If I was a journalist, and there are mornings when I wake up and I look at the ceiling and I curse my Lord God that I am not (not many mornings, Paul, but they do happen… usually when something big is blowing up somewhere and you guys get to put on little GI Jim hats and go out with notepads stuck in those pockets on the thighs of your pants where there’s supposed to be ammo) but if I were, a journalist, I would write stories like this: White guy watches Arabs shop at Walmart in Dearborn and it would certainly have lines like “As he [the manager] recalled their effort [took them two weeks of looking at food down at the wholesaler to figure of what the Mohamedeen would buy], a few women in hijabs — traditional Muslim head scarves — inspected produce. One spoke in Arabic to Mohamad Atwi, the developmental store manager.”

Meanwhile, down at Canadian Tire, it’s all very pale. Hockey jackets and those little pudgy white children who come in from the suburbs to vandalize the bubble gum machine by the door while Mom flirts her way through Aisle 9 in search of the Wii accessories. The rickety ones with the Hapsburg jaw from chewing their poptarts half cooked and the great bulgy troglodyte eyes from the rec room hours in front of the TV. Reflexes of a praying mantis from all that Wii, though.

It’s thawing and the snow drifts are getting to be middle aged: all saggy, with the bits that were perky subsiding into bits that were curved but are now only rounded. There is something to be made of this, the coming of spring and new life and so on, but I really can’t be fucked.