Air Conditioner Quotes

It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.

Bet you can't even name one romantic movie you like," she teased. She felt smug when a few minutes went by and Oliver was still unable to name one romantic movie he could profess to enjoy. The Empire Strikes Back," Oliver finally declared, tapping his horn at a Prius that wandered over the line. The Empire Strikes Back? The Star Wars movie? That's not romantic!" Schuyler huffed, fiddling with the air conditioner controls. Au contraire, my dear, it's very romantic. The last scene, you know, when they're about to put Han in that freezing cryogenic chamber or whatever? Remember?" Schuyler mmm-hmmmed. And Leia leans over the ledge and says, 'I love you.'" That's cheesy, not romatic," Schuyler argued, although she did like that part. Let me explain. What's romantic is what Han says back. Remember what he says to her? After she says 'I love you'?" Schuyler grinned. Maybe Oliver had a point. "Han says, 'I know.'" Exactly," Oliver tapped the wheel. "He doesn't have to say anything so trite as 'I love you." Because that's already understood. And that's romantic.

Some molecules - ammonia, carbon dioxide, water - show up everywhere in the universe, whether life is present or not. But others pop up especially in the presence of life itself. Among the biomarkers in Earth's atmosphere are ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons from aerosol sprays, vapor from mineral solvents, escaped coolants from refrigerators and air conditioners, and smog from the burning of fossil fuels. No other way to read that list: sure signs of the absence of intelligence.

You got shot at and you still got me an air conditioner.

All the lights were off, and I just lay there, trying to pass the hours before I had to get up and go to work, which was impossible when the night was so loud. My neighbor’s electric air conditioner, the bass pumping from other people’s cars. They were all converging together to say one thing: You are alone. You are alone. You are alone. You are truly and really alone.

We tried so hard. We were always trying to help each other. But not because we were helpless. He needed to get things for me, just as I needed to get things for him. It gave us purpose. Sometimes I would ask him for something that I did not even want, just to let him get it for me. We spent our days trying to help each other help each other. I would get his slippers. He would make my tea. I would turn up the heat so he could turn up the air conditioner so I could turn up the heat.

No matter what a person does to cover up and conceal themselves, when we write and lose control, I can spot a person from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina a mile away even if they make no exact reference to location. Their words are lush like the land they come from, filled with nine aunties, people named Bubba. There is something extravagant and wild about what they have to say — snakes on the roof of a car, swamps, a delta, sweat, the smell of sea, buzz of an air conditioner, Coca-Cola — something fertile, with a hidden danger or shame, thick like the humidity, unspoken yet ever-present. Often when a southerner reads, the members of the class look at each other, and you can hear them thinking, gee, I can't write like that. The power and force of the land is heard in the piece. These southerners know the names of what shrubs hang over what creek, what dogwood flowers bloom what color, what kind of soil is under their feet. I tease the class, "Pay no mind. It's the southern writing gene. The rest of us have to toil away.

Despair busies one, and my weekend was spoken for. I was going to lie down on the floor of my apartment in the draft of the air conditioner and spend two days and nights traveling a circuit of regret, self-pity, and jealousy.

It's about 65 degrees, so it feels like when the air conditioner is up on high. I can bear it, so I'm going for a walk. Today. Right now. In the sunshine. Because I can. Because I want to. Because I'm not going to just sit around and wait for stuff to happen anymore. I'm still me, and I have a life. It's a weird life, but it's still mine. It's still mine.

Warmly, because my air conditioner is broken, Luigi L. Lemoncello

To me, hearing that those girls gave my brother Eric a blow job sounded very nice. History shows that all boys consider blow job to be a nice-sounding set of words. I thought a blow job was putting your face in front of an air conditioner, which is something all nine-year-old boys love to do, even though Eric did not look like he had been cooled off very much.

It’s clear where the world is going. We’re entering a world where every thermostat, every electrical heater, every air conditioner, every power plant, every medical device, every hospital, every traffic light, every automobile will be connected to the Internet. Think about what it will mean for the world when those devices are the subject of attack.” Then he made his pitch. “The world needs a new, digital Geneva Convention.

I've always believed that to some extent you get to decide for yourself what your life will be like. You can either look at the world and say "Oh, isn't it all so tragic, so grim, so awful." Or you can look at the world and decide that it's mostly funny. If you step back far enough from the details, everything gets funny. You say war is tragic. I say, isn't it crazy the way people will fight over nothing? People fight wars to control crappy little patches of empty desert, for crying out loud. It's like fighting over an empty soda can. It's not so much tragic as it is ridiculous. Asinine! Stupid! You say, isn't it terrible about global warming? And I say, no, it's funny. We're going to bring on global warming because we ran too many leaky air conditioners? We used too much spray deodorant, so now we'll be doomed to sweat forever? That's not sad. That's irony.

I'm not backing down until you talk to me." "What?" I asked, cupping my hand to my ear. "I can't hear you over the flapping sound of my loose vagina." The corner of his mouth lifted, and he almost laughed. "Is that what that noise is?" he asked. "I thought it was the air conditioner.

Fifteen minutes, a myriad of cups, kleenexes and freshly-vacuumed floor mats and seat cushions later, Kay had the interior of the limousine looking ship-shape. Inching backward out of the car on her knees, she caught a glimpse of one last bit of trash she’d missed hiding under the driver’s seat. Lowering her chest to the floor, she stretched her arm under the seat as far as it would go. She grabbed the item and pulled it out and raised herself up from her crouched position. She took one look at the used condom swinging from her fingers, screamed and flung it across the top of the front seat, where it stuck to the air conditioner vents on the dash. She knelt there staring at the thin latex mess, a million scenarios racing through her mind.

Don't sell the warmer for an air conditioner just because its summer, for in winter, you will have to do the reverse.

Of course it might have been some other city, had circumstances been different and the time been different and had I been different, might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco, but because I am talking about myself I am talking here about New York. That first night I opened my window on the bus into town and watched for the skyline, but all I could see were the wastes of Queens and big signs that said MIDTOWN TUNNEL THIS LANE and then a flood of summer rain (even that seemed remarkable and exotic, for I had come out of the West where there was no summer rain), and for the next three days I sat wrapped in blankets in a hotel room air-conditioned to 35 degrees and tried to get over a bad cold and a high fever. It did not occur to me to call a doctor, because I knew none, and although it did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come—was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was. All I could do during those three days was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring. I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.

There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast. "The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways. "Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller. "I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state. "You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.

At the moment, the discussion concerned global warming. “The reason for global warming,” one of them said as Dortmunder leaned his front against the bar somewhere down to the right of them, “is air conditioners.

