The Year Without Summer

Main article: The Year Without Summer

Ah, summer. The season of fair days, harvests, young love, rainbows, unicorns, and gumdrops...

But when you look beyond that, summer, at its core, is really just a tilt in the earth’s axis, resulting in increased solar output to a particular hemisphere; making one man’s summer another guy’s winter. I know that sounds pretty unromantic. Nevertheless, it’s always been pretty fashionable for people to love on summer. Currently, summer is almost as celebrated as popular cultures love of vampires, which is at least slightly ironic.

This is what popular culture has done to a

legend of hungry, bloated corpses. :\

Now, I gotta admit, summer to me primarily means bright sun glare, a state of perma-sweating, and a marked increase in the urge to go yell at kids to get off my lawn (particularly disconcerting considering that I have no lawn). Not to sound too Andy Rooney, but I’m pretty sure I could do without the season were it an option...

...Apparently however, completely lacking a summer is, according to this article at least, not really such a good thing. Famine, disease, riots, death, you get the idea. So maybe I was wrong. Maybe I'm a cold, heartless bastard. F you. Get off my lawn.

Enter Wikipedia, the consummate goddess of wisdom and neutrality. She warms my icy cardiac organ by not only covering negative effects of the "year without summer", but in the last section of the article, many of the positive cultural effects too. Granted, many thousands, if not millions of people died and suffered as a result, but I got to see some sweet sunset pictures! :D

You may also note that the article makes reference to "brown" and even "red" snow falling in certain locales. You may have been under the impression that colored snow, particularly colors like brown, red, and yellow were solely caused by biological forces, but you were wrong. Odd colored snow may, in fact, be a perfectly natural part of an extremely rare meteorological event. You should probably taste it to find out.

Returning to vampires for a moment, I am however sad to report that the article is, much like the shadow people, very anthropocentric. It fails to take into consideration the notion that what was definitely a really sucky year for humans, was likely a phenomenal year for vampires, and perhaps undead everywhere.

What’s worse? Undead all summer or those door-to-door Mormon missionaries?

Awesomeness tip: Read the short article, just be careful not to identify too closely with the promise of a ridiculously mild summer. For one, it’s not likely to happen again any time soon, and two, in Wikipedia land they call people with our tendencies “photophobic”. A quick visit to that article will inform you that your condition is perhaps due to your undiagnosed dyslexia or autism. :(

Just another dark secret to repress deep down into that icy, black heart of yours (and mine) as we scurry through the shadows this summer...

Firewhirl

Main article: Firewhirl

If you grew up playing a large amount of fantasy role-playing games, you probably should have spent more time playing outside.

No, not those kind of roleplaying games.

Since it’s obviously far too late to change that now, we ought to focus on the few good things that came out of those impressionable years. One such waste of brain cells, is that you now have a firm understanding of the fictional, universal power known as “magic”. Magic, in this sense, is wayyy different then how your more accepted peers conceive of it. They tend to think of things like cheesy card-tricks or man regurgitating dozens of interlinked colored handkerchiefs.

Booooring                               

You however, know that magic can also mean cool shit too, like making yourself invisible (physically, not just socially), shooting fire or lightening out of your magic staff (or wand, or rod, or similar phallic object) and using charm spells to bind sexy nymphs/elves/faeries to your dark whims.

Tragically, you’re also very aware that this magic doesn’t actually exist in anything outside of a Lord of the Rings movie, and that if it did, humanity could have perhaps perfected by now and put an end to all suffering and world hunger. More importantly, you, seething with the raw powers you would have undoubtedly mastered, would have certainly gotten a lot more tail.

Yes, this is all very depressing, but I’m happy to report that, for once, mother nature has got your back on one of the awesome things that you probably thought was just an end-boss attack on a Final Fantasy game: A firewhirl, sometimes called a fire tornado. That’s right, it’s an F-ing tornado made out of fire! And just when you thought weather was all boring stuff like earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.

Booooring                              

Sweetness.

(Photo credit: Josh Lane)

I know, I know, with wind speeds that top out at only 100 mph or so, it doesn’t really rank as much of a tornado on the EF scale. Even worse, I can already tell that some of you bitches are going to find a vertical column of spinning fire that’s both unstable and non-controllable a bit ho-hum. Well, make sure to check out the firestorm link then, for thy firestorm is truly the holy grail of all pyromania.

What? You still aren’t satisfied with the idea of a firestorm? Obviously this topic needs to be a bit more personalized for you. If you’re an American (or British), take pride in the fact that your county is apparently really, really good at making firestorms. Check out the Operation Gomorrah article to see just how your grandpappy did it (ultimately creating a 1,500-foot-high mega-firewhirl). Firebombs in WWII killed wayyyy more people then those nuclear whatevers that were used later in the war. Seriously.

As they say, be nice to America, or we’ll bring democracy to your county! (or at least fight a grueling proxy war before retreating in failure) :D