From Jones Upon a Time

Max loathed the winter. The cold. The darkness. The fucking snow. Everything about the winter. Everything except the sweaters. He did like those. He was especially happy that argyle was making a much overdue comeback.

The linear nature of pseudo-Scot pattern appealed to him. It looked like someone had messed with the diagonal hold on a Mondrian painting.

But as he absently stroked the acrylic blend, his attention turned to some of the trees in his yard. Little wads of snow perched on the slightly upturned branches, giving them the appearance of Seussian poodles. It wasn’t an attractive look. “Green is definitely your color,” he thought.

As he stared at the grey and white outside his window, he became vaguely aware of the so-called meteorologist yammering about accumulations and wind chill. This guy had been on this particular TV station for as long as Max could remember.

“What do they do,” he muttered, “give these idiots a franchise tag? And for what? Being right 43.28% of the time.”

This day was really cold. Like The-Home-Depot-was-going-to-have-a-run-on-brass-monkeys cold.

His pappy would’ve described the day like this: “It’s colder than a well digger’s ass in the Yukon.” What the phrase lacked in accuracy, it made up for in folksy charm. But Max couldn’t help thinking about that well digger’s ass and it made him vaguely uncomfortable.

He heard his soup boiling on the stove. It was going to be a long goddam winter.