Cold

Video game enthusiasts are cold.

Frostbitten gamers across the country are coming to terms with the fact that it may be after Christmas until they can feel their frozen thumbs and try them out against their new Xbox 360s. Hundreds of gamers from coast to coast have been waiting in often-subzero temperatures overnight to acquire the season’s hottest gadget, the gamers’ grail.

I was at Best Buy on Saturday, where more than a dozen people had lined up outside with sleeping bags and lawn chairs, iPods and walkmans pumping out their favorite jams as they waited for the arrival of Best Buy’s next shipment of twenty-something units Sunday morning.

The season’s hottest gadget, indeed, had many waiting out in the cold.

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On Tuesday morning, more than seven million of New York City’s commuters were, well, cold. The transit worker union strike was the first in 25 years, and had many talking about the legality of the strike. While many commuters-turned-walkers were understandably confounded, several seemed sympathetic to the plight of the transit workers. As they trundled to work in below-average temperatures, many stopped to talk to reporters. With the wind chill dropping temps to a mere ten degrees, they may have been divided on the issue of the strike, but all agreed on one thing: they were cold.

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Last Friday saw the marriage between Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey turn cold. Officially. According to divorce papers filed by Simpson on Friday, the two have been separated since November 23. She sited irreconcilable differences as the cause for the dissolution of their three-year marriage.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Aniston politely denied counseling Simpson on the divorce, though Simpson seems to be following the same Hollywood rubric used by Aniston in her split from Brad Pitt. Simpson has hired the same lawyers that oversaw the Aniston/Pitt divorce, the same ones that divorced Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.

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The injury-plagued Houston Rockets have gone cold, falling below the .500 mark and losing their last eight games without leading scorer Tracy McGrady, who is out with a back injury. Seven-foot-six center Yao Ming is also out with and infected big toe (in Yao’s case, enormous toe). And Dikembe Mutombo, who started on Sunday in Yao’s place, left the game with a dislocated finger in the final minutes. Mutombo was the team’s only remaining center, leaving the Rockets, well, out in the cold.

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Ashlee Simpson was out cold for a few minutes last week on a Tokyo elevator, as collapsed after abruptly ending a performance there. The world stopped for a moment, politely pretending to care, then went on about its shopping. (Ouch! That was cold.)

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With a cultural cold front sweeping the nation, we are fortunate to live in a city that is sheltered from the cold. If there is one thing that we can truly count on, it is this: Las Cruces will always be warmer than most places during the holidays.

-From Pulse
December 22, 2005