It's so hot out here, your skin will perspire!

I live in Southern California, which is better known in summer as "Why am I still living here?" There's a heat wave going on, which started sometime when the Earth was beginning to cool. Everywhere else was becoming temperate, and the Southwest would have none of it. It scoffed at cooling. It derided the merest thought of cooling down. In fact, it rages against cooling, against comfortable temperatures.

In other words, it's hot here. It's a dry heat, but fire is a dry heat too, and nobody says "Let's start a new community in that raging inferno." No, quite the opposite, people tend to run away from fire. People who live here should all just have a free house in Canada for the summer, and in return they can come down here in winter and pay for hotels. It's not fair, but that's the way it tends to go for Canadians. We have 427 days of sun a year here. That's right, it's so sunny that there are actually extra days of sun crammed between other sunny days. It's a lot of freaking sun, and I often think that this is where they send the weathermen who can't cut it elsewhere. It's like a minor league of weathermen, and I suspect their fake weather names suck too, like "Blowy Mountain" or "Dirk Precipitation". I picture them hiding under desks when we receive our annual 5 drops of rain, so that they have to pull out their dusty old "Killer Storm Watch" files and hold them as they rock themselves gently, denying the Creator who would craft such a cruel world as to actually break the unending cycle of sunlight.

They tell us that summer days are for romping around in fields catching fireflies, but that could never happen here. There are no fireflies, and setting normal flies on fire is only a temporary solution. But more than that, the reptilian parts of our brain don't want us out there. We need to crawl into the rocklike safety of our air conditioned cars and homes and places of business. And then we hiss at the hated sun for it's stupid radiation. And we shed our skin, and go sit in front of the TV, and watch all the fires burning around us, caused by morons. The typical conversation between these people is as follows:

Jeb: "Shooting bottle rockets at that dead grass field is a fine idea"
Bobby: "I concur"
Jeb: "Aiee. A fire"
Bobby: "Cruel fate, thou art an evil mistress"

I'm certain that's how everyone speaks these days.