This is one of many articles in the Mercury’s 2026 Climate Issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.
Aliens are real. Actually real. Life travels the stars. They know about us and we know about them. What does that say about our place in the universe? What do they want? And who cares? It’s hot as balls, getting way hotter than balls, and gas is expensive.
Desperate for a cool breeze, I walk outside in booty shorts and a classic sleeveless rebranded as a “wife-pleaser.” I wave to my shirtless neighbor and he waves back. Dazed in the heat, we have forgotten each other’s names. The surveillance camera on my neighbor’s doorbell knows my name, though. It tracks my face. My neighbor’s doorbell knows my fucking birthday. I ask my neighbor if he saw the new UFO footage. He doesn’t believe in aliens. He does believe in angels.
It’s too hot to talk about the news. A super heat dome rakes over the Earth’s face like God’s big-ass magnifying glass. Lord, let me find some wholesome summer shenanigans before I’m roasted beneath this killing sky. Data centers, layoffs, genocide, Epstein, unregulated lettuce that makes your insides explode, blah blah blah. It all feels connected, but it’s far enough away when the weather is nice. The smoke from the crawling wildfires reaches out for us. Though mostly, there’s not a cloud in the sky. There’s a war on, or is there? We face the shifting sands of truth and the lack of it each day. I embrace my hypercompartmentalized denial. Because Bono was right about a beautiful day—don’t let it get away.
It’s time to “beat the heat” and get the most out of summer without breaking the bank.
Tip #1: Destroy Your Phone
Karl Marx once called religion “an opiate of the masses.” Your smartphone is the experimental bath salts of the masses. Nothing breaks the immersion of a lovely walk through the park like dropping into a livestream of your cousin’s AI-driven psychotic crash out. Doom comes for us all, so why spoil a beach day with up-to-the-minute notifications? The infinite scroll can reduce you to a Skinner box gerbil sifting through slop until you can’t even remember the faces of the friends who turned you on to these platforms in the first place. Social media sucks now. It’s all ads and it feels bad. Turn the phone off and watch a butterfly while you still can.
Tip #2: DIY Climate Control
Okay, I invented this when my electric bill doubled months before I even installed my girlfriend’s air conditioner. Thanks, data centers! Beat the heat and save on power with my amazing invention, The Limitless Frozen Gatorade Bottle Swamp Cooler. All you need is two spent Gatorade Bottles refilled with Tap Water, A Fan (any size), A Bowl, and a Ka-Bar Knife.
Place your frozen Gatorade bottles filled with tap water in the freezer. Wait an hour. Plop one frozen Gatorade bottle in the bowl and arrange it in front of your fan. Sit in front of the fan and hold your knife while soaking up that sort-of cool air! Think about the blade in your hand, its weight, its shape. Truly, all a man needs in a dying empire is a stale, cool-ish breeze and trusty handful of steel to make the voices stop. When the ice melts, simply swap with the other bottle in the freezer (hence limitless). Black out your windows and turn off the lights for maximum effect. Repeat this process until nightfall and on until sunrise.
Tip #3: Ice Skating at Lloyd Center
RIP. Never mind.
Real Tip #3: Da Movies
Surge pricing algorithms have ruined everything from live entertainment to basic housing, but the mid-afternoon movie is still half-off, for now. An afternoon matinee provides a cool and thrilling jaunt through worlds beyond your imagination! Our sun is most deadly in the early afternoon, so why not take refuge in ancient Greece with Matt Damon (The Odyssey)! Stave off heat stroke with a big cup of diet soda and a Woody-n-Buzz (Toy Story 5) popcorn bucket! The sun is a terminal beam weapon and we’re running out of water, but the Rock has a wig (Moana LIVE). I recommend familiarizing yourself with all of the conversation starting summer blockbusters. Love ’em or hate ’em, the latest hit movie is something to talk about besides the spiking cost of groceries.
The trusted footpaths of the past corral us to the sloop-troughs of the future. We are the Flintstones AND the Jetsons, outlived consumer archetypes. Our history and future are reduced to appliances and wardrobes while consumer power means increasingly less. There’s a fire sale on democracy. Capitalism is late-staging itself into some kind of crypto-carnie casino. Customer service hotlines are being phased out by robots that hang up on you. Maybe the aliens will descend from the clouds and share their secrets for same-day shipping from orbit. Maybe God’s angels will descend from the clouds and lock us in camps. Maybe AI will blow up the whole damn thing. No matter which humiliating apocalypse you like/subscribe to, the cognitive dissonance of Trump 2 can’t hold forever, especially with the oceans rising. It’s summertime, and the living is easy. It’s time to stay cool and watch the skies. Maybe build a raft.