Snowblind

(How to not become Jack Nicholson during a blizzard)

It was the biggest winter storm to hit the American South in over three decades. And by the time sunshine and sanity finally glanced back down on the Southern landscape, a national holiday had gone missing, forests of Sliced White Bread trees had been slash-harvested, and greedy grocers had permanently disfigured 18,000 milk cows.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah" is the typical meteorological analysis of the typical Southern male, when confronted with news of a pending winter emergency. Partly, this is due to winter weather over-forecasting, which happens every year. But Southerners have learned to expect such from TV Weather Pros, people with names like Tiff or Carmelottinola or Bink, who refer to rain as a "rain event," and who stand in front of weather maps, totally blocking our states, while the blue parts of their Weather Pro clothes blink in and out of existence.

Southerners are also a bit numb to weather warnings because we get endless alerts about tornados and hurricanes which, unlike blizzards, visit the South on a regular basis, often before breakfast. And after. And during.

But let's face it: guys just don't do a whole lot of complex thinking or long-term planning. Consider how guys communicate at life's three major milestones - Birth, Matrimony and Death:

First words: "Goo goo. Pull my finger."

Marriage: "Hold on ... she was how old?"

Last words: "Hey, y'all. Watch this!"

ETYMOLOGICAL SIDEBAR: We now know that "goo goo" is early guy human for "Any chips left?"

But as it turned out, this was a real (and a really bad) snowstorm, at least by our balmy Southern standards. Here's how serious the weather situation was here in upstate South Carolina: in order to provide a seamless, endless flow of weather updates, the local TV station pre-empted the mid-morning's "Live with Regis"!

It might've gotten ugly. Such radical re-programming could have caused a civil backlash. Attacks on the thoughtless TV station, that sort of thing. Hordes of torch-carrying, Mom-Jeans-wearing Moms, storming out of the suburbs, so furiously angry that they turn into grainy, black & white film. Or things could've turned politically violent, especially if any of those insane, raging Republicans and sharp-fanged Tea Party psychotics started to rumble. Next thing you know, they might start ... now, hang on to something ... they might start reading stuff out loud, even atavistic documents with outdated concepts, like the U.S. Constitution, or the Bible.

But then, of course, the real madness began, as hundreds of thousands of simple idiots rushed the roads and descended upon the local grocers for whole milk and white bread. It's an unexplained, unavoidable trigger. Snow = Horde Whole Milk. Ice = Stock Up On White Bread. It's a constant in the Universe, like hydrogen, or Dick Clark. When winter weather threatens, people just instinctively stampede the grocers for bread, and for milk, including calcium-challenged families who haven't seen live teeth in their family dining room since Prohibition.

And since I, too, am a simple idiot, I skidded my way to the grocers, wondering if they would still have any food. Sheesh. They didn't even have any carts.

Things To Do During a Blizzard

• Eat. Especially cereal. Remember, there are now 361 gallons of milk in your fridge, and every carton has that ominous, looming "Curdle Date."

• This is very, very important. Whatever you do, whatever happens, no matter how stir-crazy you may get, absolutely do not watch "The Shining."

• But when you do (and because you're a guy, you will), watch it backwards. It's calming, in a claustrophobic, cabin fever kind of way, to watch Jack Nicholson backing out of hotel bedrooms, as he slowly goes sane.

• Well, sane-ish.

• And speaking of Stephen King...

• If you live near a sewer grate, build a snowman's head that looks like Pennywise, Tim Curry's spooky clown character in the movie, "IT." Position the grinning snowman's head on the sewer grate, so it looks like the insane clown is staring out from the sewer. Long-term, this has the additional advantage of drastically reducing visits from door-to-door salesmen. I've actually done this, during a snowstorm in another city, but eventually the neighbors made me move.

• Turn on the TV and watch Bill O'Reilly, but don't listen to him. Instead, mute the TV and cue up a playlist of Frank Sinatra albums. Then sit back and watch. Shortly, you'll start to experience this odd sensation, like you're in "Godfather II," or you've been granted a private audience with the Pope.

• Shovel your driveway, or scrape your car. Here's how prepared I was for seven-plus-inches of snow: after a couple of days, I stuttered my way to the curb to scrape the snow and ice off my car, using one of those plastic pinch clips that guys get for Christmas: those clips you keep in a kitchen drawer to manage half-eaten bags of potato chips. It got the de-icing job done, but at a dire cost: I lost the chips.

• Write the next great American novel. If you need a story idea, here's one (what with trying to finish all this milk before it expires, I'm not gonna be using it): a female NASCAR driver with massive "sweater assets" saves a Baptist bird-dog from being exported to China by gay Yankee vegetarians, by hitting them repeatedly with her King James version of the U.S. Constitution. Of course, happy endings are out of style these days, so our heroine then opens a specialty brasserie, which fails due to city council over-regulation. Working title: "The Crepes of Graft."

So, hang in there, stay busy, drink your milk (quickly), and don't try to drive in the ice, because you don't know how to drive in the ice. You can't do it. No, you can't. Yes, you.

If you're a female reading this, then you know him. You know good and well that he's sitting over there, right now, fixating like a chump on the mental image, "the heroine opened her specialty brasserie." Act. Act now. Hide the simple idiot's car keys ... now ... before you hear the dreaded Simple Idiot Death Warble:

"Hey, y'all. Watch this!"

And if you're of a mind, please help support the Sliced White Bread Reforestation Fund. It's tax-deductible!

So far.