Air struggles up my throat and past my lips as Mom talks with our new landlady. Even with the air conditioner working at full blast, the air is thin, dry, and empty. I imagine this is how it feels for someone with asthma, this constant fight for breath. As if you can't ever fill your lungs with enough air. I glare at Mom. Of all the places in the world to relocate, she had to choose a desert. I'm certain she's a sadist.

It's way too long and I gave up on it. Abandoning forever an innocent child to a hostile and unforgiving land. Sometimes I still hear him crying late at night. He sounds exactly like a malfunctioning air conditioner.

Lately, in this city I love, this neighborhood I love, all I seem to notice are the intrusions. Hot Air. Reeking garbage. Lunatic neighbors...I am inventing filters. Air filters. Stinking garbage filters. Lunatic-neighbor filters... Sometimes I imagine plugging a big air conditioner to the front of my head so I can block the rest of the world out. That's not right.

The arctic atmosphere, necessary for the maintenance of broadcast equipment, is air-conditioner sterile, with occasional stray smells of brewed coffee and toner for photocopying machines.

It did not occur to me to call a doctor, because I knew none, and although it did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come—was anyone ever so young?

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so.

I dream of a small room and a man with one eye. Blood seeps like scarlet tears from his empty socket. I turn away and the room becomes a hallway that becomes a stairway that becomes a roof. The wind tugs at my body; the sky tries to wrap me in stars. Below me, a gazebo glows with red light. A line of black cars crawls like cockroaches through the streets. An air conditioner exhaust fan chitters angrily near the roof’s edge, one of its blades bent just enough to scrape against the side of the casing. For a second I let the wind push me close enough to the fan’s razor- sharp blades that a lock of my hair gets snipped and sent out into the night. As it twists and flutters toward the gazebo, I think about just letting go, letting the breeze carry my body into the whirling blades, the wind scattering pieces of me throughout the city. Blood and flesh seeping into the cracked pavement. Flowers blooming wherever I land.

I subscribe to Consumer Reports and as a consequence I own a first-class television set, an all but silent air conditioner and a very long lasting deodorant. My armpits never stink.

Growing up in a small town in India, she studied for exams by candlelight and endured hot days with no fan or air conditioner because the power would shut off for hours with no warning.

unsolicited advice to adolescent girls with crooked teeth and pink hair When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys call asking your cup size, say A, hang up. When he says you gave him blue balls, say you’re welcome. When a girl with thick black curls who smells like bubble gum stops you in a stairwell to ask if you’re a boy, explain that you keep your hair short so she won’t have anything to grab when you head-butt her. Then head-butt her. When a guidance counselor teases you for handed-down jeans, do not turn red. When you have sex for the second time and there is no condom, do not convince yourself that screwing between layers of underwear will soak up the semen. When your geometry teacher posts a banner reading: “Learn math or go home and learn how to be a Momma,” do not take your first feminist stand by leaving the classroom. When the boy you have a crush on is sent to detention, go home. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boy with the blue mohawk swallows your heart and opens his wrists, hide the knives, bleach the bathtub, pour out the vodka. Every time. When the skinhead girls jump you in a bathroom stall, swing, curse, kick, do not turn red. When a boy you think you love delivers the first black eye, use a screw driver, a beer bottle, your two good hands. When your father locks the door, break the window. When a college professor writes you poetry and whispers about your tight little ass, do not take it as a compliment, do not wait, call the Dean, call his wife. When a boy with good manners and a thirst for Budweiser proposes, say no. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys tell you how good you smell, do not doubt them, do not turn red. When your brother tells you he is gay, pretend you already know. When the girl on the subway curses you because your tee shirt reads: “I fucked your boyfriend,” assure her that it is not true. When your dog pees the rug, kiss her, apologize for being late. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Jersey City, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Harlem, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because your air conditioner is broken, leave him. When he refuses to keep a toothbrush at your apartment, leave him. When you find the toothbrush you keep at his apartment hidden in the closet, leave him. Do not regret this. Do not turn red. When your mother hits you, do not strike back.

Dr. Jeffrey Korchak: [reading aloud] Dear attractive woman number 2, only once in my life have I responded to a person the way I've responded to you, but I've forgotten when it was or even if it was in fact me that responded. I may not know much, but I know that the wind sings your name endlessly, although with a slight lisp that makes it difficult to understand if I'm standing near an air conditioner. I know that your hair sits atop your head as though it could sit nowhere else. I know that your figure would make a sculptor cast aside his tools, injuring his assistant who was looking out the window instead of paying attention. I know that your lips are as full as that sexy french model's that I desperately want to fuck. I know that if for an instant I could have you lie next to me, or on top of me, or sit on me, or stand over me and shake, then I would be the happiest man in my pants. I know all of this, and yet you do not know me. Change your life; accept my love. Or, at least let me pay you to accept it.

On one notable occasion there was a group that went semicultish whose rallying cry was “Rationality! Reason! Objective reality!” (More on this later.) Labeling the Great Idea “rationality” won’t protect you any more than putting up a sign over your house that says “Cold!” You still have to run the air conditioner—expend the required energy per unit time to reverse the natural slide into cultishness. Worshipping rationality won’t make you sane any more than worshipping gravity enables you to fly. You can’t talk to thermodynamics and you can’t pray to probability theory. You can use it, but not join it as an in-group.

I wish my car's radio volume dial also operated my air conditioner, so the louder I crank up a hot song, the cooler it would be. Oh, and more music needs to be made about ducks, because that would be even cooler.

We'll then," Enjd said. "What's the problem?" "This," Mindy said. She opened her hand and held up a tiny green plastic toy solider thrusting a bayonet. "I don't understand," Enid said. "This morning, when I opened my door to get the newspaper, I found a whole troop of them arranged on the mat." "And you think Paul Rice did it," Enid said skeptically. "I don't think he did it. I know he did it," Mindy said. "He told me if I didn't approve his air conditioners, it was war...

When spies aren't in sewer tunnels, they're usually crawling through air ducts. I'm not sure exactly why this is. It makes you kind of wonder: Are spies just frustrated maintenance men? Is that what spies really want to be doing? Plumbing? Air conditioner repair? I fear the day that they follow their dream, lay down their laser-gun cigarette lighters, and pick up wrenches. Our country will be in great peril, though with fewer toilets backing up and more of our houses at a uniform sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

Kit [Carson Kitteridge] watched me for a few moments before saying, "That was some impressive killing you did. Naked too." "I hope I didn't embarrass Office Palmer." "She said that after all she heard about you she thought your johnson would be bigger." "Tell her that the air conditioner was on.

