Global warming to blame for hot weather hyperbole
By John David Powell (07/20/06)
"Hot enuf fer ya?"
We can all die happy if we never hear that phrase again. I know I will, because, yes, it is hot enough for me. It is so hot that one of the air conditioners here at the ranch said “no mas” and gave up the ghost.
Its untimely death provide a small amount of amusement, though. My delicate tropical of a daughter left for work thirty minutes early because the upstairs was just too hot for any human to have to endure. In fact, going to work early was far more acceptable than spending another thirty minutes in our temporary sauna.
I do not know about where you live, but it is real hot here in Texas. And, just how hot is it? It is so hot, the media and folks you stick to on the street are having a hard time coming up with enough adjectives to describe it.
A heat index of more than 100 degrees for days on end not only drains the body and spirit, but it also takes its toll on the thesaurus. There is a limit to the number of ways to describe the heat and still sound relatively intelligent. The TV folks crossed that line at 2:17 p.m. last Thursday.
Of course, intelligence (or the lack thereof) is not to blame for their lame attempts at describing the heat. Blame it on global warming. I tried to blame it on illegal immigrants, but that’s a hot topic all by itself.
We can divide hot weather descriptions into several categories.
Old Standbys: Sweltering. Record-setting. Record-breaking.
Wild Kingdom: Ferocious. Savage. Tropical. Hot enough to fry a lizard.
The Gym: Sauna-like. Steamy. Exhausting. Blistering.
Really Scary Movies: Horrible. Fiendish. Ghastly.
Ghastly, though, might be taking it a bit too far. You step outside to get the morning paper. You stumble inside looking like you have survived an attack by renegade fire fighters. Your wife looks at you and asks what it's like out there. “Ghastly,” you say. She says, “You've been watching too many James Mason movies.”
Then there's that whole S & M scene. Cruel. Brutish. Punishing. Merciless and her evil twin Unmerciful.
How about the Hades motif? Hot as hell. Diabolic. Infernal inferno. Blazing.
No? Want something a bit more domestic? How about the Kitchen? Searing. Wilting. Baking. Broiling. Withering. Steaming. Draining. Hot enough to fry a lizard (see Wild Kingdom). Hot enough to fry an egg.
And speaking of frying an egg. No death is too good for the next reporter who goes out to do a story showing that “It was so hot today you could fry an egg on (the sidewalk, the street, the car hood, the lamp post, the swing, the slide, the kids on the swing and slide, the forehead of this homeless person who looks like, yes, it is, Eldred, our former anchor).”
Don't forget the whole Hottern category. Hottern a firecracker. Hottern a pistol. Hottern a two-dollar pistol. Hottern hell (see Hades).
Combining hottern with Good-Old-Boy you get hottern a (name your high school rival) cheerleader on homecoming, and hottern a (name your high school rival) homecoming queen. Of course, the closest these guys ever got to a cheerleader or a homecoming queen was Playboy's Girls of the Southwest Conference.
Oh, I forgot. Hottern a match head and hottern a pepper sprout, members of the Weather Lyrics category.
Remember your brain and your brain on drugs? Well, you also have brain-numbing, brain-boiling, and brain-baking (sounds suspiciously like a combo with Kitchen). And for those wanting a bit more hyperbole: Mind destroying.
There's also the “you're at home all day for several days with the kids who are out of school and bored” category: Unrelenting.
John David Powell is a six-time winner of the Houston Press Club’s Lone Star Award for Internet Opinion Writing, a communication professional, and a contributor to the Christian History Project.
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