This vulture is always giving me the eye as I stagger around in the dust, looking for a refrigerator to crawl into.
Maybe one of you science brainiacs knows whether this flippin heat wave is just a normal fluctuation in the Grand Climatronical Scheme, or whether it’s Al Gore’s nightmare come true. Either way, I blame the patriarchy for it. And for the only conversation anyone ever has around here anymore. It goes like this:
Jill [wiping forehead with back of forearm]: Hey Cindy Lou. How are ya.
Cindy Lou [wiping forehead with back of forearm]: Well, I sure wish it were a little hotter.
Jill [smiling weakly]: Heh.
Cindy Lou [smiling weakly]: Heh.
I admit it. I made a couple of snide remarks a week or two ago when it was all over the news that the Eastern seaboard was all flushed and dizzy over a few days of temperatures in the 90′s. “Call the networks, it’s 98 and we’re starting to perspire!”
Waa. What a bunch of whiners. In Cottonmouth County it’s been 100 degrees every day since May. Texans, however, don’t go on NPR and get all verklempt about it. We suck it up. We carry on. We spring from the TempurPedic an hour before dawn, dunk ourselves in a vat of sunscreen, shove the noggin into a large-brimmed hat, sprint about the countryside doing this and that, and get our ass back under the palapa by 9 AM. Then we find a chair in front of a fan and sit in it, motionless, until the sun goes down. Then we drink a bunch of margs, hit the sack, and do it all over again the next day. Until November. Here in the Prickly Pear Belt it takes more than a little triple digit solar radiation to harsh our mellow.
But today I’m crying uncle. Uncle, do you hear? It’s the 3rd or 4th day in a row of 107, after a week of 106, with another two weeks of 107 in the forecast, with heat indexes ever more purgatorial. 111. 113. 115. Record after record is smashed. It hasn’t rained since about 1947. If you stare too long at the scenery, the friction of your gaze upon the old dried-up grass ignites a wildfire. If you have access to a pool you wouldn’t swim in that thing with a ten foot pole or you’d get poached like some sad tilapia entree at the Golden Corral Buffet.
At this point my air conditioner merely wrinkles a cynical lip and exhales a hot, wet breath if I try to crank it below 90. Yesterday morning when I opened my front door, a crematorial blast of glowing orange air melted my lobe. It liquefied into a glib and oily slime and dripped off my honker. I collected this lobe-grease in a jar, and will probably use it for fuel this winter when the furnace breaks down.
Until then, I’m packing the bathtub with ice and making like an oyster on the half-shell.
126 comments
1 ping
Comrade PhysioProf
August 5, 2011 at 6:13 pm (UTC -6)
Damn, thatte’s fucken hotte!
sjaustin
August 5, 2011 at 6:20 pm (UTC -6)
My AC can’t keep up either, and it’s 87 degrees in my house. I’m lying on the couch with a fan pointed at my face. I’ve asked the dogs to wake me up at 6AM tomorrow, so maybe I can get some yard work done without dying of heat stroke.
roseh
August 5, 2011 at 6:27 pm (UTC -6)
Holy crap, Twisty. I couldn’t cope with that, I’d die of heat injury. Even where I live in Alaska we are having hotter temperatures than normal, and it’s miserable, but nowhere near that level of misery. Of course, while I don’t have to contend with face-melting degrees of 107F, Alaskans have to worry about villages getting inundated with water from the melting ice caps and such. IBTP.
Anne
August 5, 2011 at 6:44 pm (UTC -6)
I don’t know about Texas but 90 degrees in New York is disgusting. It really brings out that urine-soaked sidewalk smell.
Phoenix was handleable just because it’s dry, but you wouldn’t want to be outside in it more than 20 minutes. It’s like being on the surface of Mars.
Kea
August 5, 2011 at 6:45 pm (UTC -6)
Oh my, not for me. I would die of heat stroke. I have the opposite problem, though. We have had below zero (celcius) temperatures almost every night this winter, and I am counting the minutes until September.
Anne
August 5, 2011 at 6:48 pm (UTC -6)
I was going to say, a neat trick I do during inescapable heat waves is I jump into a tepid shower fully clothed and hang out or go to bed in sopping wet clothes or PJs, respectively. Beat those sweat glands at their own game.
LS
August 5, 2011 at 6:54 pm (UTC -6)
I just found out that “public toilet” is slang for “slut” in Japanese! What a magical day…
Ruby Lou
August 5, 2011 at 6:57 pm (UTC -6)
Dang. Over here in southern Arizona it’s a mere 104. In the weeks leading up to rainy season, we get days upon days of triple-digit delight, during which time it’s dry as dead bones, hellish wildfires fill the air with dense hot ash, and people go a little psycho. Or a lot. But then it starts raining. I can just imagine the endless weeks of it you’ve had in central Texas with no rain, searing sun, all those high-temp records lying broken in the dust. As I write, I’m sitting in front of a fan in a sports bra, t-shirt and shorts that I drenched in ice water before putting them on. That cold-bra-under-cold-t-shirt is pretty effective. It’s a little discouraging how fast I have to re-soak, but it’s only for 8 more weeks. Rah.
squiggy
August 5, 2011 at 7:12 pm (UTC -6)
Selfish of me. Such hilarious writing resulting from your hellish heat? Treat!
redpeachmoon
August 5, 2011 at 7:47 pm (UTC -6)
Yes. Hilarious! In spite of the heat Jill, you are still the coolest. Thanks.
Bushfire
August 5, 2011 at 8:35 pm (UTC -6)
Beautiful similes!
Ex-Advertising, Now Free
August 5, 2011 at 8:44 pm (UTC -6)
I don’t know about Texas but 90 degrees in New York is disgusting. It really brings out that urine-soaked sidewalk smell.
