stygian heat

Stygian Heat (Hope and Pray the Power Stays On) and Odds and Ends

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Might as well eliminate the middleman. Or at least find a reason for Americans to have bidets.  This porcelain fixture looks similar, but actually isn’t a toilet.

Power outages in the summer are both more frequent and more devastating than winter outages, at least in my world.  In winter, one can move the contents of the fridge and freezer out in the garage.  Problem solved.  In summer, if the power’s out for more than an hour or two you’re screwed- all the food you had in the fridge and freezer is no longer safe to eat, and you have a nasty ass mess to clean up.  In winter, one can always light a fire in the fireplace (yes, I actually know how to do this correctly, without using gasoline or other accelerants) and gain both heat and light.  In winter one can always put on more clothes, and even grab a nice warm dog.  In summer, you’re screwed again.  No A/C, no fans, and who in the hell wants to light a fire to get some light when it’s already 120° in the house?  One can only remove so many clothing items, and it is possible to be stark raving naked and still in the throes of heat stroke.

It can and occasionally does get extremely hot here in beautiful Central Ohio.  The humidity is the worst part of it.  Today it’s difficult to even draw a breath outside.  I’ve got the dogs on a strict outside time table of five minutes when it’s hotter than 85°.   The last thing I need is for one of the girls to get heat stroke, because dogs can die of it even more quickly than humans.  Dogs have no sweat glands, and panting isn’t a terribly efficient cooling method.  Add to the mix that my girls are large (therefore at higher risk for heat stroke due to body mass) and two of them have thick coats.  They have access to cool water at all times and are in the A/C almost constantly when the temperature is over 85°.  It’s not easy for them either, because they would rather be outside in the daytime.  Their excursions into the great outdoors right now are limited to potty breaks and an hour or so in the yard in the relative cool of the morning.  They don’t like it.

I hope and pray our power stays on.  Usually when we have had power outages they have been corrected rather quickly.  Being on the same grid as the airport has its advantages in some ways.  We did have about a day and a half of no power back in 2004 when there was a really bad ice storm on Christmas Eve and the transformer outside the house burned up, but at least we were able to use the fireplace and keep the perishables out in the garage, so it wasn’t terribly tragic.  It is tragic right now for people whose power has been out for the past week.  I don’t want to imagine how miserable they are.  The Red Cross set up a cooling shelter at my church so some people can at least come to get cooled down in the heat of the day.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so paranoid, but I’ve gotten to go to the ER twice in my life for heat stroke.  I don’t wish for a third.  The first was when I was 7 years old and attempting to play softball in 100° weather while also sporting flaming blistering sunburn (second degree burns) on my face, neck and arms.  I don’t remember much about the ER visit other than after getting the obligatory IV bag of fluids in the hospital.  When I got home the “cure” for the wicked burns was that I was forced to take Aveeno baths three times a day, and then get slathered with zinc oxide in an attempt to dry up the oozing blisters from the sunburn for about two weeks.  This rather unpleasant treatment did prevent scarring.   Sunscreen was not commonly known or used back in the summer of 1976.

There are people in this world who Do Not Tan.  I am one of them.  I do freckle, blister and splotch though.

The second time I had heat stroke it was a lot worse, but I’d been out in the heat longer too.  The nurse found it necessary to actually cut into the veins in my wrist in order to start an IV line as I was badly dehydrated.  I’d come back from working a temporary job- outside all day in the hot sun holding up signs of all things- (the things a college kid will do for $8.50/hr, but in 1987 that was a small fortune) and then ended up stranded on a freeway bridge in my old ’77 Rabbit that had no A/C to begin with, then it stalled out with vaporlock.  Vaporlock was extremely common in VW’s with the old CIS injection systems, especially on the very early ones (’77 was the first year for that system) that had most inadequate fuel pressure accumulators.  I knew what it was, but the car wasn’t going to move under its own power until the fuel lines cooled down enough to allow the fuel to return to a liquid state.   It was 98° and 100% humidity, so all you do is sweat and drip and the water just pours out of your body to no avail. There is no evaporation and no cooling going on, just your blood boiling and the fluids escaping one’s body, so you stew and stink in a hot sticky paste of your own sweat.  By the time the cops got to me and convinced me to get out of the car, I had the most intense, blinding headache one can dare to imagine, and I was too weak to stand.  One thing interesting about heat stroke.  Right before you black out you get this sense that you’re going to die- and you’re cool with it- because then the headache will go away.

