Auto Da Fe

Now this is my kinda heatwave!

Greg:

The South has risen again, right on the west coast of Washington, where we are sweltering under an Al-Gore-nodding-his-head-with-I-told-ya-so-smugness heat wave of nearly Orleanean proportions. (And then the author was crushed under a falling stack of modifiers. -Ed.) I have been forced to leave my windows open each night, which has done a great job of welcoming in (and amplifying) the hoots and bellows of the sweating, gleeful Chinatownians. Somehow the 90-degree temperatures and giant flapjacks of 100% humidity falling from the sky bring out their best. Under such conditions, they are wont to expound loudly and at length upon their personal virtue, the size of their man-parts; the fecklessness and moral turpitude of their enemies, as well as their enemies' significant others, parentage, etc. - late into the steaming, acrid night.

Fawk. This is not just a heat wave. This is a trial - a trial by fire which I have failed egregiously. I have proven myself to be both a pisser and a moaner. Can you mail me something that I can stab myself with? They don't let me have sharp stuff because I'm "depressive", if you can believe that. I have to shave with a cat's tongue and cut my bread with that one magical word from Dune.

As you can plainly see, the heat has made me go completely mad. But it's not the heat, really. It's the lack of sleep. And the fact that I feel like an old man because I'm whining about the heat. Just last weekend, I was laboring - laboring, I tell you! - with a pack at nearly 9,000 feet at 87 degrees F. And did I whine? Nay. Perhaps because I couldn't summon the breath. But more likely because I was in the toolies, huffing the pine-rich air, frolicking with Don Lagarto and his pals by the shores of Crater Lake. I've found that stunning natural beauty can make you choke down a shitload of heat without complaining.

So that is why, dear brother, I have decided either to a) stab myself in the whoknowswhere (not likely) or b) purchase myself a piece of dirt somewhere up in the high pineys whereupon to swelter joyfully in the summer months. The heat has driven me to it. Spending summers withstanding blazing sciroccos of dumpster stench is not as appealing as it once was, and the tonic effects of nature are too self-evident on my heat-knackered corpse to ignore.

To that end, I have alerted John L. Scott Emerald-Award-Winning agent Gloria Lee of my intentions, and am arranging viewings of 20-acre parcels within the Olympic National Forest. I've found one that seems to be unbelievably cheap, so she is going to do a little research to find out exactly how much nuclear waste is stored on the premises, exactly how much anthrax is still living in the soil, and whether the ancient Salish curse in those parts applies to this particular piece of land. Those issues resolved, I plan on first completely freaking out, and then second, crapping out the largest stack of $20s I can muster for a down payment. Then I'll march up there, throw down a double-wide, and subscribe to Guns 'N' Ammo.

I'll let you know how this one turns out.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus