It’s summer in a Texas. Yes, of course, it’s summer everywhere, except in Australia and in any other country sharing its hemisphere. But here, South Central Texas, summer can be cruel. Deadly. And if your A/C goes out (as mine did, for five dreadful days) it is tyranny with a thermostat.
Fortunately, my HVAC is covered by American Home Shield and worth every cent. They contracted with a local entity that sent “Bart” to my rescue. I dare not question anything in his double helix. That’s not politically kosher, but as a casual observer, I noticed that Nature had supplied him with an over-abundance of teeth. Of the forward momentum variety. When he smiles, his choppers cast a shadow.
Picture a human front-end loader.
Anyway, “Bart” with extreme diagnostic precision, banged around on the outside unit and after a few minutes announced “this sumbitch is shot!” A new capacitor and fan motor were be ordered.
And that meant two more days of sweating to one oldie: me. I was crestfallen.
Over the course of five days I’ve had aimed at me, one free-standing AC unit that really never worked, a ceiling fan on 11 and something called a Vornado. They all combined to just move warm air.
Everything is exacerbated by the fact that I have MS. It’s an auto+immune disease that among other things, HATES heat. It makes sufferers heat intolerant. So yeah, it’s been a miserable week and mostly a sleepless one, which have made matters worse. That’s dangerous for me. I think too much as it is…add heat inspired insomnia to the mix and I’m off the charts on the misery index.
And I’ve been miserable across the board. I deleted my Twitter account and removed both 24-hour news networks from my faves on my remote. I can no longer handle the violence. It’t anarchy and for the first time since Covid destroyed so many lives, on so many levels and all this racial unrest and the soulless heathens using it to their political end, I cried. Portland, NYC and Chicago, to name a few cities, are on fire and self-destructing before our very eyes.
I don’t know what the solution is…not really. But if pressed for an answer, I’d say we’re not unified by enough hate and anger.
“Oh rrrrreeaaalllyyyyy??? That’s all that seems to be oozing from our collective pours these days!!”
Combatting racism should be enough. But it isn’t. Racism and who or what warrants racist attitudes is just too damn mercurial….it’s certainly too divisive. When people fall in to a racist concept, it’s hard to alter that mindset. It becomes concrete and a way of life. Whites hate Blacks, who loathe the Jews who find the Muslims “que repugnante” and women suffer through all three modes. We need a common enemy on which to focus all this rage.
For example: 9/11. Right, wrong or indifferent, that day afforded us a common enemy. Nineteen men hijacked four planes and in the 19 years since flying them into buildings and one field, close to four-thousand people, directly and indirectly have died. We were sooooooo united by that hatred. Today, we’re fragmented and that disdain is now adulterated by dirty, nasty schismatic politics.
What we need is a good old fashioned alien invasion. Yessir—Klaatu, Gort, Mork, the Great Gazoo, Alf and Marvin “the by-God” Martian and their minions should descend from on high (or up from Middle Earth) and wreak some intergalactic havoc.
To quote Dr. Venkman…
“The dead rising from the grave! Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, Mass hysteria!!
An a alien invasion. Only little green lives will matter. It’s just what the Doctor——Spock ordered.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must end this post and to tend to the work being done on my air conditioner. I think it’s fixed. But beyond that, either a Toothy Bart the Repairman smiled….or we just experienced a brief, unannounced solar eclipse.
