It's hard to write in a bath full of peas

Traditionally, I've hated air conditioning. It dries out your eyes, it's environmentally unsound, and it means you have to wear a sweater in Vons, even if it is 100 degrees outside.

But now I understand air conditioning. And furthermore, I want some.

Hot weather melts your brain, taking away all creative impulse and replacing it with the impulse to eat ice cream while bathing in a tub of frozen peas. Which is fattening. And expensive.

I bet this week there was a record low in the number of pages written by struggling screenwriters and TV writers in the LA region. Our professional counterparts can all afford artificially cooled home offices or office offices, so they've been every bit as productive as normal. Which is good, otherwise we'd have an unscheduled week of dead air around Hallowe'en as all the TV shows that didn't get written this week grind to a halt.

So. Yeah. I'm hot.

And no, I'm not much farther down the road to finishing my Bones.*

Slacker excuses
ABC Evening News vans have been loitering outside my house all day, along with a brief appearance by five, count em', five, fire trucks. You see, except for my house, and one across the way, the power on our street has been out since Sunday afternoon. The news is covering that, while the fire trucks were rescuing my unfortunate neighbors from carbon monoxide poisoning after their generator leaked a bunch of nasty air into their house. So not good!

*Speaking of roads and bones, I heard recently that Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman have just completed a new travelogue, called Long Way Down. In Long Way Round, their first series, they drove around the world on kick-ass motorbikes. One of the roads they took was the Road of Bones in Russia. If you haven't seen Long Way Round, you really should. It's even better, if a lot less educational, than the ridiculously wonderful Michael Palin stuff.