For the third straight week, Tuesday finds your Supreme Spiritual Leader buried in a tomb of ice and frigid winter.

For me personally, this is fine. Spending the first half of my life in Northern Climes and being swathed in a generous layer of blubber (seal-style) has me reasonably well set to deal with “polar vortices”. A lifetime of depression makes Seasonal Affective Disorder something of an academic phenomenon.

However, in a town that is thrown into disarray by snow (as well as rain and occasionally “being too sunny”) it is a Fucking Disaster. The Little Mayhems have run out of School Snow Days, so instead they have Zoom School. They do not like Zoom School, because they are small children. Dr. Mrs. Mayhem and I do not like Zoom School because Zoom is the invention of Satan, Lord of Lies.

So what would be an unpleasant case of cabin fever has blossomed into full scale insurrection. Tempers are flaring. Tears are flowing. A miniature Lego Tie Fighter impacted on the back of my head as I attempted to negotiate both a long-term supply contract and how much lunch Deacon had to eat to qualify for Wild Kratts before bedtime.

In fairness, it was a hell of a shot. Baby Girl has a cannon on her.

NFL NEWS: the drought is not as bad as May, but when Andy Dalton is your leading news item, you know it’s still dire.

-Yes, the Red Rocket is returning to Carolina. Two years, $8 million, six of which is guaranteed. Dalton allegedly helped transform Bryce Young from a disastrous quarterback to a merely below-average one. That probably qualifies him as a Quarterback Whisperer, except that at 37 he’s probably considered too old.

-The Taek Industrial Complex is off to a strong off-season, with dumbfuck Mock Drafts coming hot and heavy before the Underwear Olympics even kicks off. As our steaming consumer maws are still not sated, we are also getting a slew of “who could get cut/traded” articles, which are the cold vegetables of off-season content: there primarily to take up visual space on the plate so you don’t notice how little actual meat you are getting.

I will say I am enjoying the relative dearth of what are misleadingly called “thinkpieces”. There’s no “where does this Eagles team rank in terms of dynasty” talk, nor even 1000 word meditations on The Crisis in Offensive Football. Perhaps America’s hard turn against intellectualism has one upside.

NOT NFL NEWS:

-Vlad. Vladdy. Vladdito. Come on, man. Canada is in a really tough place right now. They kinda need a win. So maybe reconsider closing the door on negotiations. Sure, you can make Huge Money signing with the Dodgers to be their third-string first baseman/batboy. But why be eighth on the payroll when you can be the Undisputed King of the North?

WHAT TO WATCH:

Deep Space 9!

No, don’t. Really. I didn’t need a Gritty Realism Trek back in the 90s, and I sure as fuck don’t need it now.

I don’t want to see you Sisko Stans in the fucking comments either. There is a straight line to be drawn from DS9 through Voyager and Enterprise to Discovery, and that shit was some of the stupidest, most overwrought horseshit scifi I’ve ever crammed into my brain. And I watched the new Battlestar Galactica all the way through, if that gives you a sense of scale.

Also: fuck Battlestar. Courtrooms in Space? All Along the Watchtower as the eternal song of the Universe? Die in a fire.