Cool it, now

People. It is hot. It is the kind of hot that bakes our brains, and the only thing we can say to each other, all day long, is: "It is hot. It is HOT."

And our wilted companions try to nod, but their sweaty hair weighs down their head and neck and they look a little Muppety. (No offense.) "Hot," they agree, weak but emphatic.

So we head indoors. Yesterday the newspaper's front-page story was about a man who works on a boiler at the gas plant. No indoors option for him. To paraphrase the headline: Think it's hot? Try working his job. (It's a Midwestern specialty: stop complaining, because somebody's got it worse than you. And they do. My classroom is air conditioned. The closest I've ever gotten to a boiler is Purdue Pete.) Today's front page? "We're sweatin' (But just a little)." Come ON. There are rivulets of sweat running down this city's back. That stiff Midwestern upper lip is caked in layers or salt.

Indoors. Ho-hum. The love affair with cable has drawn to its predictable close. The mall feels like cheating on the pool, with distracting signage. "It's our biggest event of the year!" exclaims a department store that holds a sale roughly every two seconds. Should we "step out" and see what it's all about? Apparently a reality show mom just "stepped out" with a new facelift. A facelift, the celeb news anchor said, that she got in time for her daughter's wedding.

Help me, Rhonda.

I feel like it's important for us to remember that a sale is not an event. Also? People do not "step out." They leave the house, sure, but presumably to do things. It occurs to me now that the idea of "stepping out" was invented for non-events. Like celebrities leaving the house in order to be photographed. And that's not an event, either. It's a sale.

Trapped inside, we long for something new. The computer connects us to the celebs stepping out, the sales events, each other. We circle one another online without ever having to say hello. Hello.



I hope The Moody Blues have found Facebook. Go-go Boots Dancer, I bet, is a vaguebooker.

So look here. I don't know if this will alleviate heat malaise or boredom, but I got something for you: The New Thing, completely free at Metazen. While you're reading that, I will wait patiently for my new thing to arrive on the doorstep. Whatever it is, it's on its way.