why french people die with heat waves

So, found out that might get apartment over summer in paris. was both a gift and a curse. Everybody, except tourists, know that france in the summer is a stupid, dirty tourist oven. however, there's always paris plage, where they dump massive amounts of sand on the Seine canal walk and call it a beach. People then suntan on expensive cabans next to water where, every three days, a body comes floating up. of course if you're rich, you'll be too wasted on 6 Eu beers to really care about the terrible stench of the stinky Seine.

read an article in Liberation about some 50 year old woman saying that well, everybody complains about paris and how shitty it is, but because she lived in the country for 40 of her 50 years, she feels like she goes to Paris to breathe. I read that article and thought how simple it would have been for her to just write, hmmm...grass is greener on the other side. Found her naivete annoying, cloying, patronising, and simplistic. You can only feel like you go to paris to breathe if you're rich enough not to have a box-like apartment. Of course, it's like a breath of fresh air when you take the metro with thousands of other breathing parisians on monday morning. Of course it's like a breath of fresh air when someone pushes you on the cutely miniscule sidewalk. Of course it's like a breath of fresh air when dog's crap in front of your door. This woman is insane and I wasted a good 5 minutes of my toilet time on her rubbish. Luckily there was no toilet paper so the article came to some good use.

But seriously, wondering if weather is going to go batty again this summer in france-land...it's starting to be like every summer the temperature peaks and people die. But, it's not like it gets any hotter than it does in the tropics. And, I'm from the tropics, so I should know. I think the big difference is that, because of lack of sun and temperamental weather, in most of france, if not the specifically the north, most people freak out when the sun comes out. At first, in the beginning of May, it's like heaven because most of the year the sky is a dead muggy grey (north of france here) which spits at you day and night. So seeing the real flanders blue makes everyone drunk with sun-love. Then, they get used to frying their silly heads off on their lunch breaks, guzzling wine and shoving crusty bread all over the place. After a short while, everybody leaves like the plague on the 15th of July for the national holidays...at which point that 1.5 hour lunch break starts at 11am, with the usual rose, and ends deep in the end of the night. Problem is, nobody has told the french how dehydrating alcohol can be (there was a cyclist on the tour de france who once passed out from drinking wine when he was dehydrated...this was in the 50s), and the water is shit anyways. So, eventually things reach a head and somebody heads out in their car, at 12pm, to buy water, at which point they get a sunstroke...and, depending on age and severity, most stores being closed around lunch hour and even more so in the holiday season, water being scarce even in bottled form, this becomes a life or death situation. Hence, the tradition of the french holiday, stubborn belief in wine as water, shitty water, and a changing climactic situation, is killing french people. more people buying fans will be a start...to the bitter end...the fans all working overtime will overcharge a fragile energy grid and short everything out... luckily france has one good and relatively simple solution....make their drinking water more potable so that people can actually drink the shit that comes out of the taps.

hey man, france is fun...just try not to get killed at the airport.