The Governor of Utah asked Utahns to pray for snow last month as the American west continues to experience one of the shittiest winters ever. While we appreciate the sentiment and will take all the help we can get, we’ve been sacrificing baby lambs in our basement every other Friday night since October and we’re all still in the same bag.

In an open letter, Governor Spencer Cox wrote that remarkable things can happen when people of different faiths plead for help from a higher power, and added that people should be sure to conserve water.

Indeed, in a nation full of dark times, absurdist news, and such apathy, we know a situation is truly out of our control when all we’re able to offer is thoughts and prayers.

Now, look, the way this works is that when we write an article, a period of time passes in between when we write words on a page and when you read them, right? So, by the time you read this, it’s completely possible that our winter is saved, OK? With any luck, our lamb sacrifices worked and Colorado is buried right now and you’re reading this while you’re surfing sick powder and getting faceshots where you’re just totally frothing dude, just really tearing it up. This magazine is kind of like a time machine, in that way, if you don’t think about it really hard.

However, as of when this article was written, which is right now to us but in the past to you, this winter is not looking too good. In fact, we would go as far as to say that it is, in fact, pretty bad. On average, Colorado gets 209 inches of snow during a winter, and we’re currently sitting at about 35 percent of that. Now we’ll be honest with you, we haven’t calculated a percentage of something since before we dropped out of high school, and then we spent the entirety of college going to these bullshit creative writing classes and just smoking tons of reefer, and the only reason we really graduated college was because our girlfriend took our stats final and, unrelated, has also done the tip math for any dining bill since 2018.

We may not know what 35 percent of 209 is, but we know it’s not ideal, and that the situation is so far out of our hands that we have no choice but to appeal to a variety of sky deities asking for snow.

Regardless, we think it’s a little heartless to tell us to conserve water with a winter like this one. In between the occasional ski day and sacrifices, all we’ve really done this winter is sit facedown in our shower and drink.

On that note…

Three Things You Can Do This Winter Instead of Skiing and Snowboarding

Pickleball

Look, your coworkers won’t shut up about it, and your mom’s friends tell you how good of exercise it is every time you come to town. You used to huck yourself off cliffs and try to backflip everything, but now, nothing’s going to get you into a flow zone faster than breaking ankles at the local pickleball court.

Watch Old Samurai Movies

Since you’re not skiing, maybe you could use that spare time to familiarize yourself with the massive amount of Samurai-themed movies that came out between the 1950s and the 1970s? If you like honor codes and betrayal, we have over 200 movies for you.

Crime

When we eat all of our bread, and haven’t been to a circus in a while, nothing gets us going like going out and doing crime. Maybe there are spots where you can jaywalk near where you live. Maybe you don’t pay your taxes this year. Maybe you import a variety of illegal pet apes into your hometown utilizing the dark web and Bitcoin, secretly raising them from a young age before they get a little cantankerous on a random Tuesday afternoon and tear the mailman’s face off. Who knows? The possibilities are endless, and you’re only limited by your imagination.