You Americans did not create that oil you used for your cars, your air conditioners, your lawn mowers, or for the plastic films you wrapped toys and pens and vegetables in. The oil was made by the world itself, when great ferns covered Texas and the Persian Gulf. It took millions of years to make it. You and the Arabs threw it away in a century.

I watched them from my window. They came with bulldozers and dug up the graves, one after the other. They burnt the corpses, and now everyone is afraid to touch them.” Then he said, “But, thanks be to God, my son is here.” “He’s safe?” I asked. “Yes. He’s in his room. The air conditioner has been on the whole time.” Then after a pause he added, “But it’s been three days now. I am doing my best but he’s beginning to smell. I must find a way to bury him soon.

Food processors, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, and clothes-washing machines have substancially lessened the physical activity required to cook and clean. Air conditioners and central heating have decreased how much energy our bodies spend to maintain a stable body temperature. Countless other devices, such as electric can openers, remote controls, electric razors and suitcases on wheels, have reduced, calorie by calorie, the amount of energy we expend to exist.

The bar, though, was cool and dry—not just air-conditioner cool, but cool like they were piping in an evening from late autumn. The sun hadn’t set, but inside, the dark wood paneling managed to evoke 10 P.M. In a good bar, it is always 10 P.M.

Hello, you listenin' to me? I got the egg timer goin' and you got three minutes to tell me how can I stop these goddam pigeons, excuse the language, miss, how I can stop these pigeons from making love on the outside part of my air conditioner. They're driving me crazy with the coo coo all day and they shit all over the window. You can't tell me that now? You have to look it up? Whaddaya have to look up? Pigeons fornicating on my air conditioner and you have to look it up. Sorry, egg timer ran out and that's the three minutes. Good-bye.

All this fantastic effort—giant machines, road networks, strip mines, conveyor belt, pipelines, slurry lines, loading towers, railway and electric train, hundred-million-dollar coal-burning power plant; ten thousand miles of high-tension towers and high-voltage power lines; the devastation of the landscape, the destruction of Indian homes and Indian grazing lands, Indian shrines and Indian burial grounds; the poisoning of the last big clean-air reservoir in the forty-eight contiguous United States, the exhaustion of precious water supplies—all that ball-breaking labor and all that backbreaking expense and all that heartbreaking insult to land and sky and human heart, for what? All that for what? Why, to light the lamps of Phoenix suburbs not yet built, to run the air conditioners of San Diego and Los Angeles, to illuminate shopping-center parking lots at two in the morning, to power aluminum plants, magnesium plants, vinyl-chloride factories and copper smelters, to charge the neon tubing that makes the meaning (all the meaning there is) of Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Tucson, Salt Lake City, the amalgamated metropoli of southern California, to keep alive that phosphorescent putrefying glory (all the glory there is left) called Down Town, Night Time, Wonderville, U.S.A. They

He had spent forty-eight hours more or less awake and restless and then, on the third day, he had bought a side-scan sonar device, two window air-conditioners, a leather sofa and a pool table. "Now do you feel better?" Adam had asked drily. Gansey had replied, "I have no idea what you're talking about." "Hey, man," Ronan said, "I like the pool table." The entire situation made Blue apoplectic. "There are children starving in the streets of Chicago," she said, her hair bristling with indignation. "Three species go extinct every hour because there's no funding to protect them. You are still wearing those incredibly stupid boat shoes, and of all the things that you have bought, you still haven't replaced them!" Gansey, bewildered, observed his feet. The movement of his toes was barely visible through the tops of his boat shoes. Really, in light of recent events, these shoes were the only things that were right in the world. "I like these shoes." "Sometimes I hate you," Blue said.

You say you know these streets pretty well? The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air-conditioner 12 stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street after you got the keys to your first apartment. It saw all that. Remembers too. Consider what all your old apartments would say if they got together to swap stories. They could piece together the starts and finishes of your relationships, complain about your wardrobe and musical tastes, gossip about who you are after midnight. 7J says, ''So that's what happened to Lucy; I knew it would never work out.'' You picked up yoga, you put down yoga, you tried various cures. You tried on selves and got rid of them, and this makes your old rooms wistful: why must things change? 3R says: ''Saxophone, you say? I knew him when he played guitar.'' Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers of your reinventions.

Gentlemen, a pleasure talking to you. Hope I’ve been of some help. It’s coming upon closing time, and I don’t stay around here one minute more than I need to.” We walked to the van. It was no longer in the shade, and hot enough inside to melt belt buckles. We talked it over and decided that the motel at Robstown had been comfortable enough and only about sixty miles away, so we decided to call it a day, but halfway there we came upon a motel in Alice that looked just about as good, and they had plenty of room, so we took a pair of singles out in the back wing of the place. The shower was a rusty trickle. The window air conditioners made a thumping roaring rattling sound, and the meat across the street was fried, but otherwise it was adequate. Good

It’s clear where the world is going. We’re entering a world where every thermostat, every electrical heater, every air conditioner, every power plant, every medical device, every hospital, every traffic light, every automobile will be connected to the Internet. Think about what it will mean for the world when those devices are the subject of attack.” Then he made his pitch. “The world needs a new, digital Geneva Convention. It needs new rules of the road,” Smith said, intoning the words slowly for emphasis. “What we need is an approach that governments will adopt that says they will not attack civilians in times of peace, they will not attack hospitals, they will not attack the electrical grid, they will not attack the political processes of other countries.

Why are you wailing away? What is the matter with you?” “I was playing and—“ and her lip quivered as she spoke, “—and it was cloudy, and then—“ a sniff, “—and then, as I was playing, the sun came out.” I gave her a flat look. “You’re crying because the sun came out?” “Yes,” she moped, wiping the tears from her eyes, “the sun came out, and now—“ she heaved, “—and now, it’s hot! I don’t like it when it’s hot. Being hot is dumb!” I immediately absolved her of all previous sins. I slumped over the sill and gave her as much sympathy as my now warm face allowed. “Yes, child, being hot is very dumb indeed. Very well, you have a reason for crying. But then why are you outside?” “Because it was too hot inside and mommy won’t let me have ice cream.” “Well, there is your problem. You must get an air conditioner and a new mother.

