It's too hot to do anything, so I won't be writing this column this week. Besides, it's too hot for you to even read it. Sweating eyeballs aren't a pretty sight. My advice to you this scorching morning (as I wrote this) is to go lie down over the air conditioning vents or stand before an open refrigerator, the bigger the better, maybe one of those restaurant jobs.

A month in the 90s has turned my brain to a pot of Quaker Oats bubbling on the stove. Things I normally care about in midsummer just don't seem to matter. I can't be bothered.

Call it heated indifference.

The NBA and NFL are both on strike. So who needs 'em, that bunch of crybaby billionaires? Bring on the Roller Derby mamas, I say. Or what about Championship Horseshoes? Who cares about Joey Chestnut's new world record for eating 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes? Enough of America's Top Weiner-eater!

Why, it's so hot outside that Congress is sending out photos of itself in underpants. Frankly, I don't give a flying toot about Casey Anthony's shadow of a doubt, the shuttle's last flight, the final Harry Potter, the iCloud or the deepening national debt crisis.

If we're lucky, Obama and the boneheads in Congress will go on strike too, and we can just let the Roller Derby mamas run the country. Ditto Rupert's Watergate, anything more about DSK, and the 15 fools gored by the bulls at Pamplona.

I wish I cared about the dull blades vying for the Republican nomination, or Sarah's freelance celebrity status, or all those cute teen moms on reality shows, or all the bright people who have just earned MBAs this spring and have the job prospects of a vacationing Martian.

Get a fan and get in line, I say. It's gonna be a long, hot summer. Just ask any economist. This record heat makes me crazy and lazy. Yesterday, before I went to lie down over the air-conditioning vents, I called a friend in Maine who coaches ice hockey, asking him to just go stand inside the arena so I could hear something cool.

It kills my appetite for anything but ice cream. Luckily, it's national ice cream month, and we have lots of ice cream in the freezer - or so I thought till I opened the door to cool off and noticed two teenage boys had eaten it all. This is the height of teenage occupation season, when nothing that isn't properly nailed down gets consumed within minutes.

My terrace garden desperately needs weeding, but I can't be bothered. Besides, the plants have all been taken to Moore Regional Hospital for heat stroke. This morning, a colleague told me she considered walking to work in her birthday suit. "I felt like I could just bathe on the way," she said.

Speaking of birthdays, my wife had one this week, a biggie that rhymes with "nifty."

I thought of getting her something truly special - a getaway weekend to Iceland, perhaps - but this murderous heat wilted all my good intentions. I gave her a cookbook instead.

She thanked me, but I could tell she thought I was suffering from possible heat exhaustion, like those idiots in Pamplona, something that only rhymes with "cool." She ain't cookin' anything in this heat, in other words.

Watching the British Open kind of helped - they were all wearing sweaters and stocking caps in cold and rainy England. Oh, how I love England in the rain!

Speaking of rain, Wednesday night we had a huge thunderstorm, and the next morning I stepped out and it suddenly felt like a whole new world instead of the end of it. The temperature was in the low 60s - almost English sweater weather! - and there was a touch of autumn in the air. It felt like the heat wave was gone and football season was upon us. Downright giddy, I decided to do a little weeding and suddenly realized I'd sure hate to lose the NFL season.

For that matter, in reality, I feel bad for all those teen moms and unemployed MBAs and sure hope our president and Congress can sort out their differences and get the economy back on track.

You don't have to be a vacationing Martian to appreciate a summer day that doesn't reach 90, and on Friday morning when I mentioned to a colleague that I might soon be wearing my favorite tweed jacket to work if this keeps up, she burst out laughing like I was running naked with the bulls in Pamplona.

This cool weather, in other words, makes me so happy I'm thinking of writing an actual column this week after all, right after I go buy my wife a really special birthday gift. I'm thinking of sending myself to Iceland so she doesn't have to hear me complain about the heat for the rest of the summer.

Award-winning author Jim Dodson, Sunday essayist with The Pilot and editor of PineStraw magazine, can be reached at jim@thepilot.com.