No one thinks about his/her fuel pump.  Until it stops working.

By the time Dad’s buddy had retrieved my car, the vaporlock in the fuel line had resolved itself.  The car fired up and ran perfectly after its 40 mile tow, which infuriated Dad even more- after driving 40 miles to retrieve me from the hospital (of course I was out of town) and then having to pay his buddy $75 to tow the car. Dad was pissed to the point that the top of his head was a hot tomato red.  (Dad has been pretty much bald except for a slight fringe on the sides and back of his head since he was about 30.)  I don’t know if he was more pissed at me for going out of town on such a hot day even though I had gone to do some temporary work to try to earn some extra money (I got a check for a whole $80- see how that backfired) or because he knew about the problem with the fuel accumulators on those cars and he hadn’t bothered to replace mine.  Why VW never got the idea to put the fuel pumps in the fuel tank like every other vehicle manufacturer is beyond me- it keeps the fuel cooler than an inline pump and avoids the hot fuel condition that leads to vaporlock in the first place- but VW has always been a bit weird.

Sometimes I wonder why I live in Ohio, but then I remember I can’t afford to leave.  Even so, the grass is always blacker somewhere else.  I can take some small comfort in my geographical location today. At least I don’t live in Detroit.

Monumental Moments in Advertising, More Crap I Don’t Need, and Let’s Go to the Fair!

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Or, if you’re poor and don’t have a dime for the pay toilet, just slide your skank ass under the door.

I haven’t seen a pay toilet since the Hills store got closed down in either 1981 or 1982.  Perhaps someone finally realized that the skinny girls simply slipped under the door and used the john for free, and the fat ones just dropped their deuces on the drain in the middle of the floor.  That was something very nasty to walk in on- someone’s steaming pile sitting on the drain, reeking and drawing flies.  Acck.   Back then I was one of the few who neither being waif-thin, nor coordinated enough to make it under the door, would generally either scrounge a dime somewhere or wait until I got home.  I am proud to say that I never stooped to dropping a deuce on the floor drain.

‘Tis sad if my list of greatest accomplishments has to include refraining from crapping on the floor.

There are certain odious advertising jingles that tend to stick on one’s head.  The Shower-to-Shower jingle has to be the all time most annoying of all time.  I do have to appreciate the fact that in this particular commercial they gave the Woman Who Forgot To Sprinkle her very own private dinghy so she wouldn’t stink up the yacht for everyone else.  That’s compassion for you.  It’s better than what the poor People Who Remembered to Sprinkle had to endure in the elevator with the Non-Sprinkler du jour.  (I should not be old enough to remember these commercials…)

Today for some reason someone mentioned Colt 45 Malt Liquor, which I’ve always thought to be glorified cheap beer, but then I’m not a drinker, and I’m certainly not a beer drinker, (I think all beer tastes like earwax smells) so how would I know if it’s tasty or if it’s pisswater, or whether or not white people do actually drink it?  So I had this lovely little tune running through my head for half  the morning.

The list of absolutely horrible 70’s and 80’s commercials is virtually endless.  The good point about them is even when they were horrible, they were at least original.  Today there is such a dearth of creativity in advertising- they just dig up an old Heart song and try to make it apply to the damned Swiffer thing that isn’t worth two shits to pick up dog hair- or anything else for that matter.   