The most interesting answer is not just that we can’t stop tornadoes but that we shouldn’t. This was the answer I got from Greg Carbin, one of the wind geniuses at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman. “Why can’t we stop tornadoes?” I asked. “Well, what is the purpose of a tornado?” he responded. It had never occurred to me that a storm had anything as grand as a purpose. Consider a hurricane, Carbin said. It acts as a kind of air conditioner for the planet, pushing excess heat from the equator off toward the poles. Similarly, he said, a tornado releases pent-up instability. “In the process of that turning,” Carbin told me, “there’s something that the atmosphere is releasing, or relaxing. So if you could eliminate tornadoes, what does that mean? How does the atmosphere react to the fact that you’ve now suppressed this natural phenomenon? It’s going to manifest itself in some other way.

To escape the throngs, we decided to see the new Neil Degrasse Tyson planetarium show, Dark Universe. It costs more than two movie tickets and is less than thirty minutes long, but still I want to go back and see it again, preferably as soon as possible. It was more visually stunning than any Hollywood special effect I’d ever seen, making our smallness as individuals both staggering and - strangely - rather comforting. Only five percent of the universe consists of ordinary matter, Neil tells us. That includes all matter - you, and me, and the body of Michael Brown, and Mork’s rainbow suspenders, and the letters I wrote all summer, and the air conditioner I put out on the curb on Christmas Day because I was tired of looking at it and being reminded of the person who had installed it, and my sad dying computer that sounds like a swarm of bees when it gets too hot, and the fields of Point Reyes, and this year’s blossoms which are dust now, and the drafts of my book, and Israeli tanks, and the untaxed cigarettes that Eric Garner sold, and my father’s ill-fitting leg brace that did not accomplish what he’d hoped for in terms of restoring mobility, and the Denver airport, and haunting sperm whales that sleep vertically, and the water they sleep in, and Mars and Jupiter and all of the stars we see and all of the ones we don’t. That’s all regular matter, just five percent. A quarter is “dark matter,” which is invisible and detectable only by gravitational pull, and a whopping 70 percent of the universe is made up of “dark energy,” described as a cosmic antigravity, as yet totally unknowable. It’s basically all mystery out there - all of it, with just this one sliver of knowable, livable, finite light and life. And did I mention the effects were really cool? After seeing something like that it’s hard to stay mad at anyone, even yourself.

People with hearing loss are hard to live with. For one thing, they’re always telling you how to talk to them. Here are some tips. • Look at them when you speak—almost all hearing-impaired people read lips. Don’t lean into their ear when you talk—they need to see your lips. • Speak in a normal voice and articulate as clearly as possible. Shouting won’t help. Sylvia, the character in Nina Raine’s play Tribes who is going deaf, describes the efforts of the well-intentioned but badly informed: “People yelling in your ear however much you explain, so you literally have to grab their face and stick it in front of you.” • If the hearing-impaired person says “What?” or “Sorry?” don’t simply repeat what you’ve just said. Rephrase it. • If they don’t hear what you’ve said after you’ve repeated it two or three times, don’t say, “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.” To the person who can’t hear it, everything matters. • If you’re in a room with a bright window or bright lights, allow the hearing-impaired person to sit with their back to the light (for lipreading). • Most hearing-impaired people will have a very hard time distinguishing speech over a noisy air conditioner, a humming fish tank, a fan, or anything that whirs or murmurs or rumbles. Don’t try to talk to them when the TV is on, and turn off the background music when they come to visit. • Don’t talk to a hearing-impaired person unless you have their full attention. A hearing-impaired person can’t cook and hear at the same time, no matter how collegial it may seem to join her in the kitchen. • If you’re part of a small group, speak one at a time. At a dinner party or book group, where there may be eight or ten people present, try to have one general conversation, instead of several overlapping small ones. • If you’re at an event—a performance or a church service or a big meeting—give the hearing-impaired person a few moments after the event is over to readjust their hearing—either mentally or manually (changing the program on a hearing aid, for instance). • Never lean into a hearing-impaired person’s ear and whisper in the middle of a performance. They can’t hear you!

The reason [James Clerk] Maxwell's Demon cannot exist is that it does take resources to perform an act of discrimination. We imagine computation is free, but it never is. The very act of choosing which particle is cold or hot itself becomes an energy drain and a source of waste heat. The principle is also known as "no free lunch." We do our best to implement Maxwell's Demon whenever we manipulate reality with our technologies, but we can never do so perfectly; we certainly can't get ahead of the game, which is known as entropy. All the air conditioners in a city emit heat that makes the city hotter overall. While you can implement what seems to be a Maxwell's Demon if you don't look too far or too closely, in the big picture you always lose more than you gain. Every bit in a computer is a wannabe Maxwell's Demon, separating the state of "one" from the state of "zero" for a while, at a cost. A computer on a network can also act like a wannabe demon if it tries to sort data from networked people into one or the other side of some imaginary door, while pretending there is no cost or risk involved.

In our times, the indirectness and “invisibility” of the planetary damage we cause poses a major challenge. Even when we are very aware of our role in the problem, we don’t see the effect of our actions on a daily basis. The earth is so big and complex. Turning on a car engine, a light switch, or an air-conditioner doesn’t suddenly raise the outside temperature or trigger an extreme storm. But we are essentially drilling holes without fully grasping the consequences of our action. If we did fully grasp them, could we look our children in the eye and admit to them that our lifestyle will jeopardize their future?

The traditional hospital practice of excluding parents ignored the importance of attachment relationships as regulators of the child’s emotions, behaviour and physiology. The child’s biological status would be vastly different under the circumstances of parental presence or absence. Her neurochemical output, the electrical activity in her brain’s emotional centres, her heart rate, blood pressure and the serum levels of the various hormones related to stress would all vary significantly. Life is possible only within certain well-defined limits, internal or external. We can no more survive, say, high sugar levels in our bloodstream than we can withstand high levels of radiation emanating from a nuclear explosion. The role of self-regulation, whether emotional or physical, may be likened to that of a thermostat ensuring that the temperature in a home remains constant despite the extremes of weather conditions outside. When the environment becomes too cold, the heating system is switched on. If the air becomes overheated, the air conditioner begins to work. In the animal kingdom, self-regulation is illustrated by the capacity of the warm-blooded creature to exist in a broad range of environments. It can survive more extreme variations of hot and cold without either chilling or overheating than can a coldblooded species. The latter is restricted to a much narrower range of habitats because it does not have the capacity to self-regulate the internal environment. Children and infant animals have virtually no capacity for biological self-regulation; their internal biological states—heart rates, hormone levels, nervous system activity — depend completely on their relationships with caregiving grown-ups. Emotions such as love, fear or anger serve the needs of protecting the self while maintaining essential relationships with parents and other caregivers. Psychological stress is whatever threatens the young creature’s perception of a safe relationship with the adults, because any disruption in the relationship will cause turbulence in the internal milieu. Emotional and social relationships remain important biological influences beyond childhood. “Independent self-regulation may not exist even in adulthood,” Dr. Myron Hofer, then of the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, wrote in 1984. “Social interactions may continue to play an important role in the everyday regulation of internal biologic systems throughout life.” Our biological response to environmental challenge is profoundly influenced by the context and by the set of relationships that connect us with other human beings. As one prominent researcher has expressed it most aptly, “Adaptation does not occur wholly within the individual.” Human beings as a species did not evolve as solitary creatures but as social animals whose survival was contingent on powerful emotional connections with family and tribe. Social and emotional connections are an integral part of our neurological and chemical makeup. We all know this from the daily experience of dramatic physiological shifts in our bodies as we interact with others. “You’ve burnt the toast again,” evokes markedly different bodily responses from us, depending on whether it is shouted in anger or said with a smile. When one considers our evolutionary history and the scientific evidence at hand, it is absurd even to imagine that health and disease could ever be understood in isolation from our psychoemotional networks. “The basic premise is that, like other social animals, human physiologic homeostasis and ultimate health status are influenced not only by the physical environment but also by the social environment.” From such a biopsychosocial perspective, individual biology, psychological functioning and interpersonal and social relationships work together, each influencing the other.

