Wildly Interesting Books

  • Adam's Task by Vicki Hearne
  • Anything by Colin Cotterill
  • Auguries of Innocence by Patti Smith
  • Big Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell
  • Darwin: A Life in Poems by Ruth Padel
  • Gehry Draws
  • Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker
  • Out of Our Heads by Ava Noe
  • Stylepedia: A Guide to Graphic Design, Mannerisms, Quirks and Conceits
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson
  • The God of Small Things by Arundahti Roy
  • The Long Fall by Walter Mosely
  • The Martin Beck Series by Maj Sjowall and Per Waloo
  • The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
  • The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank
  • Vermeeer in Bosnia by Lawrence Weschler

Thursday, January 21, 2010

45 Degrees and Frosty Refuses to Melt


Yet another Christmas related puzzle has been discovered on--you guessed it--Hampshire Street in Cambridge. Frosty the Snowman, a tradition holiday personality made famous by the song, "Frosty the Snowman" was stumbled upon, standing up and perfectly formed while most of the snow in town melted and washed away into the streets causing minor flooding in certain areas. But not the intrepid Frosty who sat all puffed up up on the porch of 199 Hampshire Street. Looking all perky and defiant in the face of the January thaw, every detail of Frosty's persona remained utterly intact. Yes, the corncob pipe retained its jaunty angle as it continued to jut out of the snowman's erstwhile mouth. The two eyes made out of coal along with the three buttons of the same material appeared to suffer no discernable slippage. The same is true of the traditional carroty nose. The top hat, the scarf and even the ear muffs hung in there in perfect form. Close observation revealed a certain curvature of the broom to the shape of the lower body. Neighbors claim that this was the case before the mid-winter warm up. Scientists and climate change experts have no leads or working theories about what elements might be in play.

2 comments:

Jim Calandrillo said...

Strange elements indeed! Most puzzling is the smile upon Frosty's face. Experts in the field of strange post-Christmas phenomena draw attention to the scarf around Frosty's neck as well. Seems a little too tight? Darva Dempsy of the pre-eminent Pre-Apocolyptic Consortium suggests that the scarf is positioned exactly at the right place on Frosty's neck and exerts exactly the right constrictive force to put the poor snowman in a sort of suspended dis-animation. Quoting Darva, "where the molecules of snow do not melt and remain in place in some bizarre Brownian movement. The smile indicates Frosty's in a nether plane, a bit frenzied on the happy side, but unable to progress, transform, melt, or even cry for help. Scientists are meeting in Copenhagen.

TomC said...

I have a scientific explanation! There's this concept of a heat bath, which is something that has such a high heat capacity that it keeps its temperature regardless of the temperature of things touching it.

Frosty is a heat bath!