Seattle. I’m sorry. Your heat is nowhere near all that. You spoiled me. Yes, I much prefer your cold days, I love your long winter nights, and live for your clouds, which never fail to carry the sun away. But when I recently visited Atlanta, I learned my lesson. That city’s summer is nothing like ours. Indeed, when my craft (operated by Delta) landed on ATL, I immediately felt another world when its doors opened: the heat, the humidity, the larger-than-life star. I was an alien whose lungs were simply stunned by the atmosphere. I could barely breathe the air, which had the consistency of melted butter. I spent a whole week on planet Atlanta, moving from one air-conditioned station to the next, always wishing I had a spacesuit during a transition. Even the mornings were brutal, and the nights offered no relief and lots of insect sounds. I changed my mind, Seattle, which will reach a high of 80 today, the same high it reached yesterday. Yes, I will always want you to be around 60 degrees or less, but now I know that even on your hottest days, you’re nowhere near the Venus that Atlanta is.
Seattle has grown to over 800,000 residents. When I moved to the 206 back in 1992, the population was around 520,000. Those were the small-fry days. The paltry days. But look at you now. You’re all grown and can call yourself a big city. Well done. And always remember, the more the merrier. One other thing: The state’s biggest cities (Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Vancouver, and Bellevue) claimed a whopping 75 percent of its population growth.
And now for that fucking awful family of crows on my street in Columbia City. Why did you, the parents, have your precious baby in a tree next to a relatively busy sidewalk? It makes no sense. You don’t want any humans near your noisy newborn, but you went ahead and built your nest around lots of humans. And this means you spend more time yelling and attacking us than you do with the one who apparently means the world to you. To make matters worse, crows very well know humans don’t eat them. We are not raccoons. We don’t care for your meat. Not one among us has ever put you in a pot or scrambled your eggs. And yet you still go apeshit when you think we’re too close to your demanding brats. Tell me why? Tell me why?…