I Finally Figured Out How to Express This

Living in Minnesota, you get used to the conversations about weather. I'm not really a big weather follower myself -- I never seek out forecasts, don't watch local news, and am often surprised to discover that it's cold or warm on a particular day. But when someone wants to talk about the weather, which they often do, I try my best to hold up my end of the conversation. "Yes. It is cold. I expect it will continue to get colder until it gets very cold, at which point the earth's annual rotation will begin to gradually bring about a more perpendicular angle between the sun's rays and the surface of our region. Greater average temperatures will then occur, and Minnesotans will then remark that it is getting warm."

The one thing you never get used to, though, is people who aren't from Minnesota dissing our state's weather. Pussy-ass Californians or Texans often come here, experience 50-degree weather, and then say "Ooooh, it's so cold! Brrr ... how can you live here?!?!" Well, I guess we manage it because we have balls. We can withstand a bit of cold weather and not collapse like a bunch of hothouse flowers.

That's not really what I say. I usually then say that I prefer the weather in Minnesota, because you get a change in seasons. I especially enjoy it this time of year, when the season is actually changing pretty rapidly to autumn. Of course, this is a stock response and gets you nowhere. So I searched for a long time for a better way to get across why having seasonal changes is better than long, uninterrupted stretches of climatic niceness.

I finally figured it out. Southern California weather, see, is like watching nothing but "Frasier" every day. It's a fine show, not exactly challenging or ground-breaking, but pleasant enough. But if you had to watch it every single day, wouldn't you get a bit tired of it? Wouldn't you eventually yearn for some piece-of-shit documentary on VH-1 in which third-rate comedians make snarky comments about the greatest Christmas-themed novelty songs of 1983? Wouldn't you ache for an episode of the hot new reality show "Semi-Attractive Morons Hitting Each Other in the Head"?

Cuz that's what weather is like in Minnesota. At least half the year, probably more, is a mix of "According to Jim" reruns and Disney's "The Jonas Brothers Do Their Taxes -- LIVE!" But when those "Frasier" episodes come on in the spring -- man! You appreciate those "Frasier" episodes so much more than you would if it were nothing but "Frasier," all day, every day. And it's not just "Frasier" either -- some nice days are "Seinfeld," some are "The Simpsons" -- I might be taking this a bit far, but you hopefully get the idea. There are so many different types of nice days in Minnesota. Right now, there's a bit of a nip in the air, which is exciting in its own unique way. In Southern California, meanwhile, this kind of weather would betoken a tragic ice age and thousands of Californians would huddle in corners, shivering madly, shaking their heads, and cursing the evil Lord Xenu for implanting thetans of frigidity in their souls.

In Minnesota, weather provides variety, and from that variety, drama. A major storm is a exciting event that we all experience together and compare notes on later. In the dead of winter, we all snuggle together indoors and gripe happily about the cold. In the summer, Minnesotans stage so many outdoor fests and fairs that you'd think we were the heartiest partiers in the world (we're not). One way or another, the weather binds us together in common experiences.

Meanwhile, poor Southern Californians are deprived of the daily drama, conversation topics, and source of cohesion that bizarre weather fluctuations can provide. So what do Californians do instead? Apparently, any crazy shit they can come up with. They start cults and get plastic surgery and make shitty movies and have referenda on whether the government should provide everything imaginable while simultaneously cutting taxes, etc., etc. I think it's all rooted in a need for drama that isn't being fulfilled by their weather.

To gather further proof that Californians are desperate for drama, I recently visited the God-forsaken hellhole they call San Diego (great town, by the way -- America's Finest City, I hear). There was this beach that the constructed specifically for children, complete with a wall that created a sort of alcove, which allowed small waves to come up but prevented a major undertow. The problem was that they didn't construct the wall quite right, which somehow made the beach very attractive to seals (who are known fanatics for shoddily produced civic projects). So the seals are always hanging out there, being cute, which sparked a decades-long vicious battle between pro-seal and pro-children factions as to which uncontrollable animal should be given exclusive rights to the beach.

And a vicious battle it was. Pro-seal fanatics formed human chains to prevent children from entering the beach. Pro-children fanatics continued to squirt out brats at an exponential rate so as to overpopulate the world and drive all other animal species, including seals, to extinction. Meanwhile legislatures tried to resolve the issue through the time-tested method of floating crazy, half-baked ideas, such as setting up speakers that constantly play dog barks to scare away the seals. (This plan was shot down when it was discovered that seals aren't afraid of dog barks -- true story.)

No one apparently thought of maybe building another beach, and this time doing the wall right. Maybe this one could have a fence at the mouth of it, maybe 40 feet from shore, that keeps the seals out but allows modest waves to get through. No, this was not considered. Because if this problem were resolved, what would the pro-seal and pro-children factions get excited about? How would they spend their time? Watching "Frasier" reruns?