Still Hot


I haven’t written about running in a while. The thought struck me while I was, you guessed it, running this morning. There’s good reason for that, though: we’re under a “heat dome” here in the States, which sounds like some sci-fi contraption that focuses stellar energy to fry planets but in reality is just another yawn-snore weather phenomenon that conspires every once in a while to stick us Americans to the car seats even first thing in the morning, to burn out air conditioners with abandon, and to see how many of us will actually utter the phrase “let’s move to Canada” in the space of a week (the over-under has to be a million per city block).

The temperature hasn’t dipped below 74 in over a week, and that looks likely to go right on, so even though I’m back into running before sun-up, there’s no escaping the oppressive heat. It’s just there, waiting for you, like that crazy stalker ex that keeps going through your trash. You know it’s there, the way the mailman knows that slavering dog is hiding in the bushes, just waiting to pounce, or the way that I can turn on the TV in the morning and know that Trump’s campaign manager is gonna be there explaining that the entire country has, once again, “misconstrued” what the candidate (I almost wrote “his client,” as if he’s a beleaguered defense attorney) said.

But that’s life, innit? There’s no telling when the heat will break. But we keep running so that when it does, we’ll be the first to feel it.

Can’t Concentrate


The internet is awful for writers, because there are always things on it to keep you from doing the thing you should be doing.

Like this: a Writer Struggles listicle at Buzzfeed.

I know, right? Buzzfeed. It’s horrible. It’s everything that’s wrong with our culture and the internet and people and society. But I’m like an alcoholic whose walk to work takes him right past the discount liquor store on the corner. IT’S RIGHT THERE I JUST CAN’T HELP MYSELF.

But it’s funny as hell. (Not the alcoholic. That’s never funny, and that guy should get help, and probably burn that liquor store down.) Because virtually everything in that list is true. Which is the point. They got me to be curious. They got me to click. And they got me to nod my head in agreement as I read through the whole list.

And that’s what’s keeping me from concentrating this morning.

 

The worst part is, I spent literally ten minutes just now trying to figure out how to make a bit of the post appear here on my site, but the embedding either isn’t working or I’m an idiot, and I just realized that those ten minutes are now totally wasted because I’m giving up on it.

 

So instead, I’m going to let frustration become the better part of tenacity, drop a crappy link here that you won’t click on, and go work on something productive.

Right. My favorite from the list was this:  

http://fozmeadows.tumblr.com/post/146993990776/writing-vs-brain

 https://secure.assets.tumblr.com/post.js

And I can’t even get rid of that second bit without breaking the link, and I’m totally past trying to mess with it anymore.

(Sidenote: this waste of a post is also my way to avoid thinking and writing about the week of horrors which has unfolded here in the states this week. I have thoughts. I will probably write about it. But not today. Death and murder and tension between law enforcement and the populace are not things I want to concentrate on today.)

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday.