The rite of spring augurs rebirth, less girth and little mirth

Thursday marks the arrival of spring. For some, the season symbolizes fertility, hope and fresh starts. For the thermophobic normies out there, it is simply an oven preheating exercise, a dress rehearsal for the three-month thermal torment occasionally also called summer. One upside (and there's just this one) to the warming weather is that it simplifies among the more "substantial" citizenry the plodding process of re-enacting the Battle of the Bulge, i.e. weight loss, via diaphoresis.

Every spring, members of the meaty masses remember well the Wehrmacht are enshrouded in the Ardennes. Yet we still sink lower into the sofa, switch to the Grapefruit League while shunning the citrus itself, brushing Frito flotsam off the Apple to check mess, and double-palming into purgatory the first scouts of the needle-nosed Nosferatus brought to life in the warmed-up waterdrops on nonwaterproofed windowsills.

Yes, the biggest killer visible to the naked eye, mosquitoes, are wafting windward on genial gusts to an apartment block near you.