This story will presumably one day be funny and thus worthy of inclusion in a “Snide Remarks” column, so I don’t want to spoil it by sharing too many potentially amusing details here. But this is the gist of the story so far:

- After I wrecked my car last month, a faithful reader and friend offered me her 1994 Geo Prizm for free. The only condition? I’d have to fly to Ohio to get it.

- This was unbelievably generous of her, and I am forever grateful. I hasten to point out that none of the problems I’ve had subsequently have been the car’s fault.

- I flew to Ohio late Wednesday night, arriving early Thursday morning. I recuperated a bit, then hit the road, staying in Kansas City, Mo., Thursday night.

- I planned to make it to Ft. Collins, Co., by Friday night, and stay with a friend there. Under good conditions, the drive from KC to Denver is about eight hours.

- As I progressed westward in Colorado, however, and the sun went down, the roads became icy, slick, and steep. (Well, I guess they were steep in the daytime, too.)

- I got a flat tire. (OK, maybe kind of the car’s fault, but keep reading.) In trying to change it — in the zero-degree weather on the side of the road on I-70 — I discovered that the rim was rusted on to the axle. It WOULD NOT COME OFF. I banged, pried, kicked, leveraged, yelled, and prayed, all to no avail.

- Eventually I gave up and called for a tow truck.

- After an hour or so, a state trooper pulled up and reported that he had ordered all tow trucks off the roads. They (the roads) were too perilous and icy, and it wasn’t worth it. He gave me a ride into the nearest town, Limon, about 15 miles away, and I stayed at the Econo Lodge Friday night.

- This morning, a tow truck hauled my vehicle into Limon. On the way out to where my car had been left, we saw about a dozen cars stuck on the median or off on the side, having skidded off the road last night. I’m convinced that NOT changing my tire was the best option for me. Had I changed it, I’d have gone on my merry way toward Denver and maybe wound up upside-down somewhere, like so many other drivers did. At least the recalcitrant tire got me off the road.

- I had four new tires put on the car (it needed them, and I didn’t want to press my luck) and went on my way.

- I took I-70 into Denver, then I-25 north to Cheyenne, Wyo., where I met I-80 and headed west through Wyoming.

- At Laramie, I-80 was closed. That’s it, just closed. Bad weather ahead, and the entire state of Wyoming is located in the middle of nowhere, so no driving.

- I headed back east, thinking I might go back to Ft. Collins to stay with the friend I had originally planned to stay with Friday night, only I couldn’t get a hold of him. Not wanting to drive all the way and be unable to find him, I stopped in Cheyenne, where I am now staying at the lovely Super 8 motel.

- With the cost of the tow, the tires, and the two unplanned nights at hotels, the trip has now cost about $500 more than I expected. Still quite a bargain for a perfectly functional car, of course, but nonetheless, $500 more than expected. So now would be an excellent time to buy that merchandise you’ve had your eye on all this time!

- Cheyenne has a lot of truckers, more so tonight because of the road closure, and I do not like truckers. They say “he don’t” when they mean “he doesn’t,” for example. Surely you can see how I would be unpleased to be here.

Thanks in advance for your well wishes, thoughts, and prayers. I look forward to being on Portland roads again, which though they may be rain-soaked, at least are not icy, closed, or in Wyoming.

As noted in a previous blog entry, I’m taking January off from reviewing new releases. There will be a few reviews trickling in for movies I saw in December that are now going wide, and perhaps a couple new ones that I’m assigned to review for Salt Lake City Weekly. But overall, the reviews will be scarce this month — though as I pointed out in the above-mentioned blog entry, January movies tend to stink anyway.

“Notes on a Scandal,” a December release, is opening in more cities today, and it’s a fun ‘n’ tawdry little gem. It stars Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, but don’t worry, it’s not nearly as highfalutin as the presence of those actresses might suggest.

