No, I don’t know why it is snowing in Philadelphia in April.

Someone actually asked me about it this morning – in disbelief that it was happening, i suppose. Unless they thought that i might somehow know something Philadelphia’s meteorologists don’t. And, well, i do know things that they don’t, but those are all about responsible journalism, and not about explaining the weather.

It wasn’t so much snowing as the wind was blowing about a frigidly icy mist, which i encountered at length on my lunch break. This should not have been the case; i did not have any reason to get so well acquainted with today’s weather. All i wanted was a salad. I thought, Surely there is a salad to be had in close enough proximity to my office building that i will not have to encounter enough weather to be forced to comment upon it when i return to my desk.

Actually, there was (a salad to be had); my coworkers recommended me to the “Oh-So-Good” eatery, which sits directly across a relatively easy-to-traverse intersection outside of my building. In fact, someone had just come back from there, and none of us even bothered to ask her about the weather. Perfect.

Oh-So is one of a new urban trend: it is like a lunchbox that packs everything … salads, sushi, soup, sandwiches, and also some things that do not begin with S. I not only gleaned this from my coworker’s description of it, but also because it proudly proclaims its one-shop-feeds-all nature in a series of simple-to-the-point-of-being-semiotic advertisements along their outer walls — they had vaguely registered in my memory from my walk to work, but i didn’t really connect them to whatever they were meant to advertise.

(Knowing me as well as you do, i’m sure you can sense that i’m about to complain about the advertisements. It is rather obvious that that’s where i am heading… why i even both to set these things up so dramatically is beyond me.)

As i exited the lobby of my building, the first advertisement to enter my field of vision was (yes) semiotic in nature. It was so effective that the pictographic on it screamed one and only one thing at me: PENIS!

Yes, it screamed penis. And, the picture that was shouting was not some virile erect vegetable of a penis, that carrot or cucumber that i might have expected since this was meant to be a sign for food and not for… well, not for genitalia. No. It was a remarkably unerect little penis.

Actually, it more resembled a shrimp…

A-Ha!, i thought, it must be a sign for shrimp!. Then, thinking some more, i thought: Surely their advertising people realize that the shrimp looks like a prepubescent penis that just participated in a Polar Bear Club activity. I mean… it barely even looks like shrimp. Or, at least, it definitely does not immediately register in the “yum, i want to eat that” category of my brain.

I continued with this line of thought as i neared Oh-So and it’s Oh-So-Shrimp. Something about the situation bothered me; it wasn’t as if i was suddenly (and uncharacteristically) having a typical male homophobic moment that lead me to fear or revile the shrimp. No. And, i wasn’t experiencing some sort of intelligence deficit that would suddenly render me offended based on some sort of right-wing moral obligation to the public to protect it from lude imagery. No, not that either.

Ah, yes, i had it. It was simply that i was bothered by the fact their advertising people were either too moronic to see that their primary food-glyph looked like an underdeveloped sex organ or too excited by its implication to make it look a touch more shrimp-like. Despite having isolated this, my problem, i found myself physically incapable of entering the building; every time i approached it i was overwhelmed by a lingering contempt by their idea of trendy advertising.

Long story short (too late), i learned all about today’s weather as i walked the two grueling ice-mist filled blocks to Lindsay’s favorite deli to get a salad there, and then another two blocks back into the wind to get back to my building so i could actually eat.

Despite this enlightening journey of the body and mind, i still have no idea why it was snowing in Philadelphia in April

In other cock-related news (ha! a pun!), i went rooster hunting when i returned from work this evening, after an unbelievable alarm-clock-like round of crowing this morning that ran on regular half hour intervals starting at five. I was unable to locate the foul fowl, despite some leads indicating that what i previously thought to be an errant chicken walking around behind CVS was actually said rooster, a pet of the man who lives on the corner. A thorough stalking of his premises revealed no such terror of a bird. I have resolved that if i am woken up at any point before 7am tomorrow by its crowing that i will go outside, find it, and shove it through its owner’s mail slot.

And still i’ve managed not to talk about my new job. Shocking. Maybe tomorrow i can squeeze it in between a discussion of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings and my discovery of an Oh-So-Sign that is implausibly meant to resemble a peach.