The Lowly Thermostat, Now Minter of Megawatts How Nest is turning its consumer hit into a service for utilities. Peter Fairley | 945 words • Google’s $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs in January put the Internet of things on the map. Everyone had vaguely understood that connecting everyday objects to the Internet could be a big deal. Here was an eye-popping price tag to prove it. Nest, founded by former Apple engineers in 2010, had managed to turn the humble thermostat into a slick, Internet-connected gadget. By this year, Nest was selling 100,000 of them a month, according to an estimate by Morgan Stanley. At $249 a pop, that’s a nice business. But more interesting is what Nest has been up to since last May in Texas, where an Austin utility is paying Nest to remotely turn down people’s air conditioners in order to conserve power on hot summer days—just when electricity is most expensive. For utilities, this kind of “demand response” has long been seen as a killer app for a smart electrical grid, because if electricity use can be lowered just enough at peak times, utilities can avoid firing up costly (and dirty) backup plants. Demand response is a neat trick. The Nest thermostat manages it by combining two things that are typically separate—price information and control over demand. It’s consumers who control the air conditioners, electric heaters, and furnaces that dominate a home’s energy diet. But the actual cost of energy can vary widely, in ways that consumers only dimly appreciate and can’t influence. While utilities frequently carry out demand

easy. Unable to slow my mind. The room temperature was a pleasant seventy degrees, yet beads of sweat dripped down my neck onto the hard pillow. There was no noise from other motel rooms. No wild teenage party down the walkway. No loud snores from a traveling salesman next door. Just the unsteady rattle of an old air conditioner in the ceiling, the squeak

Some landlords neglected to screen tenants for the same reason payday lenders offered unsecured, high-interest loans to families with unpaid debt or lousy credit; for the same reason that the subprime industry gave mortgages to people who could not afford them; for the same reason Rent-A-Center allowed you to take home a new Hisense air conditioner or Klaussner “Lazarus” reclining sofa without running a credit check. There was a business model at the bottom of every market.

As Matt began to turn the pages, he found himself distracted. His eyes began drifting around the room, finally coming to rest on the silent air conditioner that sat in one of his windows. He walked over to the air conditioner and turned it on full blast. Its soft hum was music to his ears. And what about music? Matt grinned and placed a tape in his tape deck and turned up the volume. Everything sounded and felt so good. Suddenly he remembered his reading lamp. He reached over to the wall and flipped the lamp’s switch. When the light came on, Matt whooped with joy. He felt a thrill of excitement as he turned on his clock radio. He even set the alarm to go off. “And TV!” Matt cried, racing over to his television set. “I’m going to watch TV!” By the time Mrs. Carlton appeared in the doorway, Matt was sitting on his bed reading, after turning on every electrical appliance in his room. “What on earth is going on in here?” his mother called over the din. Matt looked up from his book and grinned. “I was just checking to make sure that everything still works,” he told her. Mrs. Carlton shook her head. “Come and get yourself some breakfast,” she told Matt. “And for heaven’s sake take a bath and change your clothes.” As she walked away Matt could hear her mumble under her breath, “The way that boy looks after a simple backyard camping trip. You’d think he was just through a war!

gnawed at the wicker bars of its cage and the little air conditioner

I’ve told Miss Teeta a thousand times, it’s no good to keep fixing this ole piece of junk. Everything’s gotta die sometime.” The young man seemed to be talking more to himself than to her. As Miranda watched, he wrestled the air conditioner off the sill and set it carefully on the floor. The prospect of spending even one more minute in this heat was unthinkable. “You mean you can’t fix it?” “I can fix anything, cher.” “That’s not my name,” she corrected him. And aren’t you just pretty impressed with yourself, Mr. Repair Guy. For a split second he looked almost amused, but then his features went unreadable once more. While he knelt down to resume his work, she gave him another curious appraisal. She hadn’t noticed those scars on his arms before--faint impressions, some straight, some jagged, some strangely crisscrossed. She wondered briefly if he’d been in an accident when he was younger. Her eyes moved over the rest of his body. He was busy unscrewing the back off the air conditioner, his movements quick and fluid. She saw him glance at her, and she quickly looked away.

All your friends are welcome here, darlin’,” Aunt Teeta assured her niece. “It’ll be good to have young people in the house. It needs some laughter and enthusiasm and fresh ideas.” “You’ll love Ashley, then,” Miranda told her. “I wish I had her enthusiasm.” “I wish you had Etienne Boucher. But that Gage is awful cute, too.” Winking, Aunt Teeta picked up her mug of mint tea and started for the stairs. “I’m off to bed, dear ones. Sleep tight.” Mom gave Miranda a teasing look. “What’s all this about Etienne Boucher? Teeta seems awfully determined to get you two together.” “He’s just a guy at school. In my study group. It’s nothing.” Then, as Mom lifted an eyebrow, Miranda added, “He’s the guy who fixed our air conditioner.” “I like him already. Who’s Gage?” “His cousin. And I’m not getting together with anyone.” “You don’t have to convince me, honey.

Fundamental Electronics is a leading Kolkata based retail chain of stores for Consumer Electronics and Home Appliances. We also have Samsung brand stores by the name Samsung Smart Plaza offer the entire gamut of cutting edge Samsung products including Mobiles,LED TVs,Refrigerators,Air conditioners, etc. Our other format is Multi Brand retail by the brand Fundamental. Here we offer the entire range of consumer electronics of all brands.