Preach, Anne. This. Except, where I’m at, add to that about 20% more humidity and the stench of thousands of idiots salivating in anticipation of rooting for their much-celebrated, pigskin-tossing, rape charge-dodging town Neanderthal, Ben Roethlisburger.
Every time that shitbag’s team loses, I grin. Broadly, and with all my teeth showing. This weather means it’s almost time for me to (hopefully!) grin broadly – and with all my teeth showing – on a regular basis.
Kea
August 5, 2011 at 8:49 pm (UTC -6)
Any witty English majors feel like trolling the science blogs?
http://www.science20.com/science_20/blog/wikipedia_sexist_too-81478
incognotter
August 5, 2011 at 9:30 pm (UTC -6)
Sorry it’s so hellish there, Twisty. We got that heat wave before the east coast did, and our heat index was about 112 every day for a week. I happened to be sign-waving most of that week. Of all the misbehaviors of dudes towards women in public the one I find most enraging is their behavior toward a woman trying to avoid heat stroke via evaporative cooling. I only soak my headband and the BACK of my shirt in cold water because if I soaked the front of my shirt I’m be hur hur a chick on the corner in a wet t-shirt hur hur. Next time a guy signs for me to “hang loose” I’m going to fry an egg on his forehead.
Vibrating_Liz
August 5, 2011 at 9:34 pm (UTC -6)
Standing invite to come stay at my tiny island treehouse in the cool green Pacific Northwest. The thermometer on my deck hasn’t even hit 80F so far in 2011.
sjaustin
August 5, 2011 at 9:41 pm (UTC -6)
Vibrating_Liz, is there room in there for another spinster aunt and two largeish dogs?
Comrade PhysioProf
August 5, 2011 at 9:51 pm (UTC -6)
No patience to deal with willfully ignorant doucheiousity, but goddamn could that fucken Glen Campbell d00d look any more fucken pompously fucked uppe in his dumshitte blogge picture?
Kea
August 5, 2011 at 9:59 pm (UTC -6)
Saw the remark though, thanks, Comrade!
cardinal
August 5, 2011 at 10:19 pm (UTC -6)
Condolences on your heat. Ready to send limes for your margaritas if needed, as I live on an orchard ranch.
This aired today on NPR, with interesting points about global warming/climate change: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/08/05/mysteries-of-the-sun I didn’t get to hear the whole thing, but the prediction of “hottest year ever” coming in 2013 certainly made me sit at attention while driving.
TotallyDorkin
August 5, 2011 at 11:46 pm (UTC -6)
Oh jesus fucking christ Kea how do you have the energy to deal with those assholes for so long?
Pinko Punko
August 6, 2011 at 12:12 am (UTC -6)
I love how June was like August and now August is like a freaking suncano barfing hot oven blasts into my face constantly. Everything is just getting completely fried.
Triste
August 6, 2011 at 12:45 am (UTC -6)
Fucking heat waves. I thought they were just annoying, living in a pretty cold area myself, but apparently that shit kills more people in the states than all other natural disasters (tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and such) combined every year. Or so I’ve read. There are studies that show a link between heat waves and suicide/violent behavior too.
Interesting thing about the East Coast, by the way, is that July 1911 there was another heat wave in New England, except this one had temperatures more like what you describe, and 2,000 people and at least 600 horses died. Some just dropped dead of heat, others drowned jumping in rivers to cool down. There were a few heat-related suicides as well, apparently. Fucking nuts.
Tasha @ Voracious Eats
August 6, 2011 at 1:15 am (UTC -6)
I live in Saudi Arabia. 120F is the average summer temperature. With seriously high humidity. From May to October. Sometimes I have to think really hard to remember why I live here…
shopstewardess
August 6, 2011 at 1:19 am (UTC -6)
About 20 years ago, I worked in an organisation that had links with the earliest climate change science. I was told then that global warming is the mechanism, and its consequences would be increasing climate destabilisation.
Ever since, I have greeted patriarchal statements that new weather records are merely coincidental with the traditional Savage Death Island reponse of hollow mirthless laughter.
I take my consolation where I can for as long as I can. In my northerly climes, the sea-swimming this year has been excellent.
Nepenthe
August 6, 2011 at 4:08 am (UTC -6)
Sorry Kea, too busy dealing with dudes on Wikipedia. If I could stand tequila, I could use a bucket of margs after every editing session.
laxsoppa
August 6, 2011 at 4:44 am (UTC -6)
Ow. I had to find an online converter to figure out the temperature in Celsius – definite heatstroke material for me.
Up here it’s +10°C today (50°F). Wish I could send some of this Barents Sea breeze across the Atlantic for you to enjoy.
speedbudget
August 6, 2011 at 9:12 am (UTC -6)
Say what you want about us wimps on the East Coast, but when you’re dealing with 98 degrees and 90% humidity, getting things wet does nothing to cool you. It just makes you wet and hot. It’s pretty bad when sweat does absolutely nothing to cool you off.
pheenobarbidoll
August 6, 2011 at 10:42 am (UTC -6)
I didn’t realize it was a heat wave. 110+ is just summer in West Texas. Summer starts in March and ends late November. The lack of rain is not rare here either. We typically average an inch or so a year in a wet season.
The bursting into flames is new though. The mesquite here is actually bursting into flames from just being so dry.
Frumious B.
August 6, 2011 at 11:27 am (UTC -6)
Boston is having in my opinion a fairly mild summer. Sure, there were a few hot days. But the heat waves have only lasted like 3 days, and there haven’t been very many of them. It’s now August, and it’s long sleeve shirt weather in the evenings. August. Long sleeved shirts. Srsly.
I don’t understand why North Easterners can’t handle summer. I understand why Texans can’t handle winter. Winter requires infrastructure. Plows. Salt. Most parts of Texas don’t stock these things, so a half inch of snow or a freezing rain shuts them down. Summer requires no infrastructure. Just stay indoors with a fan and try not to move too much. C’mon, North Easterners. It’s only a couple days per year.
