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You Can Say It: Summer Is Garbage

Hey: Don't shoot the messenger, but here are empirical reasons why summer is the worst season.

Photo via teakwood

I have come to the conclusion that summer is bullshit. It is unfortunate, but it is a truth we all have to address. Deep in the white cold frost of winter, through long autumn nights, through the fresh brisk shoots of spring: All we long for is summer. And then it hits like a bomb, and we are all like: Well, good goddamn and fuck. This summer nonsense is absolute bullshit. I need to buy a fan. My body has a crucial need for ice cream. I need ice cream more than I need to have blood. I hate this with my life. I loathe the horror of this heat.

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Anyway, a lot of "summer truthers"—people who actually enjoy eating their lunch outside and away from their desk, for instance, people who glow with the healthy lacquer of a tan instead of freckling up like a storm, people who enjoy drinking cool juice-based cocktails by open-air pools—a lot of these summer truthers have been swinging for me, saying my opinions re: summer are bad, that they are wrong, that I am incorrect in a very deep and fundamental part of me, that everything I thought I knew is wrong. So here's a list to shut those fuckers up:

SLEEPING IS IMPOSSIBLE

Either you are cooking slowly in a bain marie of your own sweat or you are woken at 3 AM by some inexplicable sunrise or else every single animal in the world has decided to go loudly insane in the heat and as such are growling and chirping outside your bedroom where you, sticky with your own grotesque perspiration, toss and turn on top of a comforter and underneath a sheet because down means up and up means down here in summer, the worst season of the year by far.

This photo via, and I can't believe I am typing this, 'Hotlanta Voyeur'

THE SHORTS CONUNDRUM

Hard to know truly whether I should ever wear shorts because i. I am an Englishman and as such should never do such a thing ii. My legs are absurdly white, ridiculously white, my legs are Taylor Swift's 4th of July party iii. Is it ever, really, acceptable to expose your legs and/or feet to the people you work with, the people you need to always demand from your respect? iv. The only shorts I own are actually swimming shorts, so I'd be sitting at my desk right looking for all the world like I might turn and do a dive bomb into a swimming pool any minute, and v. Shorts are surely the slippery slope toward walking down the street topless—this is where it starts, this is exactly where it begins to go wrong, this is what leads to my inevitable topless arrest next year outside the Brixton McDonald's, me white and flabby and undulating and going, "BUT ME CIVIL RIGHTS, I JUST WANTED SOME DIPPERS, THERE'S NO SIGN SAYING, 'NO SHIRT NO SERVICE,' THIS IS A NANNY STATE!." That said, if I wear jeans right now, my balls will get so hot they will explode and I will die, so.

MAGNUM RUNS

At 4 PM every day from the months of June through early September, every person on Earth has a crucial craving for a Magnum, and seeing as I now have a BMI doctors describe as being "extremely medically inadvisable," I am, sadly, powerless to resist such urges. This leads to two problems, maybe three, at a push five:

i. If you are going to the shop for a Magnum, the same rules re: tea rounds apply, i.e. you have to ask everyone around the desk in turn if they, too, would like a Magnum, and this is how you end up with a hand full of people's dirty change, someone who doesn't have anything less from a $20 bill so will "owe you a Magnum," which you both know is an agreement that will never be served, and you are going to the shops with a Post-It note with "1 X CLASSIC 2 X WHITE 1 X MINT (OR CLASSIC)" written on it, and that's what finds you in a line of six people holding every Magnum on Earth as they slowly melt and drip down your forearms;

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ii. When you get back to the office and start to eat aforementioned Magnum, you will have this conversation, verbatim:

"Ooh, what you got there?"
[You, clearly eating a Magnum] "A Magnum"
"What flavor?"
[You, clearly eating a white chocolate Magnum] "White chocolate"
"Ooh. Should've got that new one, the caramel one."

IF I WANTED YOUR OPINION ON WHAT MAGNUM TO GET, LYNN, I WOULD'VE ASKED FOR IT—

And so point iii:

iii. Point iii is that no, you should not try the new flavor Magnum, they keep fucking about with the Magnum flavors but the ranking still goes like this 1. White Chocolate Magnum 2. Almond Magnum 3. Classic Magnum 4.–100. Fucking Every Other Magnum, there is no argument here, no disambiguation, I am telling you this to save you the disappointment of the double-dipped dark chocolate/caramel nonsense I had to endure a few weeks ago, why would they manufacture a Magnum that bad—

iv. Magnums, though delicious, leave you with very sticky hands, you mucky puppy, you, you mucky pup, oh, you sticky baby;

v. The only thing to do after you've eaten a Magnum at your desk at work is to just fuck off home, because you're not getting anything done for the rest of the day now, are you? The Magnum has subtly altered the very cogs and pieces of your brain to put it now in "vacation mode," there is no getting out of this, just get a Corona and put a wedge of lime in it and drink it at your desk, mate, you're not going to do that spreadsheet now, are you, you know it and I know it, just fuck it all off.