Here we are, said Berthold, mopping his forehead with a Kleenex. A section of the paper remained trapped in the worry lines of his forehead, and fluttered there like a windsock in the air-conditioner blast.

That can help with the heat, of course, but air conditioners and fans already account for fully 10 percent of global electricity consumption

Just because there are no windows or doors doesn't mean there are no exits. The thing to look for is an air conditioner unit, that's where the wall is weakest. Also people watch doors, they don't watch air conditioners.

At last count, eight-hundred and fifty-nine travelers had stepped off Trans-Continental Airlines at Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix, Arizona, at high noon in Mid-August without sunglasses. No one has ever done it twice. The desert sun, at high noon in Mid-August, rains down a torrent of silver needles. The sky burns white. The mountains that ring the city - Maricopas, White Tanks, Superstitions - flatten into dusty, two-dimensional mounds. Desert plants turn pale. Crawling, slithering, running creatures surrender to the heat and hide. The air shimmers on the horizon and flows in sluggish currents along the airport tarmac. Tires go soft. The odor of melting tar lies heavy along the ground. Light explodes in tinsel stars from moving glass and chrome. Phoenicians huddle indoors around their air conditioners and wait for the time of long shadows. Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix, Arizona, at high noon in mid-August is a white-hot Hell.

Some landlords neglected to screen tenants for the same reason payday lenders offered unsecured, high-interest loans to families with unpaid debt or lousy credit; for the same reason that the subprime industry gave mortgages to people who could not afford them; for the same reason Rent-A-Center allowed you to take home a new Hisense air conditioner or Klaussner “Lazarus” reclining sofa without running a credit check. There was a business model at the bottom of every market.11

Taylor said a prayer for the man, and apologized out loud. Knowing there was nothing left to do, she turned to leave. As she walked to the door, she spied a file folder, sitting apart from Stella’s cleaning supplies. “Stella, is this yours?” Stella was on the landing and shouted back to her. “Is what mine?” “The manila folder. Is that yours?” “Naw, I found it when I cleaned out the air intake for the air conditioner. There was some blood on the screen and it was inside when I took it off.” She appeared in the doorway. “You wanna take a look? I haven’t gotten to it yet.” Taylor

My hands are wet from sweat. The air conditioner is broken again and it’s too hot to go outside. I run my sweaty palm along the leather arm of the couch, leaving a streak of sweat behind the path of my hand. I wonder where sweat comes from? I wonder where leather comes from? My mother told me it’s made from cows, but I know she’s a liar, so I don’t believe her. How could leather be made out of cows? I’ve touched a cow before and they’re sort of fuzzy. They don’t look like leather to me. Leather looks more like it’s made from dinosaurs than cows. I bet leather really is made out of dinosaurs. I don’t know why my mother always lies to me. She lies to Daddy, too. I know she lies to him, because she gets in trouble for it a lot. Daddy always tells me not to trust whores. I don’t know what a whore is, but I know it’s something my Daddy hates. Sometimes when he gets mad at my mom, he calls her a whore. Maybe a whore is another word for liar and that’s why he hates them so much. I wish my mother wasn’t a whore. I wish she would stop lying, so she wouldn’t get in trouble so much. I don’t like watching her get in trouble. Daddy says it’s good for me, though. He says if I want to grow up and be a man, I need to see what a woman looks like when she cries. Daddy says a woman’s tears make men weak, and the more I see their tears when I’m younger, the less I’ll believe their lies when I’m older. Sometimes when he punishes my mother for being a whore, he makes me watch her cry so that I’ll grow up knowing that all the whores cry and it shouldn’t bother me. “Don’t trust anyone, Asa,” he always tells me. “Especially the whores.

His head throbbed beyond mere headache. This went deeper. For a brief moment, as the tiny voices chattered, unintelligible—what were they saying?—Mad Mike felt a familiar panic surge within him. And though he told himself he'd never do it, he understood a .45 round as a solution—a messenger of peace, an exit. And that knowledge, that intimacy, terrified him. He felt strangely tired and closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool window. He wanted to shed his uniform, like a snake's skin, and to sleep for a very long time. A dim room. Clean sheets. The hum of an air conditioner. The touch of an understanding woman. Not even sexual—a mother maybe. And the realization all of that was so far away. He opened his eyes. It was all still here.

If you really want me to give up my car or my air conditioner, you’d better prove to me first that the earth would otherwise be uninhabitable, Dr. Lave says. Me is you, I presume, whereas you refers to them. You as in me—that is, me, me, me—certainly strike a hard bargain. Uninhabitable the world has to get before you rein in your requirements

NEVER file an insurance claim for a stolen air conditioner, stolen tools, stolen supplies, stolen carpet, stolen pipes, stolen furnaces, vandalism, or stolen anything. Pay for this out of your pocket. You do not want to jeopardize your insurance record from these puny claims.

I miss her most when it’s quiet. The air conditioner kicks in and a low rumble fills the media lab with background music that I hate, and there it is. Loneliness.

Humanism has to speak in the terms of extant human beings. The terms of today’s human beings are air conditioners and suburbs and water impoundments overlaying whole country-sides, and the hell with nature except maybe in a cross-sectional park here and there. In our time quietness and sun and leaves and bird song and all the multitudinous lore of the natural world have to come second or third, because whether we wanted to be born there or not, we were all born into the prickly machine-humming place that man has hung for himself above that natural world.

Trees are superheroes of the climate fight. They inhale CO2 and exhale oxygen, filtering out air pollution with each breath. They suck up water from the ground and sweat it out through their leaves, which cools the air (think of them as mini air conditioners). And of course, they provide shade to all creatures great and small, as well as to the soil around them, which helps to reduce water loss through evaporation. As anyone who has taken a walk through a city park knows, they also offer mental health benefits to stressed-out urbanites. Trees are our deep-time evolutionary companions, fellow living things that we have spent millions of years leaning against, climbing, and worshipping.

Dryer Vent Cleaning Mckinney TX 972-850-6769 You won't be sorry you made this choice. Cleaning the dryer vent is a good idea, especially for older models, to get rid of lint. Our dryer lint cleaning service is designed with you in mind and will improve your machine's speed and effectiveness. We can make it possible for you to use your heater or air conditioner.