Jezebella
August 6, 2011 at 11:34 am (UTC -6)
Speedbudget, 98 degrees and 90% humidity?
All of South Mississippi probably just heard my hollow, mirthless laugh. I actually prefer a humid heat to a dry one, but I was also born and grew up below sea level in a former swamp (New Orleans).
Tanya
August 6, 2011 at 11:37 am (UTC -6)
I would send you some of our 76 F if I could. Everybody was complaining about heat when the thermometer hit 80. After hearing about Texas I will shut my yap. Of course in winter we regularly hit -40 F and that can be unpleasant. I am one of the few weirdos that enjoys the cold temperatures. Winter sports are the best! Skating, skiing, and walking my wintery dog are the best things ever. I feel sorry for my large wolfhound with the thick black fur. She was made for winter not summer heat. I won’t be visiting Texas anytime soon. Heatstroke knocks me flat when the temp hits the 90s. Here in Saskatchewan we usually have forest fires and the smoke billows into the city hundreds of miles to the south but we haven’t had that happen yet this year. This has been a very pleasant summer here so far.
Lidon
August 6, 2011 at 11:43 am (UTC -6)
@ Jezebella: I love New Orleans! I remember visiting family there several years ago during the summer, and I was dripping with sweat even at midnight. But it is a great city.
sjaustin
August 6, 2011 at 12:53 pm (UTC -6)
special mention of twisty starting at 1:15.
I didn’t make it much farther than that. I got to the part where she starts blathering as though Twisty invented the idea of women as receptacles. Is that in the antifeminists-who-call-themselves-feminists handbook? When people point out things that are icky and misogynistic about the status quo, act as though they invented it and call them misogynists.
Amrit
August 6, 2011 at 12:55 pm (UTC -6)
Greetings from balmy Southern Arizona where our brains, what little we had left, have been baked by now. I have no suggestions for beating the heat here, which is utterly relentless. By August I feel like the script is all ‘Sheltering Sky’ like I’m being stalked by a giant blazing merciless orb. My approach is less yoga, more mint tea, and avoidance of the news media. Best to you in Texas. I hear it’s been brutal there this year.
quixote
August 6, 2011 at 2:04 pm (UTC -6)
I lived for a while in The Dreadful Flat Place, just north of Texas. My method of not dying of heatstroke while doing field work in summer was to wear some sort of hat that was able to hold a plastic bag full of ice and water on my head. (Wearing an ice bag around your neck is the same idea, but gets in the way more.)
Throwing water on your clothes helps too, but that evaporates in minutes. The ice is good for a hour or so before it melts and the water gets warm. But the main benefit is that so long as your brain stays cool, your body may feel hot but you don’t have that “My God I can’t move I’m gonna pass out and I wanna die” feeling.
Try it. You’ll like it. :D
thebewilderness
August 6, 2011 at 3:08 pm (UTC -6)
You all have my heartfelt sympathy. Extreme weather events due to climate change in the Pacific Northwest are manifesting in the form of more major wind storms than we are used to seeing.
We had a mild winter and now we are having an endless spring that will slide right into fall.
Regarding the link, people who choose not to understand why women avoid donating their time and effort in hostile environments have no desire to understand why women avoid donating their time and effort in hostile environments because it might prevent them from blaming women for refusing to donate their time and effort in hostile environments.
By the bye, Texas has always seemed a hostile environment to me.
ElizaN
August 6, 2011 at 3:14 pm (UTC -6)
Berkeley is having a “heat wave” too. A “heat wave” here, which results in people walking around in their smallest clothes acting like they might die any second, is when it gets into the 70′s. (A “cold snap,” where they wear heavy parkas and wool hats and gloves, is when it drops into the 40′s. As someone who grew up in Ohio, I find it fascinating to watch.)
Discombobulated
August 6, 2011 at 3:27 pm (UTC -6)
“If you stare too long at the scenery, the friction of your gaze upon the old dried-up grass ignites a wildfire.”
This made me very happy.
I got two paragraphs into that linked science20.com article and just stopped. Ewwwwwwww. Kill it with fire!
buttercup
August 6, 2011 at 3:46 pm (UTC -6)
90s here with very high humidity and high nighttime temps-that is what does the old folks in. It never gives you a break. My electric bill came today and I nearly fainted, $300. That’s double my highest electric bill ever in this house. But at least I have AC and the means to pay the bill off, eventually.
This is very definitely not normal. I think it’s Al Gore’s nightmare come true.
Phledge
August 6, 2011 at 4:41 pm (UTC -6)
Las Vegas blamer reporting for duty; I use peppermint oil in a tepid bath to cool off. All the obvious blaming of the megacorporotheocracy as regarding climate change denial has been handled by much finer blamers than I, if I’m not mistaken. Good luck with melted lobes everywhere.
Metal Teapot
August 6, 2011 at 5:39 pm (UTC -6)
I don’t get the heat index, the feels like temperature here is always about 20 degree above actual, but at the moment the humidity isn’t that high (Southern Louisiana). I’m lucky my apartment seems to stay fairly consistently at 85 which is just comfy enough to not need air con. No idea how, maybe because the person above me runs it excessively.
Jezebella
August 6, 2011 at 8:27 pm (UTC -6)
Kea, I dropped in on that thread and I posted maybe twice and now I’m exhausted from reading the first dozen posts or so. Those dudes sure like to hear themselves type, don’t they?
piratequeen
August 6, 2011 at 8:36 pm (UTC -6)
Kea – I stuck a toe in on the science blog, but it’s clearly a waste of righteous blamin’ breath to try and engage anyone over there.
Jez – any response other than “my, what a magnificent
penisargument you have there” will be ignored.Ugh. I need to go bathe my lobes now.
