Just Weather

“But temperatures are rising…”

     “It’s summer. It’s supposed to be hot.”

     “But I mean, we’re setting records. In Europe, this year’s all-time hottest temperature is 2° higher than last year’s, which was 2° hotter than—”

     “Yeah, Europe. Who cares about Europe?”

     “Glaciers are disappearing. Rivers are running dry. There’s drought everywhere. Hundreds of wildfires are burning out west right now. Up north, too. The air’s poisonous.”

     “There've always been fires in summer. When I was a tadpole—”

     “It’s raining ashes in Michigan today.”

     “There. You see? The rain will put out the fire. Really, kid. It’s just weather.”

Inspired by A Little Bit of Magical Thinking. AI image created by Angus Peterson.

Dance with Me

Dance with me. You pull him to his feet.

He resists. Can’t. My boss is on my ass. I have 600 new emails in my inbox. The air is full of smoke. The news is full of war. I woke up with this pain that won’t go away no matter what I do. There’s so much crap around—everywhere I look. I don’t see the point anymore—of any of it—of life. Tell me, tell me, what’s the point?

This, you say, this is the point. A fast song comes on the radio and you pull him up.

Inspired by In his Chamber of Lust and Love. Image of a late 18-century print “Il Ballo” by Giuseppe Piatolli from the the Uffizi Gallery collections.

In gods they trust

Zeus stepped out onto the balcony, leaving Europa asleep, tangled in the sheets. He relished nights on Olympus, the cool air, the stars overhead, and the quiet, broken only by the raucous noise of mortals far below. Such foolish, trusting creatures, believing their times of plenty would never end! And they wouldn’t, so long as they put their faith in Infallibles like him.
      He caught a whiff of smoke, noticed a red glare on the horizon, heard screams. And then he remembered. Oh, crap! In his haste to seduce a new mistress, he’d left a fire burning in Athens.

Inspired by Out of luck at the Soup Kitchen. Image of Zeus and Europa, by altceva.

Little Sadists

That summer, I remember the grasshoppers were so plentiful in our suburban yard that clouds of them flew out of the way of my father’s lawn mower. We caught them and put them in jars with little bits of grass, punching air holes through the lids, but not bothering to feed them. I remember they bled an oozy yellow, when we pulled their legs off. Better yet, in those long hot afternoons of childhood boredom, curiosity and sadism, we offered our hoppers to any mantises we found and watched the praying arms grasp the frantic hopper and bite deep.

Inspired by Baby Bummer (via Beatles = beetles = bugs). Photo by Jon Brierley .

The State of the World

“Losses and damages are part of our future,” the IPCC chair declared, before asserting that “. . . effective and equitable climate action now can lead to a more sustainable, resilient and just world.” 

     Oh gentle dreamer! All is love and kindness at the principle level, but humanity can’t agree on bupkis when money’s involved. Still, naiveté is preferable to the BS of the deniers and the Koch brothers. Then there are the survivalists, planning to retreat to a Pacific island (really? An island?); or into a walled compound with private security (private contractors, with guns? And families outside?). That can’t end well.

Inspired by Sorry, not today. Image by Sepp Photography. See the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report here.

Rodent Land

You’d think the squirrels would get the message. The minefield of barriers, the chicken wire around the tulips. All ineffective. They are very well fed. They adore bulbs, but just nip and leave flowers, a show of their disdain.
     Raccoons maraud freely, chittering loudly, leaving their berry-spangled poop. I fill rat burrows as soon as I find them; new ones appear immediately. The other day, I glanced up to find a skunk foraging in the flowerbed next to me. I carefully cleared my throat. He casually raised his tail. Check mate.
     These animals haven’t invaded my garden. I’ve invaded theirs.

Inspired by Hare Remover.  Image from Science with Ms. Seitz.  

The All-In Simulation

We used to live in the Base Case. Our birthright was peace, prosperity, and sanity in governance and public discourse. Now I wonder if someone’s running what-if scenarios. “Let’s see how they react to a cascade of catastrophic ‘natural’ events.” “Let’s make a sociopathic narcissist their most powerful leader.” “Let’s see how they deal with a pandemic.” “Let’s have a nuclear-armed megalomaniac go batshit rogue and launch a war.” 

     “Now let’s combine them all.” 

     Maybe we’re characters in a simulated reality, where real people run worse case scenarios on us virtuals. Hopefully they’ll get things right by watching us fail.

Inspired by 2022. Image from a poster for 20th Century Studios’s 2021 film Free Guy.

Black Swans

    “May you live in interesting times.”
     This is a curse, purported to be of Chinese origin, although that, like everything on the internet, is debatable. Let’s at least agree that these are interesting times. Within the last two years we have experienced, in biblical proportions, droughts, floods, fires and pestilence. Now there is a bloody war, started by a man intent on reconstituting a fallen, unlamented empire and threatening nuclear war to get his way.

An unexpected event with massive, catastrophic consequences is called a “black swan.” They used to be rare as hen’s teeth. Now they come in flocks.

This post hearkens back to the days of Close Encounters of the Bird Kind, when avian conflict (and avian flu) were all we had to worry about. The photo is by Dorothe Wouters.

Urban Park

In spring the air is redolent of thawing turds. At the playground, green glass glitters in the bright morning sun. Exotic labels cling to shards, attesting to the good taste of last night’s revellers. Food wrappers tumble on a soft breeze, and in the pond, lazy iridescent rainbows stream from discarded oil cans. “What’s that, Daddy?” asks the child, pointing in the water. Something floats, like a ring of calamari with a translucent tail. “Why, it’s an octopus with one tentacle,” he replies, hustling her away, on to other marvels. Beauty, mystery and romance are everywhere in an urban park.