Several people have emailed to ask if Mary and I are being affected by the fires. Aside from a few road closures, the intermittant rain of ash, and a dull burning in the chest after any exertion, we’re fine. In East LA, where Mary’s school is located, they’re keeping the kids indoors during recess. I guess, after spending millions of dollars removing asbestos from the premises, they deem it counterproductive to then blithely encourage the students to run around the playground sucking up brimstone.
Yesterday I made the mistake of walking to the bank, and on the way back my eyes were streaming, and there was a nicely banked pile of embers in my lungs — the kind of dull red radiance that would have drawn the Bobbsey Twins, after a day of tobogganing in the sharp winter air, to gather round and warm their hands over my thorax.
When I got home, I downed a glass of water over the sink and coughed up a brichet, and was about to search the web to see just how close the fires were getting, when I heard Mary shout the title phrase from another room. And I realized the suddenly sulphuric atmosphere didn’t betoken a menacing shift in the wind-driven flames, it just meant that Ann Coulter was in town.
Naturally, I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to attend her speech at USC — when I was a kid, that was always the big finish to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, then we’d get some ice cream, and my dad would put me on his shoulders to watch the fireworks — but this year, alas, it conflicted with the Amish Hot Rod Association’s annual drag race finals at California Speedway.
My grandma used to say that a little charcoal does the system good — it filters it. Of course, she was a drunk who had a bad habit of burning the morning toast, so take it as you wish.
I’d think measuring the ash pile up on your window sill would probably be a better use of time than imbibing coulterism.
Left by kate on October 25th, 2007