Kea
August 6, 2011 at 8:37 pm (UTC -6)
Kind of mesmerising, isn’t it? It’s like they have never, ever considered the possibility that they might be wrong, even when talking about something that their commenters must know more about than they do.
Jezebella
August 6, 2011 at 8:46 pm (UTC -6)
Aaand, in less than sixty minutes from first posting, I got called a bitch. Out-fucking-standing. Some days, I admit, I get the giggles from taking giant radfem poops and throwing them at the idiots. Takes me back to my old BBS flamewar days.
shopstewardess
August 6, 2011 at 11:36 pm (UTC -6)
That blog has a privileged white male stating that anyone who is not a privileged white male cannot complain about the behaviour of privileged white males because there are people other than the complainant who are also not privileged white males.
Kea, I admire your persistence. I’ve lobbed a couple of comments.
angie
August 7, 2011 at 1:10 am (UTC -6)
Twisty’s email isn’t working, so I’m linking this here for all those who’s lobes haven’t been fully melted by the heat. I know it is from The Daily Mail, but these are actual pictures of a 10 year old girl “modeling” for Vogue. They blew my lobe, so, of course, I had to share here.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2022305/Thylane-Lena-Rose-Blondeau-Shocking-images-10-YEAR-OLD-Vogue-model.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Carpenter
August 7, 2011 at 2:24 am (UTC -6)
Whatever, there is no humidity in the air in Texas. An east coast 98 for a week is like living inside a sponge someone stuck in a blast furnace. Plus it stays that way all damn night, you can’t sleep and you have to resort to soaking your sheets in the bath tub before you get under them. Your dry 100 can just suck it the hell up.
Flora Poste
August 7, 2011 at 3:32 am (UTC -6)
And there was I thinking the world was gradually going over to the metric system. This thread has sure showed me!
M
August 7, 2011 at 5:32 am (UTC -6)
It pretty much has, but “America” and “the World” are different places.
geogeek
August 7, 2011 at 7:34 am (UTC -6)
Carpenter, your concept of Texas as having no humidity is a common error of people who have only seen Texas on video. The semi-desert grasslands and true desert parts of Texas (farther from the coast, north, and west) are apparently the more photogenic ecosystems. But there’s a lot of coastline and even swampy parts of TX, including the more populous areas. Houston and Galveston are only about 80 miles from Louisiana. Hot hot heat and wet wet humidity.
Comrade Svilova
August 7, 2011 at 8:13 am (UTC -6)
That Daily Mail article is deeply disturbing. The photos are really too much. But it just illustrates how much the P wants women to be girls.
TA
August 7, 2011 at 8:50 am (UTC -6)
Those doods have convinced me to abandon my “diversity is good for science” position. I now believe science would work much better without white guys. Among other things, science requires admitting you don’t already know everything. Also, asking questions and paying attention to the answers. They suck at those things; they must also suck at science.
Also, buttercup, I will see your $300 electric bill and raise you – mine was $419! I’m glad I had the foresight to switch to cheap boxed wine a few months ago.
pheenobarbidoll
August 7, 2011 at 9:39 am (UTC -6)
“Whatever, there is no humidity in the air in Texas”
Evidently, you’re not aware Texas has a coast, and East Texas is practically in Louisiana. Houston is considered a sub tropical climate.
Also, people pay to sit in humid heat. No one pays to sit in an oven, with a hair dryer for a breeze. Water, in any form, is better than none. Live in a desert for awhile and you’ll appreciate this.
Jezebella
August 7, 2011 at 9:43 am (UTC -6)
Texas has no humidity?!! Bwa. Ha. Ha. Geography fail! Houston is DEADLY humid, as is most of Southeast Texas. Dang.
sjaustin
August 7, 2011 at 10:12 am (UTC -6)
No humidity in Texas? Ha! Anyway, it’s not just 100; high temps in Austin have been 106-108. Those few extra degrees make a big difference. I lived in New Orleans for 12 years, so I’m no stranger to the difference high humidity can make, and I’d still prefer 98F with 98% humidity to our dry(er) 108F.
sjaustin
August 7, 2011 at 10:15 am (UTC -6)
Agreed. I just read that mess, and I thought about commenting, but couldn’t think of anything that hadn’t already been said. All of their arguments have been addressed; they’re just not paying attention.
Jill
August 7, 2011 at 10:34 am (UTC -6)
There is no point in discussing things like science or feminism with dudes. They either want to call a prayer meeting or go to a strip club — anything to avoid listening to you.
Jill
August 7, 2011 at 10:38 am (UTC -6)
Also, Pheeno has it slightly wrong. It’s Louisiana that’s practically part of Texas, not the other way around.
Also, they don’t call Texas the Land of Contrast for nothing! We’ve got it all: desert, high plains, pine forests, big thickets, 800 miles of coastline, swamps, mountains, islands, and of course, the picturesque Hill Country, home of Spinster HQ, where it is both 107 degrees AND humid, kill me now.
sjaustin
August 7, 2011 at 11:49 am (UTC -6)
The other advantage of a strip club is that not only do they avoid listening to those mean feminists, they can force the women there to listen to them. (Although if the customer-stripper ratio is high enough, even the stripper may opt out of listening to their particular brand of bullshit and find another customer who spews some slightly less offensive bullshit.)
Bushfire
August 7, 2011 at 11:54 am (UTC -6)
Hey, Jill, it’s only about 85 in Toronto, and I’ve got a place for you to stay up here.
Jill
August 7, 2011 at 12:07 pm (UTC -6)
Excellent, Bushfire, send me the coordinates. Me and my 4 horses and 2 dogs will be right up.
Carpenter
August 7, 2011 at 1:20 pm (UTC -6)
Most of my experience in Texas has been driving though it multiple times by diving in through OK and exiting through El Paso or the reverse, that was a whole lot of crispy.
