Helter Swelter

The temperature has been flirting with triple digits for weeks now and finally crossed over on Sunday. And yesterday?

108 degrees.

Just when you think life here can't get any worse.

I stayed inside. Even the dogs wouldn't venture out. The air was classified as "unhealthy for everyone" and when you stepped outside it smelled like the toxic stew of Bako was fermenting. And pity my poor boyfriend. He had to work outside yesterday and by the time he came home he wanted to commit hari kari. It was so hot yesterday you couldn't even get cold water out of the tap - the underground pipes were baked. I took a shower without even turning on the hot water.

And the humidity! How the hell is it that this place is humid? It gets nearly zero rain and there hasn't been a drop in months, and yet yesterday it was like Miami in August. What the hell is up with that?

The return of the heat has also brought the return of one of my pet peeves about this place, the first of many. I'm talking about the obscene waste of water. It's absolutely criminal.

I've ragged on Bako for stealing water from up north, but truth be told all of Southern California imports it's water. The difference is that everyone else seems to be abundantly aware of how precarious their position is. The good people of Palm Springs realize they live in a desert and make do with front yards made of rocks and cactus. In LA the water restrictions are so draconian you can only water your yard a handful of hours a week. But here everyone seems to believe they have the God given right to turn their front yards into an Amazonian jungle, and if it means leaving the sprinklers on for 5 hours, so be it.

And they do.


I've taken the dogs out for a walk at 7:30 in the morning and all the neighbors have their sprinklers going full blast. When I've left to run errands hours later, they're still going strong. More people still choose to water in the early afternoon when the heat is so intense the water never even hits the ground, instantly evaporating into the blast furnace air. The end result is that though the lawns all appear lush and green, it's all for show. They're usually so waterlogged they're more kelp bed than lawn - step on it and you're likely to sink in up to your ankles.

Now that I think about, I believe I've discovered the source of the humidity.

Waste Not

Sometimes the stars align and a great truth is revealed.

Or, sometimes a friend sends you an internet link that just so happens to jibe with a thought you were about to post.

This morning it was the latter.

And the subject is "waste".

Not "wasting", although they do that here in spades. They go through more water than the Lost City of Atlantis, and they're in a desert.

No, we're talkin' trash. Garbage. And other...waste.

My original thought revolved around trash. They seem to have a thing for it here. The highway into town is literally littered with trash. The now dead river through town? Full of trash. Vacant lots? Trash dumps. With the fog, you could dump a dead body on your neighbor's lawn and, unless someone tripped over it, it could go undiscovered for days. But it's not just slovenly trailer park living.

It's a state of mind.

Several months ago my favorite morning news show morphed into "Good Morning Kern County", losing most of it's hickish appeal. Gone was the snorting bull logo and the old coot doing traffic. Gone too ,the loudmouth sports guy. It became generically bland, a high school version of a morning show. Nothing Bako about it.

Except for the opening....

Every morning show out of New York opens with misty shots of daybreak over Manhattan. In LA it was the sun rising over the skyline, light dawning on the Hollywood sign, maybe the moon setting in the Pacific beyond the Santa Monica pier.

Here?

It's a trash truck.

As the "morning music" tinkles in the background, you see a shot of the sun rising and then it dissolves to one of Bako's ubiquitous brown trash trucks. Its arm extends, it grabs a bin, hoists it high, shakes out it's contents, and then we dissolve to the loopy, grinning anchors at the news desk. The end. They've put your day in the dumper and you haven't even had coffee yet. It always makes me laugh. Your day has nowhere to go but up at that point.

And then this morning a friend of mine emailed me an article about the fact that for years, decades even, all of the er... "solids" from LA's waste treatment plants has been trucked here to Bako.

And deposited.

"I'm standing in front of a series of small poo-soaked piles of used condoms, toilet paper, rags and tampon applicators accumulating in the massive headworks building of the Hyperion Treatment Plant, where the majority of Los Angeles' sewage is treated..."

"But whether or not L.A.'s sludge represents a hazard to Kern County residents is, in a way, irrelevant. What's unfair to the people of Kern County is having to deal with stupendous volumes of someone else's exported poo."

(http://www.realitysandwich.com/how_save_world_pooping_bucket)

That explains it! These poor, downtrodden people have been pooped on! By society! For years! No wonder they have such a lackadaisical attitude for garbage. Why they, reluctantly I'm sure, embrace it.

Hmmm... there must be something I can do...