kids, kids nod back. he puts on his sweater and coat. the next scene shows dad helping me out with his handy-dandy ice pick car shovel thingy with a voice over telling you how jesus visited the native americans and how you can get a free copy of the book of mormon along with a king james version of the bible.

there is a mormon center for mind control, er, "church" a few blocks over from my apt. ive not once seen a single soul come in or out of the place, much less help me or anybody else with their snow shoveling. and i figure that if there is a church within 2 blocks, then somebody around here belongs to it and probably saw me struggling with my pizza box and neglected their latter day saint duties by chosing to stay inside with their 18 children and hot cocoa.

latter day bastards.