Sweating your way to enlightenment

MONDAY EVENING, after more than a week of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, I broke down and went to Home Depot to buy an air conditioner. I know you're probably laughing hysterically right now, since anyone who's seen approximately one-third of a local news broadcast lately knows that air conditioners (and even those primitive objects called fans) are about as available as Cipro was after 9/11. But my house, whose only cooling system is a bedroom ceiling fan, had taken on the qualities of a Bikram yoga studio in Al Aziziyah. Figuring the more time spent in the air-conditioned car the better, I drove to Home Depot, only to begin to suspect I actually was living in Al Aziziyah.

Inside, at least 200 people were queued up in a line snaking across the entire front of the store. With kids and elderly family members in tow, they leaned against their shopping carts as if the carts were pieces of driftwood in a vast, thermal sea. Babies cried, flies swarmed, armed militiamen paced menacingly (or something like that; it's possible I was starting to hallucinate). In the final moments of my naivete, I approached a man in the line and asked what all the fuss was about. Was Home Depot selling tickets to an Eagles reunion tour I hadn't heard about?

"Air conditioners," the man told me. "I think there's a truck coming soon. Everyone took a number, but I don't think there are any left."

There's a truck coming soon? Everyone took a number? Was this Hollywood or a refugee camp? It occurred to me that it was too bad air conditioners weighed so much, because it might be useful if the National Guard would drop them out of helicopters like food rations.

Outside in the parking lot, row upon row of pickup trucks and SUVs boxed each other in as they searched for nonexistent spots. The air formed a dingy layer over the darkening sky. Toddlers slipped from their parents' sweaty arms and fell to the pavement. Hyenas darted among the wretched throngs, screaming out bloodcurdling calls and nipping at people's flip-flops. It was all too clear: The apocalypse had come. On top of that, I never got an air conditioner.

Personally, I think this weather is an extremely sophisticated publicity campaign for Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." But we apparently can't be sure whether the recent heat wave -- I heard one weatherman call it a "heat storm," which sounds much more dramatic -- has much to do with global warming.