Hot Topic

People who live in the northern latitudes are not happy unless we can complain about the weather. With the exception of the Red Sox and deer ticks it's the only thing we talk about. This explains our demeanors. Generously described as laconic, reserved, even flinty; Northerners, if you must know, are pissed off half of the time. And this humid heatwave now choking the life out of what's left of our good humor has us positively and joyfully enraged. Children cry, fans drone, dripping window units blow cool mildew into the few bedrooms lucky enough to have them. We slog around the steamy streets greeting one another with listless grunts. We glare across fly-buzzed dinner tables with the boiling urge, but not the energy, to fight one another to the death. But we survive because the weather is our common enemy -- like ticks -- like Manny's base-running. And we spend our wrath on these things, rather than on each other.