I blame the popularity of free love and way too much LSD for this one, even though there’s (thankfully!) no jingle in it:  1970’s Chuck Wagon commercial.   They sure did make that dog’s hallucination look real and they sure did make that dog food look tastier than most of Taco Bell’s menu.  Despite the originality and creativity of this ad, I don’t think that particular brand of pressure-cooked lips and assholes and other meat by-products we humans would rather not know exist is still being marketed.  I am sure that Chuck Wagon, like every other cheap dog food of that era, was the end result of the final disposition of diseased livestock. I still wonder if it was the Chuck Wagon or Mom’s dreadful cooking that led to Suzie the Dachshund’s untimely death. Suzie loved the Chuck Wagon- but she also loved socks and underwear crotches, and Mom’s mashed potatoes with the big uncooked lumps and big black burnt flakes,  so Suzie wasn’t exactly a picky eater.  Most dogs aren’t terribly picky.

I have always liked Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper, but this 70’s Dr. Pepper Commercial is almost enough to make one shoot oneself in the head to end the insanity.  It seems sort of Communist too- I can imagine the Soviet version: You must all be Peppers! 

Sometimes when I’m bored I find it entertaining to look at all the crap I don’t need.  Lighted slippers?   If you’re that freaking blind turn on the light. 

Jerry has decided I need to go with him and his sister to the fair next week.  I enjoy going to the fair, but I hope that the current stygian heat tones down a notch- hopefully somewhere below 90 degrees- otherwise they might end up having to call the squad on me.  I don’t tolerate heat worth a damn, and I’m pretty much confined to the Great Indoors when the temperature is much above 85.  So I really hope it cools down a bit.

I bet the chickens would be happier if it cools off some too.

Better yet, just leave me in the refrigerated room with the butter cow.

I think that most young kids in the Central Ohio area- the Columbus metro area especially- only get to see farm animals at the fair.  I don’t know if that’s entirely a good thing.  Even though I grew up in the middle of nowhere, I did live in town and therefore never really had hands-on experience dealing with livestock- except for the heifers in Taco Bell and Wal Mart, but that’s not quite the same thing. 

The only animals that (miraculously) didn’t scare the bejeezus out of me as a child were dogs.  Big dogs, small dogs, even dogs that other people branded as “mean,”  never gave me any trouble.  I got in trouble with Dad one time for climbing the fence and cuddling up to a neighbor’s Rottweiler, but the “mean” dog didn’t bother me at all.   He was quite friendly toward me, and the other kids were too afraid to mess with me when I was in the dog pen with the Rottie.

No problem at all with the dogs.  If only other humans were as easy to interact with…

The Cougar Pool- Finally! and With a Name Like That…

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Ah, the seasons of Central Ohio.  It seems that we have made the yearly sudden move from Monsoon Season into Stygian Heat without missing a beat.  For those unfamiliar with the seasons of Central Ohio, they go as follows:

Winter.  Cold. Windy.  Lots of precipitation- snow, rain, freezing rain, sleet- and it’s always dark. Lasts from about Halloween until mid-February.

Snowbooger Grey.  Cold, lots of rain, but not quite cold enough to freeze, leaving depressing grey snowboogers, discarded clothing items, assorted trash, dead Christmas trees and other detritus everywhere.  Windy. Dismal.  Still dark.  Lasts from mid-February until early April, but seems to last six months at least. The absolute worst season of the year.

Monsoon Season. Rain. Rain for days at a time without seeing a glint of sunlight.  Windy.  Sort of cold.  Lasts from early April until late May or early June.

Stygian Heat.  Hot, hot, humid and hot. Lots of thunderstorms and rain in between the hot, hot, hot, to raise the humidity and make you swear it’s even hotter than it is.  Imagine living in a greenhouse.  Lasts from early June to late August.

Fall Monsoon.  Just like the Monsoon Season of April-May, only there’s falling leaves to go with the rain, wind and cold. Lasts from early September to Halloween.

So we really have five distinct seasons here as opposed to the traditional four seasons.  The constant?  Precipitation, and lots of it.  It’s interesting to live in a (nominally) drained swamp.

I am glad that the successful installation of the Cougar Pool has coincided with the onslaught of Stygian Heat.  It was most enjoyable to float around on my floatie yesterday when it was 90+ with the usual 100% humidity.  I could have used some more interesting entertainment besides watching Jerry picking weeds, chugging Natties and listening to his whining about the bug spray.  If it’s safe for cats, it should work OK on him, unless he starts foaming at the mouth or licking his balls or something.  Then I might have to revisit the cat bug spray option, but those kinds of side effects may be mildly entertaining, and therefore an added advantage.  The cat bug spray was a lot cheaper and probably works better than the high dollar bug repellent anyway, but I’m going to have to get him the regular stuff because he won’t stop whining until I do. 

