Buckle Up

Okay, all you bible whores - the antichrist has been and gone, and we're still here, although we're much the worse for it.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born with the infamous "666" in red numerals an inch tall just below his adult hairline. Make-up (the epitome of his public persona) covered it in his life, as boot-black colored his hair for over 40 years. The country was dealt a sure death blow by his eight years of horrible and destructive policies.
Any chance of even a last-gasp recovery was smothered by G. W. Bush, known sodomite, who so ruined the economy that only about 250 million dead Americans could revitalize it. He was well down this road when his terms came to a blessed end.
Too late. The antichrist, followed by not just the worst president, but the worst leader of a first-world nation in 2000 years, has buried America, and covered the mound in coal overburden.

My heat-of-summer rule of thumb was, if you made the middle of August, things would turn the corner.
No more.
Coal is Big Money. Enough big money to keep Bill Clinton from signing the Kyoto Accords to reduce emissions (read: coal-fired byproducts) worldwide.
And W Bush: born with a birthmark very similar in size and placement to Reagan's but reading "For Sale", wouldn't have pissed off all that cash and signed even if god had told him to.
(God talked directly to him. For anyone but the over-moneyed, that's called "hearing voices" and indicates one is dangerously delusional. Our president.)
So now it will probably be 90 into November, until the thermometer bulb is smashed, and a freezer door is opened across the Midwest that would close roads in Alaska.

The other leg for my logic is the nights would lengthen enough to allow for evening cooling. Not now. Mitch Daniels ("It's MY state, goddammit!) took care of that. In a move as stupid as Class Basketball, in the face of overwhelming support for the status quo, Mitch ushered in DST. How we survived without it for over 35 years beats the shit out of me.
The only people who had trouble determining the time in other states were republicans. Go figure. Buy a man a watch and if he still doesn't know what fucking time it is, he's a republican.

I saw my first (for sure) red shouldered hawk Monday.
Like this: driving north on SR 13, towards Mississinewa Lake, and I saw this big bird standing face-on about 30 feet from the road in a yard. That behavior, size, dark breast - positive ID.
I'm not just a glass-half-empty guy, there's a hole in the bottom, too. But all the things that could have been better about this sighting must take a backseat to how the picture was just perfect. Even, at highway speed, noting the feathers on the legs.
A most wondrous sight.

Lots of raptors about. I thought I had seen an Osprey above the car through the windscreen. But it was the anti-moment. Know how you are driving down (any) road at the speed you need and someone comes flying up from WayBack (Thank you, Mr. Peabody) and then decides your rate is right and locks in about 40 feet behind you? Which made checking out the big guy impossible.
Years ago, I was on a gravel road up near Markle, looking for pollution, when a woman glued to my bumper. I sped up, I slowed down. Ditto. Finally I pulled over and stopped. Again, ditto. If given to such things I (like any normal person) might have been worried. Of course I was just angry. I was unbuckling so as to get out and eat her fucking car when she floored it around and on.
Hope her story was better than mine. She has an ad: she at least knew what one of us was thinking.