The weather has been so hot that beef cattle are becoming broiled rib-eyes while standing in their pastures.

I've seen people sneaking into farms with bottles of A1 Steak Sauce and potatoes that baked along the way.

This summer has been so hot that you could fry the sidewalk on an egg.

Quick, somebody check their GPS and make sure we're still on planet Earth and haven't been annexed by all of this Mercury.

Whoever said “If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen” didn't say it here this summer. Getting out of the kitchen won't help one bit.

The kitchen ain't the problem. The heat is the problem. And that heat is omnipresent, which doesn't mean it's some giant gift but, rather, that it is everywhere.

Actually, the better advice is if you can't stand the heat, sit down. Sitting down takes less effort than standing.

But you'd still be sweating.

The weather has been so hot this summer that even sticks of anti-perspirant are sweating.

Sunflowers have been seen wearing sunglasses.

That's how hot it's been.

The other day I saw a row of sunflowers putting suntan lotion on each other.

Even the idea of cutting the grass with my pushmower gives me heat prostration. Just thinking about lifting my little finger to type the next letter makes my hand cramp. After the first two paragraphs of this column I had to stop and drink three liters of Gatorade.

Every liter bit helps.

With high temperatures hitting 100 more often than an army of talented and gifted students at exam time, a late October day of 72 degrees with no humidity seems like some distant mirage.

Humidity?

I've seen people come out with pots and pans, scoop them through the air to fill them with water, and then go back inside to boil vegetables.

The air is thicker than a file of Wikileaks.

But why go back inside to boil vegetables when you can do it quicker by leaving those vegetable-laden pots and pans outside on the porch?

Thank goodness for overnight lows.

Ha!

Yeah!

Right!

Overnight lows of 80.

Eighty! Eighty going once. Eighty going twice. Eighty going every night of the week.

But that is just plain wrong. Mother Nature must be tripping.

Eighty isn't an overnight low. Eighty is an overnight high.

So we have daily highs in the 100s and overnight highs in the 80s. Most of us have no actual overnight lows at all and never in the 60s.

The only people with overnight lows in the 60s are old hippies having flashbacks to Woodstock and they're all overnight high anyway.

Wild animals, meanwhile, have started knocking on doors to borrow ice cubes. That's what the old hippies tell me, in between tall tales about how great the 60s were and how people wore longsleeve shirts and slept under the covers in the 60s, with bedroom windows open to the cool 60s breeze.

Actually, I'd be happy with a few 70s.