The cop checked one more time that he was carrying his police ID, even though he sincerely doubted it would be of much use here, and plunged into the lion’s den. He was immediately assailed by a heady odor of hashish, mixed with the smells of mint and mu‘assel from the hookahs. The light was muted; the powerful air conditioner rumbled. The thick wooden tables, old Vienna-style lamps, bronze art objects hanging on the wall, and large steins of beer made the place look like an English pub. A waitress, Caucasian and scantily clad, threaded between the shapes, her tray loaded with glasses brimful of alcohol. Sharko had expected to find faces eaten away by syphilis, drugs, or drink. Instead, he was amazed at how attractive the clientele looked, mostly young and flamboyantly dressed.

We had several Startenders who could not only sell ice to Eskimos, but also convince them to pick up snowmaking machines and air-conditioners, not to mention bathing suits and outdoor swimming pools.

Every summer, we used to clean and prepare the stoch for the overnight sleep accommodations. I imagined the atmosphere on those roofs - quiet, without noise or the sound of our home appliances. No buzzing fans, no refrigerator’s groans, and no air conditioner rattling. People enjoyed their sleep. I thought it was fun, at least on those nights when I used to sleep at my grandmother's in the transit camp. The overnight stays under the open sky were fascinating. Even there on the roof they must have watched the stars and their movements up in Heaven. I could not hide my smile when I remembered the time I was on my way to see my mother, and  I noticed a woman going up to sunbathe on the roof with only a tiny bikini on her body. It was in the summer months, in one of the adjacent streets. I realized that my mother was right. There were many uses for flat roofs. I remembered, of course, the biblical story of David and Bathsheba. Yes, King David made an intelligent use of the stoch. He was on one when not far away, while on another roof, Bath-Sheba pleasantly washed herself. It turns out that she knew how to take advantage of the roof too.

The floor had lush carpeting and a fan dangled from the ceiling. Not that they were going to need a working fan any time soon. The room was already cold, even though he had just turned on the air conditioner a few minutes ago. The bed was a queen, with fluffy pillows and a large blanket waiting for them. There was just a bit of dust, which meant everything had been prepared days—possibly weeks—ago.

Whatever had possessed him to give up his weapons so easily? The islanders hadn’t even asked him to do it; he had simply left them in his room of his own accord. It was the electricity. The comfort. The air conditioner. The sight of Kyle playing games in the lobby. Tom reading a book, without a care in the world. Everyone was so calm, so oblivious to what was happening out there, that he couldn’t help but fall in line.

Wiggling my breasts against his back, I waited for the groan. Cooper glanced back at me and frowned. “I need to start wearing sweatpants or else you’ll kill me.” “I don’t understand,” I said, batting my eyes innocently. “Are you talking about this?” Wiggling my breasts against him again, I jumped when his hands went to my bare thighs. Stroking from my hips to knees, Cooper gave me a grin. “I’m getting you naked this weekend. Even if I have to lie, cheat, and steal, I’m hitting a homerun with you, baby.” “Sure, whatever. Can we leave now?” “Temptress.” “Dickhead.” “Beauty.” “Stud.” “A stud that needs sweatpants.” “If it’s such a hassle, maybe we shouldn’t fool around at my place?” Cooper just laughed while pulling away from school. He was laughing again when he parked at the curb next to my apartment building. “What’s so funny?” “Nothing. When I don’t get enough oxygen to my brain, it gives me the giggles.” Now, I was laughing as we walked to the front door. “My mom might be home.” “I’ll be sure to feel you up silently then.” Grinning, I unlocked the door and pushed it open to find the air conditioner running high. “My mom sometimes gets overheated.” “Lady issues. Check. No more info is necessary or desired.” Shutting the door, I turned down the air conditioner before finding two sodas in the refrigerator. “I need a shower.” Cooper stared at me with a pained expression. “Sweatpants.” Laughing, I left him to my crappy cable. After a quick shower, I changed into a loose tank top and shorts. Feeling daring, I chose to wear panties, but no bra. Returning to the living room, I found Cooper stretched out with his legs over the coffee table and his arms spread out along the back of the couch. He looked large and menacing then he glanced at me and grinned. “Would now be a bad time to mention I’m horny?” he asked as I opened my soda and joined him on the couch. “If I never again heard a single thing about you being horny, I’d still be well informed.

Ian’s hygiene products didn’t include hair conditioner, so I was left with a tangled mess to comb out afterward. I found a flimsy-looking black comb in his shaving kit and did the best I could with it. The poor thing bent and lost a few teeth as I ran it through my snarls. By the time I was finished, the comb was ruined. I said a few words of respect and then buried it in the trash can. After getting dressed again, I opened the bathroom door and found Ian lying on the air mattress with his arm over his eyes. “Nice shower?” he asked in a weary voice. “Yes. I’ll have to buy you a new comb, though. I killed the one from your shaving bag.” He moved his arm to look at me. “You’d better.

No one needs Independence. We all just need tea and air conditioners.

Suppose it was too much to hope for a man who could fix an air conditioner and have a soul at the same time.

It is 32c today, and the only thing keeping me from hanging myself is the small sense of relief I glean from attaching my body to the vents of my delicious cooling piece. It is a stunning unit, exquisite in all its forms, exceptional in its application, and effective in all its functions. I would marry it, if only I knew it would not die on me sometime within the next five years. Appliances, like obedient children or silent extroverts, cannot last forever, and while my unbidden affection kept my other air conditioner alive for the better part of ten years, not all inanimate objects can be fueled by my love.

It is 32c today, and the only thing keeping me from hanging myself is the small sense of relief I glean from attaching my body to the vents of my delicious cooling piece. It is a stunning unit, exquisite in all its forms, exceptional in its application, and effective in all its functions. I would marry it, if only I knew it would not die on me sometime within the next five years. Appliances, like obedient children or silent extroverts, cannot last forever, and while my unbidden affection kept my other air conditioner alive for the better part of ten years, not all inanimate objects can be fueled by my love.

What is actually considered room temperature? Is it the one outside or the one inside? The one used to cool the room with air conditioner to drown out the heat or the one reached with the heater or fireplace to mitigate the cold? Because for example, room temperature in the Caribbean is not the same as the one in Alaska or Siberia. Room temperature in December is not the same as it is in July.

A few facts about China’s manufacturing juggernaut: China is the world’s largest manufacturer with over $2.2 trillion in manufacturing value-added. Its manufacturing base has increased by over 18 times in the last 30 years. China produces 80 percent of the world’s air-conditioners, 90 percent of the world’s personal computers, 75 percent of the world’s solar panels, 70 percent of the world’s cell phones, and 63 percent of the world’s shoes. Manufacturing is 40 percent of the Chinese GDP and directly employs 130 million people, a number that has been relatively stable over the past decades. Within this space, there are a huge number of Chinese companies fiercely competing. For example, there are now over 30,000 building materials companies in China making everything from ceramic tiles to wood flooring.

