Phew it's hot.

Tomorrow, Sunday, Melbourne will have the rather dubious honour to be the hottest state capital in Australia.

I mean, Melbourne is always hot for the right reasons. Tomorrow it's just plain hot. 43 Celcius - about 107 American.

The media would have us get all panicked and unsteady about Bird Flu H5N1 looking 1337 but meaning nothing. People die in heat like that. Hospital emergency rooms flood with sunburn victims and heat stroke victims and all sorts of other nasty ailments generally caused by remaining too long in an oven.

I'm talking hot.

The roads are going to melt. It's fry an egg on the roof of the car type weather. It's power grid shut-down due to the massive employment of air conditioners that's going to happen.

I remember going to the movies last time it was that hot. Even in the cinema it was hot and uncomfortable. It wasn't 43 but when you can't get up to find a breeze anywhere, who cares how hot it is or isn't. It's just blurtishly hot.

Why Melbourne of all places in this vast country?

We're southern, we're not supposed to get the sort of weather they usually get in Alice Springs - which deserves it. 40+ degree heat in Alice Springs is nature's way of telling people they shouldn't be living there in the first place. But Melbourne is beach front property. It's half way between the equator and the south pole. It's just not supposed to get that bloody hot.

Adelaide made the news today for having just endured its hottest spell for 65 years. They're in for another torrid day tomorrow with the mercury set to reach 40. Not as hot as us - and they're closer to the equator than we are.

Wtf is up with that?

I don't have to work tomorrow. There's no air conditioning there either. We sort of rely on a door open at the back to let the breeze through. It does work, but when that breeze is hot enough to roast a chicken, as it will be tomorrow, who in their right minds would subject themselves to it for something as intrinsically worthless as money?

I don't think I would work tomorrow if I turned up anyway. I don't think I'd work at all if I set foot outside the front door and into the unsanitised atmosphere, devoid of its murderous heat. If the power goes off tomorrow, I'm running a bath. A cold bath. I'll take a notepad and pens in with me and forget there's an inside out oven outside the walls and pen something poignant.

Something like "The swans drifted by the moss covered rocks at the side of the pond. They looked serene and unaffected. They wouldn't change for a while yet, they'd been boiled alive in the pond and hadn't yet begun to decay. Autoclaved swans tend to hold their form for 3 or 4 days. Did I mention it was hot? Fucking hot."

On a map of Australia, tomorrow at least, Tasmania looks like a very attractive place. In all honesty it is - except for those two headed people who live there. I liked Hitchhiker's Guide, but 300,000 real life Zaphods aren't exactly high on my list of things to see before I die.

If it weren't for the fact half the population of Melbourne would be out walking their stupid pets until 3 in the morning tonight, it would be an absolutely marvellous thing to walk around the darkened streets stark bollock naked. Or just to be outside and unclad. This weather is too hot even for mozzies. They all found refreshingly cool bits of water in which to lay their eggs, stayed too long and burned to death like lobsters in restaurant pots. Good.

I'd really do that... be outside starkers, but there are enough people already who think I'm weird and dangerous enough online without having half a suburb telling everyone else I'm a crazed freak irl as well. (Besides which, I have views about my views. There are some things I don't share with just anyone.)

When Andrew from Canada was here, he was planting trees. The news today advised that half of the eastern areas of Victoria have burned out in a bushfire or three. Probably started by the thunderstorms that went through yesterday, but it wouldn't surprise me if those trees just spontaneously combusted. And it's going to be 10 degrees hotter tomorrow than it was today and today bordered on the unbearable.

I hope he's not still stuck in some desert shithole in South Australia. I mean, this heat is killer heat. I'm serious, people die in that kind of heat if they don't take measures to protect themselves from it. If you're in the middle of nowhere in this country, the only way to escape the heat is to bury yourself in the sand and keep the sun off your head as best you can - and consume 48 litres of water an hour.

So much for all his good work, and that of those who are with him.

Hey Andrew, COME BACK!

Still love the kids on the other side. (Just so you know.)