Weather's supposed to be a dull, but safe topic, but for the past few years it's been an ever more interesting one.  If you haven't caught Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, he really shows just how wildly entertaining weather can be when in the hands of the right screenplay writers (Shane Black?  Steven E. DeSouza?  Joe Estherhaz??).  Of course, thanks to Katrina (and the Bush camp's review of that film, "I fell asleep during this movie") weather's not just blockbuster material, but Oscar worthy.

And in the category of best supporting actor, we have George W. Bush for Hurricane Katrina?  I think not...

Weather obviously affects more than just box-office results. Agriculture in the Midwest took a huge hit this summer, what with all those degrees going around, and the housing market in the New Mexico hills has been, shall we say, blackened a bit.  As I wrote in an earlier entry, we snack magnates compete with the seasons too, and this Summer has been punishing.  The big problem?  Chocolate!

Of course, I have no right to call chocolate a problem.  After all, were it not for chocolate, there'd be no Camp David Accord, and the builders of the Brooklyn Bridge ate chocolate EXCLUSIVELY.  But chocolate has its downsides, or rather, its downSIDE- it melts.  That's about as much bad-mouthing as I can lend chocolate, but this summer, that miserable trait alone has caused us terrible agony.

Imagine one of those classic, classy UPS vans- you know, the brown ones than seem as if they were imagined, designed, and engineered by a 1920s Quaker farmer from Iowa.  Now imagine them at high noon on a mid-July day, barreling through Dallas on their way to a Forth Worth suburb.  Imagine the temperature in the belly of that brown beast.  Now imagine what it does to chocolate.

Oh, how I wish I could steal a look at the Hershey playbook, or the Mars Bar Bible, and see just how they handle chocolate distribution in the summertime.  I remember that on a trip to India a couple of years ago, I was simply flabbergasted that chocolate could not be found anywhere but in the high hill stations.  Somehow I'd just never imagined a world without chocolate, but those worlds do exist.  Right there's reason enough to, with all our heart and political will, fight global warming.

We've compensated this summer by trying to ship our Shock-olate overnight, and/or with ice packs, but we've still lost a dreadful amount of chocolate to Helion/Ra/Imti/whatever you wanna call the sun.  But, at last, summer seems to be finally relenting a little, and allowing some cooling air, be it Canadian or Hurricanian air, to come down and spare our chocolate a little.  I love my summertime living- swim holes, camping, long days and big waves... but I like chocolate even more.

 An Ode to Chocolate

Pitty Buddha, for he never tasted a Mars Bar.

Jesus and Muhammed too- no Snickers for them either.

Maybe if they'd tasted Godiva, we'd never have invaded Iraq,

Or maybe Torquemada would've been a sweetheart.

Perhaps Caesar could have conquered Gaul,

If only he'd have had Hot Cocoa to tempt them out of the woods.

They say that Microwaves were invented by Chocolate

Melting in the shirt pocket of some engineer

standing too close to a microwave antenna.

Lucky shirt. 

Would that my fingers each had their own tongues,

for when I daudle, and my chocolate runneth over;

that my shirt could taste you the stains

of that last dropped dollop of chocolate ice cream.

Would that chocolate grew on trees,

not as gooey cocoa nuts, but, you know,

as Hershey's Kisses, or Almond Joy.

Yeah.  Yeah.

That'd be sweet.