Down in the deep, dark winter … When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whit! To-who! — a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. — William Shakespeare, “Winter” from “Love’s Labours Lost”

1. Outsiders
For those of us who bitch ad nauseam about the cold, consider the street people of the Mountain West, whose numbers have gone through the roof (if they had one) in the past year. Denver, for example, counted 11,000 in its 2009 survey of people living on its streets. The biggest jolt: Forty-five percent of respondents said they were homeless for the first time. In Seattle, urban street homelessness was up 2 percent for 2009, and suburban homelessness went up a whopping 40 percent, largely among people living in cars. In Phoenix, 230 homeless families were reported in January ’09, up from 49 the previous year.

2. Long, frequent ass-biting cold
While New Hampshire’s Mount Washington takes the lead for Most Freezing Days Per Year (242), Alamosa, Colo., is Damned Cold For Damned Often as well: 227 days. Runners-up include Ely, Nev., at 218, and Flagstaff, Ariz. at 208.

3. Got Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors?
It’s kind of funny in an unhealthy way that so many people move to the Mountain West to work on their mental health, only to find themselves living in Suicide Central. For reasons we cannot explain, D.C. and New York are at the bottom of the scale when it comes to people killing themselves, while Wyoming takes the top slot for people getting it over and done with (.214 per 1,000). Montana is second, followed by Alaska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Colorado and Idaho. Arizona comes in at 10, with Utah in a tie with Kentucky for 11th place. On a brighter note, if you live in Wyoming, you and your fellow state dwellers share the lowest number of chlamydia cases in the country. Keep up the good work!

4. Down and Outville
Yuma, Ariz. has the ignominious rank as the fourth most depressing place in the United States, according to The Business Insider. With unemployment hovering around 24 percent as of September, it completely sucks for people who want to do crazy things like have money and eat. Yuma comes in behind East St. Louis, California’s Inland Empire and (drum roll) Detroit at No. 1.

5. A Special Day For Fear and Loathing
We picked Las Vegas, N.M. (we had tagged the other Vegas, but it failed due to its usually decent weather in January) as this year’s site for Blue Monday, although anyone can celebrate the holiday in any place. BM is part of a publicity campaign (oddly enough, with origins in the sunny U.K.) to establish the most depressing day of the year, which is calculated as the Monday of the last full week in January. In other words, don’t get out of bed on Jan. 25. The formula for establishing BM includes weather conditions, debt level (the difference between accumulated debts and our ability to pay them), the time since Christmas, the time since failing New Year’s resolutions, low motivation levels and feeling a need to take action.

6. Tired of Being Cold, Broke and Depressed?
The spa industry is seeing its share of folks who want to declare the recession over, or at least go into brief denial. For example, in what the Bush White House called “despicable” in October of ’08, executives from AIG soaked up a $440,000 California spa retreat just days after receiving a federal bailout. Whether or not you are despicable, expensive spas are a viable escape from the deep, dark winter. We recommend vinotherapie, for example, in which you visit California’s Wine Country and have a crushed cabernet scrub followed by a bath of bubbling water with finely crushed grape extracts and organic oils. Or forego the scrub and bath and administer the wine until comfortable numbness is achieved.