Hot and Poisonous

The sky has been replaced with a choking haze that turns the sun orange and makes anything more than two miles away disappear. Our thoughts should be with the firefighters and with the people whose homes are in danger or already destroyed, but I admit the surreal atmosphere outside gives me a nihilistic sort of thrill portending the end of the world. In a few moments I'll cut a way through the poisonous fumes, take down the top of my convertible, and ride home through the glowing gloom with scorched air forcing a smoker's lifetime of cancerous pollution into my shriveling lungs. With any luck, I'll be dead in twenty minutes.

Ah, but that's nothing: The citizenry of San Francisco was subject to so much heat yesterday that the NWS declared an "excessive heat watch". Poor dears: It was 80 degrees! While down in Sacramento, it was only 106, barely hot enough to notice. Perhaps the Venusian atmosphere provides an ameliorating effect I have failed to appreciate.