I spent one winter living where it snowed. Just out of high school I moved to South Lake Tahoe in the summer with high expectations that come winter I’d be spending all my time on the slopes. I did get a lot of skiing in that year, but also learned valuable winter weather lessons such as that while owning a convertible in the summer is cool, when it’s snowing out, not so much.

Visiting the snow is fun. Living where it snows and dealing with that crap on a daily basis is not. Though I do have to admit the first morning I woke up to a landscape of freshly fallen snow, it was beautiful. Especially from inside my warm house looking out the front window. It was still a beautiful scene walking the two blocks to work that morning. Though wearing proper snow walking footwear really meant waddling. The return trip that night was more easily navigated, but after a day of cars throwing mud all over the place that pristine landscape of white that’d give the folks at FOX News a major chub looked more like the outer ring of Dante’s circles of hell. But then living where it snows 24/7 does have its benefits. You have the time to get much more creative with building snowmen. And there’s ample opportunity to perfect writing your name in the snow.

That’s not a joy everyone in the world gets to enjoy. I mean besides women who lack both the necessary equipment and perspective. I don’t remember what the subject under discussion was, but once I mentioned writing your name in the snow to my friend Noom. From his quizzical look, I knew I might have to explain. So I did. He thought about it for a minute and then asked, “Why you do dat?”

I’ve learned to take a page from his playbook and now – as then – when he asks for an explanation of what is unexplainable I give him a taste of his own medicine. “Because I farang,” suitably responded to his question without actually answering it. Besides, this is a man who has never met a public restroom he didn’t feel the need to mark his spot in. Which was a good follow-through thought, so I quickly added, “We don’t write our names in the hotel room’s bathroom.”

Few Thai guys ever get to experience the joy of signing their work in the snow. It does snow in some Asian countries, so the opportunity is there for men in China, Japan, and Korea. But it isn’t quite the pastime in those countries as it is in Western ones. Maybe that’s because cursive lends itself to a steady flow while the pictogram characters that make up Asian names don’t. Or maybe it’s because of the difficulty of writing with nothing more than a pencil stub. That too is a downside of winter weather. Your penis is much smarter than your brain and tends to seek warm shelter when it’s freezing out. And that ain’t good news when yours barely qualifies as an outie in the first place.

The good news is that if you don’t live where it snows, or are just too intelligent to be exposing your best buddy to frigid temperatures, you can still make your bladder gladder. First, for the traditionalist yellow snow fan, there’s a guy named Dave on the crowd source funding site gofundme.com who is trying to raise money for his 2014 Mt. Everest Expedition. For an entry contribution of just $5, when he summits he’ll write your name in the snow. Sure it’s not the same thing as doing it yourself, but it’s a much warmer option, you don’t have to risk death and disfigurement, and I think the resulting signature high atop the Himalayas kinda works like Tibetan prayer flags.

If instead you’d like to keep the job firmly in your own hands, and are not a traditionalist, Wacom has got you covered. The company’s XPee combines one of their pressure sensitive LCD tablets with an urinal so that you can set your inner artist free in a free flowing stream of creativity. You may not be Monet, but you can moan with the pleasure of relief from draining your kidney while expressing your artistic abilities. But please aim true and stifle your urge to create a pointillistic masterpiece on the floor.

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