Heat!

The last few days in SLO have been burning hot.

I think that heat is much worse than cold. Yes, your nose freezes in the cold, yes, you tremble and yes, it is normally darker and less appealing (at times) to go out. BUT! When it is cold you simply dress up. You choose warm clothes to put on, and you do so. And you heat up, while outside the cold breeze helps you enjoy it. If you are cold, you cover yourself more until you are not.

However, when it is hot, you have to deal with it. Other than activating the air conditioning, or drinking ungodly amounts of water, there is really not much you can do. And if you don't have those, you will start cooking in your own juices soon enough. There is not much you can do... you can take off your shirt, then your pants, then you are naked... and the heat seems to build up. You HAVE to go out, there is no other way around it, or suffer.

When it is cold outside, you grab a book, get covered in something or turn on the fire, heater, whatever. If it gets too warm, you lower the temperature and let the cold do its job. You make hot chocolate, you eat marshmallows, you prepare a nice warm dinner.

When its hot, you never have enough to drink to get results. Cold water doesn't cool you down the way a hot tea warms you up. Cold drinks, while nice, don't really do their jobs. Yeah, you could drink Gatorade and be healthier, and yes, it is definitely good for you to replenish your electrolites, but it is not going to cool you down that effectively.

Now, there is always the vacation spot thoughts: If it is hot, you go to the pool, the beach, the mall, stay out of the sun, cook outside, lie down and get a tan, etc.

But, what if you don't have a pool? And even if you did, how often will you swim? Are you going to spend every day tanning or swimming when you have to work, cook and do other things? Going to the beach, unless you live just on the shore is another thing that is basically only on the weekends, as is the mall. BBQ (and my readers know how much I love doing it) is great, but between the heat from the grill and the sun, you don't want to do it the next day. Let's face it, even Bobby Flay will probably not grill outside every day.

Besides, it is not really affordable!

Staying out of the sun is great in concept, but again, unless you have air conditioning, at 110 it gets very, very uncomfortable. While I will not even go to the point of comparing it to deserts and such (since, well, they are deserts and let's face it, whining about the heat to a desert-dweller is, well, stupid) I will say that I can't wait for winter to freeze my toes.

The Truthiness of the G.O.P.

One has to wonder what the hell goes through the minds of Hard-core Republicans these days.

The GOP (which, despite popular belief does not mean "Gathering Of Pretenders") has time and again demonstrated their excessively conservative views in outright stupidity to the point where it is almost not funny anymore.

Yes, democrats like to laugh it off since if taken seriously, it would probably start another civil war! But, there is a limit. Whenever racist attitudes come out, Hard-Core Republicans are fast to remind the rest of the world that good ol' Lincoln was a Republican... but that was back in 1861, when the beliefs of Republicans were the same as Democrats today... imagine that.

We (the world) had become used to the Hard-Core Republican ways under the leadership (snicker) of George W. Bush, where the policy was to answer with variations of the word "terror" to just about any question out there, IF they ever got an answer. "Vague" was the theme, and during those times, things like the Patriot Act and torture under the pretense of "Protecting the USA from Terrorists" made the USA seem more like Nazi Germany than the "Land of the Free".

But now, it seems that the Republican "Machine of Fear" has transformed into a new form... that of senseless and rather childish attitudes.

President Obama has been under constant attack by Republicans who claim that were it McCain in his place, it would have been the same situation... please... don't put the rest of us down with your credulous masses.

Would you have asked McCain for proof of his birth on American soil?
No.
Would you have made up a false Birth Certificate (from a country that didn't exist) to try and start a debate?
No.
Would you be chasing after McCain to fulfill the campaign promises he made whilst in the middle of a depression created and perpetrated and not prevented by G.W. Bush?
No.
Would you be accusing him of being a socialist?
No.
Would you say that the posters of him being depicted as the Joker are admissible as a form of "free speech"
No. ( Especially with the history Republicans have had of destroying and mutating free speech.)

Most Republicans I know seem to have an attitude of wanting President Obama to fail. There is this underlying current of speaking up and pointing how he is acting like a "Rock Star" and not doing his job...

Let's analyze that for a moment... So, it is okay for George W. Bush to literally have a several month vacation at the very beginning of his presidency, but it is not okay for Obama to help improve the USA's International Perception at the same time he tries to push his changes? Hm.

All I see is Republicans WHINING about whether what Obama is doing is to their liking or not. Throwing terms like "Obama Inflation" trying to scare others into their system of beliefs... (Sort of like, you will go to hell if you don't believe what I do) But I don't see any attempts in favor of productivity.

To those Republicans out there that like so much to say "Obama is not doing this..." well, let me remind you that if George W. Bush had done what most of the world wanted, he wouldn't have survived the pretzel.

As a bonus, I leave you this: The Illegitimate Grandson of an Alligator (Just my luck that it was the only video with no "embed" code)


-WD