Get Away from Me, Jiminy

it's been unacceptably hot. like 85 degrees. and, sure, pretty much anyone who lives outside of san francisco and its magical mild seasons will say, "85 degrees isn't hot. do you want to know hot?" and will go on to bragplain about how much more horrible their better city is than mine. and while there are those who miss the sun in this fine 49-square mile city of weirdos, i am not one of those people. i hate the sun. i love san francisco's 65 degree average and hate every moment of this 85 degree nonsense.

but with all of that said, what you may or may not know is that the cricket is a cold-blooded animal-- like all insects. and therefore, chirps at a higher-- and more frequent-- pitch during hot nights. similar to san francisco residents, i imagine-- judging by the sounds of last night-- the san francisco crickets are not prepared for nights breaking 70 degrees either.

at times my cigarette-smoking whiskey-drinking conversations were entirely underscored by what seemed to be a fairly annoying car alarm. or perhaps two bats debating about politics.

and, after much searching, we discovered it was in fact a cricket. he was hiding within a discarded nightstand by the corner store where we now smoke since our own apartment has been deemed illegal smoking grounds.

i say "he" in reference to said cricket not because i'm a male-- this is not one of those situations where a male declares everything else as male-- but because only the male crickets chirp.

and this brings me to a rather bothersome fact:

in some film and plenty sitcom, it is commonly known that a bad joke is labeled a bad joke by the apparent sounds of crickets chirping. this is to say so few people-- if any-- are laughing, that we can hear the crickets chirp.

but it's absolutely disgusting.

the sound we are hearing in the absence of laughter is a mature male talking dirty with any female cricket that may be close enough to hear. he's basically sitting in his apartment shouting out the window, "i like cricket-vagina. so are you on myspace...?" with a little bit of, "hey, all you guys who can also hear me: don't fucking cock-block."

why, of all sounds, must we have chosen a cricket getting raunchy with its neighbors as the iconic sound of "not funny"? why not the wind howling, or a human coughing once? or anything other than verbal cricket porn.

does this mean that when two crickets are telling each other bad jokes they stop to hear a high school guy talking about how big his dick is and what he plans on doing to the girl in his math class?

as a bug-fanatic and a man who makes plenty of bad jokes, this flirtatious cricket sound effect offends me. there was once someone i met who could mimic the cricket sound with his mouth and i was so amazed. that's not easy to do. but what amazed me more is his willingness to mindless flirt with nearby crickets with no fear that they may swarm him and rape him senseless.

oh, maybe the heat is just getting to my head. i don't deal well with this lack of fog and wind very well.