Tony Perkins at the Red Herring Magazine first came up with the merger of February and March in the late 90s when the magazine slipped on shipment and had to combine two months into one. So he took two crummy months and turned them into one uber crummy month: Farch.
While some may look at this portmanteau word as a mere combination of February and March, I prefer to refer to it etymologically as “F%^&*#g March” — the longest month of the year and the worst stretch in the calendar, the low point of New England. Looking out a window on a rainy day on Cape Cod in Farch is like looking out at a black and white movie, shot in Scandinavia by a manic-depressive director considering suicide. There’s no snow to make it a fluffy Currier & Ives landscape, just dead grass and piles of dog excrement moldering in the drizzle. There is no color at all. Nothing. Utterly monochromatic. Grim old people trudge the sidewalks. The sky looks like a bruised sweatshirt.
John Malone — the man of the cable industry, dealmaker extraordinaire, and one of my heroes — once said of the corporate scandals of 2000-2002 that financial malfeasance was like dog shit in the back yard. It’s always there under the snow, but come March it starts to surface.
But I digress. If you consider the nadir of Farch, when one’s notion of a good weekend is tax prep, then it’s easy to understand why New England is experiencing a negative trend in population and why places like Fall River and Fitchburg look like sets from Dawn of the Dead. That said, the sun is shining today, taxes can wait, and I intend to get on the ergometer, row a few thousand meters, take the dogs for a beach walk, and prepare myself for a month of solid travel capped with an April trip to Beijing, my second China trip in a year. That is something to look forward to.
I’m driving the Zombie highway of Boredom in about10 minutes. I hate I-5. it’s brown, long and boring.
And, my dog is at home looking for me.
the one bright ray of sunshine will be creating a huge conflagration at the young’s to immoate 10 months worth of lawn clipings and blown down oak limbs.
Carbon offset my ass,
Be cheery
the I5 driver
“There is no color at all. Nothing. Utterly monochromatic. Grim old people trudge the sidewalks. The sky looks like a bruised sweatshirt.”
Your literary roots are showing. Cool.
Unbelievable and embarrassing. Again with the hit run reply. George is a fellow New Englander, hails from the boonies of New Hampshire. So I invite him over to help me fix the roof on my temporary digs here in Cheyenne and what does he do but helps himself to my laptop and posts another comment here while I am on the roof attempting to put on some replacement shingles. (This site is easy to find, it is bookmarked in my favorites.) Hard to believe but he is actually quite articulate when he is not screwing around. Speaking of “Farch” and Cape Cod. It serves well to prepare you for the cruelest month and dry tubers soon to follow.
That is February in Raleigh. And dog exrement moldering in the drizzle says it perfectly…all we see out our back yard during Raleigh’s 2/3 of the year rainy season.
I have a thing for winters. I simply adore rainy days, grey skies and cold. Not too fond to grim old people, though. Where I grew up we had only one Season: winter. I miss that.
February defintely brings the worst part of “Farch” At least with March there is the occasional tease that Spring is on the way.
In my opinion there is no better season than Autumn/Fall – the season so nice, they named it twice.