It's the Heat. And the Stupidity.
by Sean Bugg
It’s hot, and I’m stupid. I wanted to use some big words to tell you this, but they all seem to be lost in the soupy brain sloshing between my ears.
I hate August.
Chances are, you’re feeling pretty stupid, too, right about now. If your name is Mayor Anthony Williams, you’re definitely feeling stupid, knowing that you stand the chance of losing an election to perennial write-in candidate Mickey Mouse.
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One would think that the month during which members of Congress hightail it home for campaigning and fundraising, the president takes off for weeks of vacation, and the people who think circuit party fan dancing is a valid art form disappear en masse to Rehoboth would be the most intelligent month of the year.
Alas, it’s not the case. August is the grand culmination (whoa, there’s a big word!) of summer’s brain drain, the time when you can literally hear brain cells popping over the insistent whine of mosquitoes laden with the West Nile virus.
The normally erudite and invigorating (two big words in a row!) web sites you read each morning have all gone on hiatus. Reading the Washington Post, you get the feeling some sweaty editor is half passed out at a desk, moaning “I don’t give a shit what it says, just fill the damn page.”
Believe me, I feel that editor’s pain.
August is the cruelest, stupidest month because nothing actually happens. We pretend things happen by releasing reports on things that happened last year. We pretend things happen by whipping the nation into a panic over an epidemic of child abductions, followed by a mea culpa that child abductions are actually rarer than ever, followed by a report that the abduction epidemic has spread to England. Al Gore pretends to be news by announcing that he absolutely, positively didn’t do nothin’ stupid during his loser presidential campaign. And then Larry King interviews the long-dead Liberace’s male lover, and you know that we’re all literally bouncing through hell in an itchy, woolen handbag.
August is so hot and bad and stupid this year that I now enjoy watching Simon and Paula go at each other like aggrieved drag queens on American Idol. I’ve become so idiotic that I considered getting cable again so I could check out The Anna Nicole Show. I’m such a moron that I’ve decided Vin Diesel is an entertaining and engaging screen presence.
In short, I have become so stupid that I’m an actual danger to American society and culture, as are you. For the good of the our nation, let’s lock ourselves away in air-conditioned isolation and have Canada wake us come September.
Just make sure our northern neighbors don’t let us oversleep. It would suck to miss the new season of Fear Factor.
See also:
- And Now, Your Local Forecast by Will Doig
- Melting Point by Jonathan Padget
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