As far as wide releases go, we have three. Here’s what I said about them in this week’s “In the Dark”:

“CODE NAME: THE CLEANER” (1 hr., 31 min.; PG-13 for sexual content, crude humor and some violence) stars Cedric The Entertainer as a janitor who wakes up with amnesia and stumbles into a top-secret FBI investigation. I just watched the trailer, and it made me sterile. From the director of “Flubber,” “Blue Streak” and last year’s Eugene Levy/Samuel L. Jackson abortion, “The Man.”

“HAPPILY N’EVER AFTER” (1 hr., 27 min.; PG for some mild action and rude humor) is an animated comedy in which a wicked stepmother sets out to ruin all of fairy tale land. The trailer mentions it’s from the producers of “Shrek,” which is fortunate, as it means they can’t be sued by the producers of “Shrek” for ripping off “Shrek.” From a first-time director and first-time writer.

“FREEDOM WRITERS” (2 hrs., 3 min.; PG-13 for violent content, some thematic material and language) stars Hilary Swank as a teacher of tough inner-city high-school kids. Does she inspire them to greater heights through the use of unorthodox methods? One assumes so.

This week’s “In the Dark” podcast can be heard here.

2007 marks the 10th anniversary of “Snide Remarks,” the weekly humor column that appears on this website. In case you have not been paying attention for the past decade, “Snide Remarks” began at The Daily Universe, Brigham Young University’s campus newspaper, where I worked from 1997-1999. The column then followed me to the Daily Herald, Provo’s local paper, from 1999-2003. Since March 2004, it has been published here at EricDSnider.com.

The official 10-year anniversary date is difficult to determine, and scientists have debated it for years. The first column written under the title “Snide Remarks” was published Sept. 29, 1997. But if you look in the archives, you’ll see that one is listed as column #9. That’s because I wrote eight columns before it that, while not yet titled “Snide Remarks,” and not yet published on a regular weekly basis, obviously were in the “Snide Remarks” vein. Taking those into account, the first “Snide Remarks”-ish column was published Feb. 6, 1997.

In my mind, the September date is the more official one, so that’s mostly what I’m going by. Still, I figured, why not celebrate throughout 2007?

I’ve been making my way through the 500-plus columns in the archives, re-reading everything, fixing the odd punctuation or typographical error, reformatting things that got messed up during our various server changes, and updating the “Comments & Reaction” sections where appropriate. This will make them brighter and shinier for you, the casual browser and at-work time-waster.

I’ve also been taking notes. I’m compiling my personal lists of the best and worst columns, making note of my favorite angry letters, and other such lists. I’ll post them periodically over the course of the next few months.

And just for fun, every Wednesday in 2007, I’ll post a blog entry with a link to that week’s designated “Snide Remarks” Classic column. These will be columns that perhaps are not as well-remembered as some of their brethren but that are still funny and worth reading again (or, very likely for most of you, for the first time). If significant, memorable entries like the “Titanic” column and “I Was a Junket Whore” are the assassination of Lincoln and the Watergate scandal, then these lesser-known columns would be the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908 and the election of William Henry Harrison. They are important, in their way, as they contribute to the larger tapestry of history, but not monumental.

Our first “Snide Remarks” Classic is #011, published in The Daily Universe on Oct. 13, 1997: “1800 Dumb Questions,” in which I call toll-free consumer-comment hotlines and say stupid things. Enjoy!

This week’s “Snide Remarks” is up now, a bit later than usual, but hey, it’s a holiday. There’s no podcast, though, because the same ailment that left me voiceless on Friday still persists. I’ll try to go back and record this one when my voice returns to me.

Speaking (ha ha!) of which, here is the conversation I had with my dad the other day:

ME: (scratchily) I don’t know what happened to my voice.
DAD: Maybe it went back up to Portland early.
ME: Well, I hope it’s behaving itself. It causes enough trouble for me even when I’m there to supervise it.
DAD: You supervise it?

ZING!