rainy days and Mondays

[freckles_and_doubt]

You know, this planet is fundamentally screwed. It's the middle of December. (And, in related news, how the hell did that happen? I've wandered around for the last two weeks firmly convinced that it was around the 3rd of the month, and here we are with a totally unexpected public holiday to the side of the head on Friday, and Christmas itself leering just around the corner. Also, I forgot friendly_shrink's birthday, by dint of not realising the month had progressed that far. Fatigue does the weirdest things to one's perception of time.)

Anyway. It's the middle of December. We have had solid, heavy rain all morning, with a truly marvellous episode of actual hail for about fifteen minutes in the middle of it. We are supposed to be a Mediterranean climate, i.e. all about the winter rain, not the summer (see High Veld Summer Thunderstorms, Lack Of, Tragic, for the use of). If we have stuffed with this climate to the extent of hail on the 14th December, it's pretty bad. Put it together with the merry billboards advertising the US/China hijack of the climate change summit to try and weasel out of emissions accords, and it's perfectly obvious why we're doomed.

This wouldn't happen if we were all orang-utans. I bet orang-utans wouldn't feel the need to get all protective of their bloody oil-based economy.

I should point out that all of the above did not in any way prevent me from spending ten minutes this morning with my third-floor office window flung open all the way while I stuck my head out into the rain, laughing like a loon, and tried to catch the hailstones out of the air. Bits of thing falling from the sky apparently regress me to the joyous age of 8, or thereabouts. My morning was materially improved by having to comb the hailstones out of my hair before I could deal with the next dose of student angst. Strange but true.

The inexorable advance of December towards Merry Festive Wossnames reminds me that I did, in fact, send out the Great Boxing Day Braai invite a couple of days ago. If you're in Cape Town and didn't receive it but would like to attend, please leave plaintive meepings in the comments. I probably only left you out owing to cheesebrain, which I have a lot of just at the moment.

Comments

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

This is why we're screwed. And this.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Aargh. Those articles are downright terrifying, if only because they back up with facts and figures my own gut feeling of doom. Thank you for linkery, apposite and important.

[dayle dermatis (from livejournal.com)]

The mental image of you sticking your head out the window into the rain and laughing makes my heart sing.

xo
Dayle

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Clearly you are a fellow weather-lover in the same 8-year-old terms that I am. We have access to very rewarding simple joys :>. And it's lovely to know that they're shared.

[xavierxalfonso.livejournal.com]

There are ethical issues around mass-exterminations of species, but the earth as a system will be fine. To quote a New Model Army song, "She'll survive us all perfectly well when we're all long buried and dead."

Humans will have problems, though. Expect significant issues around a whole range of topics - from water to refugees - to increase dramatically. And I don't think it's impossible that democracies and democratic notions end up taking a bit of a battering in the medium term.