Everything in the world was definitely based only in luck. Some people won Lotto, some people walked down the street and air conditioners fell on their heads, and the rest of the world was somewhere in between. Unfortunately, Joey felt closer to the air conditioner guy than the Lotto guy.

Anxious to defend his adopted city—especially his side of town, the less fashionable west end—Eli considered giving Veronica a condensed lecture on the history of Asheville, North Carolina. 1880: the Western North Carolina Railroad completed a line from Salisbury to Asheville, which later enabled George Washington Vanderbilt to construct the Biltmore Estate, the largest private residence in America. Over time, that 179,000 square foot house transitioned into a multi- million dollar company. Which lured in tourists. Who created thousands of jobs. Which caused the sprawl flashing by Eli’s window at fifty-five miles per hour. But Eli refrained from being the Local Know-It-All, remembering all the times he’d traveled to new cities and some cabbie wanted to play docent, wanted to tell him about the real Cleveland or the hidden Miami. Instead, he let the air conditioner chase away the remnants of his jet lag and thought about Almario “Go Go” Gato. He waited for Veronica to say something about the Blue Ridge Mountains, which stood alongside the highway, hovering over the valley below like stoic parents waiting for their kids to clean up their messy bedrooms. Eli gave her points for her silence. And for ditching the phone, even if she kept glancing anxiously toward the glove compartment every time it buzzed. The car rode smooth, hardly a bump. For a resident of Los Angeles, she drove cautiously, obeying all traffic laws. Eli had a perfect driving record. Well, almost perfect. There was that time he drove the Durham Bulls’ chartered Greyhound into the right field fence during the seventh inning stretch. But that was history. Almost ancient.

CUSTOMER USE DATA WORKSHEET FULL TIME: ___ WKS: ____ MOS: _____ PER YEAR PRIMARY SLEEPING (Yours) QUEEN: ____ TWINS: ___      NO PREFERENCE: ______ OTHER SLEEPING AREAS NEEDED (Specify # adults or children) __________________________________ EATING ACCOMMODATIONS – BOOTH OR DINETTE: ___ TABLE & CHAIRS: _____ BATH PREFERENCE – WALK THROUGH: ____ SIDE BATH: _____ PRIVATE COMMODE: ______ FULL HOOK-UP CAMPING: _______% TIME   OR SELF CONTAINED _______% TIME (This helps to determine holding tank, fresh water, and generator needs.) STORAGE NEEDS (both inside and out - i.e. golf clubs, fishing poles, clothes, pots & pans etc.): _________________________________ _________________________________   EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS (air conditioner, generator, satellite dish, TVs, TV antenna, CD, DVD, Washer/Dryer, Leveling Jacks, etc.) _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ SPECIAL NEEDS (Handicap requirements etc.) __________________________________ __________________________________ __________________________________ DISLIKES (be honest, this is very important, i.e. center kitchen, split bath, corner bed, fabric colors, wood trim): _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ PRICE RANGE DESIRED: FROM $_________    TO $___________ TRADE IN INFORMATION (Brand/Model/Year): _________________________________ MILES: _______ENG. ______ LENGTH: _____ OPTIONS ON UNIT: ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ BALANCE OWED: _________ LENDER: ___________ ACCT #: ___________________________________

Ah,” said Henny. “Give us a blast of that air conditioner.” “What makes you think this truck is air-conditioned?” said Gil. “Wouldn’t have it. Just one more thing that could go wrong.” Lots of things had already gone wrong with this truck. It had a cracked windshield, lots of body dents and rust, and ripped seats. But it did do something right. It started. “We’ve got to hurry,” I said. “I have to be home by five-thirty.” “Well, that’s very interesting,” said Gil. “Imagine how far Captain Lewis would have gotten if his mother said, ‘Now, Merriwether, be sure to be home for supper.

At one point a research firm was called in to do a study of the excessive, inescapable noise, and they concluded that the hum of the air conditioner was so bothersome because there weren’t enough competing noises — so they fixed the machines to make them give off a loud, continual hiss. In Greenblatt’s words, this change “was not a win,” and the constant hiss made the long hours on the ninth floor rather nerve-racking for some. Add

If you can hear the humming sound of your air conditioner or fridge, it is a measure of time you are wasting.

Naturally, the air conditioner wasn’t working. It seemed the only time it worked was in the winter when she didn’t need it. Ditto for the heater, which seemed to work best in the summer.

When I first saw her she dropped her purse and was scrambling to find her glasses. I was two doors down on the right side of the hall, so I walked over and picked them up. I handed them to her and she slipped them on. Her hair was a mess and her face was pouring sweat. I was too and I was itching to get into my apartment. Living on the fourth of five floors was hot, but I had air conditioners in every room with big enough windows. The four machines made it like an ice box and I loved it. Some nights when it got cool enough outside, my windows would fog and I’d see my breath. I turned and walked back to my small place and she called out. “Thank you! Most people don’t notice me!” I turned back to her and smiled, our eyes locked. Her glasses were thick, and they magnified her eyes several times. It was strange looking at them, but I kept my gaze on her for a few seconds as I turned back to my place. I looked her over. Her small breasts stood out against her stomach, which bulged slightly as if she was three or four months pregnant. I didn’t think she was, because she wasn’t straining as hard as I would think a pregnant woman would in this heat. She was attractive in a subtle way, not my usual type. She was tall, about six feet almost, and her long hair was curly, the bones in her hands and wrists stood out. She was skinnier than I ever liked. I’ve always preferred girls with a heft to them. Something about her made me curious, she felt…different.

The brain is only interested in changes in information. That's why people don't really hear the noise of the air conditioner unless it suddenly cuts off or the noise made in some classrooms unless it gets very quiet. Although they actually are hearing it, they aren't paying attention to it. This is called habituation, and it is the way the brain deals with unchanging information from the environment.

No one wanted a repeat of the sweaty and irritated Eisenhower who had disembarked during the Operation ALERT drill, so the Sikorsky UH-34 Seahorse helicopters were painted white on top, to help reflect heat and lower the cabin temperature, and each was fitted with an automobile air conditioner to help keep the passengers cool. Their distinctive paint scheme came to be known as “white tops,” and would designate helicopters used for VIP transport.

If I am really forgotten in my nightmare one day, then I will push open all the red doors and paint across the black sea so that all the eyes that have gotten used to the darkness may see the light.

When I'm walking in the darkness, I'm the scariest ghost story in this city.

Who's never absorbed nutrients at a grave? Who's never grown from flesh? I have seen plenty of hells, and because of that, I have to find heaven!