Note: I originally started writing this post in July, when it would have actually seemed appropriate to be bitching about heat. In my laziness I finally got around to finishing this in October, but of course it's pretty much fall now. So just pretend that I was competent and posted this sometime in July, and everything will make much more sense. ---Cici
Yeah, yeah, I know I said my next post would catch everything up or whatever. But first there is a much more important point I have to make: fuck summertime.
And it's not just because there's some massive drought and separate heat wave going on, either. I mean, those certainly add to my point. But no, my main point is that even a regular summer sucks.
It's an important message to get out. Supposedly a lot of people have been moving into the South--the "Sunbelt"--in the past decade. I'm sure jobs and whatever else are the primary reasons (insert your own well-researched statistics here), but I also imagine people from the north are coming because they think summer is awesome. And I say this as a native northerner. To my fellow native northerners, please realize the following before you commit to coming down here:
1. No snow, dammit. You may think this is an obvious--and beneficial--upside to a warmer climate. And yes, not worrying about mounting snow tires, shoveling the driveway, or being stranded in a blizzard certainly do constitute a plus. But snow does have its own charm: Bing Crosby was dreaming of a white Christmas, not some bland snowless shit. Snow opens up a whole new world of recreation: enter snowball fights, Calvin-and-Hobbes snowmen projects, tobogganing, etc. Not to mention iced-over lakes and ponds make great areas for a pick-up game of hockey, skating, or even curling (but not usually curling).
2. Your car will need A/C. In my adventures with crappy cars, there is almost always something off with the A/C whereas the heater has worked fine. Which makes sense: living in the South, a car without adequate air conditioning is probably something you'd try to get rid of too. Note that heaters and A/Cs are both prohibitively expensive to fix, but a car's air conditioning system consists of several parts and requires a separate fluid to work (refrigerant), whereas car heaters are part of the engine's cooling system; the heater core and blower motor are pretty much the only major heating-specific parts involved. Yeah, you can roll down those windows and still get some air flowing in that bitch, but it's not the most fuel efficient thing to do at highway speeds. We've all heard horror stories of kids and pets dying in hot cars, but deaths in cold cars just don't seem to come up as much. Point: summer = car A/C = a pain in the ass when it doesn't work.
3. Being hot is worse than being cold. Ideally, you would be comfortable, neither too cold nor too hot. But forced into an uncomfortable choice, heat is often more dangerous--partly because people don't take excessive heat as seriously as excessive cold. In some places it's actually illegal to rent out buildings without adequate heating, but I haven't heard the same for buildings without air conditioning. I realize wikipedia is not immune from inaccuracies, but the article on heat waves mentions that they are overall the most deadly weather-related phenomena. Now maybe that's just bullshit, but if it's true, that means, in general, more people die from being too hot than from tornadoes, hurricanes, and presumably blizzards. If that's not an argument to fuck summertime I don't know what is. There must be a reason hell is typically depicted as a scorching pit of death instead of some cold tundra; at least extreme cold has the courtesy to numb you before you die.
4. Crime rises during the summer. Heat is deadly in another way: it not only makes people miserable, it makes them homicidal. Literally: people commit more crimes during the summer than in other seasons. "Hotheaded" is more than just a metaphor. Makes sense to me: in February it's just too damn cold to go all out on someone. But don't worry, you'll get that bastard once June comes around.
5. Cold gives you an excuse to cuddle. Of course, this presumes that 1) you like to cuddle and 2) there's someone in your life who is willing to cuddle with you, but come summer you just want everyone to back the fuck off. Maybe that cute girl would have hung out in your bed if it weren't a whoppin' 89 degrees in your room. During winter though, all you need is a warm-looking comforter to entice lovely members of the opposite sex. Well, okay--maybe you need more than just a comforter. But being cold always makes a little snuggle-snuggle just that more appealing; why not take all the help you can get?
6. You can always put on more clothes. But you can only take off so many. I'm not saying that you'll be entirely mobile: even moving your arms becomes a feat once you've got 15 coats on. You'll be damned warm though. However, once you're naked, you're naked--and you'll need that mobility to outrun the cops trying to charge you with indecent exposure.
7. Sweating is worse than shivering. Shivering sucks too, but at least it doesn't cause wet stains on your shirt and make people squinch their noses at your odor. Think of it this way: would you rather walk in shivering or sweating to that all-important interview for your dream job? (Although it wouldn't be much of a dream job if they didn't have some sort of climate control in the interview room, I suppose.)
8. Humidity + Hot = Hell. Unlike Arizona, which is famous for its dry heat, here in Georgia we get to enjoy a lovely little phenomenon called humidity. It's a cliche because it's true: it's not the heat, it really is the humidity. While summer is often associated with happy-go-lucky days outside, the first thing that makes me want to about-face on my doorstep is having a wall of sticky, muggy air greet me first thing after I open the door. To add insult to injury, heat and humidity seem to instantly summon swarms of evil flying things outside. When was the last time you had to swat at a wasp in 30-degree weather?
9. More days off during the winter. Yeah, there's the whole summer break thing for us schoolkids, but excluding teachers (who deserve a nice long break considering everything they put up with), people with real jobs have to work in the summer. And pretty much the whole summer at that: aside from Fourth of July, what time off are you really looking forward to during those warm months? Compare that to the big three of Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year's plus Presidents' Day and Martin Luther King Day during the winter. And granted, some people have to work on holidays anyway, but at least you'll have more chances to whine about it in wintertime.
10. Animals come out in the summer. I guess this can be construed into a plus if you're into, say, bird watching or deer hunting, but I'm mostly thinking of mosquito bites from evenings spent outside, bees hanging around your azaleas next to the front door, and noisy birds who don't give a damn that it's 7 in the morning on your day off. Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with animals, but putting up with that damn cicada noise gets old by the middle of July. During the winter, annoying wild animals behaviors are much less of an issue. Hell, even bears aren't a problem in the winter, assuming they're hibernating. If only little kids did the same...
After all that, I will add a disclaimer that summer isn't completely horrible. Yes, I realize more people retire in Florida than in, say, Maine, and most guys would probably agree that bikinis alone make summertime worth the heat. Who knows, maybe your birthday's in August, maybe you loathe the holiday season, maybe your mother died by crashing into a snowdrift, I don't know. But I do know that it's just too damn hot during the summer here in Georgia. So fuck summertime.
