I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

    That was great!

    I love how, at about 30 seconds, someone clears away a patch of passenger-side window on the car left of center, and it fills in almost immediately.

    Also, how the yard fills up with shoveled snow, and how someone keeps peeking out the door-window on the right.

    • awjt

      I like how at about :22 the entire 6″ of snow on the hood of the left car sloughs off forward-ly between the two cars.

  • simonster

    “Nemo” is a name that the Weather Channel made up for the storm to make it sound scarier. (See this Wikipedia article, which may not be around for long.) Can we please not call it that?

    • http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood

      Nemo? Scarier? Sounds like…I dunno, a lost clownfish with a gimpy fin.

      The first one they named Khan. The next one will be Mr. White, the one after that Morpheus, and so on, as the Weather Channel works its way through the marketing department’s favorite movies.

      • http://deansli.st/ Dean Putney

        I for one cannot wait for Tropical Storm WaaAAALLLL-EEee.

    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

      Also, “winter” was made up by REI to sell gloves. It used to be called “wiener shrinking season.”

    • http://twitter.com/jere7my jere7my

      My wife and I spent five hours shoveling yesterday. I’m gonna call it what I damn well please. :P

      • http://twitter.com/pickledbeatnik pickledbeatnik

        The “Ayes” have it

    • http://burntheflag.ca Jardine

      What would you like to call it? Snowmageddon? Snowpocalypse? Snowy Snow McGoogensnow?

      • http://BrianEaston.net/ Brian Easton

        How about “the past blizzard”?

  • EvilSpirit

    If that’s Boston, where are the trash cans in parking spaces?

    • http://twitter.com/jere7my jere7my

      You mean chairs, and those come after the shoveling.

    • James Kelley

      You don’t need to save your space until the car is moved.

    • http://twitter.com/chrisjimson chris jimson

      I thought Menino banned that practice?  Anyway, I refuse to play that game, it’s silly– I had a neighbor who would save his parking spot until late April or May, simply because he dug it out once in February.

  • Dave Shevett

    I really wish people would stop using ‘Nemo’ as the name of this storm.  That is a marketing sham cookied up by the Weather Channel.  NOAA  sets names and they’re specifically picked to be alphabetical according to position in the year.  They’re not ‘cutesy’ names that refer to a little fish from a Disney movie.

    • RaidenDaigo

      I thought Nemo had to do with Captain Nemo and his submersion ability (well via the nautilus),

    • http://hgomersall.wordpress.com/ heng

      Yes, let’s not use a short snappy term that everyone understands, and instead describe it in full every time; after all, language is prescribed to us through edicts and not through colloquial usage.

  • RaidenDaigo

    An apocalypse means an un-covering, this is a covering of snow.
    Is the name Nemo because everyone is falling out of bed over it or because of the submersive quailities.

    • awjt

      I think you’re overthinking it.  It was just some dumb name coined by the weather channel in hopes of garnering people’s interest.  It feels plastic and carnivalesque, to me.  I’d rather just call a storm a storm and leave it at that.

      • RaidenDaigo

        Not really over thinking it when I understand what a word means.
        But I agree in calling a storm a storm.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=8834925 Chauncey Scott

    While people debate the silly name. I must say, I was impressed by the clean up. I got about 8 inches in NJ, and my street was not that efficient. 

    • Rindan

      I live in the greater Boston area, and I have to say, Boston folks tend to do a good job with storm clean up.  By law, you have to clear off your section of the sidewalk, if nothing else.  The day after the storm there was a small army on my street cleaning up the mess.  I walked a few miles yesterday to drop by a friends house and, for the most part, you could go the entire way on cleaned out sidewalks.  
      The real issue is parking.  Uhg.  We got so much damned snow that we basically lost half of all of the roads in Boston.  One side of the street has spots where cars were parked and have now been partly cleaned up big enough for a car to fit.  The other side of the street where parking used to be is a snow bank that reaches 6 feet out into the street and is 5 feet high.  After the god damn rain comes on monday and freezes, those snow banks will be there until spring, and nothing short of heavy construction equipment will be able to move them.  Basically, the amount of parking in Boston has been cut cleanly in half.  

      It sucks.  Fuck you Nemo.

      • awjt

        OK, I give in.  If the storm hadn’t been named, you couldn’t have written “Fuck you Nemo” and made me burst out laughing.  I think ALL storms should be named stupid names from now on, so that we can curse them.

        • huskerdont

          I want to agree with you, but more importantly, I want the Weather Channel to fail at this unilateral naming thing. They are such embarrassing clowns. I mean, I’d like to every now and then check on the weather on the TV, but I go there and am so appalled. Thank god for the internets.

  • http://twitter.com/racerabbit Fred Swetland, IV

    Bonus points to the guys for his clever use of Pizzicato Fives’ “Strawberry Sleigh”. The world needs more P5.

  • fredges

    I give you maximum props for using my favorite band, Pizzicato Five! And yeah, the video is kinda cool, too. (whoa. Two Freds, both fans of P5… cosmic!)

  • http://twitter.com/ohako79 Keith Page

    Oh yeah, that looked pretty much like what happened to me, except for the ‘snow plows coming along every few hours’ part. When the plow finally arrived it got stuck and had to turn back, with half the street done.

    A few hours later they cam by with a skid steer. That did the trick!

  • http://www.zhrodague.net/ Drew from Zhrodague

    The video stops before the plow truck re-cements the cars into an icy tomb.

  • wysinwyg

    People were actually making eye contact and saying “hi” to each other in Boston Saturday morning.  If you don’t live here you have no idea how rare that is.  It only happens after major snowfalls.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      C. 1975, I was walking on Tremont Street when a man said hello to a woman that he didn’t know. There was a crowd of people debating whether or not to call the police.