Breakdancing and canned tuna

It’s snowing here in Pittsburgh, the big fat kind that they always fear (because they do not understand). The white menace coats their hills, clogs their gas tanks, locks their doors, cancels their schools. It is snow now FREAK OUT

It doesn’t impact me much except for the fact I walk two miles every day, a mile up to work and a mile back, weekdays only, without fail in the storm shine ice and now snow. I don’t even mind the particulate so much as I dislike the temperature and wind; though my life in Iowa was gravely more frigid I have become a Mid-Atlantic pansy, convinced eighty-five degree summer days and fifteen degree winter walks home are anything worthy of note. At least on Thursday night it will purportedly be negative four, a temperature I can feel legitimately annoyed with.

All of this winter hullabaloo has managed to whip the natives into a frenzy, especially when combined with their football team’s recent successes in the playoffs. They stand with three sucky teams atop the heap of discarded ones (my beloved thoroughly heaped), bringing joy and pride to all Pittsburghers. They even decorated a Steelers tree! People will joke that here in Pittsburgh they are called “Stillers,” because people here can neither think nor speak. They are at least half-correct in most situations.

In other news, I watched the film Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo in its entirety on television the other day, the first time I had done so despite using it as a punchline on hundreds of occasions. It is difficult for me to eloquently put the film into a few words, but I will say this: at one point during the film a character manages to breakdance so hard he literally travels up the walls and around the ceiling of the interior of his house. Sure, I’ll leave it at that.

Also, I have come to know that there is no economy in inexpensive canned tuna, but it was a dire process. It was difficult for my bargain-focused mind to accept the fact that the cheapest might not be the best, but this comes down to tuna bits as compared to solid chunk tuna, and I have finally made the mental switch. So long, Valu-Time Chunk Light Tuna in Water. Your slurry-like presence is a thing of my past, my horrible horrible past.

Sincerely,

Brandon