Starting late last night until around 6:30 this morning we were battered by loud thunderstorms – loud enough to rattle the house and wake me up several times despite the house being battened down and windows shut tight because the central air conditioning was on. I thought it was humid last week; this week it’s even worse and the rain (although welcome by my lawn and gardens) did nothing to abate the high temperatures; they’re going to climb during the rest of the week! I find it difficult to breath in this kind of weather – the air is hot, heavy, wet, mucky, icky, and nearly still. Clothes stick to you; sweat beads and then drips and does not evaporate. There is the smell of rotting vegetation in the air, which is remarkable given that we have been in drought conditions, so how can the vegetation be rotting? Whithering away into nothingness from the unrelenting heat is more like!
I usually look at the news a couple of times a day to scope out any likely blog entries on chess and subjects related to “Chess, Goddess and Everything…” but for the past couple of days nothing has resonated. Perhaps the heat and humidity have scrambled my brain – recently it seems nothing is quite relevant except trying to figure out how quickly I can walk the half mile from the bus stop to the house without dying of heat prostration and/or drowning in my own sweat. How small my world has become, focused on how quickly I can get from one air-conditioned space to the next…
Yesterday I revisited a subject I did some research on years ago – horse sacrifice and the copulation and eating rituals associated therewith, thinking perhaps I would do a couple of blog entries. Er, on second thought, no. Let me tell you, fill your brain with THAT kind of stuff long enough, and reading the entries at the Daily Grail seems an exercise in reality. Today I read about Mothman and something called (I think) Springing Jack that terrorized parts of England over 100 years ago and left strange cloven-hoofed prints in the snow, also about underground pyramids (allegedly) in the Crimea. Oh – and a repeat of the story about a giant black bird (at least, people think it’s a bird, but perhaps it’s just a hairy UFO) flying over the southwest. I took a look at the headlines at The New York Times – lo and behold, Georgia is claiming that a Russian warplane fired a missile at a Georgian village which, fortunately, did not explode. Moscow denies everything, even while the carcas of the missile is plastered all over the NYT’s front page. Of course, why would anyone ever believe any statement coming out of the Kremlin? I feel like I’m back in the pages of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” – the Minister of Magic constantly reassures the readers of The Daily Prophet that he-who-must-not-be-named is NOT back, while that old chessnut keeps running through my brain: “denial” ain’t just a river…
I must have shorted out a circuit by reading "Deathly Hallows" too fast.
I usually look at the news a couple of times a day to scope out any likely blog entries on chess and subjects related to “Chess, Goddess and Everything…” but for the past couple of days nothing has resonated. Perhaps the heat and humidity have scrambled my brain – recently it seems nothing is quite relevant except trying to figure out how quickly I can walk the half mile from the bus stop to the house without dying of heat prostration and/or drowning in my own sweat. How small my world has become, focused on how quickly I can get from one air-conditioned space to the next…
Yesterday I revisited a subject I did some research on years ago – horse sacrifice and the copulation and eating rituals associated therewith, thinking perhaps I would do a couple of blog entries. Er, on second thought, no. Let me tell you, fill your brain with THAT kind of stuff long enough, and reading the entries at the Daily Grail seems an exercise in reality. Today I read about Mothman and something called (I think) Springing Jack that terrorized parts of England over 100 years ago and left strange cloven-hoofed prints in the snow, also about underground pyramids (allegedly) in the Crimea. Oh – and a repeat of the story about a giant black bird (at least, people think it’s a bird, but perhaps it’s just a hairy UFO) flying over the southwest. I took a look at the headlines at The New York Times – lo and behold, Georgia is claiming that a Russian warplane fired a missile at a Georgian village which, fortunately, did not explode. Moscow denies everything, even while the carcas of the missile is plastered all over the NYT’s front page. Of course, why would anyone ever believe any statement coming out of the Kremlin? I feel like I’m back in the pages of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” – the Minister of Magic constantly reassures the readers of The Daily Prophet that he-who-must-not-be-named is NOT back, while that old chessnut keeps running through my brain: “denial” ain’t just a river…
I must have shorted out a circuit by reading "Deathly Hallows" too fast.
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