Ayla
August 7, 2011 at 2:52 pm (UTC -6)
The Hank idiot at that “science” blog seems literally incapable of addressing what people say. I’m the anon over there calling him a liar repeatedly.
Ayla
August 7, 2011 at 3:00 pm (UTC -6)
(test comment to see if I am on moderation)
Ayla
August 7, 2011 at 3:01 pm (UTC -6)
Heh. I guess my post about Hank at the science blog was too offensive for Jill’s spamulator.
TA
August 7, 2011 at 3:09 pm (UTC -6)
Heh. You should try driving to Houston from New Orleans. When you get to Texas, there’s a sign that says “El Paso, 950 miles” or whatever the number is. It is AWESOME.
In other news, I checked out that science site some more, and holy shit is that guy full of suppressed patriarchal misogynist rage. Even with the breast cancer t-shirts “Save Second Base” – ew ew EWW.
I see some women fighting the good fight over there, and I’d just like to tell them that no good ever came from trying to engage or elucidate a dude like that. When you’re older you regret the time you wasted. You could have been drinking margaritas instead!
Bushfire
August 7, 2011 at 3:27 pm (UTC -6)
Excellent, Bushfire, send me the coordinates. Me and my 4 horses and 2 dogs will be right up.
Well, I think my apartment will get a bit crowded with the horses and dogs in it.
incognotter
August 7, 2011 at 5:13 pm (UTC -6)
Jezebella, if they called you a “bitch” then you are doing something right. The patriarchal definition of the word bitch is “woman who is not personally convenient to me at this moment.” Would you WANT to be convenient to Mr. Entitlement?
Ruby Lou
August 7, 2011 at 5:20 pm (UTC -6)
Thanks Angie for the Daily Mail link. To me, presenting a 10-year-old girl in full fem-fashionized drag in Vogue is a form of child prostitution, one of the patriarchy’s greatest ‘pleasure’ preferences and historically a marker for a patriarchal empire in decline. Plus ca change. As I beheld the images of this little girl done up as an adult Vogue fashionbot, the familiar feelings of grief and rage arose. Take away the spackle, the stiletto heels, the polystyrene hair, the slinked-up dress, she’d be a little girl. She’s TEN. As a striking foil to this item, on that same page is a link to Lady Gaga photographed as her male alter-ego, Joe Calderone. YOW.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2023132/Lady-Gaga-poses-male-alter-ego-Jo-Calderone-You-I-cover.html
pheenobarbidoll
August 7, 2011 at 6:00 pm (UTC -6)
“Also, Pheeno has it slightly wrong. It’s Louisiana that’s practically part of Texas, not the other way around.”
Ha!
Tei Tetua
August 7, 2011 at 6:13 pm (UTC -6)
“Today I’m crying uncle. Uncle, do you hear?”
What, an Aunt crying Uncle?
Barn Owl
August 7, 2011 at 9:57 pm (UTC -6)
Whatever Yank Prepbell and Gerhard S. Thompson are up to over at Science 2.d’oh, it is neither evidence-based nor hypothesis-driven. It almost certainly involves pathological levels of denial and privilege, however. I marvel at the persistence and fortitude of blamers who possess the fortitude and persistence to attempt to reason with them.
SPF 85 sunscreen has not been sufficient to prevent tannification of my arms, in the mere 5 minutes or so it takes for me to walk between parking lot and lab each day, here in Hill Country City. A friend gave me a little UV detector on a keychain, but I’m afraid to use it, for fear it will burst into flames, or else transfer the UV and adductify half the DNA in my body. Just want to stay indoors and drink frosty green smoothies all day – and 2013 will be worse, you say? That’s what I get, for finding and maintaining employment in a concrete and asphalt love monument to SUVs, unsustainable exurbs, and sprawling, pretentious McMansions.
Also, judging from the weather outlook for the next few weeks, all that government-sanctioned godbothering at Reliant Stadium will perform exactly as predicted. Which is to say, not at all.
Carpenter
August 8, 2011 at 12:22 am (UTC -6)
My go to method for attempting to cool off in the daylight hours used to be sitting in front of a box fan and intermittently blasting it with a squirt gun. This is the perfect thing to do whist drinking a cold alcoholic beverage and also offers the perfect amount of mind-numbingness needed to deal with the heat.
Antoinette Niebieszczanski
August 8, 2011 at 6:10 am (UTC -6)
My a/c was on the fritz for a week at the end of July. Since sleep was impossible, all I did was swelter in a pool of sweat at night. This cooled me off not at all because of the derned humidity. My memory may be warped, but I cannot recall summer being this miserable when I was a kid.
And the bugs are frighteningly robust! Whatever evil relatives of the cicada make that “eh-EH” sound at approximately 98 decibels after sunset need to STFU. Jeeminy, they must be the size a Buicks to produce such volume.
Jill
August 8, 2011 at 8:10 am (UTC -6)
“Whatever evil relatives of the cicada make that “eh-EH” sound at approximately 98 decibels after sunset”
I haven’t heard a cicada in forever. The drought here has killed all living things, including the bugs. Excepting the pretty large populations that had the foresight to move into my house before the heat hit. I kill those myself. Along my baseboards are 72 4″x 6″ “pest traps” — plastic boxes lined with glueboard — that are usually pretty full of insects of all descriptions. Death by dessication is no good, but it’s either that or toxic chemicals poisoning me and my dogs.
Sarah
August 8, 2011 at 8:13 am (UTC -6)
Here in Portlandia it hasn’t broken 85 a-once while I’ve been watching. We don’t get summers. I am open to an exchange program. I am pretty sure we’re all suffering from a vitamin D deficiency.
A Ginva
August 8, 2011 at 8:20 am (UTC -6)
It annoys me how the Daily mail is all poo-poo and oh so shocked, OUTRAGED about the pornification of young girls. As if it gave a damn. So it’s stinking creepy to treat girls as pornprey for all the filthy pervs in the world, but it’s totally fine when it comes to adult women??
