Warm weather discriminates against cold fronts


Arizona Daily Wildcat

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Monday morning, I woke up, went through my morning routine, and checked the calendar before getting dressed.

Nov. 18, 1996, my computer proudly informed me. "Hot damn," I thought. "Mid-autumn. Time to put on a sweatshirt."

Thusly accoutered, I stepped out to greet the pre-rush hour morning and found it to be only a little chilly. "No problem," I thought. "It cannot warm up much. It is, after all, mid-autumn."

Irony is a harsh mistress. As anyone who bothered to set foot out there found out, it was not a chilly day, it was not a cool day; it was a warm day, an unseasonably warm day. There were other adjectives I included about the weather on Monday (and Tuesday , and so on), but they are not appropriate for polite discourse.

Few things are actually capable of provoking thought in my battered cranium, but the recent heat spell is certainly one of them. Don't we have the right to cold weather? Don't we have a right to comfortably wear winter apparel for at least a few months a year? Doesn't cold weather have the right to exist alongside blazing heat?

The answer, my friends, is yes, and it's not blowing in the wind. I therefore suggest that we take immediate steps to remedy this problem. We should lobby Congress to set up a program to aid underrepresented weather patterns in specific locations, as appr opriate. In Arizona, for example, cold weather patterns probably feel oppressed by location and certain atmospheric conditions, not to mention the overwhelming number of winter visitors who come here simply to avoid Non-Oppressive Weather (NOW).

Snowstorms are subjected to all sorts of climactic discrimination. Years of violent interactions with other weather fronts and the negative image of cold weather as "bad" presented by the national media have set these atmospheric minorities at a disadvant age when competing with the Heat-Affiliated Climatic Kings (HACKs) that move through this state.

Of course, we must not be insensitive to the temperature patterns indigenous to this area; to infringe on their presence could result in years of moral backbreaking and recrimination, not to mention the lawsuits and lobbying groups that would inevitably p op up.

Rather, we should seek an equitable distribution of temperatures and atmospheric conditions, regardless of time, location, or immediate convenience for those involved, without seeking to impose our own values on the weather as it exists at a given time.

Certainly, one can foresee the possible implications of this solution. No longer would the world be plagued by arbitrary, ethno- and geocentric weather patterns: Monsoons would sweep the American Midwest while snowstorms hit Tahiti; we in the Southwest co uld enjoy noreasters. Complete climatic liberation would sweep the globe, and the fruits of freedom would be enjoyed by all.

In that vein, then, let us solicit of the weather:

Oh gender non-specific entity(ies) who may or may not exist, depending on personal beliefs and inclinations, help us, though we're fully capable of empowering ourselves, to receive the most equitable distribution of weather patterns without special regard to right or wrong, which are only impossible moral constructions in an existence devoid of absolute truth. Lead us not into Rush Limbaugh, but deliver us from Clinton. Amen, though all need not agree to receive personal and social acceptance, and no deno minational connotation is implied.

So come on. It's November and the weather forecast still involves the words "unseasonably warm." It's time to stand as a single (yet diverse and not actually interdependent) people and demand: "Whoever is responsible for this unhealthy bias toward warm we ather, stop all this discrimination!" Or as the Tick put it, "Knock off all that evil!" We can only do it if we individually stand together.

Thank you for your support.

Chris Badeaux is a junior majoring in English. His column, 'Cynic on Parade,' appears every other Friday.


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