IT'S HOT!

On rereading it, I fear my previous post was whinier than I'd intended. It's hot across the Midwest, and Chicago gets no relief by being on the lake. I don't respond well to heat, which makes me testier and more short-tempered than usual. I hadn't intended to leave yesterday's post as the final word for the day, but as I sat looking at my keyboard, I couldn't come up with anything but the most banal, innocuous things to say.

Taking refuge in the air conditioning, we saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and it is as good as everybody's been saying. I'm not sure that there was much information there that I hadn't already encountered, but seeing the crush of global warming information all together does make for a very compelling and overwhelming argument. Here's the movie's Webpage, and it's probably a good idea to particularly check the Take Action section. On a day like this, all the info provides a reminder of why my wife and I have limited ourselves to just a single window unit air conditioner in our front room. For the most part, it's not that big a deal, and opening windows and running fans provide more than enough cooling to the apartment, but sometimes everywhere but that front room is miserable. But it's one way to lower our carbon dioxide emissions.

It's easy to see why some people are suggesting that the movie is a reentry point for Gore's political career. Although the information he provides is vital, he comes off well himself. But I'm just not sure. The seduction of power that comes in seeking the presidency must be awfully overwhelming, so it's hard to ignore it, but I also wonder if Gore's keeping in mind all the distractions that come with the job. He would certainly have a good bully pulpit to press a response to global warming, but he'd have to clean up after the current guy. (When it comes down to it, you have to wonder why anyone would want to be elected to follow Bush and deal with all the mess he's sure to leave behind.) How much would he actually be able to focus on global warming? At one point in the film, Gore says something about once you recognize the enormity of the problem, you can't really do anything but address it, and I have to wonder if holding the office of president might work against that. This may be a silly comparison, but I was reminded of one of the main reasons I lost interest in The X-Files. Once Cancer Man explained to Mulder that Earth was caught between two warring alien civilizations, how could that not consume every ounce of his energy? Knowing that, how could he ever go back to saying, "Hey, Scully! There's a werewolf in the Dakotas! Let's go investigate"? But he did. And although what the president does is far more important than chasing down werewolves (isn't it?), it seems to me that Gore returning to elected politics would be fairly similar. Although I don't have time to find a link at the moment, my memory is that Gore got quite a bit of flack in the 2000 election for downplaying his commitment to the environment (but then again, he got quite a lot of flack for everything). I'm not sure he'd make the same kind of mistake again.

But for me on this hot afternoon, I'm going again in search of air conditioning. I've got a feeling that I may end up at the IMAX to see Superman Returns in partial 3D (the fact that I've already got a ticket contributes to that feeling, of course). And yes, Don, after that I will respond to your request. And if you're in Chicago and looking for somewhere to escape the hot evening, you could do worse than checking out "Chewy Chewy Yummy Yummy Sugar Sugar," a night of bubblegum and teenypop with DJ Stu Shea at Delilah's. Maybe I'll see you there.