The Daily mail seems to suggest once girls step into teen and adulthood, they’re magically full of agency and free choice and superpower.
And while the daily mail feigns disgrace about the exploitation of sexualised girls for entertainment, it does just that – exploit sexualised girls for entertainment.
By the way, the “femail” section should be called “women stay where you belong” section (babies, cooking and how to make yourself a more fuckeable fuck-toilet for men)
A Ginva
August 8, 2011 at 8:32 am (UTC -6)
It annoys me how the Daily mail is all poo-poo and oh so shocked, OUTRAGED about the pornification of young girls. As if it gave a fuck. So it’s stinking creepy to treat girls as pornprey for all the filthy pervs in the world, but it’s totally fine when it comes to adult women?? Cause once these girls step into teen and adulthood, the Daily mail seems to suggest that all of a sudden, they’re magically full of agency and free choice and superpower.
And while the daily mail feigns disgrace about the exploitation of sexualised girls for entertainment, it does just that – exploit sexualised girls for entertainment.
By the way, the “femail” section should be called “women stay where you belong” section (babies, cooking and how to make yourself a more fuckeable fuck-toilet for men)
speedbudget
August 8, 2011 at 8:52 am (UTC -6)
We never had air conditioning growing up. I was able to sleep pretty decently with a fan in the window, if not close doors due to them soaking up the humidity and getting all warped. It has certainly gotten hotter and more disgusting in the summers.
But I do love how all the jokers who are all, “Where is your global warming NOW?” in the winters when we are having completely out-of-character 18+ inch snowfalls one right after the other are nowhere to be found now. I can’t find a one of them denying in this heat, so I guess that’s a good thing.
Jezebella
August 8, 2011 at 8:54 am (UTC -6)
TA, I have made the NOLA-Houston drive many many times, and that “El Paso: 950 miles” sign is my absolute favorite thing on the way. It’s just so *Texan*. My second favorite thing is when I finally reach the nearest Taco Cabana.
tinfoil hattie
August 8, 2011 at 9:18 am (UTC -6)
I admit it. I made a couple of snide remarks a week or two ago when it was all over the news that the Eastern seaboard was all flushed and dizzy over a few days of temperatures in the 90’s.
Oh, and I suppose women in the U.S. should not care about RAPE because women in Sudan have it WORSE! It’s the SAME THING! /snark
In DC it was fucken hotte, as Physio says. Well into the 100s. Hottest summer on record. It effin sucked funk-filled bratwursts, I tellya.
pheenobarbidoll
August 8, 2011 at 10:13 am (UTC -6)
I am 294 miles from El Paso. Just to give you an idea how far I am from Houston. Whenever I see that sign, I just thank bob I don’t live in El Paso and can get out of the car now.
H-Mo
August 8, 2011 at 11:09 am (UTC -6)
“I haven’t heard a cicada in forever. The drought here has killed all living things, including the bugs.”
The drought has not killed the fire ants in my yard that I walked into yesterday while trying to fill the birdbath. My right foot now has a series of pustules that burn and itch to no end. I am not tough enough to live in Texas.
Roving Thundercloud
August 8, 2011 at 11:44 am (UTC -6)
Lived in Dallas for seven freakin’ years and although Houston and Galveston were worse, I have never been in such another hot, wet, buggy, AND SMOGGY place. Where the heat index would hit the 130s because of all the smog and no damn breezes night or day. Where we’d say “it’s not so bad today, maybe we should play some tennis” and it would be 98. Where a big black thunderstorm would roll in, promising relief and dropping the temperatures down to maybe 89. GROSS.
Now back up in the good old Pac NW, and relieved that it hasn’t hit 85 yet. Lately our Junes and Julys have been quite cool, with summer arriving in August and staying through September. It screws up the plant budding, bug hatching, and bird hatching cycles, keeping the crops too wet & cold too long and then the bugs & birds are too late and few to help with pollination. So we trade one problem for another.
My scientist buddies tell me it’s not global warming so much as “global weirding”–things are just going to get more and more out of whack.
allhellsloose
August 8, 2011 at 11:53 am (UTC -6)
In good old Blighty it’s a chilly 16C, so it was a jumper day for me. Last week we had a two day heatwave with the balmy high of 26C. I have to keep checking the calendar – this is still August right?
Send some heat our way Twisty and I’ll glady send this chilly air to cool you down.
eb
August 8, 2011 at 2:12 pm (UTC -6)
Been living in Houston for 37 years. Yep, it’s bad here but Dallas is hell on earth. People are under the impression we have 11 months of 100 degree heat with 90% humidity. Nope. July – Sept. are bad. But, November – May are totally awesome.
Dallas? 100+ in the summer and sheets of ice in the winter. Dallas weather sucks big, hangy, knocky, hairy, green, patriarchal, donkey balls.
Was visiting Austin in the Spring. No wildflowers because there was no rain – and that was four months ago. Lake Travis is lookin’ mighty sparse.
Adrienne Lamb (aka The Atomic Gal)
August 8, 2011 at 2:54 pm (UTC -6)
I feel y’all about the heat. I live in New Orleans – willfully – and I’ve been hiding out at home when not required to leave (due to work, ya know; that dreaded work thang). On off days, like today (and tomorrow – hooray!), I hole up during the sun-blazing hours. As a fair-skinned, red-headed woman, the sun and I are not friends. I’m grateful for my A/C and the means to pay for it. I also take a lot of naps.
Another bonus to NOLA-livin’: go-cups. Keeps ya hydrated, keeps ya numb, when necessity means errands on a hot, hot day. Personally, I prefer beer, but you can take your Margs to go as well. Whatever your pleasure; just put it in plastic. No glass allowed on the streets.
Swelteringly yours,
a.
