August 4, 2006
It’s hot outside. It’s really hot. It’s hot as a bear in Bangalore. It’s so hot chickens are laying hard boiled eggs. It’s so hot birds are using potholders to pull worms out of the ground. It’s so hot that I still have a mark across my chest from the seat belt–from yesterday. It’s so hot that when I went outside earlier my shadow stayed inside. It’s so hot I’ve resorted to telling dumb it’s-so-hot jokes. It’s hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk. I’ve actually been thinking about doing that, too. If anyone asks I’ll just say, "This is your brain on global warming." But no one will ask because we’re all too hot to ask anything. There’s a reason this is the season for reruns on television: the stations know they’ve got a captive audience, and our brains have turned into cabbage anyway so we don’t care that we’re watching the same shows we didn’t really enjoy that much back when they were new six months ago.
The other night the only thing that compelled me to lift the remote control was one of those creepy soft drink commercials made by guys who take LSD and watch Godzilla movies. I fled from the image of a miniature Japanese person stabbing a giant Japanese person in the eye with a grapefruit and ran out of strength on one of those cable shows where two guys in pinstripe suits scream at each other for half an hour, except this time it was two guys in short sleeves with Clockwork Orange-style devices on their faces to keep their smiles in place. Instead of screaming they were chatting about, of all things, the weather. One of them said, "Maybe there’s something to all this global warming talk." The other said, "Ha! Just you wait ’til January!" Then what? I never did find out what he meant by that because they then cut to another soft drink commercial and I had to flee for my sanity. What happens in January? I won’t be staying tuned to find out, but I will be taking the rest of the month off. See you in salsa…and September.
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