The Weather, or How I Learned to Love Climate Change

I don't follow the weather that closely, and wouldn't say climate change is one of my "subjects," not in the same sense that the health care insanity is (don't get him started!!). I don't typically go on about climate change like I do global finance and our utter dependence on, and mostly willful ignorance of, their psychopathic marionette activities. I come from Iowa, where the weather just comes every day, usually in some tedious form, but where, nonetheless, 100 year floods now come every 10 years, so everyone, every generation, can enjoy them. Kind of like Colorado and fires.

As for climate change, I don't so much "believe" in it as consider it a cure for the normal human irritation with boredom. Like when we broke up Ma Bell, or deregulated the airlines. Life can be merciful that way. Give you these things to keep you from sleeping the day away, from being in a constant state of wonder and doubt. Things like, for instance, puberty, or mental illness. You don't hear someone with a twelve-year-old daughter going on about how he isn't really sure that anything notable is happening to his little girl who used to be so sweet and loved watching "Arthur" and thought ponies were so cute, but now, well, she wants a fucking horse, and he's thinking it might be a good idea to get her one, real soon, despite the fact that the picture, the evidence, is still equivocal ...

No. If you heard that kind of talk coming from someone, especially a father, you'd think he was a full-on idiot. You'd pay for your drinks and get out of there. Just like you would if someone sat down next to you and started going on about how the moon landing was staged in a hangar in the desert, and fossil records are evidence of God's perversity, and Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison and Osama Bin Laden and Hitler are still alive and in fact share a duplex right beside Marlon Brando's old place in Tahiti.

Similarly, when the temperatures hit 100 degrees about as often as they didn't this last June, and fires raged across the state, and now, here in July, we hear talk—unironic talk—of our moving into the monsoon season that apparently has always been a standard feature of Colorado weather in July, I don't need to do a thorough Google search to think ... cra-zy, not boring. Thank you! Finally ... a weather system that isn't just nice all the time but is at long last off its meds, that has some pretty serious issues, having lived with its crazy family for a little too long now.

But hey, it's great, right? Charlie Sheen has a new show. I finally got around to buying an air conditioner to cool the master bedroom in my 4,000 square foot house that was built without central air back in 1988, because back then no one thought you needed central air in Colorado. What the fuck for? The weather was great here. Nice and sunny in the morning, with a nice little shower late in the afternoon.

Boring!

About as exciting as a balanced budget and peace on earth. Imagine what that would be like day in and day out. Watching fucking "Arthur" every day, listening to your daughter talk about ponies.

Still, we complain. Not more than two weeks ago I called my wife on the cell phone, for instance, in a very stressed state. Honestly, I felt I was about to lose my shit from being stuck in my 4,000 square foot house in Louisville with the shades pulled after, I don't know, the fifth straight day in a row of 100 degree temperatures and my throat feeling like an exhaust pipe. I started going on about how these MFs in the energy industry were making money hand over fist while the taxpayers were paying to put out the fires and how maybe, just maybe, if we took, say, half of Congress and buried them up to their necks in the open space and slathered their heads with gluten-rich, genetically modified foodstuffs to attract the coyotes and prairie dogs and maybe even a few people who would otherwise eat a burrito from 7-Eleven, well then maybe we might get some folks waking up in Washington ... which is to say I was talking crazy. Until I went out to the hardware store that very same afternoon and spent some money on an air-conditioning unit for our master bedroom. After that I was just fine. And now, after all that fuss, it's raining, hard. After all, it's July. It's monsoon season.

Heat, burn, douse. It's all good, natural, I see now, sitting here feeling pretty stupid looking back.

Kind of like that summer I rode my bike up Loveland Pass and thought, golly, if I don't get to the top pretty soon I'm going to kill myself; but then, when I got to the top, I got to ride down the hill so fast I nearly shit my Spandex. Which was fucking awesome.

And pretty soon, I bet, we'll have mushrooms growing in our yard again. And when we get bored with that, maybe the wind will start up again.

Wouldn't it be cool if it snowed in August?