Katy
August 8, 2011 at 2:54 pm (UTC -6)
Well, that was one awesome swarm of a dogpile on the person who dared be incorrect about the (apparent) abundance of humidity in Texas. I’ll certainly be checking my facts before posting here in the future.
Lidon
August 8, 2011 at 3:48 pm (UTC -6)
@ Katy: The four comments you refer to as a dogpile weren’t in response to something that was merely incorrect; it was totally off-base and it was defensive. Anyway, that kinda already passed, so why are we bringing this back up by sniping? And since when is checking facts before posting such a bad thing?
Jezebella
August 8, 2011 at 4:39 pm (UTC -6)
For the record, several of those comments were waiting to be approved for some time, and really, anybody who has suffered in the South Texas humidity is bound to get a little grouchy when told she hasn’t experienced the swampy hell of downtown Houston in July. Hardly a dogpile.
speedbudget
August 8, 2011 at 5:13 pm (UTC -6)
I just heard about a town in Texas whose mayor had to SHUT OFF THE WATER due to their supply being dried up and their old crickety pipes (nope, we don’t need to put people to work fixing the infrastructure in this country. Nothing to see here. Move along).
I think Texas wins.
ugsome
August 8, 2011 at 5:23 pm (UTC -6)
We had a cold and rainy July in Paris. People were wearing fall clothes. Now I am basking by the perpetually beautiful Mediterranean. Perhaps you will hate me less for that if I bring you a bottle of limoncello de Menton.
eb
August 8, 2011 at 5:30 pm (UTC -6)
I thought it was fairly common knowledge that Houston is humid. I like to think of us as the Tropics of Hell. Cuz ya know – it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
Ms. Northeast who derided us for not knowing the torture of 98 with 100% humidity cracked me up. A week? Really? A whole week? Try four months. But hey, it gives everyone a youthful glow (accentuate the positive and all). Plus, you get used to it because when you go to drier climates (like the hi-falootin’ northeast where they don’t have a clue about REAL humidity), your boogers get dang hard. Hard boogers ain’t pleasant.
Cade
August 8, 2011 at 5:31 pm (UTC -6)
Speaking of hallucination, I’m sure you’ve seen the story of the police officers in NYC who were charged with disorderly conduct but cleared of rape charges for that drunk woman they were supposedly helping. Jeez, it never ends.
Carpenter
August 8, 2011 at 5:32 pm (UTC -6)
I will gladly amend my statement to apply to half of Texas, the part that includes the Amarillo Greyhound station and that giant cross by the side of the highway that someone made out of aluminum siding.
Carpenter
August 8, 2011 at 5:47 pm (UTC -6)
BTW back home we do go through many months of humid upper 90′s with a solid week or two of 100+ temps. When I was growing up, they used to close school early if it reached 95 before 11 am. I think it helped that every building is made of red brick making it feel even more like being inside an oven.
speedbudget
August 8, 2011 at 5:55 pm (UTC -6)
eb that was me. I never meant to imply it was only a week. That is pretty much our entire summer. We are happy when it’s in the 80s with 98% humidity.
Comrade PhysioProf
August 8, 2011 at 6:04 pm (UTC -6)
I can’t believe those motherfuckers are still at it over at Wank Campbell’s shithole blogge. Some fucken smeggebagge is now whited00dsplaining to a black woman how she should style her hair so it looks “professional”.
Lidon
August 8, 2011 at 6:14 pm (UTC -6)
I will gladly amend my statement to apply to half of Texas, the part that includes the Amarillo Greyhound station and that giant cross by the side of the highway that someone made out of aluminum siding.
Melting into a pool of sweat while simultaneously riding the Greyhound sounds so awful I think I need to go fix myself a cold and frosty alcoholic drink.
amrit
August 8, 2011 at 7:10 pm (UTC -6)
On a happier note:
http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/police-beat/article_dc342756-c1f5-11e0-88f5-001cc4c002e0.html
So much for pinkification
yttik
August 8, 2011 at 8:13 pm (UTC -6)
Saw that, Amrit, and chuckled. Twice in my dinky little town dudes have shot themselves trying to use their family jewels as a holster. The one you posted made me laugh because you just know that guy was lecturing his girlfriend about safety right before he took her gun away for “safe keeping.”
Sorry about the heat wave, Jill. I wish you could come visit, I just spent 3 days freezing my ass off. People around here actually consider 60 degrees to be too damn hot and head for the mountains where they spend hours swimming in glacial lakes and rivers. Not me, I sit on the bank wrapped in a blanket and play life guard. I’m a good swimmer, but I think I’ve made it quite clear that if you need my help out there, you’re going to die long before I get in that cold water.
pheenobarbidoll
August 8, 2011 at 8:14 pm (UTC -6)
The thermometer on my porch (in the shade) read 115 today.
I accidentally left a DVD in my car and it warped into a bowl shape.
eb
August 8, 2011 at 8:25 pm (UTC -6)
No, speedbudget, it was Carpenter. And it appears we all should stop the world and melt together as one big multi-culti glob of frozen confectionery goodness on the concrete of life.
Hot, humid weather is dang uncomfortable to beat the horses dead no matter where you live. If you’ve experienced it, it SUCKS. And there is only one cure.
Beer.
I happen to be drinking Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA. Sweating. Drinking. Sweating. Drinking. And raising my brew to all who have to trudge through the heat and the humidity. Long may we live to drink another day!
tinfoil hattie
August 9, 2011 at 3:08 am (UTC -6)
One thing is for sure: if we are arguing about who is more oppressed by the heat, and taking one another to task for having our heat facts incorrect, THEN IT IS TOO FREAKING HOT.
speedbudget
August 9, 2011 at 4:39 am (UTC -6)
CPP, I don’t even want to look, but kind of I want to. I can’t even. Telling a black woman how to do her hair. What.
