Where Did the Summer Go?

I'm sitting here looking at a pamphlet called Summer Guide 2007. It contains information like Backyard Smarts: Make a Play Date with Safety, Float Your Boat: Wise Water Safety Tips and You're Going Alone? Safe Solo Travel. And I think, "When did all this happen, where was I?" If this is what our summers are going to be like from now on, I want a refund. If the weather stays like this meaning more gray than blue, I wonder if certain correlated things will happen, you know unintended consequences. Some of the things that come to mind are; more rampant depression, significantly reduced bathing suit sales, fewer outdoor concerts, more mosquitoes, dirtier houses (all those endorphins trapped in our bodies), sidewalks lasting many more years because fewer people are walking on them (in the bad weather), lower outdoor furniture and barbecue sales, fewer steaks sold, fewer cattle sold, fewer cattle grown, fewer cattle bought...I think I just put the ranchers out of business.



You know how farms have become more and more scarce over the years as they have been replaced by business parks, light industry, strip malls and numerous housing developments? Maybe that means that at some point all of our fruit and vegetables will be grown hydroponically (I love that word), it is such a cool system. It feels very 2001; A Space Odyssey.


It's amazing to me that it's 2007 and people still buy the Farmers' Almanac. I wonder if that will go out of business in a few more generations when no one can remember anyone ever relying on it for anything? I wonder what else might be gone in a few generations? Maybe encyclopedias, dictionaries, music purchased anywhere but online, board games, gasoline-powered automobiles (I hope), the radical right wing (oops, how did that slip in there?), nuclear weapons (because they will either have destroyed us all by then or everyone gets smart and decommissions them), the 8:00 - 5:00 workday sitting in an office, traffic lights that turn red for no one (inefficient use of energy), beets (because everyone will have come to their senses and realized they're gross), bad movies (I don't understand how they even get made now) and last but not least Rush Limbaugh and Lars Larson because they need to just go away and stop poisoning the minds of the elderly.

I guess that does it for my political and other sundry commentary this evening. I'm off to finish off a few more pages of Harry Potter #3.