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This is me, just nipping to the shops. Photo via Audrey

YOU'RE CONSTANTLY DRUNK

"Pint? Pints?" This is everyone you know, now, this is all they can say. "Prosecco? Cheeky prosecco?" It's so hot it is acceptable to drink rum. You're sat on a small slither of grass near work eating your Meal Deal, and you're like, "Would it actually, really, be so bad if I went and bought a single can of Heineken to have with this?" It is, but you do it anyway. And now every weekend people want you to come to the park with them to lay on a blanket and watch one of your mutual friends lazily do kick-ups alone while you all drink wine. Last night I walked home and had two cans on the walk home. I cannot remember sobriety, I cannot remember what it is like to think straight, I do not know the joy of living a well-hydrated life, I can only think through a slow hazy stupor of drunkenness, this will continue until at least September and at worst my death, help me, please Lord, I could crush a gin and tonic right now like it was nothing.

THE SUN SENDS YOU ABSOLUTELY INSANE

There is no way you've had a cogent and non-insane thought since, like, May. Don't lie. There's no way you've not done something absolutely nuts just because it's five degrees warmer than it usually is.

SUNBURN, THE CONSTANT THREAT THEREOF

This doesn't go for everyone but as president-elect of the Clapton chapter of the Pale Boys' Social Club (not to be confused with the KKK, I cannot stress this enough), I can tell you that sunburn is a problem, and the fine balance between "a hearty and healthy tan" and "your nose going so pink HR take you to a side room and ask you if you have a drinking problem" is about 45 to 50 seconds in direct sunlight, and that's it, boom, you're sun damaged for life, thanks a lot, the "sun."

This is your Instagram feed, 30 straight photos in a row, after one hot Saturday. Photo via Bruno Caimi

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YOU GOTTA DRINK WATER ALL THE GODDAMN TIME, OR YOU WILL DIE

Ugh, the act of being alive is such unending bullshit. I have had like a thousand pisses today. A million pisses. I have consumed an ocean of Evian. I am water, and I am piss. That is all I am now. I'm still thirsty. Hydration never ceases, never ends. Drink loads of water, or you will fall asleep and die. That's why summer sucks a big one: If you do not drink two liters of the most boring drink, then your heart will stop beating in its chest.

THE CONSTANT UNRELENTING PRESSURE FOR A BOOM AND BUST SOUND OF THE SUMMER

We need a sound of the summer, we need it so bad, we cannot have summer without it, each summer has a unique feel and fingerprint, no two summers are the same, so much of the DNA of a strong summer is tied up in a banging sound of the summer, and just as soon as summer ends we will tire of our 'sound of the summer' elect, but right now there isn't one, I mean maybe One Dance, at a push, or the other Drake song, the one he did with DJ Khaled, but none of them feel exactly right, and what I am saying is there is a void there that someone—anyone—could and should fill, and it's possible we'll go an entire summer without a sound, and then what? Who even are we without a sound of the summer?

THE CONSTANT WONDERING ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT YOU SHOULD JUST FUCK IT ALL OFF AND SHAVE YOUR HEAD, I MEAN IT'S HOT AND HAIR IS HOT, THIS IS SIMPLE, YOU'VE GOT THE SKULL SHAPE, RIGHT, YOU CAN DO THIS, YOU CAN TRIM IT YOURSELF AT HOME TONIGHT, IT'LL BE COOL, POWERFUL, RECLAIM THE TEMPERATURE OF YOUR HEAD, DO A DE NIRO IN "TAXI DRIVER," FUCK IT OFF, GET A GOOD SCALP TAN, YEAH

The only thing I can think about when I am not thinking about how hot my balls are is whether I should shave my head or not, and I know I shouldn't—I absolutely haven't got the head or the charisma for it, my hair is all I have, I'll just look like one of those kids at school who isn't allowed to have hair longer than an inch in case they set fire to it, those harrowed-looking kids, the kids who somehow dropped out sophomore year and nobody ever noticed, those kids, the ones who never obeyed the dress code and somehow once bought an extremely hard dog into school with them and took it to lessons and the teachers never said anything, they said nothing—and yes but anyway no I still can't stop thinking that maybe, maybe, with my fringe slicked to my forehead with sweat, Maybe, possibly, I could rock a shaved head. Could I? And the answer as always is: No I can't, and neither can you.

JULY 19, OR: NATIONAL EMERGENCY LYNX PURCHASE DAY

Most people on public transport in the morning have the good grace to smell like a fresh shower and some talc, but there's always one dude—always one, crammed on the top deck sitting between four other people, a sweaty beacon in the crowd—who smelled himself before leaving today and went, I mean, I smell like a used shell suit, but I reckon I'll be OK, gone, Oh, I'll only just get sweaty again:There is no point having a full shower,I'll just rinse my dick 'n' pits,and that person is essentially a terrorist, as far as I am concerned, an odor terrorist.

But still: Is he as bad as the wave of men who left the house today entirely ill-prepared, perspiration-wise, and had to buy an emergency can of Lynx Africa from the drugstore near work, and now the entire city has that sweet, sticky smell of it, every bus heaving with the fragrance of new deodorant sprays, they only cover the smell they do not conquer it, summer smells so bad, it smells like a PE class where somehow one million boys just frantically played dodgeball, it smells like a special kind of hell? No. No he is not.

BEING AT WORK GENERATING CONTENT IN THE FOUNDRIES AND THE MINES IS ESSENTIALLY TORTURE

I want to be outside in a paddling pool doing something frankly disgusting to a ice pop, but instead I must generate content for you squawking content birds, you hungry little chicks, you need content, always, your hunger never ends, and it is ruining every second of my life.

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