{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Burning Our Brains","description":"The heat's cooked our brains.  ------ The heat\u2019s taken its toll. It\u2019s been unrelenting. Brutal. The greenery looks weary. The grass dries and turns brown within hours of any moisture. My car thermometer regularly reads around 110 and I saw online that it feels much hotter. We need a break. We need relief. My dog looks at me and says \u201cNo way I\u2019m walking on that street. That street will burn my feet right off\u201d and she\u2019s right. It's affecting us mentally. We\u2019re budding on crazy. It\u2019s cooked our brains. Recent headlines are all you need to see. A lady in Birmingham faked her own abduction. She was missing for a few days before she showed up again. I don\u2019t think anyone knows where she was. I\u2019m betting she found some air conditioning and was just sitting in it. \u201cLet people look for me, let the donations pile up,\u201d she thought. \u201cThat\u2019s fine. At least I\u2019m cool.\u201d Lady, I get it. A brawl on the Montgomery riverfront didn\u2019t cite heat as an instigator but it certainly had to be. Those fools on the pontoon boat had been cooking themselves in the sun all day. It melted their brains. They likely had a big cooler full of cold pops that had turned warm, too. All day in the searing sun, cold pops now hot and tempers can\u2019t help but rise. It all triggered some bad decisions. Same with the folks on the riverboat. It had been a nice cruise but it\u2019s time to find the comfort of AC at home and anyone preventing them from getting off that boat\u2026 Well\u2026 I\u2019d grab a chair, too. Down here in Mobile we\u2019ve had a fully adult Roman Catholic priest head off to Europe with an 18-year-old female high schooler just after her graduation. Reports say they\u2019d been together for a while but I\u2019m sure the heat accelerated things. Cooked their brains, especially his. Those priests wear those heavy vestments and garments and such \u2013 no way to stay cool under all that. And black clothes with those closed priest collars? He\u2019s made a heat related mistake and the Archbishop has defrocked him \u2013 un-priested him. I\u2019m guessing Mr. Romeo Priest may a bit upset now that\u2019s he\u2019s come to but he\u2019s happy to get into some cooler clothes. As I write this it\u2019s the hottest day of the year so far here in Mobile. As I look online right now, it says it feels like 116 degrees outside. Meaning my car probably reads 125 or so. It\u2019s brutal. It\u2019s the seventh layer of Dante\u2019s Inferno. When I get home, I\u2019m going to watch on TV what crazy things the cooked brains in our city did today. Someone misbehaved. Someone surely snapped. Can\u2019t wait to see who. As for me, I\u2019m going to stay right here lying down in my underwear on this cool tile floor, feeling the wash of cold air flow over me each time the refrigerator door opens above me. Wondering what the camera crew is doing here. And why the convenience store clerk keeps pointing at me. I\u2019m Cam Marston and I\u2019m just trying to Keep It Real. ","author_name":"Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston","author_url":"https:\/\/cammarston.com\/keepin-it-real-with-cam-marston\/","html":"