Jill
August 9, 2011 at 9:20 am (UTC -6)
No, we will continue hating you about the same.
buttercup
August 9, 2011 at 11:29 am (UTC -6)
I lived in the hell that is West Texas for several years, (Snyder, to be precise) it was dry, but when I visited Houston, it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. And certainly nothing like here in PA. But it is very non-typical weather, and very scary. All over.
pheenobarbidoll
August 9, 2011 at 12:15 pm (UTC -6)
Oh my buttercup. You have my condolences. I was born in and lived in Lamesa until the age of 13. Snyder and Lamesa don’t get as hot as Odessa (where I am currently), but the sand storms and wind are far, far worse. Odessa is also spared most of the tornado activity, which is a nice respite from spending a great deal of childhood summers in our storm cellar. It’s only 1:15, but my thermometer is at 105 already.
pheenobarbidoll
August 9, 2011 at 12:17 pm (UTC -6)
Now that I think about it though, I might trade the heat of Odessa for the tornados of Lamesa. At least the cellar is a nice, cool place to be stuck inside.
buttercup
August 9, 2011 at 3:11 pm (UTC -6)
Pheeno, the dust storms were the worst. We’d close up the house as tight as possible and it would still get in. Ugh. I did like the stars, though, and being able to see weather coming from @300 miles away.
Nolabelfits
August 9, 2011 at 6:37 pm (UTC -6)
Thanks for the reality check, Texans. I was under the impression that El Rancho Deluxe, and perhaps Texas in general, was some kind of idyllic paradise. Now it sounds a baking hellhole.
Lisa
August 9, 2011 at 9:13 pm (UTC -6)
Aaah, the chuckles here don’t cease. Thanks for this, it puts any heat in perspective for those of us above the Mason-Dixon line. Admittedly, I’ve been enjoying highs in the mid-70′s during my visit to Wisconsin. In Ohio, we have been braving 90+ degree heat almost all summer. Eew.
pheenobarbidoll
August 10, 2011 at 8:58 am (UTC -6)
We’d watch it roll in. The wind would hit about 15 minutes before the dirt, so you had the perfect amount of time to shove the trampoline near the fence, grab a windbreaker and climb on the fence with the jacket held over your head like a sail. 50 mph winds + jacket+ trampoline= free skydiving. Takes some SKILLZ to get that trampoline situated correctly.
You could also lay a sheet down indoors, and make a dirt angel by simply laying still for a few minutes. Good times when you were a kid. Hell on earth as an adult.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIphgY8j1c0&feature=related here’s a memory for you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSiGnKPFSt4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLGzDw0FUb8 (ive been hit by tumbleweeds going this fast. It’s not as fun as one would think)
Jezebella
August 10, 2011 at 10:18 am (UTC -6)
Speaking of chuckles, anybody wanna troll a thread about how feminists are humorless c*nts?
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2011/08/09/war/
You know, in case you feel like lobbing a few molotovs and then moving along.
Comrade PhysioProf
August 10, 2011 at 11:48 am (UTC -6)
Lobbed:
If your audience isn’t laughing, that’s a *you* problem. And BTW, the bloggers with the best senses of humor on the Internet are “humorless feminists”: Twisty Faster, Jill Filipovic, Amanda Marcotte, Melissa McEwen, etc. The truly humorless are the pathetic whiny d00ds who take their d00dliness so seriously they are blinded to their own absurd self-importance. Aggressive masculine self-parody isn’t funny; it’s sad.
Jezebella
August 10, 2011 at 3:21 pm (UTC -6)
Thanks, Comrade. But of course they are not listening.
Comrade PhysioProf
August 10, 2011 at 4:27 pm (UTC -6)
No, they aren’t. But itte did get the blogge author riled enough to respond!
pheenobarbidoll
August 10, 2011 at 7:01 pm (UTC -6)
We have thunder clouds complete with thunder right now.
But the humidity is so low that even if it rains, it won’t reach the ground. It evaporates before we even know it exists.
speedbudget
August 11, 2011 at 5:42 am (UTC -6)
God, CPP. Will they EVER get over the fucking Duke rape case? Jesus. Why is that shit trotted out time and again?
Also, making a joke wherein you calling Palin a hooker at a domestic violence program is pretty fucking stupid.
Jill
August 11, 2011 at 6:02 am (UTC -6)
“We have thunder clouds complete with thunder right now.
But the humidity is so low that even if it rains, it won’t reach the ground. It evaporates before we even know it exists.”
And we’ve got the humidity, but no thunder. Do you suppose Allah is punishing me for being an Internet feminist by desiccating me and everyone within a 1000-mile radius of me?
Jezebella
August 11, 2011 at 8:22 am (UTC -6)
Clearly the heat is getting to you if you can’t figure out how to blame the patriarchy for the desiccation of Texas.
Cootie Twoshoes
August 11, 2011 at 8:26 am (UTC -6)
Isn’t blaming Allah the same as blaming the patriarchy?
pheenobarbidoll
August 11, 2011 at 9:30 am (UTC -6)
“Do you suppose Allah is punishing me for being an Internet feminist by desiccating me and everyone within a 1000-mile radius of me?”
It’s possible. I’ve heard he’s just as much of a douchebag psycho as God. Omnipotent dicks ruin everything.
Comrade PhysioProf
August 11, 2011 at 1:20 pm (UTC -6)
Because it proves that women are lying bitchez who just want to get men in trouble for having a little harmless fun.
LadyDay
August 13, 2011 at 9:27 am (UTC -6)
@ pheenobarbidoll: (cough, cough, ahem) “Allah” *means* “God” in Arabic. For instance, Christian Arabs use that word to refer to God, too.
A bit of levity from Texas | The Left Hand of Feminism
August 8, 2011 at 10:34 am (UTC -6)
[...] Spinster aunt begins to hallucinate. Now with seafood similes. [...]