I did play hell getting the Cougar Pool set up, and I discovered that the only place level enough for it to work was up on the porch.  I should have done that initially instead of trying to set it up in the yard, but I figured Jerry would be more upset if I put it on the porch.  He didn’t seem to protest nearly as much as I thought he would.  I think it would be funny to see him actually get in it but I highly doubt he will try.  Yesterday he said the water was too cold.  I thought it was rather nice, especially considering how hot it was.  Now all I need is a DVD player out there- and maybe a Super Soaker just for fun.

I find it a tad bit hilarious that a guy with the last name Weiner (damned funny in its own regard, especially for a politician) is in trouble for tweeting pics of his Vienna sausage to some young college girl.  When I see this guy on TV, several things hit me about him, and none of them are good.

He’s a Democrat.  Strike one.  Hailing from the party of William J. (Oral Sex is Not Sex) Clinton and Teddy (I Didn’t Know She Couldn’t Swim) Kennedy does not inspire confidence in one’s integrity or one’s ability to refrain from behaving like a back alley tomcat.   However, lest I appear to be too forgiving of the other side of the aisle, I understand many Republicans have made poor behavioral choices in this arena as well.  The difference is that it seems for Republicans lewdness is a liability, whilst tomcattery seems a simple rite of passage- and a way to gain valuable name recognition- for Democrats. 

He’s a whiny little twit.  Strike two.  Would I really want to see his teeny-weeny-weenie?  If you’re going to tweet a pic, make it a good one.  If you’re going to send pics of a package, Ron Jeremy would be a better model than say, Mickey Mouse.

His efforts to molehill-ize his mountain are only adding fuel to the fire.  Dude, the more you protest your innocence, the guiltier (and nuttier) you look.

He has bad hair, a whiny voice, and an extremely huge nose- not necessarily detriments when considered as single elements, but when added to the overall “package” (pun intended) they add to the just plain blecch factor of this guy.

If I had a name like “Weiner” (granted, it’s hard to forget) maybe I’d either change it to something less, uh, giggle worthy, or consider becoming a stripper.  Although I can see where the name “Weiner” would be great as far as name recognition goes, it’s not exactly name recognition in a positive way.  For instance, if I were to name a feminine hygiene product “Pu**y Fresh” the name would be memorable, but not in a good way.  It would be sort of like naming your kid “Adolf” so he stands out in his class.  He will stand out, but not in a positive way.  

I do wonder, however, how many of Rep. Weiner’s constituents voted for him simply because of his name- either out of pity or just because it’s funny.  I can hear this conversation in someone’s head whilst in the voting booth:

“Check it out.  Dude’s name is ‘Weiner.'”

“I gotta vote for him…heh-heh…heh-heh…” (internal Beavis and Butthead laugh)

Or maybe some people just break out into mental song (to the tune of “I Wish I Were an Oscar Meyer Weiner”):

“Oh, I gotta go vote for the weirdo guy named ‘Weiner’, ’cause that is what I’d truly like to be…”

-or-

“Oh, I gotta go vote for the weirdo guy named ‘Weiner’, ’cause Weiner’s what I’d truly like to see…”

Now that song is going to be going through my head the rest of the day. I know I am dating myself, but I am sure there are those out there who remember the Oscar Meyer Weiner Song.  Not too many people wish themselves to be hot dogs these days, but the ’70’s and ’80’s were more innocent times.  When the air was dirty, and sex was clean, or at least safely confined to the privacy of the brothel or bedroom, that is.

And we wonder what’s happened to this country.

Must have been the same stoners who voted for Obama. 

I just thought of a great public service announcement:  “Don’t Toke and Vote!”

