Well. We certainly showed that snow what for. It was all gone by the end of the day, a product of temperatures leaping back into the 50s or low 60s, as winter here was intended to be.

Last night, as it snowed, I heard a woman say a friend “You’re wearing Chacos!” The Chacos wearing friend said, and I’m not making this up, “I didn’t know the snow would be this cold!” So, for that dear child, bring on spring.

I have a long window that stretches almost the entire length of one wall in my office. If you peer through the giant blinds you can see a dorm up the hill. Below that is a grass lawn that has been converted into a parking lot. (When I started here, six years ago, it was a construction equipment parking lot. Now it is overflow parking as they begin work on a new business building.) If I had the ability to open this window and step outside I’d walk onto the second-floor roof of this same building. Beneath me are various administrative offices. Over their heads was a great deal of snow. And I stared at it today, watching how it melted in stages while the sun moved from one horizon to the other, all of it disappearing, slowly from the ledge, and then rapidly from the pebbles. It all went away, except for the zealous stuff holding off the inevitable in the shade, thinking, Now bring on spring.

He said, like he’s been in Canada or some place with a real winter for the last four weeks.

There’s nothing like going from snow to short sleeves and no socks in the span of afternoon. And after you’ve done it a few times you start thinking that this time, really, it will last.

I noticed that the earliest blooming bush in our front yard was starting to give off its bright yellow signal. Let us call it now: another winter is behind us. This is, of course, an entirely mental exercise. There is barely a winter where I live and work and play. We get a few days of cold and trees pointing their sticks into the air for too long, but that’s not a winter. Even still, you’re always ready to see it off.

Saw this ad tonight:

Cadillac is hitting on something here, a nod to a bygone era, with an actor who, really, belongs in another era. Neal McDonough just asking, “Why?” For this? Stuff?

McDonough’s biggest early break came 11 years after his first TV appearance. He was in eight episodes of Band of Brothers, which, for most people promoted him from “That Guy” to, “Hey, Neal McDonough.” He was playing Buck Compton who earned a Silver Star on D-Day. After the war he turned down baseball to go to law school. He became a police officer and an assistant district attorney. Compton put away Sirhan Sirhan, became a judge and retired. Just for grins he taught himself the real estate game, got licensed and was a realtor on weekends.

McDonough has said a lot of nice things about Compton. He wrote the epilogue to Compton’s autobiography and it starts “I would do anything in the world for Buck Compton.” So I’m thinking about the old judge, who died just two years ago, when McDonough says “Why aren’t you like that?”

This commercial is so strange from there. The question outside, the answer inside. The “crazy-driven hardworking believers, that’s why.” He points to his daughter, or the double helix. And then the other kid gets the high-five exclamation point. And now I will name-drop. Wright Brothers. Bill Gates. Les Paul. Ali.

Muhammad Ali had his run-ins with the federal government. The U.S. called Microsoft a monopoly. They almost shut down Gibson, who made Les Paul’s guitars. Where is this spot going?

“Where we nuts when we pointed to the moon?” That isn’t McDonough’s wife, but there is a resemblance. But we’re nuts about the moon. Where we got … bored. And littered. We put a car on blocks on the moon because we’re going back up there.

Said the guy in a polo and yellow shorts.

But now we’re getting serious, because the suit is on and the digression is over — a digression for a kinder, post-Dennis Leary world, I might ad — and now we finally come to it.

Cadillac.

An electric Cadillac.

“You work hard. Create your own luck and you gotta believe anything is possible.”

Unless, of course, you mean seeing a return on all of that taxpayer money sunk into GM.

Which brings us back to “stuff.” That we’ve paid for, so you can sell it to us. You didn’t build that. Period.

I’d have put the ad here anyway, because I like McDonough, and in 60 seconds it gets about four or five slices of what the guy can do. That you don’t know what the ad is, indeed, that you realize it is a paean to a generally bygone ideal before you even know what the ad is for, makes it that much more incredible.

But here’s the truly amazing thing about this ad. It prompted cogent comments on YouTube. Here are a few:

Wonder how many bailouts it took to design this car?

In regards to taking August off, keep in mind that the GM UAW contact gives UAW workers up to 5 weeks off per year, plus 15 holidays per year (5 more than the standard number of holidays), for a total of 8 weeks of time off per year.

If GM and the UAW actually believed the message in this ad (which is true by the way), then why do they take so much time off? They are most assuredly NOT crazy, hard-working, driven believers, as the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars they swallowed up shows and the tax payers lost because what the UAW and GM management actually believe in is buying politicians.

I hope GM fails miserably and every single UAW member loses their jobs. They deserve it for their laziness, sense of entitlement and sloth. Because of their sense of entitlement they actually think they deserved taxpayers’ hard earned money because AMERICA! The problem is that America doesn’t stand for “taking from others to give to me using the state”. America stands for the actual crazy, hard working, driven believers that the UAW hate because the UAW is made to look bad always when compared to real working Americans.

A lot of commenters have all ready pointed out the rank hypocrisy of GM’s laziness, sense of entitlement, and sloth from having their hand in the government till for decades, then making the above ad. The message in the ad is still true, even though the messenger is an excellent representative of exactly the type of laziness, sense of entitlement, and sloth welfare yields.

Bummer for Caddy. This ad would have KILLED in 2000-2008. Happily, we’ve all grown up. ‘MERICA! Seriously, I thought it was satire until it wasn’t. So sad.

We’re going back to the moon??? With what budget? Oh and the same government that killed the shuttle program bailed out GM so they could keep making average cars and keep the UAW happy

Anybody want to take a run at explaining that?

Meanwhile, in Europe: Exclusive: EU executive sees personal savings used to plug long-term financing gap:

The savings of the European Union’s 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says.

The EU is looking for ways to wean the 28-country bloc from its heavy reliance on bank financing and find other means of funding small companies, infrastructure projects and other investment.

And, meanwhile, here at home: Vulnerable Dems want IRS to step up:

Senate Democrats facing tough elections this year want the Internal Revenue Service to play a more aggressive role in regulating outside groups expected to spend millions of dollars on their races.

In the wake of the IRS targeting scandal, the Democrats are publicly prodding the agency instead of lobbying them directly.

That’s a fairly even-handed story The Hill has, but it doesn’t take much to imagine the entire approach there spinning in some perverse direction.

I just cut three paragraphs that sounded too preachy about another story. I was casting allusions to the early 19th century and the Hoover administration. And that’s always how you know when to stop.

So, moving on …

The Rising Cost of Not Going to College:

(T)he Pew Research survey asked college graduates whether, while still in school, they could have better prepared for the type of job they wanted by gaining more work experience, studying harder or beginning their job search earlier.

About three-quarters of all college graduates say taking at least one of those four steps would have enhanced their chances to land their ideal job. Leading the should-have-done list: getting more work experience while still in
school. Half say taking this step would have put them in a better position to get the kind of job they wanted. About four-in-ten (38%) regret not studying harder, while three-in-ten say they should have started looking for a job sooner (30%) or picked a different major (29%)

I’m using that in class next week.

Finally, Step Sing Step Sing Step Sing! (It takes over our campus, but it’ll be a pleasant memory by the end of the weekend.

.