Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Stir-craziness is best cured, in my accredited physician’s opinion, by liberal amounts of crazed stirring. Certainly this solution can’t be applied to all ailments, although I suppose you could relieve something like alcoholism with lots and lots of alcohol. Do you see now why no medical school, let alone general chemistry class, could contain such revolution?

If you were stir-crazy tonight and asked for my prescription, I would recommend you go for a run. If you were stir-crazy in Chicago, however, the night before four solid days of snow, your jog could very well intersect with hypothermia at that glorious point known as “frozen dead in a dirt hole somewhere.” Let me know if you have trouble imagining the coordinate. I know this guy who knows this cartographer who’s pretty good.

The answer, then, is to drive, at least until it gets warmer. Tonight was the first time I took the Saab for an evening ride, and let me tell you: it was a qualified pleasure. European cars, if the 9-3 is at all representative, just handle differently. They operate as quietly as Japanese models, but they claim a unique fellowship with the pavement. There’s real contact. You feel flush with the ground, without the aid of anything remotely rhyming with “a spoiler.” I’m enamored. Can you tell?