I Think I’m Afraid to Flush, Way Too Much Rain, and All Points Converge Here

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A peculiar quirk here in Central Ohio during the Monsoon Season (the two months – give or take a week or two- between the seasons of Snowbooger Grey and Stygian Heat, usually from mid-March to late May) is that occasionally storm drains overflow into the sanitary sewers, making it possible for effluvia rinsed down sinks, flushed down commodes, etc. to go the opposite direction than the one intended.  Low elevation, painfully flat landscapes, clay soil and torrential rains do not make for an optimum environment for natural drainage.

During the monsoon episodes, should one need to relieve oneself, in a good part of Central Ohio, you get to play a rousing game of “toilet roulette.”

Should I flush?  If it’s yellow, let it mellow?  If it’s brown, will it actually flush down?  What are the odds of ending up with a floor full of unspeakable mess?

At home I am not too averse to waiting to flush until the storm subsides, and I can see that the storm sewer grate is clear outside, as I really don’t want a backflow situation in my own bathroom.  But in public places it is extremely rude to leave your leavings without giving them their final send off, or at least making the attempt.

So far so good today.  For now.  Hopefully the deluge will take a break for an hour or two and let the storm sewers clear out some more.

I am glad it wasn’t raining like this yesterday when I was up in Marion.  It actually was a pretty good day. Steve-o got his hair cut and got some shades he wanted.

Dad had mentioned something intriguing when I was up there that I had some peripheral background on, but had not really taken a whole lot of notice.  I grew up not even really noticing the trains because trains went through town constantly and they still do.  You don’t notice them until you leave, and it either seems oddly quiet, or the trains are replaced with another background noise, which in my case today is the airport.  I live less than half a mile from Port Columbus.  I don’t notice the planes unless I make it a point to pay attention to them, but I certainly did notice the silence on 9/11 and the days following.  Passenger aircraft constantly taking off and landing, and F15s flying over have vastly different sounds.

In the early 20th century there were five different railroads that converged in Marion- from all points across the country.  Only two of those rail lines remain- the trains still go through pretty much constantly, with their endless cargos of coal, but the trains haven’t actually stopped in Marion since the early 1970’s.  If one looks close enough one can see where these rail lines once intersected which is sort of interesting.

At one time there were a lot of people going everywhere and nowhere.  Of course people are still going everywhere and nowhere, but the ride is a lot less scenic and usually is taken up with either phone conversations, electronic gadgetry, and the endless monotone of  flat, straight Interstate.  I enjoy a road trip (and even more if I make it a point to take a less traveled road) but I think something might be lost in the autonomy one has when you drive.  The train journey leaves your whereabouts at the mercy of another force, but paradoxically it also gives you the freedom to drift off into that void between everywhere and nowhere.   Sleeping (or even that delightful realm of half-sleep) and driving don’t mix.

The ghosts are restless at those convergence points.  It’s easy to imagine them at the train station even though trains don’t stop there anymore and only part of the train station remains.  Someone waiting for the next train.  Someone running down the platform.  Someone looking for someone who will never return.

I’m haunted by those stories, especially those of the troop trains.

Everywhere and nowhere.

Eventually the rain will stop, and I will get beyond my little melancholy foray into a past I don’t really understand.

On a lighter note, there are seasons here in Central Ohio. We have five.   That’s why the people who live here part of the year, but go to Florida part of the year, go down there for most of them.

Winter.  Begins right after Halloween, lasts until mid-February or so.  Best described as, “The Brass Balls Have Frozen off the Brass Monkey.”  Lots of precipitation. Dark most of the time.  Freezing rain, snow, ice, etc.

Snowbooger Grey. Mid-February or so until mid-late March.  Like winter, but with temperatures hovering right around freezing, so the snow all melts and the landscape everywhere looks like those snowboogers that accumulate in the splash guards and wheel wells of cars.  Since it’s slightly warmer than winter there’s more rain, and a bit more daylight, if you can notice through the overcast, grey haze that hangs over everything.  Dismal.

Monsoon.  Mid-late March-mid-late May.  Or so.  Just rain.  Constantly.

Stygian Heat.  100% humidity.  100% bugs.  Late May-mid-September. Plenty of rain.

Fall Monsoon. Mid-September-Halloween. Do you like rain? 🙂