As a former Martian with a dwindling memory of a previous life on Mars (the planet Mars before Nibiru sucked our seas dry and left us with a cold, red desert instead) I still find it hard to adjust to living in one of the temperate zones on planet Earth. Temperate. According to the dictionary, that means "not extreme or excessive". Apparently, Daniel Webster never spent much time in Pennsylvania's Allegheny Plateau Region.These are the highlands between Pittsburgh, Erie and Scranton. Here, temperate means "hotter than the hub of hell" in the summertime and "colder than a witch's you-know-what" the rest of the year. Except, of course, for three or four days of actual, dictionary "temperate" climate conditions. These anomalies usually occur in June or October when you can actually walk around without six layers of protective clothing on or without the fear of heat stroke, despite the cargo shorts and T-shirt.
The rest of the time you're either hot or cold and there's not much you can do about it except get cozy on the couch, drink coffee, eat pastries and watch TV when it's cold or sit in front of a fan with a cold beer and do nothing at all when it's hot. I'm always reminded that I'm on Earth and not on Mars every time I do either of these two things. Why is that, you might ask?
Well, on Mars, doing the logical thing was almost always expected and even encouraged. But, on Earth, keeping warm and cooling off somehow tells everybody that you're not willing to freeze or roast to death like everybody else and that, somehow, unimaginably, constitutes laziness. At least they understand part of the Martian concept in Mexico. But look where it's gotten them.
