I had two chocolates left from a party I had gone to a while ago, and yes they were melted and gooey when I got home. Thankfully they were in saran wrap. What the hell is the actual name for saran wrap? I’ve never bought the actual brand of saran wrap, I always got cling wrap.
I’ve already had plenty of Summers in the city, and I’m familiar with how uncomfortable it can be on the subway or in Chinatown where the heat gives new legs to the smells that during the best of times are still horrible. Despite all this I think yesterday when I got into the 34th street subway station it was the most disgusting I’ve ever felt when in a subway station. It was literally like a sauna but with subway funk. I was prepared to jump on any train that presented itself at that moment in time even if it was going in the wrong direction. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like before the subway cars had a/c. Actually I can imagine it, and it makes me glad that I don’t live in that time.
I think this Summer is reaching (is it even officially Summer yet?) the point where even in an air conditioned environment I’m throwing my germaphobia to the wind and trying my best to find naturally cold surfaces and areas. This could either be the metal of a subway pole or the stone walls in the hallways of my apartment building. I’m not quite crazy enough to be touching surfaces in a subway STATION but right now I prefer a middle subway seat if it hasn’t been sat on rather than the edge subway seat which has been warmed by someone else sitting on it. When the weather gets like this I fold my laundry in the basement where the machines are because it’s so much cooler there.
When I got home on Thursday I couldn’t help but notice FLIES EVERYWHERE. Okay, maybe not everywhere, they were mostly huddled around the nearest light source which happened to be above my desk. I think I have very good hygiene and even though I cook I’m good about not leaving food out. That being said, maybe there was a fly getting freaky on some trash that I waited a day or so too long to take out and this was the end result. Seriously though there were maybe a dozen flies, it was gross.
At first I was just trying to get them in the air which I did get at least five or so midair. The easiest ones were the ones that landed on a flat surface which were quickly dispatched. I have no direct way of measuring, but I’m pretty sure since I’ve been taking kung-fu for the last year that my reflexes are better and aided me in my quest to rid my apartment of the fly infestation.
Though after some initial struggling I turned off most of my lights except for my halogen floor lamp and they sort of flocked there leaving me alone. I even opened all my windows but none of them seemed to want to leave. The halogen did manage to fry one of them like I thought it would and when I went to sleep I think a few had flown out the window. Last night there were maybe four or so, as I write this there’s one left which I’m looking to fix before I go to sleep.
When I left the subway car yesterday morning I was greeted by the pea soup air typical to when it gets really hot in New York. I quickly went up the stairs in anticipation of the relief of the open air outside of the subway. I made it out and the air was EXACTLY the same as it was in the subway. There was absolutely no relief upon exit. Until I got to my office the best I could’ve hoped for was the open door of a store leaking air conditioned air. And no, I did not attempt to cool down with a friend by breathing upon each other. That’s gross.
The line of dialogue that began my thought process for this comic is from the X-Files when Scully is eating a “non-fat tofutti rice dreamsicle” to which Mulder groans and says “I bet the air in my mouth tastes better than that.” (the episode in question being “The Unnatural” which was all about baseball, love and of course, aliens).
By the time you’re reading this the temperature could be in the triple digits (depending where you are of course). Or if it’s not in the triple digits, humidity could make it feel like it was well past the triple digits. Though as bad as it is here, it’s nothing compared to the heat out west that killed over 100 people, 25,000 cattle and 700,000 chickens. My guess is the people who think global warming doesn’t exist have never left their isolated climate controlled house, because just from paying attention to the last few summers it’s plain obvious that it’s getting hotter every year. The room I work in at my office has big windows so it tends to get hotter than other parts of the office. That’s the price you pay for natural light.
Yesterday was a million times better than Monday or Tuesday. I actually missed my transfer in Brooklyn so I ended up walking the rest of the way back to my apartment. It was actually okay because it was a really nice night. My apartment wasn’t quite as stifling hot as the day before but the air was still about as dead. Though I figured out that if the air outdoors is cool I can get some good circulation in my apartment by opening all my windows, turning on my a/c’s fan and then pointing my floor fan out the window.
Though the bathroom continues to be the coolest room in the apartment (temperature-wise). Most likely because it’s also the smallest room in the apartment with a window so it’s easier for it to cool down. Basically as long as one of the other windows in the apartment is open, nice cool air will come through my bathroom window. I even did my Japanese homework in there it was so nice.
Now something I’ve noticed about how people are finding my comic. I suppose with a setting like today’s this next thing should come as no surprise. Lots of people find my comic by typing “poop” into either Google or Oh No Robot. Though specifically mouse poops seems to yield the best results in finding my comic. As of the writing of this rant, my Oh No Robot entry is #3 result in Google when you type in “mouse poops.” Though it also seems that Google will bring up my comic as long as someone types “webcomic” and ANY WORD that has appeared in one of my rants. The other thing I find amusing is that I get a lot of results for people typing in “penny arcade” into Oh No Robot, because of the strip I did about Commerce Bank’s Penny Arcade. Though clearly the people were hoping to find Penny Arcade comics, but they weren’t smart enough to realize that no results would be yielded unless somewhere in a comic someone says “Penny Arcade” or describes it, which most of the time doesn’t happen.
I should’ve left a couple windows open in my apartment in order to facilitate some actual air circulation, because when I got home it was even stuffier than the Canal Street Q subway station. Though turning on my a/c’s fan plus directing my other fan out the window seemed to create some nice airflow. It always sucks when outdoors it’s really nice and cool but it seems impossible to get your apartment in sync with that. Bleah.
People making out in public is annoying enough, but it’s next level to be making out when the weather is in the mid-90s. When I leave either my apartment or even worse, my office building on an oppressively hot day like yesterday (or today) it’s like the world is exhaling straight into my face all this warm air that envelops everything around me. In other words, it feels really gross and the idea that people could be outdoors getting intimate in public sounds really unattractive to me. For god’s sake, go home to your air conditioned apartments and make out! Even if the idea of being all gross and sweaty from the get go is very alluring to you take it somewhere else!
Funny story about when I was researching how to draw a big water splash for this strip. I was on Google Image search trying to figure out what sort of keyword would give me what I wanted. So I tried things like “water splash” but it mostly yielded real life examples instead of drawings. So then I tried putting in some onomatopoeia words for water splashing like SPLOOSH or GOOSH. The latter sent me to this image of Sean Connery from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade because the filename was “Goosh schtepping moransh like you should try reading booksh inschted of burning them!!!.jpg” That made me happy.
I accidentally do this a couple times every Summer. I’ve already done it once so far this Summer, and the worst of it was that it wasn’t even a very hot day. Whereas a day like yesterday I wouldn’t have minded it much if I accidentally left my a/c on. I think my electricity bill is pretty reasonable even during the Summer because I don’t turn my a/c on that high, and it’s only on mostly during the weekends. The only other time of the year my electricity bill gets noticeably higher is when I’m leaving my computer on during all hours of the day because I’m downloading very large batch torrents.
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